High Life & Star Studded Week

Two weeks ago, I had a spate of experiencing the high life in the course of my work. Okay, not a spate but for an ordinary Jo like me, two in a week is quite a lot. :)

The first was experiencing a 4 course Finnish meal prepared by Asian Food Channel (AFC) celebrity chef, Sara La Fountain. Unfortunately, since I do not have cable TV, I did not know who she was. She is this gorgeous chef from Finland and er, the rest of what I know of her comes from Wiki.

I loved the starter, a spoonful of minced beef and lamb combined with marinated beet and the dessert, baked Alaska with blueberry ice cream. Oooh! A far cry from the baked Alaska I had at a restaurant in PJ recently which had more egg white than any other ingredient with two dried chocolate cakes.

Tablespoonful of minced beef and lamb.

The lovely dessert

Sara La Fountain, my colleague Reg and I.

The second was a launch of my company's product launch which we held at a restaurant in town followed by a bus ride (complete with outriders) to Port Klang to board a boat where we sailed out to a rendezvous point to watch the setting sun.

On board the Lili Marleen

The gorgeous sunset

As you can imagine, I took quite a lot of sunset photos...

One of the caricature artists hard at work

The atmosphere was further pumped up by Ning Baizura's energizing performance which brought quite a lot of people into a dancing mood. So we boogied the night away with colleagues and partners. And got home at almost 2am with aching feet but happy to have been part of the organizing team.
  

Good friends

With Ning Baizura

Mid Life Crisis

Someone recently described mid life crisis as a result of people climbing up the corporate ladder which is leaning against the wrong wall and therefore changing career paths when they are supposed to be at the peak of their careers.

I found that this description sort of made sense. Unfortunately, there aren't many hiring managers out there who would want to hire someone without any experience in the exact same field or role. Regardless of the soft and hard skills picked up along the years of climbing that particular ladder, corporations want to see you having the exact experience in your cv for a considerable period of time.

Of course I'm not talking about moving from a being procurement executive to become an eye surgeon.

For example, I know of a friend who is doing sales but she doesn't quite like what she's doing and was hoping to move back into a product marketing role.

However, the people whom she has met for interviews have boxed her into sales roles. It's very sad to see the reality of this happening because we are then pushed up a corporate ladder onto a wall we don't want to be leaning against.

I wonder if this is also prevalent in other countries. I've always wondered if things would be better if Malaysians know what their personal strengths would be most suited for so that they would select the relevant course and therefore avoid this mid life crisis. Or would we still get bored eventually and long to try something else?