The Refinery Turnaround

The refinery I'm working at right now will be having its first turnaround starting today. We will start reducing feed capacity and should be in total shutdown mode in 5 days time. So, since the refinery operated 24/7, you can't afford to shut it down very long. Work around the clock is very, very necessary in this case. Thorough and detailed planning has been taking place for the past year, ensuring that everything is in order. Even 1 hour delay is not acceptable in a turnaround, as time is money, literally. Just as a ball park figure, the plant I'm working in generates about 300K dollars per day in revenue.


So, why do we have to shutdown? Well, in the new plant's case, once you got it commissioned you will get the Certificate of Fitness (CF). For a new plant it will last for 12 months. Then you need to shut it down, held up a series of inspection to make sure everything is in order, then you'll get to extend the CF. You can get an extension up to 72 months before shutting down again. So, the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) will be calling the shots when it comes to the inspection.


Besides my plant, another complex will be having its turnaround as well to extend their CF. Things are going to get very complicated, messy, not to mention tiring. I don't think I'll be able to update the blog for this coming 1 month. I will however try to update myself via Twitter, so stay updated. I might also post something in advance if I have the time

The Most Hideous Burger In Town?

So I took my mum & Yaya for dinner last night. We went to My Mom's Chicken Rice (the famous Linda Onn's dining spot) nearby Ampang Point, which I don't quite understand why it got so famous. If you ask me, I've tasted better chicken rice. Perhaps, because it's Linda Onn's it has some star appeal to the customers. Anyway, driving home Yaya suddenly mentioned about 1 particular burger stall which is quite famous. Having a big appetite, I thought 'Let's check it out'. 10 minutes later, here we were, at Burger Om.

Seeing the stall at first sight, the stall definitely does not spell out much appeal. It looks like your typical burger stall that you came across every day. By the way, don't get me started on asking why the hell do all burger stalls are located so close to 7-11? The only difference I can see is the one who's making it. Most stalls that I go to are handled by teens at their 20s, not some old chap with his wife as you can see here. And thanks to my eavesdropping skills, I learnt that he has been involved in this business for the past 25 years.

So, after waiting we got our burgers and we headed home. I can't wait to see what's so special about this burger. Is it so delicious beyond imagination? That would probably be too ambitious, judging from the appearance of the stall. But I'm not to judge, I'm just wanting to have a good meal. I opened the wrapping when I saw this:
I might be wrong, but could this be the most hideous looking burger I've ever seen in my life? I mean look at it! Does it not spell sloppiness and poorly prepared? How come this burger got famous? Mind you, I've ordered a beef special, not a double beef special. You can only imagine how double beef special will look like after looking at the above. I looked at Yaya when she insisted me to try it first. I had my first bite, and then everything changes. It DOES NOT taste like it looks. It may look poorly done and all, but it sure tasted good. Juicy, tender, full of flavour, as what you might expect from an experienced burger maker. But again, looking at the image above and you are not wrong; it looks like it is deep fried, with all the oil and grease...and...may I suggest full discretion upon eating this. Your health is yours to take care of. Hehe.

Satisfied with the 'sloppy burger', I browsed the Internet to verify the claim that this 'Om Burger' is in fact famous. I was stunned. There have been a few food blogs praising about how good this burger is. And one more thing, it may be the most hideous burger in town, but it also holds another record, according to popular votes:

I'm not kidding you. Fried Chillies (a legit Malaysian network site on food) organised the 1st Annual Fried Chillies Foodsters Awards and Om Burger was voted 'The Best Street Burger In KL'! (you can check the list of winners here).

So, don't just take my word. Try it out! Om Burger is located at Lorong Kolam Air Lama, 68000 Ampang Jaya, Selangor. (N 3.16063 E101.78560 for those of you with GPS). Who says sloppy can't taste good? Till the next post...

Seen And Heard: Kris Allen - Live Like We're Dying

Today has been a gloomy day, as it started raining from the afternoon till about like 6 or so. Anyway, I was downloading a few songs for my collection and I encountered this song. At first I thought it was from The Script. I was like 'Gee, haven't heard this song before. Is it from The Script?' After further digging, I found out the truth: it is Kris Allen's latest single! Hey hey, now why it sounded just like The Script's nature of songs? Turns out, it was originally recorded by The Script. But then, it was pretty much unreleased, and now Kris got his hands on it! Check out his video after this. If you're a big fan of The Script, I'm damn sure you'll like this too:)
Download

That's Just Plain Ballsy...

Enough said. Pics courtesy of mirror.co.uk

Happy First Anniversary MG3!

23 November 2009 is the day the MG3 (the plant where I'm working now) celebrated it's first anniversary of commercial operation. For that, the organizing team (led by yours truly) was entrusted to hold an event for it. A lot of work was put into making it a success, but in the end I am satisfied with the end result.

We have received a helping hand from the HR department to assist us in making this event possible. They helped us with the hall and seating arrangements, audio visual aspects as well as event photography (I have yet to get the pics from them, will upload a few here later). One colleague at work helped us in the food section (which I'm glad he did, as everyone praised the food that day). It was especially important to have everything perfect as we are expecting the CEO of the refinery, as well as the CEO of the marketing arm for the base oil. Now what is left is just...flyers, backdrops, banners, email invitations, montage, emcee text preparations, goodie bags, cake, hampers....did I miss anything else?

I have put my creative cap on to design the flyers, banners, backdrops. I was thinking something complicated when suddenly it hit me. We're celebrating 1 year old, why don't we just do something simple? Something very 1 year old? So, I thought why not put a 1 candle and a cupcake beside it. It will look cute, simple, appropriate. So the result is:


We also thought that since it is a 1 year anniversary, let's do something a 1 year old would do; cut a cake! So we went to the bakery and ordered a 4kg cake (huge!) shaped in a number 1..How cute. Then we went to Mydin, buying out stuffs for the goodie bags & hampers. I also had to prepare and emcee text as I will be the emcee of the event. Sunday at about 5-ish, we returned to the office, having all stuffs ready, we got our young operators helped us out in packaging the goodie bags.

We're supposed to be giving out the goodies at 7:15am but guess what, at 6:30a, it started to rain! At home I was like, crap, are we supposed to bring along an umbrella now? But luckily, as we reached the office, the rain stops. My boss was there, early and so bersemangat to give away the goodies. We got all dressed up in our new corporate shirts (ordered especially for this anniversary). Heck, I even bought a new pair of Dockers for this, haha.

After everything was given out, I went straight to the main hall for audio and visual check, as well as last minute preps. We tested the backdrops, montage, background music, I even practised reading my text for the big event! I was pacing here and there (my routine habit when I'm nervous, huhu).

11am, guests now slowly arrived and entered the hall. There's no turning back now. I prayed that everything will turn out well. I played my cool being the emcee, and everything else just flows along. In the end, it turned out well, and I'm happy. The wife of the marketing CEO gives a thumbs up to me and said 'Good job'. I smiled, thinking I had the job done, that's all that matters:)

Will share some of the pictures when I got it. Till the next post...

Stretching My Voice Chords; Something I Haven't Done In A Long Time

I can't really remember when was the last time I sang out, you know, publicly..with friends. I mean, I enjoy music so very much, but not to the extend of singing the tunes wherever I go. I still remember when I used to sing in public functions back when I was in Standard 2, 3 I think. Anyway, there were two occassions where suddenly I have been sucked into karaoke. One was my colleague's birthday. About 6 of us went out celebrating and the organizer thought that it would be great going out for a karaoke. So we went to this spot at Dataran Pahlawan. At first it was awkward you know, as you feel like you have to impress many people with your freakishly sumbang voice. I have no idea of what to sing, so I chose 'Better Man' by Robbie Williams as my first debut. Man have I made the wrong choice! That song was hard, especially if you haven't really been involved in this karaoke for a very long time! Later on, all of us got comfy stuffing ourselves with food and all, relaxing on a nice couch. Suddenly it doesn't matter anymore. I chose any song I felt like singing, I sang along with the others who chose songs that I happened to like. You don't really care how you sounded like, coz in the end it's about enjoying the moment with your best buds. All and all, it went well, so yeayy for me (at least)

Then there's this away day organized by my department in PD. I arrived at about 7, settled down and getting ready for dinner. At dinner, I happened to be on the same table as my process manager (you know, the one I talked about in my earlier post), and all of a sudden he was like, 'Jom malam ni karok (as in karaoke), aku dah book bilik (I've booked a room), (invite the others). I was like 'ajak yang lain2mimpi apa plak boss aku nih? (what the hell is he dreaming about, suddenly inviting to a karaoke?) So the dinner ended and 15 of us went to the VIP room booked, and again we sang our asses off! We sang and sang and sang, and one by one left the room until there are the three of us! PM, my operating enginner colleague, and me! We sang Aerosmith's I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing like crazy. Steven Tyler, we don't know how you did it singing this effing difficult song, but man, you're god! I even took the opportunity to sing one of my all time favourite song 'Iris' by Goo Goo Dolls. They dig the song too and together we sang! There are more songs, but that was definitely the highlight of the night. We left the room almost at 1am. We have to stop there, coz tomorrow we'll have a breakout and discussion session. But man it was a fun night.

I don't know, there's just something about karaoke that's just stress relieving and liberating. It's not to be enjoyed frequently (or otherwise you have to use note pads or sign languages to talk to people), but when you went out for it, it felt good.

A Valuable Lesson In Office Politics

Remember that one time I twitted about being underrated by the boss despite working like crazy? I never really managed to get it off my system. I haven't got the chance to speak my mind about it, and yesterday I got the chance. I was at the Operations room, discussing and chatting with the process manager (let's just put him as PM) about the event we're organizing in two weeks time, which is the 1st anniversary of our commercial operation. Along the way, the topic just surfaced. 'I heard that he (my boss) rated you guys harshly, really?', PM asked me. 'Well, let's just say that some of the comments that he put in, he can personally talk through with us and we'll get around it to improve, but no he has to put it in the system so that all people in the bloody refinery can look at it! It feels like a slap in the face", I told PM. PM heard about it from our senior manager, which then he commented as being totally uncalled for and biased. Personally he (PM) thinks that for a young engineer like myself and my colleagues here in the maintenance team, we did a fantastic job. Fewhh, I'm glad to hear those words. PM then talks about his past, having fair share of working with shitty bosses and all, and how he worked around it. Man, he was quite a bad ass, even till now! But if you ask me, he is a bad ass knowing exactly what he wants and fought for it like hell, which I think is a quality to be admired for. Bottom line, before we ended our chat, he gave this advice. 'Know your allies (be it your senior manager, or other senior colleagues which you are clicked with, they can be very valuable when it comes to year end feedback), if you know that your boss is not on your side. So what if you're called a stupid son of a bitch, as long as what you did was right, fuck those guys'. Wow, I did learn something today, something which may be worthy over the next few years. Something you actually need to master if you are to survive the world of office politics...

The Heart Speaks...

It's been a while since my last blog. I don't really have anything to blog about other than just sharing what I found over the Net. But today, I just feel like typing something.

First, let's talk about the state of mind that I'm in right now. If my state of mind is like a drink, I have passed my watermelon sweetness phase, bitterness of a Brazillian coffee, etc. If you ask me, I prefer to reflect my mind as being a plain water (Kelantanse will phrase it as tawar hebe)

Let's just reflect what had happened in my personal life (I'll try to not let my emotions cloud the way I'm typing here). It's been about what, 1 year 9 months-ish since the unfortunate event. Well, things went well before that, till one day I was told as being boring, having no sense of commitment, yada3 (which I admit anyway as my weakness). And then we sort of..drfit apart from each other. As time goes by comes this thing about this 3rd guy coming into the picture, of how he's doing something not cool to get her, bla3. Then comes the yoyo phase, whereby she suddenly texted me to say she had a bad dream about me and all, treated me to my birthday dinner and all of a sudden, not answering my calls and smses (I have stopped hoping then). Then comes the picture. Please don't get me started on that picture. I started listening to The Fray's Heartless over and over again, my brain starts to go cuckoo and my grey hairs breeds like crazy!

Now comes a new chapter in my life story. I got a crush on someone at work (at the moment probably I'm just the one who syok sendiri of having a fling). Heck, I even found out that there is someone in the other department who had a crush on me! Talk about playing the game eh. But then I realised that it will probably not work in the future. I just don't feel that we're compatible to the 'happily ever after' state. Plus, my stupid company has enforced this stupid policy on marriage. Apparently you can no longer got married with someone within the same company. Fuck...There goes my chances. Now what the hell am I supposed to do now to find my prospects outside work, now that inside work is a no-no? Perhaps I should start Facebook-ing again...We'll see about that...

I don't think I'm living the past now (now that I got myself occupied with work, but now and then flashbacks are triggered when I look at the little tortoises on my Crocs), but also I'm not living the future. Of course I have started saving myself financially, thinking that 11 Nov 2011 (11/11/11) is a good date to get married, but then in the mean time, I'm just living the present, and I know I can only live the present for so long. I have to look forward to the next stage in life.

To Papa, Mummy and Yaya, you have been my strongest support system I could ever have in this life, and I could not ask for more. When I reflected my actions on what happened, I think the bottom line is that what I did was not wrong.

I'm not writing this to gain sympathy or pityness but simply a means of letting my mind do the talking. Think of it as an RV (relief valve) moment. When there are times of overpressure, it 'pops' to relieve it and things will get to normal, at least for now. I've been told that things will get better in time. Well, it better be true.

Now, two happenings are awaiting. One is my turnaround (TA) of the refinery I'm working in. It starts on the 29th Nov till 3rd Jan 2010. Secondly is another significant date which is coming in about what, 37 days or so? That date surely makes my mind ponder. In the end, only He knows best...

Till the next post...

Losing My Virginity

Before I go any further, NO! it is not about that! It is about the book that I just finished reading. And no, it is not a book about journey into adulthood. I don't need a book to find out what adulthood is all about. I have all the knowledge that I need for that, hehe...'Losing My Virginity' (see above) is a book by Sir Richard Branson, who is the owner of the Virgin Group. Basically it is his memoir of his upbringings and how he drive the rising of the Virgin empire. He may not be famous here, but back in the UK you can see 'Virgin' name almost everywhere. From video stores to mobile service carriers to airplanes to trains to broadband! You can't help but wonder if all these 'virgins' are of the same company. And the answer is YES! You can see the list of his business ventures here

He started off his venture into business by setting up a magazine, 'Student' when he was only 16. His academic intellignence may be lacking (he suffered from dyslexia back during student days), but his tenacity for business is undeniable. He then set up Virgin as a mail order record retailer. Funny thing how he and his team came up with the brand name. Apparently, during that time all of his colleagues are basically new, naive into business ventures- hence the word 'Virgin'. From retailing company, 'Virgin' went to recording, undergone sheer amounts of struggle before emerged as one of the top recording companies in the world, signing up big names during that time like Boy George, Rolling Stones, and the Sex Pistols.

From there onwards, the branch of the Virgin tree keeps growing further and further. He expanded into airline travels (setting up and running Virgin Atlantic was probably the biggest challenge of his life, fighting against the ruthless British Airways who have been monopolizing British air travel business), rail business (setting up Virgin Trains), to the media business and currently, space travelling by setting up Virgin Galactic. All of his journeys have not been smooth sailing, and the heat can be felt reading this book. The way it was written is just so exciting.

Aside from business, he is also a sucker for adventures. He went for a boat trip attempting the fastest Atlantic Ocean crossing, hot air balloon challenge crossing the Atlantic & the Pacific...Goshh, only God knows what is going through in his mind, attempting all this dangerous attempts. But then, it is this sort of attitude which makes Branson exciting and admirable. He approached his life and business ventures with zest, exhiliration, and more importantly passion.

Upon reading this book, you can't help but to be green with envy towards Richard Branson. He has been living an exciting life (you will if you have two private Islands in the Carribean), his ventures have been going well, and he has the family to be there with him all the time! Woww, what a life he is having, and certainly this is one of the best books I've ever read. I highly recommend all of you to read this book.

Seen And Heard: This Is It

I went to the Gardens to watch 'This Is It' with no expectations. Heck, I don't even remember that Yaya and I bought tickets for Saturday night until the afternoon, which showed the state of mind I am in earlier. I'm not entirely sure what to look up for. Is it a documentary? Is it a tribute film? All I know during that time was the airing is only scheduled for 2 weeks only.

'This Is It' is a compilation of hundreds of hours of rehearsal footage, on how MJ and his crew prepared for what could be the greatest show ever performed by the great genius. In a nutshell, it shows you what to expect and what will the concert look like should it take place. There are footages of how the auditions for the dancers went on (a very brutal selection process I would say), the stage preparation, the visual effects. They even construct some new video scenes to complement the concert for songs like 'Thriller', 'Earth Song' and 'Smooth Criminal'. From what I saw, they really put an effort to make it BIG! It was going to be the greatest pop concert ever based on what I saw and its preparations.

Well, some might say that the release of this so-called film is only a mere publicity stunt, as a means to return what they have invested, taking advantage of the good name and just 'milk' the public in any way possible. I could not deny that possibility, and based on what I've read the public seemed to have that same opinion. But then, most of the public seemed to embrace the release of this film. Reviews were positive (at least the ones I read) said that they're glad to be able to watch MJ one last time, preparing of the greatest show in his life. Fans can see that MJ really loves his fans, and that is shown in the rehearsals. Yeah, he takes rehearsals very seriously!

MJ's attention to detail is very, very admirable. Despite being 50, he knows his stuff very well. He knows the right note to hit, when to excatly hit them. His dance move is still rockin'. You can see that he has the stamina to get the concert going. There are no signs of deteriorating health, although MH can been seen obviously thin. He is very methodical in his approach, and for that reason, it is a pleaure watching a genius at work.

I came back a happy audience. Despite being only a rehearsal footage, you can't help it but to be excited, excited of things that might happen. It is just unbelievable! Too bad the audience took it like they're watching a movie. I was dying to clap my hands, shouting 'Woooo' after each song and they can just sit there seriously like watching an epic film. Only when the end credits started to appear, people started clapping. What a dull audience. Have you not been in a concert before? That is how you should embrace 'This Is It', imo. A review from BBC can be read here. Go watch it if you're an MJ fan. I think you will not be disappointed...Signing off..