Renovation in Progress

It's a Wednesday afternoon, where most working adults are struggling to get through their lazy afternoon. Here I am, sipping my cuppa Brazilian coffee at Starbucks, devouring a plate of strawberry cake ... AAhhhh...... Life just can't get any better man!! Don't get me wrong, I AM working :) It so happens that our office is under renovation, I am "forced" to set up my temporary working place at Starbucks, thanks to free Wi-Fi here!!

The best thing about working in my company is, I don't report to anyone here in the KL office. My immediate boss happens to be based in Singapore, so as long as I'm online and my Skype is green, I'm considered working. Oh, I'm getting paid full time as well (including blogging)!!

Technical Support 101

I work in a high tech firm, where we provide high tech solutions to high tech clients. Our software cost easily few hundred thousand bucks. On top of that, we're charging clients for their maintenance as well as tech support. Every time we sell a product, we always boast about our
"comprehensive maintenance program.... Free upgrades, 24 hours 7 days a week free online support....etc" It always sound so attractive when the sales people says it! Nevertheless, being a typical AMERICAN firm, we just can't help being weasels. It' s just our nature.

Being an engineer myself, I fully understand the need for a fast and prompt (and useful) response to their problem. After all, we're talking about billions of dollars spent on building infrastructures, oil refineries, power plants...etc. It's unfair to penalize the clients just because the software is faulty.

Whenever our clients log on to our maintenance web site, they get to chat with an online analyst. They are paying for that anyway. Here's what happens:

Client :"I've got some problems with the software."
Analyst:" I'm sorry, the expert is currently unavailable, and could you try sending in your request through email?"

Damn, Not a bit helpful! So you're left with no choice but to shoot an email to tech support. Once you sent the mail, immediately you'll get an auto response with something like "The difficulty of your request will determine the time which you will receive a prompt response..." Now the word "difficulty" is sort of like a grey area. From an engineer's point of view, anything they can't solve IS always difficult. But from the software developer's point of view, it may just be some trivial matter and may not be given priority.

I understand now why tech firms like us only provide online support and never on the site support. Clients can't strangle us in case everything turns into shit! In a way, they’re getting their balls squeezed by us!!

After all, we’re just a bunch of weasels here...

$$$Show Me The Money $$$!!!

My mummy once told me, if I ever owe money to someone, it's always a good habit to repay it as soon as possible. "Sei sui zhai, mm hou zhang yan chin ah!!!" (stupid boy, don't owe other people money ah!!) It's a virtue, something you learned in school.

You walked 2 miles to buy lunch for your colleague but that idiot didn't want to pay you, he's a bloody cheapskate. You forgot to service your car loan, the bank will charge you penalty for late payment. You owe money to Ah Long, they'll decorate your house with red paints and probably force you to run drugs, or force your daughter into prostitution. Needless to say, the consequence of “Late Payment” is always severe.

However, I believe no one told my company's management about such policy. You see, in my employment contract, it is written clearly that "50% of my bonus will be given out every quarterly," meaning every 3 months I'm suppose to receive part of my bonus. I've been here for more than 9 months now and I haven't got a bloody single cent yet! All the management can afford to say is "Oh, our International Office is still counting....etc." Excuse me for my ignorance, but the last time I checked with the atlas, the US is still sitting on the same planet as we are, so 3 months here in Asia should be the same in the US rite?

For God sake, how complicated can it be??!! I may be an engineer and not some financial expert, but I doubt counting money can be as difficult as fluid mechanics or thermodynamics theory. Who cares if we are voted as Company of the Year in the US, who cares if our product sales is voted as Number One, but if employees are deprived of their well deserved bonus, it's still a total screwed up company!

Since I'm not getting my money, I can't replace my broken coffee plunger, meaning I can't get my usual coffee dosage. Less caffeine in my blood will result in lower work productivity. Oh no, my vision is getting blurry, can't see... hands trembling.... arrgghh..........

As you can see, late payment always comes with severe consequences.

Snap and crash

I remember the old Malay proverb "Malang Tak Berbau," meaning shit happens anytime anywhere, even during photographing. I was back in Seremban last weekend, planning to take some night shots around the town. Since they renovated the old Lake Gardens, I thought it would be a good place to start.

As I was walking up the staircase in the near darkness, I accidentally stepped onto a puddle of water. Before I knew it, my left foot slipped and I crashed into the muddy water!! Celaka betul man!!! In the process of the "not-so-glamorous" crash, I broke my tripod and earned myself a swollen right arm. But thankfully my G3 was still intact.

Anyway, did manage to get some photos, like the State Library and the Pentas Terapung.

Stating the Obvious

There are some people who actually find enjoyment in stating the obvious. For example "Hey, how come your nose got hair ah?" or "Do you normally stand when you pee at the urinal ah?" Don't you just feel like slapping them??!!

I have the "privilege" to work with such a moron (ok la, he's my superior, so shoot me for calling him a moron!!.....). He's suppose to be a Sales Director, and yet he doesn't know a shit what he's selling!! occasionally I get some annoying e-mails from him asking some silly questions. Of course, silly questions come with silly answers:

Q:What's the difference between our Piping and Isometric modules?
me: Piping is to produce piping whereas Isometric is to produce isometrics.... (DUH!!!)

Q: What does our Structural module does?
me: It's to produce structural .... (double DUH!!)

At times I got so annoyed that copy-paste directly from our corporate webpage would usually do the trick (he could have just easily read it there as well)

To a certain extent, he is every employee's worst nightmare, and I'm the unlucky soul who happens to be part of his direct underling. Being in a managerial position of a technology company, it is important for him to act smart. Thus, it's a real challenge for him to stay ahead of the tech trend, even though he rarely understands them. A good sales person should also know how to promote his product. Stating the obvious is a definite NO NO, such as:

"We have a wide range of products that suits your needs. Our Piping module is to draw piping. This is our Equipment module, it is to draw equipment. This is Data Manager, it is to manage your data....etc " or "The latest version of USTN V8 is the 8th Version."

Alamak!! This kind of sales talk even a ciku brat like me also can do la!!

A lesson I learned in dealing with this sort of people is never ever get into any serious discussion with them. Chances are he'll try to talk smart and create tons of unnessary strain, which may give you a heart attack. Arguing with him is like trying to wrestle a pig in a puddle of mud. The more you wrestle, the more he likes it! The key for survival here is pure ignorance. Any e-mails from him should be labeled as spam and sent straight to the junkmail folder. If he ever question about it, you can always argue "Mail? What e-mail? I didn't get any?? When did you sent it?? You sure you clicked the sent button??" Being technically challenged, he won't know anyway.

In a nutshell, always remember that Ignorance is Bliss, and Bliss brings Happiness!!

Where to for Lunch?

"Where to for lunch ah?? What to eat? Any nice food around?" Those are the questions that most of us would ask during lunch. Damn, a simple act of having lunch can be quite a headache! I'm not sure about you guys but for us, we just can't bloody decide what to eat, or where to eat. Come on man, 5 days eating at the same place sure die la!! Gotta have some variety.

There's this chap fan (mixed rice) shop around my office, called Master Chef. That bugger has been there for more than a decade, must be bloody rich now! His food are so-so only, but damn oily. Lately, his price has gone up too! For two vegetables and a meat, it used to cost around Rm3.50. Now it cost more than RM4. Phuui!!!

Further down the road just opposite Radius Hotel, there's this Dai Chau stall aka dirty stall. The cooking stoves are just by the road side, where extra dirt from moving vehicles are part of the recipe. Occasionally you can see a couple of rats running around the stall too. This is definitely not a place for the faint-hearted!

It's 11.50am now, time to crack my head ..... where to for lunch!!

I thought I saw Henry

In response to Henry's comment, yes, I did went for a short vacation at Melaka last week. In fact, I thought I saw you there!! Here's your photo:

Sunrise @ Redang island

Took this photo couple of years back at Redang Island.

1GB Compact Flash Card

Got myself a Transcend 1Gigabyte CF (80x) card recently. Cost me Rm290. darn, these stuff are getting cheaper by the day. I think there's a 4GB available now in the market!! You can never keep up with technology, can you! :p

I'm using a Canon Powershot G3, that's a 4MP camera. Having a huge storage card allows me to keep most of my images in RAW format. that means a 1GB card allows me to store up to approximately 250 RAW images.