The Fear

My mood is exactly like the one portrayed in Lily Allen's "The Fear" right now. Nice, haunting song.

Yesterday my manager called me to his desk and dropped da bomb on me - I'll be joining 2 of my colleagues to Beijing for a technology transfer.

Shock #1: I'll be leaving in 3 days time!

Shock #2: I'll be there for almost 3 months!

The thing is, I am a last minute replacement. The person meant to go had a valid reason (I won't dive into that) to stay in Penang, so backup plan was activated, i.e. me. Therefore it never crossed my mind that I could be selected for the flight, since the transition team has already been chosen.

Compounding the shock, my concerns are:

1. My skill, or lack thereof, in spoken Mandarin. Beijing itself has its flavour of Mandarin so it'll be an added layer of challenge to comprehend them.
2. My technical skills may not be up to requirements. Even when this epic journey was announced I counted myself out because I didn't believe I had the required skill sets that they needed. Well, whether I have it or not I'll need to get it soon!!
3. The people whom we're learning from are being laid off. Erm, can anyone spell "hostile"? Will they be willing to part with their valuable knowledge (that ultimately didn't save them from retrenchment)?

There's also the matter of just dropping all my plans here and getting ready to move to Beijing for three months. There's a lot of upheavels going on - I'll have to skip the Les Mills quarterly and also forego a planned excursion into Gua Tempurung. The moment I was out of meeting I started sending messages and planning farewells. So without allocating time for packing I've filled the next 72 hours with quick meals with loved ones.

Thruthfully I'm still absorbing the impact of the news. There's so many things I should do before I go but I just can't remember them. What are the things I should bring? How will I stay fit and keep updated with BodyJam when I'm there? Questions! Questions! And no time to answer them!

I'll be bringing my videocam there though, and I'm seriously thinking of video blogging. I won't have time to edit them - just plan my episode, shoot, and upload; so it'll be rough. I'm thinking of calling it "Banana in Beijing". Whaddya think?