Obstacles

swimming., swiped from williamnyk on Flickr.

In my line of work, there are several abbreviations that I abhor. I shall list them out for you and they do come in that particular order:

1. RFI - Request for Information - a short inquiry about a certain solution that the potential client needs
2. RFP - Request for Proposal - basically the customer gives out a list of requirements and questions and we are supposed to come up with a complete proposal that addresses their technical, functional and commercial needs. A lot of lying, creative writing and delusion takes place here
3. POC - Proof of Concept - if the potential client is happy with the RFP, they will shortlist us to do a demonstration of what we said we were able to do in the RFP. And since we always lie, we always end up coming up with some half-baked features just for show (think cardboard movie backdrops)

And I recently had to endure all that crap. The bloody POC script had eight scenarios and one hundred and thirty seven items for me to cover. Celaka betul. So, on Saturday I had to come into work to make sure everything was up and running. Previously we had set up the application in a server. During the eleventh hour, management decided not to move the server to the bank and instructed us to REINSTALL everything into a laptop instead. And with that, effort wasted and another round of testing. Arrived at 10:00am only to find that it was carpet cleaning day. So I waited them out in the coffee shop and orderd a bowl of pork ball noodles for breakfast. Saw a woman who had an uncanny resemblance to a famous Taiwanese lounge singer who goes by the name of Tiger. At 10:30am, they were done, but some time before lunch, the power tripped and the whole host system was knocked out. Wasted another ninety minutes to get things back on track. Ish. That wasn't the only obstacle. A scheduled electrical maintenance at my HQ forced the VPN to be unavailable for four hours and a similar outage was planned at where I was on the next day! Luckily by the end of the day, everything was up and running and I managed to pump in the transaction data that I needed. Rushed off to attend BEC later in the evening. I only had time to mix a cup of oats to drink before heading out to Jalan Badang for the gathering. Didn't even get the chance to sit down. Was quite zombified when I reached the venue. The gathering was true to the usual format and the highlight of the night was of course the makan-makan. More food than usual because it was bak zhang festival. Fried bihun, stuffed beancurd, chicken soup, roasted chicken, etc. Been ages since we gathered at Jalan Badang and the turnout was quite good. And KH had just arrived in KL... Looking forward to meeting him!