Getting busier now

Wow! It's been 3 weeks since I made any posting!!

Was making preparations to deliver an engineer training in Shanghai for the week of 15th March. Then out of the blue, the Singapore training center was desperate for help for the week of 8th March to deliver 2 customer operational trainings. Apparently, the trainer from India was not able to make it due to passport and visa problems. C'mon, it's a Friday and you want me to deliver a training on Monday? Blimey!! Well, I relented and ended up in Singapore in the week where they had a furniture fair and an IT fair in the same week

What that did was to send hotel room rates soaring. But even at higher prices, all my favourite hotels were fully booked. So I had to make do with the one in Chinatown which normally charged us S$160, but was charging S$260 for the duration of my stay. Luckily this is all on company expense and not my own.

The long and short of it was that I delivered 3 days of chemstation training to 6 Singapore customers. 3 more who were supposed to turn up did not - 2 from Pakistan and one more local who had conjunctivitis.

And then there was 2 more days of LC maintenance and troubleshooting class. This time with 9 customers - 6 from India and 3 locals.

This trip, made the acquaintance of 2 new colleagues in the call center. Sad to say, I lost one in the region. He said that his love affair with the company ended that Friday afternoon. I hope he gets around to differentiating between work and personal relationship. Don't blame him though, I had gone through the same turmoil more than 15 years ago.

I went back home on Friday evening and then was Shanghaied on Sunday.

Sigh!

Shanghai for more than 2 weeks!!

This January trip to Shanghai had essentailly 2 objectives

- get trained as a trainer for one of our support products (RA) and

- to deliver a training on another product because the original trainer could not be re-scheduled.

Because of the train the trainer sessions, I arrived on a Thursday to help the trainer get the class and labs setup. In the end, since most of the setup was network related, there was not much I could help with as only 1 of 2 trainers from Colorado turned up. The other one had to abort at the last minute due to burst water pipes in his house (extreme cold winters does that). Rick had only one hardisk with all the necessary labs installed, so I couldn't help him.

In any case, the training went well, despite many gremlins showing up in the lab. DHCP addresses were supposed to be leased for 7 days, but somehow in the lab, the moment you disconnect, you get a new IP address. Perplexing and challenging!!

There was a GC class running in the next room and both Rick and I were invited to their graduation dinner. Most of those students in the GC class were going to be my students during my last week in Shanghai!

During the first weekend, Mao (aka referred to as Chairman Mao for those who know him) took me to the highest bottle opener in the world - the Shanghai World Financial center (SWFC). You had to pay RMB150 per person to go all the way to the 100th floor to view Pudong and it's surroundings. Unfortunately for us, the day was foggy and you really don't get a good view. In fact, Shanghai seems to be shrouded in perpetual fog during the days I was there. I was the 1,984,201 visitor up to the 100th floor. For sure, SWFC is really high. Even the JinMao building and the Oriental Pearl Tower nearby is looked down on - literally. The picture above is what you can expect if the day was clear! One thing I noticed was that due to the expected high number of foreign tourists who goes up the SWFC, most of the girls manning the lifts and customer areas were young and pleasant on the eyes.

The training i delivered was also challenging as many of the instruments are badly maintained. Damn!!! But I managed to deliver what was required and had the class graduation dinner nearby.

As usual, I get to renew my friendship with many people in the factory. There was Lily, who is the GC trainer, Helen, our training admin in Shanghai and of course my Niang.

I am coming again in March!!

Shanghai !! Oh Shanghai!!

I was in Shanghai during the last week of November - for work, not pleasure. On the day I was supposed to leave, I heard that Elaine C's brother was tested positive for H1N1 and he was just back from Shanghai!! Not wanting to take any chances of disrupting my plans for the end of the year, I wore a mask all the way from Kuala Lumpur to Shanghai. I only removed the mask after dinner and when I was back in my hotel room. Call me paranoid, but better to be safe than sorry. I had enough masks to last me 2 weeks!

The trip was a training trip to learn up a new instruments that we were introducing. I was on a train-the-trainer as I had committed to deliver the training in March next year. There was this girl that I have known since she was knee high to a grasshopper (okay okay - since she was a baby). She is married now and stays in Shanghai with her mum and 2 kids. Charmaine's hubby works in another province and is home only on weekends (i.e. a weekend husband). The reason they stay in Shanghai is because that province does not have an International school for the kids.

Life is not too bad for Charmaine. She got her driver to pick me up from the hotel, went to her apartment for dinner and then had the driver send me back. 2 weeks before my visit, her Malaysian cousins visited her too and spruced up the place with a lot of live flowers and plants.

It must have been at least 2 years since my last visit to the factory in Shanghai. There were some new faces and a whole bunch of old ones. I am glad they still remembered me. At one time, there were 4 of my previous reports in the same room. It just goes to show that organizational relationships can and will change with time. I also managed to FINALLY meet up with another lady who helps me in my work. Pham - if you are reading this and you want to know who is Helen Sun and what she looks like - tah dah!!!

And Mark P. was in Shanghai a few days earlier than me - conducting interviews for Khoo WK's replacement.

Last but not least - I managed to meet up with my "niang" on the first day before she disappeared to Beijing. Niang means mum in Chinese. How did this lady become my niang? It happened about 2.5 years ago when both of us were on a high achiever trip sponsored by the company. She had brought her daughter along for the cruise from Singapore to Phuket and back and her daughter just took an instant liking to me and stuck to me throughout the trip..

That's how I got a "niang" much younger than me!!

One last comment - Shanghai is not a destination you want to go to now. Most of the tourist spots are under going renovations in preparations for EXPO 2010 which will happen from May 2010. The bund is a mess!! The old temple complex next to the Yu Yuan gardens has half the shops closed for renovations. Even the famous Nanxiang Xiao Loong Bao has half it's capacity as they work on upgrading the restaurant.

Be fore-warned!

Sales shows their appreciation

Finally I have time to do some updates!!

Sales did pretty well for fiscal year 09 (which has ended for us). And they had a series of thank you meals for the key players. Yours truly got invited to all 3, I guess because I am neither here nor there in terms of department or function. Or maybe just coz I am regional. In any case, i appreciate Soh's invitation to all those thank you meals.

First there was an appreciation dinner for the Sales team (who else??). We had that at Reunion in Bangsar Village ll. The signature dishes of Reunion was ordered. Maybe it's because of the ladies in the team, but despite being full to the jaw with food, there was still quite a bit of leftovers. After that, we adjourned to Francis Kanner on another street for a round of drinks. We had our photos taken before, during and after the beer and it was obvious that as the drinks went in, the inhibitions went out. I even managed to get a shot with one of the patrons who was (in the opinion of the group) bigger size than me.

Next, we had appreciation night with the Support team in Neway karaoke in 1Utama. The place offers buffet dinner as part of the package.Yes, everyone enjoyed themselves. Only one comment that I have about their beer- I think it is diluted with barely an essence of alcohol. It must be because NOBODY got drunk or even looked drunk despite many rounds of beer (except for maybe Danny)!!

The last appreciation dinner was with one of our key distributors. For that, our distributor also invited a local politician who is a frequent patron of Unique Seafood 23 located at Jalan Kemajuan. Why? Because Jason would know what were the good/great dishes to order. We also had a few lessons from him on the art of drinking wine, as well as the good parts to eat on certain fishes. That was certainly an eye opener! For example, I never knew (and neither did most of the rest) that the best part of a Chat Seng Ban (7 star garoupa??) was not it's meat. It's the maw and areas around the head. And for that we pay RM40 to Rm80 for a reasonable sized fish at the market!! Wow!! Give me the flesh anytime. I am okay with that. This was one of those rare occasions when Izan joined us. The place is halal. Dinner ended with karaoke as we had a private function room.

I have been literally croaking for the past few weeks now.

SAPK meet in Singapore

Just about a week or so after my last visit to Singapore, I found myself there again for a couple of days of management meetings. I have just been transferred back to the Asia Pacific operations and this was a good forum for me to update myself on the who's who in SAPK.

First observation - while there were some new faces, most of the others that I knew from 2 years ago were still there. Admittedly some were in different positions.

Second observation - things has gotten a lot more complicated in the 2 years since I left AP operationally. Obviously we have gotten more breadth in terms of instrumentation. We also have a lot more processes in place - with more to come. One of the senior managers put this into perspective - we just love acronyms and processes!!

Obviously, I cannot blog about the meeting. I am just glad for the opportunity to reconnect with the people that I knew and the people that I need to work with in my current role.

Cheers!!

Missed me??? part 2

So what else was happening while I was in Singapore?

Coincidentally, Elaine C was also in Singapore at the weekend that I was there. An ex colleague from (Singapore)logistics was having his wedding dinner on Saturday night and many of those who had worked with him in logistics were invited (but not me, since I was not really working closely with him). Elaine was supposed to stay with her ex colleague from Thailand. I offered her and another friend CM to stay with me and both of them accepted since the hotel I was staying in was a lot more central. And it would have been a lot more luxurious and comfortable. In addition, we could also explore Singapore together.

On Sunday, we went to St Andrews Cathedral for Church service. I like the cross that was made of a couple of tree branches. The morning sun caused an effect like a bird was flying across the cross.

Elaine has an aunt who stays in Bishan and we also visited her. She asked us to join her for dinner and we had that at the hawker center in Bishan. There was this stall that had between 15 to 20 people queueing for it's chicken rice/porridge. And all the other stalls neighboring it was relatively empty - essentially swatting flies!. CM just had to find out if the chicken rice was really that great. Honestly..... it wasn't!! Don't understand the fascination of Singaporeans for that chicken rice!.

But the main reason for my presence in Singapore was to help the local training center setup the instruments again after they had been relocated from NUS. The gas plumbing and wiring were a real mess. I named the mess - Spaghetti!! During the re-installation, I found a couple fo instances where the lab could potentially have had a fire hazard. Suffice to say, the quality of work done by the local engineers (and I hope it was the newer ones who had made those mistakes) leaves much to be desired.

Towards the last day of my visit, some of the older local engineers were on hand to help re-install some of the other instruments. I commended one for what I thought was a neat job. He said " I was told to do this to Tam's standard"!!! WTF!!! LOL!!!

Sigh!