16 April 2014

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

This is always asked in job interviews. After a decade of being an employee, it's only now that I can confidently talk about my weaknesses.

  • I think slow.
  • I need hours, sometimes days to process an event.
  • I abhor multi-tasking.
  • I am easily distracted.
  • I need to be alone about 90% of the time.
  • I need to be outside 50% of the time.
  • Routine makes me lethargic.
  • When I see no greater purpose in a task or project and the people around me have neither passion nor vision, I get discouraged and work with a heavy heart.
As for my strengths, I'm sure some of my weaknesses are welcome values to many enterprises—but I haven't really reflected much about it yet (see first two items on the list). Next time.

12 April 2014

Doors opening and closing

This witticism made its way through my timeline a couple of days ago:


Then thanks to Spotify, which only became available in the Philippines last Tuesday, I discovered Sue Ellen's version of Pet Shop Boy's 'Being Boring'—what I swear to be my 30s anthem.



Along with it is the re-discovery of the lyrics:

I came across a cache of old photos
And invitations to teenage parties.
'Dress in white', one said with quotations
From someone's wife, a famous writer
In the nineteen-twenties.
When you're young you find inspiration
In anyone who's ever gone
And opened up a closing door.

She said, 'We were never feeling bored...'
[...]
When I went I left from the station
With a haversack and some trepidation.
Someone said, 'If you're not careful
You'll have nothing left and nothing to care for
In the nineteen-seventies.'
But I sat back and looking forward,
My shoes were high and I had scored.
I'd bolted through a closing door

And I would never find myself feeling bored.

So I guess that's the week's lesson. Don't be discouraged by closing, closed, and shut doors.

PS: While Frozen is still hot, here's the extremely cute 'Love is an open door' (We finish each other's sandwiches FTW!). Unfortunately, though, in this instance, the door was opened too soon for the wrong person, for the wrong reasons.


So lesson #2? Not all rooms with opening, opened, and wide-open doors are for entering.

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