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:

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…

There are two good news for Malaysians recently. The first one is the further reduction of the petrol price effective yesterday. This reduction is inline with the continuous decline in global crude oil price.

That means now I can have more petrol and that would be really nice for my RM200 per month budget. Of course it would be nicer if it keeps on coming down.

Anyway, premium unleaded petrol (RON97) is now priced at RM2 per litre, while unleaded petrol (RON92) now costs RM1.90 per litre (from RM2.05). Diesel has been lowered to RM1.90 per litre, from RM2.05.

I say petrol should go down further! What do you say? By the way, this is what Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad said:

Shahrir also said the pump petrol price might fall back to RM1.92 or lower by the end of this month, or by Dec 31 at the latest if the downward trend of global crude oil price continued. The previous fuel reductions were made on Nov 1, Oct 15, Sept 24 and Aug 23.

The next item that goes down is the ceiling price for rice. Malaysians consume a lot of rice and some Malaysians can go mad if they could not eat rice even for a meal. They have to have rice with whatever that they are eating…

The new ceiling prices are RM2.60 a kg for ST5, a reduction of 20 sen, while ST10 will be cheaper at RM2.40 compared with RM2.70 previously.

So, this one should go down and has gone down and that is good!

Read the full news at GLAD TIDINGS FOR CONSUMERS: Double joy with reduced fuel and rice prices.

However, this last item has been going down almost everyday since last month and this is something that should be going up and not down. It is none other than our KLSE Composite Index.

Can somebody or something push this up! It has been staying below 900 for a long time now and my unit trust investments are affected by this.

This one should not go down!