Thursday 22 January 2009

Lifeless

Part I (morning)
I was lifeless for about one minute, when I woke up this morning, went out to my door to pick up the newspapers, walked back to my bed, screened through the newspapers and gagged at the news in front of my eyes. No, it's not about the sorry sights of massacre in Gaza, there's a temporary truce now. Well, it's about our Malaysian football team losing to UAE in the Asian Cup qualifiers held in Kuala Lumpur. For someone being somewhat kaki bangku or main bola curi ayam, rightfully, I shouldn't be bothered. But losing with no goal on our own field and letting the UAE team won gloriously with 5 goals, come on, it's unthinkable. What's the logic in it? (I think it's my first time using the word 'logic' in my blog, influenced very much by this Dude in Amsterdam in his narration about logical thinking). What happen to Malaysia Boleh? It's just a game, I know. But when the headlines says "UAE crush Malaysia in qualifiers", indeed, I felt crushed for one minute, lifeless. Now I'm OK. Here you go the photo of the page. Anyone with any justifications?




Part II (afternoon)
I was chairing a meeting at the Met Club. In the meeting there was this French woman, Gren, who likes to argue and talk endlessly. When she talked for almost like forever, I was lifeless. The other members in the meeting were looking at me sharply to indicate that I needed to step in to cut her short or cut her throat for good. Finally, I mustered all my inner strengths and the remaining wisdom to snap and interrupt her sentences. Initially the snapping was very dramatic but then it got better in time. So let me share with you some of the snapping sentences I used today.
"Good, let's take 5-minute coffee break"
[This was the simplest one after about 1 or 2 hours from the start of the meeting]
"Well, we'll cover that point later, so now let's move on to ..."
[The truth was that point was never covered later, dismissed and forgotten. Gren having too many words produced in the meeting, didn't notice it]
"Fantastic. I'm impressed. Any other thoughts, anyone else?"
[The truth, I wasn't impressed and I've had it from Gren's long articulation]
"But, really we should focus on..."
[This was my overused snapping sentence whenever there was a very short pause in Gren's trails of words]
"Let me add to that, by saying ............"
[Seriously there's nothing to add, she had covered everything and we had enough already]
"If I understood you clearly, you're saying ....."
[I was like a parrot repeating her points briefly so when she listened to her own word, she shut her up]
"Your point is?"
[This was a nasty one, I guess. Gren gave me a serious look]
We finished the meeting on time. Everyone was happy to leave the meeting room, including Gren. I might have put a limit, just a little bit, on her number of words today in the meeting. She would then have to bug someone else at some other place to achieve her words daily quota.

8 comments:

hady said...

though the entry is all about 'lifeless',
and a bit serious,
i cant stop myself from smiling,
reading your CREATIVE way to say SHUT UP,

haha

my favourite is....

"Well, we'll cover that point later, so now let's move on to ..." and everybody pretend to forget..

haha, thats cool!

Inah said...

hehehe..i like the second part of ur entry..perhaps i should use the sampe point :D

selamat hari jumaat mate!!

Inah said...

*same* typo pulak :P

niQue_naQ said...

oh god, i have one colleague exactly like that, only she's German huhu

im gonna use some of your lines from now on :p

but my own personal favourite that i use (all the time) is; "right, excellent point, let's take that offline shall we, moving on.."

sometimes we do continue offline, sometimes there's really nothing else to say :p some people really like the sound of their own voice!

Roti Kacang Merah said...

ya ya saya setuju dengan inah, saya sukathe second part of the entry.

boleh cilok tak sekali sekala?? hehe

[danial][ma] said...

hej! jumper...if me...i will say: we heard enuff from you...let's move to next agenda...hehehehe...i always mean one...;-)

Al Khalifah said...

If I were u, try this queue ..."you already mentioned that earlier.., try to recall and let's move on...."...that will confuse her big time!hah hah!

On serious note, our soccer team hs long way to go b4 they can even reach top 10 in Asia...change whole damn org, then the coach, the players and lastly the mentality!By then we'll b no # 1 in Asia...heh heh.

Jumper said...

Hady,
I'm sure you too have your own way to shut someone up when our world seems to be littered and suffocated with words, words, words...

Inah,
Use 'em as you like. But I'm sure you may come up with your own lines rather spontaneously when your ear wax got melted with the excessive heat from the overproduction of words and you just couldn't stand it anymore..

niQue naQ,
I like the sophistication of the line that you frequently used. Very polished.

RKM,
Ciloklah, no copyright reserved. But I seriously think you have no problem to handle this kind of people..

Danial,
I wish I could be nasty as natural as I can be. But I'm in a workplace where the people working with me will give 360 feedback that might reflect my professional behaviour rating. So like it or not, I have to be professionally pleasant under most circumstances.

Al Khalifah,
Good suggestion. It perfectly works well with most people who talk a lot and forget what they talk earlier. But this Little Miss Sunshine Gren, talks graciously, relates everything and she has super memory that she can repeat what she says and recall what other say. Strange creature, huh?

I hope I live long enough to see the major change in our Malaysian team's performance. I hope we will be No.1 Asian team soon enough after all the elements are in the right place at top level.