What is Imm Doing?

A Place for my family and friends to know what I've been up to and what I'll be doing. 一个交待行踪和报平安的管道。。

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Finally! Free Weekend!!

Yes, finally made it to the weekend...

My first free weekend since end of Sep... I stayed in bed till 10am, laze around, bought brunch, surf net, did some translation for Kuan and went for a jog in the evening.. Felt so good to have the weekend all to myself.

Haven't jog since early Oct, cos of a minor injury to my ankle. Missed almost 3 weeks of jogging and my form did deteriorate a bit. Could only do 6.5km in 1 hour today. Think I need to slowly gain back my stamina and form. I will aim for 8km in around 1hour. I have about 1 month to go before the actual run... Gambatte!!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

And I thought the previous weekend was bad...

Wah.... finally caught up with some much needed shut-eye...

The past weekend was packed.. stressed out and no fun...

After the last office relocation early Oct, I thought that would be the end of OTs. But I was wrong. The last Sat and Sun was madness... Went back office at ard 11pm Sat, stayed till 4am (Sun). Left and went home to sleep, then back again at 5pm Sunday and stayed till after 10pm.... All because Network guys wanna switch switches, and connect to the old UPS from the old office... Ordered in McD on Sat night. Company expenses, so why waste?! And was back in the office at 8am Monday!!

Brain was not getting any rest.. body too.. and somehow I still don't seem to lose weight... why???

So this weekend, unless there is another new translation project to do, I'm going to do nothing but stone... although I would still need to find time to somehow clean my messy house...

But even after all these mad rushes, I feel so much more alive and living meaningfully... 很充实。好像每天都过得有意义,有目标。好像在渐渐地迈向我的目标。。。 大家加油吧!!

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

A blur...

Last few days were a blur to me....

Had class since Thursday and lasted all the way thru the weekends and then on Monday. Class ran between 3 hours (weekdays) to 7 hours (weekends) a day. It was mind boggling. But so far I had survived 7 of them and the last one will be this coming min Nov. Then I would graduate with a Specialist Diploma in Translation, awarded by Nanjing University!

The weekends were the worst, especially Sunday morning. My brain will just stop functioning fully. After the previous class (on Sat) had ended at 10pm, the Sunday class starts at 9am! By the time it's 11am, my brain will (almost) be total blank. Luckily for the last module last weekend, the lecturer was very lively and her classes wasn't boring at all.

Whenever I have a class over the weekend, my working life will sort of suffered the subsequent week because of it. With my mind full of translating and interpretation stuff, it's hard to tune it back to IT stuff. And most of the time I wish I could do/study translation fulltime, instead of just once a week every month. Hopefully, after this course I will be better equiped to take on freelance translation jobs and maybe, just maybe stop doing IT stuff once and for all.....

Interpretation Exam! 口译考试!

Had my exam for my 7th module: Interpretation.

It was a short but painful 20 mins. Had to sit there, listen to the tape for 2 separate speeches (one in English, the other in Chinese) and then interprete them accordingly.

I didn't do very well for the one from English to Chinese. My vocab for magazine-related chinese terms was very much lacking and my mind kinda frooze. Not to mention that I'm full of antibiotics because of my flu and fever. Brain wasn't functioning at 100%, but I won't use that as an excuse. Hopefully I can still get around 75 and above for this module so that my average can still maintain at 80.

But I need to say this: The lecturer from Nanjing University is good. She is good.. Although she is just an associate professor and should be no more than a few years older than me, she is very good at interpretation. Both from English to Chinese and Chinese to English. She is well-trained and had plenty of actual experience to share during her class. She opened my eyes to the world of interpreters, which I know I am not suitable for. The fact that I tend to stumble and mumble and my mind tend to go slow-mo when nervous is a clear indicator of this. Maybe if I were to go into this field in my late teens or early twenties and study this as a career, I might do well in it. I can still remember the days of syarahan and 演讲. :) I bet with enough practise and exposure I could have done as good as her. But now it's all water under the bridge.. No amount of what-ifs could turn back the clock. So I will look forward and concentrate on my translation skills. I will brush up my English, Chinese and Bahasa. Next year I will enroll for Japanese classes. I would want to capitalise what I have as my advantage and work on them. Not many are good in 2 or more languages. Although the money in translation is not anywhere near as good as interpretation, but it is something that can be done in pajamas... :)

In order to succeed as a translator, I think everything boils down to practise, practise and more practise... With enough practise, nothing is impossible. (or so said the elders... :P)

Monday, October 10, 2005

Foreign Talent

That's the term Singapore government used to describe non-Singaporean workforce who are working in Singapore. At least here, the government tries to make foreigners feel at home and willing to contribute to the economy and/or society.

Today, a new guy who is going to join my APAO team came to the office, understudying with one of the Deskstop support engineer. He is Malaysian, from Malacca. From the way he speaks i guessed that he must be new in Singapore. And I was right. He came over to Singapore just for this job and it seems that he might have taken the same coach as Lay Kuan down from Malacca end of Sep. Need to check with Lay Kuan if he remembers this guy. Anyway, this new guy graduated last year from the Multimedia University Malaysia and has worked in KL and Malacca. He took up this job hoping to broaden his horizon and experience new things. His english seems passable and understandable, although his Chinese is better (but with the typical '联邦腔').

Now, didn't I read somewhere that most Malaysian university graduates are unemployable and can't speak English? Mmm.. then this guy must be the odd one out. However, I would believe that the Chinese people are more adaptable and able to survive anywhere as long as he/she is willing to put in the effort. They used to say: The sun never sets on Britain (British Empire). But for the Chinese, I believe: You can find Chinese people in every part of the habitable world. Actually, anyone who has the will can survive anywhere. Between Singapore and Malaysia, there is not much different. In fact, I believe that if you can work/survive in KL or Penang or anywhere in Malaysia, you will have no problem in Singapore. Here everything is so so systematic, so orderly and so efficient. It is a good place to gain experience and exposure, but not a good place to start a business or work for yourself. Overheads are too high and there are way too many rules and regulations that would stranggle any creative juice one might have. Do business? Do it in Malaysia. Work for others? Esp for MNC? Come to Singapore. Get PR-ship and then see how it goes. If you want to migrate to places other than Singapore (ie not staying in Malaysia too), then take the Singapore Citizenship. It is much more valued and recognised than Malaysian passports. With a Singapore passport, you can go almost anywhere in the world, and most of the time without a need for Visa. Just like going to US. For Singaporeans, they can just book a ticket and fly to any US cities immediately, if they plan to stay less than 60days, no visa nothing. But for Malaysians, because the government announced that it is a Muslim country, US imposed the need for an entry visa which takes between 2 weeks to 1 month to process, with no guarantee that it will be approved.

But for me, I've yet to decide. I'll just hold on to both the Singapore PR and Malaysian citizenship and see how things goes in the next few years. Well, one might never know what might happen 6 months or 1 year down the road...

More (Stress) to come...

Monday.... the blues....

Reached office about 8.10am after the usual morning jam at Paya Lebar Road. This is the first day where I officially take over the Monitoring Team (AP Applications Operations aka APAO). Frankly, the team name doesn't seems 'stylo' enough. We used to call it A-PAO, everything also 'PAO'. Now that I'm in-charge, I'll try to use A P A O instead of calling it A-PAO. 厚此薄比。

Went thru with my boss some of the draft SOP and form/checklist that I've created. So far she seems okay with most of the things. And she does have in mind what she wants, in terms of documentation and SOPs for the team. Need to work on several of her suggestions the next few days when she goes on course.

This initial phrase seems bearable.. Let me brace myself for the next few months... More (work/stress/expectation/etc) to come....

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Reached 9km... barely..

Ahh.. I'm so tired... managed to jog 9km this evening.. but I think I might have overdid it. My body is protesting.. my legs are like jelly now.. although I stopped a lot of times and used about 85mins to finish that 9km. Think i better stick to 7+km for at least 2 more weeks before going for 8+km.

Office Moved.

Finally!! The office relocation has completed its final stage yesterday night. All 4 stages of office relocation have been completed successfully, but not without hiccups along the way... Now my office is in an industrial area, rather than the business area and the servers that were hosted in a data center were brought back to the same building as our office. No more trips down to IDC (Internet Data Center) to do maintainance tasks nor admin works. All of us are able to either remote login or walk over to the server and work on it.

However, this marks the end of our 'low' period. Due to the office relocation, all projects were put on hold and our daily workload were about 40% lower than the 'normal' period. So the end of office relocation also signal the start of the mad rush of projects, many of them with datelines of March 06. I'm already tasked for 3 projects, but luckily (or unluckily) I will not be doing any routine BAU (Business as Usual) stuff. On my plate, there will only be projects and management of the APAO team. Hopefully, I will be able to come out with SOPs and guideline for the team so that they can self-regulate within the next 3 - 4 months. Need to have more discussion with my lady boss to get an idea what exactly she wants to achieve and by when. Currently the guys will be going over the Deskstop support team for a 2.5months training. Afterwhich, they will take up an even more important 24/7 supporting/monitoring role.

Monday, October 03, 2005

A promotion? Not really....

Today my lady boss invited me to have 'coffee talk' with her. It's her usual way of saying that she want to discuss something on a one-to-one basis. Actually, I was forewarned and was expecting it.

After the manpower reshuffling of the monitoring team, with their team leader being redesignated to another team, rumours have it that my lady boss wanted me to take over as the new team leader, supervising 4 guys working 24 hours shifts, rotating 12 hours each. The team was formed about 7 months ago, another idea that HP sold to VISA, doing the monitoring and supporting of VISA's corporate applications (in-house or outsourced) and websites (intranet, extranet and internet sites). The team's job scope kept changing and no manager wants to be responsible for them, so the team was sort of an 'unwanted child' that got kick around/tai-ji around between managers.

Until my lady boss took over about 1.5 months ago, what the guys did were just to stare at the monitor screen, looking for error messages/emails or abnormalities highlighted by the monitoring software that might denote system/application error(s) and escalate it to my current team to troubleshoot/solve. Since then, my lady boss has drafted out a whole list of tasks and (new) responsibilities that this team will take up. These are not something new, just that no one has actually listed them down clearly. Here lies the irony: The guys have been on 'holiday' mode for so long, that these workload actually made their morale low!! So my lady boss wants me to supervise them, lay down all the processes and procedures for them to follow and execute. In short, shake up the team and clear the (existing) shit. 收拾烂摊子, 吃力不讨好的烂差事。

At first, I was reluctant to take up these extra responsibilities (with no extra pay). I am happy with what I am doing: going to work on time, leaving the office on time, with lots of spare time to do the things that I want/like, for example taking up courses to get out of IT. :) However after hearing what she had to say, and her offering to half my current workload to take up this new responsibility, I decided to take it up as a challenge. I thought to myself: What could the worst case scenario be? It can't get any worst than what it currently is. With her low expectation, her understanding that the current team situation is really bad and her willingness to give me 6 months to make improvement, I have nothing to lose. Anything that I do to improve it, even by 10%, will be seen as my contribution. The situation could only get better, not worse! If I really can't sort the team out after 6 months, it is really not (solely) my incompetence since the team was in such a big mess to begin with. Either way I win. :)

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Reached 7.5km

Today I managed to finish 7.5km in slightly over an hour. This is an achievement for me.. :) Will try to run this distance for another week or so before I try to run 500m more. I think my goal of running 10km under 1hr 30min might just be reachable afterall....