Today I got home at 11.30pm from client’s. While it has been a long day (plus the fact I took an especially dangerous and rocky bus ride to the office this morning) I’ve never felt so.. alive! at work before.

The last time I worked this late was at that job in Kulai, but that was fun (doing work late at night with two girls? FUN.) too. My colleagues are worried I’ll burn myself out by week’s end, but that’s part of the challenge right? It’s something I’ve never done before and I want to test my limits.

On the whole, the client staff have been really nice, though cellphones and bags are forbidden in the office area due to the sensitive nature of their work. Still, we got quite a bit done today, though how well that translates into getting the reports done is still beyond me. Hopefully things continue to go this well for the rest of the week!

I’ll pen a longer post when I have the time. Goodnight!

Rolling in the Deep

Quickie: I had an idea on what to post tonight, then lost it; then Yi Wei (sweet sweet lass) helped me with some inspiration via her latest post, Take a Picture of Me with a Kodak;.

Photo by MyLifeStory // Flickr Creative Commons

Work has, thus far, been good to me. Admittedly my department has had to let go some people over the past few months, but such is the nature of audit.

The upshot of this is that those of us who’ve remained gain the opportunity to work on different types of engagements than we would normally do. For instance, my previous client in Kulai allowed me to get some hands-on tinkering with SAP for a manufacturing environment.

What’s in a Raid?

A church relatively nearby to my office was raided by the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (JAIS). The resulting uproar was expected, and you’ve got politicians from both sides of the divide trying to distance themselves from the controversy or condemn it or both (with the exception of one particular executive councilor).

According to news reports, the church had organized a breaking-of-fast dinner in conjunction with the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan. JAIS is accusing the church of proselytizing, or attempting to convert, Muslims that were in attendance that night. They even declared that they had found evidence to support this claim and investigations were ongoing.

KTM ETS Disruption on Aug 5

As I type this out, I’m waiting for the 8.00am non-stop train to Ipoh this morning at Sentral KL station. Usually I take the nine-something on Friday night, but simultaneous power failures at the Midvalley and Old Railway Station terminals meant the ETS couldn’t get to Sentral since 7pm, stranding at least a hundred passengers here yesterday.

KTM was gracious enough to offer free shuttle buses to Kepong to board the ETS there, while offering full refunds to those who wanted it. Granted, there was some confusion at the ETS ticket counters as to which counters were actually catering for refunds and which ones were solely for other purposes. On the whole though, I felt that KTM did make some solid efforts to try to minimize the damage and bad publicity an unforeseen incident like this could cause them, so kudos to them on that.

The ticket for the 8.00am train set me back about RM25 more than the ETS’s usual fare, but the upside is I get to go home this weekend after about one month away – definitely one of the longest periods I’ve not returned to Ipoh. I think expecting KTM to reduce the price on that ticket simply for this incident would have been nice, but unnecessary; they still have a business to operate after all.

It feels good to be going home.

I’m also planning to be doing some blogging this weekend – expect posts coming soon on events in the past week both personal and national. Stay tuned folks!

Kulai for two weeks was like a holiday where you have to work. The upside of this is the minimal contact with people at the office, so less distractions not related to the current engagement equals more work done. On the other hand, the place was really quiet and other than eating and/or spending time in the hotel room, there’s really nothing to do there.

You need to drive for half an hour before you reach Johor Bahru, so the only reason we stopped by was to hail a cab into Singapore. There’s a sense of familiarity, what with sleek glass-and-steel modern skyscrapers side-by-side with beautifully maintained pre-war buildings, but also a feeling of newness. It’s quite amazing to walk along Orchard Road and not only find pedestrian-friendly routes, but also no rubbish at all.

All in all, it was a productive two weeks there. The environment was not ideal and we faced some tough challenges, but I left Kulai with new knowledge and possibly feeling a little bit more grownup in terms of my working capabilities. I’m looking forward to more large-scale engagements such as this one, especially with a solid team to back me up!