Miss Beh, as she preferred to be addressed this way at work, was my boss for 9 years during my time in Regional Language Centre Library and Information Centre.  She was strict, detailed-conscious and a keen supervisor in my initial years. I found myself rather fearful to speak to her, as she would correct my grammatical mistakes or diction errors. It was common to have many drafts for a piece of written work, as I would see reds of punctuation, typo, sentence structure, and spacing remarks. However, it had proven to be a worthwhile training period for me. She had taught me to acquire this attitude of always looking for improvement to existing work procedures, receiving feedback from colleagues, and users before updating procedural manuals, policies, or guidelines, taking notes for follow-up action with vendors.

Despite being demanding, she was a very considerate boss, she always remembered our birthdays. Each one of us would receive a beautiful birthday cake from her and be given time to enjoy our little party in a work corner. It was also a ritual that we would receive a specially-wrapped gift from her at Christmas time.

Contributed by Ng Chen Wee