The Second Day

I was smarter today, I got up at 7am and got ready for 7.20am train from Kepong. It was smooth on the KTM, being patient and taking my time slowly in the train and enjoyed the scenes.

I met Heureuse at the KL Sentral's bus station. We stood in front of the line crowd and chit-chat a little. The bus came after a while. Heureuse warned me to be careful and try to crash in the bus when it arrives. I was wondering why is it so. Right when the bus open its door, I got pushed away. All the people rushed in the bus like some barbarians who has starved for few months and there are limited amount of food in the bus. One word for them. Uncivilized.

Again we reached office early, 8.30am. Hmm, good I shall say.

We were assigned to do a task by Goh, the Network Engineer. He drew a network diagram on a piece of papers, requiring us to setup and configure the system. He require us to create Virtual LANs and use 802.1q to trunk LANs together.

First day in Ariantec

Today is my first day going to work. I can't believe I am going under industrial training already. It feels like I have been studying for centuries and will still be under a recursive loop. Thank goodness I am out of it, for a little while.

I was told by Mr Chan Choon Kit to be at the work place at 8.30am to show our sincerity in taking up the training. I force myself to wake up at 5.30am, and prepare myself for the first day of the training. Have to give a good first impression.

I took a 6.20am KTM from Kepong, and went on bus at KL Sentral, then reached at the bus stop of Eastin Hotel station at 7.06am sharp. I am one and a half hours early! I walked around the area and found myself a place to sit in the nearest Mamak stall, got myself a Roti Telur and a hot Milo. The Roti Telur tasted unexpectedly good. Maybe it was because I do not eat Roti Telur that often. I actually ordered Roti Telur because Nasi Lemak was not available that early in the day.

I thought I can have some time to read the Sun since I got a copy from Kepong KTM station in the morning. Normally when I reach at the station to go college at about 8am, there is nothing left. Do you know why? It is not that Kepong residents are barbarians eating newspapers. The amount of newspaper they places on the rack is so little. I think it is about 50 copies. Or less than that. I took one, and I lost it on the way. Dammit.

Since I can't read the paper, I shall just stick to a fiction I borrowed from the College's Library. Mammon Inc. by Hwee Hwee Tan. It was hilarious. A very close to heart book. I shall review the book after I have finish reading it. Meanwhile, the book it dued. I should renew the book as soon as possible.

When time was reaching 8.30am, I felt a little worried for Chen Poh and Heureuse because they have not reach yet and according to them, they are still on the way. Thank goodness they came by strike 8.30am.

We went to the office, it was on the 10th floor of Block E in Pusat Dagangan Phileo Damansara 1, lot number 10. A 10-10 address. Cool. In chinese, there is a proverb which as two tens in it, Shi Quan Shi Mei, which means perfect in all ways.

We rang the door bell, and asked to see Mr Law. A young Malay lady approached the door. We told her that we are the trainees bcoming in today. I guess she was shocked to see us that early. We waited for Mr Law in the conference room for about 45 minutes. He then came in and greeted us, and asked to speak to us in Cantonese. Now its my turn to feel the shock. I guess he wanted to make the environment a little friendlier. He then introduced us to some of the collegue present at that time.

We are arranged to be trained under the Network Engineers. They are four of them, and everyone has their own projects. So since there are three of us, there should be enough trainees for them to order around. Haha.

We cleaned up some empty spaces in the Technical department, and got ourselves seats. Our first task - read the lab manual of Exinda. It feels so much like in college. Exinda is one of the product this company is distributing, not forgeting Alcatel Networking products, BlueCoat and SpammerSpy.

Goh, the Network Enginner whom I think was assigned to supervise us, gave us a lecture about the products. Alcatel Networking products are data switches of Layer 2, 3, and 4 (this refers to OSI layers, and as a reminder this is a Networking firm, OK?), BlueCoat and Exinda are Layer 7 networking products, where they are more to traffic management. BlueCoat is more like a proxy server since it caches, and Exinda is more to a traffic monitor.

These 3 products are mainly pushed to the customers since they are the distributor and they have to hit a certain target of sales volume. While SpammeSpy is a product they developed themselves, a side line product, are not so much being emphasised.

After the lecture, we were clear of what this company does. They are a networking firm providing networking solution for large companies and ISPs for LAN, WAN and SAN. They are the distributors of the above mentioned brand as well.

We did some reading on some of the company's brochures to get ourselves ready for the company. I shall say we are moving on the right track.

What I worry now is about Heureuse and Chen Poh because they did not have much networking background. Hopefully they will manage to adapt new information.