Exciting week

It has been a rather exciting week so far. I spent 3 days outside office, meeting client and did inspection work at a job site with Mr. Porche.

Mr. Porche is a great manager, I enjoyed learning from him and working with him.

I also got my engineering chartership yesterday. Yay~! But when I looked at Mr. Porche, I feel that there is still a long way for me to become a professional engineer like him. He got his CEng around my age too, would I become like him in 10 years time?

Labuan a year later

I was in this plant a year ago doing operation and maintenance training to the client's operation team. I visited the plant with our project management consultant and wrote something about social etiquette. It was just before I left to Kansas.

I went back again earlier this week to do a performance test on the product, after it has been operated for a year. I am happy for carrying out the test with the help of Mr. Experience.

The test went well, and we had one extra day before coming back. It was meant for contingency, we took that day and visited Labuan a little. Of course, I received phone calls from Mr. Porche, and had to cut the lazy day short to return to hotel checking some emails from him.

Mr. Experience spent longer time in Labuan while the product was being constructed, he knew the place pretty well. He brought me to this restaurant and we enjoyed some pretty good seafood by the sea. Don't imagine great settings, as it is also next to the wet market. It is not a place for ambiance.

There was a black cat with yellow stripes, that meow at our table from the beginning to the end of our meal. It even raised its paw to pad my thigh and my chair, to show that "hey, I am calling you to give me some food."

It didn't go away despite having a few rather large treats from us. It came back the next day when we returned as well. Darn cat.

Labuan is pretty small, most of the people work for the few plants there. You can see people walking around the city center with colourful coveralls, including myself.

Anyway, I am back home now.

Exit, escape

My career with this company, in its local office has come to a bottleneck.
I am more interested in product development, but there isn't an option here. I even offered to be in the project management role, but there just don't have any other choices. There isn't anything going on here, unless I were transferred to other offices outside of this country. But I can't leave this country for a long period of time anymore.

I was given an easy exit, but I guess it doesn't matter where I go, the result would be similar.

The South East Asia market houses mainly sales offices from various multinational corporations. Most of them don't have a proper (if ever) technical team here. It is always good to have a technical person in the local team, but it would only bore the technical person to death, as the technical supports are pretty trivial -- mainly generated from the sales person who refuses to understand the product and to take the responsibilities for owning up their promises to the clients. More importantly, it is because the technical teams here couldn't make the decisions for the product specials requested by the clients.

Some advised me to start my own business, but growing up in a business household, I am very reluctant to get into a business.

I don't know what am I doing here... I need to escape from this life.

What a day

Had my first car accident today.
I accidentally crushed into the car in front of me, during a traffic jam.
The damages on that car was barely noticeable, the damages on my car include dented front bumper and crooked bonnet cover.

Was nervous, and did some stupid things by complying to the command of that lady -- supplied too much personal details.

I insisted to lodge a police report, instead of settling on the spot. Just came back from police station. I am worried that she might come and harass me, because she had my personal details.

The lady was pretty fierce.

New member on board

Finally, we have a new sales person joinned us today.
But Decamouth and HR are away in China for a week's trainning.
There is no arrangement done for this new guy, not even computer, door access card etc.

He was unofficially assigned to Porche and myself for technical training, by Cockroach, after a chat in the corridor among Decamouth, HR, himself and Azreal.

Porche and myself had a simple briefing laid out for him, but we thought it is more important for Cockroach, Decamouth and the MD to come out with a bridging program tailored for a new sales hire, and to give a brief orientation of the office's operation flow.

Nonetheless, Porche covered for me this afternoon by giving him a brief organisational introduction, and I will spend an hour a day with the new sales guy for the rest of the week to brief him through some basic product features and how my sales support role interacts with his sales role.

Being a young chap, this guy is eager, I would like to see his interactions with Decamouth for the coming months.

Marriage is a lonely path

Ever watched the movie "Infernal Affair"? That's exactly how I feel about marriage.

I am not sure how the brides from the rest of the world felt, but I think marriage is a lonely path.

ROM

Got the registration done this morning. I guess I was the most under dressed bride among the crowd.

Most of the bride got their hair and/or make up done by professional make up artists, wearing their "little white dresses" (cocktail dresses). While I only wore a simple brown skirt and white blouse.

I didn't want to have flowers at the beginning, but was persuaded by my bf... erm.. husband. So we went to this florist opposite my office block over the lunch time yesterday, and got a bouquet of whatever flower that is available. I took the white rose, changed the elaborative catalogue design to this simpler one:


(the fake pearl was my necklace)

I have a huge white rose brooch a long time ago, and thought of putting it on my hair for the registration. But unfortunately for my husband's culture, white flowers are for funeral, especially on the hair... tolerance was already been given for the white rose bouquet... So I spent the whole night before the registration of marriage trying to make a hair piece, from whatever that is available, and is not white.

This is the hair piece I made eventually, from a square scarf, and a Chinese knot rose.


Woke up this morning, had breakfast, washed up, started bundling up the hair and put on the make up. Took me about 1 hour. Drove my parents to the venue, about 35 mins.

The registration took place in a well known Chinese temple, we were 213th couple that was being registered today. Waited for our turn for 1.5 hours.

Given GMT stands for General Malaysian Time, the registration appointment was late by 30mins, which is considered pretty good in local standard. The entire process took about 10-15 mins, and we were out of the room.

Lunch with guests after the registration, and we all went our separate ways after that. That's how I had my registration.

In summary, I wasn't very pleased with the entire process, but there was nothing much I could do. I couldn't smile, because I was having headache from the flu, make up melting under the hot sun and couldn't wipe it off, to climbing up and down the stairs with heels that hurt my ankles, to endure the long queue in the toilet with those lack-of-civil-minded-people keep cutting queue (and bring their whole family after they got in front of you), the place was very crowded and the waiting area was not big enough to cater the crowd.

Most of the people were guests that came to celebrate the ROM with the couples, but I don't know why people make such a big fuss on registration day. The couples are just there to sign some papers.

Anyway, may be I am just cynical. I should be happy and thankful for the guests that came for our marriage registration.