Nightmare

Yesterday, I felt like my head exploded. Too much information to search and understand. The whole day was spent looking for the numbers. Phew! By the end of the day, I never felt so much relieved.

The work would be easy if I were from accounting or finance background. Unfortunately, I was not. Never studied finance nor accounting. All this while, I was happy to leave to someone else to manage the budget. 

But since my colleague resigned, I have to stepped in temporarily. Sometimes I wonder why I always ended doing things people don’t want. Maybe, it’s my fault. I didn’t know how to say NO.

So when my boss told me that I had to assume the role temporarily, I was quite reluctant. He assured me that he would be doing part of the budget too. Heh! I was skeptical of it. True enough! Most of the dirty work I have to do it.

I was really struggling because finance is like Greek to me. The last two months were really tough on me. But no matter how tough it was, I was grateful.

Grateful because it gave me the opportunity to learn something new. I have to say that, career wise, I have developed a lot. I first started as an IT lecturer before I moved to do technical support. From technical support, I did software development, project management before I moved to IT Operation. 

In IT Operation, I managed the Helpdesk team, then I moved to Desktop Support before taking the challenge in Testing and Quality Assurance. I had a short stint in Release Management too. When I was in TQA, I had the opportunity to work in Jakarta. I was there for eight months, and upon my returned, I continued to assume my previous role before my Jakarta stint.

When the management offered me to move back to Operation again, I was glad because if I continued to stay in TQA, I would die of boredom. The IT operation was really challenging as I had to manage the environment end-to-end, which include Data Center, Service Desk, Desktop Support, Application Management, Servers, Databases and Networks. Its gave me the opportunity to work with the big vendors such as HP, DELL and Oracle.

From operation, I was then offered to be part of the outsourcing project team. The previous project manager left, and the handover was also less than a week. It was pure hell for the first 4 weeks as we were at the contract negotiation. Huge learning curve for me, but I survived.

And in the post-outsourcing, I’m currently doing contract management and governance. Since Financial Management is part of Sourcing Management and Governance, that’s how I ended up taking care of the budget until someone with a proper background comes in. Until then, I will continue to have nightmares with numbers….

Salam....