This is probably not an entry I would have liked to make, but the whole idea for an exercise like blogging is for posterity. Well, it is for me, anyway. One day, who knows – a little version of me 50 years later would discover this blog and said, “Look, gramps had this experience, too!”

I’m talking about libido. Sure, I’ve just sneaked past 40 but surely I’m still as youthful and, dare I say it, as virile as ever before? Or am I not? I shudder to think that I have aged in this way, as well.

Perhaps I can blame it on the fact that we (Theresa and I) have both had to shoulder the bulk of the housework and are therefore often tired out at the end of the day. At least one, if not both of us usually collapse into a heap on the lounge set at night as the family sit around watching a supposedly exciting television program, and snore away, dead to the world. We are talking perhaps 9 or 9.30pm and that is hardly the time to just drift off to Noddy land. But we do.

Perhaps I can blame it on the cold weather but this is hardly Arctic winter.

Whatever the cause, I hang my head in shame, admitting I have plummeted in this department, down to perhaps the Malaysian national average of what – 52 times a year? Even in Victoria, that average is a shameful statistic, one to be elevated, if you know what I mean.

So what do I do? Maybe we can do something about the fact that next week, kiddo goes away for a school camp. We’d have the whole house to ourselves then, and perhaps, a little less housework to worry about. I am not exactly rubbing my hands in glee but that is certainly an idea to work on…watch this space!

Melbourne is still holding out against the effects of global warming. It is true to itself and has behaved in a totally erratic manner, weather wise. As the wind blows and causes everything to fly away, weather wise, it’s such a lowly day. Starting about 2pm, the temperature dipped and the skies opened up while the wind continued blowing. It is now about 12 degrees and still falling, the skies are dark and the winds are howling outside. Suddenly the nice moderate autumn weather takes a fall (pun intended) and wintry conditions glide in and freeze everything over. Most of us would not have been equipped with coats do I guess it is collar-up, hands in pocket and quick dashes to cars, as we leave office later tonight. Already the missus is sending emails asking what I’d be cooking for dinner tonight. At the moment, steaming hot pork porridge sounds just about right.

A colleague is handling a County Court matter with a disputed claim of about $100,000.00. I was doing another interlocutory application and wasn’t sure what the filing fee was so I looked up the ledger of this matter this colleague is working on, as I know a similar application was filed in that matter. I found the answer I was looking for but just as stark, is the fact that this little dispute has racked up a bill of over $20,000.00. My own matter has racked up just over $10,000.00, and that was before an invoice for barrister’s fee of about $6,000.00 was received yesterday.

I guess this reminds me why lawyers are often a hated bunch. Yes, we solve problems but we create new ones as well.

 

This is going to be a continuing struggle for me. How does one go on doing this? For every problem worth $100 which we solve, we take up to 30-40% of that and line our own pockets. Even that is not as bad as when the problem is actually not solved. The client still has to pay us. That double whammy is what often turns clients against lawyers, sometime venomously so.

 

It isn’t such a great problem if the client is a corporation. The issues usually involve greater sums of money and they have deeper pockets. So the only thing which keeps me up at night is solving the actual legal problem. I would have no guilt laden conscience in charging the small little struggling family business a fee which justifies my work but land the client on one knee.

 

The present two cases are not the worst examples. We have had our fair share of even smaller disputes which our fees totally blow out of the water. If you ever choose to be a lawyer, don’t be a suburban lawyer if you have sentiments like mine. If you ever have a dispute, and that dispute is solely on money matters, settle it without even seeing a lawyer if you could. It makes no sense to go to a lawyer if the problem has to do with just money, as it only gives you a bigger problem in terms of a large legal bill. Only make sure you have some paper saying the settlement is final and there is to be no recourse no matter what. You strictly don’t need a lawyer for that piece of paper. Just think of the worst possible scenario where the guy you have a dispute with turns around after shaking your hands, and denying any final agreement/settlement ever took place.

 

John So’s honeymoon is over. He rode the crest on a wave of popularity towards the end of the Commonwealth Games 2006 but now that the party is (well and truly) over and everyone is back to work, the hard business of running a City Council is dropping on John So’s desk with the proverbial thud. John So is no longer everyone’s bro.

The fuss? Parking tickets in Melbourne CBD. Apparently, a parking attendant spoke to some research officers and told them there was a daily quota. Each attendant/officer had to issue over 30 parking tickets a day, or face the sack! Personally, I have been spared the harsh piece of paper on my windscreen, even when I have exceeded the time limit on a number of occasions. I have however, experienced such pains before and often, they fell unjustified.

The point is – financial performance is wrecking untold damage to countless workers’ well-being, I think. If parking officers can be under the pump and has included in his or her KPI, such “measurable” parameters as parking tickets issued, you know financial performance truly has become a dirty word. Surely, these officers’ job is to ensure orderly parking and prevention of hogging of parking spaces to ensure the traffic ticks along with minimum hitches? That is their job surely, and not enhance revenue?

The malaise of financial bottom lines is a modern day plague. I blame the stock analysts. They started it. They measured company performance by looking at growth in profits (amongst others of course, but that is a main one, I’d imagine). No matter how strong and vibrant a company appears to be, if there is no growth in profits, the stock price does not rise – “perform” – and this could lead to calls for remedial actions such as changing CEO, mergers or acquisitions, etc. Where does the chase end? Is growth a perpetual thing? Doesn’t growth stall at some stage for all organizations? Is it essential for survival?

I accept there must be growth of some sort, so that we do not become complacent and progress can be made. However if we are so obsessed with it as to be harsh to people around us, it is time to take stock and re-analyse things (pardon the pun)…

In the past 2 days, Theresa and I both received emails from friends who have migrated overseas, and are doing well…

—–Original Message—–
From: Ian Teh [mailto:ian@sharrockpitman.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 5 April 2006 9:20 AM
To: Theresa Chew
Subject: FW: Home

He got a job with BB as In-House Legal Counsel. Looks like jobs isn’t the main problem for our migrating friends anymore.

His pay is about $$K, which xxx just wont pay him, saying he asked for too much! L telephoned and asked if he found a job and got the pay he wanted!!!

Regards

Ian

---

From: Ian Teh [mailto:ian@sharrockpitman.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 5 April 2006 9:16 AM
To:
Subject: Home

1 ½ hours …. Wow, that sounds like a lot of commuting. I guess you can read/have a snooze in the train so yes, that’s better than being stuck in traffic in KL.

You mentioned YOU still live in ____. What about ______? Where is ____ and where does ____ work?

While it is not a pressing matter, I have decided to look for something else to do. I hate to say this but somehow this (my present work) is not what I want to do long term. I really cannot go on much longer charging 6 minute blocks for little tasks and quick phone calls and call that satisfying legal work.

I said “I hate to say this” because I know in spite of how I feel professionally, all other factors like working so close to home in a suburban context really do add up to a big plus. I feel it really is less important how professionally satisfied I am compared to how my life is overall. Yes, my work is a very big part of me and that is almost the last piece of this life’s jigsaw puzzle here in Melbourne to make me truly happy but there is always the catch, the fear that I may be trading in the other aspects of my life just to make my work happier.

I have come to have a real relationship with my God now so I look to that a lot and that keeps me happy no matter what. I am therefore looking to Him also, to give me a hand and steer me in the right direction. After speaking with you a few weeks ago, I prayed for you constantly and voila – I think God answered that part of my prayers! I know He will answer my other prayers in His time also.

Cheers and do enjoy your coming weeks/months in your new life, not least looking behind your shoulders – we’re coming after you. I know 6 points in 7 games is a big ask but the chase alone is worth the season’s earlier woes! Forgive me but seeing the “Special One” behaving in a very ordinary way (ie, losing temper and blaming others) is quite refreshing!

Cheers again

Teh

I have just drafted an application for discovery and interrogatories. It is for an insurance claim. Not a “runner’s” case insurance claim, but for a trade credit risk insurance claim. It is not complicated. Conceptually, at least, it is in fact quite simple. However there is a dearth of precedents on stuff like that and especially for firm out in the suburbs, precedents to assist my present task is as scarce as truffles in my backyard. We don’t subscribe to any forms and precedents except some vague references in Lexis Nexis. They are all Supreme Court stuff and deal mainly with personal injury, property damage etc. Mine is, should I say, just a wee bit off that track and it’s in a County Court.

So I just dreamt up something, did what I thought should be done and gave the boss a set of drafts for the application. He just threw it back at me. Too wide, not crisp enough, no need for an affidavit, interrogatories not there? I recall telling him I had never conducted litigation of even the smallest case in my entire legal career. I had not even seen a full set of discovery or interrogatory documents. I know what they are for (I recall doing Civil Procedures in Law School) and how they should be shaped but that is as far as I could go.

Anyway, me – a banking/securities/corporate lawyer chipping away at an application in a County Court in Victoria, working with little more than blank pieces of paper (or blank screens). I don’t mind doing all of this, but it simply isn’t efficient and could be downright unfair on the client if they get stuck with the bill for it.

So I now plug away, not knowing if the application is any nearer the correct (or expected) form. I still feel like I should be learning how to write poetry instead of learning a new language. But, until then I guess I have to learn the ancient language of courtspeake.

It is now 3pm on a Monday afternoon. Almost all or my tasks have been completed, except of course whatever amendments there may be to a few draft documents I have put on my principal’s table. He is out for a meeting and should be back shortly, I think. Until then, I am relatively free and this would not translate well onto my time sheet. This is my perennial problem. Yet, here I am sweating the issue week after week.

Show me the straw! (otherwise how to make bricks la)

Last night a friend called. She and her husband have just bought a house and had called me a few days before about doing the property transaction for them. I had then given them an estimate of our usual charge. Last night she said she found someone else who could do it much more cheaply. I was going to counter offer her and ask what rate could make us more competitive, when I recalled the conversation I had with Tim, a colleague, when we were driving back from the retreat on Saturday arvo.

The boss had launched into a tirade against Tim, implying he had done a deal behind the boss’s back, by agreeing to a lower retainer. He had hinted that I was doing the same, when my pastor wanted a will done and I asked the boss if the fee could be lower.

No, I wasn’t going through the trouble of getting work in by counter-offering a lower fee, when that sort of attitude was floating through the organisation. He didn’t trust me, didn’t trust Tim and is unlikely to start trusting us anytime soon. He recognises our reticence to charge high fees but somewhere in that very fertile mind of his, he harbours suspicions that our reticence isn’t entirely due to modesty or profit-shyness.

I wasn’t going to feed that suspicion by offering a deal on a Sunday night to an old friend. I therefore very promptly commended her for finding a cheaper solicitor and said yes, she should go ahead and appoint that solicitor. Sure, it would have meant no favours to my record of time sheet and billings but so what else is new…I sure can do without additional angst.

I don’t know – maybe after all these months sweating the issue, I’ve had it and would not let it get to me anymore. Obviously I still think about it an awful lot but just as clearly, I have stopped letting it upset me too much. I think about it, shrug the shoulders a bit and get on with other stuff. Maybe it is effluxion of time and with it comes numbness or familiarity which flushes out uneasiness. Maybe the peace of God which surpasses all understanding really is flowing through.

Unlike Malaysia, I cannot just walk away from a job and expect some alternatives to spring up (in fact even in Malaysia, that would no longer be true, if what I’ve been told/reading is accurate). But all the more so here, that is a tricky proposition. Walk away and the uncertainty, the very real prospects of having no alternatives save that which we create for our own, looms.

It is this knowledge which makes me think that it is the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, which is at work. The logical side of me would have made such thoughts/prospects unthinkable and therefore setting me off on a nerve-wrecking bout. Yet, I am learning to just quietly depend on God, whatever the outcome may be.

Funny how I think that seems to sum up my state of mind now…

Okay – I guess life goes on for most. You though, appear to keep busy enough for that statement to sound so understated. You should just get a partner in life who shares your passion for your canine friend – so that you can have more peace while at work (assuming your partner is less stressed up with work).

We have just moved into our own place about 1 1/2 weeks ago (after renting for over a year) so maybe (hopefully) not too long from now, we can start looking at getting a dog to share our house. I miss having a canine friend.

Life has been great in terms of quality time with the family, especially with Elysia. I have put job on the back burner as a priority so don’t really get hung up with the little things that used to bug me heaps. Also, God has taken on a more significant role in my life since around 1-2 years before leaving Malaysia, and I want to build on that more now.

So to answer your question, I guess yes I’m happier here in most ways but if I examine my job a lot more closely, that is where I am least happy.

Cheers

Teh

U laughed tho’, right? J

Re me, I know it’s a familiar refrain by now, but it’s been BAD. Have had to work the past 3 or 4 (I lose track now) weekends, n on average until 10pm if not later every night. L T is fine. None too happy every morn when I have to go to work n put her in the kitchen, but she’s used to it by now, I have brought her in a couple of times when I had to work late / over the weekend, but I’ve now figured (ding, ding.. lightbulb a bit fused) that it’s better to just take the laptop home n work from there. Ack.

How are things at your end? How’s wifey n kiddy n Roy Teh n the job? U happier there?

—–Original Message—–
From: Ian Teh [mailto:ian@sharrockpitman.com.au]
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 10:28 AM
To:
Subject: RE: TIMBUKTU

A red-neck through and through. How have you been, my friend? How is Tasha doing?

The National Poetry Contest had come down to two semi-finalists — a Yale graduate and a redneck from Wyoming. They were given a word, then allowed two minutes to study the word and come up with a poem that contained the word. The word they were given was “Timbuktu”.

First to recite his poem was the Yale graduate. He confidently stepped to the microphone and said:

“Slowly across the desert sand
Trekked a lonely caravan
Men on camels, two by two
Destination: Timbuktu.”

The crowd went crazy. No way could the redneck top that, they thought.

The redneck, with sweat rolled down his face, made his way to the microphone, he said:

“A friend and I a hunting went,
We spied three maidens in a tent,
They being three, we being two,
I bucked one and Tim bucked two.”

The redneck won!!

---

_____________________________________________________________________________

The firm had a retreat in this place called Sorrento, somewhere in the Mornington Peninsula south east of Melbourne. It was maybe a little under 100km from the office, and we all left office around 10.30am on Friday. We got there by around lunch, checked into this rustic little hotel called the Oceanic, and stayed there till Saturday afternoon, around 4pm.

It was a series of meetings, discussions, and eating. It’s the usual gaffe about motivation, buying-in into a team atmosphere, projects like advertising, client feedbacks, personal responsibilities and goals and the rest of such corporate mumbo jumbo, except this was a little suburban firm trying to be something more significant. Work long enough in any given field and you’d be dragged through these sessions. They’re not bad, were in fact quite fun but I’d much rather be with the family.

I guess a lot of credit must go the my boss for wanting to instil values and directions, but sometimes I wonder if time and energy is best spent elsewhere. Our work should not be more than to put food on the table. If it takes over so that we spend all waking hours thinking about it (which sessions like what we just had are designed to make you do) then it becomes problematic. That is not what I came to Melbourne for. I don’t want to be so into building something that I have little energy or time for other things.

What do I want to do now? First, I want to be still fresh in the mind when I go home after work everyday, to exchange ideas with my daughter about her school and church projects and issues. I want to get more into her life, as well as that of my wife. Sure, I may still not be as worked up as in KL, say, but such sessions as those we just had are first steps to a more professionally obsessed life. When we talk about commitment and excellence in work, we tend to start our journey towards work and away from a few other things. Our resources are finite and something’s got to give.

Anyway, secondly I want to be available for more of church work. Same issues as per above I guess.

Maybe I’m just subconsciously working out an exit plan from here, making a list of justifications. Maybe the various episodes in the past are all adding up and coming to a boil now and I am planning for alternatives, and am subconsciously looking at the other side of the ledger.

It was a weekend of retreat in work, maybe a lot further back than I had planned…