Losing Four Days

Four days, for most people, may not be a long period of time. But for someone like me, who must do labs for 300 hours before my CCIE SP 3 weeks from now, every second counts. Wow, that sounds very cool, doesn’t it? Every second counts. Or better let’s just say every day is important.

Since Wednesday evening I have been in Kuala Lumpur to lead a migration for one of our customer. It’s been a thrilling experience to try to define all the steps required, to make a cross check to ensure there is nothing missing, to accommodate the last minute request for changes, simulate the new config changes in internal lab, do my best to avoid unnecessary surprises, and finally it was over by 2 am this morning. There was no time at all to do anything else, even to check out the night life in Heritage walk next to my hotel.

So here I am, standing by my hotel room window, staring at the Twin Towers. I still have one hour left before I must check out and go to the Airport. I’m going to fly back to Singapore but I may need to travel again to another project within a couple of days.

I have been thinking about my work on the last 4 days that made me skip my CCIE study completely. I wish I could do what I said in my previous post. I wish I could ignore everything but CCIE, including work, to complete my 300 lab hour target. But again, as I mentioned, it was a tremendous experience. And I believe it really helps to build the tension and the pressures required to make one ready for the lab.

I believe all CCIE candidates must face real world pressure before they can face the lab. I believe none of all CCIE candidates should skip the work only to study for CCIE. The pressure in work can really help in setting up the mood, to bring up the troubleshooting mindset and to maintain the flow of the journey.

Well, again, at the same time the last work has caused me losing the 4 precious days. There is no reason to look back or to try to blame someone. I’m writing this just in the middle of my evaluation of what I have achieved so far and how fast I need to set the pace in my study. So far I have just done half of the Internetwork Expert workbook. I can say with the previous Techlabs from them, I have done only around 100 hour lab time.

200 hours to go. And I have 3 weeks left.