One of the TV series that I like the most and watched recently is The Office. It's a unique comedy series offers documentary-style look at the 9-to-5 white collar work at Dunder Mifflin, a paper supply company. The central of the office is the boss, Michael Scott, who's described as "..believes he is the office funnyman and a fountain of business wisdom.. comes off alternately absurb and pathetic, but always hilarious.." There are some other characters like Pam, the office receptionist who bears the brunt of Michael's behavior, Dwight, the annoying assistant to Michael, and Jim the sales rep who together with Pam always finds ways to torment Dwigth.
After watching the full season 1 and 2, and half of season 3 continuously in 4 days, I have just realized how lucky I am that I have never had a chance to have someone like Michael as my boss. He's hilarious indeed, but I don't think I could stand him in real life. Watching Dwigth and all his superb moves must be funny on TV, but I guess it wouldn't be that funny if I had to face him as my co-worker.
(You may ask why on earth I watched The Office continuously in 4 days? Well, that's the only way to do it, isn't it? Same like when I watched Lord of the Ring 1-2-3 continuously, or Star Wars 1 to 6 in a day. Or perhaps it's more like when I watched full season 1 and 2 of Lost in 4 days, or Scrubs full season 1 to 4 in 3 days. That's the only way to see whether it's a good show or not. By the way, I watched Lost and Scrubs when I was jobless for a complete week. And it's obvious that Star Wars 4-5-6 trilogy is much better than the new 1-2-3 trilogy)
When I left my previous company to join Cisco, I made a promise to myself that I will not repeat the same mistakes that I did in the past: keep complaining about my job, whining about my office and bringing all my problems at work into my personal life. In a company like Cisco Systems that kind of promise should be easy to keep, right?
My office in Cisco is much better than Dunder Mifflin. The most thing that I like about it: free food. Anything inside the fridge is free for anyone. And we have a free vending machine. What kind of vending machine that can works without putting the coin? The one in my office. And that's not all, we also have Banana day every Monday. It means someone will come on Monday and drop lots of green bananas to the pantry. I normally take several bananas and put them on my table for few days until their colours turn to yellow. Green banana is no good, yellow banana is good.
I have my own space, an open partition with wireless network connection. My space is close to printer that I like to torture from time to time, close to the restroom, quite close to the pantry. It's more than enough, rite? And the other good thing about my office is: I never have a chance to stay in it for long. I keep traveling to my country for some projects so during my first 2 months in Singapore I spent only less than 10 working days in the office. How about my boss? He's a nice guy. A perfect boss. He always travels from one place to another place even more ofter than me, and all my communication so far has been through email or messaging. So it's quite rare for me to have a meeting with him other than the one through MeetingPlace. And we are actually based in the same office. So he's perfect.
What about the building? Well, can't tell you much. It's called Capital Tower in Robinson Road, Singapore. Next to the train station. This makes me happy since I can take Singapore train system and pop up directly near my office. But I can't take the picture of the building for some unknown reason. Last time I tried it some security personnel asked me to stop without telling me why. Perhaps because the building hosts several American companies. Or perhaps because I heard it hosts an office for some Singapore's VIP. So no pictures. There is a big fish pool on the ground full of.. fishes. This Singapore office perhaps is not as much fun as San Jose office (with all its facilities as I heard), but it's still better than the one in The Office. And it's my office. That's all I can say now.
How about my co-workers? They are all better than me. I'm a double CCIE.. so what? Everyone in my team is a CCIE. The guy sitting next to me is a Triple CCIE. One guy has two CCIE and JNCIE. And one of the sales manager is a double CCIE. They all have better experience than me. Some guys used to work for big organizations such as AT&T or NTT. One guy even used to work in San Jose as testing engineer. Most of them come with extensive experience in Service Provider market. And those guys are only the one I meet in Singapore office, not to mention other teams outside Singapore that may do more interesting stuff. So I'm nobody here. I'm just ordinary.
Well, I guess being ordinary in such wonderful place like Cisco is still awesome. But I need to do something that can make myself as competitive and useful for this organization. I need to show my values. I need to be able to set myself apart from the others. But I need to do it a single step at a time. Like passing my third CCIE in Service Provider track.
So now it’s time to make a new promise: CCIE in SP track within the next 4 months. I must focus on that target. Actually it’s my previous target, I’m a bit behind my schedule. I was supposed to pass it when I was still 30. You know what they say: it's better to be late than not doing it. So I have to start the journey from beginning and finish it this time. This is my promise.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Living My Dream
It all started with a dream. A dream to work in a place where I would be judged by nothing but my skills. A dream to be in a place where there is no limit for my career as technical person. A dream to be a part of true multi-national team. A dream to work in the most influental company in networking world, Cisco Systems.It has been two weeks since I officially joined Cisco and I still can’t believe it. I still can’t believe that I’m part of Cisco Advanced Services now, a team that I used to dream to join at any cost. Every day is an exciting day. Everybody is so talented. I can really feel to be a part of the team. I can understand the true meaning of team work. Be in touch with any other team members around the globe without boundaries.
So this is the company that has a vision to change the way we live, work, play and learn. Now the question is: how can I contribute?
Joining Cisco is not the end of the journey, it's just the beginning.
It is time to start living my dream.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
A Life Without Debt
In my last day in UAE, I was "forced" to close my main account in one of local bank in Dubai. Unfortunately, closing this bank account means I have to close all my credit cards as well! And it also means I have to pay all the balance left in all my credit cards with most of my money in hand. I have been using credit cards since ten years ago and I never bothered to pay my debt completely. It was only several hours before my flight to Singapore so I didn't have a choice. I left the country that day without any credit cards and only some amount of cash in my pocket.
How can I live without credit cards?
So far it's been good. It's almost a week now I have been surviving in the new country without any credit cards. Everything has to be paid with cash. And we live in an era where people carry less and less money in their wallet. Strangely enough, most of places now prefer credit card more than cash. Take my hotel as example. When I informed them that I would like to pay in cash, I had to pay the whole amount of the room rate plus security deposit. If I paid with card, I didn't have to pay the deposit. So I guess people trust me more if I had my credit card.
Actually I was planning to use cash only for emergency purpose but now I don't have any options. This situation makes me plan more carefully in my daily spending. At least until I receive my first month salary :)
From the other point of view, actually this time is the first time in my life since ten years ago that I don't have any debt at all to any credit card companies or the banks. Live freely without any obligation to pay some fees every month. A life without debt.
How can I live without credit cards?
So far it's been good. It's almost a week now I have been surviving in the new country without any credit cards. Everything has to be paid with cash. And we live in an era where people carry less and less money in their wallet. Strangely enough, most of places now prefer credit card more than cash. Take my hotel as example. When I informed them that I would like to pay in cash, I had to pay the whole amount of the room rate plus security deposit. If I paid with card, I didn't have to pay the deposit. So I guess people trust me more if I had my credit card.
Actually I was planning to use cash only for emergency purpose but now I don't have any options. This situation makes me plan more carefully in my daily spending. At least until I receive my first month salary :)
From the other point of view, actually this time is the first time in my life since ten years ago that I don't have any debt at all to any credit card companies or the banks. Live freely without any obligation to pay some fees every month. A life without debt.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Leaving Dubai
I’m leaving Dubai in the next couple of hours to join Cisco Systems Advanced Services – Asia Pacific team based in Singapore. I’m so happy and grateful that finally I can get in into the circle, but due to my hectic days until the last minute, I still can’t feel the excitement for now.
In my last moment in Dubai, I have been trying to remember all the good things that happened to me in the past. Things that I like the most about Dubai:
- No-tax, yes if you make 1000 it means you bring 1000 home!
- Safe and Secure environment, crime rate is low
- Anything that you would like to see in the world, may probably exist here: pyramid, indoor ski, white beaches, rock mountain, opera house-like in Sydney, twin towers, 7-star hotel, world's biggest shopping mall and tallest tower will come soon, and they are planning to build something like Great Wall in China.
- Cars price is cheap, even low-skilled labor like me can drive BMW :)
- Girls are pretty, well they may not be available but it's good to see yourself surrounded by pretty girls
- Peaceful Moslem environment, there are so many mosques and I have seen some people even prayed next to the road because they are so keen to pray exactly at prayer time. I'm a moslem so having moslem environment is important for me
On the other hand, things that I hate the most about Dubai:
- Summer time, can reach up to 50 degrees celcius! Even the official never admits it since 50 degrees means public holiday
- Traffic jam, anyone can afford to buy car and there are so many new construction sites in Dubai and most of them disturb the traffic so it’s always jam and unpredictable not only during busy hours
- Apartment Rent is ridiculously high, Dubai is no.25 in the most expensive City in the world and frankly speaking I don't think Dubai deserves it
- To many hypes: for example in my opinion apartment rent price should not go up because there is no big changes in number of people living in Dubai, when the first time UAE stock market was opened the price went very high but now it reaches the bottom of the barrel, etc
Anyway, I really enjoy my time and I may come up with some other like/hate things later on. I have been in Dubai for almost 5 years so even I will go to my dream job but I still can feel that something is missing. Will continue later.
In my last moment in Dubai, I have been trying to remember all the good things that happened to me in the past. Things that I like the most about Dubai:
- No-tax, yes if you make 1000 it means you bring 1000 home!
- Safe and Secure environment, crime rate is low
- Anything that you would like to see in the world, may probably exist here: pyramid, indoor ski, white beaches, rock mountain, opera house-like in Sydney, twin towers, 7-star hotel, world's biggest shopping mall and tallest tower will come soon, and they are planning to build something like Great Wall in China.
- Cars price is cheap, even low-skilled labor like me can drive BMW :)
- Girls are pretty, well they may not be available but it's good to see yourself surrounded by pretty girls
- Peaceful Moslem environment, there are so many mosques and I have seen some people even prayed next to the road because they are so keen to pray exactly at prayer time. I'm a moslem so having moslem environment is important for me
On the other hand, things that I hate the most about Dubai:
- Summer time, can reach up to 50 degrees celcius! Even the official never admits it since 50 degrees means public holiday
- Traffic jam, anyone can afford to buy car and there are so many new construction sites in Dubai and most of them disturb the traffic so it’s always jam and unpredictable not only during busy hours
- Apartment Rent is ridiculously high, Dubai is no.25 in the most expensive City in the world and frankly speaking I don't think Dubai deserves it
- To many hypes: for example in my opinion apartment rent price should not go up because there is no big changes in number of people living in Dubai, when the first time UAE stock market was opened the price went very high but now it reaches the bottom of the barrel, etc
Anyway, I really enjoy my time and I may come up with some other like/hate things later on. I have been in Dubai for almost 5 years so even I will go to my dream job but I still can feel that something is missing. Will continue later.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Emulating Internetwork Expert
I read Brian McGahan email in CCIE SP forum yesterday about How to Run Cisco IOS on Your PC. It's nice to know that Internetwork Expert now provides dynagen files for both of their CCIE Routing Switching and Service Provider workbooks.
Download the files with initial config here.
Hopefully they will launch the SP workbook soon.
Download the files with initial config here.
Hopefully they will launch the SP workbook soon.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Contractor Wannabe
After doing lots of thinking, while watching my favorite TV show Scrubs and Prison Break, I decided not to take job offers from any company and go with contracting job instead. I was lucky, during my unemployment time last week I received an offer from one of my previous customer to work as contractor. The good thing is, I have already familiar with the customer and the project, and at the same time this job will give me experience working as contractor.
Well to be frank, I'm still waiting for the one ultimate offer from -you know who- that is supposed to come real soon. While waiting, I can learn to work as contractor and I still can make a good money.
And guess what? Working as contractor is awesome.
First of all, I become completely in charge of my work and my schedule. I have to make my own document template, project plan and even invoice. Every second is important since I have to achieve my target as agreed in the contract. I become really focus since I know exactly what to do. And offcourse, the real challenge is to make my customer happy and satisfied. It's a big task to make them feel like they made the right decision by investing their money in my services. And without any interferences and help from any Account Manager, Sales person or Project Manager from the company offcourse. I become all of them. I become the Account Manager, Sales, Project Manager, Consultant, Lead Designer, Senior Engineer and even as Accountant to calculate and get the bill. One man show.
One ring to rule them all.
So being a contractor means totally in control of our lives.
But how to start or to become a contractor? I'm still learning but I tried to make the list of things need to be taken care of if you want to work as contractor:
1. Statement of Work (SoW)
The most important thing needs to be addressed first is the scope of work. Anything we are going to work on during the contract should be written clearly. With this way, we can start working on the project plan, calculating the time allocation and put milestone in each target. The good thing about my customer is I know them very well so we can discuss and reach the agreement for the scope within short time.
2. Legal Issues
After we agree with the customer about the SoW, it's time to make it official. Contract has to be signed by both sides to make it legal. In the contract it will be mentioned about the term and condition, and I believe the following are the most important:
- duration of the contract
- total fees of the contract
- person in charge we are going to work with or reporting to
- criteria of the completion of work
- how if one side wants to terminate the contract earlier
- it can even go into detail such as expected working hours and so on
3. Financial Issues
There are two main issues related to financial: are we going to charge in hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis, and how the customer can pay us. For me I prefer to calculate the rate in daily basis, then provide the fee for a month with discounted price. This is my first contracting job so I prefer to work in monthly basis, even my fee calculation was based on daily basis, since it makes me able to arrange all accomodation and transportation easily.
Regarding the payment, the bad news is sometime our potential customers don't have any policy to pay to individual directly. So either we have to work with our customer closely to find a way, or we have to use some company's name that normally willing to provide help with certain fees.
4. Report and Milestones
I always like to make my customer fully aware about my work so I think it's a good idea to provide periodic update and report. For 1-month contract I believe weekly report should be enough. I don't want to waste the precious time during the contract to conduct a meeting only to update the customer, so unless it's really required I prefer to discuss about the progress through email and it should put everyone in the loop.
5. Closure of the Project
Since all the scope and the criteria of completion have been defined clearly, it's easier to close the project and the contract. This is the reason why SoW and the legal contract are the most importants factor for a succesful job. All documentation, plan, drawing, testing result, and report must be consolidated and submitted at the end of the contract.
6. Supporting Items
Well, if we have to work in another country for sure we are going to need temporary working visa, accomodation and transportation. We may require to have proper communication channel with the customer, for example dedicated GSM line and e-mail address only for one customer. My current customer provides one temporary email account that I can use to communicate with them.
There are some other way to make it easier to work as contractor. I have been contacted in the past by few agencies in Dubai that offered me contracting jobs as well. So instead of dealing directly with the customer, I can work for those agencies and I don't need to worry about SOW, legal issues and the payment. Those agencies have alredy had everything in place. They can even provide visa, accomodation and transportation. So I just need to work in customer site and collect the paycheck by the end of the month from the agency.
Well, surely there are some of you who have done this for years. So if you have any other suggestion for contractor wannabe like me, please share it here.
Well to be frank, I'm still waiting for the one ultimate offer from -you know who- that is supposed to come real soon. While waiting, I can learn to work as contractor and I still can make a good money.
And guess what? Working as contractor is awesome.
First of all, I become completely in charge of my work and my schedule. I have to make my own document template, project plan and even invoice. Every second is important since I have to achieve my target as agreed in the contract. I become really focus since I know exactly what to do. And offcourse, the real challenge is to make my customer happy and satisfied. It's a big task to make them feel like they made the right decision by investing their money in my services. And without any interferences and help from any Account Manager, Sales person or Project Manager from the company offcourse. I become all of them. I become the Account Manager, Sales, Project Manager, Consultant, Lead Designer, Senior Engineer and even as Accountant to calculate and get the bill. One man show.
One ring to rule them all.
So being a contractor means totally in control of our lives.
But how to start or to become a contractor? I'm still learning but I tried to make the list of things need to be taken care of if you want to work as contractor:
1. Statement of Work (SoW)
The most important thing needs to be addressed first is the scope of work. Anything we are going to work on during the contract should be written clearly. With this way, we can start working on the project plan, calculating the time allocation and put milestone in each target. The good thing about my customer is I know them very well so we can discuss and reach the agreement for the scope within short time.
2. Legal Issues
After we agree with the customer about the SoW, it's time to make it official. Contract has to be signed by both sides to make it legal. In the contract it will be mentioned about the term and condition, and I believe the following are the most important:
- duration of the contract
- total fees of the contract
- person in charge we are going to work with or reporting to
- criteria of the completion of work
- how if one side wants to terminate the contract earlier
- it can even go into detail such as expected working hours and so on
3. Financial Issues
There are two main issues related to financial: are we going to charge in hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis, and how the customer can pay us. For me I prefer to calculate the rate in daily basis, then provide the fee for a month with discounted price. This is my first contracting job so I prefer to work in monthly basis, even my fee calculation was based on daily basis, since it makes me able to arrange all accomodation and transportation easily.
Regarding the payment, the bad news is sometime our potential customers don't have any policy to pay to individual directly. So either we have to work with our customer closely to find a way, or we have to use some company's name that normally willing to provide help with certain fees.
4. Report and Milestones
I always like to make my customer fully aware about my work so I think it's a good idea to provide periodic update and report. For 1-month contract I believe weekly report should be enough. I don't want to waste the precious time during the contract to conduct a meeting only to update the customer, so unless it's really required I prefer to discuss about the progress through email and it should put everyone in the loop.
5. Closure of the Project
Since all the scope and the criteria of completion have been defined clearly, it's easier to close the project and the contract. This is the reason why SoW and the legal contract are the most importants factor for a succesful job. All documentation, plan, drawing, testing result, and report must be consolidated and submitted at the end of the contract.
6. Supporting Items
Well, if we have to work in another country for sure we are going to need temporary working visa, accomodation and transportation. We may require to have proper communication channel with the customer, for example dedicated GSM line and e-mail address only for one customer. My current customer provides one temporary email account that I can use to communicate with them.
There are some other way to make it easier to work as contractor. I have been contacted in the past by few agencies in Dubai that offered me contracting jobs as well. So instead of dealing directly with the customer, I can work for those agencies and I don't need to worry about SOW, legal issues and the payment. Those agencies have alredy had everything in place. They can even provide visa, accomodation and transportation. So I just need to work in customer site and collect the paycheck by the end of the month from the agency.
Well, surely there are some of you who have done this for years. So if you have any other suggestion for contractor wannabe like me, please share it here.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Officially Jobless
Yesterday was my last day in my current company. So I woke up this morning as a jobless person. It's official now.
Well, actually it's not that bad. I have several offering letters in my hand from different types of company. The first one is from a local company who wants me to work with them in multi-million dollar projects with UAE goverment. The second offer comes from my own company. Well, after 3 months acting like they don't need me anymore suddenly in the last day they came and really gave me a good offer. The third offer is from one multi-national and Cisco Gold partner company that unfortunately doesn't put Cisco as its main business. And the last but not least, I received an offer from one consulting company who makes lots of money only from consultancy services.
I haven't decided which one to go so until I make my decision I will stay jobless. But fear not, I still have enough saving to allow me to play snowboarding even I have to start eating ramen noodles. And I was able to add several TV show series into my collection: Scrubs season 1 to 5, Prison Break season 1, and Lost season 1 and 2. So it looks like I will be able to enjoy my unemployment time with style.
Jobless with style.
Well, actually it's not that bad. I have several offering letters in my hand from different types of company. The first one is from a local company who wants me to work with them in multi-million dollar projects with UAE goverment. The second offer comes from my own company. Well, after 3 months acting like they don't need me anymore suddenly in the last day they came and really gave me a good offer. The third offer is from one multi-national and Cisco Gold partner company that unfortunately doesn't put Cisco as its main business. And the last but not least, I received an offer from one consulting company who makes lots of money only from consultancy services.
I haven't decided which one to go so until I make my decision I will stay jobless. But fear not, I still have enough saving to allow me to play snowboarding even I have to start eating ramen noodles. And I was able to add several TV show series into my collection: Scrubs season 1 to 5, Prison Break season 1, and Lost season 1 and 2. So it looks like I will be able to enjoy my unemployment time with style.
Jobless with style.
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