Phew! Surviving April...

Finally! After an extended hiatus from blogging, I'm back!! Well, sort of...

While many Filipino students had or were preparing for graduation day, Singaporean kids are preparing for the start of the school year. Hence, after a couple months of minimal activity, the campus network would be getting a real workout.

Much has happened this April at work, that -- I guess -- pushed me to the limit. :(

We had at least two big network downtimes at least two more which affected computer laboratories. On top of these, the big boss gave me a a lot of trivial things to check such as Yahoo! Messenger not having transparent proxy, or a particular person not being able to VPN into the network from home.

Then of course there's the big network server migration coming this June. I had to map each of the hundred plus servers to the corresponding switch ports -- manually! If the lack of documentation was not enough, I had no consistent information about the server hostnames and IP addresses (they change these too often), ARP tables of most switches are imcompleteso I had to rely on MAC addresses, which means I have to ask the server owners to provide that information since I don't have access to any of these servers.

Then there's me getting "lectured" for not updating in a timely manner all of the big boss's trivial follow-ups and what-not.

My colleague said that I should not take my job seriously. If I let everything in my work affect me, there's no way you I can survive another six months.

[Oh yeah, end of April marks my sixth month in this job! Yipee! Six more to go!]

Anyway, the thing is, my work already has affected me. In my last job, it was easier to "change hats". When I'm in the office, I work hard. When work's done for the day, I leave everything behind in the office. After I leave the office, I'm a husband, a friend, or whatever -- just not a stressed office worker. I leave the work and the stress behind. I don't even think of work when I'm with my friends, with Che, or with the rest of our family.

But now, I can't help but think of work. I had to bring home the laptop they provided me so I can work from home. I brought home the stress. I get full six hourse of sleep (longer than what I used to back in Philippines) but still restless when I wake up.

Point is, my colleague's right. This is exactly what I told Che a few years ago when she was stressed with her job. Don't soak everything that's thrown your way -- let it slide off your back. So what if you can't meet the SLA? So what if you can't meet the deadline? What'd they do? Fire me? They'd be doing me a favor! At least I wouldn't have to pay the bond AND I get my freedome back! :)

So many lessons learned. The support structure and processes suck and that's the reason people leave this job whenever they can. Work attitude here is very different from what I'm used to. No choice but to adapt. Bossses want their money's worth. Technically-challenged users shout because they are too stupid to do know anything else. Blame game is the common work attitude -- someone's gotta fall and take all the hits for whatever problems encountered. I'm still thinking of ways how I can curb this away from me when I'm the duty engineer as well as how I can use this to my advantage. Hehehe... Plans, motives, conspiracy... the plot thickens.. hahaha :)

Blogging has been therapeutic for me. I want to post more regardless of the heavy workload. And I want to post less work and more life outside work. Enough about work. It's a new month, and it's my month, I might add. A new beginning of sorts for me. :)

That's it for this post. New goal: post something other than work. Hehehehe :))