Rotten.net 2.0, Fucked up script.

My five weeks haven't really been productive, maybe because I'm not doing things to help myself. I just feel bummed everyday, the moment I step into the ETG lab. I sort of envy this guy opposite me because his supervisor now and then visits him and assist him yet not spoon-feeding him. My supervisor on the other hand only gave me deliverables, keeps telling me asp.net is a simple drag and drop thing, blah blah.

Fuck that, time to help myself because it's the mid-presentation next week.

I'm sick, looks like New Year won't be happening for me after all.

zZz

I've just been caught sleeping in lab again, by the manager of my department. Not very lucky these days, of 3 times I had napped, twice was busted. I don't know what the fuck in the blue world he does as a manager but he's always walking about like he's at a pasar malam, prey for dozers like me.

Me: "zZz... zZz..."

Manager: "HEY! You come to my office!"

Me: "zZz... ???"

Manager: "Take a seat."

Me: *sits*

Manager: "Why are you sleeping in class?"

Me: "Dozed."

Manager: "Many times already you know?"

Me: *thinks: Twice only what??* "Uh."

Manager: "Your name? Who is your supervisor?"

Me: "Yit Jing, Mr Cheong."

Manager: "Too free is it? Nothing to do, too boring or what?"

Me: "No, not really." (I was still in a daze from the sleep, so I lied. Could've just told him it's a fucking boring project I was doing.)

Manager: "Then why you sleep?!"

Me: *thinks: Thought I told you???* "Dozed."

Manager: "You work so you sleep late is it?"

Me: "No."

Manager: "2nd week only you like that, do you know I can fail and retain you?"

Me: "Yeah."

Manager: "Then why you sleep?!"

Me: *thinks: You asked me twice, I replied you twice, now what the fuck?!* "Tired, I try.. I mean there won't be a 3rd time."

Manager: "May I have your insurance you don't sleep in class again?"

Me: "Uh."

Shit, bad insurance I've made but can I say no? And I think he needs new specs, my groupmate had been AWOL-ing for quite a few times including today and he didn't even notice. Teaches me one thing - Absent myself before sleeping at the library.

10 weeks to go, still like a dodo.

Tuesdays to Fridays are the New Monday Blues

During the third day of FYP, I was late by and hour and my DT found out because he made and early round to check on us. That's pretty bad so I've decided to lie low, by reaching earlier by 30mins. I was quite lucky since after Wed, because no spot checks were made.

But somehow, I think may not be that simple. Maybe right behind the nanny cam, we're all under close surveillance. To reach early, I've started to bring some of my morning to-dos into school instead. So if you sight any joker brushing his teeth and styling his hair in one of the block S toilets, it'll probably be me or some idiot that've read this.

Suggestions to reach school on time:

• Breakfast in school
• Wash your face in school
• Style your hair in school
• Do whatever make-up in school
• Bathe in school

This guide however doesn't apply on girls because I think almost none of them would take half a step out of their door ungroomed.

Just now while I was listening to music on my earphones, my system was suddenly muted and I couldn't unmute it. Without much thought, I guessed it was the DT disabling my audio from his machine but it was later unmuted. I'll really go insane if music is banned. Anyway this guy in my lab always broadcasts his chinese pop on the mobile. Irritating, noisy but at least there is some sort of noise.

Last weekend, dad took me to some dirt tracks around my place. It was quite a rocky yet comfortable drive. You feel like sleeping when there's a constant and slow rocking motion. The scenery was good, although it was merely a closed sea. Rare sights were the building of a dam and a huge seagull, wingspan at about 80cm. I accidentally scractched the lorry's bumper while going down a steep turn. Time to get an official license.

Rock Bottom Motivation

I think doing FYP is the worst phase of the 3-year polytechnic course, maybe for me at least.

It didn't start well that well, probably because I'm breaking all the rules.

I see other peeps' supervisors visitting them, giving them solid information and objective to be met but I only received bits and pieces and am not sure how to go about using this Microsoft Visual Web Developer. And my supervisor is so busy that not one of the calls gets through.

Yesterday, I was tired in the lab and decided to just put my head down for awhile but even before my chin touched my arm, the department manager barged in and stopped me. His office is at the corner and everytime he goes to the toilet, he'll be able to monitor us.

The project co-ord warned us not to cheat on the attendance because they've installed a camera to spy on us. So I got bored, and I went online to download GameBoy Advance emulator and a few ROMs, like Spidey 3, Ratatouille and the old school Pokemon. The reason I've decided to play that is NOT that I'm deprived of childhood but just because it doesn't require installation and it takes up only one small corner of the screen and so I wouldn't be nabbed that easily.

So I loaded the ROMs and played Pokemon red version. I took charmander as my first pet monster Pokemon and further on captured a pikachu and rattata before traning them each to around level 15. By then, I felt quite sleepy and I headed to the first gym. My game screen suddenly poofed and at first, I thought I closed it by accident or maybe some pop-up covered it. I toggled between the applications on my taskbar and found nothing but a small pop-up.

"Ho Yit Jing, playing of games are restricted in the lab, this is a first warning. Uninstall and remove any games from your computer immediately."

I now believe that my project co-ord wasn't lying. The DT can actually monitor EVERYTHING I DO ON MY COMPUTER. It's so secondary school man, nanny cams and all. I was about to curse about him to a friend on MSN when I thought that he might still be monitoring me (for all you know, he's monitoring me now). I turned a good boy, deleted the game and in a few seconds, another pop-up appeared.

"Ho Yit Jing, Thank You for your co-operation."

What the? First it was issued as a warning and now he thanked me as if I've done him a favour. Confusing. Maybe he needs students like me so job like his will be created.

This morning, I had no motivation to wake up and so I reached 45 minutes late at 9.15 am. The DT happen to reach earlier and marked me late. Think the management gonna be strict for a first few weeks. I'll try be good now and maybe strike later.

FYP = FUCKING YUCKY PROJECT

Ciao.

Emo already

Hi, I'm back in school once again for Final Year Project (FYP).

Yesterday, after the briefing (which almost ended when I'd reached), I checked out where I was posted to and it was some unidentified initials "ETG". The moment I got it, I muttered under my breath, "holy shit." I was hoping hard that I'll be posted to something more MIT based, maybe flash animation or PHP but for 'E', I could only think of 'electronics' or 'engineering'. I'll prefer to work under my own MIT side though, because that'll mean more company, assistance and most importantly, more FUN. My project co-ordinator allocated breifing time at 1 and so I had to wait for 3 hours after my briefing. During that 3 hours of waiting, I prayed not to get some circuit board project or else I'll kill myself by stabbing myself with IC chips and resistors.

I went to my project co-ord's room and there was already some people waiting outside. That further confirmed that ETG is under School of Engineering because those peeps waiting look really 'engineery'. I couldn't explain why exactly, except for most of them look slightly more mature.

I later found out that I'm doing some sort of 'intelligent assessment system'. My supevisor came later and further briefed me and the other guy in the team on our job scopes. Mine is to improve on an equiz system using asp.net, the programming language that've always hated because it's not straight forward at all to me. The other guy from SEG got flash animation, alien to him too but WHY DIDN'T THEY ASSIGN THAT TO ME!? My supervisor spoke as though I can easily learn asp.net and even told me to teach the SEG guy Macromedia Flash. Sucks lah, don't think I'll be helping much until I've figure out asp.net (or if I ever will).

The lab kind of suck too. I'm using a P4 with 768 RAM only with some free additional virus package.

One line to sum it all up, I miss working at ST Electronics.

Complaints over, gonna do research to self-learn.

Doc, I feel a little ermmm... METALLIC today. MC please?

This entry is dedicated to a Swedish, by the name of Roger Tullgren.

This is the man. He looks like any other able-bodied man, am I right?

I'm unsure if I should be impressdd, but he's actually financially aided by the government for a disability. I swear to God, it is called - Heavy metal addiction.

Heavy metal addiction? HEAVY METAL ADDICTION!

I wonder how did he ever got his music preference officially classified as a disability. That's not all. Was that Sweden want to promote The best part was that he was issued an official document granting him permission to do things that people usually couldn't. So besided benefits from the nation, he could...

1) Blast metal during work
2) Go MIA from work to attend gigs, with the condition that he'll make up for it later
3) Come in his matted hair, painted face, tatoos, chains and skulls because "Roger feels compelled to show his heavy metal style."

I think any one of them is more than enough to pwn job rules.

With these previleges, there are definitely job limitations as well. You can't put him to a full commitment job, an office deskjob so a magnanimous boss decided that he could hire and put him to good use.

OF ALL JOBS POSITION HE COULD ASSIGN, I WOULD SAY THE MANAGER IS INGENIOUS.

Because he made Uncle Roger the dishwasher. Of all things, the dishwasher.

If I was the manager and let's be realistic. I wouldn't hire him, someone who might be capable of this.

Guitars are harder than plates I believe. Picture him using all the utensils and crockery as drums and cymbals. You'll cry mama.

Harsh it may sound but as long as you believe, you are always useful and can excel in something else even more.

Brawling when I'm not around? This yamaha will be shoved up yours, and I'll break it inside you. FEAR ME!!! ROAR!!!

As for Roger, music is made because he plays for 2 bands. However in Singapore, I hope the government doesn't allow that else Ah Lians will go about having cam-whoring classified as a disability because "ii feAl sHo cOmPelLed tU sHoW mOi cAmZ wHoRe styLeXx woRz~!!" and tax payers will suffer. In my opinion, that should be grouped under self-obsession, referred to IMH with immediate effect.

Out.

Government responds to unemployment

Hello, I'm damn free now so here's an update.

I'm so glad that the call center I'm handling is being being outsourced to a new call center at ST Serangoon North, which also mean that...

• I can come later
• Leave earlier as well
• I can go for lunch together with my colleagues and we don't have to take turns to mend the calls
• I can go for a random tea break, at a random time, with a random duration
• I don't get interrupted by calls while I'm doing my stuff
• I don't get fucked by *take a deep breath* angsty-emo-gothic-slit wrist-screamo-pissed drunk-self stabbing-school/workplace massacre, callers.
• I can tell lesser white lies
• I'll be free to roam a little as long as work is done
• I don't have to act happily polite.
• I don't have to get someone to answer my calls while I answer my nature calls (no pun intended).
• I won't have myself speaking on a phone while the the other one is ringing.
• Roll about on my chair to reach the four corners of the call center, doing a different task at each

This sums up to a big YAY.

Yay, I'm a pussy.

On the other hand, I think I'll miss doing it because other than shit you get, there are nice callers who make you feel much appreciated for the service you've provided. The call center will be officially handed over on 5th November which is next Monday. This may also mark the end of funny calls.

*phone rings*

Me: "Hello, good morning. IT helpdesk."

New guy: "Hello, my laptop cannot go internet. I think the settings something wrong."

Me: "Go under 'tools' and then 'internet options' blah blah blah and then you blah blah..."

New guy: "Okay, you wait."

*mouse clicks and typing sounds*

New guy: "Eh, cannot leh."

Me: "Hmm okay, what's your location at? We'll go take a look later."

New guy: "This is ehhhh, I don't know my block... ermmmm"

Me: "How about your department?"

New guy: "uhmmmm... errrr... I don't really know, I'm new here."

Me: "Can you ask your colleague please?"

New guy: "I don't have any colleagues around me here..."

New guy: "Oh yah, there's this Carol sitting next to me, but she's from another department."

*thinking it may be my supervisor but not likely*

Me: "Oooo-kay. What's her surname?"

New guy: "I don't know man."

*rose from my seat*

Me: "Sir, can you stand up?"

New guy: "Huh? Stand up? What do you mean?"

Me: "Oh nono, nothing to do with your comp. Just literally stand up!"

New guy: "Errr, okay?"

*Head bobs up from a cubicle at the other side of the room*

Me: *waves* "Hello?" *waves again* "Yo? I think we were talking on the phone eh?"

New guy: *turned and looked at me, still having the receiver pressed on ear* "Ohhhhhhh! Yaya!"

*click*

Funny guy. His last line was still spoken through the receiver. Anyway, my department shares the same office witho another one so that's why that sotong was there.

From my perspective, there are 2 reasons behind the outsourcing of the call center,

1) To achieve excellence through specialization

2) Reduce unemployment

They are supposed to be more professional but I heard they weren't trained. However, one thing for sure, I know they'll have a more professional tone than I do. Mine rises and goes down together with the Sun. My supervisor told me that the call center will eventially still notify us of the problems via network and now I feel that the business process will be slowed down. Don't know, I'll see on Monday.

Last day mending the calls tomorrow!

Your HTML is fucked up, says Blogger

Hello, I guess the renovation is almost complete. Actually, I didn't even want to change anything but I got bored, fiddled with the blogger functions and couldn't get my old template back because is says...

We were unable to save your template

Please correct the error below, and submit your template again.

Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly. XML error message: The content of elements must consist of well-formed character data or markup.

Give me a break man. In school, my lecturers stress on having well-formed codes and now, blogger which initially didn't give a shit decides to behave like a lecturer. So strict? Exam huh?

Looking at previous codes which has seemingly thousands of unclosed tags and poor identation, I decided to make something simple with the functions I fiddled around with earlier on.

Anyway there's a bug in the customizing functions and I was returned some error message when ever I tried to remove the ugly blog title from my banner. So what I did was...

You noticed that thin little line that looks like the fish poop in your aquarium.

If I can't remove you, I'll deflat you.

Out.

Under Construction!!!

Under Construction!!!

Use rubber wear for safety (boot, gloves, etc)
Avoid whips, chains and handcuffs

If you think my blog is fucking messy now...

CALL TODD! 6751 1827. HUGE FUCK-UP ONLY!

If only Motivation comes in a form of Tablets.

Hi guys, guess how's my progress?

Honestly, I've only moved by 50 to 450 and today is already Wednesday. The slow rate I'm going at is due to motivation problem as well as being stuffed with quite some stuffs yesterday. Strangely, I'm not panicking at all or should I say, I've never really panicked over deadlines. Imagine staying back on a friday evening to night just to complete everything. Hah, hope that doesn't happens. If that is to happen, I'll use my other tasks as an excuse to crap my way throught. I mean, common sense tells us that customers are alive and Excel spreadsheets are dead right?

So I AM bored

Looking from the corner of my eye, I could see a little spider, and a web spun from my forehead to my elevated soft spikes.

I'm bored, thanks to my manager. He assigned me rubbish job such as auditing the company's employee list.

I've been doing it since last friday and now I'm only at 400/1200. Nevertheless, I had a nice weekend!

Ugh,

out.

Mr Tan Jia Jun (Part III)

This gonna be a pretty long one. During my working hours, Agent Conwoman rang again.

Con-bitch: "Hello, we are calling from *blah blah* company regarding the lucky draw the other day. Are you Mr Tan Jia Jun?"

Me: "Yup."

Con-bitch: "Do you remember about the phone survey you've helped us with and the ticket number?"

Me: "Yup."

Con-bitch: "I pleased to inform you that you've won yourself 150 000 HKD!"

Me: "Hmmm? You said 380 000 HKD during the last call. Can you confirm?"

I guessed that was some loop hole but continued to be interested. I was genuinely interested by the way, because reality was boring then.

Con-bitch: "Yes, confirm 150 000 HKD. I'll now tell you about our company's history."

Me: "Errrr, woahkay?"

Next up was a clearly inaudible speech of the company's history. The only thing I could understand was '20 years'.

How the hell did this turn into a history lesson? I don't care if Chen Shui Bian owns the company or if it stood since war-time. All I wanted was the promised cash of 150 000 HKD.

As she rattled on with her empire's company's glorious, majestic, massive and rich culture of five thousand years, I was already wondering what I could do with 150 000 HKD. It is about 28, 500 SGD after conversion, quite alot of money! With that, Dad can sponsor me lesser if I'm going into a private university, I can pay for Mum's medicine and I can go for a one-time shopping spree with baby.

So while Agent Conwoman was at 1560 BC, related me how the emperor CEO beheaded his queen and concubines and then finally had gay sex with the eunuch, I interrupted her.

Me: "Your company does have a website eh? Give me the address and I'll do the reading up myself.

Con-bitch: "Of course we have a website! Here you go. Age-T-T-P-mao hao-slasher-slasher-dabuyew-dabuyew-dabuyuew-dot..."

And even before the main part of the URL was told to me, I was covering my mouth hard to drown my jackass laughter. I was thinking, what in the heavens was 'mao hao' (colon) at the moment because I last time I had ever said it was when I was secondary 4. Let's continue.

"age-kah-zay-I-eiowler!-I-N-dot-cum"

That was the compiled version of what she said. The actual one was me trying to confirm with her at almost every letter until we came to an agreement that she will represent every letter with word examples. Here you go, http://www.hkjlin.com/.

After I've gotten the website, the helpdesk phone rang and I had to attend to it. I told her to call back in awhile but she called too quickly and I was still busy. And I never got any call till now after that missed call. There goes my 150 000HKD )':

So meanwhile, I'm still 'hopeful' and explored their consite website. Amazingly, it was bilingual so I selected the English version. It does look convincing at first glance but look on...

So the moment I entered their consite website, this enthusiasticly irritating flash greeted me; Unprofessional, along with the broken English. Have you ever seen "WELCOME MY WEBSITE!" on Microsoft's or IBM's website? It was nothing more than an eyesore.

Click to enlarge. Thinking that dumping in news of established companies increases your credibility? Now, what the fuck have Infosys seeking acquisition, Facebook lawsuit and Microsoft got to do with you? Try going through the news, each entry become less and less detailed as it goes down the list. Seems like the faker is tired of researching for fabricating stories.

I'm sorry that I don't understand about half the characters and therefore couldn't make out the meaning, but I guess I know enough to say that the Chinese and English news doesn't tally huh? Agent conwoman must have been, and still living under the rock now making calls her whole life. I'm highly suspicious that she had no idea Singapore is a bilingual nation.

AH HAH! This must be Agent Conwoman, whose company is so filthy rich that they're holding conferences in Malaysia everyday and giving away '2nd prizes' daily too! If you people are so rich, please get a better translator or at least send the web developer for English bridging classes. That message sounds so... directly-translated-from-chinese. My product to you? ROFL.

I tried logging in with a non-valid username and password but no error message was shown and I was directed back to the same page again. I suspect that they just linked the login button back to the home page. Looking at the whole condition of their consite website, I wonder what is there to see even if I could login. Check the status of my big-assed 150 000HKD? They are located in Kowloon somemore. So Ah Beng.

Now, this is funny.

Click on it to have a closer look. This is the company history which I told Agent Conwoman that I'll read on myself. I should have claimed that I didn't understand Chinese and maybe she'll read off this script. She claimed that her company deals with electronic appliances like handphones, digicams and such, but her company consite website states that they RETAIL SEX APPLIANCES, CHAIN OUTLETS SOME MORE! It makes me think what performance was that during the conference and now I regret not attending. Jinling self-proclaim claim that they have already become an "international famous trade" with 10k employees. I immediately googled their company name and the results return was pathetic. So pathetic that searching on the mama-shop opposite my place reaps more relevant results. I suppose Agent Con-woman is one of a few who forms the '10k employees'. Last point about this picture, can someone tell me what are 'cicadas' doing inside that chunk? Are they a pet shop or something?

This is their product page. Huge assortment of notebooks, hand cuffs, digicams, MP3 players, MP4 players whips PDAs, cicadas? mobile phones, routers and dildos. But, not a single word of detail on them. It just blows up when you click on the picture. Again, must I login to see them?!?! I can't believe that the developer actually bothered to do a product shot for all the items.

I entered their job advertisement page and this is what I saw. First, they placed 2 random con-bitch ladies over there followed by a small "invite applications for a job" and finally "No job". I figured out and will just assume that they're actually trying to throw a few catchy lines like "HEY JOBLESS? JOIN US TODAY!" Actually, they might be really unemployed for very long, till they got desperate and started a syndicate.

Click to enlarge the picture. I've poliltely sent message to them to enquiring on the cash that I've won. Sadly, THE SEND BUTTON WASN'T WORKING! Even the reset button is fake. However, I was really determine to own the prize money, so I scanned for contact details.

I dialled the phone number but but it was invalid. I'm not sure if there's some country code required but nevertheless I tried email-ing them to their email address, sever@hkjlin.com,

Click to enlarge anyway. So it was invalid too. Blown goes my prize money. MAY THEM BE SEVERED!!! (See? I was right about English bridging classes.)

The Suana

Hello, and I'm back again with my third episode of "Highlights of my working days".

Customers

The helpdesk team, along with me handle quite a number of customers a day. And if I'm to do a log on them, you'll realize there's a pattern in them. Some are so polite that we felt obliged to start on their cases right away and some are hell demanding. Some are IT idiots and some seem knowledgable but doesn't question. And sometimes, IT idiots pretend to be knowledgable and that's when it gets irritating.

There's a customer who frequents the helpdesk because she's the one who handles the new or problematic computers in her department. She've never failed to head over to my department with a loud entrance and by now, I'm like a fortune teller; I know she's coming even if she's a thousand nautical miles away. From what my colleague and I've see, she flirts to get the easy way.

Anyway, she's the one who gave us the prehistorical CPU and notebook bible. I didn't know what's her problem but she just doesn't seem to trust us (when we did almost all her PCs for her), perhaps because we're IA students (I heard some of them left behind a bad impression). So when that bible was pronounced dead, we (colleague and I) were supposed inform her by ourselves. Earlier on, we did consult the master surgeon, our supervisor and after diagnosis, "Try revive it. If cannot, call and send back," he said. So, we did as told but she requested demanded pressed that our supervisor should personally notify her of the status through email. One acronym for that; LPPL..

After that prehistorical CPU was fixed, my colleague called her up.

Colleague: "Hello, I'm calling from IT helpdesk. I'm looking for xx xxxx."

Woman: "I am."

Colleague: "Your PC is ready for collection."

Woman: "Ohhhh... okay already ah? *short pause* is it dusty? Later dirty my cloth..."

Colleague with his killer line: "Oh, we wiped it clean already."

Woman: "I see. Is it heavy?" (come on, you should know)

Colleague with his killer line again: "Not really, but don't worry. Got trolley."

Woman: "Huh, I want to just drop by after high tea leh" (She probably thought a trolley with her will make her look weird in the canteen.)

Colleague with his final killer line: "Your BU got guys hor? Go high tea together then later you all come over to collect?"

Woman: "Okay, bye."

Sorry lady, that doesn't work on our department. We are dull at hints (:

New Suana at work

My boss had modified a room near the pantry to become a suana for the department to lehpak during our breaks! Amazing huh? How many of you guys actually have a suana to belongs only to your department? (I'm NOT addressing those who work at suana palours.) I thought only T.T Durai was capable of doing that judging from his corrupt *take a deep breath* golden-tap-head-plus-golden-toilet-butt-rest-package issue. This suana is unisex but it doesn't really matter because the entire helpdesk almost practices monkhood, DURING WORK ONLY. There are only 2 ladies in the department anyway.

This is roughly how our new suana looks like...

Our boss isn't corrupt. We got greeted by a free suana last Thursday morning when the air-conditioner knocked on heaven's door the previous night. The servers overheated.

We didn't know it at the beginning, but only realized that when the network resources and emails went as slow as snail mail.

When I swung open the door of the server room, a whiff of warm air brushed my face. It was about 35 degrees celcius in the room with 5 racks of servers running. They sounded like some plasma rifle charging up and humming loudly, what you always see in Hollywood sci-fic dramas.

"Open the windows and fan out the hot air!"

That was what one of my supervisors said. It didn't seem that logical, for she was doing it with a pathetic sheet of A4-sized paper but everyone did as told without questioning. Colleague and I grabbed some sturdy cardboards for fanning but everyone's effort didn't seem to save the situation. Some network systems failed and calls flooded in like a tsunami hitting the shores. Although it was a disaster, colleagues and I made the best out of it (after all, we are only IA students) by thinking of funny lines to tell users if they call.

"Hi, our engineers are busy fanning the routers and can't attend to you at the moment. Please call again later."

"Hello, IT helpdesk. Hello? Hello? Yo? Can you hear me? I can't hear you."

*Just freaking pull out the damn line* There's a server problem anyway right?

Meanwhile, Derrick and I went went to look for electrical fans. We managed to get 2, one standing one and another power fan. I tried a small office next door and it pissed me off. It was this lady who sat closest to the door, have 897098 piercings on her nose, tried very hard to sound like a caucasian, tried even harder to appear like Megan Fox but was simply another Paris Hilton.

"Hello, excuse me. May I borrow the fan if you have one?"

Hilton raised her eyebrows, as if she was drawing an imaginary question mark above her head.

"The air-con in our server room broke down and we need a fan to cool it."

"We are tenants here and are not part of ST electronics."

"Woahkay?"

I didn't bother to make myself any clearer and left. It was as good as:

Harry: Hey Dick, what's the time now?

Dick: America.

Simply not making sense.

Anyway, the 2 fans did help and in the afternoon, a portable air-con unit was delivered to the server for temporal use before the faulty one was being repaired or replaced.

Yawn,

out.

"Oi! O$P$" "Eh, mai gei gao leh."

If your friend owed you a little money 5 years ago and you've totally forgotten about it. And if you are reminded someday, somehow and suddenly, would you call up your debtor?

My mum came into my room and left this on my table.

"Aye, borrow books must return. Don't always get fined."

I feel accused of course, because I knew I had paid my fine just 2 weeks ago and since then, have not borrowed any books.

I took a look at the letter and it was under my mum's name.

So what I saw was...

Item Details: Incredibly Creepy Stories

I did use my mum's card to borrow books when I lost mine last year but how would a 19-year-old like me borrow such books with cheesy titles? Perhaps if I'm primary six now, I would have.

Naturally, I went for the fine amount first after the book title.

Amount: $1.05

"Okay lah, one dollar only," I thought.

My eyes next scanned for the date and my eyes nearly popped out.

Date Incurred: 01-04-2000

Right! That was about 8 years ago! I don't deny that when I was primary six, I went to libraries to borrow books with cheesy titles. But why did they send the notify letter only after 8 years? Shouldn't it be written off as bad debts already? Now, it is highly suspicious that they do their accounting or auditing only once a decade.

I know it's blur, because I was too lazy to look for my digital camera. Click to try enlarge.

WAH LAO EH! ONE DOLLAR AND FIVE CENTS ALSO WANT TO GEI GAO!

Out.

Mr Tan Jia Jun (Part II)

While I was slacking in front of my computer just now, my Nokia rang with it's obiang ringtone and I was greeted with a familliar voice.

"Hi, Greetings."

"Hello?"

"You're Mr Tan Jia Jun right?"

It took me a nanosecond before that name was registered into my brain.

"Yeah."

"I'm calling from *blah blah* company, we called you another day regarding handphone survey and the complimentary admission to function at Century *blah blah*."

Oh, so it is Agent Conwoman back in action, I thought. Do they actually memorize that or do they read from a script? They sound almost like a recorded message or a freaking parrot.

"Uh-huh?"

"And we are glad to inform you that you've won 2nd price in the lucky draw during the function! It is worth 38..."

Winning the first prize definitely sounds like a made up story and so they used second I guess. I didn't know what had gone into my head at the moment. My brother happened to stroll into my room and "KOR! HUAT LIAO AH!!!"

After the craze died down, I got back to the agent.

"Hello? Hello?"

"Toot... toot... toot..."

Sorry lah, my fault. But people first time win thirty-eight something peanuts mah, definitely will excited. Now they clicked the phone on me leaving me in much disappointment.

Now, I hope they call back again to inform me about the procedures of collecting my 38-something and not pocket it.

Read about Kenny Sia's incident, he even recorded the conversation for his case and it's real funny how he conned them back.

ps: Wah lao eh, milk powder fake, unagi fake, luncheon meat fake, char siew pao fake, thumb drive fake, barbie dolls fake, now company, function dinner, lucky draw also fake.

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.