wlm balance?

food i've been eating for the past weeki love coffee!

work-life-marriage balance?
i wonder how my mom managed to work, have a life with her friends and be married for 27 years?
from my (probably biased) observation, women are either:
1. successful in their career but no life and not married
2. successful in their career but have a life and divorced
3. successful in their career but have a life and single
4. not that successful in their career, have a life and happily married

i am neither in those category.
but in the next 5 years, where will i be?
lately, colleagues have been coming up to me to share their domestic issues
which i'll lend my fat shoulder to them
all they want is someone to just listen
of course i have no position to give advise
given my status as someone who is single and hopeless in relationship
partly because i gave up in understanding how opposite sex works
i can barely understand myself, let alone to understand a totally opposite human being
my point is, most of my colleagues struggle to keep their marriage because of their career.
it is either their partner is a jealous freak, typical husband type (in which wife does everything, husband provides food on the table), wife not doing a good job at balancing their marriage and work life.
are men intimidated by the success of their partner?
there are ten thousand questions and reasons to why it happened.
i don't know what i can do to help, besides listen.
but with the rate we (gen y) are going, looks like there will be a lot of divorcee out there.
*sigh*

which brings me to today's observation.
had a half day meeting, 830 a.m. - 230 p.m
6 hours of deliberation about partner selection on joint venture and project collaboration
there's an upcoming project and they're searching for potential partner to collaborate with
the presenter, my ex-boss who is a joker gave an anecdote about how we should go about in searching of potential partner.
i wasn surprised that he used marriage as an example, i thought he was going to bullshit about some nonsense, but that wasn't the case.
according to him, project collaboration is like a marriage
in order to ensure the project collaboration is a success, that gives most significant impact and value to both parties, a suitable partner is crucial.
things to consider when looking for potential partner, objective and values.
but first, he said each party must know why they want to collaborate and proceed with the joint venture.
in business, they say to minimise risk and financial savings. also, to exchange ideas, knowledge and technology.
in marriage, to share wealth and loans. so you don't end up paying all by yourself. also, to exchange ideas and knowledge. don't know about technology.
coming back to objective and values of the potential collaboration
objective of potential partnership in project collaboration is clear, to deliver the project within given time frame and gain the highest ROI within short period of time.
objective of a marriage, to share your common interest and values in life to deliver babies within given time frame and gain weight within short period of time.
(when he said that, i wanted to laugh out loud but the members in the meeting was too serious)
selection criteria for potential partner for the project collaboration
there were probably 5-6 criteria they had to evaluate the potential partners.
financial statement, knowledge of the industry, relationship with other members within the industry, able to adapt with the culture and has the same values in achieving the objective.
maybe there are a few more, but i can't seem to remember.
that was pretty easy for me to understand as he related it to marriage.
in marriage, of course you want someone who is financial strong.
doesn't have to be superduper rich, drives fancy car and shower me with chanel, gucci and prada all the time.
knowledge of the industry, which is marriage. knows what is marriage all about. relationship, women, family, in laws, crisis, children and everything else that is related.
relationship with other members, friends, family, cousins, colleagues and anybody related to the person.
roughly get the idea? i'm too lazy to elaborate.
after hours of deliberation and challenge session among the presenter and members in the meeting.
their take away of the session was that their objective for project collaboration is to deliver the project within the given time without any other commitment
purpose for the collaboration was to minimise risk and financial savings.
throughout the collaboration, complement each other should be the focus and no dictatorship shall be implemented.
criteria of potential partner is going to be calculated based on weightage.
findings of the calculation shall be deliberated in the upcoming mgmt committee meeting next week.
that was some of the highlight during that meeting.
he's such a happy-go-lucky old man, retiring next year.
he was able to keep me awake, listen and understand the whole concept presented.
come to think of it, his anecdote kinda make sense.
to all the single ladies out there, i hope you make proper assessment before collaborating
in business world, exiting a project collaboration involves paper, money and hand-shake.
but in reality, if it doesn't work the exit process of the collaboration is messy and painful.

happy hunting!
;)