LamBerry

This is a new competition organized by my company. What does this mean? This is a competition start from 1st September until 1st December.

How’s it work?

On 1st September, the participants have to go to 18th floor to submit their fees plus measure the weights. The fees are RM10. This competition is compulsory for senior managers and above to join.

What is the prize? Money, money is the prize, but how much? It depends on number of participants. The prize is the total fees collected. So I estimate is about 1.5K. Do you think many people will take part in this competition?

Today meeting with boss. He asked me a very weird question. He asked me “If the program has problem, do you think you can rewrite it?” Wow, he think I am superman, can rewrite it within 1-2 days. Maybe can, if in Malaysia, but if in South Africa, I don’t think I can do it within 1-2 days. There are factors like pressure. A person with pressure cannot write out a program in short period. Pressure will make our brain stuck.

My colleague also laughs there. He laugh is because this is impossible.

Boss asked this is because he scared he can’t get budget for 3 person. If only for 2 person, it will be my Hong Kong colleague and a developer here. The developer candidate is who? Higher possibility is me if my other colleague needs to fly to Philippine. I heard this journey will take about 2-3 weeks. Now only left a month to go. So this month will be a busy month for us here. I have to give training to user, so I will be busy giving training and sure many problems need to solve.

I think this is a potential for me to learn and to take care a project, so I will do it at my best.

It has been many months no news about office shifting. This morning I saw the person who sent out email to everyone about the progress, so I asked her what the status is. She smiles at me. Then I asked her whether confirm moving or not?

She replied “Yes, but maybe delay to October”. I think she tried to hide something, I can see it from her face and reaction. She added “Company have not signed the contract on the new building”, this is what she said. Before this, someone told me company feel reluctant to pay the deposit, the new building required 6 months rental. So I think this is a huge figure for company to pay.

I think company should tell us what the status is after announced moving to new office in many months ago, at least we don’t simply guessing. What to do? Just wait for the management to update us in future.

These few weeks busy writing documentation on South Africa system. Boss is pushing this project, or should say big boss is pushing this. If follow schedule, the whole system should be ready on September, still have a month of time to do it.

Now everything changes, now have to follow the proper procedure, follow the right cycle. Some module has finished develop but has not release to user. But boss asked us to write the documentation, write the user manual and system flow. User manual for user and system flow for our reference. So our work becomes double or triple.

According to schedule, there should be 3 developer involved in this project, but one of our developer still busy on his current job, so his job has pass over to me and part of my job has pass over to colleague in Thailand. Jobs that hand over to Thailand was requested by Thailand operation manager, so I guess is better let our Thai colleague to deal with them, will be much easier especially in communication.

So our mind now is South Africa, South Africa and South Africa. Another 2 months for it then will be close case except for supporting and problem solving.

Today very silent in my screen, silent in the sense that less communication dialog appeared in my screen. This is because my 2 office mates are offline today. One is on leave and the other was on emergency. Both surnames are Tan and that’s why I said missing ‘Tan’.

The guy that emergency called me this morning. I thought who called me so early. I asked him what’s wrong and he asked me back where am I. I told him on the way to car park and he said “OK, now I come over”. “What’s wrong?” But he still insists to tell me why.

When I reached car park, he told me his car can’t start engine. When he tried to close the window and realized it is slow, slow like turtle, like no energy. Then he stop the engine and try start it, but can’t. I asked him is it battery problem? He said he had changed it last month, so shouldn’t be the battery issue. OK, then I fetched him to the workshop that I usually went. The foreman heard it and he suspect is the battery connection part failure, so he borrow me a battery and a wire to jump start the car. Then drive the car over here for detail checking.

I didn’t follow him back to the workshop, because I need to work. I let him settle by himself. I gave him a call on afternoon and he said the car still in workshop, not the workshop we went this morning, is the workshop near his house.

Both of them are my lunch mate, so today will be a boring day.

Early morning received message from boss. Before reading it, I thought some urgent stuff need to settle fast, thought New Zealand reported error. Thanks god, it nothing related to work, is just a message that saying he is on MC today.

Lately I found out from my colleague that something happen to his face. I think something happen to his cheek. Don’t know what happen until something grow big on his cheek. He describes it like Chinese pancake. Ha-ha. He said is food poisoning. I wonder what foods causing that happen.

From this situation, I think he will need few days to recover. So we will have more freedom in office with his absent.

HR Director is the position in my company that always change person. So far within these 2-3 years, already 3 people employed for this position and had resigned within a year. A year was the maximum period.

I asked one of the HR staff. I said “You had a new Director” and she replied “I think she won’t work for long” I was curious and asked her why. She said “Maybe FengShui not good”. I think the pressure is heavy because he or she needs to report to Director of another country. I know cross reporting is very troublesome. Is not once a week but almost every day I heard them talked to each other.

Her staff also complaint that HR department now have 5 person but 2 do operation/paper works and 3 do recruitment. She asked me “Can you imagine half of the resources work on one thing and there are many issues on a company and these issues only solved by 2 staff?” She even told me what the salary of the person who only works on simple job with high pay in rough figure is. I can feel that she is very not satisfied with her current workload. Anyway, that’s her department problem, I can’t comment on it.

I wonder how long the new HR Director will stay in this company.

Tomorrow is the last day of my Thailand colleague visit cum training in Malaysia office. This afternoon he gave us a name card holder as a thank you gift. He bought it from Thailand. Consider a souvenir from Thailand, that’s why there is a small elephant in the name card holder. It is really the right timing, because I also looking for name card holder.

This afternoon we asked him what are the foods that she loves it here. He said he loves the prawn mee. He really a good eater, because the prawn mee is one of the famous food in office area. But there is a food that he wishes to try, which is steamboat. I told him, steamboat must eat it with a group of people, and then only you can try many different type of fish balls, meat balls, mushrooms, and foods that normally serve with steamboat. I asked him where he heard about this. He said he read it from forum, he said it is one of the favorites foods you must try when you are in Malaysia.

Same goes to places. He also did a research in forum. The forum recommends them to Cameron Highlands. I am sorry to say that it is too far from here. I told him to mark it down for next trip. I recommended him to Penang, because there had many nice foods over there, like the prawn mee is come from there. Anyway I hope he has a good trip.