Fantasy football

Lets play fantasy football: http://fantasygames.espnstar.com/football/football_index.do?operation=logoutuser_football

I have a team already, but I forgot about it and it was sort of neglected until they sent me an email as a reminder. So, my score is already screwed up. But this is still fun, playing team manager, though they give away prizes to top scorers. The astro pundits each have their own team.... and they have their own so called celebrity league. Surprise surprise... mr Paul Masefield is leading.

The other night, was clicking the remote away when stumbled upon a rerun of NY giants vs San diego chargers game, and that was my first american footbal game since I left ann arbor. Though didnt watch the whole thing, the giants were staging a comeback when I decided its running late and time to sleep. Also witnessed one awesome catch made by jeremy shockey.... omg what fabolous catch, and that reminded me of american football's greatness. But it is so sad to hear the wolverines are at 2-2 right now..... I mean sad but not shocking at the same time. For me, Braylon Edwards is to the wolverines as Theirry Henry is to Arsenal, and he left a humongous gap indeed.

Die Chelsea, die!

I think I have been very prudent with money since started working, because I value it more. But in college, I bought some useless things. On the top of the list is the sony discman that cost me like nearly 200 bucks. I cant believe I bought that crap, in freshman year. It is a quality product, but the problem is that its overpriced and I bought my ipod like a few months after I got the discman. So, never used the discman since. The motorola walkie-talkie is quite useless too. It is there on my desk collecting dust. I think I only used it like twice, when I called epol/jun to come over to my apartment to "winning". Yes, they bought the talkie also, but it was on 50% off, quite hard to resist.

But the other day, while strolling around in a bookshop, killing time, waiting to pickup my sister from school, I decided to buy a FHM. Wah, the stuff in the magazine would make anyone drool(this is open to interpretation). I think I have been so disconnected to the gadget world. I only knew ipod nano is out like today. I think my prudent spending is largely due to a disconnect to product marketing. I think I also have a watch fetish. Man, I wish I could have one of them tag heuers...

I predict chelsea's first loss tonight to Liverpool, the team that last beat them. A romantic prediction, isnt it? Another sleepless night it will be, and tomorrow morning I am off to KL for bats interview. Hopefully I can get some good sleep in flight. Anyways, the three favourites for the champs league in my opinion are chelsea, liverpool and juventus. Liverpool because they have that "mombok" aura(luck, european champs blood running in them, the kop and bla bla)... and the other two because they are simply good.

career path

If I can turn back time, I would do this whole career thing differently. If only I was more optimistic and patient, I would have waited for a good offer instead of jumping into an offer and not drag myself into this whole jobhopping mumbo jumbo mess. I wish that I had the guts to reject job offers. I envy people who get many job offers all in the same time, and have the luxury to pick the best choice.

I wish that I applied to companies that I actually want to work for, instead of mixing them up a bit. But thats a good strategy for me considering my CGPA, pawe lain citer lah. And the not so interesting offers came first.... I think I had no choice but to accept, because I was such a realist. And once I had actually accepted offers, things would get complicated when more interesting companies came calling.

Anyways, I think I need to get out of my current situation. I think the whole place is in a mess, my department is in a mess, and I do not want to drag myself into this mess. I want to escape from the problem, sort of. I dont know about other companies or factories, but here it is chaos. Every request from production to us in Facility dept. is urgent. When every request is urgent, there is chaos, and something is not right.

I am in charge of energy conservation, every week they want me to update. And yet, they dont even have sufficient data of all the facility equipment, or any kind of documentation, or any kind of facility monitoring system. Can you believe it.... such a huge plant with no facility monitoring system? All the facility equipment monitoring is done manually, because the monitoring system broke down like 3 years ago.

Sometimes, when these people ask me to give updates, I fee like telling them " are you freaking stupid.... we dont have data, we cant analyse the equipment's performance... how on earth can we improve them?".... but the bosses are NATO's... No Action Talk Only, and they only want results.

I need more annual leave

I think I am taking this BAT (british american tobacco) seriously. Although it would be really ironic if I do end up there. Me working for tobacco company, hmmm.... and family opinion so far are reduced to comments like "haa nak jual rokok kah".

I guess I will be going to KL again, for the next and final stage. A few more hundred bucks gone... just like that. The final interview format for bat is similar to that of shell.... proposal, case study, group discussion and final interview. Shell's was from 8 to 5. Bat's is from 1:30 pm to 7. Hmmm... I have no idea how they are gonna do this.... everything crammed together.

The position is not engineering related, which is interesting for me. (no engineering=interesting). It is also a trainee position, management trainee, though to be exact its called business technology associate. I have no idea what that is.

Anyway, I am looking for a trainee position, because I want to get proper training. I think I will be better off that way. Currently I am huffing and puffing, and there is no one giving me directions. Everyone including my supervisor is too busy, and no one is willing to help. I am treated like I am not new and it is frustrating. They give me projects and no directions, and I am held fully responsible. Due to my lack of experience, I have overlooked some fairly important things while executing work. My worst nightmare is that I would mess up critical things, and be removed from the project. Now that will be a blow to your self confidence and ego.

Boiling point

Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.

I just cannot stand dumb drivers. Dumb drivers are those who hog the fast lane, and think theres nothing wrong with it. Plenty of them in Kuching. They think they are safe drivers. But they are actually selfish and single minded, and dumb. There are 3 lanes, and they go driving 60 km/h in the fast lane. Maybe they are just dumb and actually dont know traffic law. Sometimes, I feel like stopping these people and give them a slap in the face. Worse are cibai drivers, and these people actually deserve a slap in the face. These are people who for some reason drive slowly in the fast lane, and when you are about to overtake them, they speed up. Just because they dont want people to pass them, because kiasuness and/or cibainess and/or dumbshitness.

Knives out

I cannot wait for tomorrow. It is monday indeed.... and so the cycle will go on. Tomorrow will be the start of a hectic phase of work, for the past month or so I feel like I have been slacking, and sort of got a wake up call last Friday. Now I am nervous and anxious, and thats good because that means that I indeed have awakened. Having said that, I do not like the fact that all of a sudden, time is running out for me to complete this project, after someone like asked to do freaking extra credit to be submitted together with the assignment, deadline not changed. And all that done in a meeting with the contractor and vendor. I was like omg, "just do it".

I have seen Chelsea and particularly Michael Essien play quite a number of times, and I could not be more impressed by both. Chelsea should win the champions league this time, at least they have the pedigree, if not luck. Essien is worth every penny chelsea paid for him, and I will go to such extent: he is better than gerrard and Lampard combined.

Chelsea has gone to 6 wins on the trot, zero goals conceded. At the moment, the only team that I can see beating chelsea is Liverpool. They play similar style, they will cancel each other, and Liverpool with the power of the Kop and a slice of luck will somehow win.

mocha choca latte frappucino....

Today at work, I literally had meetings from 9 to 4. Freaking crazy day. At 4 o clock, I was so tired, I was just waiting for the clock to tick to 5. I was literally sitting at my computer doing nothing, staring at the monitor, right index finger clicking the mouse.... pretending I was at least doing something.....

We have this huge shutdown coming.... for the first time in like 3 years, they are going to stop production for like a week.... to do maintenance. The machines have been running for 3 years non stop, and now this huge miantenance work. They call it annual preventive maintenance.... but I was told that its not done anually.... the last one was like 3 years back. Luck has deserted me.... for the firs time, the maintenance will be done during raya week.....

People were telling me that I should bring pillows and comforter and sleep next to the air handling unit. Some say do not even dream of raya, as I will be at the plant for 24 hours 7.... and freaking cook rendang and lemang at the chiller plant there. Of course these people were just trying to scare me..... and I have confirmed with the boss that I WILL take days off for raya.

Are you kidding me.... I have not celebrated raya for the past 4 years.... nothing will stop me this time, even my job. They never mentioned this shutdown thing during the interview, and I never agreed to come to work on freaking 1 Syawal.....

Public service announcement: LASIK

To get lasik surgery done is like a dream for every bespectacled person. People have no idea how wearing glasses can affect lives. It is uncomfortable, annoying, physically restrictive.... we are handicapped. I seriously think that I am legally blind, because without my glasses, I simply cannot function.

Back to my story, the first time that I have ever thought at all about this LASIK was when I was at Sunway. This was when I stumbled upon a LASIK center next (left) to the pyramid. They advertised it as a miracle.... lose your glasses after painless 30 minute surgery... or something like that. And its somewhat affordable too.

However, I did quite a research on this back then, and found out what they didnt tell us. LASIK is much more risky than advertised. Complications are all too common, from severely dry eyes and astig to total blindness. The percentage of people who got blind due to LASIK was high too.... but forgot how much... Furthermore, if the surgery was successful, it doesnt guarantee that you dont need glasses. If I am not mistaken, 100% of people who need reading glasses, after LASIK, will still need some sort of aid(glasses) for perfect vision.

Anyways, my public service announcement is, if you think of getting LASIK done, do your research, and get a lot of professional opinion.

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.

Q-life crisis

I think there is no such thing as "acting like an adult". From my observation, people only behave like an adult when they need to, ie in front of their kids. 40+ year old colleagues behaving like theyre 18, and its quite hard to believe that they actually have like 2-3 kids. I dont feel like growing up, and at this moment, the idea of me having kids is like Malaysia winning the world cup.

How time passes when we are preoccupied by things. Now, my countdown to the dreaded weekly department meeting starts, and this thursday is my turn to be the chairperson....!!!!!. The big boss has his own favourite target every week... whom he drill gurubesar sekolah menengah style.

So far, I feel like people was giving me a break, because I was new. Last week, the poor guy just stood there, overwhelmed by the "interrogation". I swear he was close to breaking into tears, it was a wonder the boss did not ask him to stand on the table, or give him a stroke of the rotan or something. As a matter of fact, a female colleague actually cried, and as a result, she is no longer the target. As things got complicated.... people actually started to backstab each other lol......

I think the whole thing is a joke. If he dares to target me, I will pull off my best expressionless face and act as if he doesnt matter to me, or retaliate accordingly lol.

Team Building

My whole body is aching right now. I have not been doing much physical activities, and then suddenly going to our "team building" session in Damai, which was quite tough. Our team got second last I think, but for sure we were not in the top three. We started off well indeed, we had the meanest war cry and the first team into the jungle. If not for the ridiculos way they did the timing, we should have been third. The rule was team that complete all challenges at shortest time wins.

The challenges were very "survivor" like. I think the toughest ones, which we did pretty badly in, were the blowpipe and river crossing. Blowpipe.... we were like having no idea how to blowpipe... so just blow lah. And river crossing..... trying to cross a small river on a small log, but with a catch, last in first out, and first in last out. Suffice to say, our strategy involved squatting on the log, and I wasnt the best squatter lol. I think i fell into the river twice and that meant we had to restart twice because of me.

But we restarted like 5 times. However, the ridiculous thing was, we got there before everyone else, so other teams that got there after us had to wait, but their waiting time was not timed. So while we were working our ass off tinking of the best strategy and trial and error, other teams were waiting, observing, resting and not being pennalised at all.

The kayak challenge was tougher than I expected. I thought kayaking for 1 km was like eating peanut, so I volunteered to paddle. But, we had 2 kayaks with 2 paddlers on each, and we had to transport all 9 of our team members from one side of mount santubong to the other side. So we made the decision to go on one trip, which means we had 2 or 3 "swimmers", or more accurately "floaters", holding on to each kayak. We were also going against the wind and sea current. After that event I just went kaput.

Job sucks

I think I am starting to dislike my job. It doesnt interest me at all. I am starting to think that my previous company was a better place. Despite the low salary, at least I would be travelling a lot, albeit only to KL, and money was no problem, so the company like to spend. I mean, I had a makcik serving me coffee and kuih everyday, and staff dinners and crap like that. Here.... its all about cost cutting and achieving "cheapness" in everything.

I think I need a new job, something more exciting that involves travelling in helicopters to oil rigs maybe... hehe. Damn.... failed at the very last hurdle at shell..... why was I such an absolute moron/idiot that day. I think I will go into denial mode, and believe that everything happens for a reason.