Rise To The Challenge

I stayed back after work yesterday for an extra 5 hours to attend a motivational talk entitled "Rise to the Challenge" that was organised by the company for those who were directly involved in the mini company. This includes those who were in Logistics, Manufacturing, Engineering and Quality. There were all together four session held, two were on Sunday from 10am-2pm and 2pm-6pm while the other two were on Monday 5pm-10pm and 10pm-2am. As a result, the company had a shutdown for this two days to facilitate this motivational talk. I attended the third session which was from 5pm-10pm. Initially, I was not supposed to attend this motivational talk as trainees are not required to. However, I had asked permission from Mr.Parry, one of the organisers of this talk whether I could come and have a look. I wanted to merely sit in and listen to the current company progress and also to hear what the invited speaker had to talk about in order to motivate the staff of PSS to achieve a better production at the end of the fourth quarter.

It had been a long and tiring day for me as I was feeling very sleepy the entire day due to not having sufficient rest during the weekend and also staying up to watch the big match. My eyes seem to close everytime I take my concentration of my work and my body showed a few signs of lethargicness throughout the day. I was wondering whether I should attend or not in the first. However, I manage to pick up the little energy I had and stayed back for it. All of us began to gather at the cafeteria where the tables were arrange and everyone was sitted according to their respective modules. There were all together 6 modules, from one to seven minus number six. I had belong to non of the modules and took my seat at the available place at the end of the cafeteria. The session began with an ice breaker song "Fikirkan Boleh". Then, Mr John Lim who was the QA Manager came forward to present the company current progress report and highlighted a detailed account of what is taking place at PSS in terms of production and whether the company was at currently. My eyes were trying its best to stay awake through all th figures and graph that was displayed.

Next, Mr Ramli who was the second to the GM came on to talk about what does "Rise to the Challenge" means. He had mentioned about this theme previously during the company quarterly meeting which was held two weeks ago. This topic was to motivate the people at PSS that despite the decline in production and the increase in customer complain of late, Mr Ramli spur us to look forward and try our very best to achieve an improvement that would help in next years production instead. There was no turning back and no denial that this year PSS had fallen short from its proposed target but were not ready to give up without a fight. He mentioned that Mr. Theo, the GM who was currenly on a two week vacation was very supportive of this campaign that he had allowed a funding of almost RM20,000 for this event alone. Besides, company had to shutdown and this means that there would be no production that would result in a loss of money as well. Despite knowing this, the management of the company were convinced that they would still go ahead with this plan as they believe that people were very much more important.

After a lengthy speech, we then made our way to the cafeteria counter where a box of 3 piece KFC box and a coke were given out to those who were present there. We sat at various spots and some were made no delay in eating it. On the other hand, the Muslims began to sit with their boxes in front of them as they await the time to break fast. Some were really hungry and decided to order rice with dishes as well. I made my way to the corner of the place as I could not find someone that I knew to sit with and decided to have my dinner alone. Besides, I did not want to disrespect those who were fasting and placed my back against them so as not to show my obviously indulgence. I was beginning to feel a little bit out of place as I did not know anyone there although I saw one of my supervisor who only gave a short stare and hardly made any conversation with me throughout my internship here despite my numerous smiling attempts. My box were soon empty in a short while and sat staring at the glass reflection of those behind me while sipping a cup of Coke.

As I was beginning to leave my table to find somewhere that I could hang out, two person approached my table and sat with me. They had seen me sitting alone and decided to join me. I introduced myself as a trainee and I began to share a conversation with them. They were Latha and Sow, the two module managers for Module 5 and 1 respectively. It was interesting that most of the time PSS workers seem to sit and talk about company related issues. Not that it was boring but it seems common to do so. I learned alot about the company through conversation such as this. I was also surprised to find out that Latha and Sow are from outstation and travel to work daily. Latha resides in Semenyih which is about 40km away while Sow is from Bukit Puchong in KL. I had come to know that there were not the only people who were travelling daily as I had seen a lot of people with outstation number plates coming to work. Other than that, it was interesting to find that both of them came to PSS from different background. Latha is a Mathematics graduate and had worked at PSS for the last 6 years. On the other hand, Sow a mechanical enginner was here since 2000 after moving from Indah Water. My curiosity of his change of work involvement was left unanswered as he decided not to reveal it infront of a plate of Kuay Teow less he looses his appetitite. It was a nice knowing them.

After going into the office and getting my things to put in the car, I made my way back to the cafeteria for the motivational talk. An ex army personel whom I could not recollect his name came to speak to us. He was a former personel who had served in Somalia and Bosnia and currently is a counselor. All of his talk was done in Malay and initial thought would be it was going to be a boring session. This was the never the case as everyone ended up laughing till the cows came home. He started the session by defining three groups of people that a company would normally encountered. The first group was people were called as "Berjaya" or Succesful whose today was better than yesterday. "Sia-Sia" or Wasted were the second group of people who made no improvement that today seems the same as yesterday. The third group was defined with a heavy word "Celaka" or Useless who makes no improvement at all but instead caused today to be worse than yesterday. Besides that, he also make a comparison between male and female worker and stated the the difference approaches that is needed to deal with this two group of people. One of illustration he gave that seem to stuck in my mind was the idea of Contributor (Penyumbang) and Passenger (Penumpang). He gave a comic describtion of people sitting in a bus where there is a driver and passengers in it. One of the passenger had not visited the bathroom for a couple of days and suddenly released one the most distinct smell in the fully packed bus. A chain reaction starts to take place and one of the passengers who has an alergy of foreign smell began to vomit in the bus. The sight of someone vomitting initiated others to follow suit as well and soon enough almost everyone in the bus were caught in a pool of vomit. The driver was oblivious to the scenario that had taken place behind him and countinued driving. What are we to do? Most of us, as the speaker said would just sit in our chair, tired from the outpouring incident. Suddenly, one of the passenger stands out among the vomit filled bus and goes to the front to inform the driver of what had taken place and request for a stop so that the passengers involved could washed up and also allowed the bus to be clean. The person who stood up was obviously a great contributor towards that incident. This group of people are apparently a rare breed and he urge the company to look out for people such as this. His explanation were simple ordinary day to day living but it had manage to bring across a point. There was also the contrast between Perception and Reality which spoke about people who tend to make up a situation in their mind which is far from the truth and this at time causes miscommunication.

Other than that, he also began categorising the people who were there into their birth of dates and group them into the four quarters of the year. I was apparently in the third quarter together with those who were born in July, August and September. Each of the quarters had different characteristics and it seems most the characteristics that were brought up reflected partly about myself. People in the third quarter were stingy, hardworking, serious, attentive, loyal and big mouths. I would say that I tend to be stingy, at times hardworking depending on whether the job or thing interest me greatly and also loyal towards people or an organisation. Besides that, I tend to talk alot and most of the time loud but I do have my quiet moment especially on unfamiliar grounds. The insights were interesting and crude at times due to the amount of horny and corny jokes that bombarded both the male and female. This was all good in the name of laughter and it did help us clear my minds from tiredness and also allowed me to enjoy myself.

We ended the meeting by a time a self reflection about what was being said by closing our eyes, accompanied by the sweet sounds of Kenny G in the background. Most of the people whom I knew took this oppurtunity to doze off. On the other, I was more concern about the idea of this so called meditation and remain cautious of such practice even if it might look innocent at first. It was then time to leave and we got ourselves to the table to sign our names and left with a souvenir mug as a rememberance for our participation. I quickly left for home as I was really tired out and quickly had a bath and a browse through the newspapers before going to bed, one of my earliest attempt to do so.