Kiddo left early this morning with Theresa. She is away for a school camp and will only be back on Friday. She was supposed to be in school at 7.30am this morning, so she woke up pretty early. She was visibly excited and though we are both a wee apprehensive, this is as good a time to “let her go” as any. Letting her go, as in being away for a few days, and not with family or relatives.

This is the first time she would be away for an extended period. When we said that to her she said she had been away before. But that was away in my sister’s house in Penang. She was with her auntie and cousins then. This time, she would be with “strangers” and she would have to be independent.

We prayed for her last night but for various reasons, I wasn’t my usual self last night. I was thinking about various issues at work, issues which have been brewing all along but in the past 3 weeks or so, came to the fore again.

So, what I thought was a week I would look forward to is turning out to be quite different. I feel strange, almost like being in rather new territories. Something is cooking, I hope.

It is almost 5.30pm, on the eve of the Easter holiday. It is a weekend I have been looking forward to all week. I think this is the first time I get to spend a few days with the family, over a “holiday” period.  Don’t know yet what we are going to do (actually I do, but will blog it later) but I know I will try and have a good break. I really feel like I need this one. At the end of our weekly “management” meeting this afternoon, the boss reminded us to think of the true meaning of Easter. That was good – I never had this coming from a boss, or even a colleague, before. If you are reading this, I hope you have a great Easter and that at some point over the next 3-4 days, you too, would get a chance to think about what Easter means to you.

Kiddo had an excursion into the city yesterday. Two classes – hers and another known as 7B – took a train into the city to visit the Immigration Museum and watch an Imax movie. The Imax bit didn’t happen as one of the students climbed onto a hand rail, sat on it and fell backwards, hurting her head. She was apparently quite dazed and the teachers must have panicked to an extent where they cancelled the rest of the program for the day and packed everyone off, back to the school way before. Anyway that isn’t the story for this entry.

On the way back from the city, kiddo took out her a few things from her backpack, including her school diary. The other stuff made their way back into her backpack, but not her diary. The diary, which contains loads of important information, including details of the appointments with her teachers for tonight’s parent-teacher meetings, was left on the train. We had our usual pow-wows about responsibilities, taking care, blah blah blah and all has been forgotten. We had braced ourselves for her to get a new school diary.

A few hours ago, I took a call from an elderly lady. She said she was from Poland, and had settled in Melbourne a number of years ago. She apologised for her accent but said she called because she had found kiddo’s diary, in the train! She had seen another kid take it but insisted that kid gave it to her, as she thought (she is probably right) that the kid would have binned it.

So tonight, we have to take a drive to a suburb known as East Malvern, to retrieve kiddo’s diary. It’s a lucky break for her, to be able to retrieve it.

There are still fair dinkum folks in Melbourne. People who have absolutely nothing to gain from actions like Mrs F’s but did them anyway simply because they are the right things to do. Doing the right thing. If more did the right thing, this world would be a much better place to live in.

Sure there would always be the moral or philosophical argument as to what constitutes the “right thing”. Hang it, I think. I believe in most instances, there is a gut feel to it all, as to what is the right thing to do in any given situation. Most don’t do it in spite of such conviction, because they weighed up the cost and decided it wasn’t worth it. I mean, what if I turned out to be a granny rapist and unimaginably harmed her, when I dropped into her house tonight? Many would have thought of such caution and binned kiddo’s diary, because in many people’s books, doing this “right thing” would not have been worth it.

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