myblog

i haven’t been writing on my blog for so long that i actually thought of giving it up altogether. i mean, my whole life is engulfed by work that all i can talk about is work which is so boring ! and besides, i have this suspicion that some of my colleagues like to snoop on their fellow colleague’s private lives that they’d somehow managed to google through my blog. my blog isn’t exactly google-proof. oh com’on, i know all of u do that.

anyway, i just have to blog about the most interesting taxi ride conversation ever. i know some of you have come across taxi uncles who like to bitch about their lives but this one is really unique.

i was in the cab with two of my colleagues, one a pakistani and another one a german, heading to sentosa for our departmental retreat. this pakistani colleague of mine had a slight american accent and he’s quite fair so the taxi driver thought he came from the US. as we step into the cab, the driver asked my pakistani colleague how old he was and so he replied that he was 26. and this is how the rest of the conversation went…

Taxi Driver (TD) : wah young man, while you’re still young, you should go and find girls. how many girls do u have?

Pakistani Colleague (PC) : i have only one.

TD : Don’t stick to one lar ! look at uncle, i know alot of girls. philipino, malay, indian, thai …. you shouldn’t stick to one. it’s like eating. one day you must have chicken, fish, crab, meat, you cannot just stick to chicken you know. uncle may be old outside, but inside i am young and have the experience.

PC : oh, but i like to eat chicken only ( laughs )

(Driver then went on to take out a picture of a pinoy lady who looked like your typical maid. then he told us that this maid has been repeatedly contacting him again to ask for his services. you don’t know how disgusted i was at this point)

PC : so uncle, amongst all the ladies that you’ve come across, which nationality do you like the best?

TD : ooh, i like malay ladies because they are really horny. they can really suck until i forget my father’s name.

PC : wow, uncle, i’ve never met a taxi driver like you in my two years staying in singapore.

TD : yeah, i’m a bloody fucker you know.

wahahahaha, at that point the three of us just couldn’t stop laughing man. i think he didn’t realise that he was insulting himself. anyway, i think he’s just like this cos he thought the “ang mohs” are supposed to be more open. regardless, he was really one hell of a cab driver.

goodness, work is really getting into me…

not only do i have one project to work on at the moment, i’m working on three now. one 3/4 done, one 1/2 done and another one not touched yet.

the work that i’m doing deals with alot of data and i really mean alott. here’s our the workflow looks like..

1) Get the client’s records which is extracted from the company’s database. These records do not come in Excel or Access files like how u’d imagine records to be. Since the records are really huge, the client would give us the records in a text format, afterwhich we would have to convert it to a certain format, depending on which application we’re using to analyze the data.

2) As mentioned, after getting the data, we would have to convert it to a certain format, either convert it into Access files or ACL files. If the data is small (which is quite rare), we’d be able to convert it into Excel format. Sounds easy ehhh ? This part is the one that actually takes up alot of my time. One conversion on average takes up about half an hour and it can even take up to an hour your time.
To make matters worse, if the text files which the client gave us is really really really huge, errors would somehow appear during the conversion process. So u imagine waiting for the data to be converted for like 45 minutes only to discover that there’s an error in the conversion. It’s really frustrating larrr….

Besides that, I’m working on an IBM T40 laptop with only 1.3Ghz of processing speed and 512MB of memory and a HDD of 40gb only. Therefore, the process can take really really really long. You also can’t do anything with ur laptop while the data is being converted cos everything else is going to lag. Hence, while the file is being converted, i’ll just stare at my screen or try to find some manual stuff to do, like cleaning up my locker or go for a break (if it’s during lunch time). After the the data has been converted to either Access file format or ACL file format, the data would grow really huge. Since i’m on the different project, i’m facing a problem of a shortage of harddisk space. I only have 1 gb of space left larrr… grrr.

3) After the conversion, we’d run some test to make sure that the data the client gave us are the ones that we asked for. In audit terms, we’d be checking for completeness. For example, if we’re expecting the client to give us the data from 1st of Jan to 30th Sept, we must make sure the records all come from that date. Secondly, if the records involve some monetary values which would affect the accounting records, we have to make sure the total ties with the accounting records. Again, sounds easy right? i thought so too. But this part of the work also takes up alot of ur time. If records don’t tie, it does not necessarily mean that the client’s records are wrong.

You see, to get the total amount (or total anything else) we’d have to run some scripts to get the total. One of such scripts is SQL. So, if the amount doesn’t tie, it could be that we had ran the scripts wrongly. Hence, more often than not, if something doesn’t tally, i’d find myself running the scripts again, checking whether i had written the scripts correctly just to make sure we don’t blame the client wrongly.

4) Once all the above is done, we’d have to run some analysis on the data itself depending on what client we’re working on. For example, in one of the jobs, i’d have to check whether the premium was calculated correctly. So we’ll do our own calculations according to the business rules given to us and check whether it ties with the premium in the system. This is the stage where it’s more interesting in the sense that it gets u thinking on why there’s a difference in the numbers. At the same time, you also learn more about the client’s business processes.

5) Documentation. I haven’t actually got into this stage yet but i can foresee that documenting the work performed is going to be such a hassle cos u gotta remember what u did and make sure u explain it correctly so that if someone takes over e project in the next year, they can simply refer to our documentations.

So in a nutshell, this work is really time consuming. the condition of my laptop is also not helping the cause. More often than not, i’d find myself bringing the work home to do so that i won’t exceed the budget by too much.

i’m really tired. i’m still doing work at this hour. this is not healthy man.

whew, what a week…

i just came back from playing soccer at the cage (yes, i played from 12am to 3am) again and i must say the soccer game is welcome relief from all the stress i’ve been experiencing from work, especially so when ur playing with jc people who never fail to amuse me.

i’ve been tearing my hair out at this work that i’m currently doing cos it seems unsolvable. i’ve been tasked to reperform the insurance premium calculation of this client and make sure it ties with the client’s records. so basically, there’s a set of business rules that the client follow in determining the premium and we are using that business rules to recalculate their premium. it sounded pretty straight forward when my senior explained that to me but i was so wrong la.

firstly, they have more than 300,000 policies (and this is just for one insurance product) that we must deal with. hence, everytime i need to run my SQL commands to perform my calculations, it’ll take about 10 mins to finish one set of calculation. man, the firm should just give us a better computer than a T40. secondly, there seem to be alot of variances between the premiums i calculated and the client’s premium and i can’t seem to pinpoint the reason why there’s such variances. thirdly, it’s so difficult to arrange a meeting with the client so that i could clear my doubts because they claim that they are always busy. everytime we try to arrange for a meeting, they’ll say that we are wasting their time cos they’ve already met them once and it might disrupt their work. lastly, we’re already behind time and i’m feeling quite kan cheong now.

i know it’s easy to blame everything on the client but i’m just really frustrated that i’m currently facing a stumbling block in my work. i just wanna do it smoothly and impress my manager and get it over and done with but i can’t even complete them yet. furthermore, since i’m the worrying type, have started to doubt my own abilities. i’m always asking myself whether i’ve ran the calculations correctly and all. hence, i spend quite a substantial amount of time checking my work and being all paranoid about it.

having said that, i must say at least the work they’re giving me is not those no-brainer ones. it requires some level of analytical skills and i’m able to make use of the techinical skills that i learnt in school. i won’t ever get sleepy doing this kinda work but just a lil frustrated. i think after doing this, i can go become insurance agent.

enough bout work…

i think i’ve been really crappy lately. i think it has got to do with the stress i’m facing at work. if i’ve offended any of u in any way, pls forgive me. try not take the remarks made too personal. it’s spoken without putting much thought into it.

goodnight.

following my post on the black grey scarf, gf has just added a new item in her knitting collection. she has just knitted herself a half-sweater, more commonly known (and one which i just found out, hehe) as a capelet. she’s always been wanting to make this so that she could wear it together with the dress given by yours truly.

here’s the picture of the capelet which she made.

the picture on the right side (one which is beige in color) is taken from another website. at first when she told me that she’s going to knit it herself, i wouldn’t expect her to produce something as nice as that. she has never knitted something that can be worn before. But she proved me wrong and she actually managed to produce an exact replica of it in a different color. I was so impressed !

another thing that impressed me was the cost to make the capelet. such a capelet would cost bout $40 from mphosis but she only forked out $8.97 bucks to buy 3 rolls of yarn and another $9 to invest in a pair of circular knitting needles. since the knitting needles can be reused, we can take the needles as our fixed cost which can be depreciated on straight line basis over 10 years since knitting needles can last forever, her cost for the sweater would be a mere $9.87 only ! ( i’m very calculative, i know )

i haven’t seen her wear the capelet before but i’m sure she looks lovely in it. if only i could convince her to make me a nice sweater. *grinz*

goodness it’s really really hot recently and the weather has to be this terrible during fasting month…

tell me honestly, do i really really look gay?

the reason why i’m asking is because i’ve had about 10 friends request from total random MALE strangers in facebook. usually, i don’t mind if it’s a girl trying to add me cos, u know , it’s quite an ego booster. like ur worthy enough for a girl to add u on facebook (but that rarely happens, really!).

but guyys .. urggh, and all of them look really creepy. some come as far away as Greece and Canada. The one from Greece incidently looks like a midget. fine, i know i’m vertically challenged myself but that one looks really creepy. Then the guy from Canada has been sending me alot of messages telling me that he’s seen and met me before. what the hell … i don’t know u ! buzz off. There’s also this guy from US who looks really old but quite well built. Don’t know whether that’s the real picture though. Konon-konon sugar-daddy la. i felt like throwing up after looking at his picture. Just awhile ago, i also got a request from this Thai guy who apparantly did a semester in NTU but i’ve never spoke or met him before. soo random one.

So after all that, i went to look thru my profile thinking that i might accidently listed down that i’m interested in MEN. haha. but not only have i clearly stated that i’m interested in Women, my profile has also flagged me to be in a heterosexual relationship ! What are those guys thinking … that i would get turned on by them and turn gay immediately ?!

grr… ok, maybe i’m overreacting. maybe it’s just some “bot” trying to send out friend request to any random person. but still, why do i have to get the creepy ones.