Stressful, exhausted and sick.

This is what I feel right now. This has nothing to do with my personal life. It is all about my job here. I am tired of doing the same thing or repetitive works every day. I hate them so much. Currently, I am trying very hard to finish all the tasks assigned for me. At the same time, I also have to check some works done by my team mate and I am a bit surprised since she is senior and I am supposed to do something else rather than checking her work. In fact, she is very nice to me and I hope she will not take an advantage of my kindness to dump all the rubbish on my desk. If she really wants me to check or do her job, just let me know and if that is an order from my lead, surely I will sweep all the rubbish. Last time when people heard about the brilliant chance offered to me for working here, all of them congratulate me. Thanks. Knowledge wise, I am right on the track. In term of the working culture, yes they are very good, hard working, punctual, committed and dependable. I do agree with that. Apart from that, I think there is something missing. Personally, I think they lack of management expertise. Maybe this is only happened in my project, or maybe in my unit, or maybe they are very busy implementing HAZOP comments, or maybe detail design is about to kick-off. Maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, my point is that everything is not in order and not well placed. It is a pain to find some “master” documents. Yes, we can manage to find it through the database but we are not sure whether the documents concerned are the latest one or not or to make sure if there any comments or markup on the latest documents. I put this as a big problem because I don’t like to do repetitive work. That’s all. Sometimes I love the pressure. It is not the same feeling like those school days. It can really boost my strength and enhance my normal capability to achieve something unpredictable. This week the French class started. While working like a mad, I have been invited to join the class since I will stay here for almost 1 year. Last week, somebody called my telephone and she spoke French with me. Yes, I can’t reply her. I have zero knowledge on this language. Actually, she’s from “language department” in my office specially dedicated to teach “outsiders” the French language. Since I can only reply her 100% English, (it means can’t speak French at all), I have to join Group 1. I believe this class is for beginners. Hehehe. The class schedule is very tight since only two hours per week for three months are provided for the course. I don’t think it’s enough. Learning in the first class was horrible. The lecturer hadn’t use even single English words. It’s crazy and really put me in high pressure condition. It’s a hard time for me to catch up everything only for a short time. Besides, there are three of my colleagues from Malaysia and one guy from Chennai that also join the class. All of them used to learn French before and surely they have no problem in the first class. Huhuhu =(

Spring Vacation Planning

Last month, I and the other three went to the China Town for looking and surveying a travel package provided for this coming spring season. For the time being I am just looking around and haven’t decided for my holiday’s trip yet. First, I have to grab some brochures, study the calendar, analyze the leave balance, check the workload, forecast the peak rates and do some pros and cons breakdown. Anyway, my initial plan was going to the London with my wife during the time she spent here for one month break with me. Due to peak season on May and lack of annual leave balance, I divert the plan to Belgium and Germany for short trip. I would say this will be our continuation of our last honeymoon. Last time we had a great time in Sabah and Langkawi only for a short break. Wherever we go, it doesn’t matter for me. It is just a matter of how do we cherish and fill up the true happiness among ourselves and shared a great moment together. I feel very happy and so lucky to have such understandable and loving wife like her. Thanks sayang. I am crazily miss you.

Loneliness - The Lesson Learnt

I was struggling daily with the loneliness to get used to the new working environment (workaholic culture), climate, and the most difficult part is being apart from my loved ones. In fact, I was very depressed in the first week here because my cell phone doesn’t work. No coverage at all even the roaming feature was activated. When I told my wife (again) about this problem through the email, she was so surprised because she went to the **** center two times already. I believe there must be something wrong with the network settings in my cell phone. But then, my wife did mention to me about searching the line manually rather than keep it by default - automatically. I think there is nothing to do with that. But anyway, I still give a try with no hope at all and unexpectedly the coverage indication in my cell phone starts increasing to full bar. Alhamdulillah, thanks to my wife. Hehe. Sometimes we need to listen to others right? (This doesn’t mean that I am a stubborn person ok) Actually, I will use my cell phone only for emergency reasons as it is not a practical way to keep in touch with my wife & family in this situation as it takes a full wallet in order to digest the bill when it is time to pay. My colleague told me that there is a cheap IDD calling card sold in China Town somewhere in Paris. For only 6.50€ we will get about 1000 minutes of outgoing calls! Anyway, this rate is only applicable for calling from a fixed line to a fixed line telephone. It means I can use my room’s telephone to call out back to Malaysia. No matter how much rate it can be, I feel so released and very happy to keep in touch with my family & surely with my lovely wife. Above all, the most practical and cheapest way to communicate with them is via internet. Alhamdulillah, my room is equipped with the internet facility. For the first time I try to get online, there was a network problem. I was told by the technician on duty at my apartment to follow some steps that relates to the local area network settings in order to get connected to the internet. After every single step has been followed, I found my laptop was not able to get connected. By the time I feel damn angry and mad with my brand new laptop. What is the real problem? I couldn’t manage to solve this problem as I am not really good in computers stuff. It was a very bad situation for me since the real plan is to “see” my wife every day. After few attempt, once again I manage myself to solve this problem. Alhamdulillah. Now, what I really need is some motivation from her and my family to boost my strength and to be strong while being alone here. Frankly speaking I am a homesick kind of person. As what I’d always said, I hate long distances but when I recalled back what my mom said, this is just a small test from Him to make me realize that when the time comes, you will be alone “there”. Alhamdulillah.

Alhamdulillah

Finally i've created a blog. My pure intention is just to share some feelings and my daily life with my lovely wife and other family members. Here, I have much time spent in my room since my outdoor and sport activities are very limited except during weekends. My normal routine here during week days was too short - wake up in the morning, go to work, go back to my room, sleep. That's all. Hmm. Few weeks back, as I could remember and will never forget was the beginning of new chapter of my life which introduced me to big responsibilities, high commitments, unexplained feelings, and sweetest moment ever! While sharing most of the great time together with my lovely wife, I am just too busy to realize that along the path, there must be obstacles which cannot be or may be avoided which will end up in different manner depends on how we define it. It is all started when I was awarded an assignment to Paris just after I return back from my honeymoon. Yes, just after I get back to work on the first day. Since this “golden” opportunity was proposed by my lead engineer, and because of full respect of his effort towards my career, I just simply replied “OK”. When I recalled back, why now??? Well, people said, this is a brilliant opportunity in a lifetime – career development, superb experiences or whatever you wish to name it. Some of my close friends even like to make jokes about it – “rezeki anak2”. Anyway, there must be a reason why in the first place I am still following this path even I know what is going to be in the future. Yes, my prediction is true. I can stand it no more. I hate being far away from my loved ones. I hate long distance. Yes, this is what I am. Now, it's been almost 3 months I was here and in 3 weeks time, I will going back to Malaysia for a two weeks breaks. Really can't wait!