How Shit Happens

When engineers report to their managers.

Engineer:"The yield from the pre-manufacturing process verification build is too low. The design and chosen material of the product is not manufacturable. We cannot improve the process any more. We need to perform a total re-design in order to proceed for product release!"

When managers update to their senior managers.

Manager:"The yield of the manufacturing process is not optimum yet. We need to further optimize the process, and fine tune the product design which might pro-long the time line a bit.

When senior managers update to VPs.

Senior Manager:"The engineers are optimizing the process now. We should be able to improve the yield after optimization and the project is on schedule for product release and we will able to accept order after product release."

Finally, when VPs update to CEO.

VP:"We are on schedule for mass production and deliver the customer order."

E-mail

Nowadays, e-mail has become a common tool used in office for communication. People used e-mail to send out meeting minutes, data, information & etc. Sometimes you can observe some funny behaviors when you see people using e-mail.

Some think that their job function is to write and send e-mails only. When you ask them to work, they will tell you:

Engineer A: "I still have hundreds of e-mail haven't read one you know?"

and show you the "whole-world-owe-him" face. :|


Sometimes I prefer to call-up the person to discuss the matter when we are short of time or for simple matters.

Me: "Ei! Do you know what is the program used to test this ar?"
Engineer B: "Can you send me a mail?"

WTF?!?

Worse still, after you send out e-mails, you still need to call to inform the person to check his e-mail.

Me: "Ei you haven't reply me leh..."
Engineer B: "You didn't tell me you send me a mail what."

Some people love writing e-mails so much until they send e-mails to the colleague who is just sitting in front to ask for something.

There are also people who only know how to FORWARD e-mails instead of writing it.

E-mail from a Technical Marketing/Applications Engineer who supposed to answer customer's query but instead, he just forwarded it to us:

Sometimes people use short form or abbreviations to keep things short. My teammate, Miss HC is the laziest person I have ever met who fully utilized all these short forms.

Yxx Kxxx,

The loose units and adaptor board, CY had passed to u this end Monday.
Also, I hv reminded u on this tues after finishing testing the adaptor board type, to be sent for Latch Up.
Could u expedite ?

B.rgds..sxxxxxy

Like she's chatting on MSN.

Home Sweet Home

After one week in hell Shenzhen, I have finally back to Penang!

I have never felt good about living in China. Especially when you need to work late until midnight almost everyday.

Outskirt factory area where our CM factory is located.

Not to mention there are always pimps outside the hotel hunting for customers. Every single person on the street looks like going to rob you anytime.




At last, my work is done there. I can finally go home. I went back through Shekou (蛇口) port to Hong Kong to catch my flight back.

Ticket counter of Shekou port.

It's easier compare to ground transportation (shuttle bus, limousine & etc.) as you can check-in your flight and your luggage prior reaching the airport. You can also skip the immigration process of checking-in and out of Hong Kong after you check-out from Shenzhen.

Check-in counter for your flights and luggage.

Everything seems so nice when I was about to leave this country.

The sea looks nice.

The poster with broken cum grammar mistake English safety notice looks funny.




Except for the waitress on board with the ferry... :(

Suddenly, I felt I love my country when the airplane flew back from China and touched down at Penang airport. This happened every time when I came back from China.

Even though most of them up there who are managing the country are dumb asses.

Tough Week

This week is a tough week. Our Field Sales team escalated customer issue to the Marketing team.

Customer -> Field Sales -> Marketing

Then Marketing escalated to R&D team.

Customer -> Field Sales -> Marketing -> R&D

The "Fire" heated up until Division Head level.

Customer -> Field Sales -> Marketing -> R&D -> Division Head

Like the Australia fires, bigger and bigger.




Then Division Head told our R&D big boss,

"Send our people there to verify the samples if needed."

So I'll be going to Shenzhen again next week. But I'm not going to meet any SIA air stewardess with push-up bras anymore.

Coz I'm flying with Cathay Pacific. I'm not sure whether their air stewardess wearing any push-up bras, I hope they doesn't wear bras at all are pretty also.

End up I'm the only one who's going to save the fire...

God please help me!

Teleconference

Sometimes it's funny to listen to the conversation of people having teleconference in office.

When they call local or internal people for discussion, they'll speak in Hokkien:

A:" Ei! wa ai ga lu discuss jit eh ar."
B:" Discuss har mit? Data ng si send hor lu liao meh?"

When they call overseas to Americans, they'll speak in English:

A:" Hi Jason! I would like to discuss the data with you now. Can you turn to slide seven?

Instantaneously switch to broken American accents.


When they call to Europeans such as British, they'll still speak in English:

A:" Hi Andrew! I would like to discuss the data with you now. Can you turn to slide seven?

But still use broken American accents, instead of British.

Then, when they call to Japanese, my old boss who spend several years in Japan will try to show off his fluent Japanese:

Old Boss:" watashiwa xxx xxx xxxdesu xxxx xxxx desukah... blar blar"

But if you do not speak Japanese, then you have to be patience with their crappy English and try to imitate them.

This is my personal experience:

Yoshida-san:" Pin eighto?"
Me:" Yes, pin eighto of the testo boardo."

When my colleague speaks to Taiwanese supplier, she thought they speak the same kind of Hokkien like ours:

Miss HC:" So, 你要keep我in the loop pun..."

FYI, pun is Malay okay?


Another colleague tried to ask our Taiwanese supplier about the tolerance of their product package dimension:

Loke:"你们的 package height 加减多少?"
Supplier:"我们的东西没有偷功减料的!"

But the funniest thing would be listening to the conversation between my boss and our Chinese supplier with his Mandarin cum broken American accents:

Boss:" 请你 arrange engineer to help build sample to check 那个test data 的 accuracy 和 tester repeatability..."

Boss, don't force yourself lar... if you really forgot how to speak Mandarin, just speak English lar...

It's Friday!

One week flies again... (dear colleagues, sounds familiar hor?) It's Friday again!

Time pass by in just a blink of eye when you are busy with your work. I feel like Hiro Nakamura was beside me in the office to speed up the time.

I think I should celebrate the day with some nice food and drinks. Since today is Friday, I believe TGI Friday's will be the best choice to go for.




Monday will come even faster, so we should enjoy ourselves as much as possible during the weekends. When Monday comes, we shall 'celebrate' Monday blues in this new restaurant in town!

.
.
.
.
.

CxBxi It's Monday's

(Pls forgive me if this word have offended some of you. I can't find a better word to describe Monday other than this one.)

Engineering Terms in Daily Life

Engineers used a lot of engineering terms while chatting in our daily activities.

When we're waiting in long queue at restaurant, we said the stall cannot Ramp.

Homemade donuts are referred as Engineering Samples, and the one in J Co. Donuts are Mass Production. When the size of the donuts are very different from each other, we say the Cpk is low.

My engineering samples

We described women as Analogue Circuit because they are very susceptible to Noise (emotion), and you need to do Characterization in order to fully understand them.

Sometimes you need to make an Engineering Judgment when they are moody because you do not have sufficient Sample Size to support your decision as they refuse to tell you what they have in mind.

When we met with a group of ladies, we usually performed Sorting across the Sample Distribution and build up Database. The pretty ones will be considered as Bin 1, and the ugly ones will be categorized as Reject Bin or Yield Loss.

Bin 1


Reject Bin or Yield Loss

If there aren't enough pretty women among the group, we said the Yield is low. This will initiate Low-Yield-Trigger and we might need to revise our Spec Limit so that we can get something out of it. But most of the time, we'll try our best to stick to our ISO standards.

Ladies that are so ugly like her are described as Design Error or Infant Mortality.

Design Error

However for women like her,

Surfacing and 3D Rendering

We would say she have done some Surfacing and 3D-Rendering to become pretty.

Sometimes when people asked us questions which we cannot answer immediately, we usually replied them "Let me perform some Engineering Studies and Simulation.".

But one ULTIMATE term that was frequently used by my ex-colleague would be....

Dunno Lar!

My dear team-mates, cheers!

Note:
1) Ramp is the process to increase a production line's capacity in a short period.

2) Cpk is the measure of the process capability or how well a production line can produce goods in same consistency.

3) Yield is the rate of a production line to produce good parts.

4) Low-Yield-Trigger is a process initiated when the yield of a process drops lower than the critical stage.

5) Characterization is a process to determine the behavior of a system.

Nin Chor Sei (年初四) Face

Tomorrow will be my first day to work again for 2009 after twelve days of holiday.

I spent eight of the twelve days in Ipoh, living a fairly boring and primitive life without broadband internet connection, watching Astro's repeating TV programmes day and night.

Out of these eight days, I spent five of them eating medicine. I had high fever the day just before I started my holiday.

Luckily I was able to drive back home.

It has been grateful for me of having the chance to stay with my family for the long holiday. Frankly speaking, I have not been able to accompany my parents so frequent after I started working.

Anyway, I have to get back to work again. :| I know my LCD monitor and telephone in office have been missing me for a long time.

My dear colleagues, please find something to entertain me if I show you all nin chor sei kind of face tomorrow...

Ranking

According to our observation, this is how Chinese girls in Mainland China rank Asian guys from other countries in their preferred list.

No.1 : Hong Kong
No.2 : Singapore
No.3 : Taiwan
No.4 or lower : Malaysia


This is how we found out. Please refer to the conversation below:

Me: "您好!"
(Hello!)

Leng Lui: "陈先生, 您好!"
(Hi Mr. Chen. They like to address me as 陈先生, although my personal details clearly stated I'm 曾先生...)

Leng Lui: "您的国语说得很好呀!"
(You can speak fluent Chinese!)

After overheard we speak Cantonese among colleagues.

Leng Lui: "您也会说白话哦! 您是从香港(No.1)来的吗?"
(You can speak Cantonese as well! Are you from Hong Kong(No.1)? Asking us with exciting tone.)

Me: "我不是从香港来. 您猜猜看?"
(Nope. Would you like to guess?)

Leng Lui: "那您一定是从新加玻(No.2)来的."
(Then you must be coming from Singapore(No.2).)

Me: "也不是."
(Nope.)

Leng Lui:"难道是台湾(No.3)?"
(Taiwan(No.3)?)

Me: "也不是."

Then the girl stopped guessing. Shxx!

Me: "我从马来西亚(No.4 or lower)来的."
(I'm from Malaysia(No.4 or lower).)

Leng Lui:"哦."
(Oh!)

Then show us the "semi-smile-face" :|

Holiday

I have decided to start taking 2 of my 12.5 days "Going-to-Burn" leaves last two days.

When I was in university, holiday to me means I can...

1. Play computer games all day.


2. Study all day.


3. Doing nothing all day.

Nowadays, holiday to me means I have to...

1. Wash my weekly piled up clothes.


2. Cut the getting-long grass at the front


and the back of my house.


3. Sweep & mop the floor upstairs, downstairs and staircase as well.

4. Drive Ms. Koh go down town to take her passport.

At the same time......


Still log on to our office network through VPN to check and reply emails.

Dear boss, I hope you have read my blog too... :)

Life's not as great as old days after start working. Isn't it?

10 Reasons Why You Should & Should Not Go Business Trip

10 Reasons Why You Should Go:

1) You get to stay in high-class hotels.

Shangri-la Shenzhen China

2) You get to eat free food everyday.

Room service meal costs me 200 over RMB every night




























3) You get to show off the places you have been to.

Shanghai China




























4) You get to earn free points for your frequent flyer program.















5) You get to earn free credit card points if you do not have a company credit card.










6) You get to meet SIA Air Stewardess with push-up bras.

Image "borrowed" from someone named hunting_owl in Flikr (sorry ar!)


















7) You get to make new friends from other countries.

Wasan from HANA Electronics Thailand















8) You get to show Malaysian Chinese are better than Chinese in China, Taiwan & other part or the world by speaking 6 different kinds of languages.

9) You get to buy duty-free stuff on the way back home.

Johnie Walker's Red Label


















10) You get to show off your experience in your blog like what I'm doing right now (sorry ar!).

10 Reasons Why You Should Not Go:

1) You may end up staying in lousy budget room if you're unlucky.

Singapore Ambassador Transit Hotel's budget room. It does not come with private toilet one okay?





























2) If you think getting your ride in Business Class is fun. Think again!

Business class passengers are mostly served by lead or chief air stewardess (red uniform), and most of these air stewardess are... what should I say? MATURED...








3) You may end up going together with your boss and not being able to enjoy anything other than discussing work with him all the time.

4) I will have to wish you luck if you are visiting Taiwanese suppliers. They usually promise you that everything will be done before your visit. But end up you will be doing everything that have been promised by them when you're there.

5) You may get screwed by your customers and get quarantined until mid-night.

6) If your customers screw you until the last day of your trip, most likely you'll be continue getting screwed by your boss when you are back to office.

7) You may end up staying back in hotel for the whole trip because there are too many pimps waiting for you outside the hotel.

Outside Shangri-la Shenzhen China. Some of the men standing at the entrance/exit of subway station are pimps.















8) Get prepared to get stuck in major traffic jam for 2 hours while going back hotel after work.

Traffic jam while going back hotel.















9) You may end up drinking kopi-O in China because most of the milk in the country contains melamine.

10) You may end up stuck in Thailand airport for 3 days and participate the Thais' protesting against their government.