Goodbye Old Office, Hello New Office

For the past 1 year or so, my colleagues and I had been hearing news that the bosses were scouting around for a building to call our own. Currently we had been renting a couple of shoplots for almost 5 years, slightly a month before I joined the firm. It was also that long it had been, being neighbours with a certain cake factory. Late last year, Dexter told us that we've secured a building in an industrial area, 15 minutes drive away from our current location. Since 2-3 months ago, we had been busy drafting schedules and delegating assignments. We even had Moving Office Committee meetings! For the past few weeks, we did nothing except to pack up, throw unwanted paper, books and boxes for recycling.

Today, that day had come. We finally shifted to a new location, a much bigger space. After 16 years in operation, we finally have our very own 'menara' (Not exactly 'menara' lar, just 2-storey buildings only). We shifted with a heavy heart. At the old location, each other's departments were very near together. It was convenient for us to walk to the bank, or for lunch. We even named the shops like Dirty Shop (seriously dirty one!), Cheap Shop (food are very cheap there), No Name Shop (sells 'chap fan' but we couldn't find the signage to the shop), and Dustbin Shop (sells tasty curry mee, but the garbage trucks are always parked in front of the shop). We would also get the smell of the baking ovens from next door, we could smell cheesecakes and lasagnes - made us even hungrier! And during durian season, you could count on it that the factory would make Durian cakes. They usually buy a mega huge basket of durians, a few workers would cut open the durians, and the pungent smell... Woah... And if there were too many durians, they would sell them out really cheap. As for parking, we recently had to pay 5 bux a day for the parking coupon system, but most of the times, we just "forget" that we had to. 5 bux a day is pretty expensive lar!

Goodbye old workstation

Now, at the new place, the departments are all segregated. We have our own pantry, toilets, a mini library (more like a museum, Dexter still want books on Windows 3.0, Turbo Pascal, C, and magazines that were published in the early 90s!), and each of us has a bigger space to work in. Furniture and all are still the same ones from the old place. Lunch is harder to get, as there is only a Medan Selera at about 5 minutes walking distance, otherwise gotta drive out. We have 3 badminton courts within our compound and the place is quite big enough for most of us to park our cars in. No more 5 bux a day, hooray! And we no longer need to hold our sales seminars at hotels and enjoy their scrumplicious buffet lunches, we now have our own Function Hall and we will cater lunch = SAD! Now I worry for next year's annual trip - Would we need to camp in our compound from now onwards??

Hello new workstation

I guess, it's good in a way to have our own building. After 16 years in operation, hopefully we get to send out a message that we're more established now and that we'd still remain one of the top competitors in our industry. Hhm.. But then again, with all the amount of $$ spent on this new building, will it affect our year end bonus and increment? Oh no......