An awesome session with a couple great in learning attitude!

I had an awesome informal session with a wonderful young couple for almost an hour and a half. They are both working parents, hold great concern for their children but not pushing them too hard academically. We belong to the same school of thought, that moral values and emotional wellbeing are far more important than sheer academic excellence. There were certain areas I suggested they could do to further improve on their current bonding they have with their two children.

Little did I realise that my humble suggestion that they write journals or blogs had ignited an immediate fire in the wife and she told me she had started blogging almost immediately after I left. Nothing impresses me more than such instant action. A good start for her in 201o! I look forward to reading and learning from her blog in time to come.

Some of my career advice and suggestions got them nodding in agreement and apparently they are going to put into practice some of those ideas. I find that both of them are very keen learners and have very positive attitudes in life. With these important attributes, I am sure they are ready and set for greater achievements in their parenting process and also their respective career.

My best wishes to them and their family!

Face to face with two professionals!

It was a good dialogue I had with a very experienced and successful sales professional who carried himself very modestly and with impressive human touch. He held critically sharp views on certain life issues and phenomena including today's human behaviours that are getting pretty much out of synchronisation with our basic human nature. It was an interesting interactive exchange we had. Based on his tremendous passion in sharing his insightful thoughts, I suggested to him to start writing a book, and incidentally that was what he thought of doing lately, and my suggestion therefore, appeared as a god-sent message to reaffirm his recent thought. I hope he would quickly get down to his maiden writing journey and get his thoughts published soon.

Another enjoyable conversation was with a planning professional who has been working for more than a decade in a company, dealing with production planning and control functions. We entered rather naturally into a long conversation and touched on many common subjects based on my previous experience in factory management. We exchanged our views not just on issues related to production-related work but also on parenting as he is now parenting three teenaged children. I left with him some career advice and in the process, he realised that he had not been updating his resume for at least the last 10 years and felt that it was time to do so. It is my wish that he climbs on to greater heights in his career.

Revisit your dreams, goals and purpose

Are you beginning to drag your feet to school or to work? If so, you might be slowly losing your passion for your studies or for work. Simply speaking, you are losing fire, the fire is no longer burning intensely in your belly. This is usually a tell-tale sign that you might have either reached the peak of your success or you might be in the valley of your non-performance.

The most important thing to do is to revisit the dreams and goals you have set for yourself before, recall those moments when you first set those goals, the level of enthusiasm you had then, and rekindle it once again. Recall the purpose of what you are doing and reaffirm the purpose.

If you have reached the peak of your success, congratulations to you! It is time to set new and higher goals and bigger dreams for yourself. In terms of career, if there is no more opportunity for advancement, then you might want to consider looking out of your existing company for better growth prospects.

Seize the opportunity!

"Opportunities are there when you least expect them or when you don't need them. So, learn to see and seize them immediately!" ..... by Jonathan Ooi

When you don't need a job, job opportunities are a dime a dozen; but when you are desperately looking for one, you can't find one that suits you.

Looking forward, you should constantly look out for opportunities even though you might be still doing well in your current job. Who knows? You might land yourself in a better job with better prospects and remuneration.

Best wishes to you!

Note: These quotes are original and copyrighted by Jonathan Ooi. However, do feel free to use them as long as credit is given to the author at the end of every quote.

Why is there a shortage of engineers?

There seems to be a shortage of engineers now. I believe there are a few reasons.

First of all, engineering course is very tough by nature, as tough as most secondary students find Science and Maths. Many tend to shy away from this course if other easier choices are available.

Secondly, engineering course is demographically dominated by males, most females would tend not to opt for it unless engineering is in their genes or they have a natural inclination towards technical things.

Thirdly, though tough to study, engineering course provides solid grounding education that makes its students versatile in their future career development. Engineering graduates can take on many different career options by choice or by circumstance such as recession.

Lastly, engineering graduates seem to lose advantage in terms of recognition and remuneration as compared to their counterparts in sales and marketing or administration and finance because technical people usually lack good communications and interpersonal skills. Hence, they tend to be ''invisible'' to their superiors.