Blackberry

Crap! It's official now. I have been required to carry a blackberry... and so there goes my official excuse for not being THAT available. The only consolation is that it takes a month or so until the unit is actually delivered. Woe to the days of not giving a fuck about work after office hours!

Server Racks

I took this while we were inside the data center in HK. I know, I know... makes you wanna pull all the cables and wait for the calls from 2,000 users across Asia Pacific pour in right?










After 2 hours of work, finally installed and configured 2 blade servers. 5 more to go...

Hong Kong Office

Late friday afternoon, they finally send an email saying they'll do the power-on services for free. Fuckers! This should've been a very simple thing. It didn't really need me to be physically here. Made this into such an issue and now I need to fly here just to manage the damn thing.

One of the fist things that initially stood out was how friggin long the cab ride was. I certainly don't remember it taking that long when I was last in Hong Kong. Apparently, they moved the bloody airport sometime ago and so I guess that explains it. I looked over the meter and was shocked! It read 365.

HK$365.00!

That's how much my cab ride from the airport to my hotel in Wanchai took. That's roughly equivalent to US$50. For 1 fucking cab ride! What the fuck?!

But what do I care? My company is gonna pay for every cent I spend here anyway. My boss told me that hotel isn't cheap here, and they had to shell out about US$180/night for my little trip. And the room ain't really anything extra nice. I guess it just brings "vacationing with the family in HK for Disneyland" into a clearer, albeit more expensive perspective.

Got caught up in some confusion when I checked in since the reception was asking me for a US$400 deposit for a 2-day stay.

"Excuse me?"

I called my HK office and finally got it sorted out since they are supposed to pay for my hotel bills. All because my stupid AMEX card hasn't arrived yet.

At about 4PM, I finally went to the HK datacenter to start working on the servers. Truth is, I still can't believe I actually flew in here for this. I had to stand in that freezing server room for about 4 hours and watch the HK people install and mount the damn thing. That was my job. Make sure they didn't screw it up. And since everyone knew i was there, the group felt they needed my obligatory "I do."

"Do you want to change the layout?"

"Do you want to move the servers several notches up the rack?"

"Do you wanna us to mount the PDU's vertically or horizontally?"

Questions that on any given sunday would've been fucking no brainers, and wouldn't really need my intervention, let alone actual physical presence. But since I am there anyways... I get the customary "Is it ok?" silly questions. What else was I to do? Might as well entertain myself and give my 2 cents on every fucking thing they were doing.

"Make sure the bolt is tight enough..."

"Secure those with some cable ties..."

"Press the enter key..."

"Will somebody turn the fucking A/C down a few notches?!"

Great! What an awesome manager!

I finally installed Windows 2003 Server on one of the blade servers and enabled remote connection. Ran a few tests and left some last instructions to the team. All in all, the whole thing went on without any glitches and my work is already 50% done. The only remaining thing is for me to do the lunch tomorrow and do the obligatory courtesy call to the HK Managers and Directors. Who knows, I might even find some time to have some real fun here.

Went up to my room to splash cold water in my face. Flipped a few channels... I see that they offer adult movies for a fee. And the going rate is HK$90 per. Never fucking mind. I have better material in my laptop. I try this chinese restaurant and surprise, surprise... they don't have an english menu. What else is there to do but order "fly lies". I resist the temptation to actually pronounce it that way though. Politely, I tell the guy "fried rice", followed by the words "yang chow" and "dimsum". I ended up ordering sweet and sour pork. Just great. First dinner in HK and I order the same lazy ass food that's served back in Manila. But what can I do? It's the only one with a picture on the menu.

The bill comes in and it's HK$113 (roughly US$17). Why am I no longer surprised? I give the guy HK$120 and ask for a reciept. He comes back with a reciept that says HK$120. Smart ass motherfucker! He's lucky I ain't paying for this shit or else I'd kick his ass back to ming dynasty!

Flying to Hong Kong

Yesterday, I had one of the longest conf calls ever. It wasn't technically long compared to the others that have lasted several hours, but this went on for 45 minutes and it was about a very silly thing. We were arguing that long for a measly HK$ 8,000.

About 3 weeks ago, I bought some server eqipment from a vendor worth US$120,000. As usual, stuff like that went through several rounds of negotiation before we gave the go signal to release the PO. They then sent us a separate quote for services.

Now, I've dealt with server vendors all my professional career, and I've never seen anyone unbunbdle doing at least power on services for something that you buy from them, specially servers. So when they told us that they did, and that now we had to pay them an extra HK$ 8,000 just to unpack the servers, mount it to the rack and plug the cables, my boss and I were like "Excuse me?"

So this conf call was a culmination of a week-long email thread arguing back and forth on this HK$ 8,000 power on service fee, which is roughly about US$ 1,000. The truth is, we wouldn't have really minded paying for this, but by principle, the vendor should have paid for this misunderstanding. The thing that was so elemntary about it and yet so difficult for them to understand is, that we are asking them to give this at least as an investment for the vendor/client relationship that we are building. We are a big fucking regional account! Can't you invest that small amount to show good faith?

And so my boss and I tried to be polite as we could, but eventually the discussion spiraled down when it became apparent that they wouldn't give. And they even said that they would only do that if we committed to get the other services that were worth much more. The nerve! In the end, my boss lost his patience and finally conceded and said we would pay the amount, just to end the bloated discussion and free ourselves from this issue. And then there was a moment of awkward silence. It was probably only 5 seconds, but it seemed a lot longer, specially for their Global Account Manager. Specially when my boss' last words before the silence was "Does that make you happy?"

So now I have to haul my ass to Hong Kong and personally look into this crap. They've since sent an email saying that now they will do it for free, and have asked to meet with me over lunch when I am there on Tuesday. What can I say? Free lunch is free lunch. And I know I'm gonna love doing this lunch specially when these vendors will be grovelling at my feet in hopes of overturning that nasty conf call yesterday. Damn! It feels good to be a client this time.

Scout Investiture

Last Saturday was my daughter's star scout investiture at OB Montessori. I actually sprained my back the previous day at Basketball, but my wife still forced me to go. Not that I didn't want to go of course. My back was really killing me. I couldn't stand up, and I couldn't even sit straight. The embarassing thing was, this wasn't really technically strained from playing ball but actually after the game. I was sitting my ass and resting since the game was over. Nothing felt wrong. No pain. No discomfort. And then I stood up and picked up my bag in the same motion. Suddenly there was this sharp pain at my tailbone. Fuck!

Anyway, like I've said in my previous posts... and as any married man would know, there is no point in arguing against your wife, or with a woman for that matter. To borrow from Chris Rock, "Men are naturally handicapped when it comes to arguments, because men need to make sense. Women won't let a small thing like 'sense' fuck up their argument."

I popped 2 pain killers and off we went. It wasn't that bad. I mean it's not like I didn't want to go. Wait. Havent I said that before? Anyway... it wasn't entirely boring. Got to meet some young parents. When I say "meet", I meant I was oggling of course. They were sitting there minding their own business, or minding their kid... and I was busy checking them out.

There was a demo from the Tae Kwan Do Philippine team. Of course the kids enjoyed it, but it reinforced my perception of how fucking crappy that martial art is. You could think that maybe the Philippine Team was the only one crappy, and maybe the other National teams from the neighboring countries were better. But don't we win medals around asia in that sport? I have only been boxing for about a month now and I havent even started doing Muay Thai but (and I say this with consideration of the medals they've won), I would've kicked the spaghetti out of those cock suckers.

And then there was this guy who swore in all the star scouts... poor bald guy was made to wear a dead fox on his head. I'm sure he was thinking "Christ! How did I let them convince me into doing this? It's not even lunch time and I already look like a dufus!"

New phone

I've been told that I'm finally getting my new Nokia 6280 phone today. Personally, I didn't really think I could survive without one for even a few days. For the record, it has been 12 days since that fateful day. Sure. People have been contacting me. But if it was really that important, they would've tried calling me on my landline at home, or at least by some other means. I guess this puts communication technology in perspective, and how a lot of the stuff that passes through your mobile can really be done without. Not all. But a good number of them.

I know for a fact that I missed several business calls. Couple ones from my former boss in Singapore. Some from my current boss. There's also that 1 important message that would've advised me that work was suspended. Some from a partner wannabe. Quite a few from well-wishing friends, and then some other trivial ones. 2 nights ago, I was out drinking with friends from highschool. I came home at about 3:00 AM since my wife couldn't annoy me with constant messages and phone calls. That was pretty nice. I guess there are always two sides to everything. It's nice to be "unreachable" for once.

1 or 2 days after I inadvertently left the damn thing in a taxi cab, we went to greenhills to buy a cheap one. I'm getting a free one anyway, so why waste money on a hi-end mobile phone? So we went around with a P1,500 budget. Fuckers kept giving me supposedly "new and original" Nokia 3310 units that felt every bit as fake as Pam Anderson's titties. Not that I've felt them before, but I'm sure those twin boys must've felt like cheap plastic too. I will never ever buy another phone from that place.

The 6280 isn't the best one out there. Truth be told, I dont really like 3G phones in the first place. Video calls? Picture this:

Wife: Where are you at right now?
Me: I'm here at the office. I need to finish a couple more reports so I wont be home till about 10PM. (Of course, I'm probably just at some bar. Seating on the toilet seat because the house is loud with Black-Eyed Peas music)
Wife: Really? Turn on the camera so I can see...
Me: Err...

Busted!

Besides, my boss will probably require me to have a blackberry pretty soon anyways. Corporate email access 24x7. No more excuse for not being "available". He must already be drooling right now thinking about me being "that" available.