It's been a while ...

4th October 2009, that was the last entry on this blog.

Things have been pretty crazy in October and November.

First of all, the bid which we have been working hard on over the past year has just been awarded. HURRAH! What that meant was a whole bunch of preparation work in mid-October, followed by a LONG (2 week) training trip up to San Diego.


Pacific Ocean Sunset, La Jolla, San Diego (Click for slideshow)

San Diego Trip
Many people say that San Diego has got one of the best climates in the world, and I couldn't agree more. It's nice, cool and dry all year round. Not much natural disasters and generally a nice, peaceful place to live in.

Anyway, our training here was pretty tiring as we had a continuous 10 days of training (Yes, INCLUDING weekends). This is because of the tight schedule and as such we cannot afford to delay the start of the project because of training. In spite of this, we still managed to go out in the evenings for dinner, some shopping and generally to soak in some of the evening sights.

All in all, it was a fruitful trip. Fruitful in the sense that both the official (i.e. training) and unofficial (i.e. shopping and eating) objectives were achieved. :D

Back Home
After the tiring trip, we had only 1 day of rest before work started. And work was full day meetings and discussions for almost 2 more continuous weeks! Nothing much exciting to blog here though.

Finally
Now that the initial stage of the project is done, we can finally take a short breather before the next phase starts in a week's time. (Just to let you know in case you do not see any more updates here, you know I am busy working. REALLY.)

Imagine ...

Your Section had received orders to take this very important hill at all costs. Intel informed you that the area is lightly defended, so you take only what you need. When you arrived, you find yourself surrounded by a well entrenched platoon, supported by mortar fire. You press on ...

It was an uphill battle. One Section against so many enemy troops, you are outnumbered. Fighting for days, you grow tired. Reinforcements are badly needed, but none were in sight. You begin to wonder about the real importance of this hill ...

Suddenly, HQ radios in that reinforcements were available. They join in the fight. However, as they were engaging the enemy, some of your comrades are hit by their friendly fire ...

Through the smoke, you can see the objective at the top of the hill is now near. The battle is nearly over. In a hours time, you could be standing on top of the hill and planting your flag. However, even though the battle could be won, the war is not over.

Your troops are exhausted and some are wounded. You are still stuck with your reinforcements, and there is a high chance of an enemy counter attack. The question is, will you stay and defend because of that piece of land, or because you fought so hard for it?

Commitment

What is commitment?

Does doing a project and working more than 100 hours of OT, sacrificing valuable family time and having your health affected count?

What happens when after all these, the boss of the project tells your team to stop "messing around" and wants to put everyone in a room for a week to "focus" on completing more tasks?

Is it a question of commitment? Productivity? Or is there some other motive?

New Office

After months of planning (or not), we finally moved into our new office on October 1st 2007. The move wasn't the most organised, but still it went pretty smoothly.

By the looks of it, our new office is smaller. However, it is conveniently located on the first floor and parking is much less of a problem than our old office. But for those that don't drive, it may be slightly inconvenient as there isn't an MRT station within walking distance so many of them have to take buses.

We retained our old cubicles (to save cost) but they were laid out differently. Our cubicles have almost next to no partitioning (i.e. super low). In fact, it is more of a "space" rather than a "cubicle". Because of this, one can almost see the whole office while seated. From where I am seated, due to the direction I am facing and the 2-3 huge pillars in the room, I can only see less than 20% of the entire office (i.e. the entrance, meeting room doors, document/printing centre and 2 other cubicles). The rest of the cubicles are behind my back.

Wasn't really too used to this because you never know who is behind you as 80% of the office walks past/near you to reach the entrance or to the meeting rooms. There is a sense of lack of privacy and the unknown. Anyway, to "cure" this I have consulted some "feng shui" sites:

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/id-1113.html
http://www.effectivemeetings.com/design/workplace/fengshui_part2.asp

For now, I have made up the following shopping list of essential items to put in my cubicle:

1. Mirror
2. Plants (odd number)
3. Picture of flowing water (waterfall or river)
4. Personal non-work related picture
5. ???

So far, I've got the mirror, will install it tomorrow and see if it works! Also, have printed out this picture of a waterfall as well as a personal photo.

Losing Focus

Man, I can't believe its been almost a month since my last post! Perhaps life is getting boring and there's nothing interesting since the boat trip, or perhaps I've been too busy. Think maybe its a combination of both.

For the past month, all I can remember was work. Sad isn't it. Seem to be losing focus too. Being a jack of all trades may not be that great after all. Yes, you get to do different things, sometimes there are too many different things at once and you lose focus, result is you try to complete everything but sacrifice quality.

For example in a single day, one moment you can be doing a technical proposal, next moment a project report, then debugging C++ code, then looking at financials for a tender submission, then helping/advising colleagues, then going for an internal meeting, then after you finish all that and go home at 8pm, you receive a call from another customer at midnight requiring you to go down to their site immediately to fix a system problem ... is that supposed to be normal??!

Luckily, not everyday is like that.

Another interesting thing was that yesterday, I was asked in the morning if I was available to fly to somewhere in the Middle-East that same evening. Talk about last minute! Those who were supposed to go had family (i.e. kids) commitments. Unfortunately, I don't have such an excuse. But I would have gladly gone if there wasn't so much stuff I had to complete/prepare. Maybe I should have gone and left everything else to "fate", things will sometimes sort themselves out, somehow...

Anyway, my good colleague took over and he is probably there by now. I guess you can expect some Mid-Eastern foodie entry in his blog soon. :-)

Oh yes, and I also promise to write more often. Time to get ready to go to the office ...

Being a good "Corporate Citizen"

It has been ages since I had done anything for the Community, so I guess its about time. We were to spend the evening accompanying elderly folk to the Chinese Garden to enjoy the mid-Autumn festivities. Things didn't really get off to a good start as there were some work committments to be sorted out before going. So ended up driving to the restaurant where the elderly folks were having their dinner (and getting slightly lost along the way). General_

The dinner was nothing to shout about. There were 6 elderly at our table with 4 volunteers. 2 uncles and 4 aunties, with one of the uncles dominating the conversation at the table. Was able to speak to him as well as 2 of the aunties who were surprised that I can speak Cantonese at this day and age. They were complaining that all their grandchildren can't even understand their own dialect.

After dinner was the "stroll" through the Chinese Gardens. Personally, I felt that we were "tekaning" the old folks, making them walk round the dark, hazy, hot, stuffy and crowded place. Hopefully some of them enjoyed themselves.

It was a challenge trying to take photos in the dark environment, handheld, and with a point and shoot camera. Furthermore I was a little "sianz 1/2" cos I thot I had lost my wallet (which was found later in my car after the event). Some passable photos of the event are available HERE.

Anyway, the best part was reaching home and getting a nice hot shower. Looks like I'm not really cut out to be a good volunteer, but hey at least I tried ...