A friend

I saw, yes, I saw this friend of me on a train home today's evening, guess what, we haven't seen each other for more than five years.

I think this is really pure luck, because I usually don't go back that early. Somemore in the same train cabin, board at the same door, but at different stations.

Obviously, she didn't see me, that I'm used to it, in the past, I'm always the first to approach her. She's married, I think, how I know? She is pregnant. She still the same with a tired and worried looking face.

So, did I approach her? Nope, don't think she still remembers my name. Maybe next time.....

Dreams can come true

The other day while I was day dreaming away on my couch, I dreamt about playing football on a large patch of green. The air was fresh, a light breeze was blowing, it was sunset time, warm, but not hot. Far in the distance south were mountains and hills. To the north, a river cut through the dense forest.

I was on a high ground, with my old time buddies of 15 years, we were playing football. How times flies, it has been that long since we were together again.

As I awoke from my day dream, I heard my pager beeped. Strange, I have never seen this number before, who could it be? A long lost friend, perhaps?

I called the number, well, you just couldn't believe it. It was one of my old time buddies! Who says dreams don't come true? It does for me, at the least expected...

Surprise!....No thanks.

Geez....I was shot by a surprise "arrow" last Friday, I was given a new task.

Apparently, some business "bighead" decided to cut cost, cut man-power, wanted to send me down for that task. Hey, this was last minute, just when I was about to knock off for the week!

This is tough, man, never expect them to do that, I'm too good to take advantage of or what? Later as I found out, they have been working on this piece of task for quite a while, someone was already fronting it, why the last minute change?

Till now, I haven't got much clue or info...*Oh...Oh.....*

Surprise!....No thanks.....really.

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.