February 2025

03/16/25

TLDR: A month full of celebrations and rushing for client deadlines, with occasional pockets of time to reconnect with old friends.

This month started with our annual Chinese New Year celebrations. This year was special because this was my first time giving my parents a red packet each, since I am finally working full-time. My family gathered for our annual hotpot reunion dinner during the eve. I took a night walk after a stomach-filling dinner (let's just say I really needed to walk off the calories gained). I called up my JC senior to join me in my walk. I have been meaning to catch-up with her. It has been roughly ~2 years since I last met her. We took a long ~3km walk around our neighbourhood and she shared with me her life as a nurse, her daily routine, her ambitions and aspirations to work as a nurse overseas. It was this conversation that reminded me that everyone has different sources of happiness and different definitions of work. For instance, I feel fulfilled, hence happy at work when I can value-add to my Client and advise them on their problems. But, she feels happy when she has time off-work to do what she wants. For context, she experienced ~1 year of constant OT-ing in a different department - the fast-paced life and extremely tight daily routine motivated her to change department. She craved for time that she could set aside for herself, though she loves her team so dearly. I think it is difficult sometimes to put ourselves first and I am really glad she did. I am still proud of her journey and how far she has come, especially her sacrifices as a front-line healthcare worker.

I started on a new project this month and it was an extremely demanding project. But it was this project that awakened my dormant business acumen. I did not realise how much I missed building businesses, growing businesses, and running analyses to support strategic decisions. It was precisely because of how challenging the client was, I managed to learn a lot from them and it became a mutual learning and sharing knowledge space. With tightened relationship also comes with greater expectation to need to deliver even better quality work. This project was a short-sprint of ~1.5 months and by now (mid-March), it has ended. I tried my best and I think that's all that matters. I hope I would have more opportunities to develop the commercial side of me further. 

Let's see what's next.

Rookie for Life,
Hui