Another 32 hours for year 2006 to come to an end and year 2007 will continue the new leaf of calender. Like it or not, everything and everyone will grow 1 year older without further negotiation. Time gives no mercy. 

 

2006 = 365 days of  sad + happy & laughter + tears & stress + relaxing & etc. 

 

Company annual dinner held last Thursday at Jogoya, Starhill. Managed to meet everyone of the 'family' but sad to know that there may be another farewell for some-one, some-two or some-three or some-<anyNumber>.  Living out side the 'family' expose to a lot of experiences, sweet and bitter of working life is never be the same when you are living outside the 'family'.

  

A long break for everyone thanks to mathematic equation of calender calculation. 1st of Jan 2007 fall on Monday with Hari Raya Aidiladha holiday replacement on 2nd Jan 2007. For those who are not working on Saturday, there will be 4 days of long break before come back to workstation with in new year. A long break to prepare our new list of year 2007 resolution..........or a good time to flash back what had we went through for the year 2006 and what had we learnt...............or a good time to have good rest before starting a new journey.

 

There is a Chinese proverb saying that "休息是为了走更远的路" : " Rest is the way to go farther "...........well.......I would like to go farther of course.....many places to venture and many books that I want to read and also many documentations that I need to prepare when the bank open for business and many challenges ahead with debates and arguements and managing.......wow.......with such a long journey to continue..........how can I no give myself some good rest during the long holiday?

 

Happy holiday to everyone and Happy New Year 2007 !!!!!!!

The Apperentic" is one of the few reality shows that can catch my eyes on it. The reason that I watched the show is I found many interesting yet cruel side of human. The show always started with 16 contestant that want to be Trump's apperentice to involve in multimillion dollar, edge competitive businesses and it is the dream job of the life time. One thing that I always found interesting is, it doesn't matter how the team won in the task, as long as the team wins. However, the losing team will be questioned by Donald Trump on the reasons of losing and someone or more than one person (the maximum I watched is 4 persons) will be fired after the trial.  The key point here is, in business, if you win, people will look up to you; but if you failed, most of the time, all your efforts that had been put in will be concluded as the factors of you losing the game.

 

There was a tough meeting I went through with my boss and project partners yesterday at the client's office(ie: bank).  The project has not been going too well and deadline being missed. The meeting was hold to "justify" whether the project can proceed to the production before 2007. Many parties are involved in the meeting; from the bank, there have project team members, application support member, UAT members and us from the vendors. In the meeting, bank project team chief manager is going through a list of problem logs that the UAT team given to the vendor and asking why such a log being raised and why we(ie: vendor) did not solve the problem once and for all. Everyone was keeping quite and only the UAT team manager trying to "describe" what was going on with all the problem logs raised. All the explanation given by the UAT manager are trying to "cover up" on the faults that had been made and trying to "divert" the responsibility to the vendors. Due to some reasons, my boss and project partners were quite most of the time and I try to be at the same pace as they are. However, when come to an explanation that the manager trying his very best to push the responsibilities to us, I got no choice but to voice out and questioned him back to inform the "boardroom" of what is the true scenario.

 

Our team members slept less than 5 hours a day for more than 2 months to meet the deadline of this project. With very limited requirements given, we had all went through a tough time to gather requirements, pushing for test data, pushing for process flow and etc from the client and at the same time proceed with our development. One of the BIGGEST mistakes that the bank did to us is, their UAT team was using an OUTDATED version of data (a list of SMS reply messages for different scenario) to test on our system and claim that they are correct all the time. And for that stupid mistake of their, the UAT team had given us substantial amount of problem logs and telling everyone that we are not up to the standard. After the bank project managers found out this mistake, they just tried to cover up themselves and give the UAT the latest version of the data and ask them to re-test. The "most professional" act that the bank did was NEVER apologise to us(ie: vendor) but keeps on telling everyone that we are not up to the standard.

 

Many blames had been put onto us(ie: vendors) for the delayed and missed deadline. Refreshing back my memory on The Apperentice, we are now at the losing side, althought the game is not over yet.  Whatever the losing team say will be seen as "excuses" to cover up even though you have a live camera following and recording every efforts that you had made to save the game. 

 

Anyway, what had passed is a history. We are unable to change the history, but we can take the opportunity to improve ourselve to win the game back. I had learnt a lot from this game. We need to learn from the mistakes we made during the course of the project and not to repeat it in our future undertaking. In business, most often, every parties will try to cover up their own mistakes made and tends to push the blames to the other parties especially when there are external parties involved.  We gotto to be stern and strong to voice out and stand firm on our decisions. Do not let the opponent to have a chance to ruin us and we need to be always alert on all situtation.  We need to have the project information on our finger tip and any decisions made during the meeting must be notify to everyone that involve in the game. Trust me, those notifications had saved our team from landing into bigger difficulties because of the bank's project team negligence and for this reason, the bank project team tell my boss saying that I am a very defensive person. (Anyway, I take this as a compliment)

 

Sometime I wonder, is it true that the bank people are envy with our team's high and cheerful spirit that we have all the time. Our team has always been in harmony no matter how bad the situation is. They cannot see us fighting or blaming each other for the mistakes made by any of the team members. My project partner always giving us confidence and boost our spirit to help each other to achive the same goal. We are a self-manage team with a good sense of commitment and responsibility.

还有三天圣诞节就来临，明天是冬至。看着购物广场的人潮，有点羡慕他们的节日心情。我对圣诞老人要求让我好好的在假节期间好好的睡一觉。 就只有这个愿望。。。我不奢侈，只要在假节期间好好的睡一觉。。。。。好好的睡一觉。。。。。好好的睡一觉！

趁着上个周末有三天的假期，带了3位朋友回家小住。家里没有人，大家趁着假期出外游玩。 空空的家反而感到更自然。。。这到底是为什么？是谁或是什么变了？最后的结果会是如何？城里的生活很疲惫可是有一种熟悉和自由的感觉。。。。难道又是时候要离开家了吗？到更远的地方见识？

 

 

今天我回家一趟。家人很高兴见到我。我也很高兴见到他们。

 

可是为什么我却没有感到回家的兴奋？也没有回家的感觉？

 

为什么我总觉得周围是那么的陌生？是我离家太久？ 是我变了？ 还是家里的环境变了？

 

难到城里的生活环境更适合我？