A job is a job is a job, and the consolation to even the most stressful and depressing job is payday. Anyway, things have been rather depressing at work for recently, with most of the sh*t coming from someone I considered an useless a**hat in my department. The final straw that broke the camel’s back was of course an outburst from someone whom I suspect is either having menopause or suffering from PMS.
That probably is part of the reason why I am getting writer’s block and have no idea what to put on the blog for quite a while. Either way, in between paydays, my other solution is either eating good food, having a good time drinking with my pals, and sleeping.
Several months ago when our office shifted from Raffles Place to Tanjong Pagar, I was even more depressed because I am leaving my usual lunching places behind. Fortunately for me there is some good food at Maxwell Market, which is about 10 mins walk from the office so even I can get some comfort in between work. This is a ‘field report’ *wink* of two of the stalls we used to frequent there:
Stall Name: Traditional Claypot Chicken Rice
I personally hadn’t try their Claypot Chicken Rice because it comes in a big pot which probably requires at least 3 people to finish. But their chicken drumstick noodle (or mee hoon or mee sua) is heavenly. The soup is made from some medical herbs and the drumstick is so well cooked that it usually just falls off the bones with a slight push from the chopsticks. At $3.80 a bowl it is very filling and would usually last me from lunch until knock off time. The tonic in the soup might probably even go into repairing some of the damage done to my body when I blew my top over the idiocy of the usual suspects.
However, my personal advice is not to eat this too often. But if you can’t resist the temptation and would love to eat it everyday, I would personally recommend you take some Chinese herbal tea to ‘cool’ your body. I bear no responsibilities if you get nose bleeds from eating so much herbal tonic.
Stall Name: 75 Peanuts soup
When done with the main dish, my colleague and I would usually queue up to get ourselves some deserts. Diagonally opposite would be a store selling peanut and red bean soup. But what is really nice isn’t the soup, but the sweet dumplings made of glutinous rice flour. For a bowl of $1.30, you will get two where one contains black sesame paste and the other peanut paste – the real heavenly stuff. If you would like more you can just go for the $2 one which will contain four dumplings.
Business for this stall is so good that by 1pm or so they would have run out. Thus they are usually closed after 2pm and you can only try it during lunch hours.
So far, all of the people I told enjoyed the food from these stalls. So, head down to Maxwell Market and try these stalls out if you work nearby in the near future.
This photo was taken by the CIO and sent to my direct boss, when he was attending a meeting. He was unhappy that this rack-mounted switch which was set up for a meeting was simply left on the desk. To him it was an unsightly mess.
Why was this switch set up in the room and left on the table in the first place was because there weren’t sufficient ports in the room to support the number of laptops required. From the looks of the photo, I suspect that even if we had set up the switch on the floor, there is no avoiding the tangle of wires. Whether the complaint came from the CIO personally or he was upset because someone commented on our ‘shoddy work’ is irrelevant. What would be relevant would be a long term solution to the insufficient IT infrastructure in that particular meeting room. However, I do not pretend to know management and tell my CIO what actually requires to be done.
Our CIO does give us the feeling that he looks down on us, the very ‘grunts’ who would face the enemy (i.e. the users) on the front line. I have seen on one occasion he gave one of my seniors a dressing down over the matter of housekeeping in our department room. I do not know whether he had actually came all the way down from our data centre down at the armpit of Singapore (somewhere near Paya Lebar Airbase) to do that, or my senior was just unfortunate to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I could only say I am fortunate not to be the one on the receiving end of his tongue lashing, but for sure I do find it ridiculous that ‘the CO [Commanding Officer] is doing the work of the CSM [Company Sergeant Major’. During our days in National Service, a good CO almost never give direct orders to us pertaining to matters of camp maintenance or area cleaning. That falls under the supervision of the CSM, who will order us to do all sorts of menial labor such as plucking weeds from the glass patch in front of the company line office, clearing mud from the drain ‘intersector’ (a term invented by a CSM), washing the vehicle bay and wiping dust from fan blades and florescent light covers in our bunks. In short, the CO only concerns himself with matters of the macro-management of the unit and such matters of micro-management is normally left to the CSM or the individual Platoon Sergeants. There’s always a good reason for a chain of command.
Anyway, other than the above, at times the CIO would override decisions our direct boss made, or even IT security protocols to satisfy ‘people in power’ who contact him directly over a certain matter. In one particular incident, after we and our boss have rejected a particular request to set up a laptop that is not built to the company’s standard, the CIO spoke to the same senior above and asked him to get it done. He claimed it to be a one off incident. (The reason for such a request is because the user’s secretary would not want to mix work with home and has an irrational fear that her personal stuff such as photos or videos may end up on the company’s network. How that would be possible when access to the company via VPN is through Citrix is beyond me! We suspected that the real reason for this request was that the security protocols on company compliant laptops would have prevented it from connecting to any network outside the company to access the Internet, since it is locked down to allow only IP addresses on the local subnet it is connected to, and then to the website that connects the VPN.)
Unfortunately, we end up manually installing another laptop for another user within a month. Even so, on the second occasion it was at least justified since the user was doing the company’s work – being a sales trader who would be introducing our company’s trading platform to potential customers. In the context of the army, what the CIO has done is the equivalent of the CO disregarding the TSR [Training Safety Regulations] and directly meddling in the execution of low level combat tactics. As we all know how often that leads to disastrous consequences.
Thus, in a certain way, when the CIO actually sent the photo to our direct boss and not to us directly, it is actually an improvement, though not by much. Perhaps he has been reading some ‘For Dummies’ book recently. Frankly, I personally do hope that there are other matters that would direct his attention to concentrate more on the macro-management aspect of the department.
Leave it to the ‘grunts’ like us and the field commanders to do the real fighting. I’ll definitely prefer he sits in the comfort of his command center and not bother about us. Alternatively, I hope the auditors have had enough of his disregard for IT security protocols and smack him on the arse for his endless meddling in daily operations.
I almost forgot… one of the field commanders is the ‘bway kan’ guy that I mentioned in an earlier rant. How tragic!
Sometimes, some people should realize that simply because he is in a managerial position, doesn’t mean he can try and push everything to a subordinate – especially when the task doesn’t even belong. After all, there’s a good reason why there’s a segregation of roles and if someone goes on leave and there isn’t a backup, as a ‘manager’ it is his own responsibility to seek assistance to resolve the matter and not try to word it in such as way that it becomes the problem that is completely unrelated to another sub-section.
What makes it worse is that even after being explained to that the task has completely nothing to with my sub-section, he insists that I relay the message to the person responsible when this matter has nothing to do with us in the first place. Did I mention that the person responsible is ON COURSE for crying out loud?
I can understand that there are ‘people managers’ and there are ‘technical managers. However, the key in being a ‘people manager’ is knowing who is the best person to use for the task, and not simply ‘arrowing’ another person and expects him to so-call ‘take ownership’. If one doesn’t have the relevant technical skills, nor does he have a clue how to do the task, at least have the initiative and responsibility to find out how to do so himself, or refer to the right person to do it. If not, it is high time he admit he is an incompetent fxxk and quit his job
But clearly I can’t expect that from a certain person, since he can obviously sleep well at night even though he clearly does not deserve their pay. That’s not forgetting how he once tried to shirk from the responsibility of a mistake that he made – when records on the Door Access Card Scan showed without a doubt that he was the one who forgot to close the server room door. Nice try for attempting to have one of us own up and be your scapegoat. Did it occur to him that if it was a court of law, perjury is a crime?
But what can I expect from this unethical f**k? He asked 3 vendors for a quote, but he then helped another vendor who is his friend to outbid the rest of them. That’s also not mentioning that because of his own “Blackberry Bold Envy” he made a big fuss about the legality of ‘jailbreaking’ some Blackberry 8707h from Docomo which are no longer under contract, not to mention already written off by our Tokyo office. All that simply because he wanted a new Blackberry handset. In fact, when he has been such an unethical and despicable mofo, how dare he even breathe a word about legality?
Finally, I wanna say this to him, and it should have been said a long time ago, YOU ARE INCOMPETENT. WORST OF ALL, YOU ARE A DODGY ASSHOLE WHO DIDN’T HAVE THE BALLS TO BEAR THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF NOT ONLY YOUR MISTAKES, BUT ALSO THAT OF YOUR ROLE.
I wished he was a part of those people who resigned or took the retrenchment package because I actually liked working with those people who left. KNN!!!
I bought and installed Windows 7 on my Lenovo X61 laptop recently, and here are some free application I find useful and would like to recommend.
Name: imgburn [Site] Category: ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application Size of download: (v2.5.0.0) 2.1MB
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Name: Brava Reader [Site] Category: PDF Reader Size of dowload: (v3.3.0.16) 32.4MB Drawbacks: Expires every few months. Requires uninstall / reinstall to effect.
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Name: FreePDF XP [Site] Category: PDF Maker Size of Download: (v3.24) 1.5MB Pre-requisite: Ghostscript
Name: Notepad++ [Site] Category: Source code editor / Notepad Replacement Size of Download: (v5.5.1) 3.5MB Alternatives: TextPad (v5.31) – Annoying Reminder on Program Startup if not purchased. Simplyjean informed me that this is the only program that could open a 2GB text file.
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Name: 7-Zip [Site] Category: File Archiver (Can open these format: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z) Size of Download: (v4.65) 1MB
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Name: VideoLAN VLC media player [Site] Category: Media Player supporting most audio & video formats Size of Download: (v1.0.3) 17.2MB
Name: Gadwin Print Screen [Site] Category: Screen Capture Program – for capturing a part of a screen and not just the full screen or a window. Size of Download: (v4.3 Freeware) 2.75MB
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Name: xMarks [Site] Category: Browser Bookmark Manager – Works for IE / Firefox / Safari / Google Chrome Size of Download: Depends on browser used. Drawbacks: Requires a separate installation for each browser.
Being on the desktop support team means at times I will form negative impression about some users or even dislike them. As time goes by I learn not to be angry with users and to provide support according to their computer proficiency – e.g. for some who do not understand certain computer terms, simply go to the desk and not try to guide them over the phone. When users ask over emails what seems to be dumb questions or write emails in a nasty or impolite manner, these days I generally just muttered some curses (or scream a little) at the mail, ignore the more ’emotional’ parts of the mail and just get down to business.
The worst lot of users are those who simply throw everything at the IT department as long as it runs on electricity. Once, some guy held a electrical calculator on one hand with the plug on the other and asked my colleague, “What do I do with this?” In another occasion, the call-centre received a call from a user on National Day reporting that the air-conditioners are not working. There was even a case about the failure of the StarHub TV with MSNBC in the trading room! All of these examples showed exceptional laziness because they could either do something about it, or at least call the right department to handle it. Whenever we remember these examples, we can’t help but wonder how they deal with these problems at home. Perhaps they have a maid a housekeeper to do all these for them and with them in mind, I can empathise with crazy maids who make special soup with their menses or urine for their employers.
Some users also ceased thinking the moment they see some instructions about something that runs on computer. Once, a vendor sent a document (with some instructions on it) to a group of users to do some changes to the settings on their trading terminals. It was not long that a request for assistance was logged into the system, and the instructions sent by the vendor was attached to the case. To cut the long story short, the document talks about changes that is required as a result of the recent acquisition of my ex-company by the current one. To put it in an analogy: “It is something like adjusting the mirrors and the driver seat before starting the vehicle. The document speaks about the modifications being made to the vehicle which has changed some of its dynamics, and the users were advised to make adjustments to the mirrors and driver seat as a result of this. Basically, the mechanic shouldn’t be the one who making those adjustments because they are unique to each driver.”
Even so, there’s nothing unforgivable about these users even though I may dislike their actions, simply because at the end of the day everyone is just doing a job. Above which, there is something worse than ‘computer morons’, nasty / impolite users, or even lazy users describe above – The sickos from the samemy own department* who create issues and play office politics because of their self interest. A recently incident has my blood boiling.
About 2 months ago, I wrote about ‘unlocking’ Blackberry 8707 handsets sent from the Tokyo office. The 15 sets are all locked down by the Japanese provider NTT Docomo and we intend to use them as spares, or at the very least keep them as loan sets for users with 2G Blackberry Smart Phones who are required to travel for short periods to regions with only CDMA networks. Since IT initiated the request to ship these sets to Singapore, I find it a waste to throw these 3G handsets away or give them to a recycling company. I took upon myself and on my own initiative found the method to ‘unlock’ them.
Someone in themy own department* then asked for a set to replace his allegedly faulty Blackberry after I ‘unlocked’ two sets, and all was well for the the last 2 months. Perhaps he intended that set to be simply a loaner until his contract runs out where the company will renew and obtain a new one. However, our colleagues from procurement start stock taking recently, and they assigned this set to him permanently. They informed him that since there is no fault with ‘the loan set’, along with the fact that 3G Blackberry 8707s are still on the company’s approved list and relatively advanced (as compared to his previous 2G one), it will not be replaced. At that point in time, I had unlocked ten sets (nine Blackberry 8707 + 1 Blackberry 9000 Bold), with fives sets (four Blackberry 8707 and 1 Blackberry Bold 9000) assigned and active.
[* Amendment: To avoid the confusion that “the” department was referring to the traders.]
Here’s where the whole hullabaloo started. He was upset that the procurement department will not obtain for him a new one – presumably the Blackberry 9000 Bold. He then informed me to put on hold and not unlock the six remaining ‘locked’ sets and went so far to justify his actions, saying that unlocking these sets may actually not be legal.
Legal, my farting ass! For the past two months when that set is in use, he said nothing about it not being ‘legal’. In my opinion, since these handsets are already out of warranty and written off by the Tokyo office, the company need not be concerned that ‘unlocking’ the set might render the warranty null and void under any existing end user agreements. Even if I break them in the process of unlocking, it makes no difference to the company. By suggesting that it may not be legal, it would suggest that I am acting without approval from higher management and I might be subjected to disciplinary action. While nothing would benefit me by making these sets usable, I certainly did not expect the someone to make a big fuss which would potentially put me into trouble. On top of which, I am now stuck with all these ‘locked’ handsets under my desk, because I cannot hand them over to the procurement department.
How do I feel about that? I felt like someone deliberately scored an own goal because he wasn’t given something and didn’t even realise he had! He further went on screaming to the referee that a foul may have been committed. Because of this, I might even get a yellow card for it.
Thank you very much, sir! All these shit just because you were indignant you weren’t given a new Blackberry Bold. How you can create such a big fuss over your very own penis “Blackberry Bold Envy” would probably be a legend that will be told again and again among the colleagues in the procurement and legal department in time to come. I hope someone from high management can see this idiocy in itself, then proceed to kick your ass and shut you up for a long time!
