Working from home… My take.
Posted on March 26th, 2012
In this day and age where internet is easily available, working can pretty much be done anywhere – at least for the work that I do. Those days, facilities like laptop, network connectivity and phones are not easily accessible. Even if it is, the cost of using it is extremely expensive – not worth it for the employees to use it for work use. It will even make it worse for those who work in global companies which requires them to communicate via the phone. IDD calls are just expensive over landline.
Advancement in technologies such as IP telephony and video conferencing allows employees to communicate at a fraction of the cost. Companies like skype and Cisco are making big bucks for selling online collaboration services. Of course the prerequisite is a fast Internet line.
Countries like Malaysia, Klang Valley in particular is lucky because access to high speed Internet is widely available at an affordable cost. I personally use 20mbps line at home, accessing Internet is a breeze. Using it for work is even better, conference calls and video calls are smooth. I often do screen sharing with my colleagues from around the world – and seriously, that has made my work a lot easier. Especially when running conference calls. Every now and then, I hop on video calls as the other party at the end insist me to use my webcam.
In fact, come to think of it, working from home is somewhat better as access to Internet is a lot faster at home. It’s not economically possible for an office to give each of their employees a dedicated 20mbps line. Therefore surfing on the web could be painful! Not that I do that during working hours :p but sometimes, downloading knowledge materials and market report is just a lot more faster than in office. It does improve my productivity… In a way.
The problem about working from home is of course the ”trust”. It requires a lot of trust for a company to start working from home policy. A company must have a matured workforce, not matured by age but matured in terms of culture and responsibility. Having this policy really means that the company trust their employee to be anywhere they want and achieve the objectives that’s on them. DO YOU TRUST YOUR EMPLOYEES?
I have heard of cases where employees who allows working from home have issues because the employees productivity dropped. Too much distraction I supposed. Television, video games and kids to name a few. But I guess as the workforce matures and realised that a the end of the day, it’s about the work the needs to be done and not your presence, working from home policy can be successful.
In fact – this policy will allow the company to attract more working mothers. Working mothers who has to take care of the kids would be able to spend more time with their kids as they are always at home. The question is, how much of their time are allocated to work and how much is for their kids. Well – then it comes the talk w out flexible working hours. Again – it does to matter how much or how long or when you work, at the end of the day the job gets done!
Based on my experience, working from home allows me to put a lot of focus to work. I get really interruption free time by myself. I get to finish my work faster and gets to do more for the same amount of time. The problem is of course, I tend to go overboard,like a lot of other things and ended up working long hours.
I guess at the end of the day, discipline is key. The discipline works both ways, not just about ensuring you finish your work, but also to not neglect your other responsibilities and personal time. Being at home means that the line that is drawn between work and personal life gets more grey. So, we just need to be wary of that and all will be good.
HAPPY WORKING FROM HOME!
Urban Market@Pantai Dalam
Posted on March 25th, 2012
After a long hiatus of shooting, finally managed to get myself out of bed early on Sunday morning and go out shooting. This morning, we decided to go to Pantai Dalam, somewhere near the Komuter station. Johan mentioned that he passes by the place almost every Sunday and never stopped by, so it’s good time to go.
The market reminds me of the places I’ve been in Vietnam and Indonesia, old school type market but surrounded by development. Pantai Dalam itself located in Kuala Lumpur – near the border to Selangor. From the view, I can see a lot of government housing(not so sure if it’s low cost) – right next to PJ Section 5(a lot of old school bungalows).
As a lot of other places, usually train station is the centre of “attraction” where a lot of business are located. The place is extremely busy, with cars parked by the road side. Hardly has room for two cars to pass by.
What’s excellent is the fact that the people are extremely friendly. In fact, we can see the smiles in their face whenever we approach them to take pictures. In places located at the fringe, they hardly encounter photographers nor tourist. Obviously it does not help with some of my kakis who looks like Koreans or Japanese.
In fact the conversation that we had, sounded like this…
Lady: Awak dari mana nie (Where you from?)
Johan: Dari sini… Bukit Gasing (from here, just Bukit Gasing)
Lady: Oh.. Hehe
There’s a lot of stuffs that was sold in the market, from meat to vegetables – right to clothing and second hand shoes. There’s also quite a number of medicinal and aphrodisiac stuffs – but doubt I would be interested, at least not yet.
Few pictures deserve the light of the day. But my hit rate getting worst. Definitely because I’ve not been shooting much. Need to shoot more!
Butcher
Smoking Fish Seller
Chicken Seller
Child labor… And some life ranting
Posted on March 24th, 2012
Child labor is something that is quite a norm for third world countries. Few years ago, I did a trip to Bangladesh for photography. As usual, my interest brought me to the corners of the country. Caught this picture, and of course this is one of the many I’ve seen with my eyes.
What I can say is that it’s appalling but at the end of the day, families in those country has no choice but to get their sons to help out in order to make ends meet. That’s why it’s not surprising when we see a lot of Bangladeshi immigrants come to our country(Malaysia) and willing to “work like a dog”. Do whatever the boss says! I guess because the environment back home would not be much of a difference anyway.
We in Malaysia should feel fortunate with what we have. Yes, we might be the richest country in the world nor do we live in the best environment, but all in all – as bad we may think our situations, there are a lot of countries that are worst.
Anyway – this year I have not gone, nor do I have any plans for a photography trip. I should do, at least once. Work been catching up I guess… Gosh. It’s so sad when somebody commented to me – why you keep recycling your old photos. The answer is of course I don’t have time to take any. But I guess – time is all relative. I should make time for it.. Some how .. Some what