Visiting IBM HQ at Bandar Utama Damansara

In February, somehow one of IBM partners got hold of me and invited me to join them for a meetup. As I didn't have any important task at the time, I accepted their invitation and went ahead to meet up with them at IBM HQ in Bandar Utama.

An established name in the IT world

 

Where are the receptionist?

 

IBM hardware offerings

 

IBM solutions, I got lost here

 

People of IBM

 

IBM is huge, the price is huge, the challenge is also huge. However, they have huge competitions nowadays and in the razor-thin profit business of IT hardware, they need all the help they can get to stay relevant.

We'll see how this partnership plays out.

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I've been lazy to write or update this blog but determined enough to make a video using my rarely used outdated Camtasia Studio on my laptop.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.

My Failed Attempt to Renew My Malaysian Passport Jan 2017

I'm trying out another medium od blog post so I decided to try out videos. At the moment I think it is much faster and more interesting to create. Of course, this would be my first so the quality is not up to par I guess.

My family and I will be heading to Bandung Indonesia for a holiday end of this month.

I am planning to create a video of the trip very soon. Need to polish my video skills then.

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: