That Friday afternoon, while at work, my 3rd daughter called. She must have this feeling of dissatisfaction because mummy won’t be home at the usual time. She said, ‘Kenapa mak balik lambat? Kan selalunya ayah je yg balik lambat?’ At 7 pm, my 2nd daughter called and asked, ‘Pukul berapa mak nak balik?’ I said, ‘Malam nanti mak balik’. She said, ‘Ni kan dah malam ni..’ She even refused to do her homework because I was not there .

• Daddy should be home earlier more often. OR


• Mummy should be having more nights out. OR


• Kids need mummy more than daddy. (My husband will totally disagree to this…)

Part II

The dinner was held by the faculty to express appreciation to its staffs that have performed excellently in categories namely Academic & Research, Quality, Community Service and Sports. Ha’ah… ye la tu… cemerlang la sangat (speaking for myself). Anyhow, I applaud the effort done by the faculty. Staffs are people who need to be appreciated once in a while. Words of encouragement are sometimes enough. Tokens can also be given and not necessarily expensive ones. I received a certificate in a frame and free dinner. Ok la kan… daripada tak ada… But frankly, I feel everyone in the faculty should be appreciated and not only the few hundreds who were invited to the dinner coz everyone did their fair share of contribution and sometimes the margin of who contribute more is sometimes ill-defined..

My hubby’s office has one of the cool ways of showing appreciation to others. He is working in one of the banks in KL. They have what they call as 'Apple'ciation Day. So on that day, you sent out big juicy apples to colleagues that you would like to show your appreciation to. Likewise, people may give you apple to show their appreciation. But what if you don’t receive any apples? Demotivated la pulak. Jadi macam Mr Bean and sent apple to yourself, maybe?

Nice place. The theme for the night is batik. From left: Norhazlina, yours truly and Anisah

Great company. I was pre-determined to sit at a table elsewhere but luckily I managed to squeeze into this table and enjoyed the dinner. From left: Chua, Azman, Anisah and yours truly again.

• Appreciate yourself and others. Why not write an email of appreciation to your colleagues and cc the email to the head of department or maybe the Dean or even the VC or the CEO. Hantar sekali kat PM while you are at that. No la… gila apa… But at least the immediate boss or supervisor should be in the know.

• Even if the gift/token/words are way below your expectation (like in this case, the dinner…), the effort itself should be appreciated. Do you think I should write to the Dean appreciating him for appreciating me? Then he will appreciate me for appreciating him appreciating me. Boleh??