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.

Call me stupid. I take a taxi to work daily and I often wear this black trousers with a slippery pocket. My phone is in the right pocket of my trousers but when I sit in the cab the pocket is tilted at a downward angle and so most of the time the phone slips out of my pocket and onto the taxi back seat. It has happened many times already. But I either noticed it gone from my pocket or the taxi driver saw it as I alighted without my phone and alerted me (this happened once).

Yesterday, it happened again. My 3-month old, one thousand ringgit phone slipped out of my pocket and onto the taxi’s back seat. I alighted the cab oblivious of this. Neither did the cab driver alert me because he did not look behind. I only noticed the disappearance of my phone later on when I was wondering why my right pocket felt empty.

I called my own number with my boss’s phone and a lady picked it up. As it turned out, that she was the next passenger on the taxi. She spoke mandarin to me and hence I passed the call to my colleague. We arranged to meet at 12.30 the next day (today). My colleague ends the conversation but without taking her contact number or name or even where to meet! (The stupid thing was that I didn’t even try to converse in English with her, or Bahasa if need be! Otherwise all details would have been sorted out!) I thus assumed that it was at the taxi stand, but I did not make it a point to call her again to get more details. (DAMN STUPID OF ME) I did SMS her in English, asking for her contact number, but I got no reply.

Thus I waited for half an hour today from 12.30 pm onwards, but no one came. Sigh. I couldn’t call my phone today, as the phone must have been turned off. I also set a pin number to the SIM card, so the phone bearer could not turn it on to receive a phone call from me even if she wanted to. Or maybe the battery died. STUPID ME.

One of those things that happen la. Shows how stupid SPM straight A students can be. (Only referring to me) Yeah, this is a very good example to illustrate that academics aren’t everything. Common sense is indeed more important.

Hopefully she would take the trouble to go to a Maxis Customer Center and return it.

T_T … So yeah, if you did not get the point of this post, it is this:
Don’t contact me at my usual 012 220#### number until I have reunited with my phone again.

If I get a new number, I will update you guys. Oh yeah, and I need to fork out my own money for another phone, because mum/dad won’t buy it anymore.

I am extremely angry with myself, beyond words, for being so foolish, careless and dumb.

I have been writing too much in the past few posts. A random picture would be good!

It was another long night working at Giant Kelana Jaya last week but then some ex-DJ Prefects came to light up my day half an hour before Giant closed it doors! Thanks for visiting guys!

From left, John, Suh Ming, Kevin and myself.

If Suh Ming had not pointed it out, I would not have realised that the picture also featured, from left to right: KP 2005/2006, PKP II 2005/2006, PKP II 2004/2005 and KP 2004/2005. Lol

Oh and I plan to work until 31st March before quitting. I want my weekends back. And I want to be more involved in church, which is hard to do when I work crazy hours.

Alright haven’t found much time to blog lately (for 3-4 days already) and due to my crazy working hours… starting at 2 pm and ending at 11 pm everyday. And yes I cannot get up in the morning and usually I get up in time for lunch or for driving lessons (YES I AM ONLY LEARNING NOW). Coupled with some flu and cough lately it really spoils my mood to blog and I can’t stay up as late as I used to (need to recover mah).

Oh yes btw I am now “curi tulang”-ing at my workplace at Giant Kelana Jaya to write this blog post.

But the past few days have been rather… fun… in a different way. For the better part of yesterday and today (and tomorrow there’s another appointment) I have been spending hours at customer’s houses setting up iZZi’s internet connection since Scream-X’s connection by TM Nut have been causing them a lot of headaches. There were also problems with wireless routers and wireless USB adapters. I am rather amazed that people look at me and expect me to solve their router and internet configuration headaches. I also least expect myself to be some tech guy who knows a lot about how to configure computer stuff (but of course I did not disappoint them and solved whatever computer troubles that they had =P )

Frankly, I am just a tech-savvy user. But incidentally I want to study Electrical and Computer Engineering given my interest in comp stuff. So perhaps i can be a real tech-genius in the future managing a company of tech-geniuses.

Random - Advice for people who want to use Vista: Don’t do it. Keep your XP. Seriously. Recently-leaked e-mails between Microsoft employees show that even Microsoft employees were aware that present computers do not have enough specifications to run Vista smoothly. Read more here and here. Skeptical? Ask your friend who just bought a Vista-powered computer recently. (Unless you have 4GB RAM, your computer will be slow and bound to hang) If you have the cash, get a Mac. (which is the main reason why I am working now, to save enough for a Macbook Pro)

Customer: One question, this internet package need to pay upfront right?

Me: Yes that is correct, it is packaged that way but you can pay monthly with credit card easy payment scheme.

Customer: New company always close down one what. What if three months down the road your company close down then how?

Me: We might be new and 8 months in the market, but we are actually doing quite well in sales and we are linked to a larger parent company.

Customer: What company is that?

Me: Mobif Berhad based in Penang .

Customer:  Established company also can close down what. Recently got this satellite TV company shut down… Then what happens then? Where will my money go?

Me: Sir, everything has a risk one. This is business.

Customer: No la dun wan to buy la scared later your company close down.

Me: =.=“ (sweat)

Some people ah I tell you… if you think like that, don’t need to buy anything la mister…

Today, he went to The Mall near PWTC to set up the new booth and be immersed in the new booth location. He then receives a call at about ten something from a customer who asks him to come to his office at Menara Maxis Level 29 to discuss about wireless broadband packages. This customer was one of those whose hands reached out for one of the 500 flyers distributed in two hours on the previous day in front of Wisma Central.

So, this salesman heads off to KLCC via the Masjid Jamek intersection from PWTC at 2.00 pm and arrives to find himself in a very classy, majestic building called Menara Maxis standing right next to the Petronas Twin Towers. He surrenders his IC for a moment and obtains a Visitor’s Pass that allows him to go only to Level 29 of that building. He goes up to the higher floors of the building for the first time and wonders how a normal salesman like him could enter such a beautiful office building meant for higher corporate echelons. He goes into the office in Level 29 and was greeted by the receptionist who ushers him to a corner with comfy seats overseeing the beautiful KL skyline (it is such a nice from up there). He looks outside the large window pane and admires the beauty of the KL landscape, wondering again what a part-time salesman is doing in such a beautiful office high up in the sky.

The secretary of the customer who wanted to see the salesman appears and brings him to the office located a floor below (Level 28). He meets the customer in a private cubicle (nice office) and then discusses the signal strength in the customer’s home area. The salesman tries his best to persuade the customer to buy instantly but the customer insists on a signal test in his own home first. The customer asks to conduct this test during the weekend and the salesman agrees to pay him a visit. So the salesman, not being able to persuade the customer to purchase on the spot, packs up and readies himself to leave. But as he walks out, the customer calls out and asks the salesman to wait for a while. After speaking to his secretary and confirming that the afternoon meeting was nothing important, the customer changes his plans and fetches this salesman to his home located nearby, in his very nice and comfortable monster-sized Ssangyong four-wheel drive (somehow this customer was quite free and can skip meetings).

His condo was a luxurious one, and his home was very cosy. But alas, albeit a strong signal strength, the download speed was less than satisfactory, even with the antenna attached. The salesman was aware that the download speeds these few days in KL were lower than usual due to some reason but all the customer wants to see is performance. So he hesitated in buying but he might just call the salesman during the weekend, since after all despite having lower download speed than usual it was better than his existing wireless broadband services (even if it was by a small margin). The salesman also told him that if he bought the more expensive package he was bound to get a better signal reception and hence better download speeds. The customer then fetches the salesman back to his office at KLCC, small-talking along the way.

Anyway, the salesman headed back to The Mall after that and got himself bored at the booth again. Doing outdoor sales can really be quite fun rather than being trapped in some stagnant place. Today, that salesman visited some interesting places which would not be accessible to a man in the street, he thinks.

Update at 4.30 pm, 16th February: The customer visits the salesman at The Mall near PWTC and buys the iZZiYOU package. Great day for the salesman.

Stood in front of Wisma Central near KLCC today from 12.30 pm to 2.45 pm and gave out approximately 500 flyers to office workers who visited the building for lunch. The place was so smoky that i literally choked in front of the building as many people entered and left the place smoking cigarettes at the same time. Thankfully my supervisor placed me there for only two hours before telling me to get out of there. My throat dried up after saying “wireless broadband” for what must have been more than three hundred times. Some serious pollution happening there, seriously.

But for all my experience of giving out flyers in my previous working location @ Giant Kelana Jaya, nothing was like today. My hands could not give out the flyers fast enough. I had to devise some speedy mechanism to dish out flyers like flying saucers. Lol. People were generally nice, with the occasional thank yous and thanks a lots. And also unlike the previous location, where people take flyers and forget about you, I received about 5-6 enquiry calls today after giving out 500 flyers in two hours. One guy even asked me to go to his office in Brickfields near KL Sentral to test the internet connection out. (sadly, the download speed in his office cubicle was less than satisfactory, so he hesitated in buying but promised to contact me again if he wanted it) All in a day’s work! (more like a few hour’s work!)

Tomorrow I will begin work again at my new posting, ‘The Mall’ near the Putra World Trade Center. I will be at the iZZi Wireless Broadband booth opposite the McDonalds outlet. (I will be here for the next two weeks only. Not so sure about where I would go after that.) Come and drop by if you are free! And if you are looking for a part-time job (minimum 3 months commitment) get in touch with me and go see my boss! This job may require some hard work, but one can pick up some lessons along the way. =)

Seemed to be yet another 2.00pm to 11.00 pm day working at Giant Kelana Jaya with no sale in hand. Another colleague of mine sold one earlier, and being human, I felt kinda desperate for a sale myself before I close the day. Maybe its KIASU. Anyway.

Feeling down and resorting myself to the fact that life is like that, sometimes we lose and sometimes we gain, I went for dinner and just psyched myself to not feel too bad. After all, it is just a STUPID part-time sales job. I told myself, I’ve been through 9 days of ZERO sales before, so what’s there to be dejected about?

Right after I finished dinner I received a call from my mum and I lamented to her that this day would be just another ZERO sales day (my mum called me at 7:01pm and by the time the story ends it is 8:02pm). Within that same hour, I sold two RM1258 iZZi wireless broadband packages ONE AFTER ANOTHER. Instantly after I closed the first sale another customer came by and I started talking to him for a while. And he also BOUGHT!!!!!!

OMG, what a miracle! It’s so hard to sell these stuff. From this, I believe that God will come through for me (and you too!) in the most hopeless of situations. Today my mood really changed after the two sales settled within one hour. I made RM 100 in commissions today. Praise the Lord.

Well, at least I gain a basic salary of 1.5 K a month, but other than that, sales are very slow. NO SALES for three days in a row already. Not many Klang Valleyians need to use their laptop away from their phone lines very often, so iZZi might not be so appealing to them. Plus, iZZi’s price is reasonable but not cheap. Signal strength varies, and if you are unlucky you might be living or working in places with a less-than-optimum signal strength; hence you are unable to enjoy the full 1 Mbps speed.

In any case, I am bound by contract to work for at least 3 months. Hence I will have to do what I can anyway. Hopefully I can get out of Giant Supermarket Kelana Jaya to a place with more people unlike the quiet Giant during off-peak hours…. Sales target is 30 a month but so far I only sold 6 with 2 refunds, which makes it a nett of 4 sold and a total of RM50 x 4= RM200 commission. Better than nothing ^^

I work here. About after 2.00 pm on Sat 12/01/2008, i tested the speed. Highest I ever seen. Normally lies in the 800-1000 range.

Excellent download speed.

Yeah you guessed it right BU 7 is where I stay… =)

Bad news for gamers perhaps? Cause ping for wireless is inevitably higher than a fixed line. But other than that, download speed is really impressive.

The only prerequisite is that your area has a strong signal strength (mine’s pretty solid). And coverage as well (soon expanding) Other than that, Stream-X has a new strong competitor. Furthermore, 2Mbps coming soon for iZZi =)

If you are a very mobile laptop user who always goes out and needs the internet anywhere minus the hotspots and the phone lines, then iZZi is for you. iZZi is a wireless mobile broadband which does not need the phone lines or hotspots to function. Besides that, if you are really fed up with what TM Nut is giving you with Stream-X and want a new connection for your home or to power your hotspot in your business, then iZZi is a very good alternative choice.

Three packages now available:
1) iZZione: PCMCIA Slot Modem: RM 66 per month (for older laptops)
2) iZZiyou: USB Device Modem: RM 98 per month (for newer laptops and desktops)
3) iZZipro: Ethernet and LAN Device (which can be connected to another router to make it wireless): RM 118 per month

One-off activation fee of RM82. Modem charge is included in the first year monthly charge.

For now, coverage is limited to the Klang Valley only. Expanding to Penang, JB, Malacca very soon.
No waiting period. Visit my booth at Giant KJ Hypermarket, pay via credit card, cash or cheque, register online and take it home to use instantly.
Easy Payment Plan for 12 months 0% interest available for all major credit cards (except CIMB and OCBC)

Coverage area http://www.izzi.com.my/coverage_map2.php
More information at www.izzi.com.my
Speed test at www.speedtest.net or http://www.izzi.com.my/speedtest/

(up to 1 Mbps at best effort)
2 Mbps is already underway and should be around by the end of the year.

We can conduct free signal testing at your area if in doubt. 100% Money back guarantee within seven days. Kindly contact me for more information. ernsheong[at]gmail.com

Well into my new job (fifth day), I can conclude that doing sales is a tough job. One needs to stand for hours on ones toes, approaching many people only to be declined multiple times. To date, I have settled three sales, but there were days with no sales at all. So life is tough. All along school has been like a “small heaven” where everything is ideal and prospects are always bright. Welcome to the new world. The working world. Or at least for me, a foretaste of  it.

But the good thing is that I have faith in my product, as any good salesman would have. (Wireless broadband minus the phone lines and hotspots) I like the product and would not hesitate recommend it. No, I am not a good salesman yet, but I have picked up many tips and pointers along the way. Each sale is worth RM 1000 plus, hence it is not easy to solicit sales, especially when it deals with amounts as much as this. People need to think, and when they think too much, they end up not buying.

Another thing which I never bothered until now was all the people whom I have been meeting in my life asking me to buy something. Now I know that they are all tired, as I was. It doesn’t matter if you do not buy from me but surely some kindness or a “Thank You” would be great for a salesman who did not manage to sell something the whole day. Now that I have stepped into the shoes of a salesman, I can see the other side of the picture now. Next time when you see a salesman, decline politely or listen for a while if you have interest. Ignoring me totally is kinda rude, but as a salesman, I can take it too. But some kindness or a smile won’t hurt.

I can bet that starting a business is worse than doing sales. Anyway, businesses will have to deal with sales, there’s no running away from it. So Ern Sheong, still want to start your own company? …

Very very fun. Felt like I did it before when I went from house to house during the Scouts Job Week doing odd jobs for people. Also felt like it was the two weekends in Singapore during mid-2006 when I sought donations from the public for 9 hours a day for two weekends.

But this time it was different. I am doing this as a job, and also for a financial reward. That makes a load of difference, and yet it does not make any difference from what I had done before in my past student life.

Nonetheless, it was very very tiring. Standing for eight hours straight with a 20 minute break for lunch can do some harm to the legs. But it was worth it perhaps. Sealed two sales today plus a lot of follow-up numbers to contact in a few days time.

Let’s hope that the job will be more fun as the days continue. =)