kemarin pagi saat bear bersiap2 berangkat bekerja pasha terbangun dr tidurnya.. melihat papa dan bertanya…
pasha: “papa.. kemana??”
papa: ” mau kerja nak.. ”
pasha: “kenapa kerja..??”
sejenak kami berdua terpaku pada pertanyaan kritis pertamanya..
papa: “supaya papa dapat uang jadi bisa belikan milo untuk pasha..”
pasha:”ooo..”
dlm hati tak tau mesti merasa takjub apa girang.. anakku sudah besar.. sdh mulai mempertanyakan perbuatan yg diambil oleh ayah dan ibunya..

kalau sudah begini.. terbersit sebuah pertanyaan dalam hati kecil.. sanggupkah aku meninggalkan anak kesayangan ku dalam asuhan orang lain?? sanggupkah diriku untuk tidak lagi mendapatkan “privillages” yg pertama melihat kemajuan dalam perkembangannya..
aku jd bimbang… pertanyaan2 itu kembali menggugah niat awal ku yg sudah bulat sebulan yg lalu untuk kembali bekerja setelah lebaran nanti..
seandainya aku tetap dirumah mengasuh anakku dengan tangan ku sendiri mampukah aku menunaikan kewajiban finansialku pada sebuah instansi yg bernama bank??

Berikan aku petunjukmu ya Allah.. sungguh aku tak mampu memilih…

Words

Last weekend I learned to differentiate between tactile and tactful. In short, tactile is referring to sense of touch or good with the hands while tactful is about being considerate and discreet.

To make it easier for me to remember, I use thumbtacks. If you give a box of thumbtacks to a tacktile person, he or she could make an art out of them. However, if you are not tactful with that same person, you might get some thumbtacks stuck on your b-u-t-t… That is the easiest way for me to remember…

Memories

Thumbtacks bring back memories during my junior high years. My friends and I were in a class where our brains were more dominant than our muscles. We had a huge problem during the lunch break at the school cafeteria as the other boys from the other classes somehow had their muscles developed much faster than their brains.

We were taught to queue for our food and they were taught the same but somehow, due to some unexplained events, those teaching about being civilized such as, taking turns by queuing up, failed to stick in their head. I guess brains and muscles have different ways of learning stuffs…

As a results, those students would dash to the food counter like bulls on a stampede. Before we knew it, we were pushed to the sides and everywhere else except anywhere near the food…

Brainstorming

This went on for months and we decided to have a brainstorming session. Furthermore, that’s the only part of our body that was stronger than those bulls. Finally, inspired by the MadMax movie and porcupines, we had devised a defence mechanism that would not prevent us from being pushed around but instead, would painfully punish those who came in contact with us. Sadistic but somewhat necessary as muscles would definitely respond to that…

Defence Mode On

It was really simple. We bought lots of thumbtacks. Then we just pushed the thumbtacks from inside our shirts and pants so that the protruding pins would prick those unsuspecting bulls. Placing them strategically around our body, those tacks could not really be seen unless someone would really come close.

The outcome was a big success. We heard lots of “Argghhh!” “Ouchhh”, “Adoii” … And since then, although we were still being pushed around, we had the satisfaction of knowing that we had successfully delivered lots of pain to them…

Well, their brains were capable of processing the painful sensations but expectedly. was unable to figure out how to avoid such pain in the future…

Victory

After some time, the school authority realized that there was a problem and shortly after that, prefects were assigned to manage the food queues and we were told to take off our thumbtacks… Yeah, we were caught…

Anyway, what did we do with the thumbtacks since we had lots of them?

To be continued…

———

Updated on Feb 7, 2010: This entry will not be continued…

Bert & Ernie

While bugs are drawn to lights, I was drawn back to this blog when I saw that picture on Google. While the bug phenomenon can be explained scientifically, I do not think that I can explain what that picture has got to do with my blogging… Nevertheless, here I am and Bert & Ernie still remain as puppets I love to watch and Happy 40^th Anniversary to Sesame Street!

Addicted

Smokers find it hard to quit. Bloggers are no different. There are times when I felt like not wanting to put these alphabets into words on this space ever again but when other things faded away, the craving was just too much to bear and the words start to form again and one more story enters the blogosphere…

The Other Things

What dragged me out? At first it was just work. A new job, a new place, new people, new this and new that. It took time to settle down. Apart from that, I was just plain lazy as plain as a vanilla ice-cream can be… Plain but tasty… If you like vanilla like I do…

Then Came the Dragons

I do not work 24 hour a day and that is a fact. I do have some times after work but instead of cooking up another entry, I was busy hunting dragons and whacking some people online. The culprit was Legend – Legacy Of The Dragons. An online multi-player game. I killed and got killed and months passed by before I got bored of the same apparel that my online warrior was wearing… The thing is, that guy looked nothing like me at all… He had six pack abs and I have… Well, just think of any number other than 6… I finally left…

Facebook was Complaining

I left my Facebook for sometime and it started to whine… By the time I got back in, things have changed. New look, new layout, new this and that… Guess what? It started to look nice again like an old car with a new coat of paint and lots of refurbished stuffs in and out. I decided to stay and resume my connections to real people instead of some dragons and avatars wearing the same stuffs with different colors and accessories…

The Came the Mafias, Cows and Rollercoasters

What else can you do on Facebook besides telling the world how you are today, what new car  you bought, which neighbour’s cat you kidnapped and so on and so forth? The answer is, a lot more. I got sucked into the Mafia ring and I was making headlines there. At night I would be with my mafia brothers and sisters and during the day, to cover things up, I became a farmer at Farmville… After milking some cows and selling some fruits and crops, I started a theme park and life goes on… What’s next? I moved on…

Fallout 2

Thanks to Rapidshare, I found an old game that I used to play decades ago. It was, in my honest opinion, one of the greatest computer games ever created back then. Back then, I had a PC that could barely run the game and after a while, the PC put up a white flag and I just had to stop. Now, I could start all over again roaming the post nuclear world… One of the nice things about this game is the starting cut scene where it plays the song “A kiss to build a dream on” sang by Louis Armstrong… A lovely song…

Give me a kiss to build a dream on

And my imagination would thrive upon that kiss

Sweetheart, I ask no more than this

A kiss to build a dream on

The Earth is Round

And so is the cyberspace… I moved out of the blogosphere into some other places in the cyberspace and after a while, I am back to where I started… I have made one round and I guess I would be doing that over and over again… Only the dead remain at the same place…

The End

Last week was my birthday
and I didn’t feel very well
waking up on that morning.

I went downstairs for breakfast
hoping my wife would be pleasant and say,
‘Happy Birthday!’,
and possibly have a small present for me.

As it turned out,
she barely said good morning,
let alone
‘Happy Birthday.’

I thought…

Well, that’s marriage for you,
but the kids…
They will remember.

My kids came bounding down stairs to breakfast
and didn’t say a word.
So when I left for the office,
I felt pretty low
and somewhat despondent.

As I walked into my office,
my secretary Jane said,
‘Good Morning Boss,
and by the way
Happy Birthday ! ‘
It felt a little better
that at least someone had remembered.

I worked until one o’clock ,
when Jane knocked on my door
and said, ‘You know,
It’s such a beautiful day outside,
and it is your Birthday,
what do you say we go out to lunch,
just you and me.’
I said, ‘Thanks, Jane,
that’s the greatest thing
I’ve heard all day.
Let’s go !’

We went to lunch.
But we didn’t go
where we normally would go.
She chose instead at a quiet bistro
with a private table.
We had two martinis each
and I enjoyed the meal tremendously.

On the way back to the office,
Jane said, ‘You know,
It’s such a beautiful day…
We don’t need to go straight back to the office,
Do We ?’

I responded,
‘I guess not.
What do you have in mind ?’
She said,
‘Let’s drop by my apartment,
it’s just around the corner.’

After arriving at her apartment,
Jane turned to me and said,
‘ Boss, if you don’t mind,
I’m going to step into the bedroom
for just a moment.
I’ll be right back.’
‘Ok.’ I nervously replied.

She went into the bedroom and,
after a couple of minutes,
she came out
carrying a huge birthday cake …
Followed
by my wife,
my kids,
and dozens of my friends
and co-workers,
all singing ‘Happy Birthday’.

And I just sat there…

On the couch…

Naked.

Wi-Fi Router

Returned the Xytel Wi-Fi Router. Could not get it to work with the Wireless Jaring Broadband. Refunded.

P1 WiMax

The money refunded from the router purchase used to buy a P1 modem that comes with Wi-Fi. P1 registration system went down. A real bad impression for a customer to be. Already thinking of sending it back for refund. Will wait another day…

Parking

6 hours at the client’s office: RM 28! I am making someone rich!

I Hate…

This woman who drove a huge mercedes benz and did not want to wait before merging into the main road. Why do people have to be rude when they feel that they are very rich and drive an expensive car? Beats me! It’s my way and she was supposed to yield! Idiot!

Customer Is Always Right

Why do we pay for an event and yet we did not get any spot light on us apart from a small torch light beam? Beats me again…

Some Conclusions

I think P1 sucks but I will wait till tomorrow…

I hate people who drive like they own the road…

At Home – Locked Out

It was a typical Monday morning. Lots of goodbye waves and flying kisses from my wife and son. I was on the phone while driving to meet a client in KL. Once I got off the phone and reach my destination at the same time, there was a message from an unknown number. The number was unfamiliar but the message was written in a very familiar style. I called back the number and the person who answered passed it on to my wife. Guess what? My son closed the door  when they were on the way out and the faulty lock kept them out. She got hold of the neighbour and the repair man and now we have a new lock. Awesome!

At Work – Planning Ahead

My idea of planning ahead is always what I have been used to and that is to plan for something that would take months or years to complete such as a multi million ringgit project. Now, I have to submit a weekly plan. What I did this week and what I plan to do next week… This is going to be tough…

The Client – To Ask Around Is Good!

This guy that I work with at my client has this strange problem of doing things, which are not really familiar to him, his way without asking those who know better and in the end, I had to do things twice, trice, etc… duh…

Traffic – Going To KL

It would be the end of the world if there was no jam…

Lunch

An extremely salty fried noodles… Yucks!

Dinner

Pizza from Pizza Hut. RM 28 for two regular pizza! Not a bad deal at all!

It has been a very long time since my last update. My bad! The last time I was busy trying to get a job and did not update for a long time. This time, I was busy with work and I do not have much time left for me to update as frequently as I used to be. Nevertheless, this blog will not be left to die and that is a promise. I just need to add some extra motivation to my life so that I would be able to write more often… We will see whether that would actually happen or not… haha!

Anyway, maybe I will let you all know what is going on at work and why I did not have time to update aka the excuse of not updating…

The thing is that I was taking care of 6 projects. I said was since a few days ago, I got to transfer two of my projects to another project manager and that leaves me with just 4 and may be then, I would have some time to just pop in here and write a word or two ha…

My first project is to manage the development of a portal for the agency that takes care of all the wild animals in West Malaysia. This is an agency where animals go to lodge complaints against the human… just kidding but really, they do take care of the animals welfare…

My second project is to attend monitoring meetings for a digital library project for the ministry of defence. Nothing much to do but lots of time taken to travel to the meeting sites. The previous meetings were held in Lumut, Port Dickson, Johor Bahru and Alor Star. The next meeting would be held in Port Dickson again.

My third project is to manage some hardware and software subscription and maintenance services for one of the local universities. The fourth (given to another PM recently) was about the same thing but for the agency that takes care of the Prime Minister… Lucky guy for having a whole agency making sure that he is okay…

The fifth (also given to another PM) was another digital library project and this time it is for the agency that take cares of the lawyers… No wonder they are so…. err… choose your own descriptions to describe them… heh heh!

The last and the latest and the one that has been taking most of my time is a data leakage prevention project for one of the oil and gas giants in Malaysia… Lots of meetings just to complete the scope of work… Guess what? It is not complete yet…

So, there you go! Those are the things that have been keeping me busy! Till then, see you later and take care!

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

Do You Want Fries With That?

That would be one of the most asked questions at some fast food restaurants but that would not be the case if you are buying something to eat at the Machap rest area. Over there, the question would be: “Do you want flies with that?”

If you are travelling between Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru on the NSE, you would not miss a rest area called the Machap R&R. Last week, while driving back from Johor Bahru to Shah Alam, we had the “luxury” of stopping over for a short break at this rest area . From the car, everything looked great as the rest area was recently renovated by PLUS.

They Are Everywhere!

However, once I stepped out of the car and went to one of the stalls there, I was greeted by hundreds of flies. While the few hundred of them were doing the welcome to rest area Machap song, there were few thousands other flies were busy “promoting” the food and goods for sale to travellers… What a sight!

I went to the upper portion of the rest area. The automatic escalator was impressive and once I reached the top floor, I saw the whole eating place was sealed by glass walls. I thought that was a noble idea to ensure that the flies stay out while people are eating inside…

Let’s Do Some Maths

Well, it did not really 100% work as there were thousands of flies queueing up on the glass walls and doors waiting to enter the area. Imagine this:

1000 flies waiting to enter the eating area. If one person open the glass door to enter, and1% of the flies would take the opportunity to sneak in. There would be 10 flies per person. If 100 people went in, there would be about 1000 flies and each person that goes in must come out and that would mean at least 2000 flies in there…

They Can See You

With that, you can imagine that whatever you order in there, flies are complimentary… Not bad for a free source of protein ha! At the same time, you would get to experience a scenario that is normally common in some sci-fi movies and in this case, you would be trapped in a glass enclosure surrounded by thousands of flies staring with their compound eyes… Would you still eat there? Some people did but no way for me…

Blame It On The Chickens

I talked to one of the sellers there and I was told that there are some chicken farms nearby and things would get extremely bad during the rainy seasons and there was no way to get rid of the flies…

Luckily my son was asleep and therefore, he stayed in the car with my wife… If not he would have a freaking time chasing after the flies and my wife would have been having a busy time wiping his hands and feet shoes…

So, the next time when you drive on the NSE, look out for Machap rest area and stop to look at the wonder of the flies.

P/S:

There was a fly in our car a day after we came back and looking at the size, it must have followed us back from Machap…

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

Hunting for Hotlink

On Friday May 15th, 2009, my wife and I went to KLCC to meet up her friend who would be going back to Jakarta. One of the things that she wanted him to bring back is an activated Maxis Hotlink SIM card for someone there. Somehow, due to some technical problems with my short term memory retaining capabilities, I had forgotten to purchase the card from the shop near my office.

So, right after dinner, all of us decided to walk over to the LRT station where they normally would have those prepaid cards sold there. It was not really a normal walk for me as my son had dedicated me to carry him all the way there. If you have been to the Suria Mall in KLCC, then try to imagine carrying a a load of more than 12kg from the centre court to the LRT station…

Registration vs Activation

When we got there, a lady was behind the counter. At 9:00pm, she looked like a person who has been working for the last 96 hours or so. There was no smile and we could just forget all about greeting the customers. What a fine example to show one aspect of Malaysian hospitality to our Indonesian guest that had to walk with us all the way there carrying all the stuffs that he had bought at the mall.

Me: Can you please activate the card for us.

Lady: There is a technical problem with Maxis and we can’t activate it right now. I will register it for you.

Me: Will you activate it later for us?

Lady: I will register the card and it should be okay…

At this time, I started to get agitated with this lady as she was not answering my question.

Me with voice getting louder: Registration is one thing but will you activate the card for us or not?

Lady: No.

A guy behind the counter: Why don’t you go to the Maxis centre and you can get it all done there…

You Must Be Kidding Me!

What a waste of time and energy. So we went back all the way to the Suria Mall and walked over to the Maxis centre.

We went to the Hotlink counter and:

Me: I need to buy a new number.

The counter guy: We have no more card.

Me: What! Aren’t you the owner of the Hotlink services?

The counter guy: Yes but we ran out of card since 6pm.

Our Indonesian friend had a big disbelief expression on his face and that was probably the combination of hearing my conversation with the counter guy and looking at the face that I had after learning that by going to Maxis did not guarantee that you can buy the Maxis Hotlink Prepaid number. What a bullock!

The thing that really pissed me off is the fact that they had run out of card since 6pm and did not do anything about it. They are not resellers or some free lance prepaid card agents but they are Maxis! The owner of Hotlink! What was that all about?

How About We Go For DIGI or Others?

And our Indonesian will for sure be happy to stick to his Digi prepaid services. If not for my contract with Maxis until September 2009, I would have changed my mobile phone service provider as that was not the first time when their services had gone below par…

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

This would be the final chapter about my job interview sessions. There were one or two other interviews that I attended but since they were not that significant and at the same time I would not want this story to drag too long as it is now already having more chapters than the Star Wars movies…

This one was not really my last interview but it was actually in between the others. The only reason that I put it to the last is that it was the interview that got me this current job.

To begin with, I got the HR contact from a fellow blogger Nina and I shot an email to them. It took them about a week to respond and I was called for the first interview. The first interview lasted about 2 hours where I was made to listen to stories rather than being interviewed per say… He got lots of things to share and since I had nothing else to do, I might just as well listen to him…

Then, a week after that, I was called for a second interview. This one actually caught me off guard as I was not expecting a totally opposite character from the first interviewer. This guy was very particular about certifications such as PMP and business processes experience such as CMMI. I have none of them and as far as I was concerned at that time, I failed!

Note: Now I understand why the PMP and CMMI was emphasized as the customers that the company works with are looking into those as part of the criteria to show how capable the vendors are.

Anyway, with little hope in securing that job, I went about searching for the next job vacancies.

However, after about a month, I got a call from HR to negotiate the salary. Well, I was surprised as I thought that without the things that they needed, I would not stand a chance.

Anyway, after some negotiations, I had agreed to the offer and since nothing better came along the way, I accepted the job offer with a 30% pay cut. It is a substantial cut but it is much better than having no job and no salary at all.

I guess the time has come to start all over again and work myself up and maybe things would not that bad after all.

So, there you go! In the end, what I gathered from all these are:

1. It is not that easy to get a job out there.
2. Stick to your job if you can.
3. Get yourself certified (anything that is relevant to the current market and your expertise).
4. Save your money when you can.

P/s: They offer a good medical benefits and that has somewhat made it a bit easier for me…