Farewell to Elene

Parting is such sweet sorrow, especially for those of us who have been working together for many, many years. And so it turns out that the next in a long line of farewells is none other that our old friend, Elene Tan.

Personally, I've known Elene for over 10 years now, way back in the days when the "pioneer group" of Vishay were all young and restless. Ahem, we're all still young today (at least I believe so) - just that we were younger way back then. Since then, many of us have already become fathers and mothers, but the Gen X spirit is still burning strongly in our hearts.

L to R : "Auntie" Chong SC, Elene (VIP Queen for the night), Sussan from Singapore, VSM-ex-VSM-VSM Chea Thin, "Pinky" Foo (if I understand correctly from Low CL)

Elene was initially in the production planning group, but somewhere in the years gone by made a successful transition to the logistics team. Always on top of the situation, managing things as they happen, and not waiting for something to happen, working with her sure dropped the difficulty level down a couple of notches.

A few of us banded together for a night together at the i-Tango family karaoke, conveniently located at the 2nd floor of the Bukit Beruang Bazaar opposite the gym. I had no idea there was a karaoke there in the first place, but we're most fortunate to have Chong Sew Chu in our group, as she is very "in" when it comes to this genre of socializing....

The VIP room was fitted with 3 screens and was large enough to accommodate our group of 20+ pax. I'm not one with "golden ears", so I can only say that the sound system was not lacking in any particular way. There was 1 wired microphone provided, along with 3~4 wireless ones. Throughout the night, there appeared to be some minor technical challenges with the microphone, mostly coming from weak batteries / dropped connections.

As for the karaoke system itself, the interface was at least orderly and user-friendly and the song list appeared to be quite extensive. Did not really look into it in detail, as my main intention that night was to see Elene off, and not to practice singing. Overall, I do rate the experience more positive relative to the one we had at Mybox karaoke last year.

Though there were many of us from the original pioneer group, like Chong SC, Tan HC, Low CL just to name a few, there were also some "new guys" like Ang CK, Lim CN and Goh YF, and even Sussan from Vishay Singapore, which just goes to show that our team spirit extends across all boundaries.

Ultimately, people come and people go, for various reasons, sometimes unique to the individual. As I understand it, Elene exits the world of semiconductor manufacturing - in fact, leaving entirely the workforce, to focus on family.

Must be the effect of haze getting in their eyes....