Shanghai training in July 2007

One of my engineers decided to transfer to the Shanghai factory earlier this year. So, this July training was orphaned!! No trainers available. Considering that my team is already over-stretched in training deliveries, besides the expectations of providing online support and escalation management, I took it upon myself to deliver this class. I have been delivering this training about once a year since 3 years ago and almost once every 2 months in the years before that. So having to do this twice this year was not a big issue. I did the first this year in the first quarter in Beijing.

The class was a mix of experiences coupled with different support teams. I had at least 2 new engineers in class, 2 customer trainers, one call center personnel and of the rest of the attendees, 2 were from Thailand, one from India and one from Malaysia. So the challenge was to be able to deliver the training in English and Chinese while making sure that most of the participants understood me with my Malaysian English twang. Adding on to the challenge was the condition of the instruments in the training lab. We had missing parts, defective parts and instruments. I was tempted to call off the training with the most easily available excuse - that my father had passed away. But that would not have been fair to all the people who were expecting to be trained. So I persevered. I was suppose to have a co-trainer, but when he saw the list of attendees, he backed off and was not willing to even deliver one session. I guess the challenge for him was too big.

Anyway, the training went well despite all the challenges thrown up. I tried to inject some humor into the class and I think that for a majority of the people, that went well. We finally wrapped up the training with a graduation get together at a karaoke in Pudong. Everyone enjoyed themselves. We had S.H.E. and H.I.M. together with F4, Backstreet Boys, Westlife and a host of others entertaining us.

I am sure you can tell we enjoyed ourselves in these photos!.

Establishing relationships with my half brother

2 weeks ago, I wrote about the passing of my biological father. I was in Shanghai when that happened and I had no intention of attending his funeral or wake, so I stayed on in Shanghai to complete the delivery of the training that was scheduled. I have since learnt that his second wife also opted not to attend, leaving her son, Tham Eng Kit, to take care of things. Luckily he had the help of the uncles (2nd, 3rd and 5th) and Aunt (8th) and Uncle in law.

I got back from Shanghai on 14th July and in the evening, called up Eng Kit for a meeting the next day. I had avoided establishing any relationship with him all these years because I did not want to open any opportunity for his father to even find an excuse to come back into our life. So Eng Kit survived 35 years knowing he had an elder brother but not knowing how to contact him (i.e. me). Letting his father any opportunity to come back into our lives would have done a grave injustice to my mum.

I have shared with a friend before that I consider relationships in life to be multi layered - very much like the layers of a large onion. At the core is family - good or bad, like them or hate them, they are still family. I chose to put my half brother at an arm's length all the 35 years of his life. But with the passing of his father, there was no reason to do so. So today, 15th July, I whole heartily welcome Eng Kit into my family core. My mum, my cousin Madeline and her husband were also there to welcome him, along with my wife and son. Out of the blue, Alex had someone to call small uncle (Sai Sook). Eng Kit's background is just as complicated. His mum remarried and he also has 2 brothers and sisters with different surnames. Now that is what I call complicated!!

If you are interested, the other layers of the relationship onion moves from Family to a multi layered friends circle, starting with God Daughters that are almost family, to core friends, casual friends and new friends. Outside of these are the colleagues, acquaintances, strangers and a dried shrivelled layer called enemies. As with an onion, the enemy layer is very thin and few.

Having a younger brother around is a new experience. It sounded funny whenever he called me Tai Kor - sounds like I am some underworld boss or something. Most of my cousins call me Yew Kor (Kum Yew being my home name). The get together was surprising very relaxed with no noticeable tensions. I guess since both of us were aware of the existence of the other and the circumstances and situation, we had accepted that it was neither's fault that things were the way they were.

Eng Kit, welcome to my family.

Looking back at starting preparations for regular work life

This Sunday, woke up to torrential rain in Shanghai. Still a week to go before I can go home. Weekend has been lousy as it was either raining or heavily over casted skies. The weather put me into a pensive mood. It made me think back on the different paths I could have taken if I had taken different decisions when I had finished my Electronics course in TAR College.

I guess I was lucky and also fated to have pursued this career. After finishing MCE (O levels) with grade 1, the scores were not good enough to continue A levels in Government school, especially if I wanted to pursue Science Stream. I applied to TAR college, listing Bio Maths as my first option, Automotive as my second and some Arts Stream course as my third. TAR offered me my first choice. But between applying and getting the offer, I had time to reflect on what I really wanted and what my Mother could afford to sent me through. Finishing A levels meant that I should continue onto University and that would have put a very big strain on my mum. She had been working as a domestic help almost all of her life. IF I am lucky, I may have been able to get a scholarship, just as I did from Form 1 to 5. But that would have been speculative. I opted to take pursue vocational training, which would have gotten me into work life within 2 years and lift a burden off my mum. While waiting for TAR college's offer, I applied to FIT, a private college, taking an Electrical and Electronic course. I liked what I was learning but I did not like the college - it was noting more than a money generating concern with little care for students interest. I only studied there for 6 weeks.

So when TAR college's offer came in mid way thru my studies in FIT, I rejected the Bio Maths offer and asked if they could let me have a place in the inaugural Certificate in Electronics. Took them some time before they came back and said NO - because the class was already in progress. I had to ask my mum's boss to use his connections in MCA to help me wangle a place into TARC. The long and short of it was that I was able to get a seat in the class and went in 2 MONTHS LATE!!. I still remember my lecturer, Mr Wong Mee Choy, almost fainted when I walked in. "What? Another one?" were his exact words that i remember to this day.

The above photo shows the combined class of Electronics and Automotive visitng the Matsushita plant in Shah Alam in 1976. Look at the long hair and bell bottom fashion of those years!! I am in the standing row, wearing dark clothes in the middle of the pack.

Throughout the 2 years, I consciously made sure that I did not disappoint all those who helped me to that point in life. While not the top of the class, I did credibly well enough that the college offered me and 2 other a job when we graduated. I had applied to many other companies as well to hedge my job chances. Motorola had offered me a position as an electronic technician too, but I felt obligated to accept TARC's offer. Evelyn Chua worked in the same lab as me and the other chap (sorry dude, I can't remember your name) was in the Automotive lab. I'll see if I can find a photo somewhere to update this blog entry. Evelyn was the rose amongst the thorns of the class.

When I got my first pay increment from TARC, I was totally disappointed. I had put in a lot of effort (from my perspective) into my work and the increment was miserable. So I applied to Motorola again and was offered a job as an electronic Technician, again. 3 and the half years there, going from Electronic Technician to Maintenance Supervisor was quite an experience. Due to the heavy hours I put in especially in overtime, in order to pay back my friends for loans that they provided me in purchasing my first house, I had virtually no social life.

Working 2 shifts, that was how I met my wife. She was in a different shift and that shift always came in after my shift ended. Towards the last year in Motorola, I was actually on normal shift - essential 8 to 5 and then continuing till the end of night shift which was up to 10pm.

When HP had a position opened for a customer engineer, I confidently applied and eventually was taken in to support Medical and Analytical Instruments. I am trained on Ultrasound equipment operations. I had to learn from scratch how to use the instruments to take blood pressure readings (this was an invasive technique, not like today's instruments), place the leads on the ECG monitors to take heart rates. Learn to read ECGs and so on. In addition, I also had to recall a lot of my Science learning from my O levels to support chromatography instruments.

If I have to identify a high in my career in HP, that would have been my participation as the support team in Korea to support the Doping Control Center during the Asian games (1986) and Olympics (1988).

Dare I hope that TWO decades down the road, I will still have some contributions to make to Beijing Doping Control Center Support in 2008??

Shanghai revisited - July 2007

Another week in Shanghai. I have not been buying things from Shanghai in my last couple of visits. Especially not any of the "souvenirs" or any of the genuine fake goods ranging from Rolex/Omegas to DVD. Last night, a group of the training participants wanted to have dinner together and during dinner, we decided to go for karaoke. We headed to near Times Square in Pudong and while waiting for some of the group, I was browsing through some DVDs. There were like a DVD seller every 10 feet or so around that area!!!!. Remembered that my son was clamouring for TMNT movie as he did get to see it due to my travels. So, I got him one and found that the price of DVDs had dropped from about 7 to 8 RMB to only 5 RMB now!!. You can get a collection of 10 DVDs on 120 shows on the National Geographic Channel for RMB40.

And the thing is that, despite being pirated copies, they were really good clear copies, without any of those cinema sounds or out of focus stuff we get in Malaysia from the pasar malam. And... the pirates can still continue to get a profit from those kind of prices!! No wonder every Tom Dick and Harry wants to get into the business. And as long as the legitimate businesses insist on their ridiculous and exorbitant prices, they are fighting a losing battle.

I am staying in Diamond Court Apartments - a serviced apartments that serves our purposes for mid to long term stays. I get an executive apartment which has ONE bedroom, a study room for me to work and connect to the internet, a very large and comfortable living room. And they have cooking facilities, with a 4 burner oven, refrigerator and even a washing machine. 2 TVs - one in the bedroom and one in the living room. As it is located away from Pudong center, I did most of my meals and shopping in the nearby Carrefour (at Jinqiao). It is only 11 minutes brisk walk away (I have a pedometer to count my steps and time the journey!!).

Sunday, when I went to purchase some sundries to stock up the fridge, the crowd was so jam packed tight that you would think that things in Carrefour was free or close to it. And most of the customers were local Chinese.

Who says China is poor??

Passing of an era- who cares -updated!!

Today - 2 Jul 2007, is the first day of the class that I am delivering in Shanghai. I don't go back until 14th July, with a possibility of extension. Midway through my training delivery, my cousin sister Michelle called up. My biological father passed away and the funeral was the same night. She asked if me or my mum would be going. My answer was almost instantaneuos - NO!!! And I don't give a damn. All I would commit to was to inform my mum of this event. In any case, one of my grand aunt (aunt to one of my step uncles) had also passed away today and my mum had already planned to be at that wake.

My sister and I were abandoned by this man more than 45 years ago. My mum had to struggle to bring up both of us by being a domestic help almost all her life. Who cares if he is dead. Not me for sure. I even jokingly told my God daughter that if I could, I'll take the compassionate leave and go somewhere to celebrate. In fact, I had already planned to have dinner with 2 of my staff in Shanghai tonight, so it is still a celebration of sorts.

I realized that these 2 days, many people who knows me were wondering if I was joking or in denial when I said matter-of-fact - FATHER DEAD ALSO I WILL CONTINUE TO DELIVER THIS TRAINING IN SHANGHAI. (Say Lo tau dut gai juk pooi fun). It is neither a joke nor denial. How can one expect to have any feelings for someone you have never known in your life? Someone who has never been part of your life, especially in your formative years? I informed my sister in London of the event and she wrote back, she feels sad for her cat which had to be euthanized. For this man- no feelings!!

I was told by my cousin Michelle that my half brother had to shoulder the burden of doing all the rites. Well good luck to him.

The SOB is dead, long live the living!!