The festive week has come to an end with only four beers down. This gives a clear picture of my enthusiasm for life this week. The official notice that dad lost his respected position in the company to an outsider was a known issue, yet it hurt reading the letter posted to all staff.

I could hear people whispering behind my back and stop talking as soon as I hit the door knob to enter a room. These are apparently insignificant things yet they make their mark over repetitive occurrences. Coupled with this, that sly smile on the management's faces made me want to rip their hearts out, liquidise it and drink it for breakfast.

I cannot help not feeling sorry for dad. He's been through hell this year especially after the crisis declaration when the company's accounts were put to light. All his efforts and energy were sucked up by work. He was a rare animal at home. All those dreaded hot meetings with unions. The Memorandum. Eating and Breathing work. Now this is his great reward.

This whole affair stinks more than a rotting carcass. The person responsible for bankrupting our subsidiary company got promoted to what is probably the most influential of senior management. The enthusiasm I had for work last week wilted down to earth after experiencing the corruption and external manipulation beyond anybody's comprehension. There are by far too many influences behind each and every decision with powerful people and money involved to ever believe that fairness and justice will ever play a part at work.

The only benefit I see in all this tragedy is that now people will drop their masks when dealing with me. It is the prefect time to see who treated me differently because of my father. I am, and probably always will be always in doubt as to whether people really value my work, or else say so only at face value.

I tried to smudge my depression by doing different things this week. The only high energy activities were a game of squash and volleyball, otherwise I was left will little more to do than watching loads of TV and reading about Malaysia. Last Thursday I went to my first Bachelor's party which consisted of a rabbit dinner. The night cost a hell of Lm10 which is extremely expensive by any standard. Being the good boy that I am I refrained from going to see the Russian girls show, which most of my sex starved colleagues drooled over all night and the rest of the week.

With the orient holiday in the horizon I regained an interest in Origami. This actually started by flying aeroplanes on Friday afternoon along with my interplanetary pal. I managed to make the longest distance ones for the record. I must check out the following toys/crafts from Malaysia:-

• Origami Paper
• Mahjongg
• Tsunami Puzzles
• Chinese Cards

At work I launched the telephone directory input application. I managed to stretch it for about 3 months, and given what happened this week I felt really good. A new project is now hitting in my direction in a very heavy way; the computerisation of the normal business processes such as leave application, vacation and duty travel applications, etc. This is a though nut to crack and I'm trying to save some work by looking for a workflow application framework. Although I didn't have the time or eagerness to do extensive research I found Oracle Workflow and Open WFE as potential frameworks.

My worry of the week was the camcorder choice. This is living up to its expectations as far as difficult choices are concerned. I started out looking for an analogue video camera because I was of the impression that analogue video was better than digital since it is in the beginning. Actually I had two mistakes on this account; digital video has been around for some time now, and digital video is supposed to be better than analogue. There are half a million different digital cameras from were to choose and I still have to determine the best one for my money. Another dilemma is whether to buy the camera from Europe or wait till I get to Singapore.

I'm leaving for a deep night sleep hoping next week will be better than the last.