I can breathe again

 

What had been surreal before, have now taken place. I am able to work overseas without being in the office. It's kinda strange if you tell me 5 years ago, being a junior level I will be able to do this. Furthermore, being in a bank, being away from the office just sounds unheard of. Working means being in the office and overseas means its being on a holiday.

Also, remote desktop means that it is possible to work on your own computer and not on the company issued laptop, so it's definitely a huge opener and such a change of technology that have happen as we grow older.

Now I am serving my quarantine in Dorsett Hotel at Wanchai. We are visiting cat's grandparents and relatives and as per the latest quarantine, we will have to be in hotel for 3 days before switching to 4 day home quarantine where I will be staying with cat and her aunt's place. 

Being in quarantine, without much stuff to do and other things that distract, it's probably a good time to just blog and log whatever thoughts in my head. It's definitely been a long time coming I reckon. So I thought maybe I should do this while waiting for dinner to be sent to the door.

So, recently I have finally gotten my promotion and the pay increment was surprising and that somehow I had hit the salary milestone that I had always wanted. To be 50% of Cat's salary, but of course there is no bonus included so maybe it's not that high also. Hey, at least the basic salary is now at the level that I had always wanted. Though once I go to Australia with Cat due to her being seconded there, then maybe when I am back, I am unable to command such a salary already. Not sure if they will allow me to work in Sydney while still on Singapore payroll because technically I am on a different timezone and I will not ever be in office for a good 1.5 year. 

Like what I had spoken with wei ren earlier, till now I still have no clue on what to study there and of course there is this scary aspect of relocating and australia being notoriously racist and all. From my earlier posts, you can probably tell that I wanted to go because of the late hours I have been putting in and also stress and all of trying to understand the IR role and performing on my job. Also, as the company set up and the style of the job is different from how a bank is , where its very structured and fixed, here being more laissez faire than at BNP, there were undoubtedly more stress and pressures. These days with the volume dying down and I have gotten more experience in my role, it felt a lot better and I tend to work pretty much on time. With more time to spend with cat and marly, to cook more and other things to tend to. Mentally I also felt more resilient and happier as compared to the december to february period of the year. Heck even June was bad , though I had gone to Norway, but I was never truly relaxed. Came back and was thrown into the deep end of handling a new fund which resulted in June and July being the months where I had worked the longest ever. 

I believed it was only the beginning of september where I had a more or less breathable and more substantial period of normal working hours. Truly it's a lot better.