The Chronicle of Me: Part 3 (Final)

The Working Years......until now (1997- )

Whew! It took me sometime to actually get down on this final chapter....anyway here it goes...

Despite persuasion from my undergraduate project supervisor to stay on and continue doing MSc and then Phd, I decided to go back to Malaysia to start working and earn money, giving reason that my sponsor's (i.e. TM) requirementt for the students to come back and serve the company upon graduation.

It was in Aug 1997 when I first reported duty and me and my batch was enrolled in 3 months mandatory training. It was a good having to re-group with old friends who were scattered all around UK years ago and at the same time there were also those scholars from local uni, hence opportunity to make new friends. It was during this training period I decided to apply for a totorial position in Unitele Melaka as I thought that I would make a good academician due to great love in science and learning.....so off I went to Unitele.

At Unitele I was assigned to a Bangladeshi Professor assisting him teaching Solid State Electronics.....my strongest subject and passion. In a class of a mixture of Malay, Chinese, India and some foreign students I immediately notice a striking gap in terms of academic performance. I wish not to elaborate this further and it is actually well understood. I did ask around why was this happening. One source of the story said due to overwhelming response from the non-Malay to enter the University (who happen to scored excellent results in their SPM), in order to fill in the Malay quota the university had taken the "tangkap muat" approach giving very little priority to the SPM results of the Malay students. No wonder lots of the Malay students did not even have a clear grasp of the basic of solid state theory...let alone to let them ponder on a more complicated physics and mathematical concepts.......it was like a suicide for them.

My stint in a university environment was not a successful one, after 2 months and a few phone calls I was transferred to TM HQ in KL. In my re-assignment letter it mentioned that I will be reporting to Corporate Strategy Division. Being a well-grounded engineering and technical person....I was trying to figure out what the he** is Corporate Strategy Division (CSP)....I was hoping that the HR will put me in network engineering or operation or something similar of which I would be more comfortable.....but why the heck were they putting me in CSP!! Never mind I said ...probably It would be clearer once I was there.

Well as the name suggests, it was not an engineering division, the division is responsible to in developing the high level strategic direction for the company......and how does an engineer fit in this scheme of thing. For a first few months it was hell! As I know nuts what these people are talking abount...all the strategic management, finance and accounting mumbo jumbo..."tolongggggggggggggg!!!!". Nevertheless, I was so lucky to have a good boss and he was once an engineer...so most of the time it was him that was trying to make sense of things that we do in CSP in an engineer point of view.

Years after the above event, I have come to terms ad got used to the working environments and its requirements. It had forced me to step out of my comfortable zone and actually I had leant and acquire a lot of knowledge.....this was actually my strategic inflexion point and for once I realised that there are more interesting things than just the little protons andelectrond. Life was easier from then on and it was time for me to take probably the most crucial step in my life.

I came to know her...well actually we were introduced by a common friend, Kak Nab (more like "kakak" instead of a friend to me) during a end of training function and it was on the 31st Aug 1997 which also co-inside with her birthday. I have to confess here that I was never good at courting women....the idea of having a girlfriend when I was a student was mission impossible! And that really made me an odd ones among my friends. But having said that, I did have a crush on my course-mate at the university but again due to my nature I was too damm scared to say anything....syok sendiri je laaa. Ok let's get back on the track....at first I agreed to meet her out of respect to Kak Nab....same goes to her. From one simple name intro, it led to a very lenghty conversation that night.....and from then we frequently called each other and normally talked on the phone untill wee hour......I used to express my perplexed-ness at those couple who can talk on and on ..hours and hours and hey! look what happened to me myself......I guess people in love have the ability to bend time and space as if it is just a matter of seconds to them.

We got married in 2000 and guess what...on 31st Aug 2000!! So for both of us 31st Aug is really significant as it marks our first introduction, our akad nikah date as well as being my wife's birthday......Subhanallah! We have been happily married for seven years now and Alhamdulillah blessed with 2 kids ...a daughter (6 years old) and a boy (3 years old)....and InsyaAllah one more is coming soon.....at this point as a father, since I already have a girl and boy, what comes after is not an issue to me anymore (but my wife really wants a girl).

- Me & My Happy Family -

So there goes a summarised version of my chronicle. The purpose of this is more to me than anyone else...to remind myself, from where I come from and how I got to be where I am today. We are not sure what would happen in the future except that we always pray to Allah for the very best.....nevertheless the past is for us to cherish and take lesson from it...and those are something that we know.