Ayoi's

Last weekend, I had a “old-friend-get together” session with one of my old friends nearby my house. He is one of my long lost friends and I can say that we shared a lot of experiences doing some naughty activities during our younger days.

He is totally opposite of me (used to be). I was a straight talker (Err I should use “am” but maybe it’s debatable) while he is more diplomatic, “cakap berlapik” thingy. I’m more “let’s go and do it now” while he is “Okay but let’s plan and think about the consequences (escape plans actually) first”.

So after exchanging the usual pleasantry, we start reminiscing the past activities and had a good laugh about it. The of course we touched about our current life and careers. Kinda surprise when he mentioned that he already surpass me on the number of companies that listed in his CV as former employer. When I asked him why, this is his answer;

“I work for money. For loyalty get a dog. For ‘Bear with us statement’ get a bear“

I just laughed so hard that I accidentally spilled my nescafe on the table.

Have to give that statement an exit 0

Strangely, I do feel like that sometimes. And I know some of my colleagues kinda agree with that. I totally have no idea why I’m getting more edgy lately. Because of my age? stress? work related?
Maybe the difference between straight-to-the-point and bashing is kinda blurry for me? Hmmm…
I guess I should not send that kind of email with all the points that I raised to our mailing list.

Perhaps next time I need to be a lil bit tactful with my wordings.

Or maybe not hehehe

I spent most of my time at the main office compared to the client site last week. I wish I haven’t do that since I get lots of other works.. Lesson learned. Anyway it also means that I can have nice conversations with my colleagues on the gossips current news. Among other things that we’ve talked about is on the headache that both of us is facing currently about improving our analyst’s capability, skills and knowledge. Other topic which is kinda fascinating is the way of how our company’s ex-staff behave whenever they need to deal with our company in their daily business.

Some of them seems like having a bad feeling towards the company and of course I have no idea on what they’ve experienced during their working years/months in the company. My colleague relate to me on some unwarranted remarks or unpleasant comments made by them. Of course since some of them are our clients/potential clients, these remarks or comments in my opinion perhaps can have some negative impact on us.

I am not defending the company as I also have some unpleasant moments and experiences while working here. And yes I do sometimes feel that I do deserve more or it seems that my works is not being appreciated by my superiors. But then that’s my personal opinion and perhaps my bosses have other reasonable explanation on why they act like that.

IF I have an opportunity to grow/move/enhance my career to other places, of course I will leave in good term. I do realize and have to admit that without the opportunity given by my current company, I won’t be what I want to be and get other opportunity. I’ve learned a lot during the past 7 years and will be eternally grateful for all the experience, skills and knowledge that I’ve gained while working here. I always remember my beginning when I was a relatively new and kinda dumb when I first joined the company. In 2004, security is a relatively new for me. Looking into security events and distinguishing between false positive and actual events requires a lot of works. I had to double my effort in order to improve my knowledge, skills and other capabilities and I really had to live up to the security analyst title. After 7 years, I can’t say I’m good but what I can claim is that I am far better than I was in 2004. I never expect myself to conduct trainings, giving talks, doing presentations, doing some analysis and studies(I wont call it research), travels to other countries, lead a team for a multimillion project and many more. Those are some of the tasks that I am doing now.

My point is simple. We can easily find our head among the clouds when we feel that we have improved significantly, when people start making you as their reference points (even from master students) and feel that we’ve achieved this without anybody’s help. And we do feel that we are bigger than our current department/company (I am soooooooooo guilty of this ;P) But do remember that we will not be whatever or where ever we are now if not for the opportunity to grow that was given to us today/previously.

Every company has its own flaw/weaknesses and strength. the adage; “Love your job but not your company” perhaps is true but let we add one more line.

“Be grateful but not easily satisfied and don’t look back in anger.”

p/s: This entry IS NOT sponsored by my company OK? And NO, this is not an arrangement for me to get a raise haha

When I joined the current company, I was sent to a client site and spent 3 years there. I’ve learned a lot of things in those 3 wonderful years and yeah including starting a blog as well. At that particular place I think I’ve developed my technical and soft skills especially when dealing with people like how to scold people without letting them feel that they are being scolded. Also from that place I learned on the importance of team work and you are not Superman..

After that 3 years, I transferred to the HQ and again I saw that as an opportunity for me to enhance whatever I had (of course the opportunity to travel to other places as well

And now after 3 years spent at the HQ, I was given a task to establish and setup security monitoring & response team and facilities for one of our clients here in Petaling Jaya. I will spend the next two years here and even at this early stage of my tour of duty, I’ve gained and learned a lot of new things…

Kinda deja vu actually. It seems that all the things that I’ve faced/experienced/complained at the previous client site is happening again. You know the usual thing like how to improve your staff, how to be diplomatic, and yeah nowadays I need to juggle few tasks at my hand at one time. Maybe I should google and look for any vacancies at circus…

2008 near its end. As usual during this period, I always looked back and try to find any milestone achievement for this year. Find any aspects that I can and must improve, acknowledge on the mistakes done or in other words, I’ll performed the “Lesson learned” analysis on myself. So far I am so grateful to my Maker for helping me achieve most of my goals of joining this company and involving in this industry or field. I have no complaints, no regrets but perhaps some disappointment as well. Well like what people said, you just can’t have it all or the term that I’ve learned in my Economic class back in 90s, “The next best alternative forgone.”

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Yeah, hopefully. After enduring worst headache I ever had on last Friday, everything seems like back to normal during the weekend. Perhaps due to the visit of my parents (they never fails to visit my house during the weekends..Maybe after Raya I need to start going back to Kuantan as well), maybe due to the news that a new babysitter finally arrive today, or maybe simply because I just have another dose of Panadol’s ActivFast and sleep on it.

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Is a new laptop. Yeah. I want a new laptop. Currently my ‘ol workhorse lappy Compaq V3000 showing some tendency of sloppiness and sometimes I need to restart my lappy (sometimes when I try to do some demo with my VMwares in my training) which is embarrasing.

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