北京

This marked the second time I went to China without my family, and definitely my first business trip to China. Excited? Oh yeah.

In the past, it was always China Eastern Airlines or Thai Airways – but now, I went there with (a bit of) style – Malaysian Airlines. It is one of the few things “Buatan Malaysia” that I’m proud of.

The Airbus A330 is definitely comfortable, equipped with on-seat touch-screen entertainment system – you can watch TV, movies, play games and listen to music (on crappy headphones, unless you bring your own with airline adaptor).

Malaysian Airlines prepared quite a wide variety of fresh content – from what I saw – X-Men: First Class was on the list. But what I usually watch are those rare Japanese flicks you don’t usually see coming to Malaysian cinemas.

If that’s not enough, there’s a USB port for you to plug in your thumb drive – you can browse your files and listen to your own music. Next time I’m definitely packing myself an airline adaptor.

However it was rather disappointing the games didn’t work. They went all the way of preparing a special controller (read: built-in QWERTY keyboard and gamepad buttons) but the games couldn’t load. (for my case: on both flights)

To top it off, Nasi Lemak definitely pwns sandwiches.

Enough about big flying bird machines, let’s talk about Beijing.

It was autumn, from what I heard from the locals, the best time to visit Beijing as it’s neither too cold nor too hot. 20-26 centigrade daytime, 10-19 centigrade at night – awesome weather that will leave you sunburned without knowing it.

The Beijing network of roads is organized into multiple rings. Outer rings are marked with higher numbers, while inner rings are of smaller numbers, closer to the heart of the city. It’s kind of like an onion if you ask me :P

Compared to Malaysia, the major roads are definitely wider, and are generally high capacity and straight. However the traffic is rather chaotic but still ordered, a very contrasting phenomena difficult to be explained unless seen by your own eyes.

In a nutshell, I would never want to drive in Beijing.

The people whom we are working with were very welcoming, accompanying us for lunch, dinner and driving us (my superior and I) around after work hours till late night – on working days mind you. Most of them already have their own families, spending time with us would mean less time spent with their wives and kids.

To be continued…

展望台

Purposely left work early to join buddies for dinner at Look-out Point (Ampang). Somehow it felt nostalgic when we passed by the place I once stayed, from childhood till couple of years ago.

I could still remember clearly the location and names of the shopping complexes, except a few closed down and a few new ones popped up since the day I left this place.

The look-out point is roughly 15 minutes drive from Ampang Point, around 300 meters above sea level. It was kind of a mixed of hazy and misty today, we didn’t get to see any spectacular views, but the cool air is kind of calming.

The food at Haven was quite pricey, but the portions are quite good. If you get yourself a good spot, then the ambience might just hit the right bang-per-buck spot you’re looking for. A nice place to chat up with friends, also a nice place to have a brief escape from the city life.

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VERBOSE

Paranoid. Confused. Didn’t know situation. Holding up a promise I made to myself, to eliminate all signs of threat coming from myself. To retract my fangs. To avoid barging into others’ territory. Probably ended up awkward.

新しい物語

Hello blog, it’s been a while. *blows away dust*

I’ve been busy lately, busy completing the things-to-do-before-I-start-working list, before I started working. Unfortunately I left out two of them – to go to Sunway Lagoon at least once in my life, and to go vacation on an island not surrounded by the Straits of Melaka.

Yes, I started working (finally). Currently worked as a software engineer in one of the companies owned by Dibena Group. From what looks like a random assignment, I got into a company known as Smart Consult Solutions Sdn Bhd.

Though the HQ is situated in Damansara Heights (Dibena HQ) – that place is so densely populated I can’t even find a car park at 8:30AM. In the end I gave up the second day and relocated my workplace to the Cyberjaya office (which the rest of our R&D team is situated).

As for what I worked on – I can only say it’s related to the smart card operating system (the technology behind MyKad and credit/ATM cards with chips not made out of potatoes).

It’s pretty cool actually, think of it as a miniature computer, equipped with memory to store your data, a general purpose CPU to do some calculations and dedicated hardware crypto processor to secure your data.

As for the current R&D members of the same team that I know of, 3 female colleagues from Panasonic lead by a guy who has worked on PCI Express using Verilog before (hardcore shit). Another 2 ladies from Panasonic will be joining us within this few days.

Yes, FEMALE CODERS. And yes, I am asking the same thing: where were they hiding all along?