Outside, the rain pours down relentlessly, giving the landscape a fuzzy quality. But despite the unforgiving weather, cars packed with Christmas shoppers continue to crawl bumper to bumper into the car park across the street, ignoring the blinking lights saying “Car Park Full”. Red taillights glow alternately thru the shower.
Indoors, it’s anything but gloomy. Christmas carol tinkles in the background; decorative baubles in red and silver hangs from trees and garlands; fake snow fogs the glass; baristas dressed up like Santa’s elves cheerily greets each customers stepping into Starbucks; the espresso machine sputters and hissed in rhythm to the carols, delivering steamy hot cups of lattes and foamy cappuccinos. At a nearby table, a girl is arguing with her boyfriend because he got her a tall Frappucino with whipped cream. She wanted a grande, light, without the cream but with lots of caramel sauce. Further down at the corner, a toddler is feeding his juice to the potted plant as his Indonesian maid looks on, while the parent sips their coffee and read their individual magazines.
On top of the buzz, a persistent voice is speaking – no, lecturing is more like it – and I am unfortunately at the receiving end.
“I can’t believe you’re going to walk out just like that. We all know it wasn’t your fault, we all saw you working your ass off preparing for the project. What happened was just a last minute cock-up and had nothing to do with your performance. You don’t have to stand out and take all the responsibility, you know? Blunders during presentations are really common, and it’s not like you’ve not done your homework or gambled away millions of the client’s money – damn it – why are you making this so difficult? Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Tu?”
I wrap my hands around my lukewarm Toffee Nut latte and look across the table at Ean, his expression all earnest and serious as he tries to convince me to withdraw my resignation from SD&Co. I don’t understand why he is so worked up. In fact he has been this way since he found out about my plan, and that was two weeks ago. Since the disastrous presentation, Ean’s taken over the project, and from what I heard, doing a good job of it, and will be wrapping it up before Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong; I am not jealous or mad at Ean in any way for taking over my project (my first – and last – solo project). Just the opposite, I have come to accept it, and even able to move on from there, which is why I can be so calm. My mind is set, I have made my decision, and I’m not taking back my resignation.
Oh, I’m sorry; I guess I should at least tell you (just briefly) about what happened during the presentation, and the enlightening process which followed. Well, here it is:
On that fateful morning, I arrived early at work, checked through my documentations, backed up the files in my laptop and did a dry run with Julianne and Ean. They were generally happy and gave some tips on how to handle some difficult questions. For the rest of the morning, I sat at my desk doing some paper work, and feeling confident and excited. I should have realized that things were going a little too smoothly.
Julianne, Ean and I left for early lunch, and then made our way over to Mr. Benedict’s office on Jln Ampang. Things started going wrong the moment we stepped into the Zen-styled office. First, Julianne spilled her take away coffee on waiting area’s very plush and very white sofa. The receptionist screamed for the cleaning lady as we scrambled out of our seats and stood awkwardly aside while the poor lady ran in with two pails, a mop and five towels. None of us dared to ask why someone would choose to use white sofa in a high traffic waiting area. Ten minutes later, we were still standing at the reception when Mr. Benedict’s secretary came to inform us that the meeting will be delayed as Mr. Benedict was still at lunch and will not be back for another hour. However, we will need to complete the presentation within forty minutes because by then Mr. Benedict will have to leave for his doctor’s appointment. Mr. Benedict is a very busy man, indeed.
Ean was about to argue, for we were previously given an hour and a half for the presentation, but Julianne stopped him and told the secretary that forty minutes was not a problem. It was better to be able to do a shorter presentation than not at all. The secretary showed us into the meeting room and left. I remember noticing that she looked very good in her white pant suit.
Inside the room, Ean started setting up the laptop for presentation while Julianne and I went through the notes, finding ways to make the presentation shorter. We were quite wrapped up in our discussion and didn’t notice any problem until Ean started cursing. Somehow our laptop could not detect their projector, hence could not be connected. Which meant no projection. Which meant no presentation.
I was really panicking by then. Everything I have prepared, all the statistics and proposals and information were in the PowerPoint document in the laptop. My notes were only for back up. I have to show the presentation!
“Let’s try and see if we can borrow a laptop from them.” Julianne suggested, and Ean agreed, so he went around asking. Almost half an hour later, he came back with a triumph smile and a very sleek piece of machine under his arm. When we managed to hook it up with the projector and my carefully prepared PowerPoint blinks onto the screen, we all whooped with relieve. Moments later, Mr. Benedict walked into the room, shook everyone’s hand, sat down, and the presentation began.
The first five minutes went on well enough, if you discount the fact that Mr. Benedict was a bear of a man, dressed from top to toe in full white, who is incapable of showing any sort of expression on his face. Maybe that’s why he is a successful business man; you never know what he is thinking. At the least we are beginning to understand why the rest of the office looks more pristine and clinical than a hospital; he is into white, and nothing else. Interesting.
Ten minutes into the presentation, things started happening. Bad things. Without warning, the state-of-the-art on loan laptop flickered, and then died. Yup, it went dead, just like that, and wouldn’t restart, no matter which button we pressed to resuscitate it. Shit! (Later, I found out that their people called our people to inform us that the pen drive I used to transfer files from my laptop to theirs contained some un-namable virus which were so powerful it totally wiped out the entire system. And that we owe them a new laptop. Till today, no one understands from where the virus came from, for no other computers within our company, nor my own laptop, had been affected.)
And then, as if nothing catastrophic has just happened, Mr. Benedict turned to me, and asked in that loud booming voice of his which I will remember probably for the rest of my life, “Why are the presentation text in red and black? I do not deal with people who cannot find it in themselves to respect others’ special preferences. You may leave now.”
What – What?
My mind went totally blank then. Thinking back, Mr. Benedict was not so intimidating, actually. I could have just laughed him off and went on with my presentation using the notes which I have already prepared. I could even have switched on my own laptop and run the presentation from there, projection be damned, at least he could still see what we have prepared and listen to what we have to say. I could have, I could have – yes are probably thousands of I-could-haves, yet at that point of time, all I could think of was that I have failed, and that the sanitized “Zen” place totally sucked.
I flipped. Yes, I admit that. Maybe I could have tried harder to hold myself together. But all I felt then was being totally drained. Maybe it was the accumulated stress throughout the weeks leading up to the presentation, or maybe it was the hiccups we faced since the moment we entered Benedict’s office which multiplied the pressure level to an unbearable state, and everything starts to fall apart, inside and out.
Maybe, I was just not strong enough.
You all know what happened after that. I went straight home and locked out the rest of the world until Kaelyn came and rescue me from myself. What followed was some serious soul searching, as cliché as that may sound, to identify where I came from, where I want to go, and where exactly I ended up heading towards.
The results? Lets just say that if I have initially set out towards Destination A, after two years of traveling along the highway, I’m actually closer to Destination T, more than half way towards Destination Z, which is absolutely not where I want to be. So I am pulling over, catch my breath a bit, and maybe take out my compass and try to locate my direction again.
Thank goodness Kaelyn’s been very encouraging.
“This is exactly what the stars predicted! In this new year, you will be going on a journey of self discovery, and even though it may seem a bit unwise at this point of time, you will in fact discover much more than you expect to find. Retreating has nothing to do with cowardness, but because you have found the strength to reach for your dreams.”
Does that tell you anything at all?
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Update !! Update !!
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