Creativity

Many of my friends think that I am too creative in my imagination and have lots of thoughts that are out of the boxes. I just helped a friend of mine to draft out an advertisement - 8 scene script last night. It had been a great adventure when I was in university when my cliques shot short video clips for publicity of events especially for dinners and dances for faculties and AIESEC events. I guess it is part of the fun in life that I enjoy much.

Why aren’t you in the creativity industry? Your talent seems wasted! I felt so, but that feeling was before when I got this job of mine - a paint chemist. I hated chemistry a lot because it was hard to score and I feel as if I am the worst student in the world that I almost had to extend my course. I wanted to extend but in the end I did not - that was another long story.

Yea, why am I in science field? I began to realise in life creativity doesn’t just applies on arts, musics, movies, pictures or sculptures. I began to love science because it also need my creativity to design the formulas for industrial paints! I prefer to call myself a paint designer than being a chemist. Sounded more cool.

Everyone is planted with a dream to pursue. When you write it down on a paper and work towards it, it’s a vision. I have always wanted to work with children. I love to play, teach, and spending time with children but I never made the step to teach in kindergartens or work with children homes before - my only experience with children was to take care of my younger brother and my younger cousins. God did not put me to work with children directly, or exactly like what I wanted in my dream to come true. Instead He put me in paint industry, which I was reluctant to be in.

Indeed every company has its politics and I feel my technical department’s politics are not as bad as other departments. I have challenges in work too and stressful moments with other departments too. But it was okay, deep inside me I would speak to Him, “God help me in this”. Naturally, things went smoothly for me. My seniors are concern whether I like the job or not. I am always happy to see some improvement in my works or learn something new. To make myself cheerful, I always tell myself, “God places me here for a reason!”

Working in science field needs one to be more creative and bold to try than just going through the routines of normal daily life. In researches, I don’t even know where I am going, so far all sorts of formulas my senior and I had done to improve the water soaking resistance mechanical tests failed. We would discuss together with our boss what is the next step that we need to put into the formula. Making paint is like baking a cake but it is not exactly as easy as baking a cake.

I know many people would always complain about their jobs. They would always criticize about how people do things and how people just do not follow the systems in the company. I guess it is an attitude problem. The more you complain, the more you would think that it is not your problem and other people should be responsible to solve the problem. More people think the same way as you think, then the whole company will end up blaming each other for not being able to deliver the results on time.

I volunteered to take care of the laticrate area in the company. I pulled one of my colleagues to share responsibility with me. To my disappointment, the machines was not well taken cared of, and it was leaking and the air pressure was too high and calibrations needed to be carried out on the machine. Everyone complained to me about the problem, no one did anything to solve the problem and the problem is being pushed here and there until I came to work and decided to handle this matter.

I managed to take care of the situation even though I have never learn much about the machine. I self-studied and asked around my lab assistants on how they managed the machine before I came [to save the world?]. My boss was happy to have me to be the area manager, he suggested things that he would like to see changed and I did my work. Most of these things are supposed to be handled by the engineering department, but my work orders to them was almost 2 months back. Changes they’ve made? Only 5%.

Most of the things, I have done it by myself. I cleaned the whole room with my colleagues and put some signs to make sure people who use the room take off their shoes. Signs were big enough for an old man to read - “close the doors always” and “take off your shoes before you go into the room”. The signs were there for 3 weeks. But to my disappointment, I still see the lights were not switched off until the next morning and when I went to check the room, I noted that the floor stained with shoe prints.

I do get frustrated and often wondered why are these people so stubborn? In fact, they worked here longer than me. They should love the company more than me. I forgot that people come from many different backgrounds and different levels of society. I guess I have to forgive them and I am still coming with a way to make sure they do understand how to love the area. Best time is when the room is nicely re-painted and everything is polishing-ly clean. Let my patience be tested for now.

Perhaps I have not reached the “worst case scenarios” where all blames are on me yet or all responsibilities were pushed to me… But I definitely do not want to make them lose respect for me. I want to prove to them that they need me in the company, even if they do not treasure me, they will regret losing me. Yeah, basically that is one of my motivation to stay alive in my working area.

Asian companies do not work like westerns. They work with emotions and often mix up professionalism and personal issues. If only things can be perfected in a day, life would be too easy to handle, don’t you think so?

Article contributed by Antonia Lim
Picture: Jen Stark