A Rock and A Hard Place

The big meeting I am destined to have with the big bosses has been put off again until Saturday (10 May 2008). It is destined to have because it is one of those sooner or later meetings that cannot be avoided.

Thankfully, it is not one of those HR or accountant type meetings that my blog colleagues GJJakarta and Greenstump wax so lyrically about! Yet, I am sure that there are some hard yards to be hoed throughout this one...

I am hearing various things about the meeting but none of it from any of the direct participants in it. The beauty of hearsay is that it is just that hearsay. It is great to see that all sorts of people are hearing tid bits and then putting their own spin on it! So, I am invariably somewhere between a huge frackin' pay rise, improved benefits, and conditions and totally fracked! (for those of you who are not avid watchers of Battlestar Galactica, frackin' is the space aged way of saying fucking -- sorry Ma but I have already eaten all of the soap so there is nothing left to wash my mouth out with!)...

In the big scheme of things an increase in salary, benefits, and conditions might be enough to convince me to hang around but I have a feeling that this is not the motivation of my earlier posts. So, anyone who thinks the money will get 'em every time needs to remember that Beatles song about "Money Can't Buy Me Love"...If I have said it once I have said it 1000 times, it is about treading water and I am treading water! Not going forward, not going backwards, just not going anywhere at all and that is the problem!

I sometimes wonder whether after all this time I can in fact go home and settle in to what would be life in Australia. Yet, there are other times where I am so looking forward to it. I want my wife to be able to experience Australian life and I know that I want our kid to grow up in Australia. I had the best time as a kid in Australia and I would not want to deprive my own flesh and blood of those same opportunities.

So, maybe you can now see that it is not about the money. It is about lifestyle, it is about experiences, it is about moving forward and not about standing still! I actually really, really enjoy and genuinely like what I do at the moment, but I just do not see myself doing it for another 10 years. I am not challenging myself and I am not being challenged and something has to give. That "give" is going to be me having to challenge myself and to that end I have to make the move to move because my employers (the big bosses) just are not going to challenge me or allow me to challenge myself within the current framework!

My apologies for boring the hell out of ya with this little bit of personal musing!

The weekend is coming up so maybe I will be in a better mood tomorrow! Then again maybe not!

Thoughts about Pistachios and Taxis

It is 23.30 and I am sitting in the office for no other reason than I cannot get a frackin' taxi! That is the way it goes in Jakarta when it rains (or in this case it is pissing down like cats & dogs)! So, what is a fella to do than read the blogs and munch away on the pistachios?

So, I have been catching up with my fellow bloggers by reading and commenting on their blogs...These are just a few of the blogs you should visit:

Treespotter
Green Stump
GJJakarta
Jakartass
Rima Fauzi
Carl Parkes
Dilligaf
Ecky
Finally Woken
Indonesia Matters

Interesting one and all!

While I have been taking care of blog business. I have been munching away on the pistachios and wondering why they are so damn expensive. I could probably do the research myself but for the fact I am to frackin' lazy! By the way frackin' is my new word (too much Battlestar Galactica)...

On an aside...my blog ranking seems to be moving north and I am not sure why? It is strange because the hit counter statistics thing that I am using suggests that my visitor numbers a plummeting and I should by all reckoning be becoming less popular (if there is such a thing when you are already unpopular)...Argh, the crazy world of cyber space math!