Breezin’

It is one of my favorite oldies songs. The jazz element is so relaxing, and I can’t help but to imagine myself on a breezing evening in Las Vegas as the song is played. No idea why… maybe the song was used in some Las Vegas movie somewhere. Haha… FYI, the song is by George Benson, the same guy who sang ‘Nothing Gonna Change My Love For you’, one of the few songs which lyric I can remember inside out.

Anyway, this song has been a great companion this week. Thanks to WMP which has done a good job by randomly picked this song in office. I haven’t been listening to it for such a long time. Guess when people say music can change your mood, it’s really true :)

Office has been as per normal. Almost one month in new office and I’m still constantly amazed with all the software engineering stuff around. Things from requirement specifications, use case, sequence diagram to unit testing, integration testing, user acceptance test, change management, etc (I can go on and on). Guess no one would understand how excited I am; to finally (after a year) found out that what I learnt for the past 4 years is not something imaginary which only alive within the 2 lab session per week.

I must say, the real practice of software engineering is not as bad as what we’re always asked to believe. The scope-creep is more or less a rare thing, change management is in place, and the documentation feeds me with more information than what I wanted to know. But yes, some classic problem is still there. Like now I’m in testing phase, bug are found and fixed, but it means that we have to re test the whole things… which will surely affect the schedule due to resource constraints… Oh well, think this is one of the reason why people in IT are left with no choice but to work long hours.

Apart from working, I have finally finished a long overdue book (overtaken by two other books in between). “The 7 habits of highly effective people” is really perfect for university text book. It’s divided to logical and easy-to-follow structure, and I really like the content of every chapter.

The book provided a lot of new angles for me, but I guess my main takeaway is the listening skill. I always thought that whenever someone talks to you, they want to get continuous respond… so as they talk, I will start to think of how to respond ‘intelligently’. Sometime, I try too hard to show sympathy by giving suggestions even before they finish their stories, or even worse, tried to convince them that I understand what they feel by start talking about my own experience.

Those are all flaws in good listening practice. Can’t imagine that I have spent so much effort to do something wrong =__=’ Listening is about getting what your counterparty want to send across. Asking question is sometimes necessary to clarify, but most importantly, you don’t have other intention but to understand deeply. Seek first to understand then to be understood. Got it? (If no, please buy and read habit 5 :p)

Another key takeaway is to think win/win =) I first heard about it 5 years ago, when I took first 181 effective communication course in NTU, but I understand more about it after reading the book. It’s a good concept, of how you should think of benefitting you and your counterparties, without scarifying your need and theirs. We really need to think out of the box… and it is definitely tricky to apply. The examples given sound perfect… but of course, those are ideal cases, leaving behind the other billions of fail cases.

Alright… that’s about this book… Can’t believe that it’s written in 1989 and yet everything still sounds relevant! Next book is Outliers, sponsored (still) by my generous flatmate :p Thanks to these books, my time in bus is no longer a pain.

Yesterday, I went to Ion Orchard, one of the newest malls in Singapore. Urm, nothing is so special there. Or to be more precise, I can’t find suitable yet affordable things to buy. Guess if I go there again, it will be for the food =D There is one Japanese Cuisine which already has a very long queue even before it’s opened! Nice. I myself had a dinner at Crystal Jade Korean Cuisine. The queue is almost an hour, but it was definitely worth it!


Escalator to dunno where, only at Ion Orchard

Ok.. it’s evening now. Time for a weekly movie night =]
ED

The Work - Life Balance

Work life balance is tricky witchy quirky! Now I understand why there are so many workshop and seminar about this particular thing but almost none for “study – life balance”. In school, you more or less know what is the max bar you need to achieve for a subject (you go higher and your professor will ask you to pay for the advance level subject). In contrary, you can never be too proactive in working life. Neither can you be doing something out of your scope. Never!

This is when things get hard for someone as blunt as me. Am I doing enough? I need someone to tell it straight to my face. When is ‘suffice’ in the view of my boss? My official working hour is 9 to 6, but my team is practically in office from 10 to 10, everyday without exception...

Now, tell me where the balance should be. Will I be a slacker to follow the official 9 to 6? But will I be too workaholic to follow team’s 10 to 10? I feel guilty of whichever decision I made… =__= so childish and indecisive huh.

Life goes on despite of my million complains. I’m not in stable state yet T_T I want to do something more out of my working life, but week starts and ends without me doing much to it. Guess too many options have finally left me in the sea of doubt. Thing wasn’t that complicated during university life.

Talking about university life, I just watched 2 movies that discussed about the past. One is about a guy who keeps living in his past (17 Again), another is about a guy who needed to be reminded about his past (Ghosts of Girlfriends Past). Both gave the same takeaway for me: Never forget what was important for you, why you do the thing you’re doing and evaluate if you’re still on the same track as you started…

For me, well. I’m on track, I guess. But I started to wonder if I should be doing more… Argh, I want many things… but I don’t want to forgo whatever I have right now…

…I can’t believe that I write something as childish as this =_=’’

Anyway~, my manager just approved my leave application for September, and I got my visa ready =) Now left with the air ticket and I’m ready to set off to Sydney. Aurelieee… please wait for your auntieeee :D

This weekend, I manage to get the rest that I wanted to :) I went to watch Harry Potter, and it was as gloomy as expected from the novel. The graphic was awesome, but I was displeased with the way they twisted the story. Harry was portrayed to be such a coward… he just hid and watched Dumbledore reached his final time. In novel, he was immobilized and hence unable to move or do anything to save Dumbledore. That was more ideal, wasn’t it?

Today, I finally resume my swimming after one month =D now is time to get ready for tomorrow...'s muscles ache T_T

ED

Adapting…

I’m still adjusting to my new rotation. Even though I adapt to the new waking hour pretty easily (it required less effort to wake up one our later than normal, definitely), I am not very used of finding the house empty while I wake up… and the sun rises so high when I walked out… and the way I go to lunch after two hours of starting work. Everything still feels awkward for me. And even though I used to skip dinner (ups) I was having hard time figuring out how to get one when I need it. I have a direct bus from office to home, which makes me quite isolated from any eatery place, unless I want to spend more effort in taking bus to Harbor Front to get a dinner, then a long winding way home with switching from purple mrt to green mrt to red mrt to bus. Bleeh. I can predict that I will do that at most once a month.

Anyway, on top of all the office changes, I need to build up patience to my newly added duty at bathroom. Taking care of wound can quite put me into test. Being a person who can hardly wake up 5 minutes earlier to prepare breakfast, the process of cleaning and plastering wound feels like taking forever to get done. No choice still. I passed through it quite smoothly this week though… and I’m glad that the wound is recovering =) It didn’t hinder much of my activities, except that I can’t smile too wide as the plaster will then hurt my face.

A lot of things come at once, but thanks that it was not too much for me to handle. This week, two more groups of friends are moving out… from west to the very east :( I hope that I can still meet them often after this. Maybe more activities at east coast park so that we can get together (not traumatized with the bike incident at the very least)

This weekend has been quite packed with a farewell party, commencement, and being a part time mover :p hahaha.. I hope that I can get more rest next week…


@ Mich's Totally Awesome Place

13 July... Happy Birthday Mum, I love you to the max.
ED

After the Bike Accident...

I am demoralized after seeing a doctor today. He kept scaring me by saying that my wound would take at least 6 months to recover, and there is a big probability that the scar will remained.

When I was trying to calm myself down, he continued by saying how important a face is, especially for a lady, and how I might have ruined my future… He even asked me to find the guy who caused the accident and ask me to marry him :s What kind of doctor is this!!

And instead of giving me a proper dressing, he stick an oversize hansaplant to my chin and asked for $35. I felt stupid walking out from the clinic :s

Scar or not, one thing for sure, I will never go back there anymore. You can call me a coward who doesn’t want to hear the fact, but I really can’t tolerate his attitude :s

Resting,
ED

July and Hospital

July hasn’t been as busy as June (at least for now). Some news, like the sudden death of MJ has been covering news paper for one week and more. The news itself is shocking, but I am even more surprised to know that he is already 50! That means all the other famous singers in his era, has been around that ages as well. Half decade. How fast time flies.

MJ has been a legend. My all time favorite is “You’re not alone”. It sounds so comforting and full of sincerity. MJ, may you rest in peace. Thanks for bringing so many wonderful songs to the world :)

Enough about MJ. For my rotation, it has been a great 3 days :) This is my first time being in such a big team, where everyone is talking about technology and implementation. I got excited, yes, but I haven’t been able to contribute much yet. The team is big and I haven’t known exactly who is doing what. My very first challenge will be to remember all their names. I almost twist my own tongue and still can't get the name perfect ^^;


My new office @ Alexandra

The new 2009 grads have came and joined on Wednesday, 1st july. Their presence really brings back the memories of the naïve me one year back. Hope that they will enjoy the programme as much as I did (minus the stolen bag part).

On Friday, after finishing work, I met up with the other 2008 grads at Novena, to celebrate the fact that we have been working for a year and still being together :D We played the Rockband @ Gaminghow for 2 hours, before heading back to home.

On Saturday, I slept like a pig until almost 1, then went to help Julianto moving his stuff to Lake Side and went directly to East Coast for cycling.


Fighterz @ East Coast

Believe it or not, that is my first time being in East coast, after staying in Singapore for more than 5 years =.=’ the place was nice. We rent a bike each ($6/ hrs) and started cycling at around 5.45, hence the sun wasn’t very hot, and the wind was just nice. We cycled until the end of the route, took pictures, then headed back to the bike shop.

That is when the incident happened. There was a guy in front of me had been cycling in a very weird way. He moved left and right, slow and fast. I tried to avoid him several times, but in the end…

My front wheel crashed with his back wheel. I fell down from my bike, with my face kissed the ground first, as my hand was stucked at the handler. My heart was really ripping when I feel the cement hit my face, twice. I then quickly try to rise up, which wasn’t hard because my leg and hand were alright. When I touch my forehead, I was really close to break with tear. I can feel a big bruise, as big as chicken egg, came out instantly from by forehead. I then touch my chin and I can feel the blood dipping from there. My face!! T_T

Anyway, I know that there is nothing I can do to turn back time.. so after some first aid from my friends (thanks all), I cycle to the bike shop, return the bike, then took a taxi to Changi Hospital (sorry Tom to drag you along :p). They are quite professional there, so I was discharged in less then half hour, after all the screening, xray, injection, dressing, and 4 types of medicine to be taken everyday (oh, and a MC certificate as well :p) That cost $75, which I feel quite reasonable with their services :)

I reached back home at around 11, applied the medication, and went to bed at around 1. The medicine was really a strong sleeping pill… I was totally unconscious until the next day at 12.

On Sunday, after my lunch, I had the medicines again.. and… I was really drowsy. I tried to keep myself awake by typing blog. I managed to survive the nap, but my blog turns out to be so unorganized T_T still.. I am too sleepy to fix them up. Haha..

Ok ba, that’s all for this week. Just finish my Sarpinos Pizza and answering call from my family around the globe (dunno how my incident news travel so fast).

My life is full of unexpected events, but I kind of treasuring them. It shows how my friends and family care about me :p

Movie next!
ED

The Anniversary

At this very same day, a year ago, I was full of anticipation.

Now, after one year of working life, I’m recalling back on what had been my expectations on that memorable day. Thing wasn’t really far off, although it has made a lot of unexpected turns.

I started off with zero knowledge about business process, but I wasn’t really worried about that. I was so sure that they hire me because of my technical expertise, till I was told that I was just made a very big wrong assumption.

Despite being in IT department, there is no development going on. At all. The most technical stuff I can find was to make test cases and liaise with vendor. I feel very uncomfortable at that time. If my core competency – my knowledge of software engineering – wasn’t put into practice at all, I am no difference from a JC graduate. I started to panic, knowing that I wouldn’t be contributing as much as I want.

It was only after few months then I realized their reasons for hiring me. No they are not looking for an expert in the field. They are looking for someone that they can nurture, to have a high level view of the organization, and to have the experience of how every team works. I was flattered and skeptical at the same time. I was not convinced that it’s going to work out for me.

Time passed by, and I moved on to different teams. The more team I work with, the clearer I can see the value of the arrangement. In the end, I’m thankful that I can make meaningful suggestions to my team, just because I learnt it from my other team. I started to focus a lot in business processes, and quite accept the fact that my technical expertise might be left unused.

But the plot wasn’t last long. With the organization decision to revamp their business strategies, focus was no longer to nurture people. Rather, it’s to find the people who can do it at the lowest possible cost. I’m now misaligned with the strategies, and hence Plan B is executed.

The plan B kicked off today, right on my one year anniversary. After working at DBS and ORQ, I’m now located at 911 Alexandra. Rather than working with stock, price, fund, order, I will now work with select, insert, execute, debug. Wasn’t this what I have been wishing for since the first day? To be on technical side and talk about the topic I’m comfortable with? Sometimes I really feel that God hear my voices (even though with some lagging. ehem.)

Now, instead of jumping out when waken up after 7, I can still roll around after 8. Instead of being in a team with no guy, I’m now the only gal during lunch. Instead of talking about school holiday, I’m discussing about new iphone application. And instead of going home after 12, I reached home before 9.

Is this what I want? I don't know. But I realize that I can't ask for more than that. I truly find that this is a good opportunity for me to find out, if I'm really what I thought I was. Let see what I have to say on my second anniversary. For now, I’m engaged to GBIT.

Happy Anniversary,
ED