Friday, March 27, 2009

The Good News and Bad News

Today I finally broach the subject of my employment with my boss, regarding the rumors that I will be transferred to the HQ office.

With the corporate restructuring that happen recently, we were promised that there will not be any change. I guess that is not entirely true after all. As part of the restructuring, one member of the IT team decided to take early retirement. There will be just two of them left so that is not going to be enough.

The good news is that I will be promoted one step higher in the salary grade. The bad news is that I will be moved to the HQ. This decision, as my boss said, was made by people higher up at regional level. So this is not something that he, or even the boss in HQ (if they would), could protest or have any say. He said he did fought this but it did not make any difference.

I must say that I am not happy about this arrangement. While it's true that I will get more money and I am not getting fired. But I am perfectly content with my current situation. I love the fact that I could only walked to work, the workload is fairly light, and I have varieties of responsibilities other than IT related issues.

Now I have to look forward to travel to work, being in a close proximity with the bosses and less time to slack off :ppp

I am not suppose to know about this yet because they still ironing out the details of how I will be transferred. Also my boss seems to be able to manage that I will not be transfer anytime soon. At least not before the computer woes has been dealt with. Or at least, as the head of Thai staff speculate, until this boss got transfers as his contract expired.

While this is not entirely bad arrangement, I still feels horrible. I guess that I am not the type that handle change very well. I am not sure if this is due to the fact that we used to move quite a few times in the pass, before settled down at our current location. My boss did said that I have to concentrate on the good of it and not the bad. I also have to remind myself that it is not like I got fired and I can still come back to visit. I will probably got to visit at least once a week. I hope I will feels better after I woke up.

Although I will get paid more, at this moment I do not think it worth all the *monkeys* that I will be taken on. Before this year I will say that my job is relatively stress free. Perhaps not so much in the future.

Now I just have to wait and see...

Monday, March 16, 2009

Two Male Doing Tango

I saw this from another blog that I read. I saw the preview image and I just have to see it :)

It is not hard to see that they must be professionals. The butt kicking was certainly cute :P It would be fun to dance like that, although I would prefer Cha-cha-cha over Tango but I get what I can see :)

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

I've watched the Watchmen

I spend Monday hanging out with a fan of my blog :) Despite the minimal number of people reading this, I do have a good fan :)

We meet up in MBK and wandered around the area. I mention the movie 'Watchmen', he said he had watched it a couple days ago but badly jet lag and slept through half the movie. I said I wants to watch this movie in big theater, like the couple deck theater in the old days or IMAX theater. As it turns out, the IMAX theater in Siam Paragon is showing Watchmen, so we went up to buy the tickets.

Since I have not read the graphic novel, I cannot tell how much of the movie stay true to the original source. However, I feels that the movie is, somehow, looks very real. Most of the 'Superheroes' did not seems to have special power other than highly trained fighting skills. Except for Dr. Manhattan of course. I couldn't shake the feelings that the movie feels *real* somehow. The way the characters interacts, the way they think and how they behave. Although some of the characters seems rather simplistic in their behaviors.

The looks of the movie did not feels over the top, although many of the action sequences were. Some of the scenes were very violent, one was particularly grusome. Interestingly enough, they only censored the frontal package of Dr. Manhattan but not the behinds of all the people who show them :P

Monday, March 09, 2009

No More Japanese Suki and Waiting for the right Watchmen

Today I was reminded why this is the second times in about five years that I have had Japanese Suki. I do not like it much.

Like I mention in my previous post, it was a meat-centric meal, particularly beef, which I am not crazy about. They were thin slices, but not too fond of it. My friend loved it, according to his bf.

So I propose another Japanese restaurant. A Japanese grill house this times, in Victory Monument area. I will probably do it with them in a couple of weeks.

I also wants to see Watchmen but the movie is not shown in the ex-IMAX theater in the cineplex near my house. Nor it is playing in the current IMAX theater in Paragon either... I wants to watch this movie in big screen like the old days with two decks seats.

The only theater like that left are in Siam Square area, which is quite far for me. We will see... I am planning to buy 24" monitor anyway. I will be one of the movie that I will download later for sure.

PS: It is so hot right now... I can't wait till rainy season...

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Blazing Heat

The Summer is now hit BKK in full force. Luckily though, it seems that the heat mostly generate from the sun as the night is still quite comfortable once the light was off.

Now I shower with the shower head turned to spray mode which feels very nice on my skin. As oppose to 2 months ago when I have to turn it to massage mode to get the water in thick stream which retain the most heat.

Tomorrow will be the second times I will eat Japanese style sukiyaki. Which is very different from the Chinese style that I usually see or had in BKK. The soup is different, the way you eat it is quite different not to mention the ingredient.

I only had it once several years ago. It was a meat-centric meal that I did not feet very good afterward. Maybe they will have some noodle this time around.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

The Day I Handed out Cans of Whopped Ass

Today I did a lot of follow up on various issues which still not resolved in my office. The ongoing process of Formica resurfacing bookcases, the broken projector, the car exhuast fume that came into the a/c vent, and the strangely high counter number of the new photocopier.

I have manage to express my displeasure with the way things are on the first three issues, which still goes unresolved for a couple weeks (The car exhaust problem is longer). Especially the bookcase resurfacing and projector cases. The resurfacing issue is by now, a week late. The work is just not up to par, the current carpenter just not have enough skill to do it neatly. After working on it for 2-3 days. I finally had enough and ask the vendor to send better personal who have enough skill to do the task. The new carpenter is said to come in on Friday morning.

The car exhaust fume issue is also a big problem for my office. So far, the problem has been handle rather poorly (in my idea at least). Since the building techinicians still cannot figured out where the leaks happen. Since it only happen after other normal office hour, as other office workers went home, their cars congested in the back of my floor and the fume gathered. After giving me non-specific "We are looking into what/where/how to fix the problem", I finally told the contact person to give me update every two weeks regardless. I considered this is serious issue. It is unacceptable that this happen, not to mention the rather nonchanlant attitude of the maintenant crew.

I call to follow up on when will we get back the projector. The supplier was not much help because they also have to send the projector to HP. So I decided to ask for HP contact number and do the follow up myself. After calling them a couple fo times, asking for specific finish date, express my displeasure with their service and some hardline questioning, I finally got a confirmation that the projector will be ready to pickup tomorrow.

The photocopier issue was a lot easier to handle. The saleslady who visited the office today had figured out the reason why the counter is so high. If bypass feed tray was used with default configuration the machine will count it as two pages. Maybe... it will also count double when the A3 size pages were made. I will have to check this out when the techinician comes.

All these incompetent raised my blood pressure. Although I partially enjoy railing on these people who seems to unable to give me the specific date or solution to my problem. Of which, then, it became their problem. I suppose this is my learning not to take crap from people and demand of them what I need.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Another Banned Youtube Account

**Sigh** My second youtube account got permanent banned because I uploaded *copyrighted* materials...

For some of the stuffs, I admit that it is not quite right to uploaded them. But geez at least one or two things got me banned was uncalled for. I suppose I would hardly understand why youtube or rather Google now, feels that they needs to policing the copyrighted material on youtube. Everything that went up there got their quality reduced considerbly that it won't worth much. I Know because I had download videos from youtube and rip the audio into mp3 for me to listen to.

I had checked the video clip with codec analyzer and found that the audio usually got reduced to 22000 Mhz and 64 KBit. Sometimes it even got reverted from streo to mono!

I am not sure if I will make another account or not... After all I had uploaded a bunch of stuff that is well liked by a lot of people... I am not sure if it would worth the efforts anymore.