Meeting Madness

Lately ni, aku dah rasa macam dalam kartun kat atas ni. Hari-hari meeting. Masuk ofis terus meeting. Before lunch meeting. After lunch meeting. Petang meeting. Malam kat rumah pun meeting conference call lagi. Bila ada pre-meeting just to prepare for the real meeting then ada pula after meeting to discuss and review the meeting, memang sah meeting madness. Makin lama makin berkarat teknikal kalau keep going on macam ni.

All that glitters...

Back in AU, for how long tak tau lagi. Based on previous schedule might come back to CBJ after Raya. Freezing cold la ni. Maximum temperature is at 15C. Minimum is at 3C. Duduk dalam rumah pun pakai sweater & stokin. Most of the houses in AU takdak central heating or heated carpet like in UK, yang ada kat sini cuma portable electric heater. But sejuk kat sini still bearable.

Monday back to WA office. Harap workload tak setimbun macam kat CBJ. But I doubt it. Two big projects yang most likely aku kena involve..satu relocation of one of our customer's data center, satu lagi new maintenance agreement for three IBM p5-595. If both projects lepas, the revenue for this remote office will be almost double from its existing value.

Tokey kedai nak more time in CBJ but he also wants more time in AU. So he is suggesting to commute on weekly basis back and forth to CBJ/AU which aku rasa agak melampau. Still negotiating though. If the plan goes ahead, naik kapal terbang dah jadi macam naik bas express balik kampung tiap-tiap minggu. Which is ridiculous.

A few days ago, conduct several interview sessions. Ni sama position masa aku conduct interview previously kat AU. Received about 150+ resume. Aku filtered down to 10. Out of these 10, 7 agreed to come for the interview. Out of these 7, only 5 yang betui-betui tunjuk muka masa interview. Sorang telepon kata demam flu tak leh mai interview at 4:30pm and minta reschedule, but he was calling me from office. Masa tu pukul 12:00 tgh. If you can come to the office for work, then definitely you can come for an interview. Terus potong nama. Sorang lagi pula interview at 9:30am, around 8:00am dia call kata takleh mai interview and minta reschedule sebab kena on-call kerja. Alasan tak diterima. Terus potong nama juga. Nak mai interview pun tak bersungguh, I doubt you will bersungguh nak kerja nanti.

Out of 5 yang datang, semua tak lepas. They are not fresh grads. Semua dah ada experience kerja. And good experience I must say. Kalau tak, mesti tak shortlisted for the interview. But honestly, aku disappointed dengan all 5 candidates. We don't even really ask about technical questions masa interview tu. Just tanya common questions pun tak leh nak jawab. Yang sorang tu bila aku tanya "Do you know about XXX, the company that you are applying for this role?" Dia boleh jawab tak tau. Aku tanya hang tak research kaa, or tak tengok website company kaa. Dia jawab tak. What the hell.

Yang sorang ni lagi best, bila aku tanya "Why we should hire you?" Selamba mamat ni jawab, "I don't know" sambil sengeh-sengeh. Masa tu aku muka serius abis. Manager yang lagi sorang pun serius. Tapi mamat ni boleh dok sambung gelak sengeh-sengeh lagi. "I don't know....Hehehe...Don't know". Lawak gila. It's true apa yang selalu orang kata, it's not about your technical skills or knowledge, it's all about attitude. Skills or knowledge memang penting but if you don't have them, still boleh belajar. It may take sometime though but masih boleh diterima. But attitude is something yang susah nak ubah. Your mindset is something yang susah nak ubah.

Out of 5, aku tau ada 1-2 yang memang bersungguh nak kerja tu. But they still crack bila apply pressure masa interview tu. Mungkin depa gabra sama. The same applies to everyone including myself. Semua orang akan crack bila under pressure, it's just kena tahu masing-masing punya threshold. Maybe just bukan rezeki depa this time.

One of the managers was saying to me that he had to go through 60 interview sessions just to pick up one candidate. And it was worth it. Now I have to go through all of this again bila balik CBJ. By saying all of the above, I learned a lot about myself too from these interview sessions.

Wednesday night had meetings at KLIA Pan Pacific business center. Lepas tu terus buffet dinner. RM80++ per head. Gila mahal for buffet. I had one of the most refreshing drink malam tu...apple+carrot+ginger mixed. Sedap ayaq ni. Lepas dinner sambung another meeting this time kat coffee house Pan Pac. By the time semua selesai dan sampai rumah dah almost 12 midnight. Pagi-pagi Khamis dah cargas to office, first meeting at 8:30am. Thursday lunch pun meeting lagi, this time at Pullman Putrajaya. I think buffet RM55++ per head. Still mahal aku rasa. Tapi semua ni makan free. That's the best part bila tokey kedai ada sekali. Makan minum ditanggung. Tapi yang tak best, anytime boleh kena maki hamun tak tentu pasal. As long as you know your boss is mental, you'll be fine. Hehehe. Malam pula another conference call with the Latinos till 10pm.

All of these....good food, good health, good education, good job, good salary, great family and friends, great love, warm & cosy house, nice expensive car, everything in this world...is nothing actually. Semuanya on loan to us. One day or any day from now, satu-satu akan kena tarik balik. There will be nothing left except your deeds. Just a gentle reminder to myself.

All, as they say, that glitters, is not gold.

I need a language translator...

It's funny when you are shoved into a meeting without knowing heads or tails of the meeting's agenda. For a moment you just sit quietly in a corner, your mind blanked out trying to digest what people are talking about. Lepas a few minutes, masih tak dapat nak tangkap lagi apa depa ni dok sembang. Lebih teruk kalau tak dapat nak paham completely their sentences because of the slang that they used. Macam English slang Kelantan. Or English slang Negeri Sembilan.

Aku baru lepas conference call dengan sorang Australian, sorang German, dua orang Philippines, sorang Argentinian, sorang Brazilian and sorang Chilean. Aku rasa depa ni bukan cakap English dah dalam meeting tadi tapi dah jadi macam meeting dalam bahasa Spanish. Nasib bukan aku yang ambik meeting minutes.

Lain kali kena ada translator macam dalam video ni baru senang nak paham...


By the way, yang mimic Italian ni sejibik macam boss aku cakap. Dan yang paling best...."This is not my sandwich." LOL.

SAN Design

Trying to learn to do storage properly this time. Selalunya tengok at operating systems side of things but storage is important too actually. To design SAN environment is not a trivial matter. Especially if you want a Level 4 multiple fabrics and device paths with no-single-point-of-failure (NSPOF). Designing is just not on theory only, we need to know the hardware juga....what is GBIC, SFP, SC-LC, SC-SC, HBA, Host initiator, disk target, switched fabric, Brocade switches, Cisco switches, etc...etc...and all of these are just from HP Storage point of view, belum masuk IBM Storage lagi. Serabut juga lah kepala.

Some reading references for myself :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre_Channel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber_connector
http://www.iol.unh.edu/services/testing/fc/training/tutorials/fc_tutorial.php

And the best of the bunch, 6 pdf SAN design documents to read from HP itself.
http://www.hp.com/go/sandesign

Kopi terkujat

Aku bukan nak minum sangat pun pagi tadi tapi sebab dah sampai awai kat training center, perut pun belum breakfast aku pun singgah lah San Francisco Coffee yang betui2 depan pintu bilik training.

As usual, aku reti minum regular flat white saja. Ayaq kopi jenis lain aku tak reti. Tau tak regular flat white berapa ringgit kat San Francisco Cofffe? RM$9.45!! Secawan almost sepuluh ringgit tuuuuuuuuuu. Terkujat gila aku pagi tadi. Nasib tak tersembur ayaq kopi kat minah cashier tu.

Serious this is the first and last time aku beli flat white dekat San Francisco Coffee for my breakfast.

Corporate Lessons

From my inbox,

CORPORATE LESSON 1
A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day.
A small rabbit saw the crow, and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?”
The crow answered: "Sure, why not.”
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested.
All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story:
To be sitting and doing nothing you must be sitting very, very high up.

CORPORATE LESSON 2
A turkey was chatting with a bull.
"I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy.”
"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull. "They're packed with nutrients."
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree.
The next day, after eating more dung, he reached the second branch.
Finally after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree.
Soon he was spotted by a farmer...Who promptly shot the turkey out of the tree.

Moral of the story:
Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

CORPORATE LESSON 3
A little bird was flying south for the winter.
It was so cold, the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field.
While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it.
As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realise how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out.
He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy.
A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate.
Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him!

The morals of this story are:
1) Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy.
2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
3) And when you're in deep shit,keep your mouth shut

All five horizons...

Another PJ's finest. Cherish.

Revenge of the Crap

What a crap movie. Oh yes, Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen is such a crap movie. Crap. Crap. Crap. The first movie in 2007 was so-so, boleh tahanlah juga but this one was way too much. Apo kobondo eh jang. Penat aku bersusah payah nak make sure dapat seat best kat dalam panggung, tapi movie macam cipan. And the fight scene at the ending was way too longgggg. And boring. Lawak selit-selit pun aku rasa dah tak lawak. Devastator's steel balls? Serius tak lawak.

Even Terminator:Salvation was much better in my opinion. At least in Terminator ada selit lagu Alice in Chains, that was good enough for me. So far the only Transformers movie yang paling best is the animated movie from 1986. Yang tu memang best. Nasib ada Mikaela and Alice dalam Transformers yang baru ni, kalau tak memang lagi macam cipan.

What's wrong with this year movies release? Wolverine macam hampeh. Star Trek pun lebih kurang hampeh. Angels and Demons sahih hampeh. Terminator pun nyaris hampeh. Transformers bukan setakat hampeh tapi total crapstatic.

Straw that broke the camel's back

There is a limit to how much straw a camel can carry on its back. If you keep putting more straw on top, it will finally break the camel's back. Susah laa ini macam kalau asyik jadi unta, baik jadi lori trailer bila tensen tak puas hati boleh juga transform jadi Optimus Prime.