So I had to attend a site visit a over the weekend with my boss in the East Coast area and it is for a project that will be starting the renovation phase in about a or two week.
My boss will personally be managing this project because one of our PMs recently tendered his resignation, this particular PM, whom I shall just refer to as Dave, apparently has the tendency to "quit" when he gets stressed out at work, the reason Quit is in quotes is because he doesn't actually quit, he would usually end up rescinding his resignation letter and just come to work again as per usual after he has completed serving his notice period, that is according to our accountant, who has been with the company for almost as long as Dave, apparently this is his sixth time pulling his stunt.
One of the current projects that he is currently working on is a project that I am involved in and compared to the other PM, whom I shall refer to as Jason, Dave is not very good at his job. Jason, the other Project Manager, is very meticulous and will show initiative, he will take time to study all my drawings and clarify any issues that he has with me before proceeding with the renovation work, if he notices that I have made certain design decisions that are not viable, he will take the initiative to adjust them on-site and then explain to the clients why those amendments were made, so I barely ever have to get involved.
Dave on the other hand is the completely opposite. He will glance through all the drawings I have prepared, but he won't study them in detail and will expect information to be spoon fed to him, information that can be found on my drawings with a little deduction skill.
For example, when I present to him the electrical plan, it will be filled with information such as where the switches will be, where the powerpoints will be and where the lights will be.
For this current project, we had to demolish a wall, and on that wall, there were existing powerpoints that would be affected once it was taken down. As an experienced Project Manager, I had expected him to look at the electrical plan and understand how to deal with those affected powerpoints, which would simply be to relocated them to where I had reflected in the electrical plan, but instead of automatically thinking of that, he sends me a photo of that freshly demolished wall with all the dangling wiring and ask me to think of a way to deal with them.
I have already thought of a way to deal with them... in the electrical drawings. In the end, I had to literally draw out on the photo how to re-run those wires and where they will be relocated to. At that point, my mind was blown at how inept he was and my expectation of him as a Project Manager dropped.
After that, he went on and arranged more works, but had stopped requesting for any clarification on my end, so I figured he probably had everything under control and that my drawings I had prepared were sufficient for him to plan the works smoothly.
I was wrong.
My boss had brought me to that site to take a look at the ongoing works together and I realized Dave had done the false ceiling wrongly, I showed the drawings I did to my boss on-site and my measurements on it were a bit off, but it was very obvious that the false ceiling designs were meant to be aligned with certain walls.
This is how a False Ceiling Plan would look like. (I found it off the internet)
If we were to look at the yellowed coloured part, we can see that the false ceiling will end in alignment with the wall on the right. I had a false ceiling that followed a similar concept, but instead of an alignment with a wall, it's in alignment with a door.
On my False Ceiling plan, I had also included measurements, those were meant for my accountant because she needed the measurements to prepare her quotation. I had assumed that Dave would have the sense to look at the False Ceiling plan, catch these little details, and maybe ask me for clarification before he instructed the sub-cons on how to do the false ceiling, but he doesn't and instead, just gives the workers those measurements and they followed them to the dot. The floorplan isn't to scale because it's one of those condo floorplans like the one pictured above, they have no measurements and are usually not accurate, so the false ceiling that was constructed ended up extending beyond the door frame and that was an issue because it meant the full height wardrobe that was directly facing the false ceiling would no longer have enough allowance to open the wardrobe doors, they will end up hitting the false ceiling.
When my boss and I saw that, we checked all the bedrooms and they all had the same problem. If Jason had been the one running this project, I am very certain he would have foreseen all this and pointed out all this issues to me, but unfortunately, Dave is the one in charge and he didn't. Luckily my boss and I were able to come up with a solution, so nothing had to be redone, we also didn't want to message Dave because it was a Friday and we know that alerting him to all this issues would just spoil his weekend.
And that is the other problem with Dave, it's the fact that we have to baby him so much because if we don't, he will have a mental breakdown and then just go MIA, like he did last week. He was so stressed out that he just became uncontactable for 2 days, my boss had texted me about it last week and literally told me not to message Dave because he was under a lot of stress, that even my boss couldn't reach him. I was actually flabbergasted that my boss allowed Dave to pull this stunt because just like his habit to "quit" when the job gets tough, he also has the habit of disappearing for a while as well. Usually his modus operandi is to disappear for a while, and then make a reappearance to throw his resignation letter.
SIX times.
And every time, once his notice period has been served, he would come return to work like he had never thrown the letter at all. I am honestly hoping that my boss will actually find another Project Manager soon that is as capable as Jason, because Dave is just not that great at his job, and he cannot just keep disappearing and then quitting when the job gets too difficult, only to come back again to potentially repeat that cycle. It's so disruptive to the company because projects that he is running mid-way through will have to switch hands and then projects that had been assigned to him in advance will have to be reassigned to another PM who may already be overloaded, and if that other PM has too many on his plate, it will fall on my boss's shoulders. My boss needs to find a new Project Manager soon so Dave won't be able to return once his notice period is up, because he is clearly taking the kindness of my boss for granted.
I really cannot trust Dave to run any of my future projects because the one he is working on right now is actually extremely straightforward, the fact that he can mess it up is really a testament to his capabilities as a Project Manager.
Anyways, as I was saying, I did a site visit over the weekend with my boss and we had no choice but to meet on a weekend because the client is currently on reservist and is only available to meet on that very Saturday. We had previously met on a Saturday before on site as well and the reason why I am bringing this up is because after the meeting, I did the very same thing I did after our previous Saturday meeting, I headed over to Orchard and got a bottle of perfume.
Previously, I had visited Escentials at ION to get the Gentle Fluidity Silver, they had a discount going on then so I managed to save around $40, but this time, I wanted to actually get the perfume from the brand's flagship store, so I dropped by Maison Francis Kurkdjian at Ngee Ann City instead, which is a walking distance from ION.
It was so fucking crowded. The walk from ION to Ngee Ann City through Wisma Atria took so fucking long because the human traffic was insane. I was actually really annoyed at how crowded it was, but I did eventually make it to the shop, passing by Le Labo, Byredo, Jo Malone and a few other niche fragrance store along the way. I hadn't noticed all these brands were at Ngee Ann City until I started getting into fragrances, and it is such a pity because I used to work so close to all this shops and could have visited them so easily.
The flagship store is a lot smaller than Escentials, but understandably so because Escentials carried other brands of fragrances as well. When I headed in, I already knew what I wanted to get, a bottle of Gentle Fluidity Gold. I had originally planned to get the 70ml bottle, which was what I tried to get online but failed because of customs issue from France side. I thought I could also get it for $300 at the retail store since it was the flagship store, but when the sales person informed me that it was going for $340 instead, I had to take a step back and reconsider, then I just thought fuck it, I will just get the 35ml bottle instead because I didn't want to pay that additional $40.
The smaller one was $209, which is the same price point as Escentials, they didn't have any ongoing promotions, but they did give me a free sample of my choosing, I requested for the Baccarat Rouge 540 Extrait, but it was unavailable, so in the end, I settled for Amyris Homme.
Honestly not a great deal, if I had known the price was the same, I would have just saved myself the walking and got it from Escentials at ION instead.
I also did an unboxing video for it for Tik Tok, just to document my questionable financial decisions.
It looks good in my perfume collection though.
This 2 bottle alone cost almost $400, add in the Mod Vanilla, that is $500 worth of perfume in this photo.
And this is the collection of my full bottled perfumes, which amounts to about $700 in total. Mainly Ariana Grande perfumes because they are actually really nice, I did try the Billie Eilish releases as well but they were not my style.
I also recently added another Ariana Grande fragrance to my collection 2 weeks ago, thank u next 2.0 the heart shaped one on the bottom left. That was a blind buy because none of the shops online sold any decants of it and the reason is because it is a limited edition.
I got it for the sake of getting it really, I was hoping I wouldn't like it because it would probably be impossible for find another bottle in the future since it is a limited edition release, but of course it had to smell fucking good. It's strawberries and apple, and the strawberries scent has a tartness to it, which is what really makes it so good to me. I can't really wear this out as my main scent because it is a bit too juvenile and feminine, it's the type of perfume popular pretty girls in school will wear, girls that are nice in front of the teacher but an absolute bitch when no one is looking, so I will usually only spray it on the back of my hands before I go out, just so I can take a whiff of it when I want whilst I am at work or just outside in general. My signature scent is still the Gentle Fluidity series.
I would usually spritz a total of 5 sprays of Gentle Fluidity on myself, mix and match maybe 3 spritz of gold and and 2 spritz of silver depending on my mood, 1ml equates of 15 sprays, which means each sprtiz is about 20 cents based on my calculations, that totals to me going out with a dollar worth of perfume on myself everyday. It's so fucking expensive, but it smells so good.
If I manage to finish the 2 bottles within a few months, then I will definitely be buying the bigger bottle in the future, but if I don't and end up switching to something else, then that will be good news for my wallet, unless the new perfume I end up wearing is from another niche brand like Parfums De Marley or Aventus, because those are also expensive shit.
I really need to go take my IPPT soon, get the $200 incentive to make up for this MFK purchase, but who am I kidding, I will probably use that incentive to get another bottle because I am out of control.
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