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...