Mr Tan Jia Jun

Earlier on just now, I received a phonecall but it seemed unusual as the caller's number was blocked. Nothing was shown, just the word 'call' followed by a blank space where the number usually should be at. I roughly had in mind what kind of call it should be but answered anyway.

*original conversation spoken in mandarin

Me: "Hello?"

Agent Conwoman: "Hello, greetings *blah blah blah* company representative from *blah blah*... *blah blah*." (in M-16 single fire mode.)

It was a lady, and a China lady with a pretty strong China kind of Chinese accent. I've replaced some contents with 'blah' because I had no damn idea what she was trying to say.

Agent Conwoman: "What is your name?"

Me: *ponders* "Tan Jia Jun."

Agent Conwoman: "HEY! My surname is Chen too!!!"

Had I claimed my name surname was Abubakar, maybe she'll stupidly and happily reply that we have the same surname too. Don't try telling me that we share the same ancestors. Doesn't work on me.

So for the next couple of minutes, she confirmed the chinese characters of my name.

Agent Conwoman: "So which Jia and which Jun is it?"

Me: *Damn, I've got no damn idea* "Jia is the 'home' one and as for Jun..."

I randomly used my brother's character because it sounds quite close.

Finally, she moved onto the main issue.

Agent Conwoman: "So, what handphone are you using?"

Me: "Nokia."

She translated "Nokia" into chinese and confirmed with me again and I just yah-ed to everything. She didn't even bother to ask me for the model making it more obvious that she's a con-bitch.

Agent Conwoman: "How do you find Nokia?"

Me: "Okay."

Agent Conwoman: "Okay"

That was the briefest survey I ever had, settled with a one-word answer. Such easy job which I wouldn't mind applying for.

Agent Conwoman: "Thank you Mr Chen Jia Jun! You've been invited over to Century *blah blah* at Johor, just near the causeway for a function dinner where you'll be served refreshments, have a dinner accompanied by a set of performances which *blah blah... blah blah... blah blah* and your lucky draw ticket number is r6klsdjkfasjkldfaskldkjasfljklajf *pure inaudible noise* and so can you make it, it's 7 tonight?" (in M-16 burst fire mode.)

Me: "I would like to but I'm working and couldn't make it in time."

I wondered what was she rushing for, speaking in an inaudible accent, matched with an inaudible speed. Maybe she gets more comission for every airhead conned.

Agent Conwoman: "It's a pity you couldn't make it, you working in office?"

Me: "Yup."

Agent Conwoman: "Oh alright, thank you for the time."

It ended abruptly.

So I was bored

Hi, I'm back from some busy learning and haven't been updating for a week.

Those days I was doing cables, dissembling and assembling Desktops. Time crawls when I was waiting for OS and software to install and time flies when I try to figure out something. Learning at work is a very down to earth process, no room left for I-don't-know because you keep on figuring out till you do. The amount learnt is definitely more than what I've learnt in school over a long stretch of time. Anyway I'm refering to the technical sort of modules I took and not my specialization because there's no relation in between.

Some highlights during work here.

Bored Names

As I'm doing administrative job too, one of my task is to update the employee list when HR submits a new staff's details. Being hell bored doing that work, I'll always look at the names to self-entertain, to amuse myself.

Some parents give children auspicious names, hoping that they take after it. The parents of this guy surely does want their son to get rich, as rich as *KACHING!* the cash register. No kidding, his name is Tan Kah Ching. He's position in the company isn't very significant yet, but I'm sure he'll make it big someday.

I thanked god that he or she isn't in my department. Have he/she around either makes me laugh or my stomach growl. Name, Lim Peng Kang.

If you have to travel with this guy, anywhere yes. But not Hong Kong. You'll have a pole shafted up yours every time you address him. As you have guessed, he's Hong Kee, I mean really Hong Kee, not his nationality but name! They prefer being called Hong Konger or Hongkongite but sounds weird too huh?

Now, here are the names that I spent a minute trying to pronounce but still couldn't figure out at all. Sonq Ern and Kjell Ulf.

Last of all, my favourite of all is Mr SAY HUAT! He sounds like he'll bring loads of luck when I bet on soccer. I've this supervisor called Say Do, probably the strictest of all. I always think that he's called Say Do and whatever he says, we must do. So now, I'll like to watch soccer with Say Huat because just like Say Do, whatever he says, confirm HUAT!

Buang-ed PCs

The company may seem filthy rich but recently, concrete evidence were sent to us, proving that the company is actually either poor, a miser or some staffs thrift too much, for the company. Days ago, came a desktop that looked like one which was buried along with the Qin Dynasty's terracotta warriors in Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi's (259 BC - 210 BC) mausoleum.

When it was unloaded, my colleague and I inspected it for a moment, we blew the sand dust away from the chassis before laying our hands on it. It was those ice age kind of CPU tower, a yellowing block (I'm exaggerating, but 128 RAM and PIII 600MHz is already ancient on contary of current models). It was reported that this tomb-dug PC couldn't boot up and so we did the usual stuff, which is formatting and then installing the OS and other required software. However, that method didn't work. The PC crashes into darkness everytime we finished all the setting up and restarted it. The harddisk was removed for testing and it was fine. So we tried plugging in some more RAM to 300+ and amazingly, it became okay. I'm clueless about that because Window's XP supposedly can run on 300MHz tagged with 64 RAM. Nevermind, case closed anyway.

Next up, was a Compaq notebook bible (for the thickness) which I've just returned to the customer and asked her to prepare a funeral, bury it before getting a new one. It was like one cement slab, those that are used to cover manholes. Actually, the specs of the machine wasn't that bad but the condition seemed like it was used for 24534534634523 hours non-stop and then ran over by a truck which reversed and accelerated over it 20 times before it reached us, the poor helpdesk team. Our task was to revive it. The condition of the machine looked really bad, keyboard and wrist rest sticky and seemingly dirtier than a toilet seat you see in kopitiams (I don't want to imagine what the user was doing in front of his notebook while surfing). The CD-rom driver was stucked we had to knock it out after pressing the eject button. Trust me, these weren't the worse. We carried on with the usual process and format it before other installations. The machine was faulty and could just decide to hang itself in while installing the OS and so a few tries were needed. This was when we found out that the machine can be scrapped for 20 bucks. While the OS was installing halfway, my colleague sneezed and the machine switched off. Needless to say, this shows that the power socket is as bad as the battery. I've heard heard about deteriorating batteries that lasts only for half an hour but how about lasting lesser than a split second, or should I say, it couldn't charge at all?

I was assigned some disposable asset testing job and my job was to test the supposedly buang-ed PCs for working RAMs and harddisk before recycling all of them. 6 PCs were given to me and after the test, I retained 2 CPUs and added in the recycled harddisks and memorys. The tricky parts comes, when I had to set the slave and master harddisks with the jumpers. Some had instructions on them and for those that didn't have, I tried the 8-12 pins found on them. It was tricky because the jumper connects 2 pins together and so I had to try all the possibilities and reboot it. I managed to do both PCs correctly using the trial and error method after half a day. At night, I related the incident to my brother (who's more technical orientated) and he told me one sentence that made me feel that my effort was wasted.

"Online can find."

Funny thing, I had always searched for answers on google for school e-quizzes but didn't thought of that while I was doing the PCs. Well, we learn from being a fool eh? All in a day's work.

Network cable production and labelling

I remembered during year 1 or 2, I had some networking module and during one of the hands on lab lessons, we produce a RJ-45 LAN cable for ourselves. It finally came into use as I was assigned to do that together with my colleague. He cut like 20+ of them and we started stripping the wires and slotting in the thin wires into the tiny slots in the RJ-45 jack. It was tedious job and my manager popped out of no where.

"Hey, how's the wiring?"

"Quite tedious."

"I believe you did it back in school eh?"

"Yeah, did it once."

"I see. So now, you guys have more than once, HAHAHA."

"HA-HA." *look away and roll eyes*

How amusing (note: sarcasm included).

I was pretty proud that I wasted only 1 of 11 jacks (my team leader supervisor confessed that he screwed up several jacks while doing 1 wire.)

A couple of days later was the labeling of another set of cables. And the number was not 20, but 200. We had to unpack the wires, stick 2 labels neatly on each ends and name them. Colleague and I were doing at a pretty productive rate and George, one of our supervisors came by.

"You all no need chiong lah, still got time."

"But Erwin said boss need by 10 something." (the time was 9.05am)

"Aiya, the boss always like that, his 10 something is 2 days later, but just ask you all rush early only."

"woahkay." *Slowed down productivity rate by 50%, slack only*

20 minutes later, George came back...

"Aye, this one really 10 something today need! They need for on-site and are leaving at 10 plus."

"!!!"

We had no more time to waste, for we've wasted some time doing the work at a slower pace earlier on. Erwin, joined us at our cubicle and we started a chain production line. Amazingly we've completed the task within 30 minutes. Thank god it was just labelling and not wiring.

Morale of the story from a slacker's perspective, boss should be more honest about it if there's any allowance in time.

I'll just make an abrupt end here,

out.

Slackaholics

Yesterday

Yesterday, I followed 2 of my supervisors to some place near Ang Mo Kio MRT depot. The moment we reached there, the peeps exchanged some words and we headed for lunch. "Not bad," I thought, "Haven't start working and here comes lunch time."

After we came back, we got our asses moving. Pretty easy job for me, I only had to check the links between the network points (in the office) to see which belonged to them at the other end of the network switch (in the server rack). Upon confirmation, I labelled the wire with a tag and the rest of the time, I had nothing much to do beside clearing up.

After we're done, it was 3+ only but I was allowed to go home. Holy cow, it feels really different somehow, freely going home when you know your colleagues and friends are still at work.

One of the supervisors went:

"YJ ar, tomorrow if they ask you work until what time what you say?"

"Six?"

"Tomorrow if they ask you work until what time what you say?"

"errr..."

"SEVEN LAH!"

And off we went, sharing a cab since he stays in Punggol too.

Today

Earlier on today, I thought today will again be a typical day for me.

So when I got into office, I sat on my roller chair and before my butt could warm the seat, George told me to follow some engineer to go on site, probably doing something like yesterday. The first thing that came to my mind was -pause- none other than GOING HOME EARLY!

I collected a few network switches, changed my pass and cabbed off to City Cab building with that engineer, whom I still don't know his name. Anyway, I think my company rented a space over at City Cab and some department is going to be relocated there, so we had to go over to set up a newtork.

The moment I reached there, I was given a desk, pantry, toilet and nothing else. I was told to make myself at home here but I switched myself to "office behaviour" in case I got complained (though I think I saw permanent staffs making themselves even more home than ever). You peeps won't want to see what I do at home, right in the office. I'll raise my legs and rest it on my desk, like I'm the big mean boss of XYZ company, blast music and sometimes sing along thinking I'm from some rocker from an old school band, with hair in matted coils.

The engineer went to his work space, just in front of me and started to do the 'chim' stuff, configuring of the server. I had grabbed some TIMES mags in the morning and read them to kill time before some work was assigned to me.

I read the first mag and learnt about the Global Peace Index (GPI). There are 121 countries in the list and every each have an Index, ranking them. The higher the index the better you are in that trade. Without running my eyes to the bottom (they started with the most peaceful one,) I instantly knew Iraq would be crowned the champion. I was right indeed. Singapore ranked 29, and I was almost shocked for it is the very land I'm stepping on right now. But I guess it attributed from maid abuse and maids abusing their masters' and mistresses' kids, and the kids grew up, fucking up their maids again. What a vicious cycle. I couldn't believe Germany is ranked 12 and Hong Kong 23, beating my motherland. Germany have had Adolf Hitler and Hong Kong have the big-assed Infernal Affairs, 無間道 on top of the Chinese mafias. I read up more and later learnt that relations with neighboring countries, number of homicides, military expenditure, people behinds the bars and the number of heavy weapons the country holds attributes to the GPI. No wonder lah! We have episodes of people jumping down the railway or people pushing others down. People killing and molesting their children and the strict sturdy law throws ah bengs behind the bars. As for the military expenditure, I'm unsure whether more equates to more violence. Perhaps, though the army supposedly preserve the peace you probably have you heard that "Usually, the process of shutting others up is louder than the noise itself"? More violence needed to stop violence.

Whoops, I just noticed I sidetracked by the thousand miles. Back to the desk I was at, I read 3 TIMES mags in a row, had my attention span killed, tried not to even snooze discreetly. It was only 2 hours later that I was needed. "Ah, finally something to do," I thought. I was instructed to carry a few network switches to the server room and fit it into a rack. As I began, I got a ring from George, telling me that Cheng (my fellow IA colleague) is already on the way up to replace me since I was wanted back to do some admin job. Ugh, I cabbed. The good thing about travelling during work time means free cab.

When I reached my desk, guess what? I thought I'll be greeted by a shit load pile of work but on the table, there was just a few resignees for me to settle. And in my inbox, a few more harmless new employee details. Finished them in less than an hour. The comapny is too rich that it had to encourage employees to cab more. They might as well cab us to and fro work everyday.

Out.

Uh-huh?

Hey, back for a short while. After 2 weeks of office job, my supervisors told me "YJ ar, ming tian wo zhun ni chuan T-shirt and jeans," meaning that he allowed me to report for work in home clothes! I was of course surprised for a nanosecond because it had always been tradition (laid down by the manager that we must be dressed formally on all weekends.) Silly rule huh, when majority of the other departments can dress down on fridays.

Perhaps we have walk-in customers and that's why we had to look better and not sloppy. But then again, they're all internal. I don't think they give a shit about how good we look, in fact some didn't even look at us. I can see from their eager eyes that there's only one thing in their minds - "GET MY LAPTOP FIXED BY TODAY!"

Now speaking of getting their laptops fixed by the end of the day, this is ridiculous. Some users called in and demand immediate assistance like for instance:

I'm in blue and 'user' in red AND I'm quite positive that she's Singaporean.

*ring! ring!*

Me (politely, due to obligation and risk of failing IAP):
"Hi, good afternoon. IT helpdesk, how may I.."

User (frantic voice, as if she's in a crashing plane):
"MY LAPTOP SPOIL, CAN SEND SOME HANDYMAN DOWN?"

"OI, SIMI HANDY MAN? YOU THINK WE PAID CHAPALANG 20 BUCKS A DAY AR?" I thought.

Of course, I retained my composure since I'm here just for grades and maybe that 500 worth of allowance per month:
"Okay? Describe to me your problem in detail please."

User blabbers: "My laptop ar... BLAH... BLAH... BLAH..."

Me: "Uh-huh."

User: "And hor... BLAH... BLAH... BLAH..."

Me: "Uh-huh."

User: "Then hor... BLAH... BLAH... BLAH..."

Me: "Uh-huh, your problem seems really complicated, may I have your.."

User: "That thing... BLAH... BLAH... BLAH..."

Me (cut in with slight politeness):
"Excuse me, your name and extension number first, please."

...

As you have guessed, I 'uh-huh-ed' all the way since, asking her to elaborate only invites more of them, each branching out just like multi-level marketing (MLM). So since my team leader (main supervisor) said "difficult or nasty people, we (seniors and other supervisors) settle," I went ahead.

Alright, another supervisor calling me to go off now, see you.

Significant Milestones of my Work life

Hi there, I'm at work again. Picked up my stuff slowly, through numerous screw ups and confusion and still slightly confused now. But it's okay, still able to do stuff in the given time, leaving me more than enough time to slack. Just wasn't used to having no music and no windows (I won't even know if the skies poured, the sun shone, a tsunami swept across or the moon fell on us). All I knew was there was an earthquake in Indo earlier on this morning because my chair rocked slightly. I checked with my colleagues and soon confirmed it to be an aftershock because the stuffs hanging and opened doors were pendulating, pretty obviously.

Anyway back to work, here are the highlights.

The first one that I'll never forget, for the next 10 weeks at least; I was supposed to send confidential account information to a business unit representative (BU rep), so that he/she/they can forward it to the exact user in the BU. Anyway, the BU rep is either an individual or a small group who are trusted with the users' account information which are used for configuration. So what I did instead was sending it to the entire BU, most beautifully, made up of 200 odd fellas, because the group list names are similar. Wonderful eh? And it wasn't long when my admin mail got bombed by various supervisors from that BU.

Second one, something similar. I was supposed to send account information to finance BU rep, and after sending, someone called my main admin and told her somebody sent some confidential stuff to the wrong BU rep (from another finance dept). This one wasn't that severe, because BU reps are trusted people (I think?) so that's why they called back. So this taught me that there's more than one finance department in the corporate.

Third one was minor. I copied a phone number wrongly and so couldn't get back to him. I was prepared to get strangled since I mentioned "... get back to you in a short while" My trademark "short while™" now became 48 hours, slower than snail mail because he called back 2 days later. Luckily he wasn't angry probably because I owned up, apologized, reported and help was provided almost immediately. What have I learnt? Get the damn numbers right, or perhaps, forget about mentioning how long I'll take if callers don't ask. The service level agreement is 3 working days anyway. But of course, we aim to provide the best possible service to innocent customers (I'll mention about those that aren't so innocent next time).

Alright, incoming mails!

Stay tune for more highlights! (HELL NO!!!)

Out.

Don't know? TRY ONLY LAH!

Hello, I'm at work now. Finally there's some time to slack so I'll write a few lines because THAT'S THE ONLY THING I CAN DO? I mean, besides surfing the net. Anyway, I'm posted to ST electronics at Ang Mo Kio for industrial attachment. Before that, I checked out on what exactly they do and found out that they do the various simulators for the army such as flight, land and sea. I guessed that most likely, I'll be doing stuff such as simple programming or even simply testing the simulators (which will be close to playing games). Sadly, it was a bad guess.

The Heavens turned away from me and now I'm working at a place where I'm not allowed to use MSN messenger, play games, play music, no MP3s even (because its a storage device and my entire workplace forbids any sort of that and more strictly, camera phones). Well, regarding the part where no storage devices are allowed, I kind of understand, you know, national secrets? But not anymore do I understand that policy because since when I was attached to the IT department! Yes, it may sound cool to some but down here, I do nothing to do with those simulators. Everyone here simply troubleshoot IT-related problems.

Last Tuesday came and I finally have a confirmed job scope. The priority goes:

1. Email administrator
2. Handling helpdesk phonecalls and TRYING* to troubleshoot requests
3. Setting up/repairing of new/faulty PCs

The first one is enough to kill me because I was given a 2-hour crash course on it, a day before the engineer I am attached to applied leave. For helpdesk, the keyword is 'try'. Luckily, I was told that if some alien problems are reported, I can transfer the call to some gurus. As for setting up or reparing PCs, once again the keyword is - TRY but with some guidance and supervision.

Incoming mails!

Out.