Killing me softly

4th week at Ericsson.

The working environment here is a whole new world compared to my previous place. Ex-place, when users there have a computer down time, they rejoice and go yum cha. Over here, when users have a computer down time, they are fucked, so I am fucked. Barely a month and I've gotten an official complaint and already scribbled 4 names in my Death Note. Suprisingly all females.

People never fail to amuse me. The different mentality, actions and reactions. And over here, there are lots of foreigners whose mindset still remains alien to me. Handling people is fun, but it can get frustrating as well due to all the different shit you encounter. But some of them, are just ridiculously unreasonable. It is just bull crap I'd say.

There is this lady. Lets call her B. It is just a coincidence that the word Bitch also begins with the alphabet B. So far, B is the most ridiculous/unreasonable person I've ever encountered in my life. Finishing a plate of bull crap would be a whole lot easier than trouble shooting for her. Some of her infamous tag lines:

"I am not going to waste my time explaining the problem to you, but I want the problem fixed when I'm back." and walks off.

"No, you cannot have my password, so you cannot restart." and walks off.

"I want it fixed now and I mean now."

"No, I will not let you access remotely. I want you right here right now."

She acts like she's the only person working in Ericsson and she isn't even a VIP. She expects us to attend to her the second she calls when our SLA (allowed response time) is three days. She doesn't even want to cooperate to the extend of not telling the actual problem. How the hell do you fix a problem when you don't even know the problem. To make things short, B's a bitch.

Working here builts character.

I ain't complaining.

Welcomed to the real world.


if i could...

Cina New Year

Happy Chinese New Year.

I can't recall how many times I actually repeated that phrase. Nothing new this year. Same old relatives, visiting and gambling. Nothing interesting.

Wait. I broke my brand new bed. Scared the shit out of my bro. According to him, the conversation went something like this:

"CRACK" (Bed collapsed)



Me : Whoa. Wtf????

Bro: You fucking broke the bed.

Me : Oh.....SNOREEEEE........ZZZZZzzzzZZZZZZ.....

Bro: WTF.

Indian Entertainment

Lately, I had been calling India a lot to lodge for part warranty. A real test of patience. They will put you on hold for at least half an hour and torture your soul with some sad depressing song. So, its quite normal for me to have the phone on loud speaker.

One day, after hanging up on some Indian guy, I started my normal daily squabbling with my colleague which went something like:

"I give you two tight slap, bish-bish~!"

"I kick you, dush-dush!"

We went on like that until we heard a voice from the phone:

"Sir, could you kindly disconnect the phone?"

"..."

-_-''

High

2nd week in Ericsson.

Still semangat at the moment where the will to learn is still burning at the moment. Got screwed by a few users already so far, slowly adepting to the trend here and adding more people to my search-and-destroy list.

Was at the CC room the other day patching up network cables for a new floor. These switch rooms are really stuffy and hot. To make it worse, they were coating that particular room's door with shellac at the same time and the fumes were breath taking. Now, the room was hot, stuffy and intoxicating.

Started patching.

Started sweating.

Started breathing heavily.

Started to hear my heart beat picking up pace.

Started to feel light headed.

Soon, I was sitting there stoned trying to figure out why I was there in the first place.

Fresh air tasted real sweet after that.

New Job

Goodbye KLIA, Hello Ericsson - Cyberjaya.

Yea, I finally started my new job with Hewlett Packard and started serving in Ericsson yesterday, 5th February 2007. A fresh start. A new hope. A new life?

Started off my first day with a gastric. Yea, I was too used to the long breakfast hours in MAS and was somehow expecting the same here. Turned out they don't take breakfast here and I had my first meal of the day at 3pm. Almost died there.

Lesson #1: Have breakfast before work.

I will survive.

I love pineapple tarts

I can't remember the last time I went back to my hometown, but I finally decided to do so. And I had to choose the perfectly right time to go home where Chinese New Year is just around the corner. Which also means a long list of housechores to do. My mom's favourite chore for me would be to scrub the outside floor and drain which I really dread doing. I really see no point in it cause this are the places which really go un-noticed. No one goes "Wow. Your drains are sparkling clean. I wish I had drains like that."

For a whole week I had to feint hibernation to escape from housechores. The only thing I helped mom with was to help out with the preparations for pineapple tarts. Nice to chew, nice to taste, hell to make.


The basic ingredients for pineapple tarts - pineapples!


The grinding of pineapples. The worst process of all. The grinder is so damn dangerous where a slight mistake can be bloody. It is during this process where extra spices like skin and blood is added to the paste. (Mom's cookie business drops drastically after customers read entry) And to make things worse, the pineapple happens to be a very acidic fruit. Once a cut appears, the rest of the process will be hell. The rest of my process was hell.


This would be the process where the grinded pineapples are sieved to get rid of its juice.


Which results in infinite supply of pineapple juice. This is where we add some sugar and boil the juice so that it can last longer. I take my juice without sugar where it will ferment a bit after a couple of days. It tastes like pineapple beer after it ferments and I totally love it. Well, friends get disgusted with tomato juice and say that I have weird taste for loving it.


Further cooking of the paste where real spices like star anis and sugar and some other stuff is added to it and cooked till the paste is all dry and nice.

That would be it for the preparation for pineapple tart paste. After that would be adding it to the pastry and baking. These tarts are my favourite for Chinese New Year. Without them, CNY just wouldn't be CNY.

Happy Early Chinese New Year greetings.