Yet another 4 year cycle

Time flies. There goes my 4-year again.

4 years back. I was assigned by my company to a local tel-co client. I joined the Enterprise Service Bus team there, where all team members belong to the same company as mine.

I remember i only had 2 days to take over one existing Java Standalone Program, also an "adapter" to the client's back end system. The program owner is a Filipino and he had to fly back to The Philippines two days later. The project phase then was System Integration Test (SIT).

So i spent 2 days with my Filipino colleague for the Knowledge Transfer session. Back then my Java knowledge was not really solid so it was kind of difficult for me. My previous experience was more on web application rather than standalone program. And I had to deal with web services(SOAP/HTML), API (to talk to the back end system), Message Queue and etc. Nowadays i think those stuff are easy but during the first week that I got to learn all these I just felt these were so challenging.

What was my mood back then? I took it easy. I still left office before 8pm. I was telling myself I should not again force myself to work till late nights, like what I did in my first company. One should be willing to work late night that the work result will only be good, that is my realization so far after working for many years.

After my Filipino colleague left, for every SIT issue, the client person in charge would look for me, as i was the successor for the program. They were disappointed that i could not commit to solve every SIT issue within a day. And they sent an email to my boss that they complaint I was not the suitable candidate to take over the program. My boss was kind. He is a very understanding one. He stepped in and helped me to resolve some critical issues. I really wanted to thank him. Till today I still remember his help. I know some people do not really like his working style but that does not affect my gratitude towards him.

Finally the program went live. I enjoyed every moment installing the the prerequisite software for the program to the production server, with root access. I enjoyed deploy the program to the production server with the help from deployment team. I enjoyed working from home for a few days continuously to troubleshoot the production issues of the program. That was really tiring but it was fun as well.

Few weeks later, my company managed to sign a Out Source deal with this client. That means my company will run the client's IT services from infrastructure to every services & systems. That was really a big deal to my company. The deal created a lot of job opportunities. Anyway the contract ended just last month.

So once Out Source deal was signed, my boss moved on to join one of the projects. Subsequently our team changed 3 bosses in one year time. LOL. I remember there was this boss. He has a poker face. He looks a really strict guy. I was kind of worry knowing he was going to be my boss. In fact, he turned up to be quite a good boss to me. He knows how to reject all unnecessary projects. He knows how to prioritize projects for us. I really appreciate his help during his term.

Soon another boss has come to join us. And with his presence our team had turned into Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) team. Actually what changed is just the name of the team and the service methodology.
This boss stayed with us until last month. He is really a good one. All team members really appreciate his guidance. As for myself, i also appreciate much the trust and freedom he has given to me. I can actually conclude that he is the best superior i ever had. His existence is part of the important process of my life, indirectly, but very important.

What interesting is, I have this good friend, an ex-colleague, joined in the same team as me! He started off in another team after the Out Source deal. Then because he was playing with some integration product, due to the nature of work, he finally joined the SOA team. I actually never expected that both of us would end up working in the same team again. He is a special one in my life. He has been introducing a lot of personal improvement stuff to me. He led to to another meditation teacher. I really owe him a lot a lot. I will not mention all the stories here because it will be very lengthy. Ha ha ha.

Few months after SOA team was setup. I became a module lead. I was leading a team working on the java module. Team members came and left. When our company left the client, i had 2 team members left. In the beginning, it was a bit challenging for me to duplicate my experience and knowledge to them because at the same time i was rushing for projects. Fortunately they are very eager to learn about the module. I just needed to spend like 2 or 3 months to coach them and then one of them eventually was taking almost all the works while i just hid behind and provided necessary support to her. I really really appreciate her help in this. She is a good team member.Of course, I have to thank the rest also for their effort. With their help, I managed to get away from getting calls every minute every second. Imagine I once had to entertain calls almost every night or during dinner time. My dinner mate was there to "testify" this. Ha ha.

It was a meaningful 4 years. Not only at job. But in my life as well. I met one senior citizen who actually shared with me a lot of concepts, a lot of knowledge and a lot of interesting stuff. Other than the friend I mentioned earlier, I owe this senior citizen friend a lot a lot too. Of course over the 4 years I managed to get together with all my university mates. We all had crazy memories during our university life. One of them was my daily dinner mate. So in KL, we talked about a lot of craps LOL everyday. We played FIFA in cybercafe and I really enjoyed all the games. We watched a lot of movies and spent much time crap about the movies also.

So, that's my 4 years in KL. It is like dream. What left is only memories. And I forget to mention I almost lost my life 4 years ago in a severe car accident. Just one week before I started my new job. On my trip back to hometown from KL, my car hit the divider of the expressway. Thank divine, thank divine that I managed to survive. Only this year one medium told me that It was the amulet that saved me from the accident. Life is really full of surprise. And now I have come to one crossroad that if I am courageous enough to LIVE MY DREAM.