Photo taken in London by a friend
If I have time I'd make entries about:
-- How I cried on the second day of the New Year, remembering someone, the familiarity and comfortable tension we had in the short time we spent together. How for a moment there I had to ask, will I ever find a better fit? But now I'm preoccupied again with work, it's subsided again. This thing about memories can turn one loony at times!
-- How it's such a scary time for my industry, with news of freeze hiring, non-renewal of contracts and lay-offs piling day after day. A year ago, Oil & Gas design engineers like me were hot commodities and had so many job opportunities that it was a matter of choosing which ones fit our whims. From 2007 to 2008, I went from resigning from a Seoul-based company famous for its LCDs to a stint in KL which I cut short for a London job. From London I went back to Seoul (for love!for natch!) despite having an offer in another European country. I'm still in Seoul, but now I'm staying put even if all I really want is a ticket back to Europe. I have no choice, it's either stay put or go into business (as a consequence of not having a job!).
The plummeting gasoline prices, the global crises have led to the indefinite hold status of the design/ revamp/ construction projects for LNG, LPG, Refinery and Petrochemical Plants. So now, most EPC (Engineering-Procurement-Construction) companies are struggling, trying to ride the downturn of projects by trying to be as lean as possible which at its worst would correspond to laying off foreign contract workers.
--If I have time, I'd really expand on this and that little episode of the blues, but, I am dead tired and will have to wake up early tomorrow to do some take home work to meet a deadline. Which just goes to show how crazily paradoxical it can be. Like most EPC companies we have no new projects, but many, many proposal works. Why? Well, everyone's hinging on the hope of getting at least a project (or two!) from all these proposals. Even small projects would do in this time of lay-offs. All we want are just enough projects to tide us over to avoid lay-offs and idle time...Still, one always be a pragmatist so:
< Note to self: start making contingency plans.. NOW!>
