Week 7 : Fitting In

It has been another week. I skipped last week entry because I could not generalise the whole week into an entry due to the activity that I had taken apart. This week had been another week that did not have any outstanding events. The only change that I had so far this week was a change of place. I was supposed to take over Pei Chin's computer this week as she was due to end her 7 months and a half internship last week. However, due to unforeseen circumstances she was supposed to stay back for another two more weeks as she had to write another program to allow mobility for the user to make changes using notepad and also to be access easily from the server where it is stored. As a result, I am currenly sitted between Elfiz and Mahadi which is where the phone used to sit comfortably. It is a bit cramp but I managed to make do with it as I am currenly using my laptop to do work. I decided to bring my computer again as it would be a hassle to obtain a computer and a place to put it due to the office full capacity. Therefore, my cubicle is the most filled compared to the rest. I was quite afraid to be place between them as I did not want to bother them with their work and had scouted around for a new place but found none. I even brought a chair in from the meeting room last week and place it behind Pei Chin and it was like a standalone office by itself. Fortunately, I made some ammends to my work schedule and decide to attend to other things like audit to spend my time. Elfiz apologize for this inconvenient but I was more concern about disturbing him instead. He was nice to accomodate me and had to sacrifice some space for me to sit in.

My computer had been having some problems for the pass few weeks ever since I installed a Window Update. My dates has been jumble and could only display year 1999 and 2099 although I had yet to change the battery for my internal clock previously. I have to boot up in bios everytime to change my date and time. Besides that, decimal places seems to be missing and it is really confusing when you found that there is extra hard disk in your computer when there is no such change except for misplaced decimals. As a result, I decided not to installed the VB project from Pei Chin's comp which I had previously worked on and decide to make some adjustments like reinstalling Windows and Visual Basic 6.0 before continuing programming. I am currently working on a dummy database using Access so that I would be able to link it with my project and present it to my supervisor. I had not much experience using Access but now I can say I know what tables and query are all about and how to link them up. Its interesting to learn how to use new programs when the project that I am given requires me to find ways to make myself learn it. It seems like a better learning method compared to reading slides and studying about it which I usually can not remember at the end of the semester. All is working out well but there is some areas which I have yet to find a solution. Hope to see myself finishing this project as soon as possible before shutdown and venture into other areas.

My company will be undergoing a shutdown from 10 to 17 November 2004 in conjunction with Deepavali and Hari Raya. It is an shutdown they do annuall around this time due to number of Indians and Malays working for the company. A shutdown means that the machine will be stopped from production which normally occur round the clock. As a result, I would be getting a 1 week break which actually sums up to two days only and would return after Raya. This shutdown is timely as I would be having plans with my family including my grandparents and my auntie to Penang to spend Raya there.

Other than that, I had been spending a lot of my time this week mixing around with the new engineers of my company by having lunch and tea breaks with them. I finally got to know the last of the two new engineers namely Sugu and Ajay. It seems pretty much fun mixing with a bunch of guys. Most of them are Indians and it does remind me of my group of Indian friends that I used to hang out with in secondary school. The group that I normally mixed with comprised of Stanley, Baljinder, Long, Lim and the two new guys, Ajay and Sugu. This are the additional people that I had mixed with besides Ah Hew and Pei Chin. As I mixed with more people, I began to learn more about the people I mixed with. I have not been hanging out with Pei Chin recently as it is pretty hard to make a conversation with her. I had wondered why and realised this week that she is more connected to girls instead of guys. She currently mixes with a group of ladies which she seem much comfortable. Ah Hew on the other is very approachable and we could come up with a conversation about anything under the sun. Food seems to be our favourite topic. However, he is a more personal and one to one conversation seems to suit him more. Besides them, I got to know the new lady senior engineers, Chan whom I heard did Chemincal Engineer and a Masters in IT. I had also manage to exhange a few words with the loudest guy you could hear speaking over the phone, Mr. Yap. I did not know him earlier but had managed to learn much from him just by listening to his conversation and learning the way of addressing people in different way. I noticed that the people had begun to take notice of my presence as I had managed to get some feedbacks from the smiles I usually send across to them. This had make me feel a bit more at home and I am feeling alot more comfortable now compared to previous.

My handphone has gone kaput and am currently using a 3210 which my mum has been keeping aside. It all happened when I was in the toilet taking a bath when the alarm came on although I had close it and began vibrating on the table and soon was at the edge of the table and down it when with a hard knock on its head. I could not turned it on and this was a quick end for my phone.Sigh!