Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!

That’s what I feel like screaming right now. With my imminent departure looming closer and closer, people are coming out of the boondocks with all sorts of English checks and translations for me to do. Just now I had to exercise maximum self-control and take deep breaths to stop myself from punching someone in the face. Or like Ally McBeal, chewing his head off and then spitting it out like a plum pit. Why is it not Friday yet?!

I Quit

I finally did it. I turned in my resignation on Monday. Yes, I am finally leaving this company after almost three years. I’ve been wanting to do this for as long as I can remember, but was somehow always pulled back. To be fair, the people in my department are all really nice and sweet, even if sometimes I don’t always agree with the ways they do things. If I didn’t like the people I worked with, I I wouldn’t have lasted this long. BUT, all things were not peachy. Little things that you think you can deal with become a big source of frustration over time, and I finally decided that I don’t have to live my life this way. Why torture myself? If working is becoming a tumor that poisons my quality of life, why not remove it altogether? So that’s what I did.

It’s actually scary. I am only 31, going on 32. I have half of my life still ahead of me. What am I going to do with it? Any suggestions?

Ever since my boss signed my resignation form and made it official this morning, I’ve been having this sickening feeling in my stomach. Where do I go from here? How will I spend my days? Work was my safety net, however much I hated it, but now that it will be gone, I kind of miss it.

Blind Men's Elephant

You guys all know the story of the three blind men and the elephant, right? It goes something like this:

Three blind men wanted to find out what an elephant looks like. They each went up to it and felt it with their hands.

The first blind man touched the elephant’s trunk and said: “It looks like a giant snake.”
The second blind man touched the elephant’s leg and said: “No, it looks like a tree.”
The third blind man touched the elephant’s body and said, “No, you are both wrong. It looks like a wall.”

This is exactly what went on in both of the 2-hr meetings I attended yesterday. Nobody knew exactly what he was talking about but everyone was pretty sure with his own assumptions. I just sat back and day dreamed.

Wanna know how a Japanese company works?

I have refrained from writing anything about work, because, well, you just never know who’s going to read it. Granted, I doubt how many people I work with will trawl the internet to pass time, and even if they did, I doubt they’d be interested in any English sites. So I guess I can take a little risk.

Here’s the situation, a faffer who mumbles, who is also a manager, sat on a big pile of unsorted matters, which is actually not all that complicated, but since he let it sit for so long hoping it'll go away, it's about to blow up in his face. At which point he goes to the boss asking for backup. Boss turns to me and another unsuspecting hardworking pawn, basically asking us to clean up the mess, giving us one week to do what faffer was supposed to have finished in the past two months, i.e. writing a quality agreement for a drug company A is making for us. We obligingly agreed to give it a crack, but soon found out that critical information is missing. We went back to boss and faffer and said, “Hey, we can’t write it without knowing how this drug is made.” Faffer who mumbles starts to mumble and this is when it really gets bizarre.

Instead of asking company A to send us the essential information, boss and faffer decides that the other pawn (TOP) and I can wing it and just use information on hand, and whatever we can’t make up, simply leave it blank for company A to fill in later. (All because for some mysterious reason, old faffer promised, probably under heavy influence of Schnapps, that he’d send them a draft agreement before their next meeting, and he was reluctant to go back on his words. It’s a face thing.) We were also informed that we should preferably finish the draft in 3 days so as to send it to company A for review before faffer’s second meeting with company A in Switzerland.

With the 3-day deadline hanging over our heads, TOP and I started to frantically cutting and pasting old information to make a quality agreement out of practically nothing. If you have never seen a quality agreement of a drug before, trust me when I tell you it’s a long (approx. 40 pages) document with a shit load of information that you just can’t grab out of thin air. You need your source information, damn it! Without it, our so-called first draft was a joke.

At this time, TOP and I decided to try one more time to convince our boss that if we sent out the agreement with gaping holes in it, we’d be the laughing stock of the entire pharmaceutical industry. We had a heated 30-minute discussion, involving much mumbling on faffer’s part but my brave fellow pawn and I stood our grounds. The result? I am now in charge of getting the essential information from company A and finishing the quality agreement.

How did that happen? Because I work for a Japanese company, that's how.

Fun in the Sun

Our company had an earthquake/fire drill today. The way the drills are conducted is very different from in the States. For one, we were notified two days in advance. And the day before the drill, people were assigned to all sorts of tasks: one guy went around and made sure everyone had a helmet; another tallied up the people who will be in the office on that day (not taking into consideration emergency sickness, but then again, in Japan you are not allowed to get sick); clipboards were distributed to group leaders with action plans for the drill, etc. etc.

9am this morning, the loudspeaker cackled into life. A man announced that a drill would be conducted in 30 minutes. How nice of them to give us yet another notice.

9:30am, the real drill began. We were told that an earthquake had just occurred, and then were instructed to put on our helmets and hide under the desk for one minute. Then our floor leader informed us that a fire has broken out on our floor, but everyone should stay calm while they contact the fire department. We were told to wait until further instruction (despite the burning FIRE??!) After enough time that would’ve allowed the fire to engulf the whole building, we were instructed to evacuate the building via the emergency exit. Then we had to cross the street in an orderly fashion (and wait for the traffic light) and assemble in the parking lot.

After confirming all 546 people who are supposed to be in office today are all present, the drill was declared a success. (Is it a coincidence or extremely well planning? Because every time we have a drill, we always have gorgeous sunny weather.) This would’ve been a total waste of time, despite the weather, had it not been for the “Smoke House” experience.

The local fire department set up a smoke-filled room (about 3ft wide and 15ft long) in the parking lot. We had to find our way through it without bumping into the partitions inside.

I thought I could just follow the person in front of me and be out of there in no time. Boy was I wrong! I now know why smoke is more dangerous than an actual fire. The smoke used was of course harmless but nonetheless gave out a strange sweet smell. I crouched low like I was told because smoke rises up so visibility is supposed to be better closer to the ground. At first, it was fairly easy to see the person’s shoe in front of me, but after two steps all I could see was white smoke. No sign of the person in front, not even the ground. I felt like a blind person and had to rely on my hands to guide me. For a brief moment of not knowing which way to go, I actually (am not proud to admit it either, but it's the truth) felt the onset of a panic attack. But luckily, fresh air gushed in from the exit and guided me out of the smoke house before my imminent breakdown.

Moral of the story: if you are trapped in a smoke-filled room, you are as good as dead!