Alright time for an update
OK so Ern Sheong has gotten himself rid of that sales job with iZZi Wireless Broadband which required him to work all weekend and practically 9 hours a day in a shopping center trying to sell people one thousand ringgit broadband packages. (I actually got a promotion to booth supervisor, but when I realised that the basic pay did not change and the working hours were still that gruelling, I quit anyway =P)
Well I was enjoying my days off after 31st of March (the day I quit) and spent my days hanging out or sleeping late and getting up even later. Nothing in store for me. No plans to do anything. But then before the week was up my mum obtained for me an internship with her friend’s company, i.e. a telco company in Malaysia (no not Telekom, much smaller private company called Telshine Telecommunication) (Somehow it’s weird how things are always planned nicely before me. It just comes. I did not even have to search for both of the jobs I landed since coming back from Singapore. I have to thank God for that.)
I started my job on the 7th of April, and for the past week I have been following an engineer around the entire Klang Valley changing the gateway number for the dialer used to connect to the call server at Telshine (discounted call service). I went to the semiconductor factory StatsChipPac in Shah Alam, Gardenia in Shah Alam, Transwater Api in Bandar Sri Damansara, Aker Solutions at Wisma Hong Leong … bla bla bla so so many companies and so so many factories that I cannot remember anymore. But of course, the pay is lousy. But I can claim petrol and make money out of the petrol allowance! XD
This week I expect to be be driving out on my own to meet clients and do the required maintainance since I have learnt how to deal with most of the troubleshooting needed to fix faulty dialers and how to reprogramme the gateway via plugging in a handset.
Saturday went to the PIKOM PC Fair at KL Convention Centre and got myself a pair of SonicGear earphones for RM 45 (bad publicity for this company, but sorry have to announce it: Your earphones are lousy!!!). Got home and realised that the sound quality was way inferior to that of the original iPod’s =.=
Then I went to church later part of my Saturday and found out that there was some audition for dancers to perform in a special church musical production.
The weird thing about this was that I signed up for the audition:
ES: Hi, I would like to try out for the dance production.
Girl: Sure, just fill in your particulars here on this form.
While I was filling up the form…
Girl: So, what kind of dance are you currently in? Hip hop?
ES: er…. uh…. ar…. no experience
Girl: It’s okay just come for the try-outs…
Thanks. Phew.
Sweat.
Sunday I was paid to go to a volunteer training session for the World Congress of IT happening this May. I was even given free lunch and three complimentary tea breaks. (There is such thing as a free lunch!) Well I signed up to volunteer for the event months ago (I blogged about it before) so here I was at the training session for one entire day along with 300 other people. Not bad, rather fun. (Paid RM 80 a day for volunteering, training days included) I was allocated to Sales (aka PR) and was posted at the KL Convention Center IT Exhibition during the conference (May 18-22, 2008). Maybe you guys can visit me there! And owh I was also very fortunate to make some great new friends there at the training… hi Aaron from Monash and Peng from APIIT!
Yeah so came back home, had dinner… and decided to drag my father to the DVD shop (whoops! shhhh. hope the police do not read my blog XD). Bought 6 DVDs and watched Step Up (yeah I know I am slow…) at night. Great movie. Makes me feel like dancing too! =) And the girl’s hot =P
So that sums up my week. Not to mention Cell Group, 2 birthday outings, and well, the sad part earlier in the week at Andrew’s wake. Rest in peace, bro.
OK now back to my “How Dell Does It” book before I retire to bed. I really respect and admire Dell.
Good night people. God Bless.
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Ah-ha! Exploiting the company’s petrol allowance! Let’s hope your boss doesn’t read this XD
God bless!
hohoho RM0.55 per km man!!! very good allowance!!! XD
huhuhu… sleep late wake up late.. bad habit… naughty naughty.. haha joking
Mr. Lin, you seem to be an intelligent person. Do you know reason(s) ISPs in Malaysia have difficulties in maintaining broadband speed? I am not talking about maintaining 1Mbps download speed. During peak hours, e.g. 20:00 - 01:00, download speed for US servers could drop below 100kbps
I do not think broadband plans in Malaysia are too cheap if I use Singapore ISPs for comparison. So what is/are the reasons retail broadband in Malaysia is so slow?
Hi Encik Wan, I am not that knowledgable in this respect, but from my observations these are the possible points that I can gather:
1) the broadband penetration for malaysia is very low. i am not sure about the exact stats, but it is estimated that only about 5% of malaysians use broadband. in this respect, it would not be that beneficial or profitable for telekom malaysia to offer such fantastic facilities for maintaining broadband speed by upgrading infrastructure. thus they have no incentive unless the market take-up for broadband increases to a much higher proportion.
2) telekom malaysia is a public company. even if it is private, companies have to profit from their investments. thus if it is not cost effective for them to provide much higher broadband speeds at lower costs then they would not, since, as in point 1, they would not profit as the market is not big enough. furthermore, telekom malaysia is a monopoly, and thus if it can continue to reap profits while maintaining the lowest cost structure, i.e. without upgrading to faster broadband facilities, it would have a large incentive to do so.
just my two cents. competition in the broadband market would be welcome, but as we can see, telekom controls all the phone line systems. the only way competitors can compete with telekom is by employing wireless broadbands (iZZi, Maxis, Celcom, U Mobile, Wimax). so unless there are more competitors in the WIRED broadband sector, I do not foresee any quick improvement in the broadband speeds in malaysia. this is the reality i guess =(
Mr. Lin, thanks for the explanation
Do you think DiGi could bring better broadband service to retail market via 3G broadband, like what it does for prepaid mobile phone? It can use it’s profits from mobile phone division to provide better broadband service which will grab market share from other small broadband service providers, e.g. iZZi, Maxis and Celcom. The retail market scene for broadband could be changed from one monopoly to duopoly.
alright from my experience with 3G broadband technology, the problem is not in the company that manages it, but it is the technology itself. we all have heard of maxis and celcom 3G broadband being slow, because, that’s what 3G broadband is: slow and unreliable. The technology behind 3G is not very good. In fact, when I was studying in Singapore I used M1 3G broadband. It was not fantastic too, and it was slow compared to wired broadband, and this is in Singapore. So the problem lies in the technology. You get mobility from it, but if you want reliability you will definitely go for wired broadband currently offered only by streamyx (TM). So that’s why there’s a lot of hype about Wimax now, as we all hope for a better alternative. But the early stages of Wimax will not be that fantastic, and the infrastructure development for Wimax is extremely high.