Back From The Dead: 10 Years Of Being Me

It's been 11 years...

Decided to revisit my long-dead Blogspot page today to see if it still existed... and it is (as evident by the fact that you are reading it now). So I decided to revive it by adding another post after more than a decade of not even publishing an article.

So here I am now, with an article with a hurriedly made-up title. Granted, it was conjured up on the fly, and I could probably come up with something wittier if I still had half the creative juices that I used to way, way back then. Age slows you down a little.

Looking back at everything that went on since the last post dated August 2008, it would take almost the whole day just to revisit ten years' worth of memories and going-ons; Facebook was relatively new at that time with the mass transition over from MySpace and Friendster taking place en masse, and people still (mostly) penned their thoughts down into online blogs like this one.

What else changed? A lot. In fact, some friendships lasted even shorter than the period between this post and the last, and everyone still maintained some degree of innocence. Jocelyn was only married for a year, and she was one of the first in our batch to get married in church wearing a strapless wedding gown - once frowned upon in churches due to having the bride bare her shoulders but things were slowly changing.

To recap, here's a list of what I personally went through; the joy, the sadness, the frustrations and the life lessons learnt along the way to be a better and more mature person (also, I'll be quoting from the Marvel Cinematic Universe a lot):

2009
01: Iron Man kickstarted the Marvel Cinematic Universe a year back, and no one took it seriously. At most, critics praised the movie for being the first Marvel movie that was actually watchable (yes Marvel movies prior to this were close to being cheesy B-Grade flicks in an era where DC reigned supreme) but dismissed it as a one-trick pony. Even the character Iron Man itself was sort of a bargain bin type of superhero that nobody wanted or even considered making toys. But Robert Downey Jr. changed all that.

02: The age of smartphones was slowly taking off, with HTC taking the lead and boasting an impressive (at that time) 128MB storage space and 512MB memory. And it only cost you an arm and a leg at about RM1,500!

03: G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra was bad. And I mean really bad. It had none of the signature stuff that made the cartoons so endearing, everything was updated for the sake of realism, nothing was left to the imagination of adults that grew up watching both the animated series and THAT mature-themed movie. And Snake Eyes' facemask had lips. Dear God. The only good thing was sexy Baroness which somehow made the movie somewhat watchable but only during her scenes.

2010
01: The 00s were officially over and it was the start of the next decade

02: The much-touted "end of the world apocalyptic" movie 2012 premieres in cinemas. The premise was as absurd as how you'd picture it to be - single-engine planes that could outrun volcanic eruptions, tumbling skyscrapers that somehow always seem to miss the hero and his family by mere inches, the hero always knowing what to do (and nothing goes wrong with his decisions),

03: Iron Man 2 debuts... to harsh criticism. The first was now considered groundbreaking and putting Marvel Studios in the spotlight. This movie, however, seemed to have the opposite effect. At this point, there was not even any plans to decide what the direction would be after this



2011
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02: Captain America: The First Avenger was the next MCU character after Iron Man to get his debut movie. Chris Evans was still reeling from The Fantastic Four, and was wary about taking up the role of Captain Steven Grant Rogers. He decided to trust his gut instincts, and the rest is history.

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2013
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2014
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2015
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2016
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2017
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2018
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2019
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I finally left my abusive job, the one that had been hacking at my mental health for the past 6 months or so. Half a year of being on the edge, with little to no rest, and where the fear of getting reprimanded was constantly playing on your mind.

Before we go further, let us have a recap of the events that led to these unfortunate set of circumstances happening:

April 2019. It was my last month of tenure at Company X. Said company's main line of business was in marketing solutions, and of their clients (a particular credit card company) was the source of income for my workplace. I was brought in to replace the ageing Operations Manager, and I found myself having an uncanny knack for doing Operations; in fact, one may even say I enjoyed and excelled at it. Things were starting to look up.

However, the dark side of ambition is that it always requires a sacrifice of sorts, and in my case, someone, or rather, a few individuals, had the collective decision that my presence in the company posed a threat to their very careers (because there's no such thing as being too good at your job without someone feeling queasy about it).

Fast forward - I got notified that the company had decided not to renew my contract for the upcoming year (despite curiously receiving a Letter Of Confimation just months ago). That was in November 2018 when the weight of my world started to crumble onto me: no job, no money, and that new Honda Jazz that I was eyeing as a replacement for my 12-year old Myvi rustbucket? Gone. Just like that.

Fast forward again - the end of April was coming fast, and I had to figure out how to sustain myself and my car. Out of the blue, this job offer from a close friend came along, and the requirements to join was pretty relaxed as well. Seemed OK. Or so I think. All the red flag signs were there even during the interview itself, but I was desperate, and desperation is a tool that some people can use to prey on for their own benefits.

Soon I was an employee of the new company (let's call this Company Z, which is itself a branch of Company Y). Now the role I was promised during the initial meet-up was that I only handled projects and reporting documentation.