I have got tunes running in my head - almost non stop

For some strange reasons, I have had that Japanese song Subaru running in my mind since last Thursday. I went to Google the song and found the Tanimura Shinji mp3. I printed out the lyrics and even asked my Japanese admin Miyuki to help me translate the lyrics so that I do not inadvertently sing something offensive. I even have Kylie and Kuen hooked on Subaru in the office. Elaine heard me singing and called it noise pollution and Kah Leng said I was singing in the shower!! Okay, I am not a singer, but what the hey, Subaru is a beautiful song. So I went to YouTube and found at least 3 versions - the original by Tanimura (popularised in 1980), a Cantonese version and another Canto version sung by Paula Tsui.

Why stop there?? So I started looking around for songs with videos sung by some of my favourite singers like Teresa Teng, Elvis and even one by Josh Groban.

If anyone want to sing along with Tanimura Shinji, here are the lyrics
Subaru
by Shinji Tanimura

Me o tojite nanimo miezu
Kanashikute me o akereba
Kohoya ni mukau michi yori
Hoka ni mieru mono wa nashi

Aaa... kudake chiru
sadame no hoshi tachi yo
Semete hisoyaka nikono mi o terase yo

Ware wa yuku aojiroki hoho no mama de
Ware wa yuku saraba subaru yo

Iki o saraba mune no naka
Kogarashi wa naka tsuzukeru
Saredo wa ga mune wa atsuku
Yume-o oi tsuzukeru nari

Aaa....san zameku na-mo naki
Hoshi-tachi-yo
Semete azayaka ni
Sono mi-o oware-yo

Ware-mo yuku kokoro-no meizuru mama-ni
Ware mo yuku saraba subaru yo
Aaa.... itsu no hi ka dareka ga kono michi-o
Aaa.... itsu no hi ka dareka ga kono michi-o

Ware wa yuku aojiroki hoho no mama de
Ware wa yuku saraba subaru yo
Ware wa yuku saraba subaru yo

God bless YouTube!! It was like a treasure trove of memories.

Company get together Sept 2007

Ever since Agilent spun off from Hewlett Packard in 1999/2000, the Sales office in Malaysia has undergone many changes. We had to move from Wisma Cyclecarri in Jalan Raja Laut to Uptown 2 in Petaling Jaya. We have had 3 General Manager changed since then. We are now into our 4th Site Manager. I guess we have gotten so small that it makes no sense to call him the GM. Previously, we had a management council, of which I was part of. With the new site manager, the managers are part of the site committee. I look at the telephone directory of the first year we became an independent company with the trading symbol A on the NYSE and find that almost 85% of those people has left the company under one guise or another. Agilent itself has sold off the Medical Products division to Philips Medical Systems. We spun off Avago which was part of the Test and Measurement business. And then we spun off Verigy, part of the Automated Test systems. Today we have Electronic Measurement Group and the Bio Analytical Group.
With a capacity of 77 cubicles, we only have a total of 35 employees and another 15 non Agilent workers (contractual/ temporary staff). During the separation from HP, we had >80 employees. WOW!!

Chew Teck Ming took over the role of site manager since July 2007 and has since tried to institute some basic changes like cleaning up the office environment to reflect on the Sales office identity. Today, he delivered his first coffee talk which was filled with talk, cheesecakes, nasi dagang, carbonated soft drinks, BUT NO COFFEE!! :)


So after the update on the state of the company and the 2 major businesses, we celebrated the birthday of 2 of our colleagues - Ben and Jason. And lunch was a sort of sumptuous Nasi Dagang catered by Village Park. Round about 2pm, everyone started making a beeline for U-Bowl at I Utama. We had 7 lanes booked for friendly bowling games with the objective of team building.



Each team was mixed and matched with members from EMG and LSCA. There were some surprises. Some of these guys are GOOD, but inconsistent. In the end, EVERY team won something. 7 teams took part and 7 teams won hampers.

We had almost half a day off for team building. I guess that accounts for something.

Project Pongo - the German meeting

For those who have been following my blogs, you may remember that sometime in May of this year, I had to go to our factory in the East Coast of USA for a face to face meeting with the Project Pongo team. We were trying to re-engineer the Support Assist team structure - roles and responsibilities. I am managing the Asia Pacific team. Since the project began early this year, the team have been having telemeetings on Wednesdays and I always ended up with a 10pm to midnite slot - EVERY WEDNESDAY!!!. There is only so much one can do on the phone and so, we had to have another face to face meeting to thrash out the details of the plans. We met in Waldbron in the week of 27th August.

The meetings were scheduled for the whole day and on one of those days, it dragged on till almost 8pm. You can see the hagged look on the team members. Okay - a couple did smile for the camera.

But it was not all work and no play. As I have stated in my previous blogs, August this year seems to be Middle Management Month - my middle, my waistline. After a hard day of meetings - including the one which ended around 8pm, we went out for dinner as a group. Those who know me knows that I am a social drinker. And even then I limit myself to a glass of beer, max is 2. In that week in Waldbron, I drank more beer than I normally would have in the previous 6 months. If my WW boss - Mark D, who was also in this meeting sees me writing this, he would probably have a good laugh as he was drinking beer like water. It was not just the beer - there was the food. Most times, I try to order something relatively light like FISH. See what happened when I ordered spare ribs. I did justice to it.

In my previous visits to Waldbron, I normally stayed at the Stathotel Engel. This time, I joined the majority of the team and stayed at Erbprinz Hotel. It is a building full of history. On one of the days of my stay, they even provided me with a fruit basket. In the hotel entrance and courtyard, there were various plants, flowers and trees. For many Asians, we normally eat chestnuts without knowing what the tree looks like. Here is a chestnut tree, with the chestnuts still wrapped in it's spiky skin (looking very much like a mini durian). There was also a lemon tree near the entrance. Rooms are much more comfortable than the Engel and for once in more than a decade, I did not rent a car. I car pooled with Jon. That meant that when I had to go back to Frankfurt Flughafen (airport), I had to take the train. That was actually quite fast and comfortable. Pat and I took the taxi from the hotel to Karlsruhe Hauptbanhof (main train station), took the ICE to Mannheim, changed platform and within 70 minutes was in Frankfurt airport. Here is Pat taking the opportunity to get some rest.

All I want to say about the airport in Frankfurt is that there seemed to be planes landing almost every 2 minutes on the side that I could observe - which had 2 runways. I will be lucky to see more than 1 plane landing in the KL airport for the duration that I am there - typically 2 hours.

Beijing Aug 2007

Travels for August started off with a trip to Beijing to participate in the Middle Manager Program.

First of all - look at the display at the KL airport. The transport ministry promised to reduced late flight take offs. Seems like they are achieving it BECAUSE they have been cancelling MAS flights that night!! :)

First thing I did on Monday was to go to my regular tea merchant. Had to get some tea for some Friends and to replenish my stock. I am only consuming Loong Jin (Dragon Well), Oolong Char Wong and Pu Er. Pu Er can be kept for years and their price has been escalating over the years. I buy mine in loose form, not the discs pancakes. The loose form is cleaner and does not require a tool to take chunks out of the disc when brewing tea. Spent 4 hours sampling different tea in the shop and almost 1000RMB on tea purchases. The shop also sells oolong char in balled form. The balls are a little bigger than a basketball.

The MMP started on Tuesday and we were assigned to 2 universe - a BLUE and an ORANGE universe. I was in Blue 1. Here's my team. We had a good mix from Korea, Scotland, China, Malaysia, coming from backgrounds of Support, Finance, HR, Manufacturing and Marketing.

In the evening, the China Support team invited Yu Sung Han (Korea CSM) and myself out for dinner. We had it at a place called Kung Iichi(sounds something like that). Food was great. They had an in house yellow wine which was sweet and easy on the throat. It was served in a warmer as seen above. We also took in a bottle of white rice wine. it was a wonder that nobody got tipsy, though there was certainly a lot of loosen tongues. After dinner we had a boat ride around the lake and finished off close to midnight!!

As if that was not enough food for the week, we ended the Program with a cocktail and dinner. The food below was just half of what we consumed!

Looking back at the weeks and the amount of food consumed - with Asam Laksa, Char Kway Teow, Crabs, Mum's birthday lunch and then the group dinners and MMP cocktail and dinner, this month has definitely been a Middle Management Month - My Middle, my waistline!!

Mum's 68th birthday

This week seems to be the week to get really Fat, Dumb and Happy. At the very least - it is a week to put on some pounds (or Kg for the metric minded). My mum's birthday falls on the 25th of this month, but I shall be somewhere in the air between Beijing and KL on that day. So, to celebrate her birthday, the Tehs, Yeohs, Yaps, Cheahs and relatives were invited to the East of Highway Restaurant in Seri Kembangan. We have been eating there over the years and it so happens that today, there is also a writeup of the place in the Star ( http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=/2007/8/19/sundaymetro/18582307&sec=sundaymetro ). They serve reasonably good Szechuan food.

More than 30 years ago, my mum worked for the Mr Teh Gin Sooi's family. He was the secretary of Badminton Association of Malaysia. They allowed us to stay with them in Lucky Gardens in Bangsar and in many ways, they were like a surrogate family to us. When the older Tehs retired, my mum went on to work for their eldest daughter - June Yeoh. So, in a way, today's lunch was a family lunch. I had also invited my brother to join us.

As usual, mum ordered enough food to feed not only the 2 tables. We could have fed at least 4 tables of guests!! Siew Yong arranged the bouquet of flowers and Allan the birthday cake (no - that is Alex holding the flowers for Grandma)

Well, it is her 68th. Happy birthday mum