My last day - really!!!

Today, 30th Nov 2007 is my last day. My last day as the Support Assist Manager for Asia Pacific that is. Next month , my whole team of Support Assists will report to new managers in Santa Clara (California), Little Falls (Delaware) and Waldbron (Germany), I still have one team to manage at this time - the E Authoring team in India.

So what lies ahead? There is a proposal to setup a new Global help desk team, but at this time, I am in a holding pattern, waiting for the control tower to advice me which airport I should be landing in. Hope I don't run out of fuel before that happens.

Almost 5 years ago, I took over the management of the Support Assist team and the Sales assist teams and had our combined team meeting in Hachioji, Japan in Jan 2003. The team was pretty big then - disparate and culturally dissimilar. We had Sales assist teams in Japan serving Japan and another team in Singapore serving the rest of AP. AP had 2 Support Assist members who had to merge with the Japan based team with more than a handful. This photo just shows most of the team members at that time,

Over the next 5 years, Sales assist moved over to Marketing. I added Lab Informatics team to my management for a while and then transferred them to Pleasanton last year. The number of AP Support Assist were slowly increased over time. I transfer this current team with 2 members from China, 1 from Taiwan, 1 in Malaysia, 1 in India and 1 in Australia. Japan still had 5 members.

I met up with a future Pongo team member in Beijing in Sept 2003. Nancy - you don't seem to have changed much. I still remember confusing you with Cristina Knebl.

This was the first joint CSO meeting between Asia Pacific and the Solution Units. So we had every CSO manager and most of the decision makers from SU in one room.

That was one big meeting and the team building was just as enjoyable.
Here is one of the team up one section of the Great Wall in Beijing called Mutianyou (not the Badaling section).

Over the years I have had numerous collaboration with China's CSO team. I had utilized their training facilities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou to the max. We used weekends and public holidays to deliver technical trainings. There was one year when I visited China almost every month to deliver trainings!! Due to the close working relationship, I guess, China CSO treated me as part of their team and for a number of years, I joined in the CSO and customer training's off site team meetings. This one was last year in Chengdu - Panda country.

My last team meeting this year was held in Fukuoka - but only involved the LCMS support team. It was getting difficult to get all of the team together due to workload and bandwidth.

When all's been said and done, this little plaque we left at one of the temples in Fukuoka just about sums up how work should be done.
Now, if only I knew which airport i am suppose to land in???

Despicable people

The office is running a food donation campaign as part of the Employees Community Activities. We have been asking employees to donate food so that we can share the donated food with less fortunate families. Six families are selected to receive the food donations once the collection period is completed. That will be a blog for another day when we make the donations.

What I want to mention here is the despicable and disgusting behaviour of at least one unknown individual. 2 days ago, in the early hours of the day, 2 plastic bags of foodstuff was left in the cubicle next to the food collection room. Inside the bags were bottles of chilli sauce, cans of raspberries and so on. Hey, that's a nice addition to the collection, some of us thought.

Today, we decided to move the food into the collection room and one of the committee members noticed that all of the food in the plastic bag had exceeded their expiry dates. #*&$#%$*- how can anyone be so callous?? It looks like someone did some spring cleaning and decided to "DONATE" the expired foodstuff.

To add salt to injury, one of the bottles of chilli had been opened and used. I postulate that the person giving these may have tested the sauce to see if they would die from consumming it. I hope they had a &#*%$@ stomach ache after that!!

All because we are targeting to donate to poor families, it does not mean that we should be giving them stuff which is potentially not edible. For the person who did this - I hope you can live with your conscience. It is either very small or non existent.

Sheeesssh!!

No mood to blog for a while

It's been a long time since a ratchety persistent cough got to me. My last visit to Singapore, I seem to have caught the flu bug that is prevalent all year round. First it came on like a hay fever symptom. Itchy eyes, raspy throat and sneezing spells. Asked the company clinic for anti-histamines and symptoms cleared except for the cough.

By the time I got back home, cough became more persistent and frequent. See the doc again. Diagnosed as flu of the month. Got a bunch of antibiotics, anti inflammatory pills, muco-solvant and a cough mixture to be taken at night as it makes one sleepy. I am very much awake after taking this!!

By this time, the cough is so bad that my sides are aching from the persistent coughing. Hope this clears by Friday when I have to send off my last day message.

December 2007 - $uper month

ARB (Results Bonus) just got announced at 16.4%, which translate to about ONE month's salary (depending on which country you are in).

Add that to the regular monthly salary

For some people, add salary increments (effective 1st Dec), add Individual Performance Bonus (IPB - only a very few some!!), add RSU (restricted stock units - again, a very few some) and you have a very few some people seeing a $uper month.

Crossing my fingers!!!

It ain't over till the fat lady sings.

Interestingly enough, someone I wrote about felt sufficiently offended to write to me about being "impolite" - quoting a line in one of my previous blogs. So I did a bit of googling to find the origin of that saying and Wikipedia has the more authoritative origin of this saying

Well, as luck would have it, the link I put in earlier does not work, so I'll reproduce the relevant parts here. If you are interested to see the whole parts, just google the title (copy and paste onto a Google search)

It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings is a proverb, essentially meaning that one shouldn't assume the outcome of some activity (frequently a sports game) until it has actually finished.

This phrase in turn refers to the impression by many that at the end of every opera, an aria is sung by a heavy-set woman dressed like a valkyrie. A famous example of this is Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (aka the Ring cycle). This is a set of 4 separate operas (lasting about 15 hours), in which the final scene includes Brünnhilde (a very large Valkyrie) singing, and then riding onto Siegfried's funeral pyre.

The set collapses and the entire cycle ends up in the Rhine river, where it started. The "fat lady" is often illustrated with a horned helmet, a spear, possibly a shield, and possibly blond braids (to suggest Scandinavian ancestry).

Well, life is like a play, an opera. At the end of the play/ opera, things comes to an end. What is the legacy you have left behind? Does it matter who were your friends and who were your foes. The answer to me is NO. Once the play has ended, a new one begins ad infinitum.

In any case, if one were to dwell on the meaning of life and events happening to us, I think one of the soliloquy from Macbeth best sums up the meaning of life. Macbeth with his burning ambition and "the behind the power" wife had murdered King Duncan. Subsequently, after his wife died, he started to have nightmares, hauntings and visions. In this particular scene, he reflects on the meaning of life

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow,
a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale
Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28

I like the last lines - a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying NOTHING!!

Live life to the fullest with people who appreciate you for who you are and what you are. Do NOT change to suit others. I may be weirdly unconventional - but I know many appreciate me for what I am.

Malaysia LSCA team celebrates!!

Well, the fiscal year has ended. AP is feeling on top of the world - preliminary results looks good. We still have to wait for the official announcements. But what the heck, the team feels confident of the results and was ready to party after a long hard year.

Friday evening, we adjourned to Chilli's at 1 Utama for a team dinner. It so happened that that day fell on, both Liew Ting Kok and my wife's birthday. So I got to bring her and Alex along (or contend with a really black face at home for not celebrating her birthday). We had to split into 3 tables as the crowd was quite large - 20 people.

Table 1 with the hip younger generation started off by ordering a round of margaritas. Then came the main courses. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.There were many more dishes, but by then my hands and fingers were all greasy and oily and I had to give it a rest.

After dinner, we adjourned to Neway for karaoke.

The night ended with last 4 people leaving the karaoke joint after 3am. I left at 11pm as Alex was getting too tired, but I heard many strange stories the following Monday.
There were a number of people who got so pissed drunk that they vomited in the loo, the ice bucket and the rubbish bin. One engineer fumbled and dropped his car keys through the gap of the lift doors. He had to travel back home to Setapak to get his spare keys and by the time he returned, his parking charges was more than RM40 (we only paid RM1 for parking the whole day!!).The guys lost out to the gals in the drinking contest. They just couldn't hold their liquor. So some of them pretended to sleep??!!

Well, we enjoyed ourselves. Next thing to look forward to are the slew of news from 1st December,

Hari Raya open House visits

The Muslim festival of Eid Fitri is almost over. But the Malaysian tradition of open houses has not abated. That is when we visit our Muslim friends (invited or otherwise) at their home for a bit of food, drink, and catching up.

The last week of October and beginning of Nov, my family and i visited Indah, one of our sales admin about 4 generations ago (as in 4 admin persons ago). We were amongst the first to reach there. Some other office mates arrived much later. Indah had a nice buffet spread laid out for her guest. My son enjoyed going from table to table to enjoy the different cookies that she had.She has a nice super link in Tropika 2 located within Bukit Jelutong. That is near to Denai Alam where I have purchased a double storey linked house. So I took the opportunity to recce the house - it is still being constructed.

Then the following week, we went to Maryah's house in Bandar Tasik Puteri, near to Country Homes, Rawang. and Madeline. What a loooonnnnggg journey to get there. The 3 musketeers met up there - Jeanie, Maryah and Madeline. Maryah prepared Asam Laksa, Ketupat with kerang, chicken nuggets and fried chicken wings. The Asam laksa was on request from Madeline.

Wan Yow said that if he had known, he would have made his request for special ffod too!!

Fiscal year 08 just started - changes galore!!

Today, 1st Nov 2007, the new fiscal year for Agilent starts.FY07 is over and done with.For those who had not met their targets, whether self imposed or expected, too bad, the slate is wiped clean and you start all over again. And what a start we have

As announced earlier, Chaiyapat Chirathamjaree and Koh Siam Teck switches jobs. Roger is now the new support boss for SMT. Cheng Ah Sai take on the business development position for Lab Informatics reporting to AP VP. Susmaryosep Ong, still has Channels but switches reporting to Teng in marketing. Want to win (Sheang Yin) has resigned from Singapore Sales - reportedly thumbing his nose at getting another month's bonus if only he would remain one more month. Mel Ng decides that Sales is a better life and has tendered notice of resignation to join the competitor - PE. Rumors of another support engineer contemplating resignation is rife. He may consider tendering for a couple of months of no pay leave.

They say it ain't over till the fat lady sings. Well, the fat lady did not sing, but she has to report to R Wong under SAPK sales. And her whole team is now on pay at risk! And that is just Singapore!!

In the world wide arena, my WW support boss has a new manager - Bill (not Sullivan), a product of Princeton U. HR teams WW had to size down as much as 50% in some cases. Quality teams and functions has been re-organized

As of today, the management unit (MU) of my CE Assist team has been mapped to the solution unit, i.e. the SU pays for everything the team incurs form today. By the end of the month, actually 1st December, the whole CE Assist team reports directly to SU - except me.

So what's in it for me? Once the management of the CE Assist team transfers to SU, I have to hire between 6 to 8 new staff, train them up and start a Global Technical help desk that has to operate 24 x 5

Looks like FY08 is a year of and for CHANGE!!