Life as a Personal Assistant

Your boss has snot running down his nose and you have no tissue. What do you do? You wipe it with your finger... and then wipe snotty finger on his shirt!  It's gonna get washed anyways!

The boss is going through a rough patch. He's being sleep-trained. Kinda late, I know, but we're all a little more than tired (literally) having to wake up at least twice a night to get him back to sleep. So the first night was tough.  He cried and cried for what seemed like hours and was constantly shouting "ma ma!", banging on his bedroom door.  My heart broke.  How do you not respond to that? Does he think he's been abandoned and all alone in the house?  He can't even come out of his room. Of course, the crying just lasted 20mins... and then the second time was only 15mins but it seemed like hours!! The second night, instead of lots of crying, he just started shouting "hi" over and over again with some crying towards the end.  Couldn't help but laugh.  Maybe he thought polite greetings would give him some leverage? Lasted 10 mins.  Hopefully we are getting there. This made me reflect on my relationship with God.  I'm guilty of thin

The other day, I took the boss to a playground.  It had a sand pit with all sorts of little construction trucks and sand toys in it. It was great! Who doesn’t like sand? Maybe not Anakin. I sat on a bench and watched him play. It had rain the previous day so the sand was a bit damp but I think that’s the best type of sand to play in because damp sand is easier to compact, makes for excellent material to build castles or Costco-shaped buildings!  Well at one point, the boss comes towards me with this little red cup in his hands. I imagined it was filled with some sand.  He proceeds to shout “cup” in Chinese at me and I confirmed, “Yes! It’s a bui bui!” And before that last word left my lips, I knew exactly what was going to happen next and I threw myself forward but I was too late. With one quick movement, he lifted that cup to his mouth. Yup. The boss took a nice gulp of sand.  #fail I guess we’re lucky the sand was wet so not much came out. I’m sure if the sand was dry, the whole

I survived my first week at the new job. No unscathed though. Jet lagged coupled with being sick made the days and nights tough. I am very grateful the previous guy was close by and able to take over for me for a few hours so I could rest. In many ways, being a personal assistant isn’t all that different from my previous job. I’m still at the beck and call of someone. Clients, consultants, managers and the like, were always calling, emailing or trying to nab my attention for assistant. I guess the only big difference is I used to be able to ignore calls or hold off on responding to emails. The new boss won’t have it. Can’t ignore him. He’ll just constantly and, quite relentlessly call my name until I acknowledge him and cater to his every need. (Seems unfair when I call out to him, he blatantly ignores me...) This goes to show that whatever our job is, we're always in servitude of someone. Even if we are our own boss, we are still doing something that is for another person. Whe

When I told people I was leaving my job, everyone assumed I was going to another architecture firm.  Why would anyone assume differently?  After all, I just painstakingly finally got my architecture license!  But when I tell people I wasn't going to do architecture anymore and become a personal assistant, they all seemed genuinely supportive and didn't try to convince me otherwise.  This was surprising since my own first thought was whether I would be wasting all the years and effort I spent to get where I am in my career.  Perhaps everyone just thought it. After all, what kind of person would tell you that choosing family over career is a terrible idea.  Spoke too soon.  Enter stage right, my dependable parents who did not wonder this at all and just said it straight to my face. I can always depend on my parents to tell me what they think of my life choices... it's brutal but it's honest. In the end, they understood and accepted my decision. Especially since they kno

So today was my first day at my new full-time job as a personal assistant.  My job is to help my boss go about his day and organize activities for him that are stimulating, engaging and fun! The new boss is...nice.  He's VERY young so he's a bit brash, demanding and does not know the workings of the world nor proper etiquette in treating his employee (he coughed in my face today).  On the plus side, his youthfulness is exciting and his inexperience with the world means I can cater his day-to-day activities however I like.  This makes for a very flexible schedule but a little too flexible for my liking. I've never been someone's personal assistant before so am feeling totally out of my element.  I also have to plan his meals!  That will be the most challenging as I'm told that he prefers home cooked meals vs eating out.  I may need my husband's assistance with that.  One of the things I will miss about my old job are all the great places I went for lunch with m