Category: Uncategorized

According to the online article, our government paid nearly RM77 million to APCO, an Israel-based public relations company from what I understand, to help manage a bunch of stuff including the recent greet-and-meet between Najib and Obama. According to the article, our Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department claims that due to the deteriorating relations between our two countries, it can only be mended by spending some good money.

Well, I won’t deny that our fences need mending. Goodness knows that our dear old Tun, spent a lot of his time pointing fingers at the US for causing all sorts of ills in this world. However, I cannot really understand one thing and one thing only.

Malaysia does not recognise Israel’s existence. That is why, we have “Israel” stamped in our passports as the only country where it is not a valid entry document. I think that this was largely done in a stance of solidarity with our Palestinian brothers because our country cannot condone the kinds of things happening there. Okay, the historical, political, religious and other reasons are not important here.

By extension, we should not recognise any Israel-based entities because it would not be possible for us to enter into contract with an entity in a country whose laws we do not recognise. It also baffles me that we managed to issue payment to an invoice issued from a company that, for all intents and purposes, cannot exist because it is based in a country that we do not recognise.

However, I don’t see any of our opposition politicians asking this question and that worries me. Can’t anyone else see the flaw in the business logic of our government?

Don’t let your mouth write checks your ass can’t cash

I had better make a note of this while the memory is still fresh in my head.

I was brought into a meeting by my boss today, to explain why it is that it is so difficult to deliver the system that we needed to deliver by a set deadline. On one side, my boss has been making promises of delivery without checking to see if the thing can be done. On the other side, I just cannot deliver the thing that they need within the time-frame that they want it by. So, I said this during the meeting with my CTO present. He asked me why and so I gave him the reasons.

Firstly, I said that I will not be around for a couple of weeks next month because I need to go back to Cambridge (some other people would also be going for their Umrah next month). My CTO threatened to cancel my leave application and that I have my priorities wrong. He asked if I agreed with him that my priorities were the wrong way around and I totally agreed with him that my personal priorities should be myself first.

Secondly, I said that the machines that we got arrived very late. In fact, we ordered the machines in Oct 2009 but due to various fiascos we only got the machine in Mar 2010. He said that this was not his problem and I told him that it was not my problem either. The problem started because our vendor refused to process our purchase due to substantial outstanding payments that our organisation had with them.

Thirdly, I said that I needed time to make things work because I do not have expertise in this area, which is true. My area of interests and expertise is in computer architecture and chip design. I am not interested at all with writing web applications or doing systems administration work. I am most certainly not an expert in these areas as I only do these things in a limited way for my own purposes at home.

It was right after I mentioned the first point that he advised me to leave. He said that I had my priorities the wrong way around and that he did not need people like me around. I totally agreed with him on that too – I am most certainly not needed by the organisation, which is the reason why I was put to work in a totally alien field to me.

What my boss needs to do is to hire more people, which was what I told my boss last week. If he gave me six people to do the work, I might be able to deliver it on time. I am single-handedly doing the work that another department has more than twenty people doing. While it is not that difficult, there is only so much that ten fingers on a keyboard can do at a time.

Furthermore, my colleague helping me out with this work is already leaving at the end of this month. So far, she has been handling the Windows portions and documentation work. I do not know anything about Windows and the documentation is all written in Word. I would not touch any MS stuff after she leaves.

Anyway, at least I finally got some face time with my CTO and got to put a few words across. Goodness knows that I have been trying for months to schedule an appointment to see him, months ago, to no avail and I have already given up. He probably did not think that I was his problem to handle either.

On another note, another manager said that I am an easy person to manage – which is true. I am honest, rational and logical. If something can be done, and I can do it, I will say that I can do it. If something cannot be done or I cannot do it, I will say that I cannot do it. I won’t weasel around and promise to deliver a system that I cannot. That’s all.

PS: Today, I turned down the invitation to have breakfast with my CEO tomorrow. He likes to touch base with the staff to get some ‘honest’ feedback. Unfortunately, since I did not think that I would have anything positive to say, I decided that it was best for me to stay away. However, I like this idea and I think that I will adopt it in the future – but less formally. If I had been invited a year ago, I would probably have gone but now, I kind of doubt that it would be a good idea to go.

I just read a letter in M’kini which is worried that Zaid is being made into a scapegoat at Hulu Selangor and that when he loses there, he will be crushed. Personally, after reading that letter, I think that is exactly the kind of problem that we have in our country’s politics regardless of political affiliation. The fear of losing. Kiasu.

Firstly, I don’t see why everyone is predicting that Zaid is going to lose when we do not even know who the BN candidate is yet. Even after we know who the competition is, it would still be pure speculation, although a slightly better one than the random speculation going on now. This is loser mentality. If you think that you are going to lose, you will.

Secondly, I don’t see why Zaid has to win and if he loses it will be the end of his political career. Winning and losing is part of life. Both Karpal Singh and Lim Kit Siang have both lost their parliamentary seats before and both are still kicking arse in parliament today. Losing Hulu Selangor would just mean that PKR has lost a battle, not a war. If they phrase the problem as anything other than that, they are already lost.

If you have the balls, you will do what Nurul Izzah did and run against a seasoned politician, a UMNO wanita leader, a Minister, a partner at one of our country’s leading law firms, a friend of various local celebrities and businessmen. Now, that is the kind of leader that I want – someone who goes against all odds and wins. Someone who has the tenacity and grit to stare the impossible straight in the eye without blinking.

If our opposition politicians are unable to take risks, they are just the same idiots that we have in BN today, all running in safe seats in Johor and other BN strong-holds. If you don’t have the balls, just go away.

PS: The same applies to our opposition politicians who run in opposition strong-holds like a certain someone who has a 36,000 majority. You do not keep your best generals in the base, you send them out to conquer territory!

A couple of my colleagues at work today, suggested that I should consider doing some professional writing – they said that I write with emotion. This was not the first time that somebody came up with that suggestion after reading some of my writing here. I’ve had several other people tell me that I do not write like an engineer and that I write well.

I would have you know that engineers write very well. Engineers tend to be fairly explicit and specific in their writing because engineers need to communicate well in order to convey their concepts and work to other engineers. So, they cannot help but learn to communicate very well, in writing.

That said, creative writing is not really our forte as what we do is generally technical writing.

Now, back to this notion of me doing some creative writing. I have to admit that the thought has crossed my mind many times. Unfortunately, I need a reason to write and I have yet to find a topic or cause that is compelling enough to motivate me and just like every other thing that I do in life, I need a reason to write.

Penning my thoughts down on paper will only be interesting if there was a reason to do so.

To any of my friends considering a career in consulting, you should know why it is an amalgamation of the words con and insult. This is a well written, heart-wrenching article on the inner workings in one of the world’s top strategy management consulting firms. The rest of the companies are just the same. I shall just quote one part of the entire text here:

I was not surprised the day I lost my job. The writing was on the wall. BCG’s management might have been releasing reports claiming countries like Dubai would be islands of stability in the world’s rough financial seas, but to the ground troops, it was obvious the economy was not doing well. From the very beginning of my employment, I hadn’t met a single employee who planned on staying with the company — all of them were scrambling for lifeboats, trying to land cushy jobs with cash-stuffed clients or find their way back to their home countries.

What did surprise me was the offer BCG made to me as I was on the way out the door. In exchange for me signing an agreement, BCG would give me the rough equivalent of $16,000 in UAE dirhams. Much of it looked boilerplate, like any common compromise agreement used in Europe — in return for some money, I would stipulate that I hadn’t been discriminated against on the basis of race or gender, etc.

But the rest was very clearly a non-disclosure agreement, and it made me uncomfortable. I signed a non-disclosure agreement when I first took the job, but that only covered BCG’s intellectual property and client identities, things that seemed entirely reasonable to protect. This agreement went much further. Not only did it bar me from making any disparaging comments about BCG or my work experience, but I wouldn’t even be allowed to reveal the existence of the non-disclosure agreement itself. The implication was clear: I could either be a cheerleader for BCG or stay silent, but anything else would bring swift legal retribution. When I asked to have the non-disclosure clauses removed, I was told that the agreement was a standard offer to employees, and that its terms were non-negotiable.

As hard as it was to decide whether or not to stay at my job, it was easy to pass up the hush money. Mistake or not, my future hypothetical children deserved to hear their father’s story, and $16,000 did not seem like a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. After rejecting the offer, I enjoyed a full night’s rest.

A friend sent this to me and I thought that it was quite good – the way that he combined the two songs so seamlessly together. Simple, yet nice.

… calls Code 8, which it started six months ago. This is an initiative where it hires 70 of the best students from public universities to train them (because they apparently do not have the right market skills) [sic] to become domain experts in the eight areas it is working on. This is an accelerated programme as the graduates focus on the proof of concepts that …

When I read this in The Edge (blunt one at that), I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. This is such a blatant spin on the truth that the quote is evidently self-conflicting. I guess that the editor must have found it rather weird too and decided to add a few words to highlight it.

The programme claims to actually hire the best students from public universities to train them because they do not have the right market skills. Since I know some of the people who are actually under this programme, I have to say that they are most definitely not the best students from our public universities. In fact, they are far from it – very far from it – there are candidates in the programme who barely passed their undergraduate degrees and none who actually came in anywhere near the top of their class.

However, I will grant that it may have been the original intent of the programme to take in our best and brightest to accelerate them with the right market skills. If that was the case, then it just reflects extremely badly on the state of our public universities when our best students do not have marketable skills. I think that our local universities may take offence at such implications. Again, I would have to say that this is not true. I know many local graduates from both private and public universities. The good ones have many marketable skills, good communication skills and hard technical skills.

Unfortunately, I think that if the CEO is pointed out as selling vapourware, he will just claim to have been misquoted by the press – as our local leaders are oft to do. Our local press corps must be made up of the most incompetent reporters that are hard-of-hearing if they are always misquoting our leaders – and we all know that is not true. Our local press may sometimes be a bit short-sighted and need some glasses to help them see clearly, but I doubt that they are intentionally incompetent.

So, while I think that the programme is a good one, because it takes in some of our local graduates who lack any marketable skills and gives them a second chance by providing skills based learning through real-world projects, I do not understand why our leaders have to lie spin the story like that.