Working with Style

Who says we cannot work with style? My style is to work heavily on a single day and enjoy my free time afterwards. While this habit of mine tends to be inconsistent sometimes, I do feel that this behavior best suits my line of work. However, can this be seen by my seniors? Probably. After all, they are calling me a zombie. Also, I have to admit that I am more active during the night when people are asleep. Thanks to the computer and internet which can be used 24 hours a day.
  

The SAPsters

The SAPsters. I define my IT Audit Team as individuals who are tasked to do research on SAP, the accounting system used by our upcoming client. We are originally composed of five IT audit associates who work inside the IT room, but one was assigned to go to CDO to perform internal audit. Each one of us was given a job to familiarize with the business processes in SAP and that includes doing the "Should Be" flowchart for revenue, expenditure, payroll, inventory, warehouse management, and financial statement closing process. The said flowcharts shall be used in identifying the gaps between the ideal and the actual process flow.  

Doing research on SAP is fun. I get to learn more on how to operate the system. However, after four weeks of research, I could say that this job gets to be boring. Well, I'm not complaining about it since this gives me an opportunity to be widen my knowledge on SAP. I started to identify the necessary controls and the possible risks when using the system. But facing reality, there are times when one will just stare blankly on the screen (mental blocked) after doing the same thing every single day. One loses the momentum and starts a conversation with his/her teammates who are more than willing to listen on the latest gossip in town. One finds him/herself guilty of not being productive as the day progresses by. One simply surfs the net trying to find something that could enlighten him/her to work again. 

That being said, research is not an easy task. Being a dedicated SAPster is hard unless that person is really devoted to SAP research. 

The Puppy is in the House

Sino ba yang naka-park sa labas ng bahay natin? Curiosity struck like a lightning when I saw an unknown black car parked at the front of our gate this evening. Suddenly, a familiar image went out of our home-- a thin Chinito boy wearing comfy clothes and greeting us. Yep, that's my cousin right there. Maybe he got something for my mom. I was right. It was a cute little Chow-chow, Doberman, and Askal hybrid puppy. Wow.

The puppy is a female dog about two months old. She has light brown fur and is called Miu-Miu for an unknown reason. Puppy, ikaw na ang Chinese! She was walking around our living room for the past few minutes before my arrival, trying to avoid our big Chinese Shar Pei 'Haley' who cannot seem to resist smelling Miu-Miu's butt. Miu-Miu was not comfortable with butt sniffling so the fight between the dogs started. 

Butt sniffling is a common dog behavior. I remembered having heard somewhere that butt sniffling is a form of greeting for dogs to get to know each other. However, butt sniffling does not always go well between dogs. In our case, Haley was quite tamed and fearful most of the time but for some reason she wanted to follow and smell Miu-Miu all the time. If I were a dog, I would also get irritated so it was quite understandable when Miu-Miu began to bark and put on a fighting stance. This led to my search for the whole meaning behind butt sniffling. According to an article on Psychology Today, butt sniffling can be described as a handshake between two dogs. It is a way for dogs to  get information about each other and make friends. However, unlike humans, dogs cannot categorize things such as friends thus they need to do butt sniffling every time they meet. They use 33% of their brain to process olfactory information which can help them recognize their breeder, and other social memories [See related article on Psychology Today]. 

Butt sniffling may also be referred to as an act of dominance. Based on an article by Shibashake, dogs are usually classified as dominant or submissive. Dominant dogs are those that would not back down in a fight and would tend to have an erratic behavior when scolded. They are quite aggressive and are usually the initiators of butt sniffling to get information from the other party. Two dominant dogs cannot be placed together. This might explain why our new puppy and our Chinese Shar Pei didn't get along during their first meeting. Nevertheless, I hope things will turn out well as time passes and our two dogs will learn to get along with each other. 

The Avengers

Last Saturday, I went out with my college friends and colleagues to watch the movie "Avengers". We went to Shangri-La Plaza at around 6pm and ate at Sentosa, a Singaporean Chinese Restaurant which offers a variety of delicious foods such as the Roti Canai (an Indian dish with flat bread and curry sauce), Yang Chow Fried Rice (a Chinese dish which many of us are familiar with), Pork Spareribs, and many more. Sentosa was actually owned by the Penang Hill and Tempura Group. I have to admit that eating at Sentosa for the first time didn't leave much impression on me since we were in a hurry to watch the movie and I was a bit late during the dinner. Perhaps given more time, I would be able to appreciate every bite of the food served by the restaurant.

We immediately went to the movie theater as soon as dinner was over. As the name suggests, the movie is about a team of superheroes called Avengers who are gathered together to fight the forces of evil. Its main casts include Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk, and Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury. The story follows the usual hero-saves-the-day plot with the Avengers defending the good-old-earth and its human beings. Although the movie lasted for more than two hours, I enjoyed watching it onscreen. The movie was nice and it was able to show several action and comedic scenes with some major graphic effects, in particular with the transformation of Hulk who was funny throughout the movie.  However, two things that I've noticed are the inconsistencies with the scenes when Hulk was finally able to control his anger and when Iron Man was able to escape death despite falling from the sky after the explosion of the missile/nuclear. During the last fight between the Avengers and Loki, it was mentioned that Dr. Banner (known as the Hulk) was actually angry all the time. That would mean to say that he could control his anger but making a mess in the plane at the first half of the movie was purposely made which doesn't seem to make sense unless he had undergone some training to distinguish his teammates from others. The incident with Iron Man saving the city and surviving after falling directly from the sky was another mystery. I shall leave the explanations for this to the viewers but well, it is after all a fictional movie. Maybe we simply need to enjoy watching and stop thinking for a while of what's logical and what's not. Leaving those inconsistencies behind, I think movie goers would definitely love this movie. It is an action movie played by all-star casts with a touch of slight comedy.

The Blog is Back!

Writing in blog was fun in the past, is fun right now, and will always be fun.

It's been a while since I've last written in my blog. I was no longer updated with the changes made by Blogger so it took me some time to recover my account and start writing again-- hooray to myself.

Today I would like to reminisce the past 7 years when I have started to create this blog. One thing that I would like to admit is that writing wasn't really my style to begin with. Back in college, I consider myself as a person with few words. Writing a blog is considered a difficult task since I must be able to express myself in words and entertain my Philosophy professor, who gave us this working assignment, as the same time. However, regardless of how hard I think this task was, I gave blogging a shot and started to write things no matter how small and insignificant they were. My writings were mostly about my trips to school and at home which occasionally had some philosophical thoughts. Reviewing my past blog entries, I could say that I really enjoyed writing and that majority of the entries that I have last posted are related to the mundane day-to-day life concerns of a freshman college student. Writing in blog was fun in the past, is fun right now, and will always be fun. It is actually a pleasure to read at my past entries again and imagine what I used to look like 7 years ago. The 17 years old me can be described as a curious little lamb wanting to experience many things in life. 

I have changed a lot these past few years and have focused on my work as an auditor. I stopped writing in my blog about 5 years ago when things got little busy with my Accounting studies and the modular program in DLSU. I needed a period to adjust on my studying habits and give myself some space to release stress by diverting my attention to extracurricular activities. These extracurricular activities were actually organized by JPIA, the professional accounting student organization that I have joined since 2006. I considered JPIA as my second home-- the type of place where you can forget studying for a while and have fun with other people. JPIA served as a way for students to balance their studies and life at the same time. It was all thanks to the experiences I had with JPIA that I was able to grow stronger and be who I am right now. 

I am currently an audit associate who still has a lot to learn from my audit firm. With this in mind, I will keep on striving for excellence in every aspect of my life.