Old friends gather

Back from a friends gathering, some haven't met for more than 3 years. From the look of each other's face, we know we are getting old! Most of the guys are already married, they brought along their spouses and kids.

Hey, I know you guys are better off in that area, maybe, I need some little fixes in my life, but well, I guess I am still comforable now with my singlehood, I still have a job to do.

haha....take care.

Hungry king

When I am really hungry, I could eat a cow. Just joking anyway, I don't eat beef, what I am trying to say is that I could eat a lot more when I am, well, hungry. This is what I found out recently, if there is anything that stands in-between me and my food, I will go into a high RECON mode, eliminate and destroy! Ha...ha....not really true always.

I eat a lot at times, but my body is still ok, not thin nor fat, stike a balance in the middle. I think I am more health conscious these days, been trying to cut down on FATS in-take, especially saturated fats, there are quite a lot talks about this type of fats, last heard not good of the body, you shouldn't take more than 5g per day.

Windy season over?

Guess the north-east wind has passed, no more windy nights! The weather was so cooling for the past weeks that I don't even have to switch on the fan when sleeping at night, save a lot on the electricity. The heat is slowly creeping back, though the rain comes once in awhile, but hopefully, the haze doesn't appears again.

Rain, rain, please come! I miss you....

Manpower issue

The other day I was talking about a System Admin in my team leaving, the one who is supposed to replace him is from another department.

Just yesterday, the Resouce Manager spoke to him, and he highlighted his concern about the pay package. Apparently, the company may not be adjusting his salary if he comes over to our team. If this the pay that he is drawing after joining us, then it will be lower than what he's getting now. At the moment, he works on shift, so there's a shift allowance, with our team, nope.

Well, the Resouce Manager will talk to the HR, check whether there is anything can be done. Keep our fingers crossed.

Family gathering

Tonight, everybody will gather at my parent's place for dinner.

We are going to have a sumptuous meal of seafood steamboat, the prawns, crabs, abalones, noodles, etc... My mum's home cooking is the best, no comparison. I am looking forward to having the dinner tonight. Yummy......

Someone's leaving...

*Sigh*......a Windows System Administrator from my team has tendered his resignation, his last day will be on the 21 Feb.

He is an ok guy, who works hard, pro-active, willing to learn and have a good attitude, people with these traits are pretty hard to find these days.

What motivates?? Pay and opportunities to advance are the top most criterias of job hopping. There has been talks that company is not paying people well, maybe it's true. We tried to make him stay by counter offering, but failed, offered pay too low.

Nevertheless, I wish him all the best in his future endeavours. Take care and keep in touch!

St Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day, actually to me, this is nothing special, just a normal day. You wash up in the morning, go to work, knock off after that, go home, have dinner, pick up a book and read and then go to bed.

I think this Day is being "blown up in proportion", a day where it creates opportunity for shops, restaurants and hotels to make money. A bouquet of half dozen roses could cost more than 100 bucks, worth it? Nope, I say.

I prefer a Day which is special and unique, like a birthday, not everyone around you celebrates the same birthday as you are, it's SPECIAL, I say.

To me, treasuring each day is the most importance, another day, another fresh start and your future is charted based on what you do today, don't waste it. Live on!

February 2007

It has been quite awhile since I last wrote, not that I have forgotten but simply was too lazy to write. So how's everyone? Enjoying your new year? Did you guys watch the fireworks on new year day? I was there, it was fun-fair and fantastic.

I was actually pretty relaxed at the start of the new year, not many projects work to do, so things were still manageable then, got some free time to do something else, e.g. jogging, swimming, sightseeing. But, come the next two months, work will start coming in.

Want to share with you guys, if you understand the Hokkien dialect, check this out....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjUX5hB74zs

Happy New Year 2007!

Hey, how's everyone? Enjoying the holidays? Have you any plans for the coming new year?

The Internet link in this region was crippled by the earthquake last week, it was very slow, and most of the time couldn't even access sites hosted in Nothern America. Kudos to the guys who fixed the broken under sea cable lines. There's this guy in Taiwan saying that this will never happen in another 100 years. I think this incident clearly shows that it's just too much to rely on these links alone, especially most links goes to Taiwan and Japan, the high risk earthquake regions, then to the America, having an alternative cable path is just too expensive, they say.

Oh well, let's hope this will not happen again....in another 100 years, perhaps.

Christmas eve...

Today is X'mas eve, but I'm still in office, working. Why am I working? It's not because I don't like holiday, but I got to finish up with some outstanding work, so that I can go on leave till 28Dec.

Although, I don't really celebrate X'mas as a religious day, is a holiday to me actually, but, I do buy a gift for my little niece, as she is such as loveable girl. I always make a point to get her a present or gift on her birthday and X'mas.

I have also send e-greeting cards to my colleagues, wishing them a happy and joyful X'mas and new year.

Leaves approved! But...

Although, my boss had already approved of my two days leaves for Thursday and Friday, but, I still got some unfinished work to settle tomorrow. I got a meeting minutes to do, some documents to review, I reckon this should take me at least half a day, so, meaning I can still go on leaves in the afternoon. Also, I intend to take two or three days next week, after Christmas day, that would be good. Yeh.....

Take a break

I have applied for two days leaves for this coming Thursday and Friday, my boss has not approve it yet, anyway, as usual, I will still go ahead and clear my leaves. So finally, I'm going to have a long weekend till Christmas. I may even clear the rest of my outstanding leaves days next week, till the end of the year! How nice, huh ?!?!

Before going on leaves, I still have work to clear, got a meeting tomorrow, and I will be taking the minutes, supposed to be today, oh gosh! Then, there's some document reviews to do, not sure whether can finish them, but will do my best.

Any advice?

Some people has said that I'm too much into work. It seems like my life revolves around work, and nothing else, if you look at most my entries here, they always talk about work. Reading the posts, you will roughly know what I do for a living, right? I don't make alot of money, even though sometimes I have to work on weekends or overtime.

I think I need advice, perhaps plenty, if you do have any, do put in the Comments.

What's on Sunday

I'm thinking whether I should go back to work on Sunday. Just three week's ago, also a Sunday, I had tried to test swing over of SAN disk connectivity from one Windows server to another, but, this was not succcessful. So, i intend to do it again, this time, I had made some changes to the SAN's configuration.

Let's see whether I will be able to wake up early tomorrow.

I would like also, to share with you a very interesting blog at http://aaroninafrica.blogspot.com/. Aaron, a peace corp volunteer who is in Africa. Lots of video to watch.

Today

Today is Friday!

Today is the day, the day! The day you will return back home!

I am working today, so, not sure whether can make it to the airport to meet you, the time is pretty tight. I have got a couple of problems to solve today, application stuff, let's hope that they can be resolved today, or at least find something of what may have caused the issue.

Anyway, I will always do my best I can....

Questions from the team

I have finally completed the mount points setup for the second HP-UX server which is connected to a SAN system for another customer. The external SAN storage requirement was for at least 1TB to be configured solely for this server. This was done yesterday.

On the same day, I got questions from the team, asking me whether we should have a KnowledgeBase or 1st level troubleshooting guide for helpdesk. In order to address this, I spent about 3hrs last night creating the guide, will send to the team for comments or inputs.

There was also the question of data migration/batch support, one colleague claimed that he played multiple roles doing both in some weeks, which I presumed that he meant this is unfair. Ok, I will think about this, in fact, I'm more willing to scrap this batch support thing, let's see whether they are in favour.

Two more days..

Hey, how time flies, two more days and you will be back! Have you started packing?

I maybe busy for the next 2 weeks or so, have got another task to do in the afternoon, and this is due on Friday. Next week, I may need to provide support for another customer's disaster recovery exercise, mainly to assist if there's any server related issue. The other team who handles the Data recovery portion encountered some issues this week, so might need to help take a look at the server's configuration.

I still have about a week's annual leaves left, hopeful around the mid of next week, I will be able to clear them.

Hey, it's me!

Ya, it's me (not the man in the photo), way past midnight, and haven't sleep yet. I guess I got too much nap this afternoon, so I'm still pretty awake now.

Been troubled by an application issue for the past one week, did a search of the web just now, looking for solution or fix, but no luck, couldn't find much useful stuff, other than those I already know. It's just one of those times where you will spending time after office hours to solve work related problem, so used to it already. No worries, the storm comes and goes, will definitely get over it....

Coup in Fiji

Just heard from news today that there was a coup in Fiji, and the military has taken over the functions the government. Wondering what's going on there.

I remember that time you told me that you wanted to visit Fiji, hopefully, that it is not part of your travel plan.

How's everything? Have you been enjoying yourself?

I'm actually counting down on the day of your return. I have been keeping myself busy here, very tired sometimes, but I know I'm doing something very worthwhile.

Busy work week ahead

Mostly likely, next week is going to be a busy work week for me. I have planned work for some OS installation work at two different Disaster Recovery sites, software installation for two servers at my office's data centre, hmmm, maybe I will get our Windows Administrator to do that.

There's also my progress report to write, prepare learning plan for our team members and also preparation for take-over the duties of our DBA who is confirmed will be secondment to an overseas assignment next month. Let see how I can manage....

I read an article today, this guy said something interesting, it goes:

"If you are technically competent, but lacks communication skills, you will be struggling."

I think it's true, expecially in the IT line, most of the people I know are very technically capable, but when it comes to communication, it's just not there.

Here's another, a modified version by me:

"To survive in the IT industry, no matter what position you are in, you should continuously seek to enhance your technical, professional, communication and mangement skills, else you are just wasting your work life."