Segregation of Roles

Today morning i went to 2 banks to deal with a similar event. First i went to the headquarters of Hang Seng Bank, i found the staff are cool, until they saw your account information and felt that you may be their potential customer, then a smile is squeezed out. Of course followed by suggestion of introducing some current exciting packages to you.

The other bank to where i went was the headquarters of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC). i found the staff are a bit professional in terms of serving manner, dressing. HSBC gives me the impression of higher level of service, manner, ..., ,etc. when compared with the Hang Seng Bank. The staff in counter of HSBC do not require to sell products, they only work on different services provided to customers.

The difference is that the staff of Hang Seng Bank needs to sell products, i don't know if they need to take quota. The staff in counter are driven by sales, that is, money, rather than by customer satisfaction. i think that the management of Hang Seng Bank consumer bank goes to the wrong direction (in the past, these staff are not required to sell products), they needs segregation of roles, to eliminate conflict of roles, to push to a higher level of services.

Information Everywhere

Last Friday i attended the Oracle Technology Day. The Oracle keynote speaker, Steve Illingworth, talked about the use of Oracle database as a file server which can keep all stuffs including files, email, voice mails, every piece of information. Interfaced the database with a portal and connected to the internet, everyone can access its information seamlessly over the world. He pointed out the use of one single brand database - Oracle - get rid of many headaches about interfacing among new, legacy systems operating in different databases, file systems. At last he talked about his love topic - data mining, demostrated the present capacity of database and analytical softwares to provide instant analysis by a few number of clicks. Such work was done in old age by taking few days to collect data piece-by-piece and doing manual analysis in another few days.

Now information becomes available everywhere. Whenever you have a small gagget connected to internet with a browser, information is at your hand regardless you are in Hong Kong, US, Europe.

Loss and Gain

One of my friends left a company 4 months because his job nature was changed and felt difficult to get along with the new boss.

During the time he was finding a new career, he started to spend time with his 3 years old daughter who has difficulty to learn. He also spared his time to offer help to his friends, such as, drove friends' kid to school, drove friends' baby to clinic, help friends to move...

By spending a lot of time with his daughter, she improved a lot, even the doctor from the periodical attended children hospial said that she is now able to go to normal kindergarten. Also at that time, he learnt a lot to handle his family issues.

Is it a loss? It is a big gain.

In Chinese we have a proverb, "3 years old determine the characters at 80's". i believe that it is much more difficult to change when one growing older. i believe it is God's grace to give him a chance to help his kid to change.

Down to the Earth

Last Sunday, one of my friends got marry and i attended her wedding ceremony in a church. i was late and the church was filled with many people, many of them that i knew a long time ago. Many of them had been the committee members of the Catholic Society (so called Katso) on 1987 during our Univerity life.

Within one minute i found a seat, the chairman of the next committee (1988) arrived with his wife. Later on he told me that once he and his wife were Catholic, but do not go to church now.

After the ceremony and photo taking sessions, i joined my friends in a shopping mall and met the past chairman and spiritual vice chairman of my committee whom i haved talked to during the photo taking session We chatted together and the past spiritual vice chairman said that , "now i am down to the earth and so and so..." It conveys the meaning that because of living he does not care about God and church now but care about to earn a living. At that moment i didn't notice this but seems to get his meaning the day after.

In fact, God is more practical than we are, following Christ's foot steps will be more down to the earth than following our paces. Floating around the sea of falling world, we often get lost and don't really know ourselves. But putting our eyes on Christ opens our eyes and understand the meaning of living.