something came in the mail today...

remember this?






*grins*

10 seconds

...or maybe less than that.

for the past month, i've noticed that there's this girl who works as a receptionist at the floor below my office. it was the office of kao corporation. the first time i saw her, it was in the lift. i was going to work one morning when she was there, pushing a trolley full of nasi lemak into the same lift as me. i guess they are having a breakfast party in the office. my first reaction was, "how come i've never seen her around before?". she's not the type who would make heads turn, but she is very sweet looking, with her pinkish cheeks on her round face. at least that's my opinion lah, my colleagues said she looks normal.

from that day onwards, i was hoping to catch a glance of her every morning. no luck. i seldom got to see her in the morning. unless someone stops at her floor while i was in the lift. that also depends on which lift i'm in. there are 5 main lifts in the building, and the receptionist table is only visible to 3 of them.

2 weeks ago, i realized that she would wait for someone to pick her up at the lobby after office hours. the thing is, i don't usually leave the office on time, and i only get to see her a few times.

wait, it gets better! as my training is coming to an end, i figure i didn't have much chance to see her anymore. so..i did some crazy stuff. for a few times, as i was using the lift to go down for lunch or go back to my room after work, or going back up to the office after lunch, i would press the button to her floor, just to stop and look. yeah, i know. i sounded so desperate huh? i can't explain why, but i just liked looking at her. you know, there are things that you just don't get bored looking at over and over again. a little overdose of eye candy wouldn't hurt, eh?

to be honest, i have thought of approaching that girl just to make friends with her. asking her out would be way off limits. the guy who picks her up everyday might be her bf, or maybe i'm just too young for her cos by the looks of it, she must be older than me. besides, i don't have the balls big enough to do that.

today is the last day of my training.

there i was, walking into the building and i saw a lady in a nice tone of pink coloured shirt which complements her fair skin, and a black skirt, walking in to the building.

IT WAS THE KAO GIRL!

damn she looks good in pink! i abandoned the plan of buying a pack of 3-in-1 nescafe at kiosk, and proceeded to take the same lift as her. got other people in the lift also lah. since her office is on the 20th floor whereas mine is on the 21st, both of us would be the last to get out. there were at least 10 seconds of just me and her in the lift. i stole glances at her, not having the balls to strike up a conversation. staring at her would be very rude. it was the best opportunity to make friends, and i totally blew it. those 10 seconds.

did i mention she looks good in pink? she looks damn good in pink. coupled with her pinkish cheeks and all...

ipod nano

i've been holding back my ipod purchase just to see what apple would come out with yesterday night. it has been revealed, the ipod nano!

looking at it, i can't help but drool...but i find the design a bit, out of proportions. if only it was a bit more shorter in length. plus, it's wafer thin, which makes me wonder whether it will break in half easily.

however, i already decided to get a full fledge ipod color 20gb. the reason is that for the same price of the ipod mini, i get LESS gigabytes and apple still would not include an ac adapter into the package. the adapter itself cost RM179. the total cost is already near the cost of a 20gb version. without the ac adapter, you have to charge your ipod through the usb port of your computer, which means you have to be near your switched on pc whenever the ipod ran out of juice. what about portability then?

the damned "you-can't-afford-it" look

i've been craving for an ipod since dunno when, and after winning some grand prize last month (read previous post), i decided to get one just to pamper myself. hehe...

yesterday, i went midvalley to buy a pair of 3-quarter pants and something for someone. i wanted to test an ipod as well before committing myself to buying one. so i walked into the apple centre and i turned invisible. apparently the salesmen there didn't notice i was there and continued doing their stuff. i lingered for a while hoping that someone would notice but, nope. no one bothered. the person at the cashier saw me but refused to even budge from his seat. ok, i told myself to leave and come back later.

i got all the stuff i went there to buy and i was back in the apple centre. some ah beng salesman was there, and he had just finished serving another customer. i asked to test the ipod color, and he took it out from the glass cabinet and handed to me, WITHOUT the earphones. like wtf? hey, it's an mp3 player dammit! you're supposed to let me test it WITH the earphones! (which he selamba-ly curled up in his hand after the previous customer left). i thought he might catch the hint, when i was playing with the interface and all but NOOOOO....he stood there like a log and gave me the "YOU-CAN'T-AFFORD-THIS" and "I-KNOW-YOU-WON'T-BUY-ONE-LAH" look. i had to ask for the earphones from him and he grudgingly obliged. i asked a few questions about the warranty and stuff and he answered half heartedly. i couldn't stand him anymore and i just left. what kind of a salesman is he? if that is the way you treat a potential customer i'm sure he doesn't get much sales anyway. so i didn't wear a armani suit or a calvin klein jeans or maybe a tag heuer watch but that doesn't mean i can't buy an ipod! armani mania perfume i got lah, thanks to lai ching, but still...arrgh! geram.

to the shop's credit, there is a salesman who was very friendly and helpful in the shop. the last time i was there, i was just looking around with no intention of buying. he approached me as soon as i stepped in and asked what was i looking for. the guy was there yesterday, but he was busy serving another customer who wanted to buy a mac. i guess i'll try other shops before coming back to this one.

lucky

enough said. *grins*

*cough*

i was going to blog about the convocation i attended last week but there were so many emotions running through my mind at that time that i couldn't find the right words to write about it. i'm wrote a few paragraphs but i'm not really satisfied as it doesn't really paint a true picture of what i wanted to convey. yeah, i suck at getting my point across. those who are close to me should know that i don't have the talent of telling stories. i even had troubles summarizing plot details of a book.

i guess i'll have to put that off first and write something which is bothering me, THE HAZE.

those who saw my yahoo messenger status last night should know how frustrated i am at the haze. not particularly the haze, but the people who caused the haze. yesterday, it was really, really bad here in my office. the smell of ash was so strong, even in my air conditioned office! i could hardly breathe and the lack of oxygen gave me a headache. if you are wondering whether i'm exaggerating, i can tell you right in the face : NO! not exactly in your face lah but you are staring at the monitor while reading this right? oh shit, that was so lame. back to the topic, yes, i had a terrible headache and i'm gasping for air.

someone actually asked me 'that bad?' and i have no better answer than to tell her that she must be here to know how serious it is. compared to the 1997 haze (that was 8 years ago, and i didn't have a good memory, just read it from a news article and found out it happened during the el nino phenomenon), i guess this is worse. i don't remember having any difficulties at all during that time.

i'm really upset and angry because this seems to happen EVERY YEAR, without fail. the only difference is the severity of the haze. why isn't the indonesian government doing anything effective to curb massive burning? oh sure, they told us about the death penalty if found guilty of open burning but, hello? it still happens!

clubbing night

i used to think that clubbing are for those 'bad guys'. my definition of a bad guy was...quite naive at that time. people who smokes a lot, drinks liquor a lot, swears a lot and gamble like there's no tomorrow. i categorize them as gangster, but i have since redefine the term 'bad guys'. mature already what. in fact, i even consider myself a bad guy.

i can't remember the first time i went clubbing, but i know i wasn't fond of those places at that time. i just hated the smoke and i don't like the taste of beers.

then about 2 years ago, i developed a liking for cRunk n B songs. long story short, a new clubbing kaki was born.

one of the reasons i've been looking forward for my training here in pj is the various clubs they have around the area. if that is not enough there's still more in kl but have to drive there lah. transport is a problem for me and although yien sien sort of gave me hope by saying that he'll ajak if he's going to any of the clubs. so far, he hasn't called yet.

then came yesterday. someone in the office organized a volley ball match. according to my colleagues they do this once in a while so that people in the office can socialize with each other while having fun. it's not just limited to volley ball though, it can be any sports and i just heard that they are proposing to organize a paintball game. can't wait for that to happen, and i just hope they do it before my training ends. anyway, the volley ball game was cancelled because they couldn't find a court, and as an alternative, ket proposed that we all go clubbing. of course i jumped at the opportunity!

fast forward to the night, we went to this club in the heart of kl called the loft. it was really crowded, mostly working adults. the good thing is you don't see any ah lians or ah bengs around. bad thing is, some of them are just to old for me to hit, IF i ever wanted to. *sniggers*

the music played there was of the 'jungle house' genre. not really my favourite, but it's not really that bad at all. when i mentioned the name of the dj to edmund, i was told that he was one of the more popular malaysian dj. i think his name was dj jungle jerry.

that night itself, i get to see the other faces of my colleagues. they can be very serious at work, but when it comes to party, they do know how to party. too bad the whole experience was spoiled by a colleague who had too much drink.

oh yeah, i wasn't expecting to see anyone familiar there, but i saw wei lee there with her boyfriend. what a small world...

weird dream

i had another weird dream last night. funny how most of my dreams are weird and sometimes, it happened in reality! though it makes me wonder why dreams of me striking loads of cash in lottery never came true. last i remember, i had 3 of those dreams. hehe.

yesterday's dream was about me falling off a slope or into a ravine. i was in a hospital, and i have no recollection of what happened. i woke up in the hospital and asked what happened. then someone showed me a newspaper with a picture of the slope with arrows indicating the path where i fell. if i remember correctly, it was on the front page and the picture alone covered 3/4 of the page! i was on the front page! not for a good reason though. later someone asked me whether i remembered anything and i said i had no idea about the fall.

that's all i can remember. bad omen?

spiderman

not staying much in the office nowadays cos spent a lot of time going outside, climbing rooftops to do site surveys and also installations. i lost count on how many buildings i've conquered. i am afraid of heights, but another side of me is eager to climb to the rooftop of high rise buildings. the view is magnificent, if there's no haze. most of the time, it's really windy when you are standing so high up.

the downside is when the sun is up and shining at full strength. as a result, i'm getting a nicely toned skin. wait, that's not a bad thing after all. ok, what i wanted to say is that it will be scorching hot and i'll be sweating like a pig. some of the rooftops have various ladders and pipes, meaning it's quite challenging at times to climb up and down and maneuvre through the pipes. if you're not careful, you might just get a knock on the head or go home with cuts and bruises.

once, i almost had the chance to climb a 100 metre tall communications tower. those red and white steel towers you see along the highway which is where mobile phone companies fix their base stations to. i followed the other guys to do some aintenance work and i thought i would have the opportunity to climb it, although i was warned that it is very, very tiring. i don't care, as long as i can boast that i've climbed one. in the end, it never happened, because there wasn't enough safety harness. i would've climbed without it, but if i'm caught, i/the company would be sued for violating safety laws. *sigh* so i spent the day looking up at the tower while the other collegues do their work...well, maybe next time.

lost?

almost everyone i know seems to have a blog now. thanks to friendster.com, blogging has suddenly become the 'in' thing for those who have a bit of a basic knowledge in using computers and the internet. almost everyone i know in mmu already jumped on the bandwagon, but they would soon find out, that a blog is unlike a diary, where you can write anything you want without other people finding out. unless, of course, you willingly let them.

for me, i'm having this blog just to pen down my thoughts and what has been going on with my life. i recently realized that i have forgotten a lot of things from the past, such as my childhood days where i spent a lot of time being naked and playing in the rain, or how i was punished for misbehaving, my kindergarten days and friends and certain primary school memories. sometimes i really need some reminding before i can really remember things.

this blog also functions as a way keeping my friends in overseas updated about my life. then again, it wasn't quite successful as i thought it would be.

i knew i wasn't blogging for a big audience, and that is the basic reason why i did not publicize my blog address to everyone i know.

reading my old post, i also realized that i've lost my flair of writing. suddenly, my post have all become...dull. in fact, it might actually represent what kind of a person i am in real life now. i used to be known as the happy-go-lucky guy back in high school. i seemed to have no worries about my exams or my future. i'm constantly teasing and laughing and making all sorts of stupid jokes in the class. it's actually very flattering that someone back then would tell me that he will remember me as the joker of the class.

only just 2 weeks ago, when i was on my way back in melaka, i received a call from a former form 6 classmate, who told me that they have some sort of gathering that night. although i wasn't informed about it, what i heard next made my heart sank. she actually told me that most of them won't be going unless i'm there! since i couldn't make it in time, i promised to meet them the next day, which i duly did.

what i'm trying to imply here is that i have great friends back in high school, but the same can't be said about those i know from my uni days.

from the first day i stepped into mmu, i've told myself to fly under the radar. it worked for a week or so, but then i soon find out it's hard not to make new friends. i still remember the night where 4 campus mate added me in their icq list at about the same time. yet, even as i was doing so, there is a certain someone, whom i am sure i have never offended before, started to spread rumours about me. i didn't know about it for almost a full year, and what shocked me more was the fact that that particular person, was the brother of one of my high school classmate and my best friend's cousin!

things never went smoothly since the beginning anyway, and it was getting worse with each passing year. somehow, i felt there's a big "HATE ME" sign emblazoned across my forehead. rumours about me, a variety of them, were flying in every corner. some of them were so absurd and ridiculous to the point that i'm confused as to whether to cry or laugh at hearing them. i believe jealousy, played a big part too.

nevertheless, there were some, albeit a few, who managed to keep me sane.

undoubtedly though, my dream of having a memorable yet pleasant uni life goes down the drain.

sheesh, i'm talking like i've already graduated even though i still have 2 sems to go after my industrial training.

somehow, during my industrial training, i've got to meet some old high school mates which i've lost contact for quite sometime. most of them are already working or freshly graduated. in fact, they made me feel as though they've move on a lot since our last meeting whereas i'm still stagnant and going nowhere. average achievers during high school days turned out to be working for multinational companies with a comfortable salary. yeah, i think i'm lost...

2nd time in the gym

yeap, the title says it all. i went to the gym the 2nd time yesterday, this time with a colleague.

there's still a lot of people there, and i've got to mention one particular incident. i was working out on some of the equipments, and then i saw there was cycling class going on in a room with transparent glass walls. there's this lady, whom i guess is 40+, was in the class. she was wearing a tube top, with half of her breasts showing! her cleavage is so obvious, and she was really fair. i must say that her boobs are...HUGE. and when she cycles while standing... (think waves) yeah think of me as a pervert but i noticed that quite a number of guys are looking at that direction when she does that. i even told my colleague that the instructor must be having a hard time to be professional and not look at her direction. furthermore, she's in the first row!

other than that, there really wasn't much to write about, aside from the fact that the cute fitness consultant (refer last post) wasn't there last night...

if i was a rich boy...

i must say that i'm starting to really enjoy working with the people in my workgroup. although i can't say that the office environment is good, but the people here are nice. they treat me to lunch quite often, almost always when i went out with them to do a site survey or installation. mind you, sometimes what they eat is overpriced, but the food is nice. i actually don't mind going to those high class restaurants once in a while (since we don't have it in melaka) and paying for my own share but everytime they will just pay for me and shrug me off when i tried to pay for my own share. and going out with different people will give me a different kind of conversation. some of them would give me advice on working life, some would tell me their past working experiences and some would just talk about their personal life. it is interesting to hear what they have to say because all of them are still young (oldest is 4 years elder than me) and yet they have stories which sounded like they've worked for ages.

recently, my company was to provide broadband internet to a few fitness clubs in kl, which means me and my colleagues would visit these clubs quite frequently. there are more and more fitness clubs opening in kl, with different names but almost the same service. people in kl seem to like going to the gym, especially after work and during weekends. if you happen to pass by a fitness club around 6-10pm on weekdays, you can see that it's very crowded. think about the crowd on weekends then. i heard people have to queue to use a certain equipment. working in a gym seems to be the trend now in kl. even during office hours, there are people working out in the gym. i know because i visit these places during office hours to work. me and my colleague actually sat down and talk about this during our break one day. we concluded that these people are possibly rich, the parents is rich, the husband is rich, or maybe they are someone's mistress. =)

the membership fees are expensive though, more that RM100 per month! and if you need a personal trainer, it's roughly RM150 per HOUR. so that's where the rich spend their money. anyway, i actually had a taste of being a member of a fitness club, albeit for only 14 days. you see, i bought this pair of adidas shoes in mid valley megamall and they ask me to fill up a form for a lucky draw. the grand prize of the draw is a year's membership of the new fitness club there called california fitness. i didn't get the full year membership of course, just 2 weeks, which i am told is worth RM700. i went there for the first time yesterday with edmund, and suprisingly they gave him a 14 days pass too! too bad mine will expire this saturday where as his will last until the 27th.

so there we were, clueless as we don't know where the locker is and where to get our towels. and the people there must be wondering what are we 2 skinny kids doing in the gym. we managed to get changed after finding out where the locker is. so we played around with the equipments and looked at some of the pretty ladies working out. and there's one particular fitness consultant which is really cute. we were looking at here and she gave us what must be her sweetest smile. i wonder how many men were killed with that kind of smile. damn, why must my pass expire this saturday? oh, the club even has an outdoor swimming pool and jacuzzi. too bad we didn't get to try it because it's raining outside. we took our baths and left the club when it was closing. so there...my first real taste of being in a fitness club where the membership fees are exorbitant and i got to go in free, for 2 weeks.

last weekend, i went back to melaka and somehow got a weird feeling. i don't know why, but i just felt so out of place. i've just been back there a fortnight ago, but somehow something wasn't right somewhere. maybe it's because i've familiarised myself with kl's lifestyle that i forgot how slow paced life in melaka is...

most wanted

i was like the most wanted person in my department last wednesday. i was thinking of leaving the office on time so that i can go to 1 utama to claim my free tickets to watch war of the worlds with edmund. since it was first come first served, i was hoping that by going early i could get a nice seat.

at first i went out with gavin and arif to do some installations. then man called and asked me to follow him to pj hilton to troubleshoot. and jeff actually had an assignment for me that day. in the end, i left the office at about 6.15pm. oh, and my first pay cheque arrived on the same day!

reached 1 utama, claimed my tickets and found out later that it was a side seat. =( bah, as long as it's a free ticket. treated edmund to a nice dinner for fetching me around for the past one month. proceeded to watch the movie afterwards and it was....ok...but the ending sucks.

thursday was spent climbing on the rooftop of subang parade to test the wimax link quality. got so tired from the day before that i actually fell asleep at another location.

yesterday, a new employee was supposed to start work, but she didn't came. yeah, all of us in the workgroup knew it's a woman. and today they started clearing a table for her and i'm guessing she'll be working from next week...

past week summary

wow...the past week was hectic. ran into some bad luck as well, but still ok la...

about the bad luck, what happened was this. we are given one hour to have lunch. last monday, i went out at 12.30pm to eat. i came back to the office with another 10 minutes to spare. so i punched my card (bad move) and proceeded to the pantry to read the papers. i was already feeling weird at the time. i don't know what it was but there was just a bad vibe going on in the office at that time. i didn't care much about it, and concentrated on reading the papers. suddenly, i heard a loud voice calling out for sim, my colleague. i turned my head towards the origin of the voice and to my horror, my boss was there! in a split second, i saw my supervisor was looking at me in a strange way and i quickly folded the papers and went to my workstation. (if you were wondering, my supervisor did warn me about the boss' dislike of seeing his employees browsing the papers, be it after work or during lunch time). on my way there, my boss caught my eye and asked how i was doing and whether i learned anything. my heart was beating fast but i managed to reply that i was doing fine and i did learn something. then he summoned my supervisor and asked him what i was working on. luckily, there was something i was working on, or i'll be in deep shit. my supervisor didn't say anything to me after that, but i guess i shall stop reading the papers in the office.

later that day, another colleague hinted me about something, something which sounds bad, but so far it has not happened, so i think i'll need to watch my behaviour in the office.

on the bright side, i had the chance to go out of the office and go work on site. i was to learn how to do a site survey (climbing on rooftops to check the quality of the wimax signals) and install wireless access points. at least i have something to do and learn instead of being in the super cold office! dammit, it's getting colder and colder. i'm practically shivering despite wearing 2 jackets on top of my shirt.

oh yeah, i also saw the ugly side of the business world. see, this cabling contractor asked our team to arrive early on the site we are working on, and so we did. he arrived soon after, but he didn't bring anything. no drills, no pipes, no nothing. he just looked around at the place and finally decided he couldn't do the job. not only that, he had the guts to ask us to do the cabling works although he was already paid in advance for his services! to rub salt to the wound, he left after a while, claiming that he had another customer that he had to attend to. my team was like, what the fuck? we went to the place for 2 freaking hours, skipping our lunch, bringing all sorts of equipment (which is NOT light) and he just went off like that to attend to another CUSTOMER? are we not his CUSTOMER as well? my collegue got so pissed off at him that he said he will make a formal complaint to the contractor's superior. too cool off, he said he wanted a good meal, and he knew there was a t.g.i. friday restaurant nearby so off we went. the best part is, they treated me to a nice meal...it was so satisfying...not only that, i get to hear some juicy gossips, and some of their work experiences. a nice way to end my working week indeed...

first on-site job

last friday was the first time i went out during office hours to do some wimax installation. it was kinda fun yet funny. fun in a sense that i got to learn something and play around with the other 2 guys and funny because the 3 of us were rookies and did a lot of mistakes before we completed the whole thing. another 2 guys came over later to join us for a late lunch. they joked a lot and somehow, i felt like i was part of the team. at least they don't treat me like an outsider just hogging a place in the office.

the weekend was spent back in melaka. didn't feel like going back at first because i might be going back again the next weekend to take my car up. anyway, i managed to meet up with a few friends for yamcha. felt bad for jin who did nothing related to IT during his training. his office hours is from 10am to 10pm and there's no allowance! he told us that what he do is deliver furnitures, carry furnitures around and doing sales. that's bad.

good news and bad news...

we had a small meeting today in the office pantry and i was some what happy and excited to know that i'm allowed to follow the other colleagues when they go on site to work. this means i might actually learn a lot of stuff!

the downside is, i might have to work long past my working hours as there is no specific time limit to finish the job. there's one instance, which was on the day before i start my training, that they had to work until 2.30am! other than that, i might get a tan by working under direct sunlight.

another thing which i was not so thrilled about is the possibility of me working in shifts! the earliest time to work is 6am and the latest time to go back is 12am! it gets worse, the 2 off days are not back to back, which means i can't go back to melaka if i wanted to! some of the people in my workgroup is already subjected to work in shifts, and i'm still working from 8.30am to 5.30pm because, plainly, i don't know anything!

un-happening weekend

things have started to normalize a little bit for me. yeah, i think i've settled down a bit, just that the lack of transportation is still a big problem. it came to a point where i'm really embarrassed to ask my friends to fetch me around, especially when it rains.

last weekend wasn't such a happening weekend for me. was supposed to go to the computer fair but decided otherwise since my friend told me it was a failure. still, i went over to low yat plaza and bought a new casing, power supply unit and a dvd burner for my pc. tit hian was kind enough to install the components for me. now i can burn out all the downloaded stuff which fills up my hard disks and delete them off, so that i can download new stuff! well, first i need an internet access...which is a luxury i don't have in my rented room... *sigh*

i started to get along with my colleague as well, at least i have talked to everyone in my workgroup (network engineering), though still not much talking on the other side of the office (the customer service and tecnical support department). however, jeffrey seems to be very busy and hardly talks to me...

i forgot to mention this but...

I MISS CLUBBING!!!!!

it's saturday dammit!

and then came the project...

finally, i've been given a project to work on!

the task is to implement a network traffic monitoring software on the company's routers. this is to enable us to check the traffic situation on a particular router. the software is able to monitor the router's inbound and outbound traffic and a few other stuff. what this means for the network engineering department is that they can pinpoint exactly which link is down and rectify it soon.

i don't expect this to be completed so soon because it runs on the linux platform and i'm not really familiar with it. there will be a lot of messing around with the settings and configurations and all but i'm kinda excited about it. although the linux OS has gone through a lot of improvements from the command line interface days (it's available in GUI now), there's still a learning curve to it. i've always wanted to learn about linux operating system and now is my chance. the problem is, i'm required to do a full documentation of the implementation so that if something goes wrong, someone else would be able to set it up from the scratch.

part of me felt proud because this is something the company will be using in the long term. and it also helps developing my skills in the networking area which i am majoring in. i'm not sure if this will help in my final year project, but at least it's something new for me to learn!

that being said, there won't be much blogging around in the office. and today was an exception because i'm feeling a bit lazy as it's saturday!

decisions...decisions...

it's 9.39am here and i'm in my office sitting idle again. looking out of the glass windows of my office, i can see swallows flying around. almost overslept today and now i'm feeling kinda moody.

isn't it weird that sometimes you just have something good which is within your grasp, but you overlooked it? i've been in this kind of situation before, and however hard i try not to feel regret about it, i do. most of the time, i settled for something less and realise later that i've made the wrong choice.

i'm bad at making decisions. i'm not an optimistic person, not really pessimistic, but realistic. i know chances of me striking first prize in 4d is close to nothing, yet everytime i bought a ticket, i hope to strike at least a consolation prize.

my decision to come to kl for my industrial training may be something i might regret later on. to be honest, it was nothing as i expect it to be. knowing how others are coping with their training just made me feel..envious.

email

data communications and telecommunications. computer networks. these are the 2 subjects which i scored lowly for. maybe because there's a lot of topic to be covered for the trimester. or maybe i'm just tired of learning all the theory stuff without actually practising it....until now.

now that i've started my industrial training, it became clear to me that these 2 subjects are the most important subjects when dealing with networks. luckily i haven't forgot them all, though i'm still having a grudge at the lecturer who taught me computer networks. that being said, i'm hoping to learn more things about networking so that i would at least have some skills when i graduate to land me a job.

with the advent of instant messaging, i've totally forgot about the functions of an email. when i first started using the internet some 9 years ago, (wow..that long already?) email was the only way to communicate almost instantaneously. free, web based email started to pop up everywhere and people like me, signed up for a few mailbox. those days, yahoo was the hottest search engine, and hotmail was the most popular free email. when yahoo finally launched their free email, i promptly signed up for it and i've been using it ever since. that's like almost 8 years ago!

my mailbox has since been used to send files and forwarded mails instead of using it for communications...until recently. with no means of using instant messaging programs, i've been using email as an ad-hoc instant communication tool. here i am, chatting in the office with my friends from penang and somewhere else...

cold morning

it's cold in the office. really cold. i think they keep dead bodies in here. and i can't think of what to post...

sleep deprived

i complained about not having work to do yesterday and right after i posted up the blog entry, i was told to go the the other office at plaza mont kiara to help out. my supervisor called me up and asked me how i travel to work and whether i have a transport. he was shocked to find out that i walked to the office as i was just staying nearby. anyway, i think he needed help desperately and called a colleague to send me there.

arriving at the other office i helped out a programmer with his documentation. he needs to edit a lot of the documents and the deadline was today. at first i thought it would me easy, but i had to do a lot of corrections and re-do because he wants to standardise all the documents.

halfway through, we went out for lunch and he paid for me. maybe he felt bad or something but i did have to stay back way past my working hours to finish up the job. he offered to send me back earlier but i just felt like finishing it up for him. i don't really mind because i find him to be quite friendly and not because he treated me to a lunch! futhermore, he is also a graduate from mmu! he took down my handphone number and promised to contact me if he's down in malacca. another female colleague sent me back and we have quite a little bit of chat about the company and my boss. *wink* and so i reached my room at around 7 something before going to dinner with edmund and tit hian. soon chern arrived after we finished up our dinner and we waited for him and chatted a little.

i was so tired when i reached my room that i felt like sleeping straight without bathing. in the end i watched a few episodes of friends and head on to the bathroom. then it was back to friends again. 2 episodes later, i decided to call it a day. but i couldn't sleep! maybe i was not used to the hard matress, or maybe i did not have a bolster to hug on. i don't know what time i finally fell asleep, but i woke up in the middle of the night because there were mosquitoes feasting on my blood! sigh...

this morning i came into the office and was taught how to configure a wireless access point, which i read about yesterday. it was quite similar to a router, just that it's wireless. managed to set it up within a few minutes and by this time, half the networking department was gone. sim then told me to read up on wifi and prepare a presentation...

so i surfed the net for some wifi stuff (though i already know half about it) and stumbled upon a article about the history of sith lords (from the star wars movies). i finished reading it and now i feel so sleepy! to keep myself awake, i decided to blog.

i can't wait to go back to malacca tonight and have a good night's sleep.

boring morning...

just over 2 hours since i've been in the office and i was give 2 big stacks of manuals to read on. it's about how to set up a wireless access point and i am going to configure one later on. it's freaking cold in the office right now and i'm feeling so sleepy! didn't sleep well last night because i was constantly stung by mosquitoes. need to get something to repel them...

i called up a few friends last night and asked them about their first day experience of their industrial training. seems that most of them had nothing to do as well, but some of them had plenty of work.lay wei's company even allowed them to chat online! how i wish i could do that here. i'm starting to feel a bit lonely...

last night also, my sis sent me a message telling me my grandmother wasn't feeling so well. i didn't gave much thought on it until i found out that she was in fact suffering from a stroke. a bit worried about her condition but i had to wait until this weekend before i'm able to visit her.

well, time to get back to the manuals...

industrial training: the 1st day...

it's my first day of industrial training and i haven't been doing much. i came into the office quite early, thinking of surveying the office, but turns out, there wasn't much to look around. the first thing i notice about the company is that both their offices are located on the top floor of a building. let me describe the office a lil bit. the entrance to the office is just a really small door, just like a typical room door. it was nicely painted with the logo of the company, with a lime green background. to enter, an employee must first scan his/her id card at a terminal, something like the touch n go system they use in highway toll collection. the difference here is that you have to key in a PIN code after scanning your card. once you enter, you are greeted with...yet another door, though there's a small area with a table and some chairs. this is where the employees discuss things with their clients, instead of letting them into the office. to enter the office, you need to scan your card again at a 2nd terminal, but this time, no PIN code. i don't have an id card, and i doubt they would give me one, so i just have to press the doorbell whenever i need to get in. and since the toilet is outside of the office, i would have to borrow some colleague's id card whenever nature calls.

once inside, you are able to see the whole office in one glance, surrounded by glass windows overlooking the petaling jaya area. you can clearly see the menara telekom, klcc, and kl tower from the office! anyway, there are no cubicles, just tables with laptops or desktops on it, and they are all joined together. so you can see everyone when they are sitting down and working. basically the office is divided into two parts, separated by a row of cabinets which contain manuals and documentations. on the left is the networking department, whereas on the right lies the customer service department. the pantry is just a small table at the side. on the networking side, most of them are using laptops provided by the company. this is because they need to bring it along whenever they go on location to set up the wireless access points. i understood that they usually work outside, and spend time in office just for paperwork. over at the customer side, well, their job is to answer calls from customers, so everyone of them uses a desktop pc.

around 8.30am, most of the staffs are already in, and we had a small meeting, which is a normal practice for them. i was introduced to all the staffs, and it seems that there's a new permanent worker today as well. after the short meeting, i was given a space at the office, which will be my working table for the duration of my training. not only that, i was also given an IBM notebook (not to be taken back of course, use in office only). as this is the first time they are taking in trainees, they are not really sure what task they should assign me to. after sitting idle for a while, my supervisor in the company, jeffrey took out a router from the storeroom and asked me to configure it to the company's LAN. i've never really tried configuring a router before, but i have seen people doing it. yet, i wasn't able to configure it properly. all those theory i learned in lecture goes down the drain and i asked for help for a few times, before finally getting it right. and i was able to go online. after accomplishing my task, i was left sitting idle again. so i checked my email and surfed around, before a colleague asked me to read up some documentations. i soon got bored and started looking around. it seems that they are having some projects going on, and they need to finish it up soon. by noon, 90% of the networking staff is already gone to do their work on site, including jeffrey. another colleague, gavin, which i became quite close to (maybe because the age gap isn't that wide), told me that, the night before, they had to work on site until 2.30am to set up a wireless internet access point. because the said place wasn't closed for business until 10pm, they couldn't start setting it up earlier.

on another note, i felt that gavin's face looked bloody familiar. i wondered if i've seen him anywhere. and then at lunch, i realised that he's the guy whom i saw during my interview for internship. he was there for an interview as well, but he's applying for a permanent job. he has only worked here for the past 2 weeks, so he hasn't been assigned off office job yet. we talked quite a bit during lunch, and he seemed like a guy i could really click with in the office...so far. he's into the movies, pc gaming and also...CLUBBING!

it's already 3.57pm as i was typing this, and i guess i won't be doing anything else until it's time to go back to my rented room, and maybe eat dinner with edmund...

to blog or not to blog?

i enjoy reading blogs. i really do. you can say that i'm curious about everything that's happening with total strangers but some of the blogs i read are really interesting. take for example Wa si Hokkienlang. the author post his entry in the hokkien dialect, and i enjoy trying to guess what's the meaning of certain words. truth to be told, i'm of a hokkien descent, and yet i can't speak hokkien. well, i can understand a little, since many of my friends talks in hokkien most of the time. so, in a way, by reading that particular blog i get to improve my command of hokkien as well, though i'm still not prepared to speak in that dialect in public. at the same time, i find the language to be...quite amusing. it's not degrading of any sort, but it's just funny to me. i often find myself giggling everytime i read a new post on that blog. it's hilarious! oh, while you're checking out the site, try to spot any english/malay words which have been hokkien-ised. for example, "direction" became "lai lek syen", "blog" became "bollok"...you get the idea.

on a different note, i admire all these bloggers. i too, wish to achieve what they've been doing. what i meant here was, i want to keep a record of my thoughts. i hope that sometime in the future, i would be able to look back at all these thoughts and laugh at myself. all these bloggers i've been reading, they are so passionate about blogging. the one thing that's different between them and me is that, i'm a bit of a reserved person. i don't really share my thoughts with all of my friends. perhaps that's why i'm always misunderstood. sometimes, i just wished to be more open about my feelings and all but then again, if i do, i guess i will lose a lot of friends because they read my blog. this is just what happened to a singaporean blogger who's just being honest in her blog. she didn't care about what other thinks about her. she didn't care whether her future boyfriend will find out about her past relationship deep within her blog, heck she didn't even care that she might lose a friend just by being honest! (she actually did lose a few). the problem with me is, i care. i care too much for my friends' feelings to be talking about what i really felt about them. yes, call me fake but the reality is, how many of you can actually take honest criticisms about yourself?

when i first started blogging, it was meant to be some sort of update of my life to all my friends out there. i want them to know what's going on with me without actually telling them. but since a few months ago, i've lost the motivation to blog. i don't have a big readership to start with, and most of the time, i can't post what i really wanted to blog about. let's just say i'm a sissy.

all that being said, we'll see how things go from here on. yeah i know it's a bit lame to end this post like this. so what?

i was sceptical when i first heard about friendster.com. nevertheless, i decide to give it a try, since i've got nothing to lose. you see, i'm paranoid about disclosing my personal informations on the web. i hardly submit my real detail whenever i register for anything on the web, unless i really really trust the website. maybe i've been reading too much on identity fraud and how people get caught for forwarding racist email or trading mp3s on the net.

back to friendster, my initial thought was that it's just another site which groups certain people together to exchange messages or maybe share files, a la yahoo! groups or circles99.com. boy i was wrong. as more and more people registered, it turned out to be a very useful site.

now this is a site, where i get to find people which i have lost contact for a long time. besides, you might never know who might find you! it happened to me recently, when a kindergarten friend who i almost forgot, added me into her list. initially, i have totally no idea who she was. we were exchanging messages in friendster until i decide to add her in my instant messenger list. after a few rounds of chat, i finally recalled who she was. what surprises me though, is her ability to remember in details so many things about me when i was a kindergarten kid, whereas i almost lost all my kindergarten memories, save for a few very unforgetable moments. now that i've had her contacts, i wish that i could spend more time talking to her, just to regain all those past memories. so far, we haven't got to meet up yet, because of our busy schedules. futhermore she's currently studying in kl and seldom comes back to melaka.

and then there's another girl, paik ge, and her cousin, pelf yeen, who used to sit the same school bus as me during my primary school years. we kinda lost contact with each other after i stopped travelling on that school bus, though we stay in the same neighbourhood. paik ge happened to see my brothers in kl a few weeks back and got their contacts. i didn't know any of this until she added me in friendster, and told me all about it. i told her i never seem to bump into her in malacca anymore (malacca is so small that you are likely to bump into someone you know almost anywhere, seriously!). only then i found out the her whole family moved to penang. still, she is studying in kl now and i might go meet up with her someday.

so what else does friendster.com does for me? hmm i guess the most significant feature would be pictures! tons of them! well, it interesting to see how your friends changed and all. i remember a few times when i actually dropped my jaw seeing the latest pictures of my friends. there was one particular fri...ermm...acquaintance (wiyang should know this) who changed so much i thought she had a plastic surgery. and there was a photo which confirmed rumours about a friend getting married. so it's true that a picture tells a thousand words huh? there's even pictures to show that a particular person is currently attached to another person. hmm..saves the trouble of telling each and everyone, i guess.

i really salute the person who thought of friendster concept...

more than 3 months since i last blogged. nah, it's not like my blog is interesting anyway.

chinese new year, the best opportunity to meet most of my old friends, came and went. i didn't actually get to meet everyone i wanted to meet, because the holidays were short and most of them are already working and they just can't stay in malacca longer. futhermore i had to go back to my grandma's place in bukit tinggi and that has taken 2 days off my holidays. as much as i wanted to meet them, there was just not enough time. i guess in years to come, it will be much much more harder to meet up. not to mention certain people who preferred to meet a person that he sees almost everyday in campus rather than someone who he hasn't seen for a year or two.

anyway, there was a small gathering of sort 2 days before chinese new year, because ganesh had to work on the first day of CNY and he will be travelling back on the eve. it's good to see edmund, sin yi, affryll, joon liang, and the jet-lagged wiyang who had just reached malacca for a few hours. the look of his sleepy face was just...funny?

anyhow, i couldn't say that the conversation that night was lively, most probably because we haven't seen each other for so long, and 2 of them are already working. our conversation was mostly about working life, industrial training, and even marriage! yeah, marriage, because recently one of our ex-classmate had just tied the knot. no, it's not a shotgun marriage (everyone of us who heard the news thought so initially). and so we were speculating who would be the next ex- 5Sc1 Class of 1999 student to get hitched.

i wonder how next year's celebration will be...