Log: Week 4

Monday

Cluster drive with senior Praba. Very nice guy. Covered:

Bandar Baru Selayang, Selayang Baru, Selayang Segar, Selayang Indah, Kg Selayang Permai, Kg Lembah Indah, Tmn Selayang, Kg Mahkota, Kg Sg Tua Baru, Kg Nakhoda, Tmn Jasa, Kg Bendahara, Tmn Selayang Mulia, Tmn Jasa Perwira, Tmn Jasa Utama, Kg Sg Kertas, Tmn Gombak Permai, Tmn Pinggiran Indah, Tmn Pinggiran, Tmn Gemilang, Tmn Bkt Permata, Tmn Industri Bolton, Seri Gombak.

Tuesday

Thought I would be continuing yesterday's cluster drive but it's back to site tests again with Weng for the rest of the week.

Site 1: Kg Baru (first time I actually entered it, it's a nice place)

Site 2: Grand Central Hotel in Chow Kit. Anything but grand or central. Okay, maybe it's central for..... Nevermind.

Wednesday

Site 1: Restoran Jejantas Sg Buloh (tests done from Damansara Damai)

Site 2: Kg Sri Indah, Sg Buloh. Finished so fast until didn't manage to get a picture.

New record, people! 4pm and we're done. Back to office we go.

Sounds too good to be true? Yep. Call from Wang (coordinator at Samsung). Never good news.

Site 3: Kinrara. Our friends Fishy and Ika were still stuck at their first site so we were asked to help out at their second site. No problem, no problem... Our pleasure =)

Lesson learnt: no such thing as GOING BACK EARLY.

Thursday

Site 1: KM15 Elite Highway. Damn, should have took the Hilux.

Site 2: KM25 Elite Highway.

5pm and we're done! What does that mean? Back to office and hope we don't get a call...

And..... No call. Arrived at the office and they asked, "Don't want go back ah?". Erm, is that even a question? We'll take it!

Walking back while the sun still shines? Never happened and probably won't happen again.

This makes up for yesterday, then.

Friday

Weng appears to be sick and couldn't get out of bed, so Kelen (the office's IT lady) will help me today.

Site 1: Valencia, Sg Buloh. Heavily delayed here because of the tight security.

Nice place to do tests, though.

Site 2: The Store, Sg Buloh.

Had a near accident, too. Just missed by a few mms. Thank you Jesus.

Launch date is approaching, boss says we might work night shifts next week and during Deepavali too. Wonderful.

And that's a month of training already... Fast, huh?

*speechless*

Log: Week 3

Monday

Out with Weng.

Site 1: Tmn Alam Jaya, Cheras. Stuck here from morning till night as the network was having problems.

Second site was in Seri Kembangan but when we got there the site wasn't serving, so we were told we could go back. Had dinner at the Mines.

Tuesday

Weng is sent to Penang, so I'll be with Lim from Mechatronics on this one.

Site 1: Neither Genting nor Klang. Jln Genting Klang, Setapak.

Site 2: Gee, this building sure does look familiar. UTAR FES

About the only time i ever appreciated our canteen (paradise compared to being stuck in the car for the whole day)

That was my school, this is your school~

Wednesday

With trainee Nur from MMU today. Couldn't leave office till about 1pm sebab timbul macam-macam problem: computer cannot charge, GPS cannot install dan sebagainya.

Site 1: Tmn Megah, Cheras

Site 2: Taynton View, Cheras

We were just only getting started when senior Tinesh (our coordinator placed at Samsung) called to ask if we could pick him up at the Marriott. Gladly, boss (just compare the last two pictures).

Returned to the site and senior Tinesh helped us complete the remaining tests. Haleluyah.

Thursday

All sites will be shut down today and tomorrow so we'll be in the office. For lectures. Haha. Tak terlepas jugak. For the first time, all seniors and trainees were in the office together.

Senior Tinesh taught us how to do the site reports.

It was a happy day, full of laughter. And thank again, sisters for the cake =)

Friday

Senior Chua (she's pretty) gave a workshop about MapInfo, a software used for the drive tests. In the latter half of the day, we did reports.

I'm told I'll be doing a cluster drive on Monday. Not Penang though. Oh, well.

Log: Week 2

Monday

Again with senior Liow, Ivan and fellow trainee Aw from Mechatronics. Weng was sent to Penang yesterday.

Site 1: Kajang. Finished in record time for a first site (done by around 1pm)

Senior Liow got a call from the office and he's being sent to Penang. Like, now. We're on our own for the second site.

Site 2: NKVE Setia Alam exit (it's on that BigTree signboard). WTF! Highway sites are the worst we can get as we can't do the tests while stuck ON the highway. Broke another record (latest finishing time, 9:30pm)

As we were finishing, office called and notified that I'll be sent to Penang tomorrow. Amen to that!

Tuesday

I'll be following senior Freddie, we are given two cluster drives: Gelugor and Bayan Lepas.

That is, every populated area on the east and southeast of the island.

Started with the Gelugor cluster as soon as we reached in the evening, areas covered include:

Kg Batak, Kg Darat, Kg Seberang Paya, Kg Sg Nibong, Kg Dua Bukit, Bukit Jambul, Pantai Jerejak.

And half of the Penang Bridge.

Why don't we see more parking like this?

Wednesday

Finished off the Gelugor cluster, which included:

Kg Batu Uban, USM, Minden Heights, Tmn Brown, Tmn Tun Sardon, Kg Kastam, Kg Gelugor, Queensbay.

Vehicle due for service

Thursday

Started on the Bayan Lepas cluster, it's gonna be a long day:

Kg Jawa, Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone, Batu Maung, Tmn Seri Indah, Tmn Muhibbah, Tmn Ipeng, Kg Permatang Tepi Bendang, Tmn Sri Bayan, Kg Binjai, Kg Padang, Kg Seronok, Kg Bukit, Kg Baruh, Kg Sg Tiram, Kg Bukit Ayun, Gedung Heights, Kg Jln Tengah, Kg Pulau, Kg Pulau Tengah, Kg Gedung, Tmn Bayan Baru.

@PDC to collect site keys

Some of the kampungs were a total pain in the ass, the roads so narrow that even riding a bike through them would be difficult. Covered so much that we had only one meal today to be sure we could finish tomorrow.

Friday

Damn, it's Friday already? How fast was that? Finish the scraps and we're good to go:

Kg Pagar Buluh, Kg Manggis, Tmn Tunas Muda, Sg Ara, Tmn Desa Ria, Tmn Seri Acres, Pearl Garden, Kg Sepuluh, Kg Perlis, Setia Pearl Island.

Weng, long time no see

Inilah panggil good week, next week please send me outstation again!

Log: Week 1

Monday

Continued cluster drive from last Friday with senior Amri. Nuff said.

Tuesday

For the rest of the week we'll be doing single cell tests, two cells a day. It's basically going to antenna sites and doing tests there. Try spotting the antennas in the pictures below. Today I'll be following senior Liow together with my roommate Ivan.

This is a VoIP phone, by the way. For testing only.

Site 1: Selayang Segar, behind Stadium MPS

Site 2: Seri Gombak

Wednesday

Again with senior Liow, Ivan and another roommate Weng.

Site 1: Some ladang near Kapar. Seriously, who's gonna use WiMAX in a ladang?

Input for car, output for pundi kencing

Site 2: Kg Jawa, Klang. Wasted 4+ hours here without achieving anything because the antennas' angles were messed up. Supervisor told us to "keep trying" and finally let us off at 8+pm as not much could be done.

Thursday

Senior Liow is not going out today, so we (me, Ivan, Weng) will follow senior Poovan.

Site 1: Bandar Baru Klang

Ah, Klang... Home of bakuteh, traffic jams and erm, Shyne? The roads here are seriously screwed up, man. One way here one way there. Maybe that's why Dorcas hates Klang so much?

Site 2: Kg Jawa again. Tests run smoothly now that the angles have been fixed correctly.

Some much-needed happiness, hence the Happy Meal.

Friday

Same team as Wednesday, back with senior Liow again.

Site 1: The site name was Masjid Bukit Aman, so we'd expect the antenna to be somewhere on the dome, tower or something, right?

Uh-uh. They had to hide it among the trees. So much for going green.

Site 2: Jaya 33, PJ (antenna on top left)

Nope, no cell for me again tonight.

Next week, we'll be doing it on our own! No more following seniors. Shit.

Ponteng. Main. Rilek

Okay okay. Not funny. Let's remember our friends whose PMR starts tomorrow, shall we? Some words of encouragement wouldn't hurt.

Our twinkle star, HX

Supergirl, SY

 

ANGELine

May God bless you all with good memory! May this week and a half pass quickly! And may you smile when answering the questions! =)

OYK Turns 1!

It's you who started this page, you know. I MISS YOU... Hope you're truly happy there =/

Ampang-Phobia

Hi. I'm just sharing this to help jog my memory in the case it has to be included in my report/log book later. Okay, maybe not. I guess you people care about me and would want to know what I've been up to, right? Finished my last paper on Wednesday (for the n-th time, no comment) and started industrial training yesterday. And what an eventful day it was.

First, try getting this, a (not-so)simple concept of handphone coverage:

Take this beehive as the covered area. Each hexagon is a cell, each with a base station (those tall towers you see), and when you move from a cell to another your phone switches connection from a base station to another (handoff). A group of cells is called a cluster.

So after some briefing at the office, each trainee was assigned to one of their engineers. For the time being, we'll be the drivers, while the engineers will run the tests. Wah, not bad, get to learn, get to improve driving, get to improve Geografi lagi. OH YA KE_

We were told to do a cluster drive for the Ampang area. Basically this is the idea: Drive on every road in every taman in Ampang, the car is fitted with a modem on the roof connected to a computer, the engineer records the signal strength along the route and if/where handoff fails. Logs are kept in files about 50MB each. The routes given is basically a map without road names, without buildings, just a jumbled bunch of criss-crossing lines. Nothing like this:

(click to enlarge)

Ampang is defined as the whole area east of the MRR2 (the blue line) between Ukay Heights in the north and Taman Cheras in the south. (2.5cm=2km)

Shoot man, there's so many places I never new they existed! After about more than two hours of collecting data the engineer needed to have his Friday prayers so he said I could go find something to eat while he's inside. No sooner had I dropped him off, the worse storm (EVERR) happened. I could barely see the road in front. Drains were overflowing like boiling soup. Tree branches everywhere. So much for lunch, I thought. I better turn back and wait at the mosque before I got lost in the rain. At the mosque, I ran into a dead end and (foolishly) attempted a 3-point turn but got kinda stuck instead, no thanks to a gate that was blocking. So I had no choice but to run out and open the gate (there was an umbrella, couldn't get it to open though) and got totally wet. Phew. Lunch turned out to be 60-sen bread from the petrol station.

Not long after he got back in the car he suddenly exclaimed, "OHHH SHITTT!!!" and started jumping around in the seat. Guess what, he accidentally overwrote the file which had everything previously recorded! FUGG! FUGGG! Everything... GONE! What to do, start again la. This time I drove much faster and completed the previous areas in about 45 minutes. Supervisor asked to do until 6:30.

Covered areas (Geografi-haters, skip this part):

Kg Cheras Baru, Tmn Mawar, Tmn Bukit Permai, Tmn Seraya, Tmn Mega Jaya, Tmn Bukit Teratai, Tmn Saga, Tmn Melur, Tmn Muda, Tmn Kencana, Tmn Lembah Maju, Pandan Indah.

We may or may not (by then I was already zombie-like, so I'm not sure) have covered these areas too:

Tmn Pandan Mewah, Tmn Putra, Tmn Seri Raya, Tmn Seri Bayu, Kg Tasek Tambahan.

With these, we've pretty much covered only 1/3 of Ampang, continue on Monday.

At a traffic light on the way back, we noticed smoke coming from the front and hurriedly turned off the road to check. Bila check, ok pulak. The only problem was a busted air-cond so we continued and reached office at about 7:40pm. Ten hours of driving, people. My ass seriously needs a massage. Make that eleven: one on White Horse back to sweet home. Thank you Jesus for the safe journeys...

And hey, thank you again... You're so good to me lah =)

Let's see what next week has in store-