Public holiday = very good

If you have yet to enter the working world.... you would not know what it feels like to have a day off. Or even better, a public holiday, which means you dont work and still get paid. The feeling is freaking awesome. To state the obvious, we working people dont have mid term breaks, summer break and things of that nature. We have annual leave, and I have officialy 12 annual leave per year. I have been working for 2 months, and now I have accumulated 2 annual leaves. Thats how it works here.... 1 month, 1 more annual leave.

On a sidenote, we had a near-miss the other day, when one of those toxic containers(tong dram) was found to be expanded in volume because of the chemical reactions between whatever that was stored in it. It could explode, because it actually happened a few times already, but not explosion with fireball and stuff la.... minor one, but is still dangerous. Some clown decided that they were scientists and go mix chemicals like there was no tomorrow. I just thought that it was so funny.... when clueless people started to claim that "tong dram tiba tiba kembang....." like its a mystery...

Our days are numbered....

So how much of the stuff that I learned in college is needed in my current job?..... not much, except for 450, 395 and such.... those things teach you how to write good engineering reports and how to deal with people. Things are mostly new.

450 in my opinion was the closest thing to work..... I dont know about other groups, but our sponsors sucked and sometimes they don know what they were talking about. For example, they gave a requirement of 1 micron uncertainty for machining.... which looked so stupid, after witnessing how inaccurate the actual fixturing and machining process was.

I am experiencing the same thing currently.... people (aka boss or contractors) giving out wrong info and sometimes false hope. Sometimes the boss can make it sound so simple... oh there should be no problem, you could liase with bla and bla and bla..... contractors and their work ethics are stuff of legends.

Remember Netscape.... I read somewhere that they were pioneers in the internet world and the so called dot com bubble. They are considered geniuses, because they invented the browser, and without the browser, internet is not that groundbreaking and useful as it is today.

I find similarities between Netscape and my company, Komag. We make hard disks, not hard drives. We just make a component of the hard drive, and sell it to Seagate, WD etc. So, I can make sense of the fact that our company is thriving right now, even after filing chapter 11 just like 2 years ago. We could easily end up like Netscape. Microsoft decided to offer its own browser and killed netscape.... and IBM or WD can just decide to make their own hard disks.

Lets get musical

My entry shall be graced by Robbie Williams' words of wisdom in Rock DJ, maybe I should quote Hitzfm on this one:
"If you can't get the girl but your best friend can, it's time to move your body...."

I used to think that Robbie Williams is an awesome artist, I bought his millenium cassette, which by the way is a decent album. Taste changes I guess. Now I think hes just one "geezer". Geographical factors come into play too. Being in the US limits your access to British music. I think British music is so silly.... flooded with silly artists playing silly music. It doesnt come any sillier than that "crazyfrog" crap..... that is beyond irritating. I am not sure if its british, but for sure its european.

I decided to pick up my guitar again. The poor guitar has been sitting there in the corner collecting dust. I bought it during those jobhunting days when things could get really slow. I managed to teach myself 2 songs and some basic chords.... then lost my interest lol. I think I am determined to play again.... if only I have smaller rock hard fingers..... that could solve my blistering finger problem..

It is strange that I complained about not being able to use autocad... and now we are setting up an autocad station right at my cubicle. That means I will have to move though.... over the weekend the IT people will help me move my stuff. Nevertheless, I am happy with this news, an autocad station right here in our Facilities office can be useful and convenient. I will be sitting next to the window again, right behind our new safety engineer. I used to sit at the safety engineer's place for a while.... I have been pushed around indeed.

I had no idea the safety engineer position is so "hot", in our company at least. The salary is higher... but is not proportional to the increase in workload. The safety engineer's seat is so hot, many people cant stand it and just quit. But our new hire seems up to the challenge and very enthusiastic.

I think right now, I want to open a place in front of the waterfront for people to lepak and just chill. The place shall serve the best expresso and mocha latte and all sort of coffee varieties, with a huge stainless steel expresso machine from italy, on display for the public. And of course, we shall have other stuff like plasma screens showing sports and music, a pool table, Playstations strictly for Winning Eleven.... who is interested to invest...

Online therapy

So much to talk about. This blog is like therapy.... I can put anything that bothers my mind in here.... anything from serious stuff to the matter of absolute nothingness.

My superior enrolled me in this SPC course for three days since yesterday, and that sort of provides me with a legitimate excuse for not getting work done and not read those emails. I am not attending full-day-course and then take my work home. Having said that, I thought that I would never bring home anything pertaining to work, let alone staying up all night writing reports ME450 style. Yet, I found that impossible as I would never get anything done.

I think I underestimated training offered by a company to new employees. For my case, I never got proper training, they just sort of throw me into the sea and expect me to catch lobsters, when I dont even know how to swim. First day in office, I was given my job scope..... and then told to come up with some plan to reduce energy consumption by 8%. I was like... are you freaking kidding me....... I think right now the best way to handle my bosses is to sometimes ignore them, if not I will have too much to do.

However, the thing that annoys me the most is the way they supposedly "control" things here. Everything is controlled.... from engineering softwares, telephone access, internet access..... Right now, I still dont have access to the internet, I only have access to the company's corporate network. Right now, I have to do research using dial up at home instead of the high speed internet available at the factory.... that drives me crazy.... I can save so much time, they just need to give me access to use the internet. I can opt to not research and buat keje sambil lewa, but I am not that pathetic. Autocad pun nak control.... freaking komunis. Its not that we engineers do not need these things.

Talking about pathetic, the other day I was so gung-ho about bringing the streamyx home and bridging the digital divide in the household. Apparently, to my horror, streamyx is not available in my "Taman" because we are located >5 km from some Telekom wire or something..... I mean, I am not like in Kapit or Long Semaboh... or to a lesser extent, Serian or Sri Aman.... its Kuching, and no streamyx. No wonder the broadband penetration in Malaysia is only 0.5%.... TM is beyond pathetic.

Rush hour entertainment

Since my workplace is quite a distance from home, I get my fair share of HitzFM every morning. Thats like the only listenable station for me anyways. They have this ourageously annoying segment called "Dr know it All". Dr Know it All has this annoying high pitched voice, and he answers questions from two dumbass dudes who talk like Paul Walker in Fast and Furious. I am just curious, because lately I have not heard "Dr Know it All" on the air. I kind of miss it.... sometimes this segment can be interesting and informative if not funny.

Anyways, Rentokil is suddenly getting so much publicity. All because of news of their success in capturing one giant rat in some Pasar in Kota Bharu, or Norway rat as they call it. I have seen the picture of the rodent in NST, it is freaking huge indeed, and that alone is pretty scary. One medium sized rat can freak me out, let alone one as big as a cat.

Recently, the hitzfm crew pulled a prank on one of them pest control experts from Rentokil. The DJ spoke with some crazy accent supposedly southern... but it was done so over the top that any southerner from America would be offended upon hearing it. The storyline was that one Norway Rat got into the american's apartment, and freaked him out....

Sometimes when I got stuck in traffic, I listen to all these crap playing on the radio and they just make me laugh or at least leave a big grin on my face. In the early evening around 5 to 6.... Radio 4 have some interesting stuff too. The other day, the DJ'S asked the public to create the most creative roti canai. My favourite of them all was "roti besi", which comes in two styles, western and local. Apparently, roti besi western was normal roti canai rolled up like popia, and filled with viagra. And local is filled with tongkat ali lah.

EPL and weekly meeting

EPL is starting in 2 weeks.... how time passes.... the day that Liverpool entitled Champions of Europe seems more like 2 weeks ago. The summer transfer activities were not that interesting in my opinion. However, I think exciting times lie ahead. I think ManU will buy Owen and Ballack, and Arsenal getting Essien. Wah, that would be fantastical. If I am correct, ManU will be so much more a force than they are right now.

Quote of the day: "They are not the Manchester of before. If I were a player, I would laugh about it". (Karl Heinz Rummenigge, Bayern's chairman, on Ballack's ManU move talk)

I think its the other way around. If Rooney wants to move to Bayern, I would be more likely to laugh it off.

I was so puzzled when quite a few people in my department took a leave on a Thursday. I mean, why not Friday and get a 3-day-weekend. Then, I witnessed the cutthroat way they manhandled the Thursday meetings. No wonder people try to escape. It was just a shock to me, meeting macam meeting regim komunis. Whoever is presenting on a particular day will see scuds, tomahawks or molotov cocktails coming his way. Sometimes, you have people like the swiss or swedes throwing missiles at you, people who supposedly have nothing to do with anything.

Link Blogger.....nah

You Are a Link Blogger!

Your blog is more about cool links than thougtful posts. Better to be entertaining and breif than longwinded and boring!

What kind of blogger are you?

What link blogger.... I hardly post any links here.

Truffles

Do you know about truffles.... truffle the fungi, not the chocolate. I have always tried to imagine what does it taste like. Its always featured in iron chef and such cooking programs.... it seems to be the secret ingredient that can make a meal super luxurious and tasty. Today I learned from channel 11 astro that truffles grow wild underground, not cultivated and very hard to harvest (sniffing dogs help in harvest). I actually tried to look up in the internet before, and people acctually sell truffles online. i would imagine that truffles are like turtle eggs or shark fin.... something that is totally unique. I mean, I can eat turtle eggs with rice only and still satisfy my appetite, because turtle egg is like the most delicious egg you can eat. Not that I am saying eating turtle eggs is ok.