Attending VMWare vForum 2017 at One World Hotel Bandar Utama (November2017)

A Happy New Year 2018. It turns out that I only wrote a handful of blog posts last year. I know it was pathetic but I am working really hard to make a positive change this year.

Anyway, this was my 3rd year of attending VMWare's vForum in One World Hotel, Bandar Utama. The first and second was also held at the same place. The registration queue stretches from the lobby of the hotel towards the registration counter. The crowd was jam-packed but I must salute the host and the hotel venue for well managing the food for the enormous crowd, superbly done. I attended Google Cloud event earlier at the same place but the crowd was far less than VMWare vForum, clearly, the event organizer did a very good job.

I've been lazy to write or update this blog but determined enough to make a video using my rarely used outdated Camtasia Studio on my laptop. Check out my less than 2 minutes of video presentation. It may look crappy but I made the video in less than half an hour so imagine if I can spend an hour or two if I'm not that lazy.. haha...

By the way, check out the cool demonstration using Virtual Reality concept done by the awesome presenter on stage starting at 0.19s onwards. Very Cool stuff!

How To Get Headhunted By Job Recruiters

Success can be defined in many ways, shape and form. If you are an employee, don't feel bad about it. There are times when I wish I had the freedom of time, money and no boss that I need to serve. Well, I guess I never got to that situation yet. An honest confession, I currently have a huge debt of almost 3 times my yearly salary that I need to serve after trying to achieve the freedom of time, money and no boss to serve. I got cheated, duped and failed miserably. However, I know that I can bounce back stronger than before. That's how life teaches you a lesson.

Enough about my failure, I want to write about my experience being sought after by these job recruiters. A few years back, I had to change jobs because of some unfortunate circumstances of the company that I served at that time. Basically, at the moment I'm back at the same company because I can't resist the complacent working environment but I'll try to write on that later. After going to almost 10 job interviews, a job recruiter spotted me on this site called 'Monster' which was a big job recruitment website and hook me up with a job interview that landed me a job offer for big public listed local IT company. I chose to accept a smaller company because of the permanent status rather than contract and stayed there for more than a year.

The point here is when you are good at your job and even when your resume sucks, you can always try further on the next round like I did. I never had a degree in IT, furthermore, my only qualification is a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering with specialisation in Automotive but how did I end up in the IT world. My only answer would be because of my passion. So, if you have passion you can definitely survive anywhere you go.

Recently I tried to update my Jobstreet profile after  4 years of dormancy. Suddenly a 'Job Opportunity' landed in my inbox.

The job description given was very interesting and if I was 5 years younger, I would have definitely grab it. So, if you are interested in a change in career or a job opportunity such as this one, do contact me or the guy in the screenshot above. I would love to communicate with a 'younger me'. ;-D

I didn't answer the topic of this blog post. Well if you ask me, a few ways you can try to get headhunted is to:

1. Advertise and expose yourself. Don't be scared to be different from the rest of your peers. If you have a blog, write about yourself on your blog, social media account profile, Linkedin or anywhere you can get spotted.


2. Register yourself to all job recruitment agency. If you found a job recruitment website, register an account with them. If there is a 'Job Fair' in your area, attend and drop your resume, your name card if you have one or a note to the guy or girl at the job booth.


3. Network with a fellow headhunted guy such as myself. What a headhunter would probably look for are recommendations by trusted sources. If I find out that you are good and there are opportunities for you to go further, I will definitely recommend you to the headhunters I know (I have a classmate who is an experienced head hunter).

There you have it, a combined answer with some of my experience after being absent from this blog for a while. I never thought it feels so good to write a decent blog post again. I should really write more often. Until next time my fellow readers.

XM Forex Broker Review

If you've notice, I've put a couple of Forex broker ads on this blog. I was exposed to the world of online forex trading back in 2005-2006, at that time the retail forex trading was rising up and I was amazed at how electronic trading was done. Yes, I got burned that time but I know that in any business, there will always risk involved. After a while I got sidetracked and completely forgotten about it. Thinking about it, it was rather wasteful of me not pursuing being in that industry since I got a lot of the technical knowledge on trading forex equipped.

After I had a career change at the end of the year 2013 where I got introduced back to the world of retail forex trading through a good friend of mine. What triggered me to get back to this industry was when I went to a seminar on stock trading. The huge initial investment needed for stock trading was a turn off for me since my capital wasn't enough to proceed further. The course alone would burned off my entire savings and that doesn't include the initial capital to fund a trading account. Luckily my good friend referred me to a free forex class conducted by a forex broker which I had used way back in 2006. Strangely, there were only 3 person attended the class including myself so I had the upper hand to learn a lot of inside things from the trainer. I then pursued for close to 4 months before I got the trainer to give me a special excel sheet containing trading formulas. That is where my retail online forex trading activity returned.

Enough about my Forex journey, let's talk about a broker that I've been using which has proven to be a reliable broker for me. I even got paid a couple of hundred of dollar just referring people using them (one of the many ways to make money online). The broker is called XM. Previously known as Trading Point during the time I got introduced to Forex 9-10 years back, in my country Malaysia, I believe XM is one of the top name in retail online forex trading. I've been to their office and a class (also free BTW) in Ara Damansara, their seminar at Sheraton Hotel KL 2 (Oct 2014) and their Gala Dinner at Bukit Tinggi (Dec 2014). They're truly doing a lot of aggressive marketing in this country and their turn out is huge, you can refer to their website for the event they've organized. Who doesn't like MONEY right?

That's the fun stuff, let's dive into XM platform technical stuff and some other benefits provided. Here are the pros and cons in my opinion:

Pros:

1. I like it when I make a deposit into my account, the money instantly shows up in my MT4 software. No need for waiting unlike the rest of the competitors. BTW, I use Skrill to do my deposit or withdrawal.


2. The minimum deposit is USD5 (or around RM20) which is kind of affordable if you ask me. The cost of doing this trading business is very low. I spend more than RM20 on a single trip to Speedmart..haha..


3. The Micro lot account is superb with the maximum leverage of 1:888, it gets even better although if you go for full margin it is not recommended.


4. There are all kind of MT4 platform available, I only use MT4 Windows and Android to analyze the charts but I execute my trade using the MT4 Multiterminal. There are quite a number of other brokers doesn't give their client the MT4 Multiterminal.


5. There are no additional charge for both deposit and withdrawal. So I save some money on the transaction made.


6. Their servers are very responsive, I've compared them with another broker I'm using and it is proven to be quicker and no re-quote.


7. XM gives 50% bonus on top of the deposit. So if you deposit USD10, you are given USD5 bonus so you have USD15 of equity to play around. This could be very useful if you are very watchful of the margin level (I rarely leave my account margin level below than 500%, its just to high risk).


8. There is also a 'No Deposit Bonus' of USD30 promotion since 2014. I've traded using this credit on one of my account registered under my wife's name and grew it to almost USD60 before I got greedy and emptied the account in just 1 day..hahaha..

Cons:

1. There are waiting period for withdrawal which in my experience was less than 24 hours.


2. The price quote used is 5 decimals (eg. EURUSD 1.26445) which I find a bit advanced during my beginning of trading forex. I would recommend for beginners to forex trading should start with only 4 decimals (eg. EURUSD 1.2644).


3. They deploy floating spread where during busy news announcement can get quite high. However don't be scared of the spread, based on my experience it the least thing I worry about.

So there you have it, my review of XM Forex Broker. Please don't ask me on how to trade forex or can I learn to trade from you or anything, I don't do such thing as I do other stuff for a living. However this online forex trading is something that I can get the hang of it and most probably be one of the things I would do when I decide to retire one day.

So go and check out XM broker by clicking the banner below:

Attending The VMware vSeminar Series 2011

I've been a big fan of virtualization since the day I've discovered Windows Virtual PC somewhere back 5-6 years ago. At that time, my thought was its free, its convenient and it triggers a lot of new ideas for testing purposes. In 2005,my team (consist of me, my brother and my boss) had to handle a software upgrade for a very well known big multinational corporation.. Their technical team was kind enough to show us a software called VMware.

I first registered myself to VMware email subscription in 2008. VMware wasn't really big during those days but I heard that they are getting stronger by the day. Earlier this year in July, I attended a virtual event conducted by VMware.

I notice that such event utilized a lot of internet bandwidth. I had my network guy screamed at me for using most of the bandwidth during that time of the hour. I don't really blame him, he maybe wasn't equipped to handle such an enormous request. Anyway, he left the company to pursue a better position. Enough about that, I find the virtual event to be quite dull since I can't listen to any of the web conferences because of the bandwidth issue.

Last October, I received an e-mail invitation:

vSeminar Series 2011 – Online Registration is Now Open

Join us at vSeminar Series to discover the latest cloud infrastructure and management solutions to accelerate IT and your business, and learn how you can further leverage your virtualization investments to reduce capital and operating expenses and improve business agility.

vSeminar Series is a free one-day multiple track event where you will be able to hear from VMware and experts from our partner ecosystem as we share the latest technologies in enabling Your Cloud to meet your company's specific business needs.

If you're an IT professional tasked with virtualizing and managing your IT environment, or taking your organization to the Cloud, you won't want to miss this opportunity to:

• Explore the latest technologies to aid your transformation to deliver a flexible, agile IT-as-a-Service delivery model


• Learn the latest infrastructure and management solutions that enable greater efficiency, agility and choice for IT organizations - including vSphere 5, Site Recovery Manager 5 and View 5


• Create a modern, user-centric approach to personal computing that delivers secure access to applications and data from any device, such as the iPad


• Experience technology demonstrations from the exhibition showcase by VMware and a broad range of technology partners


• Dive into operational best practices, performance, tuning and troubleshooting for your IT environment


• Learn how, by using VMware vSphere, you can increase the performance of mission critical applications and how your organisation can accelerate its transition to the cloud

Don’t miss the opportunity to acquire best practices tips and strategies for virtualization and learn how to develop a cohesive, secure and compliant cloud strategy in three core areas: infrastructure, applications and end-user computing.

Register now in the city closest you and don't miss a seat. We look forward to seeing you!

Malaysia

Date: Tuesday, 15 November 2011 Time: 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Venue: One World Grand Ballroom First Avenue, Bandar Utama, City Centre 47800 Petaling Jaya Selangor Malaysia

I immediately register myself. At first, I thought the event wasn't going to have so many people. I was so wrong. Just look at these photos I've taken:



This was at 8.30am! I couldn't believe it. When the event started, the speaker told that there were a thousand people who had registered and come to the event. I then realized, VMware is huge!

Since one of my role in the company is to suggest better ways to manage the IT infrastructure for both ourselves and also to our clients/prospects. Virtualization is definitely the way of the future. My team has been fiddling with Oracle VM Virtualbox to maximize the use of our development and test servers in the office. So far, the only restriction that we have is the shortage of physical memory for the hardware. The cloud wasn't really a solution for us since we need to utilize what we have and keeping the cost down (although we have 2 virtual private servers running in the US for hosting purposes). Overall, virtualization has helped us in our IT deployment stage.

Back to the event, I must say that the event was way much cooler and more fun than any techno events I've ever been to and this was in Malaysia by the way. Kudos to the organizer and to all the sponsors for organizing such a wonderful event. Looking forward to next year's VMware vSeminar Series if VMware decided to conduct one again next year.

The International Construction Conference 2011 - Kuala Lumpur

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a 2 days conference. If it wasn't for my boss who had to go to Jakarta, I wouldn't have to attend it. Anyway, the conference was a totally different industry, the construction industry. This is a huge industry with huge players. The event was jointly organized by UiTM (my former university) and The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) which was sponsored by CIDB Malaysia. I have never heard of CIOB before so it was new to me.



The welcoming address was done by Associate Professor Dr. Masran Saruwono, Dean of Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying, UiTM. Opening address was done by Dr. Yeow Yoon Foo, President of CIOB Malaysia. Keynote Address and Official Opening was done by YB Dato' Sri Ir Dr. Judin Abd Karim, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, CIDB Malaysia.

A little disclaimer here. I am not from the construction industry and what I'm going to write is from my own perspective.  If for some reason the information is not correct, misleading or gibberish, I would really appreciate any comments or feedback.



Session 1 -  Paper 1 : Case Studies in Sustainability for Major Construction Projects: The Veritas Experience by Mr. David Mizan Hashim.



The introduction given by the moderator to the first speaker was quite lengthy but really interesting to listen.



Once Mr. David Mizan gave out his talk, everybody including myself became very attentive towards what he was talking. He is quite an interesting speaker. Let's check out his slides:



17 of the 20 tallest buildings in the world are in Asia and the Middle East.



For the first time in history, more than half of the world's population is urban.



Three types of Green Building Rating Tool from Singapore, Malaysia and USA were compared.

There were 4 case studies were featured,The LCCT, Menara Binjai, Menara Chua and PKNS HQ. I kind of get the understanding of what the speaker message is since I've read about the Malaysia Green Building Index.



In this case study, the speaker mentioned about conserving energy by making an open design for the building.



If you're familiar with engineering, the diagram above does make sense to you.



Some design view of the LCCT.



Case study 2: Menara Binjai. Don't ask me where the building is, I have no idea.



The objective of the building design is to bring as much as natural light inside the building thus a lot of glass is used.







Case Study3: PKNS HQ. I have live in Shah Alam for almost 4 years during my study years. I love Shah Alam and Kompleks PKNS is one the earliest shopping mall my father used to bring me when I was little.



Did you know that the lake in Shah Alam is owned by PKNS? I didn't know that. It is said that PKNS wanted to fence the entire lake area in Shah Alam since it is located their private land. Of course there were an uproar from the people in Shah Alam so they decided to leave it open to public. So the designer proposed this design:



The idea was to open up the building so that the public can go through instead of around it.



The building also is targeted to score a Platinum Level on the GBI scale.



I do gain a lot of knowledge just by attending this conference but I don't want to write about the whole content of the conference. It's not because I am lazy or so, it's because this industry is not really related to what I am paid to work for. So, I'll just summarize this entire post with photo galleries taken using my mobile phone down below:


international Construction Conference 2011 Kuala Lumpur - Day 1


international Construction Conference 2011 Kuala Lumpur - Day 2

Discovering RedHat Enterprise Linux

I am a Windows guy so when it comes to Linux, I am a complete newbie although I've been exposed to a few RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 5 x86_64 tasks related to Oracle database administration. I've played around with Ubuntu and Fedora but I find it hard to adapt since I'm so used to Windows environment. Earlier this month, I was invited to attend a free half a day RedHat Workshop conducted by ECS Pericomp. I've dealt a few software purchase with them and so far I've been satisfied with their level of service.



ECS Pericomp is located in Kota Damansara. I had to hustle the peak traffic jam, I am puzzled of why is it that during the fasting month of Ramadan, the road traffic are more congested than usual. Maybe I was driving on the wrong route. Anyway, I arrived there slightly late and the presentation started:



I must say that ECS ICT Berhad is quite big. They have a list of smaller companies within their own premises. My company is way smaller than them.



Mike Lai is the Technology Specialist at ECS Pericomp. I really admire his presentation style because I think he loves to share stuff instead of selling.



Some brief explanation about what Open Source is all about.



Some of the software development milestone related to RedHat.



Some of the tools and features of RHEL. Mike continued to share that a lot other organization clone the RedHat to become their own, one is example is the Oracle Linux where the OS are fine tune with Oracle products.



Now this is what the entire workshop is all about, "Virtualization". I've been exposed to virtualization ever since the creation of Virtual PC. From there, I moved on to VirtualBox and read a little bit about VMWare. It is really an interesting topic to learn and implement. I have a couple of ideas I wanted to experiment since my company has its own small data center and the aging servers are really hard to manage. Now comes the best part, demo:



In the demo, Mike showed how he actually makes a live migration. The Virtual Machine (VM) used is Windows XP. He opened a text file and without saving it, created an exact copy of the VM and launches it. The exact opened text file appears sort of like a clone. Of course this is no surprise for people who have been familiar with Virtual PC such as myself. However, the web-based virtualization tool used reminded me of Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute EC2 I've been playing around 2 months ago.



As much as I marvel all this new cool technology, conveying the virtualization idea and practical issues is something to work on. Overall, this workshop benefited me well enough thanks to ECS.

Potential Jobs After Oracle SOA Training

There is a career fair happening at PWTC KL at the time I'm writing this blog post. It reminds me when I was still unemployed, really missed those good old days while doing job hunting. Anyway, my job hunting experience is rather different than any one else. I never attended any proper interview, one day I set an appointment to meet this person in charge of the company, the next thing I knew, I was offered the job. So far, I never rejected any job offering and I'm not looking for a new one at the moment.

After a week of learning all there is from the SOA/ADF Oracle training, I found this job advertised by a big multi-national company that matches what I have learned so far. Before I write about it more, I wanted to share with you some screenshots of what I've learned from the Oracle training I attended, here you go:

 

What you see above is a screenshot of Oracle Jdeveloper tool in designing a work flow of a credit card process. At first, following the step by step instruction in the tutorial was easy. Not until the end part when you have to test to see if the work flow application you've just created could run or not. It was sort of a relief when it run successfully. But when you see an error message appears, there is where you start to scratch your head opening up every little components which you've thought was so simple and realized it has become so complex. It's like doing math problems during school but with some visuals added to it. For those people who loves the challenge, this is an ideal job for you. I can't really say it is for me although I do like it once in a while.

 

This is a view of Oracle Enterprise Manager. It's a heavyweight application which I believe involves BEA Weblogic application server. My laptop couldn't take that application therefore I had to connect to the instructor's laptop to view. If you are familiar with online dashboard, PHPmyadmin or others, you'll get the hang of it. All of these activities I've shown to you requires a lot of 'experiencing'. It's not something you could just read and digest. So if you are lazy 'doing' but love to just 'read', this is not something for you. I love experimenting (up to a level where I don't see too much disappointing error messages) so this might be a suitable task for me.

Alright, enough about my ranting, here is the job description of a Oracle BEA Weblogic Portal Consultants:

Job Description

Systems Integration Consulting professionals are responsible for delivering large-scale, complex programs that marry processes with technology to help our clients achieve high performance.

Oracle Weblogic professionals design, implement and deploy Oracle Weblogic Portal and Oracle Weblogic Integration solutions to achieve defined business goals. They maintain skills in Oracle Weblogic Portal and WLI solution architecture, design, configuration, development, integration, testing and deployment; and Oracle Weblogic Portal and WLI technical architecture.

Key responsibilities may include:

• Supervising functional and technical design activities


• Creating functional requirements as an input to application design


• Developing and testing detailed functional designs for business solution components and prototypes


• Supervising application build, test, and deploy activities


• Planning and executing data conversion activities (e.g., test data)


• Driving test planning and execution

Qualifications

Well versed with Oracle Weblogic Portal skills.

1. Portlets, Page Flow, Web Flows


2. Weblogic Portal Configuration, Administration and Performance Tuning


3. Weblogic Portal Clustering Design and Implementation


4. Web Services Integration


5. Portal Content repositories


6. Content integration and management


7. Access Management Integration or Single Sign-On


8. Rules-based personalization


9. RIA technologies such as AJAX / Adobe Flex

Well versed with Oracle Weblogic Integration skills.

1. WLI Clustering Design and Implementation


2. WLI Configuration, Administration and Performance Tuning


3. Human Workflow Design and Implementation


4. Process Integration Design and Implementation


5. Synchronous (e.g. SOAP, Web Services, EJB, RMI, CORBA) Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation


6. Asynchronous (e.g. JMS, MQ) Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation


7. Batch Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation


8. Canonical Data Model and Data Transformation including XML, XSD, XPath and XQuery


9. Service Orientated Architecture


10. Oracle Database Integration (JDBC, SQL)

Other Related Skill Requirements

• Knowledge and experience in implementation of Oracle WebLogic Server based solution


• Knowledge and experience in implementation of Java Open Source Framework (e.g. Spring)


• Knowledge and experience in full application development and implementation lifecycle


• Recognized Degree from good universities

Experience Preferred

1. Manager: 8 years and above of relevant experience including Project Management and Solution Architect roles


2. Consultant: 4 years and above of relevant experience including Team Management and Web Architect roles

Professional Skill Requirements

• Proven success in contributing to a team-oriented environment


• Proven ability to work creatively and analytically in a problem-solving environment


• Desire to work in an information systems environment


• Excellent leadership, communication (written and oral) and interpersonal skills

Phew!! That's just too much to handle for me. I can't imagine myself learning all those skills just to become an Oracle BEA Weblogic Portal Consultants. I know that this job can offer triple or more the salary I'm earning right now. However, I am missing a lot of requirement in becoming one for instance, a degree. So I guess my only option at the moment is to work closely with my company to maybe provide services for this role. Although my boss would not probably give me triple salary earning, at least I can still make use of what I have learned so far.

By the way, the product line my company is selling can be used with BEA Weblogic server. I think I'll try and find some time to fiddle around with that one first. Hope you get an insight of what my job is at the moment.

Have a nice day everyone.

Systems Analyst Job Role

Since doing sales job is not one of my strongholds, I've always been interested to become a systems analyst. It may sound geeky but it is something that I like to look upon. Nevertheless, since I don't have a diploma or degree in IT or Computer Science, I'd better stick with becoming at least an engineer role such as a web engineer role.

I just wanted to share with you some notes that I've gathered on what a job of a systems analysts is all about:

What are the responsibilities of the systems analysts?

Here are some of the responsibilities that System Analysts are expected to deliver:

• Provide creative source of ideas, solution to address problems to the existing implementations.


• Perform internal testing and debugging.


• Produce project progress reports, including project details, schedule, milestones and resource allocation.


• Ensure projects are implemented and completed successfully within schedule.


• Conduct technical feasibility studies, evaluate user requirements and recommends solutions and resolve issues.


• Prepare functional and technical specification and provide production support.


• Design, analyse and code programs for system development according to user specifications.


• Support user testing and be responsive to user queries, request for assistance.


• Participate in the full software development lifecycle (SDLC) including requirements study, analysis, design, coding, testing, documentation, implementation and user training.

What are the types of knowledge and skills possess by the systems analyst?

Knowledge and skill needed to be possessed:

• Up-to-date with the latest IT in specific areas of their scope


• A keen determination in problem solving


• Excellent communication skills with various level of management level

How are these knowledge and skills acquired by the systems analyst?

Knowledge and skills is normally acquired:

• During on-going job, tasks and projects


• Daily routine of work and communication internally and externally


• Internal training by senior personnel and top management


• Own effort of obtaining the latest information

Are the knowledge and skills possessed by the systems analyst adequate for him to perform his responsibility effectively?

Knowledge and skills are hard to be determined whether it is adequate or not. It is all depend on the individual performing their responsibility and the motivation and drive that they have.

If you are a job seeker, hope this information would be a good guide for you.

Oracle Demand Generation Training @Sunway Resort Hotel

Yesterday, I had the privilege to be part of a sales training at Sunway Resort Hotel next to Sunway Pyramid. The event was organized by ECS Pericomp together with Oracle. I did some Googling and found out that ECS Pericomp was just appointed as Oracle’s Value Added Distributor last month. Since the company I work with is a partner in some other products they are representing, they’ve invited us to come for this event. Becoming a business partner is not an easy task, my guess is they are looking for alliances with the others for them to achieve their sales target. Basically, leveraging on other people’s contacts, time and energy is the best way to kickstart their venture I supposed.

I wished the event was held after the fasting month, this was because I could have enjoyed the drinks and meal that were provided. ;-) Anyway, since I arrived at the place early (The event was supposed to start at 9am but the majority of the people invited only came in at around 10pm), I’ve gotten myself one movie voucher at Cathay Cineplexes (Thanks ECS).

 

4 years ago, I had the opportunity to come an Oracle event also at Sunway. You can refer to my blog post here. That was like a long time ago when I was just started off in the technology area. Bringing back the memory, I wrote that I was going to get an IT degree. Well that didn’t happen because it was just too expensive at that time. My mother just last week asked me whether I did think about continuing my studies because my younger brother had plans for it. I replied to her that I wanted to get married first and later on think about it. Then again, what can I gain if I pursue for further studies when all I can get is a better paying job. The question remains, is it a fulfilling one?

Enough about my ramblings, let’s move on to my sales training yesterday. The title of the training was “Oracle Partner Demand Generation Training”. Confused? Me too. It sounded like a name of product but its not. The trainer was a guy from Oracle, Nick Tielman. Before that, we had the Oracle channel’s manager giving a brief of what how Oracle company and product doing these days.

 

Getting back to the training session. Nick did a great job at presenting his presentation. I really like the first part which is the Goal Setting. That is one aspect that most of us or mainly me neglect the most. The rest is just like the usual sales training but from the aspect of technology industry which I also found is interesting considering I haven’t been on a sales training for a very long time. Anyway, relating this training to my job. I wear many hats in the company that I work with. I can still recall the time when I was a telemarketer and failed badly (this was before I landed at this job right now), it was one of the most difficult job I had ever done. I never enjoyed a moment of it.

Basically what Nick presented was a refresher course for me. However, I love the part where the Customer Relation Management system usage that Oracle themselves are using. I’ve implemented an open source CRM but hardly use it. There’s no harm in trying after learning all of what the sales training has provided, right?

 

By the way, Nick is from the Oracle application business development unit and what he had said about Oracle’s product is fairly true, with all the 60 acquisitions within 4 years and humongous amount of applications under Oracle’s umbrella, there is no way a salesperson could remember all of them. What they can do is basically get the ball rolling by bringing in pre-sales, consultant and tech-guys into the picture before getting the sales transaction completed.

What I saw yesterday was only just to sell Oracle’s product as if it was a box of software being presented to the customer and we need to close the deal as fast as we can. I am more into looking on how the implementation and services that we can provide because a lot of the clients that I’ve seen doesn’t have a clue on how to operate the software. Apart from that, the services and implementation area are more profitable rather than making a small percentage of profit margins of the product itself. By doing that way, the cash flow business can be sustained longer and the effort can be justified. I am just writing what come into the top of my head here.

Anyway, the sales training is a good approach in knowing what Oracle businesses is. I wonder if entering into Oracle University would be a good move for me. I guess I’ll have to look more into it as I reorganize my own personal goal.

Getting My CIDB Green Card

This entry is 6 months behind what I was supposed to blog. Anyway, I just need to get it off my draft page and publish it on my blog. I don't know why I am so lazy to blog these days but I'll give it my best to clear off all of my pending writings. Here it goes.

CIDB or the Construction Industry Development Board requires any personnel who is or will be working in any consctruction site to have a green card. This is to ensure every personnel is covered, sort of like an insurance or license to be in any construction site. My company has a major project in one construction site installing network cables and IT equipment. Although I only went there like one or two time only, I still need to be covered. So last January 2009, my HR department sent me to get my own green card just in case if I were needed to be sent to any construction site I supposed.

The class was done on a Saturday. This is where the place is located:

The Akademi Binaan Malaysia 

The place is next to the LRT Star Station Chan Sow Lin station. So if you don't want to drive there, just take the LRT. If you drive there, the parking is free. No sweat.

The Green Card Program 


My class speaker 

The speaker was fun to listen to. I wasn't bored throughout his entire presentation. He was interactive with all of his audiences although I am guessing half of the class didn't really understand his Malay languange (only 5 or 6 people in the class were Malaysian, the rest are all Indians, Viatnamese, Nepal or Indonesian). I really like what he is presenting. The most interesting part is when he includes his past experiences being a safety inspector.

CIDB Guideline Mini Booklet 

This book was given complimentary of CIDB. It's a nice booklet, less text and more illustration. During the end of the class, I received the construction helmet which is now being displayed on top of my closet collecting dusts. BTW, it is an offence leaving your construction helmet in your car.

That's all for today. Will write again soon.

Getting A Job in The Malaysian Advertising Industry

On the 13th of July which was two weeks ago, I went to Bangsar to attend a public talk. A few days before that, I saw an advertorial that says “Here’s how you can get a job in advertising paying you a salary of RM2,300. Guaranteed.” The headline alone drew me to read the half a page content. The advertisement was from 95%: The Advertising Academy so it did a good job at making me notice and take action to come to their talk.

Since LV is a masscom student majoring in advertising, I brought her along as well just to give her some insight of what her future career will look like. I've already have a career but somewhere deep inside of me, I have a lot of interest in advertising. Eventhough I blew up some of my own advertising money during a few weeks of online advertising campaign I practiced a couple of years ago, I still think advertising has an endless bright future.


95% The Advertising Academy Office 


A Scene Before The 95% The Advertising Academy Talk 

The talk starts at 2.30pm so even though I was kind of late, I still managed to arrive there.


Janet Lee Giving A Speech 

That’s Janet Lee, she’s one of the founder of 95% The Advertising Academy. They have their own blog here if you are interested to read what they are planning to do or what they have done so far.


The Welcome to Advertising Slide Show 

The welcoming slide is rather simple but quite creative. If you cannot read what the fineprint is saying, it says “Say goodbye to dull and boring days”. Basically it was assuming that people who came there are looking for a career change and advertising are one of the industry that isn’t dull and boring.


One of the trainer at 95% The Advertising Academy 

That’s Shaikh Shahnaz Karim. He was the one presenting the entire presentation to the audience. He was actually from the IT industry before he came into the advertising world which he finds it 'colourful'. Now read this, the advertising industry is a RM5 BILLION industry in Malaysia alone. That’s a HUGE amount of money! Now look at this figure:


Number of advertising agencies in Malaysia 

I think there are plenty of shares to have more advertising agencies in Malaysia for that RM5 billion advertising pie. That might be one of the reason 95 percent ad academy has come out with a program called Hydrogen. The program cost RM15,000 for 6 months but there is a screening before you are actually admitted into the program. They have 3 positions to be filled; 1)Copywriter 2)Strategic Planner 3)Account Executive. If I were to choose, I think I'll go for copywriting since I like to play around with words.


95 percent Advertising Agency Hydrogen program 

The best thing about the program is it is sort of like a crash course training twice during your weekdays evening and you are actually guaranteed a job. If I were looking for a job or a career change, I think this program is really worth it. Just think of the time you can save by leveraging through your mentor’s network and experience and you get paid on top of that. It’s a healthy investment. The advertising industry is the only industry that can connect and communicate with every industry available because of their excellent medium which is now become really targeted using Information Technology. Throughout the talk, they’ve shown us sample videos of advertisement from many different countries and which videos won the Kancil Awards and the Cannes Lions festival.

Then again, I’ve already found my career field which is currently in the IT solution and application. 95 % The Advertising Academy works closely with the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents Malaysia. You can check out their blog at http://enter95percent.blogspot.com/ or visit http://www.rise67.com to learn more about their program.

Joomla Administration Training at UTHM

Two days after I went to Singapore, I headed down south again. This time, I had to drive my own car accompanied with a colleague of mine. I was lucky I managed to fill up my tank with a full tank of petrol the night before the price of petrol increased the day after. Unfortunately, I still have to claim back from my company the same mileage before the price hike.

Anyway, I drive off from Equine Park where my office is located at around 6am in the morning. The journey took 2 and a half hour with a maximum speed of 120km/h with my red Proton Iswara. I arrived at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) Kampus Bandar at 8.40am just 20 minutes before my training session starts. I have never conducted any training session before, the closest I have done was organizing a training session so this would be a great experience.

There were 10 participants in my training class. The best thing about the class is how well the computer training lab at UTHM is equipped. The PC they have are all brand new Intel Core 2 processor with vPro technology. I wonder how much does it cost for just one desktop computer alone. Before the training started, we had an in-house “nasi lemak” breakfast and then to set up the network and computer for a localhost connection with Joomla.


The Computer Lab at UTHM 

At first my partner suggested to install every PC that is going to be use with XAMPP. I insisted that we save up the time to install on every PC to only setup and install XAMPP on one host computer and the rest of the connection is pointed to that PC’s IP address. That would be easier to control and make it almost as the same as a live website. Unlike Wordpress, the best thing about Joomla is the only setting that is needed to make the image, link and database connection is configurable at configuration.php file. After all that is done, I started the class with a brief introduction of why Joomla is suitable to handle a portal instead of a static HTML and the difference and similarities between a blog and Content Management System (CMS) website.

After lunch, sensing that the class was a bit bored over the technical jargon Joomla administration has, I organized an activity exercise which was a competition between the guys and the girls. The objective was to produce the most content entered and the best-looking website into a brand new empty Joomla system one. My partner facilitated the girl’s group while I handled the guy’s group. Obviously I helped the guy’s website look much more impressive than the girls since I know a lot of short-cuts and trade off of Joomla administration.

My objective before the class is to get the participant to grasp at least 50% of what I’ve taught them. From my observation, they have achieved it and I am quite happy about it. Overall, it was a good class and I’ve gained a lot of valuable experience which I couldn’t have got if I only keep the skills to myself.

Why I Was Only Granted a One Time Entry United State (US) Visa

The beginning of the week, my brother and I went to the American Embassy located at Jalan Ampang to apply for a Non-Immigrant Visa. It was just a short 20 minutes drive from my house. I arrived in front of the American Embassy guard house at 8.30am since I’ve already booked an 8.50am appointment:


In Front of KL US Embassy 

The booking was done online here and I’ve already prepared all the necessary documents. Among them were:

• My Passport


• Alliance Bank Pay Slip


• The interview appointment letter


• Filled DS-156 form


• Filled DS-157 form


• An official employers letter verifying my employment


• My Itinerary


• My event schedule

I had to hand over my handphone since they don’t allow handphone inside the Embassy. There were two metal detector door which everybody have to go through. Took a queue number and waited inside the waiting room.


My American Embassy Queue Number 

The Mistake

Half an hour later, it was my turn and I surrendered all the filled documents only to find that my photograph were wrong. It had a blue background. The grumpy Indian lady then handed me a yellow slip and asked me to go out and take a new photograph that has a white background. It was my fault of not reading the instruction properly and entrusted the girl at the photo shop of the colour of the background since I thought she had done it before. What a waste of RM18 for that photograph.

I then walked half a kilometer to Ampang Park to get a new photograph with a white background. I discovered that different Visa application photo had different requirement when the shop asked me which country I’m applying for my visa. That place was expensive because I had to pay RM10 for just 2 pieces of photo. I should have gone for other shop but that’s the only shop I found which was opened at 9.30am and I am in hurry to get back to the Embassy before 10.30am. Because of this mistake, I had to take another queue number and was among the last to finish the interview.

The Interview

I lost track of the waiting time already, when my turn is up after gotten my fingerprints into their system, I was interviewed by an American lady. She asked about my company and why am I going to the US. I explained briefly about my company and the reason which was to attend a product update training, a business partner meeting and a conference. She then proceed and asked about my previous employment , my salary and my current job position. It was kind of lengthy (which my brother find odd since his interview was short) but of course I had to endure it.

She then told me the result of the interview, I was only granted a one time visit to the US. She elaborated on the reasons; it’s my first time going out of the country, I have to build more reputable career line (I guess she saw me as a job hopper) and I need to build more credibility on my profile. I almost argued with her but she said she could have refused my application but didn’t want to because she’s giving me a chance. I had to calm down after that because it would be difficult for me on my next application if my paperwork had some negative mark on it.

The validity period is only 6 months (it’s more than what my brother got last time-3 months) and once I stepped into the US, my visa will lose its validity.

The Disappointment

It was rather disappointing the fact that all my effort to get my passport done, getting my US Visa and all the additional hours of doing travelling research went pointless as there was a change of decision in my company’s management. I appreciated my boss for letting me know earlier that there was a slim chance of the travel trip would have to be revoked. However a part of me was also relieved I didn’t make it for the trip since I haven’t prepared anything for my luggage and all the additional spending I had to bare for the preparation of the trip in such short notice.

Anyway, I treat everything that has happened in my life as a good experience and it would always be treasured in this blog to share with everyone.