Friggin interviews

Havent really had the chance to update this in a while. Its gonna be a long weekend coming up specially with Memorial Day on Monday, and I finally have a laptop I can bring home to surf the internet and stuff so some stories should be coming very soon. Notably, our trip to Tampa last weekend was great.

I am sitting in my office desk waiting for a call. It's actually a call interview from a Company in Manila. Another referral from a headhunting firm. What the heck... let's give it a try and see if there's an opportunity worth pursuing here.

[Break]

Hmmmm... it's already 8:20 PM here and still no call. The Director of IT is 20 minutes late and counting. I can smell the chicken I bought from this chinese place. Havent had dinner yet waiting for this slow ass call...

tick.. tock.. tick.. tock

OK now I hear the Janitor has started vaccuming the corridor. I just hope this call actually does push through before the Data Center guys get here at 9PM for the routine server check.

8:35 PM - Sent an email to the guy. Will only wait for 10 more minutes and then I'm going for dinner. Of coure, dinner is already on my desk... but I'm starting to get pissed at them anyway...

US Trip, part 1

I am only on my 3rd day in Florida and I am already a bit bored. Of course, this part of Florida (Cape Coral) isn't really the "exciting" part, altough I am only roughly 2 hours away from Miami. But what can I really do if I don't have any one to go out with? Mr. Know-it-all has been here ahead of me for more than a month now and has been pretty ok as a lunch companion, but I really think that's as far as we hanging together goes.

So to sum up what's happened recently... I travelled under an extreme tribulation of 4 connecting flights from Manila... it's too much from anyone else's opinion of course. My flight itinerary was:

Manila > Narita, Japan
Narita, Japan > Minneapolis
Minneapolis > Detroit
Detroit > Fort Myers

And that my friends is only 1 way! Motherfucking airports... motherfucking packed planes seated in between old farts who wouldn't budge on the arm rest. All in all, it was 20 something hours of hell. SO hoorah... Welcome to America!

First meal I ever ate on US soil was at the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) Airport, and good lord, I had to eat at a chinese fast food. I quickly grabbed something more at Chili's when I realized what I had done. And then I almost missed my flight to Detroit because they changed the goddamn gate. I arrived at the gate 2 hours before the official boarding time and was quietly reading my book and then realized that it was already 20 past boarding time. I looked at the podium and it was empty. More than being empty... there wasn't any activity. No attendants arranging stuff, or preparing the machines, or whatever. So I was like... WTF?

Checked back the monitors and voila... they changed the gate to the far west side of the terminal so I had to scurry there to find that I was one of the last passengers that they were waiting for.

Some more updates to follow...

C2 Green Tea

I've been downing 2-3 bottles of these a shift. What makes this a damn good drink is that this is probably the only one out there that is still tolerable to drink even when it's no longer that cold. But not the other flavors.... just the apple.

A taste of Ukraine

Our QC Manager just recently returned from a trip to our office in Ukraine and brought a pack of chocolates with what originally looked like cherry syrup in the middle. So we passed it around and had some... it definitely tasted like cherry syrup first time you chew it but then an obvious vodka taste immediately overwhelms your mouth.

Holy Crap! I can't believe they put vodka even in chocolates back there. I've seen chocolate flavored vodka... but vodka flavored chocolate? Christ! But then again... it's Ukraine so wadaya expect?

Scarlett

Speaking of Lost in Translation... earlier today, I saw a rerun of that E! episode where a gay reporter at Golden Globe(?) groped Scarlett Johansson's tits on live telie. Of course nobody got slapped since the guy was gay and they were supposedly talking about her red dress. So what now? I guess it's ok for guys to do this as long as they're not enjoying themselves, sexually that is. Christ! I'd pretend to be gay for that.

Although if I was faking to be gay and did this, I don't really know how I'd fake not enjoying it. I mean holy crap, just take a look at that rack. If I ever meet her, I'll be a bigger fag than Prince... or isn't it TAFKAP now?

"Uhh... Let me just slide my penis down your throat... I just want to see if these earings go nicely with that pearl necklace"

Being Handy

Found this while surfing on the internet. Woke me up.

Two deaf people got married. During the first week of marriage, they found they were unable to communicate in the bedroom when they turn the lights off because they can't see each other using sign language.

After several nights of fumbling around and misunderstandings, the wife decides to find a solution.

"Honey," she signs, "Why don't we agree on some simple signals? For instance, at night, if you want to have sex with me, reach over and squeeze my right breast one time. If you don't want to have sex, reach over and squeeze my left breast one time."

The husband thinks this is a great idea and signs back to his wife, "Great idea, now if you want to have sex with me, reach over and pull on penis one time."

"If you don't want to have sex, reach over and pull on my penis....fifty times."

Lost in Translation

Whenever you work with remote teams, there are bound to be at least 2 issues that you will have to deal with. One is the time zone... which can be a real fucker unto itself, and the other one is the language barrier. And I've already learned this when I worked with Thais before, but I guess I have to deal with it again now that I am working with bloody comrades.

Case in point, I sent the email below:

"Please change the URL of [client] in beta environment from “prototype” to “beta” so as not to confuse anyone. Let me know as soon as this change has been integrated so I can advice the client."

20 minutes later, I recieve this reply:

"Hi,
the URL was switching."

Now, if it werent for the 6 months or so of actual combat experience that I have working with Russians and Ukranians here in this company, I would've probably replied:

"Excuse me?"

But ever since enduring dozens of conference calls with these buggers arguing on the line, and moderating chat conferences that usually end up in arguments... I have become some what of an expert in reading between the lines. In fact, reading clearly enough to know that what he really means is that the URL has now been switched. Whew!

Of course, it probably helps to know that a big majority of them dont really speak english so well so much that they actually use babelfish translator whenever they chat or answer emails so you really have to cut them a bit of slack.

Email Announcement

Just 15 minutes ago, the company owner just sent an email announcement that the company President has just resigned and will be effectively moving out on May 12.

Well... well... I guess there are no more speculation about the company's stability. It's more or less certain that we friggin floating right now. In that email, he also confirmed that he hasn't really sold the company yet... ergo, the justification for the attrition they did sometime ago that there was a management buy out was pure horse shit! But we all knew that. At least all the managers did.

What's the deal with the President giving a 15-day notice? Since the email also mentions some emergency management meetings to handle all the 19 areas that he currently manages, I am assuming that the fucker didn't really give notice 45 days ago, but really just probably last week.

I can only look on the bright side, at least I'm gonna have a precedent when I pull this stunt in the next couple of months...