One of the downside of having an all-malay colleague is when Raya is near, they all want to apply for leave at the same time. Last time we had a vacancy in IT support and guess who they hired? Yep another malay. It’s either they have a soft spot for malays or there’s nobody else qualified for the job. Fast forward earlier this month when the boss asked everybody to submit their leaves, everybody applied for the same 2 days before Raya. Me I would have applied for for the same dates as well but since my wife can only apply for leaves after Raya I relented and let the boys have their fun. Even then I thought my boss would reject one or two applications but surprise-surprise she approved everybody’s leaves. That means for the last 2 days before Raya which happens to be the last super-busy two days of the term it will only me and my manager who will be working in the entire ICT department.
And since we don’t hire any helpdesk person yet, I’ll be manning that position while my boss deals with all the tech support calls. At least that’s what she envisioned. In reality, she had to man the ICT office because a lot of the teachers will be returning their laptops and ICT equipments before leaving the school for good. In the end, it was me who was attending all the tech support calls and also manning the helpdesk. To add salt to injury, I was down with cold the entire two days so imagine my suffering at the office. Even then when all things are said and done, I survived the two days ordeal intact especially since they let us out early at 1:00PM. Seriously they should really hire more ICT staff especially for helpdesk. I mean how hard is it to get somebody from JobStreet really?
We left home around 2:00PM that afternoon. Our kids were already back home with their grandparent and uncles who took them along last Saturday. My wife was kind enough to drive for the first part of the journey since I was still sleepy from the cold and medication. I expected some heavy traffic the day before Raya but fortunately the road was surprisingly smooth with occasional bumper to bumper traffic here and there. We had dinner somewhere in Gua Musang and reached Tanah Merah after driving for 8 hours and 25 minutes. On a regular school-holiday or festival-free traffic we could reach home in 6 hours so that’s pretty fast considering it’s Raya’s eve. Two years ago it took us 12 hours to reach KL from Tanah Merah.
