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the otnaicus daily

Edition 241 – Back!!

Yes, I’m back. But not for a post-CNY posting but just to rant. Still editing photos for the CNY post so I shall rant for now.

The past week has been crazy. First day back at work in Taipei I stayed till 8pm. A lot of small little things to clean up and working hard to clean those things up. Why clean up? Because this week, we start what we in the profession call SIT. That stands for Systems Integration Testing. One of the last few stages of the project before the project closes. So that’s good news, being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, there’s another tunnel at the end of this tunnel and it’s known as Phase 2. I shall rant about that when I get more details.

The whole of last week’s experiences made me wonder about why some people work the way they work. Why would someone want to make things difficult for himself, drag things out, and in the process also drag another party down together with him? Wouldn’t it be more beneficial for that person to cooperate and work to solve things ASAP? Well, that’s what I’ve been facing the whole of last week and to say it has been frustrating may be too little. And just because another project A is relying on project B doesn’t mean that project A has to do project B’s testing. But then again, this is the case and that’s another frustrating point. And the “best” part? Me getting “kan chiong” over their problem. Sigh…

What can I say? It’s all in a good learning experience huh? Meeting people, seeing the way they work, getting frustrated, learning how to work with them, getting over it and gleaning a lesson from the experience. And thanks be to God for the strength and perseverance.

Pray that this week will be better. Maybe I’ll get frustrated over other things but at least it’s a change in the things I get frustrated over. Haha. But whatever it is, the project is coming to an end. Well, at least this part of the project.

Enough ranting. Time for me to get back to work now. I promise to get the photos for the post-CNY post ready and hopefully, the next post will be about that. Until the next time, cheers… :Þ

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the otnaicus daily

Edition 232 – Post Chinese New Year

Sorry that I haven’t blogged in a while. Penang went by like a blur and I wished that the holiday was longer. But I’m now back in Singapore and back to “reality”. I will update with more pictures very soon. Just don’t want this blog to start having cobwebs again.

Promise a substantial update soon. Until then, cheers… :Þ

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the otnaicus daily

Edition 240 – Holiday Mood

gathering_food_20080204

A picture to set the Chinese New Year mood for this year. Anyway, it’s amazing how one can slip into a holiday mood in the span of one day. Yesterday, I was still hard at work trying to troubleshoot some problems that I’m facing while integrating with another system and getting pretty frustrated at it. And today, when I stepped into the office, it was pretty empty and the holiday mood sank in. Nevertheless, the fight has begun against that holiday mood…

gathering_20080204 Had a fun time at a Michelle’s place yesterday night. We had our traditional yearly gathering over steamboat and chit-chat. Yesterday’s included screenings and some fun with the Wii. It was great catching up, enjoyed in the company of friends unwinding after a long day. The evening even stretched till almost 1am for some of us. Why? The Wii is simple too addictive. Want to see how ridiculous one can look while playing “Boxing”? Check out the video below. Simply fun and fascinating.

Headed back to Penang tomorrow for CNY. Will be there for about a week and I hope that I don’t have to touch work much. I just want to rest and relax, enjoy a few laps in the pool, and get as far away from work as I can. And of course to spend precious time with my family, this time with my sister included in the mix. I think she missed the last two Chinese New Years. And Debbie is joining me as well. So it’s shaping up to be a fun getaway.

Got to go jump back into work now. Will update again when I’m back in Penang. And yes, I have broadband there now. Although 512Kbps, it’s still better than nothing. So until the next time, cheers… :Þ

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the otnaicus daily

Edition 239 – Home!

Feels great to be back. Touched down yesterday afternoon at around 11.45am and was home by around 1pm. Got a haircut to get ready for Chinese New Year, spent some time with Debbie and came home to, wait for it, WORK! Thought I could get some rest in but made the mistake of powering up my work laptop and checking the email. Ended up with a tonne of email that required my attention.

I’m looking forward to Chinese New Year. Headed back to Penang for about a week to spend time with my family and to get away from work for a while. Taiwan has their CNY holiday from 6 Feb till 11 Feb. So at least for those days, emails should be kept to a minimum. Work or no work, emails or no emails, I am determined get some rest in and to just relax in Penang.

If you’re wondering why I’m up so early in the morning blogging, trust me, I would rather be still sleeping at the moment, or be on my way to Expo for the rehearsal for a drama that’s happening this weekend. I’m up early trying to get some work in, to show our “commitment” (as my PM put it) and try to get problems solved. But here’s the catch. I have no clue as to what else I can do and I need to communicate with some engineers in Taiwan, whom might have a clue to what is happening, but we’re doing it via email which can get frustrating. Want to call them, but they don’t seem to want to give me a phone number. But to be fair, maybe I did send out the email yesterday night a tad late. Nevertheless, I shall wait around for a bit till around 1pm. Then I’ll just report back to my PM and go off to church. Hence I’m playing the waiting game.

I’m going to stop here for now. If I don’t blog again before Chinese New Year, here’s wishing everybody a Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year!! Until the next time, cheers… :Þ

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Edition 238 – PersonalDNA

A friend sent me this link to this personality quiz. It’s called PersonalDNA. And the following are the results of my test.

You are a considerate leader

You are a Leader:
Your solid grounding in the practicalities of life, along with your self-assuredness and your willingness to appreciate new things make you a LEADER.

You’re in touch with what is going on around you and adept at remaining down-to-earth and logical.

Although you’re detail-oriented, this doesn’t mean that you lose the big picture.

You tend to find beauty in form and efficiency, as opposed to finding it in broad-based, abstract concepts.

Never one to pass on an adventure, you’re consistently seeking and finding new things, even in your immediate surroundings.

Because of this eagerness to pursue new experiences, you’ve learned a lot; your attention to detail means that you gain a great deal from your adventures.

The intellectual curiosity that drives you leads you to seek out causes of and reasons behind things.

Your confidence gives you the potential to take your general awareness and channel it into leadership.

You’re not set on one way of doing things, and you often have the skills and persistence to find innovative ways of facing challenges.

You are well-attuned to your talents, and can deal with most problems that you face.

You’re not one to force your positions on a group, and you tend to be fair in evaluating different options.

You prefer to have time to plan for things, feeling better with a schedule than with keeping plans up in the air until the last minute.

If you want to be different:
There’s more to life than the practical – take some time to daydream and explore the aesthetic sides of things.

 

How you relate to others

You are Considerate
You trust others, care about them, and are slow to judge them, making you CONSIDERATE.

You value your close relationships very much, and are more likely to spend time in small, tightly-knit groups of friends than in large crowds.

You enjoy exploring the world through observation, quietly watching others.

Relating to others so well, and understanding their emotions, leads you to trust people in general, even though you’re somewhat shy and reserved at times.

Your belief that people are generally well-intentioned contributes to your sympathy regarding their problems.

Although you may not vocalize it often, you have an awareness of how society affects individuals, and you understand complex causes of people’s behavior.

You like to look at all sides of a situation before making a judgment, particularly when that situation involves important things in other people’s lives.

Your close friends know you as a good listener.

If you want to be different:
Because other people would benefit immensely from your understanding and insight, you should try to be more outgoing in social situations, even when they make you uncomfortable. Others will want to hear what you have to say!

Yup… That’s the result of my test… Accurate? Until the next time, cheers… :Þ

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the otnaicus daily

Edition 237 – Quote Of The Day

Heard this quote from a friend a while back. Shook me quite a bit when I heard it.

Specificity is the basis of all co-operation.

Rev. Dr. A. R. Bernard

Profound? Let me explain a little bit. Imagine that you wanted a cup of non-fat, no-foam caramel latte from Starbucks. You asked your assistant to help you get one but when you told him/her, you just said you wanted a cup of coffee, expecting that he/she would be able to get the job done correctly. But all your assistant did was run over to the nearest coffee shop to get you a cup of black coffee. Not what you wanted at all, right? Now, if you would have specified exactly to your assistant that you wanted a non-fat, no-foam caramel latte, your assistant would have been able to do the job correctly and be up to your expectations.

Apply that to the bigger things in life, such as the projects that you manage. You can see that tasks can’t be done to exact specifications if the specifics weren’t there in the first place.

So there you go. Some food for thought. Cheers… :Þ

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the otnaicus daily

Edition 236 – Week Over!

I’m kinda glad that the week is over. It marks the end of my two weeks acting as PM for the project. Challenging but I feel that I’ve come out of it learning something and one step closer towards realizing my dream of being a project manager. At the end of the day, I think I can say that I’ve learnt to swim fast enough to keep me from drowning. While I thank God for the opportunity, I also thank God that it’s over. Heh…

Had a pretty good dinner earlier. It was the appreciation dinner for the local company that my company has partnered with for this project. So the vendors working on site were invited too. Felt very awkward in the beginning because nobody talked and was very quiet. Thank God that things loosened as the evening progressed. But even as we enjoyed ourselves talking to each other, I noticed that almost nobody talked to the boss. Made me wonder exactly how lonely can leadership be. Because in the eyes of most employees, the boss is just that, a boss. No matter how outgoing or friendly a boss can be, employees may think that the boss has ulterior motives somehow. Or maybe they’re scared of what the boss might think of them if they loosened up too much. Oh well….

I realised today that it’s 11 months exactly to Christmas. Not that I miss Christmas but it just simply means that January is OVER!!! My goodness, that’s just fast. Pretty soon, you’ll start the new Chinese year and February will be half gone before you know it. It’s scary how time flies.

One more week before I head back to Singapore. It’ll be great to be back in Singapore, even though it’s only for a few days before heading to Penang. I think the few days back will be a busy one for me. Gotta run around getting stuff and gotta meet up with a good friend because that’s the only chance I get. Can’t wait…

So I’m headed off to bed. It’s the weekend but I’m tired out from the week. Gotta get my beauty sleep. So until the next time, cheers… :Þ

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the otnaicus daily

Edition 235 – Yet Another Object Of Desire

macbookair

Yes, yes… I’ve said that I definitely would not splash money to get the MacBook Air but it still looks great doesn’t it? Nice and thin, and light enough to be carried around every day. And a 5-hour battery life. Just fantastic.

Now, would a sponsor please stand up and identify yourself?

Cheers… :Þ

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the otnaicus daily

Edition 234 – A Heck Of A Week

The title of the post kind of describes my week. The week holds both ups and downs and I shall try to recap in this post.

Last Sunday, I had my first meal in a Taiwanese’s home. It was a gathering of friends and we had steamboat. Even though a lot of faces were strange faces to me and a couple of friends, I still enjoyed the evening thoroughly. Took tonnes of pictures of friend’s baby. The baby is very brave. Let so many people carry and yet not a single sound from him. A very outgoing baby indeed. Haha.

Then Monday came. And I was alone. My PM wasn’t around, away for reservist training. So everything thing to do with the project came to me. Meetings, documentation, following up on things, emails, conferences, etc. So much so that I didn’t have time to do any development work that’s currently on my table. But in the end, I felt that I accomplished something. That something is what one cannot achieved if one is sheltered by another person above. True, you get all the “arrows” and “knives” that are being thrown around but that’s how we grow. I guess being thrown into the deep end of the pool has it’s merits. You either sink or learn to swim very very quickly. I’m glad that I’m coping. But since I didn’t really keep track of the project very closely from the beginning, a lot of things I still have to consult with my PM and so I guess this weekend may have a long conference all with him in store.

And so, Friday is here. I’m glad for the rest that the weekends bring. Next week is one more week without the PM around. Hopefully I can get most things sorted out with him during the weekend while he’s out from camp. And hope next week is not such a taxing week. Thank God for his guidance throughout the entire week. Tiring but I think, to a certain extent, quite fruitful.

Time to get back to work. Until the next time, cheers… :Þ

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Edition 233 – Problems….

I know some of you may experience problems accessing my blog, especially those in Singapore using SingTel connections. Apparently, my hosting service is experiencing some kind of distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDOS). This is a kind of attack on a web host/site that tries to deny other people access to the web host’s servers. Anyway, they’re saying that some ISPs are restricting access to my web host’s servers and hence the slow loading times or impossible loadings.

I’m sourcing to see if I can find an alternate hosting service that’s affordable for me. If the situation doesn’t improve soon, I would seriously consider a shift to an alternate web host. So in the mean time, please bear with me a little.

My usual rants and postings will go on. So do try to check back to new posts. Until the next time, cheers… :Þ