Soul behind the faces...

These were several pictures taken during the recent visitation by our CEO on the 14th Jan 2009....I was going to post them yesterday but I've forgotten to copy them over to a memory stick yesterday night...

This was taken by me..gatal tangan nampak Tina's kamira di atas meja...I was speaking to him when I took this picture..wahaha...the clock was already 11:50am..presentation was about to start in 5 minutes...

This was also taken by me.......Bani was trying to help him setting up his laptop with the LCD Projector...

A small chat between me and the CEO...haha...kesian CEO inda kana layan..haha..I was busy looking at my to do list ba ni..sorry ah boss..he's a very nice CEO...the kind of person you would not hesitate to ask question although your question might sound stupid..haha...

Haha..then saya layan juga lawak jenaka dia..haha...the room on the right (behind me) is the Manager's room and the one on the left is the Server Room a.k.a my part-time room where I usually spend my time using both PCs inside to do my task...

I was just about to start my 1st round..they were on their 2nd round..huhu..food was nice and delicious but...Revolving Restaurant, Bayview City Hotel is a lot more better....plenty of choice plus the scenic view of Georgetown city...

What was I looking? well there's another restaurant on the 1st floor...I was checking up the atmosphere...surrounding la...

Me (Kadam), Bani (Developer), Azman (New Support) and Ian (New Support)

Team picture..Azman, CEO, Ian, Khatijah who is currently 3 months pregnant (Developer), Tina (Support), Bani and me...huhu..I couldn't hide the tiredness I had that day...

There you go...notice that we have a small office and team? That's why the Company is looking for another bigger office unit as there's a big budget plan for the company to expand further more...with the current office, I don't think it would fit 2 Senior Developers and another 2 Support Staffs in the coming future...

Pity Me - Part II

....the rambling continues...

Came back home from the workshop...I then rest for a couple of minutes with a cigarette in my hand...smoke coming in and out from my lung....made a call to the office to inform that I will be a slightly late..perhaps 10-20 minutes...took a shower, berdandan and left at around 11:21am...it was quite a rush...so riding my "old kapcai" to the max but safe was inevitable...it's normal to me though because it happened several other times..haha...like a "remp-it" wanna be...menyisip sana sini...corner baring..haha...with a standard speed of 80-120kph..I managed to arrive at the office building at 11:34....the distance between my house (Sg. Dua) and the office building (Georgetown) is about 14.7km...I notice this on my return home at night...I watch the meter on mileage of my dashboard...when I entered the office..it was already 11:41 (menunggu lift lah ni yang lama..haha) I saw the CEO was chatting with the father of our Penang Branch Manager who is currently in UK...thanked God...at least the CEO had something other than waiting for my arrival..haha.....waiting their conversation to finish, my colleague requested an assistance to her outstanding issue....I assisted her as requested but as per last week advice..I didn't give a complete answer..I guided her on how to get the answer...she listened and got what she was looking for...good girl...after 10 minutes in the office..the conversation between the CEO and the 'father' has not finished...one of the developer then took the chance to consult my opinion on his current task...I've reviewed his work and discussed the requirement on Monday....so, I just listened and responded with several short questions before I decide what he should do with that.....around 11:48am...the conversation ended..a hand shake to the 'father' (I've met him several times at his house and in our office) then another hand shake to our CEO....apologized to him for me being late....the CEO seemed happy to meet me and we had a small chat before we proceed to the Team Meeting...it was about 11:55am when we started the Team Meeting and lasted for approximately 1 hour and 5 minutes...done with the meeting, we went down to the neighbour hotel for a lunch that was booked since a month ago...whereas I was notified and confirmed (earlier this morning when I was surfing the internet) by the Restaurant Manager that we were going to have an International Buffet instead of Semi Buffet due to several other reservations made by others....unfortunately..I had to stay back in the office whilst the other went down to the restaurant...my colleague told me that one of our Senior Trainer in Aus wanted to speak to me...urgent matter! So, I asked my colleagues to accompany the CEO for a lunch then I made a call to Aus's office to speak to the Senior Trainer....he was worried about the schedule tomorrow...he's flying to another part of Aus to visit our new customer for a brand new installation and setting up their 100 workstations...we discussed the matter and let him know that he only needs to worry about setting up the workstation which is pretty simple and I will do the installation at their server via Remote Desktop tonight....he was OK with that and we were kind of late...this should have been completed before my 2 weeks holiday but for some reason...a colleague in the UK was not actively giving a good response to this issue...no worries though...So, I had another task lining up in my to do list today...I spent about 10m minutes speaking on the phone then went down joining my colleagues....

Whilst taking my food..suddenly a guy came and greeted me...walawei....it was Izwan a.k.a born (the PAKU's vocalist)....he's having a 1 week seminar in that hotel (he's working at Intel in R&D) we chatted and upon returning to our table...his group was just sitting next to my colleagues..hahaha..we adjourned right before 2:00pm because I had scheduled for another appointment for the CEO to meet up with the office unit's owner...we're requesting for a permission for a renovation to be made.... we're expanding and hiring when most companies are sacking their staff or minimizing the cost...that's one of the interesting point he presented in the Team Meeting...the owner was punctual (I've met him) where he came few minutes before 2:15pm...that's what we call attitude! Whilst they were in meeting..I then took the chance to chase several others that I had scheduled to meet our CEO...appointments: 3:00 with a Space Conceptualist for a renovation work, 3:30pm with a representative from a company dealing with Door System Security, 4:15pm with a Support Specialist Candidate which was interviewed in Nov 2008 (the CEO was keen on meeting her for future opportunity) 5:00pm with a Recruitment Company - Kelly's Services (where I met a pretty-beautiful woman...hehe...second time meeting her..I can't stop looking at her...huhu...she's Chinese but looks like Eurasian....her face is a version of Kristin Kreuk except that she's a little more shorter (petite) and whiter..hehe..)

Latest picture of Kristin Kreuk for her role in Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun Li

All the appointment went well except the appointment at 4:15pm due to 20 minutes late....I just don't know why some people "too-confident" they can reach one place within their predicted time...it's always better to take several matters into consideration before hand....budget your time for the whole journey as well as your unexpected journey...i.e. normal duration from A to B as per experience is 20 minutes...then you should have began your journey 40 -50 minutes earlier instead of 30 minutes earlier...you would have plenty of time to relax if you able to arrive in 20 minutes but in case you can't then you have an extra 20 minutes to cover up your ass....I honestly dislike to wait and queuing!!!!!

There you go....the CEO stayed in the office for a couple more hours...earlier when he was in a meeting with the Kelly's Recruitment company...I had to setup the phone for the next event for him ; a tele-conference between the Tech Director-Penang Manager-Aus Business Dev Manager-CEO......That's pretty easy, I just need to ensure the phone is properly working and run several tele-conferences call...when the CEO was on the phone, me and the new staff were already working in our shift....I knew he's going to monitor the conversation between support and customers, so I advised the new staff to take this chances to show his good performance...well I had to do the same thing la...except that my other task is to monitor the new staff's conversation as well...I'll be his guidance either whilst he's on the phone or off the phone.....the most important thing is I need to ensure he provides correct information...Items on my list: Installation for Aus..Dialing In (UK) for Data Investigation...Dialing In (UK) for Data Migration...Dialing In (Aus) for Data Migration...Test on 2 New Versions...QA on 3 Custom Reports....Supporting Customers...Monitoring and Helping (New Staff) and reply emails...That's pretty pack to me....I couldn't just ignore incoming calls and nor my list....I juggle up between each of them...I've been using 2 or sometimes 3 machines (desktop pcs and laptop) for almost a year.....so last night I used 2 machines to do all these Dialing In stuff still with the slow connection MY-UK...it takes about 2 minutes at least to fully view each page screen...

About 30 minutes before 1:00am..I still have 3 custom reports and Installation for Aus in my list....at 1:00am, my call list has already reached 18 calls.....So it was time for me to wrap up and right after 1:15am, I then spent over an hours doing these items....still I couldn't finish the QA on the 3rd custom report...I decided to blog (my previous post) and went home afterwards..as I found my mind already tired and I was not able to think properly....My Manager called me around 1:30am to inquire the updates in the office with the CEO....noticing my voice and words were getting weaker he apologized for my situation and shared his experience when he was dealing a lot of stuffs years ago where he had to deal almost everything in Penang which I'm currently doing....he then advised me to go home and rest...I said, I will stay a little while until 2:00am but I ended up leaving the office at about 2:45am then reach home at about 3:10am....surfing the internet then sleep....zzZzzZzzZzzZzzZ....

The day before I was planning on coming to office at 9:30am to ensure all the things that had been planned/scheduled going as per planned.....unfortunately, the plan was ruined by the problem I had with my bike....I don't know what would happen if I were to come to the office at 9:30am then stayed there until 1:00am....I might have to sleep in the office due to tiredness...I thought about this though last night..because I really dislike to postpone my work...if there's work to be finished I will try to do it rather than postponing and the next time you realise..there's pile of work lining up to be completed...I've been complaining pula kan since my return...I guess I am...there's another thing that made me smile during the Team Meeting, it was...when the CEO told us that I've been scheduled to come to UK somewhere in March/April 2009...how long? Not pretty sure but in the recent budget meeting, it could be a week or more..according to him la...that sounded pretty good huh but I've heard this kind of talk before...except that this time..it came from the CEO and the word "scheduled" sounds promising..I would be more than happy to come although I already knew the pressure I will be facing working at the HQ during the whole period of my visit.....it is always interesting though to face a new challenge...

Thank You Boss!

At last...all went well so far...interview was good as well as the appraisal....I was the last person being interrogated and interviewed...and it went smooth for almost 2 hours...I couldn't complaint as we had lot of stuffs to discuss..office..support team..development team..strengths and weaknesses...I'm happy enough to get what I have expected for my contribution and hard work..thanks to myself for the hard works that I have put into my career....of course there still plenty of rooms for improvement and looking forward for another appraisal somewhere in March 2009....I seemed to be motivated after being told that the Management has a very high expectation from me...especially after the huge contribution I made during the User Acceptance Test somewhere in March - May 2008 meant for the Oz's customers..I was the Project Manager in setting up the Test Instruction Plan System (TIPS) for the whole Oz's customers....although I was not the one who really setting up the entire database..still I was the one who wrote all the Test Instruction Plan of our software for users in Oz...it may sounds easy but writing almost hundreds of test plans about our software features and functionality... from A to Z might gives you a definite headache....thanks to my colleagues who contributed in testing and validate those hundreds of test plans....I'm a workaholic, to be honest..during this period, I stayed in the office up to 5am just to catch up trying to get things done as quickly as possible although I came in for UK shift at 3pm.....went home at 6pm although I came in at 7am for Oz shift...I was told today that the whole system was charged for ASD$27, 000!!!! I was shocked and the Tech Director was thinking of applying the same service to our UK's customers......we had it running internally since years ago but it never been updated up to the most recent product we have recently deployed...he already informed me that my skill would be in demand during that time....I was happy enough to hear that I am so valuable to the company but thinking of the experience I had with the Oz's...this could be another big project for me..where we have more than 400 companies around UK and most of them are using the software 200% different or over than the Oz which consist of 8 companies.....

I could still remember..during setting up the whole TIPS database..I was the only (in Malaysia) that has the privilege rights to access and modify including the TD himself and another senior developer in the UK....none of my colleagues in Malaysia (including the Manager) had the access rights to access nor modify....until the project was 100% completed then they were given the rights....

The Management hasn't decided yet who will be the lucky candidates for the post of Software Application Developer (2x) and Software Support Specialist (2x)..whoever that persons would be...welcome abroad and wish you a good future in this small company...

Last night..we had a company dinner at our neighbour, Hotel Northam..it was decent but still..lucky enough to taste an expensive and exclusive foods that you can't taste everyday..I'm a poor guy bah not for some people who can afford to eat in a luxury restaurant almost everyday...the dinner was meant to be informal so most of the stories we had were totally not related to works....more into knowing each others..not me la sebab I already senior....I and the Manager are the current survivor of the Penang branch since it was opened 3 years ago...we're still young kan and we're already began to expand....for the record, the company is about to enter its 14 years in business....

The Penang Manager informed me that he might be flying back to UK later at the end of this month..that was the plan made by the Management and once again..I will be the one to train our new colleagues (Developers and Support)..if that happens then I will be re-scheduled to work in Oz shift until the whole training process is completed....2-4 weeks perhaps...Deep inside me saying..please no..I don't want to take that responsibility but another me were saying..come on Wel...with your charm and good looking face..you can do it! Wahaha...silap sudah ni tau..to be honest..I really wish the Manager himself to train them and I will be the one who will help to sharpen their knowledge...the Manager is the most suitable person to train them because he has lots of experience dealing with customers first handed, he was also a trainer in the UK and Oz..so he has plenty of knowledge of how most customers would apply our software in their works requirements...Of course if I were required to train them..I have the obligation to just go ahead with the order.."Yeah..sure, I'd be happy to train them..[smiling]" That was my quick response to a quick question given by the Manager if it is OK to me to train them...

I'm quite happy that this year (again) I managed to get the expected salary I had expected and targeted since entering year 2008....I had it coming last year as well...Thank God and may more great things to happen in future time...

*Extra budget to buy DVDs and beers???