Day 3 - Starting my work

My new office, and my beloved dual-mon Day 1: Colleague J drove me to the office Day 2: Colleague J drove me to the office again: another colleague gave me the printed bus schedule Day 3: I went to work by bus alone, and the 1st ride took 1hr 30min Day 4: 2nd attempt, the length of the travel went down to the normal 50min; yet another colleague gave me the thick published transportation schedule of the region. So things are improving, huh?! The colleagues in the office sounded fun and friendly. A typical dialog would be like: S: Wo ist Ralf? (Where is Ralf?) T: Er ist im Stress. (He is in stress.)

Be decisive please

In my office on the Christmas Eve Today, on the Christmas eve, the job agent was supposed to come at 2pm, and then I was supposed to sign my contract, and to throw my numerous worries aside, until I obtain my work permit. BUT... I have changed my mind at 1am, because of a phone call in the evening yesterday. I have decided to put myself at some risk, and get the "courage" to tell my boss "the plan". Apparently my mind is the sole agent driving me through my zig-zag trails. If only I don't need to care about fulfilling others' expectations, I'd then be a free entity... AND at 2pm, instead of signing my contract, I have resigned my job.

My desk@office

I begin to miss the stuff on my spacious desk, the dual LCD monitors, the Xtra on my desktop, the habour-facing office located 10-min walk from home, the jokes from a team of young colleagues, the occasionally enjoyable assignments, and what else? (This blurry picture to be replaced... :p) N.B: I have no chance to replace this blurry picture, because we are asked to remove all stuff with Reuters logo...

Stretching Exercise

I need a shoulder blade pinch...

A thick black cloud

Today my PM announced the new contractor renewal arrangements in our office. Starting Feb next year, an approval from the executive board will be required for all new hires and contract renewals. Take a look at the "Five signs you may be on the layoff list" (MarketWatch) :

1. Others are losing their jobs
2. Hiring freeze
3. Training budgets cut, projects slow down
4. Office gossip
5. Company is missing targets

A thick black cloud of signs 2, 3, and 4 shadows our office. The travel ban is still effective. The social committee cut various employee welfare. We didn't send out a dragon boat team this year! The gloomy outlook of the global economy surrounds me. When the PM reassured that the new arrangements are not going to affect those few of us, who have our contracts renewed before the end of Jan, I felt sorrow instead of relieved - like I will terminate my invaluable life after surviving a massacre.

C++ training@Reuters

I attended a 3-days "advanced object-oriented design" course at Reuters HK delivered by this Kelvin Henney, a UK consultant. The only thing which I was thinking through the class was - if I want to be a consultant in the future... well, maybe... but not like boosting in the public...

Thomson Reuters

The Town Hall@Sharaton and the circuit on my desk

The only question which I wanted to ask in the Town Hall must be.... if the HK Office will lose its importance in the new Thomson Reuters.

Individual Development Path

This is a recent campaign in the company about IDP planning:



Sometimes it is difficult for me to define what amounts to brain-wash, and what is simply a positive encouragement. The term career is still far away from me. I only believe my fate is interactive.

My humor style is sarcastic :p

Developer R: there is no error-report or probe capture with debug log to make sense of this bug or any comment within .. Tester L: It was an output defect and I did attach the probe capture. Question : Does that mean error-report and debug log are required to open a bug even there's no error showing? Manager M of L: Well, I am not sure whether error-report will help or not in this case, it should be easy to recreate. But the developer asked, let's give it to him (and I see you already done that). Tester L: Thanks, M. Here is another question... R assigned the bug back to me. Shall I assign back to development team? Or shall I just wait and see if any further comment from R? Manager M of L: Since you have provided him new information, please assign the bug back to him. Thanks. N.B: The fact isn't as bad as it seems. The actions involved are deem to be appropriate.

DataPower

Towards my goal of becoming a computer freak, let me blog about my work. Oh yeah, this is the first time in history, but I am not going to get technical...

These are the crazily expensive toys which I have been playing for 3 months in Taipei - SOA appliances - what a fancy name. I was told the non-discounted price of the yellow box is 8,000,000 NTD. Of course only giantic clients can afford to buy these boxes.

If I stay until Dec, the end of this project, I will be able to go through a full testing cycle.

The magical boxes

Interview@Redmond

Microsoft campus

A typical dialog between my collegues

Can you imagine, if I stay in this field for 5 years, maybe I will act like "John"...? I am on my way to become a computer freak??? kuocl - ic, so I don't need to cover this feature in my test case, right? John - Nope, it is fully tested by the autobuild test cases that use it. John - There should be tests that it does NOT work on an image running on a box. John - Indeed, that's part of a larger class of tests. You should test that extra elements and attributes are ignored by all the WS-RM SOAP methods and SOAP header elements. It's all supposed to be extensible. Not that this is a high-priority test. kuocl - John I am kind of confused about your last sentence. cannot understand what "part of larger class", "extra elements and attributes are ignored by all the WS-RM SOAP methods" "Not that this is a high priority test" mean. kuocl - sorry, a little technical for me to understand. John - All of the control messages between machines speaking WS-RM are in SOAP, which is (of course) in XML. For instance, . See the definition of this on page 17 of the specificiation. Note the ... all over the place. What they are saying is that you are free to extend the protocol by putting a XML element inside the , and the recipient should just ignore them if they aren't understood. This is what all the XPATH expressions with "any" in them, like the one at line 544, and the one at line 599, are expressing. The one at line 544 is about adding an attribute, it's valid to do http://localhost:900/. John - The one at line 599 is the one that allows inside . John - We won't emit any extensions, but if Microsoft were to send a message with such an extension, we should silently ignore the extension. John - Note however, that this extensibility is NOT universal in SOAP. There is the MustUnderstand attribute in a SOAP header, and you will see some requirements about that in the specification. For instance, headers must have MustUnderstand, so they would be , so that you can't have them accidentally ignored. John - (Not sure about the capitalization of MustUnderstand.) kuocl - your point is to make sure that box can handle extended elements and attributes correctly, if no mustUnderstand="1" specified, which means box just ignore those elements and attributes. John - As for not high priority, I mean that these are tests I'd leave to the end of the project. There's almost no chance it doesn't work right, there are more important than this. John - Right, but mustUnderstand only applies at the level of elements that are direct children of . So has the SOAP meaning of must understand. But if inside that there was , that mustUnderstand does NOT have any SOAP meaning. kuocl - yeap,

Job search update

Had an Interview with the Shanghai hiring manager, he said he has learnt German some 16 years ago, he told me "Morgen" and "Auf wiedersehen". It is funny that when I had interviews with this company, the first time I was in London, second time in Tübingen, by the third time I will be in HK. Will I be in somewhere else for the 4th interview? I haven't written back my collegue to meet him before I leave. I'm not sure if I am rude by doing this... I simply have an uncomfortable feeling when people treat me "too well" ... I hate guys showing-off to me their possessions. Hey.. I'm earning very little, but I'm financially self-sufficient, and I don't sell my affection.

Departmental meeting

Had a test in the morning on data structures and Java. I think I will have no problem exempting the classes. They don't want to deal with me either (I guess). Maybe I should try to attend the Intro to CL class tomorrow?! I really don't know what I am doing all these silly stuff for. Will I stay here for 2 more years to complete a BA, let's say I can survive this semester? Not very likely.... Afternoon was the departmental meeting. As a small potatoe, attending this meeting is always a matter of "presence", or a German listening training. Today's topic is about: IBMers Foundational Competance. No one in the department, except the manager, knows these 3 values. 

My Life@Praktikum

It is already 2 weeks since I began my internship. I must tell, my recent life is one of the most difficult time during my stay in Germany. As the only girl, the only Asian in the department, and the only one working with Linux among the interns, my work is as they warned me before: very independent. With my poor German and quiet personality, it is extremely difficult to chat. Although some of my collegues, especially Frank and Stefen, notice my difficulties and have taken the initiative to talk to me. The long travel and work hours also kill. However, the best thing about my internship is having Oliver as my supervisor: a workaholic who works till 1am in the lab at night, and a very experienced programmer. He knows what kind of tasks he should assign to me to let me learn, and sounds also very friendly (maybe in an European manner though :p) But my life here can be worse without him. Ein Schatz: "So... Frau So, Du kannst deinen Personal-ausweis abholen."

My office@Labor Bö

I must bring a big bottle, because there is no drinking machine... 6 Tipps für ein prima Klima am E-place 1. Herzlich Wikommen! Das fängt ja gut an: Gehen Sie auf neue Kollegen zu! 2. Blieben Sie sauber! Sauber macht lustig: Ein aufgeräumter e-place gehört zur Tagesordnung! 3. Laut ist keine Stärke! Geben Sie's ruhig weiter: Am e-place ist laut out! 4. Teamgeist beflügelt! Der Kollege rennt, wenn's brennt: Teamarbeit macht den e-place zum "Wie-place"! 5. Feste feiern! Teaming ist für's Business wichtig: Erfolge feiern IBMer dann auch richtig. 6. Mit freundlichen Grüßen! Freundlich kommt an: Eine nette Begrüßung wird begrüßt!

First day at Labor

My first day at Labor Böblingen. I will have a 5.5 months internship here. I was a bit shocked that there is *no* water machine and no stationaries for the employees. The interns like to play Kickers (table soccer) everyday during the lunch break, which is a game that I cannot play well. The life after I begin my internship is very terrible, because now I am a pendler between Tü and Bö. My work takes away at least some 12 hours from me every day, which leaves me *NO* personal time (regardless the working hours is very flexible). Frankly speaking, I have problems adapting to this new work environment. In my office, there is a poster about some rules having an enjoyable e-work place. The first rule is about welcoming new comers, which are ETs and they illustrate my situation very well. I also give myself some extra responsibilities. It is my target to show them: 1) There exist girls who are not stupid at programming. 2) There exist Chinese who speak some German. 3) I will play Kickers well someday :p

IBM Labor

Visited the IBM Labor at Boeblingen today. I suspect it's not that far away by car, but with public transportation it took me 1.5 hr one-way. Saw the largest server room so far I have seen in my life. Unfortunately photos were not allowed... IBM LABOR: a small pentagon like place in a country park!? Then I received the email from Ali urging me for program implementation status... wed meeting... Hurry up Angie!!! At the evening, had our first campus challenge group meeting with Alex and Nils (one month after the briefing LOL), I think my presence slow down their discussion, because they have to speak in English or translate... :p I feel the difference of a CS student and E-commerce students. I must admit I'm not trained to have a business mind. I'm not sure if the application is going the right way, because it's not particularly innovative. If I could find out such a thing, I think I would have won the game!!! :p

Exciting news from project!!

Today I received an email from the project:

Diese Woche findet kein Meeting statt, aber vergeßt nicht, die Dokumentation zu schreiben! Bisher habe ich noch nichts neuesgesehen!

Response: Yes, I also notice this... :p

Die nächsten, wichtigen Termin sind: 15-19. Mai in Berlin das erste Integrationstreffen bei Siemens, bei dem alle Softwareteile von uns, Universität Bremen und TU-Berlin zusammengefügt werden. Möchte jemand von Euch freiwillig mit nach Berlin kommen. DieReisekosten werden natürlich bezahlt.

Reponse: I also want to go!!! But am I too small a potato to be qualified?!

Nicht vergessen, Siemens' top management is watching you. Also nicht vergessen, Doku zu schreiben.

Response: Why is there suddenly a sentance in English inside a full page of German? Am I the shooting target for not writing the documentations...?! :p

Sca(r)lenet project integration

如果我有佢咁勁就好 + Sca(r)lenet project integration Actually I didn't contribute much to this project. It's my first week to take up the job. How will it go?