Needles & Blood

9 June 2009, Tuesday
I woke up and wasn’t feeling good. Decided to call in to the office with an MC. Continued to take the antibiotics and fever medication. In the afternoon, after lunch, my hands broke out in red spots. I stopped taking the antibiotics. Spots became worst and fever came back. After dinner I went to see the doctor again.

Doctor advised not to go to HK. My heart shattered. He said that if I still have fever in the morning, I will have to go back to the clinic for a blood test. There were 2 possibilities, 1 – suspected of dengue due to the on-off fever and 2 – allergy to the antibiotics.

My spotted arm which got way worst.

10 June 2009, Wednesday
3am – woke up to see James, Mei & Alex going to the airport by cab from home. My conditioned worsened and I was in no condition to go anywhere. I was upset. Very upset.

I woke up again later in the morning, got ready to see the doctor for blood test. Told the doctor to be really gentle because I never done this before. He was nice and gentle and a very jovial doctor. So he strapped the upper arm and asked me to clench my fist tight, he found my vein and pressed the thin needle on my skin (my 1st encounter). Surprisingly it did not hurt at all. It’s just like an ant bite :)

At bout 12noon, the nurse from the clinic called and told me to collect the doctor’s referral letter to admit to the hospital. So at 2pm, I went to collect the letter and headed to Damansara Specialist Hospital to admit myself. They referred me to Dr. Zainuddin who is a Physician. But before I got to see him, I had to take another blood test. So I went to the lab and did the whole strap, clench fist and needle poke ordeal again (my 2nd encounter). By now, am not so afraid. I waited pretty long for my results. The moment I got the results, I went back to the doctor’s clinic and I was called in to see him. He asked me some questions which I’ve answered to many before seeing him.

My blood count in the morning from the clinic was 143 then the 2nd count from the lab dropped to 120. So, I had to admit and start on medication immediately. I was then sent to register to be admitted. I waited again for bout 30mins for my room. The nurse took me to the Maternity Ward and put me in room 231.

My bed number :) buy 4D la..

They then tagged me with this:

And fed me my medication - every morning, afternoon and night:

Mom made food for me everyday - breakfast - bread, lunch and dinner - either noodles or porridge. Dad ate my lunch from the hospital most times :) *heart*

Every morning, at bout 6am the nurse will come and take my blood for test. Good thing they only take once a day. That is where my 3rd, 4th and 5th encounter with needles took place and caused my hand to bruise. They took twice from my right hand and 3 times from my left. Both hands are bruised. But it's not that bad.. Still bearable. The first day, i actually woke up early and couldn't sleep until later at night. I was hyper. My crazees from work came to visit - Suje, Jan and Max. They gave me a pink monkey whom I call BERUK. BERUK kept me company for that few days I was in hospital. My friends also kept me entertained daily through MSN and text messages, making sure that I was ok and keeping posted on the happenings in the office. Thanks to VJ, Edwin, Belinda, Suje, Jan and Max - you made my days in the hospital so close to you guys at work.

13 June 2009, Saturday

Dr. Zainuddin said my blood count went up to 162, fever has gone and rash on body has su-dided alot. I can go HOME!

Doctor's medical report: Viral fever and allergy to antibiotics.

Am glad to be home. Mom has been constantly taking care of me, making sure I eat enough and getting enough rest. Friends came over to the house to see me and kept me company while mom and dad was at a wedding dinner - Thanks for coming by Jeng, Alvin, Chiang & Lili.

And to all of my friends and family, THANK YOU for the well wishes on Facebook, your SMSes, calls and visits. Am now getting better and will recover soon to be with all of you again.

Robin & Kelli

11 May 2009, Monday

It was time to say goodbye to Robin Babin, the IST trainer who was with us from the beginning until the end of our classroom training till OJT (on-job-training), which was bout 2 months. Robin went back to US on 12th May. Kelli L. Jordan was with us for a short while, bout 1 month plus. She went back to the US on 17th May.

A lil farewell was held at the cafeteria :)

Robin Babin & Kelli Jordan with their farewell gift

Me with Robin & Kelli

The ASEAN team with Roszaini, Kelli, Robin & Megan

Till we meet again, ALL THE BEST!

Work hard, play harder

It's been a long time since i updated! SO, here is gonna be a mass update again :)

Recruitment Coordinator (RC) Graduation, 10 April 2009.

Robin Babin - North Carolina, US

Megan Johnstone - Sydney, Australia

Vivien Seh - Malaysia

After our classroom training, we moved on with On-the-job (OJT) with respective country support recruiters. We have Nguyen Hoai Thu from Vietnam, Aprilia Patriani from Indonesia and Eddie Tan from Singapore.

Cristina Villamayor & Jonathan Reyes from Australia, Gloria Ming & Eric Huang from China are trainers for Batch 2 training for ANZ & ISSC.

We took the trainers for a day outting starting from breakfast @ Hong Kee Dim Sum DJ, Karaoke Session @ Red Box The curve, and SHOPPING @ The Curve Street Market and 1 Utama. After we arrived at 1 Utama, they decided to all go back to Shangri-La and get some rest before they go out clubbing for the night. As for us, we settled for dinner at Chili's.

All excited with coffee-in-a-packet

Ending the K-session with Gangsta Paradise

The crazees at Chili's, 1 Utama

It was a great outting with the trainers and there is more to come...

Back in CYBERJAYA!

1 April 2009, Wednesday

I am officially back in Cyberjaya!

IBM Cyberjaya

Today is there was a soft launch for the IBM IST Team in Cyberjaya. There was breakfast and the IST-Learning team were dressed in colorful cultural wear.. mostly sari's :) They made the big pantry look really colorful and pretty :)

The IST Learning Team - colorful culture

After the speeches, there was a photo session of the IST Team at the foyer of the building.

IBM Intergrated Services Team - Learning & Recruitment

IBM IST - Recruitment

After all the photo sessions, we all proceeded to the 1st Floor where we will spending most of our time there when we go "LIVE".. yes, our workstations. There was a ribbon cutting ceremony to officiate the office :)

Ribbon cutting ceremony

Then we wow-ed as the doors opened to this.......

Besides the good-looking workstations, there was some nice deliverables which IBM gave out to us as new employees to the company :)

We took the opportunity to snaps some group shots of us. It was good fun before the 2nd half of the day :)After all the happenings in the first half of the day, we settled back in Room G07 to continue our RC training :)

It's been GOOD!

All About GOM

10-20 March, 2009

Let me just give you an idea of a few acronyms before I start:

1. IBM - International Big Machines (yes! there are ppl who don't know!)
2. IST - Integrated Services Team (the team that am in)
3. GOM - Global Opportunity Marketplace (a recruitment tool)

Now that you know what it is, I hope it'll be easier as you read on.

For 2 weeks, we were based in Vads, TTDI for GOM training. The trainer is from India and he is a system administrator for GOM who knows his stuff inside-out! His name is NaveenKJ. He is a very very patient trainer. He will ensure everyone in the class understands the topic discussed for the day.

So the first week (10-13 Mar 2009), NaveenKJ introduced us to GOM. It was dry and hard to understand as we have no clue what he was talking about. His indian accent made it harder to understand him. But after the first 2 days, we managed to absorb what he was trying to tell us. We did practical training on a dummy GOM which is exactly like the real site and everything became even clearer and more understandable.

The 2nd week (16-20 Mar 2009), the team was divided to Background Sourcers and Recruitment Coordinators. The Background Sourcers went to another room and was given training by Robin, Megan & Bryan. While the Recruitment Coordinators, well we still had NaveenKJ with us. He trained us further in depth about GOM and its applications. Everyday we did at least 2 practical training on GOM. We were getting the hang of it and what seemed so difficult in the begining, its now so much more easier :)

At the end of the week, Suje and myself decided to get NaveenKJ something from the whole class for his patience and knowledge. It was good response from the class. Edwin, being NaveenKJ's fave person to call on to, presented the gift to him which we bought from ARCH, a wooden crafted picture of KL Skycrapers in a frame :)

We have gained excellent knowledge and information on GOM and I believe we have more to learn cos, next week is another week of training with a different group of trainers.

The IST HR Recruitment Team - Background Sourcers and

Recruitment Coordinators with Naveen KJ

The Rays

9 March 2009, Monday

I was looking for new sunnies as i mentionted here and I was looking for an Oakley which i saw online. I even asked my fren in the US to check out the price for me over there. I was so hoping to get the Oakley Special Edition sunnies until I saw the actual product at Reliance, Bangsar. Quite disappointing actually. Cos it looked really nice online and the real product looked nothing like it. It was so plastic-ky and too big for my liking.

So, i looked at other brands that was in the shop and looked into Ray Ban catalog. I browsed and saw 1 sunnies that looked kinda cool. Too bad the one I saw was out of stock *sigh* The girl who was attending to me was very helpful and took a few nice sunnies from Ray Ban for me to look at. I tried a few but did not really find one that fitted nicely. I was not happy. I wanted new sunnies. THEN, she brings one frameless sunnies and I tried it on and immediately I loved it. After much thought and lots of price discussion, i settled for it :)

It's Ray Ban Polarised! I can see rainbow colors on the leafs of te trees if i use it in the morning :)

Sure makes my world a lil more colorful :)

IBM & IST

2 -6 March 2009, Monday - Friday

This is a back-dated post. So please forgive me :)

Well, since my contract in Lenovo ended, I've joined IBM immediately on the 2nd March 2009. And since then, I've been in one training after another! I've never been fed so much information since school! But nonetheless, it's been great!

For the first week in IBM, we attended training with Meghna from India. She introduced us to IBM as a whole from the begining to present, a full view of the Integrate Services Team (IST) and a whole lot of group discussions, group games and group activities :)

The new IST team consist of 2 teams - HR Learning and HR Recruitment. I am in HR Recruitment as a HR Coordinating HR Specialist (in short, Recruitment Coordinator). We will be based in the Cyberjaya office where the Regional Call Center (RCC) for IBM is. We still do not have our workstations or let' sjust say that our level is not ready yet. Its still in the midst of preparation.

Training with Meghna and the team has been really informative. It doesn't make much sense at first, but as we went along the week, things made more sense and information that was given was better understood.

We also had Nico DeBok from Belgium who takes care of the HR Learning team, Abhinava Chandra from India who takes care of the HR Recruitment team and Kenneth Ho - HR Director from IBM Malaysia who takes care of these 2 teams. They have been very kind and helpful to us as we are the pioneers, the first batch or the whice mices in the start of this new IST team.

It's gonna be great!