Job02

Well, hard to believe it folks, but I've actually been working for 6 weeks now! I ended up starting on the 7th of January, the day after my birthday, just because I felt I needed another 5 or 6 days to mentally and physically prepare and get ready to start work. In other words, I was f*ckin' slack! Fortunately, there have been a lot of holidays happening in the last two months, the biggest of which was Chinese New Year. I've probably only been 'really' working for 5 weeks. More slackeness! But we don't get another public holiday falling on a week day for the next 3 or 4 months, so I'll be doing more serious working.

The work itself has been really interesting. Basically, I'm working as a Structural Engineer, doing steel and concrete structural designs at the moment. However, since I'm doing these structural designs for Septic Treatment Plants, I guess technically I'm a Sewerage Engineer (i.e. I DO SH*T WORK!!). When I started work, the biggest I had to try and do first was try to remember all the stuff I had done in Uni like over a year ago, and then try to translate that over to design procedures here which are different to Australia. While engineering in Australia is done according to Australian standards, engineering in Malaysia is done according to a mixture of Malaysian and British Standards. What this means is although the basic principles may be the same, the design methods can be quite different because the Standards employ different methods to ensure a safe design at the end of the day. Of course, being the natural genius that I am, adjusting from one method to the other was absolutely no problem for me. (Yeah right! Who am I trying to kid?)

It's funny though, while I was trying to go through the unfamiliar design methods, something Sivan said to me at University kept running through my head. Him, Glen and me were in the same group for Structural Design in 4th year and I remember him and me (maybe more me) were always going to ask Glen questions about structural design, just 'coz he happened to be the smartest out of the three of us. And Sivan used to say, "You can't just keep asking Glen for the answers. Glen isn't going to be around to give you the answers once you start work." (or something to that effect). Fortunately, after a while, I've learnt how to ask people like my supervisor and other people at work for help. So the trick is really to try and do what you can, and if you get really stuck, it's better to ask someone then to waste too much time sitting down and thinking yourself in circles.

Speaking about the people, I have to say the people at my workplace are great. They're just about the friendliest people I've ever met in Malaysia! (and I'm not just saying that because some of them may be reading this!) Everybody's quite easygoing, easy to talk with, and really easy to get along with. It's a total different environment to when I was working and living on site with that other company I did work experience for at the end of that year that I failed at Uni.

Speaking about failing, (don't you just love these sedgeways?), I have to check this out further, but my failing a year at UWA may have reprecussions on me being able to work in KL as an engineer. See, the problem is that to practise as an engineer here you have to be registered with the Board of Engineers which is a governement body. Apparently, if a person failed a year at uni or didn't get Honours for their degree, they may not be allowed to register with the Board of Engineers, and both of those things apply to me. This is in line with the local government universities that don't allow students to repeat if they fail a year. Basically, if you fail a year at uni, you're kicked out for good, with no prospects of ever being allowed back in. (Like, totally harsh, dude!) If you've got enough money, then you go to some private collage and try to pick some qualification there instead. If not, you're so f*cked! But the thing is I may have confused the conditions for the Board of Engineers with those of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia. If the conditions actually apply to the IEM, and not the BOE, that what will happen is I won't be able to join the IEM instead, which means I won't be able work towards getting an 'Ir' title, which is similar to the IEAust's CPEng. That would suck a little, but at least I'd still be able to work as a lowly structural engineer.

You know, from what I can gauge by talking to people, I've worked out that I'm probably the engineer with the crappiest qualifications/grades in the company. I know I'm definately the only guy without Honours. Nothing new there. I was pretty sure I was the guy who only just managed to scrape in a pass for my degree in the civil group for my year. So basically I'm so f*ckin' lucky to be able to get this job. I'm probably going to have to work twice as hard as everybody else to get the same results but luckily the work is interesting enough to motivate me to work harder. Anyway, the end of my 3 month probationary period will be coming up in just over a months time, so I'll let you know whether they decide to keep me. In the meantime, I'm just gonna be trying my best and trying to learn as much as I can to get the most that I can out of this experience.