Working From Home

I know.. I know. Some may think I'm just lazy to go to office, other will think that I'm just taking an advantage of not having a boss around.. yeaa my boss is based in another country.  Well, not 100% wrong, but definitely also not 100% true. Here are some more appropriate reasons. hehe..

• SAVINGS

So many things we can save by working from home. Do I need to list them down here? No, rite? It's pretty clear what it means without any further explanations, I think. Oh come on! Who wouldn't want to save time, energy, money and .. life in that insane traffic of Jakarta? Read back your own FB status or Twitter, I bet almost everybody has at least one complaint. If you don't have one, it's either you don't have FB/Twitter account, or you own a chopper or .... you are superman. And those who use ground transportation, the more complaints you have, the shorter life you get. Trust me. Ancient prescription, it's written in the Bible too, Proverbs 17: 22 A cheerful heart is good medicine,  but a crushed spirit dries up the bones

That savings go for the employer as well. One of the most expensive costs of a company is office space, that's why many companies now have a "mobile area" for mobile employees. The company I'm working at right now, has a big mobile area in each of the 4 floors we have. The employee can just come, sit anywhere he/she likes, plug the laptop and dial a PIN to get his/her personal extension number at any phone near him/her.

• MORE PRODUCTIVE

I spent around 3-4 hours return trip from home-office-home, even more than 4 hours if traffic was so crazy,  like Mondays or Fridays. While, actually it should be less than 35min for me to reach home... after midnite only. haha. So, when I work from home, I use that 3-4 hours efficiently, produce more emails, complete more assignments and finish more jobs. Not to mention that I can avoid all the unnecessary distraction like when I'm sitting at my open cubicle. You know, sometimes people just came for something not important at all... like "hey, that x has just changed her profile picture, see see.. I'll show you." while I'm in a middle of preparing a report or even doing a conference call. That is not cool, at all.

At home, I would have been sitting in front of my laptop, from 7AM to... any PM or even back to any AM I want. Nobody would dare to ask me anything, well because I have almost nobody around, just my dearest maid who, even without me asking, always prepared a plate of cut fruits and put it right in front of me. Cool, huh? My kids were back from school only around 3PM or so. They went deep to their own bedrooms afterwards, so yeaah... almost nobody around. I got up only when I wanted to go pipis. haha.

• MY BELOVED "DASTER"

You may wrinkle your forehead thinking why can a "daster" be one of the reasons I love working from home. OH YEAAAA! Fancy Fashion is just not my FUN. It's totally a waste trying to make me follow a concession of how a carrier woman should dress. My office outfit was just a long trousers, a simple blouse and a flat shoes... And it already annoyed me?? U bet it did. LOL!

• ADVANCE TECHNOLOGY

Of course. Where would I be, what should I do without internet? Thanks to a bunch of people who invented internet. I hope the guy who made internet run faster was in the list. If my modem was still like last year, there's no way I can have this pleasure of working from home as today. Live webinar, online training, virtual room sharing, weekly SEA concalls, APJ concalls... I did that from home. And thank you to whoever invented all the chatting tools too. Office Communicator, Yahoo Messager, MSN, Skype, WhatsApp and others. Audio/video chat was possible and FREE, even overseas interaction. Isn't that extremely cool?

• I'M 100% REACHABLE

Again, thanks to technology who has made the world shrunk to just one click away. I run my works, communicate everything thru emails. If my notebook was off for some reasons, my blackberry was on 24x7. For anything more urgent, I have OC, BBM, WhatsApp, even a traditional way like SMS that come to my immediate attention.

• DEFINITE ME-TIME

This one is important. Working from home gives me a real "Life-Work Balance". I can stop anytime for an hour to cycle in the afternoon. I can stop anytime to receive a nice massage from a therapist at home. I can stop anytime to peek on an infotainment at TV. I can be there earlier when my kids needs help during exam weeks. I can even stop anytime for a nap. haha. Well, you need that too sometimes, don't you? :p

• NOBODY LIKES ME IN THE OFFICE

Do I still go to office? Of course. I go to office for a face-to-face marathon meetings that I stacked for one day. But I have this feeling, that nobody likes me there. So, even when I'm at office, I was not really at my cubicle, I moved around to join the meetings at meeting rooms hehe.... My desk was not my desk anymore, few guys have invaded it. They even put my office laptop away so that they can have a wider space. They're using my phone, my stationary, my network cable and my laptop charger. And when they saw me coming to my desk, they were like.... "oh no.. can you just go back and work from home... " LOL!!!

• MY VERY OWN KARAOKE ROOM

Can you sing your lung out at office, while everybody's busy on whatever they busy at? Or, can you lower down your i-tune player volume and still can hear your fave songs, and even sing along with it? Even I seriously think that everybody will love Leehom songs (haha), but for the sake of Leehom safety (LOL), I put his songs in repeat just for myself. Yesterday was full Westlife, and today back to Leehom again. I just cant tell you how much I ADORE him... his songs. So let's sing ...




So, anyone wants to Work From Home like me?

Westlife - Gravity World Tour 2011

Caution:
Some parts of my story are very similar to this post. Oh yeaa... we're twin, with so many different things, most basic one is .. different parents. LOL! And as this post has pretty much said it all, ... I'm just gonna write it short. So short that it goes like this: "Aku enggak kapok". Sorry, enggak tahu bahasa Inggris nya "kapok" ahahah..

Enggak Kapok Soal NGANTRI
Desek2 an, umpel2 an, kaki pegel, dan basah kuyup keringetan, sudah biasa and it was expected too actually. No surprise. So, I have equipped us with mineral water, hand fan, tissue, and flat shoes. My husband was a bit over-reacted. "Buy at least 3 bottles of mineral water" he said. I went "ya ya ya..." but no. Unless he's with me to help me carry my hand bag, I'd go with 1 bottle only. Berat bo. The hand fan was handy. We bought it at the outside of the gate, Rp 10.000 saja dengan gambar Pooh yang cute banget itu. I didnt go to office that day, so it's an "office-free" outfit for me. Yeahh!! Monita wore her converse snickers and I had my crocs. But ... Julia unfortunately, has problem with shoes. She's wearing 5cm heels, black covered shoes.

"Ntar di dalem gue buka, gue cemplungin aja ke tas gue" kata Julia. Oh.. okay. I nodded. No further comment. Agreed 100%. So di dalam, gue tagih. "Ayo copot aja" kataku. "ihh.. bisa keinjek kaki gue. enggak deh, thank you." jawab Julia.

I'm sure she was so happy when we're finally able to sit down. "Mendingan memang jangan lepas sepatu deh, lihat nih paku2nya" aku menunjuk lantai dan Julia nodded pasrah...  Was she really "cemplungin" her shoes to her bag later on? I have no idea. The room was dark and packed. I can't even see my own shoes! But I dont think she's having cramp legs or something as she jumped all along with the rest of the fans, the whole time. Cool.

Enggak Kapok Soal TIKET

Beruntung. Beruntung banget aku punya channel gratisan. Tiket festival adalah kelas yang paling mahal. Di tiket tertera Rp 750.000. Entah kenapa (belum sempet tanya), Julia bilang dia pesen online harga Rp 825.000. Anyway... di dalam area aku ketemu temen SMP, Elly. She's there with her husband and son.. katanya mereka memang hobi banget nonton2 konser... Justin Beiber nonton... Dora atau Teletubies nonton juga enggak yaa.... haha! Dan yang mengagetkan.. dia membeli tiket festival seharga Rp 600.000. Kok bisa ya beda2? Mungkin karena dia beli di hari H, ke calo. Hmm.... maybe next time I should try that trick to get cheaper ticket too. Kalau beli sendiri, worth to try. Rite? Rite.

Enggak Kapok Soal KERICUHAN
Walaupun udah prediksi pasti bakalan heboh, enggak nyangka ternyata sangat heboh. Anehnya, aku enggak kesel, or marah beneran dengan kejadian itu. I was enjoying the whole things, really. Aku menikmati di suruh mepet kebelakang, walaupun mentok, selangkah lagi itu mas mas tv-one pasti sukses ke injek. Aku menikmati nonton panitia yang "desperado" meminta kita geser. Aku menikmati diomelin Westlife. Aku menikmati ikutan teriak bar-bar seperti "balikin! balikin!" or "ENGGAK BISA GESER LAGI BEGO!!! UDAH MENTOK!!!!!!"  I was really having fun enjoying that 30min off.

Keselnya baru besok. Soalnya malah kita yang di festival yang dituduh biang kerok. Hmm... awalnya emosi, sampai ikutan "nyap-nyap" di sebuah site. Penulis berita itu hanya cari sensasi supaya tulisannya di baca. Ngatain Westlife mogok tampil karena penonton ricuh. What a cheap trick, enggak berkelas sama sekali, shallow and disgraceful.

Tapi later on, yang ribut dan heboh ngatain adalah mereka yang tidak nonton. So, let them be. Tidak perlu berdebat dengan orang seperti itu. Buang energi. Halah.....

Enggak Kapok Soal Lagu dan Lirik
I was a fan of Westlife long long time ago, and that night, the feeling was still there. Bukitnya gue teriak "NICKY............" sambil loncat-loncat kegirangan. haha. Tapi soal ngikutin mereka nyanyi malam itu, gue nyerah. Lagu Westlife yang gue hapal, terbatas banget. Jadi malu sama bapak yang berdandan aneh (Julia swore he was a pick-pocket), but this man sang along each and every song that night. It was hilarious to hear him pour his lung out "So i said a little prayer, hope my dream will take me there where the skies are blue to see you once again, my love.."

Enggak Kapok untuk NONTON WESTLIFE lagi
that sub HL said it all :)

If you want a more detail article, song list, packed situation, the crowd and even some of youtube videos, read this blog.

Some pictures :