My First Week at Kone
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Well, to set thing’s straight, it’s pronounced as “ko-nee”, not “cone”. I don’t know if I enjoyed my first week here - I mean, this is a nice place and all, but, it’s been a boring week! I can’t really do data migration, without the data right? Hm, my first week at HSBC was pretty much the same - familiarize with this, familiarize with that. Unfortunately for a colleague of mine, she only got to leave office at 8.30 on her first day to work. And boy oh boy, she’s a hottie! But sadly, she drives a Vios and has 5 credit cards. I take the friggin bus and have a yellow and black card labeled “Maybankard”.
Moving along to the other colleagues, well, they’re mostly quite friendly. The department manager is pretty friendly and outgoing and I even had lunch with him on my first day to work. The person I report to however, is not the department manager. Don’t ask me why, I’m just as blur :p
The coolest thing about Kone? They use Outlook!! Yay!!! No more replication problems, no more “delete from inbox, then delete from all items” nonsense and no more shitty interface. Outlook rocks!! And almost everyone here uses the calendar for scheduling, coz it’s so easy to use! I can recall, hardly anyone uses Lotus Notes’ calendar function back at HSBC. I didn’t even know how to open the damned calendar!
Unfortunately, the location of our office leaves much to be desired. There’s a malay stall at the canteen, and some other malay stalls within walking distance. The staffs refer to that stall as “longkang”, thank’s to it’s beautiful location. It’s an industrial area, so if you park your car there, it’s gonna get dirty really quickly. I’m quite okay with that, just that the 1 hour journey (1 way) will get to me pretty soon.
Tags: life
The Next 4 Months
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve got this bad habit of doing “something else” during exam season - I would be busy thinking about how I’m gonna spend the 3 week semester break. This time, it’s worse - it’s a 4 month break.
Of course, since I wanted to get a dSLR camera, the first priority was on getting a decent part time job. Thankfully, I managed to find one. No, I’m not the kind that would work 3 months then say “sorry, this job not suitable for me after all” and disappear. It just so happens that Kone wanted someone for the same exact period that I’m available.
The other thing of course, is the side projects that I like to work on. There’s always this thought of the “usefulness” of the project I’m gonna do. A photo gallery? There’s plenty others out there, and it’s not really something to shout about. Then there’s this concern of what technology to work on: LINQ? PHP5?
So while doing my FYP documentation, I realized the technology isn’t that important after all - you can’t possibly predict what technology your future company would be using. As long as it’s not Assembly, it should be fine =) I was going to settle on a PHP feed reader project using the CodeIgniter MVC framework, but something even better came up. I was on the bus back to Ipoh, thinking bout the damned bus routes I need to follow to get to Kone, when I realized - why not make the RapidKL bus routes search-able? That would be way cool!
By search-able means you can enter a starting point and a destination, and the system will tell you what buses to take. Not only was it something extremely useful, it was technically challenging too! This would be a good chance for me to brush up my SQL too. This will be a web based system, so PHP5 it is. There’s also a .NET Compact Framework version planned!
The system would most probably be community driven - after all, I can’t possibly enter and validate all the bus routes RapidKL has, since it’s in an image format. So if you’re keen on this, check back in about a months time!
4 Years at TARC Comes to an End
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
I still remember the days after SPM, where I looked forward excitedly to come to TARC. Today, I handed in my Final Year Project documentation - marking the end of my studies at TARC. 4 years has passed, and boy, so much has really happened. Come to think of it, time seems to just fly by. So many memories are still fresh in my mind! I won’t forget all the kick ass people I’ve met, the great, great, great times at hostel, the first “date”, the first real date, and of course, my first love. My last year at TARC was also topped off by fellow SPs Kok Chiann and Huey Chen and all the committees. You guys ROCK!!
I only have 2 regrets: not doing well for Discrete Maths and not putting in 100% for my Final Year Project. No, how can she possibly be a regret?! =) I only got a miserable C for discrete maths, like 2 years ago. As for my Final Year Project, well, I guess it’s just part of the learning process. Believe me, it’s not easy working with really, really talented people like Chu Hang, Eu Hua and Kean Keat. I really regret not being able to put in 100% onto our FYP - industrial training and MSP events really take their toll, and I guess I’m just not up to it. Quite a number of people think my programming is “God-like”, please!! Through this past year, I’ve truly realized my weaknesses. Now it’s time to work on it!
To everyone whom I’ve met at TARC (that “basket” from hostel, that pretty classmate turned junior, and that “handsome” fella), thank you for being a part of my life and I truly would like to apologize for all the times I’ve offended you guys. I know it gets difficult to work with me at times. All the best to you guys (job hunting or studying) and happy CNY!!
