What Happened?

Yea, it’s been almost 2 months now since I last update my blog. Think I’d forget this holy place of my rants, my complaints?? Fat chance. It’s just that I’m pretty tied up with lotsa stuff for the past 2 months, coupled with “few” outings organized by my department as well as by sports club which I enrolled myself into, and worth every single penny of it!!

Now then, onwards to my story during my “absence” in here, eh??

Let’s see, where shall I start…hmmm (scrambling through all my yet-to-upload photo album).

In a normal day life of call centre, we have the freedom ( well, not totally, but to a certain extent) to use our choice of words in communicating to our client, just as long as the other party doesn’t get offended, and they understand our intention, that’ll be fine. However, there’s this one counterpart of mine whose sits just right behind me used to say the word “grab” when it comes to getting the clients’ contact details for a follow-up later on. I think the manager that is sitting right next us (3 steps away from me and my mate, mind you) has heard lotsa times about this ‘grab’ words throughout a month or so, she finally can’t take it one fine day, she decided to drop this piece of post-it-note to my mate.

"Dont use grab ur name, sounds very unprofessional."

Lesson learnt guys, don’t use that word, ever again.

And then, there was this 2 days. 2 goddamn ‘memorable’ days since I joined this company. 2 days full of escalation calls. 2 full days of “can I speak to your manager”, “can I speak to your supervisor”. Seriously, why would they wanna speak with manager/supervisors when the answer that the clients will get is gonna be the exact same, except for it’s coming outta someone else’s mouth??

I’ve always have this impression that the first person to pick-up the call, will not be the one that has the empowerment to make decision. Don’t you agree?? Owh well, they want it, they got it. The next thing you know, “Boss! Escalation!”, “Boss! Your call!”, “Boss! He/she wants you!” and the likes of it. My boss was the busiest of us all on that 2 days. If whenever my boss is still engaged on the other line, best we, as an agent could do is to “grab” down the contact numbers and advised ‘em that my boss gonna return their shortly. Hmm, where did I hear this stuff before? Sounds familiar.

Oh yea, it was my birthday back in November, being a nice bunch of chaps that they are in my department, they bought me one nice banana-chocolate cake for the occasion. Not much celebration to be done seeing that ‘twas a weekday and I was on a call. It was a quiet one, but really appreciate what they’ve done on that. I’m touched, seriously.

THE cake

3 days later, the lads decided to throw a party at nearby german pub within walking distance from our office after work. All I could say is that, “brilliant, bloody brilliant!”

First off, got myself a pint of Tetley, sweet taste. Then, got myself another one, this time around, a good big cuppa Hoegaarden. All in all, it was a crazy night, with the whole department gathered and have some fun, off work.

"1 pinr of Tetley"

Left - Hoegaarden; Right - German stout

1 week later, got an invitation to celebrate a working mate’s birthday as well as her promotion to another department. This time around, it’s in Hard Rock Café. Yeah, the world renown brand. I’ve forgotten what I had that night, but I got a picture to show it though. Yeah, I know I know, it’s just a burger. But, I dare y’all to try this ladies and gentlemen, I can’t finish it at all!!!

My Dinner

What is Hard Rock without some “drinks” eh?? Here’s the beginning of it all, 4 ‘towers’ of beers waiting behind me. Well, it’s sorta 'parked' where I sat on that night.




Slowly, it became 5 towers.




At the end of the night, almost 12 of us finished off 8 towers of beers, and another bottle of Jack Daniel to top it all off. Hohoho, talk about party eh??

Another week has passed. Got another invitation to have a dinner with one of my favorite directors ever, who has left the current company to pursue other career opportunities. She’s the core to everything that is happening now in where I’m working now. For the 2nd time throughout this blog, I’ma mention a person name. Thank very much for everything, Shareen. I’ll never forget ya, for everything that you’ve done. ‘twas truly memorable on that dinner. Catching up old times, gossiping, talking bad about other people etc etc. Well, you know what it’s like when a bunch of old friends/mates meet up for dinner. Wanna know what we had on that night?? There were 10 of us, sharing this big “bowl” of stuff. Believe me, again, we can’t finish it. (Talk about wasteful eh??)

They call it "poon-choy" in cantonese

3 days later, our sports club committee organized a function at one of the clubs nearby. It was another blast as well. As always, all “beverages” are free of charge for those sports club committee members. Don’t believe me? Here are some photos. The stand-up comedians performing on that night were: Andrew (Host), Chris from UK, Akmal from the land down under, Australia, and last but not least, our very own Harith Iskandar himself, performing live!!!!

Chris from UK

Akmal from Australia

The man: Harith Iskandar in action

So much so for the event happened to me in the month of November. Quite “eventful” eh??

I just got back from a great ‘adventure’ on last Saturday, ending up with whole body aching. This is the outcome of no constant exercise. This event is organized by our little department. Before everything starts, one has gotta get yourself a pair of new gloves. Don't ever take those used gloves scattered in the buckets. It won't do you any good. Besides the new gloves will only cost you 3 bucks. What would you wanna save this kinda $$$??? Clueless on what I’m babbling about?? Check this site out over here => http://www.skytrex-adventure.com/challenges.php ladies and gentlemen, and you’ll have a clearer idea what I’m referring to.

THE glove

Trust me, it looks easy, but in the middle of the course, you’ll feel bloody exhausted and you can’t wait to get the fuck outta it ASAP. Well, that’s for me though. The whole quest took us about 2 hours to complete it. Don’t worry, some of you lots might be thinking “Is there any easy way out?”

Absolutely YESH!!!!! That’s the common people known it as “chicken exit”. Yea. It pretty much self-explanatory eh?? Well, ain’t gonna talk much on this ‘adventure’ that I’ve been through. Gonna leave it in my next post, complete with pictures.

Owh well, I'll leave it at that. Will be back for more. Hehehe..

"Some Concern" - End/ Weekend's Life

So, it’s Monday again. A dreadful day for all working class people. It’s mainly because it’s the first day of the week, and it feels like an awful long period away to weekend, even though weekend has just passes us by yesterday. Human, we’re never satisfied with absolutely anything.

Here’s a lowdown of what has transpired after my last post.

Remember my email communication tool difficulties that I faced last week? Apparently it was solved on Friday. But, yes, there’s always a “but”…..there’s a story behind. So , the retarded IT nerd sent an email to my boss to seek assistance [finally], and only to find that there’s something wrong with my ID setup with the tool. The email was out to my boss on Thursday. My boss did something onto it, he told me that it’ll all depends the response from the department that deals with ID issue. Expected response time ranges from 24 hours to 48 hours. Since it’s already Thursday evening when the email reply was out from my boss, so I was expecting the issue to be resolved at least next Monday.

But, waddaya know, Friday morning. I had a rush to test it out myself once I reached the office around 530 in the morning. So happen that he’s in early. To my surprise, I was able to access to an entirely different setup screen, which enables me to at least have a glance at my inbox. Therefore, I asked my boss to come over my place and had a look at it. After a few tweaks here and there, VOILA!!! It’s up and running bay-beh!!! My email communication tool is up and running!!!!!

The IT nerd came to me around lunch time, just to check how things are going on with my issue. I told him that it’s all been solved, and then he walked away. Talk about humiliation eh?? We did it without his help. All he did was just send an email out to my boss to check. When I was discussing this with my boss today, he and I agreed on one thing: both of us can replace the nerd to be a part time pc technician in our department.

Anyways, with my email tool up and running on Friday morning, I was the bloody busiest employee around the office. When it’s almost lunch time, I virtually replied and sent all the necessary information out to relevant division already. Took me almost 4-5 hours to clear all those stuff.

Finally, the long awaited weekend has arrived. Took my own sweet time to get up from bed around 10-ish in the morning. I was struggling in making a decision whether to attend 2 parties at the same nite, or shall I be skipping one, attend the other. After much brain-damaged, consideration, I’ve decided to do the latter. To the other party that I skipped, my sincere apologies for that. Hope that I can make it up to you in due time. I promised.

Had a fabulous nite, reached home around 3 in the morning, not drunk……..yet. but only to remember that I got an outing on the very next day, Sunday.

Got up around 9-ish in the morning again, which means I only had a good 6 hours of sleep. Rolled on my bed for 2 hours, couldn’t continue my sleep due to a certain ‘disturbance’ right below my house. Bloody retarded foreign immigrant. Went to pick up my friend and we went for some window shopping session in downtown. Surprisingly, for a weekend like yesterday, there weren’t any traffic jam around downtown area, the crowd were lesser compare to normal weekend. Then my friend told me that the ‘kids’ are having their exams and hence the lesser crowd as well as traffic in downtown. Hmm, no wonder this friend of mine chose to go downtown today.

Anyways, we walked till evening beckons and we were seeking some ‘replenishment’. Yea. Hunger strikes. Both of us went and had some local delicacies “dim-sum”. Damn ‘twas a while since I had these stuff.

sample only, we didn't eat that much laaa...

Reached home around 9 in the evening. After all the walking and eating and walking, I thought that I can take a shower and slumber into dreamland straight. But that was not what I thought it would be. I ended up slept at 1230 midnite, whilst my friend only fell asleep at 4 in the morning. Don’t ask me why, I have no freakin’ idea as well.

Today, is another lazy day. Both bosses were not around in the office, which ultimately gives us the liberty of ‘relaxing’ while working the whole day. I don’t why, but something about today that doesn’t make people feels like working. Nope, it has nothing to do with today being Monday et al but there IS something. Words can’t describe it.

Anyways, that’s all for now. Perhaps next time I should resume the way I posted last time around ie more conversation between me and those callers eh??

"Some Concern"

Day 3 into my new 530am working shift, fucking one week of me without the email communication tool! Wanna know the whole story?? Here you go.

Last Tuesday, everything was smooth as silk in terms of everything, and I mean EVERY-FUCKING-THING! Then come Wednesday, I was still scheduled to report into work at 6 in the morning. Due to the fact that I’m currently having my VERY OWN DESK, normally I will just lock my computer desktop when I leave the office for the day. Like I said, everything was effing fine on Tuesday noon.

Got into the office before 6am, turn on my personal computer, wanna access to my email system to read through any news. Only to find out that I’m unauthorized to access to the server that I was using perfectly, PERFECTLY FINE on Tuesday. So happened that my senior was around to assist, but he suggested me to go ahead and contact our helpdesk for further assistance.

Fair enough. Call the helpdesk. After a few troubleshooting here and there, the agent on the other line decided that she would have to raise this case for the local technician to come and have a look at my desktop to solve since it can’t be done over the phone. Right, I will be expecting someone from the IT division to visit me today to fix it.

Time passes real fast if you were to work shift like mine. It’s almost 1pm. The IT guy finally came. After abit checking here and there, and abit touch-ups here and there, he said that he’ll need to get back to me the next day for further remedies. Remember, this guy came on Wednesday.

So, the next day, unfortunately I was on medical and dizzy et al. Hence, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Consider it a “holiday” for him then.

I was back on Friday. Again, that same IT guy came down around 1pm. Don’t ask me why the time, I’ve no fucking idea at all. He said that he tried contacting the country where the server that I’m attached to is residing, but apparently it’s that country’s public holiday. There you go, another day has gone.

Come weekend, and then Monday. He tried to fix it again. God knows what he did to my PC, it’s still unsolved, and then he said that he’ll have to go online while sitting at my desk, so that a remote-site engineer from the oversea country can do their stuff while the IT guy standing-by my desk. Still, failed, and it dragged to today, which the exact one week passes by. All my emails from customers, I’m unable to retrieve. All the emails that I wanna send out to solve cases, I’m unable to send. All the updates within my division, I have no fuckin’ idea at all unless notify by my workmates or my boss directly.

You might be thinking why haven’t I escalate it to my boss to have a “good look” at it?? Of fucking course I DID!!! But, there’s so little that he can do as even the IT people trying to close my case ASAP.

Tomorrow will be another day, Thursday. I wonder how long will these bugger drag on my case. I’m a computer literate as well, hmmm almost. But if my email tool has got authorization problem accessing the server, why on earth does the IT guy wanna re-install the whole application?? Does it even really help?? He claimed that he just wanna “eliminate” this possibility of the limited access is resulted from my pc instead of something else. Good lord. Common sense: if there’s a server access problem, even if you were to change the whole goddamn fucking computer will not change a single thing. It only has got one thing to do that is denying the access to the server, and that one thing is: ID…..Is he really that dumb? Or does he think that I’m dumb??

I wouldn’t know when will this problem be solved. But I’m very skeptical of it getting solved by end of this week.

To top it all off, this IT department stationed locally in our very own building is an outsourced company.

Some grunts n’ groans from the humble me.

Be back for more, will ya??

Recently........[Part 2]

It’s been more than 2 weeks since I last wrote here. Yeah. I’ma busy person recently. Been out from the desk for quite an amount of time. Here’s a low-down from my last post.

So, one fine day. We, the newbies that just got outta training room decided to have one last gathering with the trainer, before we actually go on our own separate ways in different department. Hence the gang decided to dine in a restaurant located uphill somewhere south-east of my living area. Quite a nice environment I’d say, see pictures below on the view from the restaurant. Words can’t describe it. The breezing air, coupled with some hot dishes that the restaurant has to offer, absolute perfecto!

View from the restaurant. Nice eh??

Another angle, well, more like another camera mode.

So, after some crazy session of dinner cum rubbish-talking. Second round of the nite beckons. We crashed our trainer’s house for some ‘wine-tasting’ session. Owh, forgot to mention, the few of us bought our trainer something as a token of appreciation. Guess what is it? See picture below.

and no, we didn't touch this wine on that nite.

We stayed till almost 3 in the morning, and lucky enough, none of us went drunk. We were able to reach home in one piece. Hallelujah!

Then, just last week. Got to know from my old folks that I have to turn up in some relative’s son’s wedding dinner. Gosh. Outta nowhere, I’ve no contact with ‘em, I don’t know who on earth are they, and now I gotta turn up for that?! In addition to that, my old folks said that relatives from all over the states are turning up, so there’s no exception this time around. Well well well, waddya know? This relative of mine seems to be some big shot, that catches the attention from all over the states. Reluctantly, I dragged my lazy ass to attend both functions ie. First was the nite before the actual wedding day, the second being the actual wedding dinner. ‘twas tough for me as all I can do is eat, drink, smile, nod my head and keep my mouth shut. My old folks will do all the talking, socializing while me sitting there, “entertaining” the elders. Another problem is, there’s this couple who came all the way from the land down under just to attend this wedding. They’ll always spend the nite at our house in the event if there’s any ‘function’ similar to this. Heck, the couple spent 2 nites with us, at our house, and I lost my ‘connection’ time. Sigh….the wedding was on Saturday, on the very same evening, my uncle from down-under suggested that we go for some “really” nice food, and I mean REALLY nice food, who people like me & my old folks probably will only get a hand, or rather a mouth on it once a lifetime.

So, Sunday it is. The “grand feast” beckons. Due to the fact that it’s a chinese restaurants, the menu I captured here with my phone cam is exactly what we had stuffed into our stomach on that evening. One day after we attended the wedding dinner. I need to apologize on this one here as I have no idea how on earth am I gonna translate the name of these dishes.




Here’re a couple pictures that worth showing you lots.

This one below here is sharkfin, sorry about the quality of the picture, I was trembling with joy & saliva dripping when I was taking this one.




This one right below here, is the ultimate abalone. ABA-EFFING-LONE!!!! There were altogether 11 of us, one abalone for each headcount. How much did it cost?? You do the math here.




After all these feasts, my dad went for a med-check, only to find out that his left shoulder has some tendon problem and he has to cut down all the ‘heave-duty’ food. Lucky that he stuffed it all in, before he went for med-check, or my mom will be nagging him whole nite long.

Couple of days later, I got down with fever. The funny thing is, everything was A-O-K the nite before. I was suspecting because of the slight rain during I retrieve my car from my house to the car park. C’mon, it’s just less than 2minutes walk to get to my car. What harm would it have if I just run over to the car without an umbrella? But, god knows. I started to feel dizzy in office, feeling cold eventhough the whole office was warm. I know something is wrong with me already. I told me boss upfront that I might not be turning up tomorrow. He acknowledged it.

Went straight to the doc after work, only to know that I am really down with slight fever, at 38 degrees. Got myself some meds from the doc, lost 20 bucks in the process. Owh, ‘twas the same day that the the whole world is impacted with earthquake, flood, storms et al. talk about tragedy eh? Ah, now I remember, ‘twas last Thursday!

Friday comes, was informed by my boss that due to a change in time zone, 2 of us gotta come in to work at 530 in the morning, while the remaining 2 will be reporting in to work at 7am. I took the 530 shift, which will last for a month. But if any case that anyone of us wish to change it, we’re allowed to do that, just a simple notification one day in advance will do.

And that’s today. Woke up 4:40 in the morning, reached office around 5:10. Work like a dog, got to know that my so called lunch break/1hour break is scheduled at 9 in the morning. 9 IN THE MORNING!!! Everyone just arrived to work, but I’m already going out for my ‘lunch break’. Words can’t describe my feeling that time. All I can consume that time was just bread. A tuna bread + some egg bread, all packed in one bag. I’ll show you lots the picture tomorrow. “Escaped” from office at 2:40 in the afternoon, beaten all the bloody jam. Reached home around 3pm, and here I am, posting this one up.

Phew! Hope it’s not a long post for y’all to read. That’s it. A summary of my absence here recently. Gotta go prepare myself for some japanese anime marathon. Then will have to knock myself off to bed already, for I have to wake up around 4:30 in the morning to prepare to work, which starts at 5:30 in the morning!

Till next time.