SAHM? WAHM? And writing?

It all started in January 2007. I remember posting about my dream to become a working at home mom. I was not really sure of what I could do at home other than driving the kids to school, fetching them in the evening, cooking, cleaning, gardening etc. 


A friend suggested to start a clothing line but none of us knew how to design clothes. I could sew simple baju kurung and shirts but never taken any formal courses. Not long after we discussed this, I read in the gossip column that Victoria Bekham was planning to start her clothing line too. Hehe. Coincidence or what?


Another friend encouraged me to start baking, and I took some initiatives about a year later. I bought an oven and started baking. It was really fun trying all the new found recipes (mostly Googled), playing around with buttercream and fondant. But I couldn't spend much time baking as many IT projects started pouring in that year. So, the oven was left in a cold and lonely corner in my kitchen. Poor oven.


In early 2007 too I dreamed to become a published author. I started writing fiction and a few paid articles. I published the fiction in my blog. It was a short story. And that was it. I never had the time to write fiction soon after that because of my work load. 


The only thing I managed to do consistently since then was writing. Well, actually only the blog writing part was consistent. The technical writing, fiction and paid articles only lasted for a few months. 


So, the idea of becoming a WAHM was forgotten for a while. 


Earlier this year, one of my new year resolutions was to start with my Masters programme in June/July timeframe. I started planning on how to adjust my work schedule and researching on the most suitable courses offered by nearby Unis. At one point, I was contemplating quitting work and focus 100% on doing the Masters Programme. 


But Allah knows best. There were a few new challenges at work that I didn't even have time to enroll myself in any of the nearby Universities. The first quarter of 2011 was so busy that I didn't even took any time off during the school holidays. 


Some time in April my body started to tell me that it was too much to take, my BP was high again after stabilizing for more than 3 years. It was so frustrating as I realized I've been neglecting my health again. I tried going to the gym and cooking at home more frequently but work became too demanding, sometimes I even had lunch in the car while driving to customer's place. 


So, when I saw an announcement in Twitter requesting for manuscript submission, I started writing fiction again. It's a therapy, much better than shopping or going to spa. Writing fiction transformed me into another person and it brought me to another world, another dimension. It kept me occupied, but less stressed. I completed the proposal and my first 4 chapters in 6 days and submitted to the publisher. 


To my surprise, the proposal was accepted and I continued with the rest of the manuscript. 
Four weeks later I managed to complete the manuscript and submitted the first draft. And it was accepted! 
Allah knows best and works in mysterious ways. My first novel will be launched on 17th September 2011. 
A wish/dream started in early 2007 and will materialize on the 3rd quarter of 2011. 


For all my readers who dare to dream, trust me, insyaallah you will succeed.


** more news on my first novel will be posted here after Raya.

Good news - we're hiring!

Yeah, we're hiring. Again! 


I have been interviewing System Engineers for the past 3 months, to fill up two vacancies we currently have in the team. Hiring is not an easy job, especially for these 2 posts. I think we've interviewed more than 10 candidates so far and only 2 are good enough. 


The worse news is, these 2 engineers turned down our offer.


Argh.... I'm back at square one. Now I have to find more candidates. I really dread going through resumes and calling people for the first interview. 


What was written in the papers a few days ago was so true. The younger generation (especially fresh graduates) are demanding for high salary and want jobs that suit their lifestyle. I've interviewed a few young engineers (who have about 2-3 years experience in the IT industry). They actually told me their likes and dislikes, dos and don'ts on their first interview. They didn't do any research on the positions offered and never visited our corporate website, instead they started dictating their expectations. 


So, it's not a surprise to see the number of unemployed graduates grew each year. They'd rather stay at home, asking money from their ageing parents than start earning and building their lives. 


It's true that Malaysians have been living rather lavishly in the past few decades. Our children, especially. They could always get what they wished for. Even those with struggling parents who are earning less than RM5K a month. I'm not blaming the parents but somehow, showering children with gifts, granting their every wish (especially more pocket money) is not really helping them develop into mature adults. 


You can ask any teenager you find in the shopping mall, what's the value of RM1K? I bet majority of them would answer 'Not Much'. These kids are using smartphones worth more than RM2.5K. Their clothes are from brands you and I couldn't pronounce properly, and some of their shoes alone are twice the price of my 4 handbags combined. 


So when these kids finish college and start hunting for jobs, they'll be looking for really high salary. Even without any experience they would still demand more than RM3K as a start. Most companies can't afford to hire unskilled worker with such basic pay. So, in the end, these kids remain unemployed, and I have to go through 30 more resumes to find the suitable candidates for these 2 vacancies. Pffffbbbtttt!


Have a great weekend, people!

Wordless Thursday - HACKED!!

Pic ciloked from NizamBakeri's tweet. Hehe.

Your IT infrastructure - Small and medium business Web Hosting

This is an IT related post, but it's relevant and beneficial for those who are looking for web hosting services.

After years of doing IT Infrastructure projects, some of the biggest challenges and pain points faced by my customers are hardware acquisition and building a team of competent IT engineers to manage the infrastructure. Requesting for new computer hardware alone might take as long as 6 months for approval. Just imagine a department or division that are planning to roll out a very important application but have to wait for almost a year before it can be provisioned and used by their end users. By the time the system stabilizes, some of the software components might need some upgrades.

When the infrastructure is successfully provisioned, then comes the operational headaches. For a simple secured web based application, it takes at least 5 components or software products to be managed by an organization. This alone might take 3 competent System Administrators to maintain. If a few more applications are deployed, and on different sets of software technology, the same people will need to be multiskilled and perform multitasks in their day to day job. This eventually caused inefficiency and lead to knowledge workers' frustration. They end up looking for jobs elsewhere.

There were times when I'd advice my friends or acquaintances to opt for web hosting that are secure, reliable and able to meet their service levels. If I were in their shoes, I'd rather keep a few really good engineers who can focus on their special areas while leaving the infrastructure headaches to another party who can provide the hardware and skillful people. This managed hosting is getting popular now as many more organizations realize the value and have increased confidence level. Some companies opt for managed services to reduce software licensing headaches as they're getting more complex with the advancement of hardware technology such as virtualization.

For organizations that own IT infrastructure also have the choice to operate with less headaches by doing colocation where they can enjoy having more secured network and their servers are placed in a better data center.

In my day to day job, I don't only sell hardware and services. At times, I do share informations like this with my customers especially the options available today for them to maximise their IT investment. 

Wordy Wednesday - I'm not taking my meds starting today because I can't stand the side effects

I was complaining to my hubby about the side effects I'm getting after I started taking my hypertension meds. He asked whether I'm pregnant. Huh? I told him No. I'm so sure I'm not pregnant and even if I am, I won't have those symptoms. All my pregnancies were rather smooth - no vomiting, no mood swings, no weird cravings etc.

Starting today I decided not to take the hypertension meds.

Furthermore, I'll be doing project deployments this week - less meeting room sessions. So, by right the pressure will be less. I got this feeling that my blood pressure is higher because of the long meetings. I can only focus for 20 minutes. If I had to endure a 3 hour meeting, I'll be in a very depressing state because I have to force myself to focus and look interested in the discussions (that are usually long winding and off topic). So, doing project deployment activities bring calmness to me. It's hectic, but I'll get to stay focused and motivated. Long, boring, unproductive meetings can kill people - trust me.

Let's talk about career

A career won’t really promise you big houses, luxury cars, expensive holidays and endless partying. A career cannot guarantee you’ll have a happy live, reliable good friends and faithful spouses. For people like me, my career helps me pay my monthly bills and satisfy my shopping desire; then a certain amount would go to my investment portfolios and savings accounts.

Do I love my career? Well, let’s just say that I’m in this love hate relationship with it. There are things I really love doing and they’re giving me job satisfaction. There are also things that I really hate to deal with but I still have to do it in order to meet my employer’s and customer’s expectations.

One thing missing from my career is that it’s not giving me personal satisfaction. Professionally, I’ve met a certain number of targets I set 13 years ago. Personally, there are many things that I found them hard to achieve because of my own limitations and current job requirements.

Having any career in any industry will bring you to a realization that you’ll be taking almost similar path with your peers or seniors. Take IT as an example. Most System Engineers started as support engineers, then move a bit higher to become Solution Engineers, followed by Senior Solution Engineers. The next position is usually in the management force, be it Technical Lead or Technical Manager. After spending probably 8 or 15 years there, if we’re lucky we’ll be promoted to the C-level positions: CIO, CTO, COO, CEO etc etc…

Not many will make it to the C-level positions. Along the way, some might decide to make a 90 degrees turn and become an IT entrepreneur while some even do something totally different like growing crops or joining MLM to generate 5 figures income by selling corsets, for example.

It all depends on what kind of life excitement and satisfaction you expect from your career. Making career moves is so common nowadays that it doesn’t surprise me a bit when I heard an engineer friend joined herbal medicine business.

So this year I am looking for new excitement, but still asking myself ‘what’?

Frustasi

One of the things that really frustrates me these days is having to cancel my important meetings because I have to attend another meeting that doesn't even require me to speak a word. Reason being, people attending that meeting expected to see my face there. In other words: I have to show my commitment by being there although the meeting might not even be discussing areas related to my team's deliverables.

Since I have to attend those 'more important' meetings, other things had to put on a lower priority. This is causing great frustration and angers some parties that are depending on my decisions and advise. Okay, I'm not such an important figure in this industry but my job description lists a lot of things.

Some of the people I consulted didn't really help as the only advice they could give was 'We're paid to do it.'
Thanks but no thanks. That's why most of the time I decided not to share my problems with friends but rather blog about it and share with the whole world.

Money is not my main concern these days. Once upon a time I accepted an offer which was laughable. I'm not a demanding person. I know what I want in life and the most important thing is I want to live and die happily.

There are a few other frustrations that might take me the whole day to blog about. But some of developments at workplace can really affect our personal life. I am not willing to make more sacrifices especially my health and my time with the family.

During the 'important meeting' I had to keep myself busy by snapping picture of my own shoes. 

For the next few weeks, I'm going to make a few adjustments. A few people will be angry, I know. Some will accuse me for being selfish. But then again, wth. This is my life. I'm 100% responsible. 

Post training blog post

Last week I went to a leadership course that felt more like a bootcamp ala commando training. On my first day, I was questioning myself why did I decided to voluntarily attend it. It was the toughest training I have ever attended.
We started at 8.25am and ended at 7.30pm at the earliest. On the 4th day we ended at 11.40pm when the last group left the room (well, my group finished only one hour earlier). The schedule was so packed that we never spent more than 10 minutes for coffee breaks. I haven't been that disciplined for a long time. I set out at 6.55am every morning to drive Zarif to the Daycare and make sure I arrive at the Hotel where the training was held before 7.45am. The last time I arrived that early at the office was when my ex boss called for 8 am meetings. That was like a few centuries ago.
However, it was a damn good course. I've been to a few other leadership courses but this one was the most challenging one. There were lectures, course works, case study, daily exam and finally a group work that we have to complete. It's a certification course, so all the assignment and exams' marks really mattered to each participants.
I dare say it was a huge success. Besides completing and passing the certification, I could feel that I am looking at the world and myself differently now. I feel less troubled and stressed even when I had to handle a big problem at one of the customers this weekend.
Yes, I haven't had the chance to take a good rest after the course ended but I didn't feel tired and cranky on Saturday morning like I usually did. Until this minute and hour I still feel fully charged and surprisingly looking forward to Monday morning. Ok let's hope there'll be no more Monday blues posting from now on.
So now I'll need to keep this momentum going because it's going to take a lot of energy and hard work from me for 2011. I'm also looking forward to our company kick off next week with high hopes that some incentives will be announced, hehe...

Robbed

I think my life is being robbed. I can only go to gym on Fridays - during lunch hour. So that means I can only work out once a week now. Too bad. 

What's even worse is that now I have to attend way too many meetings. They're really long, boring and unproductive. Usually if I were to call for meetings, I'd limit them to 60minutes. Well, my mind can only digest things I focus on for 20 minutes, the rest of the 40 minutes will be healthy arguments. So, imagine how screw up my mind would be if I were to be in a 4 hour meeting!

My 2010 diary and my mango for tea break

2010 had been very busy. I bought a diary and only started writing in July. Up till today, only 20 pages used. So, I'm not buying any diary this year. I'll just write my meeting notes in this same diary or my iPhone Notes. Well, despite spending hours in the boardroom this diary is still not really filled up, that's how unproductive it has been. 

I spent most of the time waiting for discussions related to things that don't concern me but I was not allowed to go out and do my own things. During some of the meetings, I even ended up Tweeting and playing games on my phone. That's bad, I know. But don't expect me to participate in things I don't know the head and tails. 

As I'm writing this, I'm waiting for the office hour to end because another meeting is supposed to start after 5pm. Imagine how many families/hubbies/wifeys/children will be cursing if the meeting doesn't conclude by 7pm. 

New place

No I didn't move to a new house, just moved to another floor and got a new (but very old) cubicle. Old laptop too. Must request for a new one this quarter. 

The good news is I can see the Federal Highway very clearly, I can do live traffic update everyday ( like I don't have any other thing to do lah... haha).

Hey, I was a teacher for 2 days

I had to conduct a Technical Training this week. It’s been ages since I did project deployment. In other words, ‘sudah berkarat’. Since my name was committed to deliver the training since the project started, I had to do it. It was a two days training. I had to finish reading 5 ‘thick’ online manuals before I was confident enough to do it.

It’s easy to show engineers how to do things, but when it comes to explaining the theory behind it – well, it involved losing a few nights’ sleep. That’s how difficult it was (for me). Maybe that’s why the thought of becoming a teacher/lecturer never crossed my mind.

A few years ago, I had to conduct a 5 days training to 12 government officers. I didn’t know then that most of them never used the product. I spenta few weeks preparing the course material. Complete with servers for them to do their hands-on lab. So, during the training I noticed many blurred faces. I tried re-phrasing some of the explanations many times. Still, they were showing blanked eyes. It’s either they’re miles away or have fallen asleep with their eyes opened.

So, I learned my lessons. This time, on the first day before I started my first lesson I distributed quiz questions. There were 6 of them. All were simple and general questions relating to the product. The training participants took 10 minutes to answer and they failed the quiz. We discussed the questions and I gave them the correct answers. They nodded and said ‘Oooooooh’ everytime I explained the answers. I knew I was in trouble then. Again, this was the case where beginners were forced to attend advanced classes. *Sigh*

Luckily I have the product simulator software, so I shared it with them. I let them play with the simulator for about 2 hours. After that I went through the important tasks they just did using the simulator; that was when I noticed their enlightened faces. *Phewwww*

I scraped the syllabus earlier planned for them. I had to use a different approach. So, there was no lecture. The training was turned into group discussion – a lot of drawing, a lot of quizzes and case studies.

On the second day, their boss came to see me and asked whether his engineers are good to do deployment. I told him that I let them experiment with the simulator and he was furious!!!! Hahahaha… He expected I would let the engineers to have hands on with their production system. NO WAY! If they screwed up, I’d be the one who had to recover the system. Tak kuasa makcik.

Well, my point is, never take Training Needs Analysis lightly. Technical Training is nothing like giving lessons in school – prepare lesson plan, lecture as according to syllabus, give homework, exam. A lot more preparation needs to be done. If it’s a big Technical Summit then perhaps we won’t have the luxury of time to get to know each participant. But this is providing training to identified engineers. There was ample time to identify their skill level and training needs. Ok, I must suggest this to the management. Ada harapan tak diorang akan setup a Training Department? Hahahahaha… Boleh aku mintak transfer.

*Note: Picture was Googled.

Busuk.... busuk... busuk....

This morning, as the elevator opened its door and I stepped on to the ageing grey carpet on my office floor my nose was stung by an awful smell. The girl walking beside me noticed it too and asked what it could be. I guessed the cleaner might have accidentally spilled a two days old Milo or Nescafe on the carpet as there was hints of stale milk smell.

Later when we were about to go out for lunch, the smell was still there and grew stronger. I was with a group of engineers who were planning to enjoy lunch to the max before Ramadhan starts. We covered our noses with our hands as it took about 3 minutes for the lift to stop at our floor. One girl asked what the smell was. Again, one of them guessed it might be stale coffe or Milo. We used the 3 minutes looking and searching for coffee stains on the grey carpet, there was none. One guy claimed the smell reminded him of Alam Flora trucks. We couldn’t be happier when the elevator doors finally opened.

When I came back from lunch, the stench became almost unbearable and I held my breath until I reached my cubicle. I quickly smelled my wrist hoping that there were traces of my cheap perfume I sprayed at 7.30 a.m.

So, I’ve logged the problem to the General Services team and hoped to see cleaning ladies doing some carpet shampooing soon.

When I went down for prayers just now the smell just got stronger, I started to suspect there’s a decomposing corpse lying somewhere. I’ve emailed the GS team to ‘investigate’ the source of the smell and solve the issue immediately.

Just now when I re-read the email I sent, I was laughing at myself. Perhaps I’ve seen too much of CSI that I started having these kinds of thoughts. If there’s an unbearable stench, there must be a dead body somewhere. If there’s a door left ajar for more than 30 minutes in the neighbour’s house, there must be a burglary. If there’s a fallen tree or lamp post along the road, there must’ve been a freak accident. And the suspicion goes on and on and on.

Well I don’t blame myself for having all these thoughts and suspicion. There was a car hijacking cum shooting case near my house a few years ago. There was a dead infant found on the hilly rocks in front of my house some time last year. There were many burglary cases reported by my neighbours between 2002 and now.

It’s difficult to feel safe when all these things are happening around us.

But it’s okay to be suspicious as you might save another person’s life. Did you read about the abandoned baby found by a boy who was playing nearby? The boy heard the faint cry of an infant. He was curious and searched where the cry came from. And he found a baby!! The sad thing was the baby was left by an adult there to die, judging by the location. If the irresponsible adult wanted the baby to live, he/she might have left it at the surau or the police station or at an orphanage. I don’t understand human nowadays, are we turning into animals? Even animals love and care for their young. I think we’re turning into robots. We just want to be charged, function (but sometimes malfunctioning), survive and be as selfish and heartless as we can be. Robots are selfish because they’ll only do what they’re programmed for. There’s no such thing as charity work done by these robots. Ask the floor cleaning robot to do some sofa cleaning… sure fail punya.

She came into my dream

About 3 weeks ago I received a very sad new on the passing of an ex work colleague. She was with the company for just a few months but we reported to the same manager. Although we were not close, she sat just a few cubicles away from me and I was so used to seeing her in the office. She was the reserved type, didn't share much about her life outside office with us but didn't shut people totally. She was not doing many concurrent projects, so she's in the office most of the days.
Every morning, she'd usually arrive earlier than me. We exchanged silent Good Mornings followed by brief nods. I never went out for lunch with her even when most of the times there were only the 2 of us working on 9th floor.  She usually went out right on the dot, 12.30 and came back before 1.30pm. She had her own lunch buddies, so I never really bothered to ask her to join me.
A few months ago, I heard that she has resigned. I noticed she's not in the office but I thought she was based at another project office. Later I learned from her Team Leader that she left for very personal reasons. She didn't even share it with her Team Leader. Didn't get the chance to say goodbye, but I was not that sad for I knew the IT industry in KL was so small. We'd surely bump into one another at events or training classes sooner or later.
When I read the email on her passing, I couldn't believe my eyes. She was involved in a car accident, but I didn't know who's driving and how the accident happened. The news really hit me hard as she didn't even leave us with a farewell email on her last day working for the company or called to say goodbye.
Two days after we received the sad news a few of my colleagues sat together in silence and shared happy moments we had with her, not much but enough for the session. Then one of our floormates made a stupid joke, 'Whoever stays back late after this, if you see her, say Hi, ok...'.
We didn't take that seriously but none of us stayed back ever since. Hehehe. Penakut.
Then a few nights ago, I dreamed of that session we had. We were sitting together at my cubicle, sharing stories and making fun of each other and SHE was there too. But she wasn't laughing or talking. She was just standing quietly among us but it seemed like she was enjoying the session. That was when I asked myself (well, in my dreams I still managed to question myself... apa lah....) 'What is she doing here? Isn't she dead?'
After that my phone alarm went off and I was awake. Drowsy, confused, a bit disoriented but I remembered the dream vividly.
Today I told another colleague that SHE came into my dreams and my colleague asked, 'Dia ada apa-apa pesanan tak?' Haha very funny...
So, I told her, 'Takde, she was just visiting...'
Then she told me something that I wished she never had, 'Kau tau tak ada orang bagitau aku sebenarnya dia bunuh diri?'
After that our bulu roma tiba-tiba terus meremang... seraaaaaaam....

...and it's appraisal time of the year again....

I used to have 7 engineers reporting to me in 2009. Back in January/February 2009 I was cracking my head to prepare 7 performance plans and 7 training plans. The plans went back and forth between me, the boss and the team members. It took us more than a month to finalize them.

After completing a high profile and very demanding project I found myself left with only 3 performance appraisals to be done for 2009. We lost 4 engineers in 2009. It's a really bad news, I know. But I only have to do 3 appraisals next week.... so, yeay!!!

During every appraisal session I tried my best to be fair and at the same time evaluate each engineer honestly. It's not an easy task. Some were just too quiet and accepted each evaluation while the rest could become rather vocal and defensive.

However, this year with all the new KPIs introduced I anticipate some changes during each appraisal session. Every achievement is measured in numbers, so that won't left much for arguments. When there are fewer arguments, I can spend more time highlighting their areas of improvements. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing a team member pulling up their socks and performed twice as good after appraisal is done.

Having said that, the most frustrating thing that could happen is seeing the team members hastily updating their CVs and started taking personal phone calls at the office stair case or in the toilet. These are the two possibilities. So far I've never had any team member who remained their old selves after appraisal (except for the Diva - but she never really reported to me... hiks ;) )

Although I lost 4 engineers, 2009 has been rather kind to us. Or rather, the team members have been helping themselves by being more independent and efficient. I dare say that our overall performance actually was 100% better than 2008. Let's not forget, we had 5 pregnant ladies in the team throughout the year.... yet all of us performed! That's really something.

I loved my 2009 team. This year, I'm leading a different team and there's a loooooot of work to be done. Good luck to me, yeay!

My middle name is 'emo'

I didn't have a good start to 2010 as bad news kept flowing in since middle of December 2009. There was a structural change at work and I'm not really happy about it. Although I'm leading a smaller unit but Software Support comes under my wing this year, and that's definitely not a good news. Customer service/support is just not my forte. I never excelled in delivering it and suffice to say, I'd rather clean Malaysian public toilets than doing software support.

For some people, customer support/service runs in their blood but in my case I've had a few very bad experiences when I first started working about 12 years ago that I've been avoiding this area ever since.

Imagine this: You just graduated from University. You got a job with a company that was busy delivering a mega project. You are assigned to that project to provide Application/Software Support.Well, that's not the worst part yet. The new Malaysian international airport operation depends on those software. You were not trained for any of the software product. The rest of the project team members (the skilled ones) were all still busy chasing deadlines. In other words you're left alone, in an unknown territory and was instructed to fight dragons!

I survived there for 11 months. It was great suffering no money could buy. We were paid rather handsomely with all the additional shift allowances, mileage claims etc but I was damn miserable. The first few months I had to support POS users (not POS Malaysia lah.... P0int of Sales). The users at the retail outlet mostly were either dumb blondes or insane bitches. They just shouted at us mercilessly and treated us like morons. Many of them can be considered application illiterate (helloooo.... dumb blondes... what do you expect. If they could count from 1 to 20, you're lucky....) Some didn't even know how to punch in their sales. These dumb women, in a few occasions even called us names like 'budak bangang', 'bodoh' and a few others which I chose not to remember. There was a time when I attended to one of the problems and was turned away by a mean looking lady in extremely high heels (another blonde who didn't look so dumb). When I arrived at her outlet she simply shooed me with her hands and said, ' I don't want you, send another person here.'

The few incidents really brought my morale down. A few friends told me that in a few years' time I'd just remember those difficult moments and laugh about them but I just couldn't. I'd never want to relive those few months. If possible I want to just erase that chapter from my memory and my life. Those bitter episodes didn't teach me much but hurt a lot.

The rest of that year I was assigned to another department in KLIA but was still doing software support for products I never knew existed. The skilled engineers, upon handover to support team were all called back to HQ to do other projects. So, only us, the fresh faces were left doing operation, maintenance and support at the airport's 16 degree celcius data center. It was another difficult chapter but luckily nobody called us 'budak bangang' there as we only had to interact with IT engineers from other departments. Thank god, none of them were dumb or blonde.

So, when I got to know about the new unit I have to handle this year, it was all coming back to me. These few days were like Deja Vu. No matter how much I hate customer support, now I have to relive those KLIA days. Hopefully this time it's not as bad as 12 years ago. Well, I try not to put high hopes as the past 2 weeks have been hell. The pressure is mounting and I'm coping badly. That's why I'm damn emo. So, avoid me if you can.

Kesinambungan kisah kesilapan grammar terlampau

It's just so frustrating having to deal with work colleagues who produce documents with really bad English. I never expected any of them to use Shakespeare-standard writing; all I need is simple English as all our deliverables are technical documents. A few weeks back, I requested an engineer to produce his document in Bahasa Melayu and later I translated his whole work to English. My manager would have never approved should he find out, but I realized the engineer was able to express himself better. All I wanna see was the right technical details to be put in.

Since I'll be focusing on Government Sector and GLC projects starting next January, perhaps it's about time I get all my engineers to produce more technical documents in Bahasa Melayu. Even emails, letters and faxes should be in Bahasa Melayu. For the past 6 months I realized all of engineers are technically sound and posses world-class project deployment skills. But when it comes to presentation to customer and producing project documentation they seemed quite reluctant and some of the end products are not those that I dare to showcase.

If I introduce Bahasa Melayu as the main communication language it's going to save many people from becoming the laughingstock in the office. Today we had a great fun in one of the meetings by just searching for grammatical errors in emails. The super-famous 'Subject Matter Expect (SME)' resurfaced a few times in some of the emails (and we were not surprised they originated from the same woman). To my uninitiated readers, SME is the abbreviation used for Subject Matter Expert - the skillful and knowledgeable technical person (Guru) in his own field. But I don't know how and why is this ignorant woman just couldn't be bothered to get her pronunciation and spelling right.

Then we found another hilarious email. The content was something like this:

Please submit your document bla bla bla to the Project Manager by bla bla bla. 
I also putted Dayang and boss in the loop just to make sure that you guys bla bla bla....

Throughout the meeting, we tried our best to use and reuse the word putted and each time was followed by a loud roar in the conference room. If the engineer was present, he must have blushed a hundred times over.
Just when I thought we've had enough of putted, a manager came up with all sorts of double negative sentences and redundancies that left us in stitches. I don't have to deal with them too often but it seemed like this manager has been getting a lot of these from her team members:

I can ensure you there won't be no problem.
Please provide me the thorough details.


And then there was this one that might have putted some customers in great confusion:

Dear Mr. Customer,
appreciate it if you can double confirm your availability for this discussion on Tuesday. Nowsadays I'm quite tied up with a few projects.

This evening I decided not to fight for the PPSMI anymore. Perhaps the govt is making the right decision to revert it after all. I'm not looking down at our educators' capability to teach the language. It's just that, perhaps this is the best time to take Bahasa Melayu to a new level. Furthermore, it's not fair to those Subject Matter Experts who are just not fluent in English.

... and FYI, the senders of those funny emails I mentioned are some of the top performers we have in the company. Although we laughed hard at their English, I still think they shouldn't be judged by their language proficiency.

(Datuk CT would be smiling ear to ear reading this entry, I think.... no more coffee in a cup joke for her....)

Y.E.S (Year end suffering)

I don't like the October - November - December (last quarter of each year) time period. It's the most hectic period when most of the bosses turned into beasts and many work colleagues decided to jump ships. Our business year closing is just around the corner and all the Account Managers will start chasing for service completion so that they could capture the numbers. It's chaotic and emotions are high (and so are the people's blood pressure too).

Besides project monitoring (a.k.a aktiviti kejar mengejar dengan engineer dan Project manager), I have to complete all these before 2009 ends:
- revise the team members' roles and responsibilities for 2010
- skill growth plan for 2010
- measurements for 2010
- update templates for operational improvement

I'm glad I have taken many annual leaves throughout 2009. Now I have only 4.5 days of mandatory leave that I must take before 31st December.

Oh yeah, I have another challenge. One of my senior team members decided to leave the company after she got a job that only requires 9-5 commitment. The management didn't counter offer her as her reason for leaving was to have more time for her family. There's nothing I could offer as the nature of her job here includes 24 by 7 support and project deployments (where the activities require system downtime and can only be performed during weekends or at nights).

So, before 31st December I am going to train an intern to become competent and ready for project deployments. This is not going to be easy. They gave me a freshie and expect to get a skillful engineer within 2 months' time. Diorang ingat aku ni Magician ke apo?

BTW, magician yang nama 'Cyril' tu adalah agak cute. Ramai kawan-kawan aku di Twitter dan Facebook yang mention nama dia sehari dua ni....Keh keh keh...

Magic, kucing pandai pakai topi.... hehehehe

What to do when the meeting is long and boring....

It was a hot Tuesday afternoon. I just came back from a meeting in Jln. Pahang. Managed to grab a quick lunch at Bistro Deliferance, One Utama (cuba fikirkan, dari Jln Pahang ke Subang Jaya.... macamana boleh singgah di OU.... hehehe.) I didn't know why I took all the trouble coming back to office as I didn't have anything to do in the afternoon. So, I just sat at my place, played with my electronic calendar and put on the LLB face (LLB ialah Look Like Busy ye tuan-tuan dan puan-puan).

Mrs S, my lunch buddy was in a long project meeting in KL. She had to attend with another lady who's famous for her indecent office wear and very-very bad English grammar.

As always, whenever either one of us was in long winding and boring meetings, we'll start sending text messages to each other. The text conversation this afternoon went like this:

Mrs S: Cess! Minah ni nonggeng lak sebelah mamat ensem tu, nampak spender putih... adeeehhhh....
DNAS: Dia pakai G-str*ng ke? Hahahaha!

Mrs S:Tak kot. Hahahaha. Tapi baju singkat so ternampak banyak.
DNAS: Ewwwww.... boleh hilang selera makan 8 hari! Mesti dia pakai granny's panty nih.

Mrs S:Hahahaha! Bangang! I tergelak besar plak.
DNAS: Takpe, kalau Minah tu sound you, you kata lah, 'Your panty is being very funny', hihihihi.....

Mrs S:Hish, tak kuasa! But seriously, my grammar pun dah gone. Not 'expect' anymore. I 'very worry' you know...
DNAS: Yeah, you wait there till I came.... hahahaha!

It ended there, maybe Mrs S ran out of credit.

Anyway, moral of the sessi mengumpat was, to female execs, please lah dress to work decently. I've witnessed way too many free 'shows' during meetings. Shirts with plunging neckline, extra tight extra short skirts, high slits, see through blouses and so many more. These women might feel proud showing off their assets but we as their colleague adalah sangat berasa malu, ok. Especially when a male customer or another male colleague asked you, apasal kau tak dressing macam minah tu, ek? Sangat murah la wey. Tolonglah. Kasihanilah rakan satu species anda ini.

On the bad gramar... phewwwww..... worth a few blog posts!! Watch out for my future entries entitled 'Let's learn English from the expect' .... wahahahahaha!

Come, let me show you the way...

No, I don't do that.

I don't show people the way.

I only influence them on how to think about  finding the way. On how to achieve targets. On how to make decisions.

When a person decides on something, they've somehow thought it through before sharing it with me. I won't tell them, NO that's a bad decision. I also won't say, YES that's the best way to do it.

Instead, I always challenge them whether they can justify the decision to themselves. Not to their parents, their bosses nor their spouses, but to themselves. We don't live to please others. It's impossible to please everybody. What we decide today is only based on the information currently available. We don't know what will happen in 2 years' time. So, no decision is bad and no decision is the best one.

It's tough to know and accept that someone in the team decided to leave. But it's tougher to convince her that her future is brighter here.

So, I'll just her justify it to herself.

By the way, I never counter-offered staffs who tendered their resignations.

* Image from weheartit.com

Serious takde selera nak makan....

No you are not dreaming. Those words are from me, a well known hantu makan. I love so many kinds of food - oh what's new.... everybody knows that. However, after my confinement I found it difficult to chew food sold at restaurants and food stalls. I went to Alamanda food court, ordered my favorite but after a few bites I lost interest. There goes my appetite. Today I had lunch at the office cafe, luckily I only took a small portion. It took me quite long to finish everything on the plate. The food tasted like plastic.

This is the problem when you've had 2 months of home cooked food. During the first 2 weeks of confinement food was prepared by the CL, so it was either chicken soup or haruan soup. When my maid arrived and my mom went back to kampung I cooked most of the days (for lunch and dinner). I had to cook actually, in order to show the maid how to prepare food properly. Yeah, my friend told me that it's going to be a long adventure teaching bibiks to do things 'our' way.

I didn't prepare 'fancy' food, just the usual ones that are easy to cook and didn't require too many ingredients. But still, they're home cooked food. You know how the ingredients were cleaned, cut and cooked. You seasoned them to your liking. You let them simmer on the stove until the meat was tender.

Yesterday, on my first day of coming back to office, I went home for lunch. I knew it wouldn't be easy to stomach food from the nearby food court or the office cafe. At the same time, I was also doing a spot-check on the maid. Thank god everything was ok at home. The baby was also doing fine. Although he looked rather lonely because he's left only with the maid and there's no usual loud noise in the house.

I think tomorrow I'll just tapau breakfast and lunch from home. Outside food has lost its appeal these days. Tengok pun takde selera. When I passed by the food stalls, the only thing coming to mind was, 'Dia cuci bersih tak ikan ni sebelum goreng?'