Raining & Traffic Jam Morning

Driving to work this morning is demanding. The rain started at midnight last night and it continue until the morning during the rush hour.

Everywhere you turn there is a long queue. Initially, I wanted to make a U-Turn back home to work from home as our office allows it at times, but then only realise that there is a tele-conference scheduled at 10am. So, have to drive through the traffic and come to the office.

Along the way there were so many incident that contributed to this traffic chaos. It started with a car broke down not far away from my house, then as I drove pass it, just after paying the toll, there is a rear end collision. Then, not too far off from there, another 3 cars pile up.

Then, when I reaches the office, the office is still not fully filled up, many people started to arrive only at about 9.30 to 10. It seems the whole area traffic is in a chaos. People coming from all directions towards the office got stuck in the traffic.

This is very typical scenario. Many accidents happens during rain. At times I wonder are the drivers are not able to make proper judgement during rain or are people tend to drive faster during rain to catch up the lost time in the jam or is it due to the fact that people is driving slower during rain, they got sleepy and slept off during rain?

For whatever reasons, do drive carefully during rain. Have a safe journey.

Cloudy Morning

Whenever I see a cloudy morning sky, it always reminds me of the weather in the UK. Not that UK do not have sunny days, maybe because when I first arrived there it is autumn and the weather most of the time is cloudy. Not many days you can see the sunshine.

I still can remember all of us walking to the university every morning with 'smoke' coming out from our mouth. As we all stayed within the university area, we can see a lot of people of all nationalities making their way for the morning lecture.

The cloudy morning also provide an ideal condition to continue sleeping... but what to do?? It is a weekday today and have to wake up and work. Thought of working from home today but not able to do it as there were some meeting to catch up in the office.

Well, hope the weekend weather is also as ideal for "extended" sleep as today....

Fridays

Time do travel fast especially when you attend any training sessions which last for days. This is even more true when you are learning new things in the training.

For the last 3 days of the week, I have attended the First Aid / CPR & Fire Fighting Training, and today its already Friday.

I like Fridays. Reason is because tomorrow is the weekend and I don't need to wake up early to come to work for 2 days. Over the weekend, I can bring my lovely gf for a date, have some exercise i.e. swimming, and catch up on my sleep and spend some time with my mom at home either helping her preparing lunch on Sunday or go to the market together to stock up our fridge for the coming week. Occasionally, on weekends, I became a tuition master teaching a young Form 3 student science and maths. This boy I mean used to be my neighbour and my parents babysit him when he was about 2 years old and spend lots of time in my house at the time. Even as he now 15 years old, he is still very close to us and spends his weekends and holidays at my house.

My date starts early on the eve of the weekend itself. Normally on Friday evening, I will spend time after work having dinner with my gf and catch up the week's happening. I really look forward for this time.

So for all of you out there, enjoy the Friday and weekends....

First Aid, CPR & Fire Fighting Training

Our company had arrange a First Aid / CPR training for us. It is a 2 days course + free one day fire fighting skills.

This course is gives me a lot of memory refreshment. I have received previous training on CPR and First Aid back in school days being in St. John Ambulance club. Then, I also did my lifeguard training (as I am a certified life guard) and learn more advance CPR.

However, it seems like the CPR courses had been simplified with the latest version (dated to 2005 - latest revision). This is a more simplified version of doing a CPR.

The second day is the first aid training. We are trained to put on bandages, slings, supports, neck brace, head restrain and also proper way to lift the injured person. In the afternoon session, we have a "drama" training. This is where some will be chosen to be the victim - where they will pour some red colouring on you to simulate blood and see your response. It is good and really realistic. I just had a real feel of panic situation when you see so many victims laying down on the floor with various injuries. The situation is not easy to control and handle.

The final day of the training session is the basic fire fighting training. This training basically train you on the class of fires, the type of fire extinguishers and their content. In the market there were 4 types of fire exthingusihers, namely, water, powder, foam and carbon dioxide. For most of the fires powder can be used, but it is a little messy, but what the heck, in a fire we don't care much about mess anymore right? We got a chance to try out the feeling of using a fire extinguisher for real rather than just looking at it hanging on the wall everyday.

Anyway, the best part of the fire fighting course is when the trainer pull out the fire hose from the cabinet and connected it to the fire hydrant and open the valve. The volume and pressure of the water from the fire hydrant is really incredible and it is not easy to hold down the water hose / nozzle.

For having completed the 3 days training and having passed all the assessment, I can proudly call myself a certified First Aider which is valid for 2 years before taking a refresher course.

Over the 3 days, I learn a lot and find it is really useful. So, to all of you out there, if you get the chance to attend such training, don't miss it. I am very sure it will be useful and lots of fun.... enjoy training...

Tender documents

I'm pretty sure many of us have in a way handle tendering documents before. I have seen countless of them in my 9 (coming close to 10 years) years of working experiences.


The thing that never fail to amaze me are the following points:

• Most tender documents are thick. Even thicker than the Yellow Pages / telephone directory at time for a small package of work and at times it comes in multiple volumes.

• The person who sat and wrote the tender documents are so deep thinker / writer, he basically covers everything under the sky and leave no space for you to go wrong... or was it for you to go wrong?? hmm..

• The data required for most of the tender documents is so tedious that it will take at least a few days of 8 hours work just to get all the data.

• The specifications / standard to follow is so details, virtually all applicable standards e.g. AISI, ANSI, ASTA, IPCEA, NEMA, UL, AMCA, ISO, ICE, CEN, CENELEC, JIS, DIN, NFPA, LPC, UL, SMACNA, ASME, EIA, EEE, ARI, ADC etc etc will be required to be follow. Just to read thru one of the above will take you at least another 2 days, that is if you have those standards sitting in the office library, but if you want to buy those standards, it will cost a fortune. You will need to spend money before even you get any project.

• Most tender documents would specify the brand of the items they prefer. However, at times, variations are accepted with lots of supporting documents.

• Almost in all tenders, the tender will want you to list down all the pricing for even the smallest of things e.g. screws, pipe fitting of various sizes, fuses of various ratings, cables of various sizes and configurations etc. They will treat you like a database for which every single items no matter how minute is the item is to be rated / priced by you even before you get the project so that you can't argue with them when you charge them for works variations.

• Almost in all tenders, they will specify all the stakeholders e.g. End User, Project Management Company, C&S Consultant, M&E Consultant, Architect, Landscape, Quantity Surveyor, Quality Inspector etc. So detail that you will never go to the wrong person asking for the wrong information.

• In the tender document, they will specify all the environment you will need to know e.g. allowable noise level, the earthquake factor, the ambiance temperature, the relative humidity etc. They will describe it in so detail, even at times, the average rain fall per year is provided.

• In most tenders, they will specify all the various government departments you can imagine e.g. Local Water Authority regulations, The National Fire Protection Association, the country specific standard, Plumbing Code of the country, Department of Environmental & Natural Resources, HVAC Codes of the country specific etc and they always qualify themselves by using the phrase "... The latest and most up to date edition of the local statutory requirements..." . If you have a copy of any of those standard sitting in your office, when you happen to do a search, most of the time you will find it not up to date, and then you will need to buy another new copy to ensure it complies.

Just to complete a tender process, at least 3 to 4 solid days of works required from the sales and engineering team. If you work out the economics, just to submit a complete tender, the company would had spend a few hundred dollars in terms of salary for the sales & engineering people who spend 4 days to prepare and complete the documents, the paper used to print and fill in the data and the bill it will pay for the courier fees to courier the documents to the end user after completing the tender.

Having said that, but when the tender gets thru / when you win the bidding, it will be a well worth effort. Wish you luck...

Or wait... did I mention that even after you had submitted the tender, there is still going to be many rounds of revision and tender interview before they give you the go ahead??

Enjoy your tendering process..... ALL THE BEST!!

scope of supply

This incident is quite unique. The story / background is really long winded, so to cut story short, this is how the story goes...

For a requirement of one of the oversea project I am handling, I purchased an equipment from a supplier in Singapore as they were the main agent / distributor. As supplier, they played their part and delivered their equipments and have it shipped all the way to site and we had installed it.

As technology developed, the equipment came with some Programmable Logical Controller (PLC) to have all the process automated. It is partially our mistake we did an inspection (physically & visual) the equipment was acceptable prior to shipment, without testing the PLC. When we were about to test run / commission the equipment, only we came to know that the PLC programme is not loaded into it.

Then, when I contacted this supplier, only he came to inform me that the programming is not their scope of supply and that we have to pay additional USDxx,xxx.00 for the program, telling me it is proprietary etc etc

My blood pressure shot through the ceiling and we argued over the phone for about 2 hours and of course me being in the field for so many years or aka "old bird", I won the arguement and they finally says that they will send the program to be loaded into the PLC saving me USDxx,xxx.00.

Good news for my company saving the USD, but bad news to the supplier, they now ended up in my 'black-list' just for not thinking before talking.

Technical gf - Part 2 (update)

Remember my posting previously on the advantages of having a technically sound gf? Well, this is another update that just happen last weekend.

We were sitting down having a cuppa in the mall and I struck a conversation, telling her, there is so many people talking, but funny thing is you can't hear a single word or understand a complete sentence.

As usual, my technical gf gave me an in-depth explanation on what is really happening, which again, clear my doubts, but this time she confused herself on the formulas. Then, she immediately wanted to rush in the nearest bookstore to look for the formulas to verify that what she is saying is correct. Then, we ended up in the bookstore and verified that she is right and again save me from creating another forum in the net.

See, this is another example of advantages of having a technical gf. Even on dates or anytime when a doubt pops out from nowhere, there is always an explaination readily available, saving a few hairs from falling off the head.

Again, well done to my cute, lovely, smart, naughty (at times), playful (most of the time), adventurous, curious, thoughtful, "touchy" (she will touch everything she sees especially in the malls), creative, sharp, attentive, hardworking and not limited to technically sound girlfriend, the above 'mystery' was solve in no time and safe a few MB of space in the Internet for not publishing it as a forum and some say a few hairs from dropping of my head....