Monday, April 24, 2006

I Am So Pissed

I'm not feeling very good today. Not because I'm not well. I just spend the day preparing 15 cheques for my company since today is my payday. Eventhough I get paid today, I am so not happy with I heard.

My boss just told me that I will get an increase in my salary once the money from a project worth more than a million ringgit coming in. Since I control every document that the company is handling, I know exactly what the project cost is because I am the one helping my management making the proposal and also the quotation. It hurts me so badly after knowing that I am going to get an increase of just about RM500. After deduction, it will go down to just RM200. My boss is so inconsiderable. I am so pissed. I better go back to Burger King and work using the Wi-Fi there. It is so useless working in this crappy management company.

Oh my god. This is the first time I'm condemning my god damn company in my own blog. Well, at least I feel so much better now. Better plan for my retirement with this company as soon as possible.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Visiting A Hotspot Place

This is my first time blogging outside of my house or office. Sometimes, it good to once in a while change your environment. I'm meeting someone here at Burger King, MidValley branch. So while waiting for the person to come, I'm writing this entry and trying out the WiFi of this place. Ohh..Burger King is quite nice to hang out as they provide free filling up for the drinks.

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Well, I'm enjoying doing this. Maybe I should do this more often. Have a nice weekend. (I'm supporting for McLaren Mercedes for the F1 tonight)..hehe.. ;-)

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Microsoft Partner Infrastructure Roadshow 2006 Review

Every now and then, we need to refresh ourselves. So, it's normal for us to change our mind all the time. However, it is vision that gets you moving forward whether you realize it or not. So, instead of writing my goals, I am writing down on my vision as sometimes I set my goal based on my emotional feeling which is changing all the time. Hopefully this new found way would help me shape a better future for myself and the people around me.

Let's analyze this situation for a while. Some people and even myself don't understand why I am still working for peanuts in a dreadful company that utilizes all my skills without compensating it. It is because I like the company's vision and the way it is moving ahead. However, I had numerous occasions where I really wanted to quit my job because of the low wages but eventually I stayed. Basically it all boils down to my own vision as I would like to see and be in the position of where the company will be as a result of the company's vision. However, I really need to think about my own vision and this what we all must do to mak our lives fulfill.

Anyway, last Wednesday I went to Sunway Lagoon Resort Hotel for a Microsoft event. The last Microsoft event I went was Microsoft KL Ready Worldwide Launch 2005 Event. So this time, this event is targeted to Microsoft Partners and since I have handled Microsoft product purchases for my client, it automatically makes me a partner. So, basically Microsoft target market nowadays is in Small & Medium Enterprise and this market is huge. They estimated that there are more than 300,000 SME's alone in Malaysia that is worth USD270 million. Wow...that's a lot of money and of course and if I could have 1% of it, I'm quitting my job immediately.

I have a few interesting notes but I left it somwehere. I need to find it so that I could plan out something. Here's a picture of me at the event:

Ashrufzz at Sunway Lagoon Resort Hotel

Well, I need to reorganize myself again. 3 weekend was allocated fulfilling my emotional needs. Now it's time to allocate it for my vision.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Wealth Management Vs Wealth Creation

I love reading newspaper and during my weekend, I spent a few hours scrutinizing the newspaper in search of valuable informations I can get my hands on. So, today I read New Sunday Times and there was one topic which got my attention. I am always interested in creating wealth as so many people are, however I am still finding my way of doing it (I'll let you know when I found it though).

So, one of the ways into creating wealth is to tap into the wealth creator's wealth. Simply saying, you use your hard-earned management skill or tools and convince the wealth creator to hire you to manage his/her wealth. That is how financial advisor make money from. Having a credible credential is a bonus in convincing wealth creators but in my opinion, having a set of selling skills and persuasion tactics is the key for getting the wealth creator's to be sold by you. However, what is the most important is the education and your willingness to learn and to be educated even more.

Let's see how Wealth Management and Wealth Creation differs:

Wealth Creation

Purpose: To create wealth from nothing
Who works for who: You work for wealth
Risk Profile: Take risks
Resource allocation: Concentrated
Key Performance Indicator: Speed
Return on Investment: Main or only measurement
Feeling: Exciting

Wealth Management

Purpose: To manage the created wealth
Who works for who: Wealth works for you
Risk Profile: Minimise risks
Resource allocation: Diversified
Key Performance Indicator: Length
Return on Investment: One of many other measurements
Feeling: Peace of mind

Having to know this invaluable piece of information. It is now your choice to choose on which side would you prefer. There's no clear answer on which is more superior. As for me, I would choose Wealth Management as I feel it is more superior than the latter. However, each side has its own learning curve and anyone who wishes to become wealthy has their own path toward achieving their goals.

Friday, April 14, 2006

A Technical Hiccup Day

Today, something extraordinary happen in my office. The networking went haywire and the internet connection was terrible. My boss who is long known for his grumbling behaviour kept me busy all day long. I had to juggle between both, preparing an administrative job which was to prepare a few marketing documents and technical issues plus some project management issues with my technical guy. At the same time, I had to handle my bosses big asses because they were freaking out about their damn credibility of not having a competent technical team. It's practically their fault for not hiring qualified staff but of cause they had to blame it to someone. Who else than their 2nd in command guy. I hate being in a slavery state right now that I swear I'll kick myself out of the company if I wasn't compensated properly when the money comes in.

So, what I did first was to analyze the network accessibilty. Then one of the laptop all of sudden gave up, the windows was unable to load. Even worse, the laptop is now assigned to one of my director and he has a loud mouth. So, I had to reinstall the windows and load all the stuff for him. Lucky the office only have a few people, imagine if I'm the only guy in the IT department and I had to assist numerous other non-IT department, I can go crazy after that.

While analyzing the office internet connection. The Wi-Fi connection was lost. Took me 3 hours to restore it back to normal while solving a couple other jobs that were being dumped at me. I just can't believe I had to also solve a technical problem one of my guy is having with his web-based software that is going to be presented for one of our client. The problem just lies because of some minor mislinking with the script. Capital were used instead of the non-capital, the link got messed up.

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Nevertheless, my webmastering skill had save his task. So, that's not too bad wasn't it? My mistake was to told my boss of what a great job I did. Unfortunately, my skill wasn't appreciated and I was given more task. So, now I need to multitask my skill to its limit. I don't know how much longer I'm going to hold on with this slavery. So many things is crossing my mind right now. Well, tomorrow will be a better day than today.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Another Redesigned Job

I didn't really like my previous template. Since today is a public holiday on celebrating Prophet Muhammad and I'm not going out on a date or something, I spent a couple of hours trying to find a good template and customize it according to my preferences. Before I did that, I built a couple of pages on my Geocities Pages. I'm planning to add a few more features but it will take up a lot of my time.

I love reading about SEO and since SEO Optimization is not so technical, I did a few experiment myself. Recently I'm so surprised to find out that my blog has PR4. That's an achievement too be proud of. Just look at this:

Ashrufzz Blog PR4

If you are not aware of the SEO specifically about Google PR. You can read all about it at Wikipedia by clicking here. Maybe the page descibe PageRank in a bit too technical. Even I don't really read and study those theoretical and formulas. Let leave it to the professors shall we?

Basically, the higher PR your page rank, the more relevancy and credibility. I'm writing more about this on my other blog CSS Learning and Website Authoring. See you on the other side..

Sunday, April 09, 2006

The boss needs you, you don't need him!

It's Saturday night and I'm in front of the tv while writing this blog. The title of this entry was taken from a newspaper I read a few days ago. It got my attention as it has got to do with what my position is right now. I watched this local drama, the story was about this young chap venturing into the vicious corporate world specifically in the construction management. Construction here in Malaysia was reported to be a bit slow. However, if you drive around, you can see there's a lot of development still going on.

With a lot of developed buildings and properties everywhere, the next thing to do is always to maintain the built environment. This is a huge task to do altogether. This is where the company I'm working is trying to educate. We have a solution to manage all those properties and buildings. The beauty of having such solution is, it is all going to be digitize and if you haven't notice, digitize information is a mouse click away and requires even less manpower. However, less manpower means higher skilled manpower which turn out to become highly paid. So, poor all those unskilled people having no employment as these systems slowly replacing them. With less people, the company will gain a lot of profit since the highest overhead is always the salary of the people working. This will then increase the company's value as cost of overhead is cut down. A company if you are not aware is just an entity formed with a few folders filed in some office probably just a small one.

Enough about the jargon, I happen to be the skilled person but I am definitely underpaid. I'm not asking for huge remuneration. Anyway, the person controlling the company will say something like "Oh, the company needs the fund for future projects". It's always crap. The boss spends money like crazy while the employee earn peanuts. Well, no wonder a lot of people resort to network marketing or starting their own business. The funny thing about being an employee is, you can never get enough salary. I've met a few person who has a 5 figures salary but the money still wasn't enough. This is the world called the 'rat race' if you ask Robert Kiyosaki. Still knowledge is power.

I'll leave you readers with this interesting quote by a consultant (I hate people who claim to be consultant without any track records as they are like conman):

'One reason why such companies (big scale business) don't need multi-tasking is because this will only lead to tasks being inefficiently completed as the people who are responsible to perform them might not specialize in them' "JeromePierre Bonnifay, - SB International Consulting Chief Executive Officer)

Thursday, April 06, 2006

To Change or Not?

Yesterday, while I was busy designing a new and improved company website, I received a call from a guy who e-mail me an offer to renew my company's domain name. The guy actually called me at the right time as the domain name is going to expire next week. Gosh..I've been using the company's domain name for a year now. The website, eventhough just half-heartedly designed has been indexed in major website such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

So, the offer was to change my webhosting to a local one for just RM98 and to renew my domain for just RM80. When I register the domain, I paid only RM120 for the domain and the 50MB webhost which resides in the US (I have no idea where the exact location, Washington, DC if I'm not mistaken). The domain cost me RM90 while the 50MB webhost was RM30. It amazes me at that time how cheap it was. We all know that cheap thing comes with their own quality price. Only one thing differs the local webhost and the US webhost, distance. With greater distance, it will took longer than the local one. However, I don't see any problem as I don't use the webhost for heavy development of stuff. Only pure HTML and some Wordpress & MySQL database action, that's it.

The local webhost FTP is of course way much faster and it offers more customer service. With a 1GB webhosting for RM98 and renewing the domain for just RM80, I am tempted to go with the offering. However, I didn't like the database part as they only allow 1 MySQL database. I don't know why they only allow 1 database when the webhost allows me to create unlimited MySQL database. My company's website doesn't need so much bandwitdh as it is not a high traffic social site. It hosts only a few stuff concerning my company's corporate information. So, why do I need a big webhost with unlimited while the small one can offer me better features.

So, it's time to make a decision. I think I'll just renew my former hosting as I don't need that bigshot webhost. As long as it works, it'll be fine for me. I may sound a bit technical, and you know what, I am...

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Being Attracted or Begging for Attraction?

Over the years, I have seen many things, read many things and sometimes I can't resist the temptation of trying to do the things I have seen. One of the topic that I really love and what most people are seeking is, "How To Attract Someone While Not Being Seen As A Begger". If you like shopping, most likely you'll encounter those mischievious salespeople that will come up to you and try to sell you the products of whatever shop or company they are from. I never like those people and subconsciously, I linked being a salesperson as a bad person. It never occurs to me to be a salesman until the recent years after discovering the larger picture of what sale is all about.

Well, sales is a boring subject. Let's go to another kind of topic but uses the same sales principle. It's call attraction. What do we do when we get attracted? Normally when I get attracted, my focus of attention will be towards the person to whom I'm attracted and I'll dig out whatever information I can have about that person. Well, that is what I'll do. Some other people who I know will instantaneously go up and confront the attractive person whether it's a guy or a girl and starts talking. While we all have our own style, the thing here is we are sold whenever we saw something we would like to have.

As far as I know, people who are good in sales are normally people who can flirt successfully. This is because they can talk and ask questions so that the people they are attracting can make instant decision whether to move on to next level. People normally delay decisions and they miss on a lot of other opportunities around them. So, making decisions quickly can sometimes attract the people around you. Just don't make a bad decision though.

Eventually, attraction is one of the key to be successful. So, are you attractive enough?