Post Raya Depression

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh..

 

Amboi tajuk..tak agak2..haha. My Solat Apps says its 27th Syawal, and I've been back to work since 10th Syawal, so I came back at the time all the open houses are about to start. My FB timelines are filled with people either hosting or attending open houses.

 

I hosted one (can't really say its an open house) the previous weekend. Cooked mee rebus, rendang daging with pulut kuning, roti jala with kari ayam, and for dessert I made chocolate brownie and kek suji CMG. Nak kata puas makan, macam kenyang jugak la, siap ada leftovers which took me almost 2 weeks to finish, but still I craved for many other foods as well.

 

I just realized, on each of my trip back, I've never really go for 'jalan-jalan cari makan'. Normal catch up with friends and family pakai main tangkap muat nak makan kat mana. Waaaa... As of now, my cravings include:

1. Pasemboq
2. Durian - not so much of cravings per se, but more of teringin dok tengok orang post gambaq durian dalam FB..huhuhu

I have another 3 days to go for puasa 6. I will finish on 29th Syawal, insyaAllah. Am seriously thinking of making pasemboq as a mark for my 'raya' celebration..hehe.

 

Malam ni kena rendam kacang hijau for the tauge, and maybe by Sunday I will be able to enjoy my pasemboq, that is, if I didn't change my mind in the course of this week. Haha.

 

On another note, am sponsoring the fun run this Thursday. The menu would be:

 

Appetiser :
Cucoq udang with kuah kacang

 

Mains :

1. Nasi putih
2. Sambal kering - kentang, tauhu, fucuk, suun (made the tauhu last weekend, now sitting nicely in the fridge, and I just realized, I have tooo many fucuk and suun, so better start consuming now.
3. Kerabu daun selom - I cannot NOT have this :)
4. Snake gourd kootu - Snake gourd is a vegetable that is of peria, petola family, originally came from India, I used to have it in my garden but somehow it refuses to grow anymore. Will share the recipe if its a success.
5. Ayam goreng berempah.

 

Dessert:
Kuih sagu

 

That should be it. It looks a lot, but its not actually. The previous fun run I had a theme going on, but this time I didn't really have a proper plan, so the theme is 'wing it'! haha. We'll see.

 

Until next time. Wassalam.  

Too Much

Today I cried. After quite some time. Today I cried. The pain felt a bit more than usual. Or is it just me being extra sensitive this time of the month. It's horrible. Already had 6 tabs of pain killer, 2 cans of coke, and I don't have the energy to go and make a nice warm tea for me.

I'm lying on my side. Crying my hearts out. The pain felt more just because I can't tell anybody. Last month I was with the girls this time around, it was painful, no doubt but I wasn't hurting, because I had someone to talk to.

Ya Allah, please send someone I can share the feeling of this pain. Just by talking about it ease the pain. Please Ya Allah...

I don't allow you to drive.

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh...

Di saat orang kat tanah malaya sibuk dengan pick up line yang sweet-muit, ayat atas tu lah yang buat aku makin terikat.

So here's the story. Few friends and yours truly are planning to chase the northern lights come November this year. The lead proposed we follow trip kengkawan's itinerary, which is to go to Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We copied all their itineraries and tried to adjust here and there to suit our planning.

Taking advantage of Kim, I volunteered to run the plan with him to my friends, just to see from a local point of view if that is a good plan.

These kind of things to me is not something that you can just talk in passing. Since we have a proper itinerary, I asked for his spare time, to meet and properly discuss it. So yesterday we did.

Our plan for now is to drive in most part of the journey, exactly as what Trip Kengkawan did. Kim, on the other hand, upon knowing the tentative timing, strongly advised not to do so. At first he was just expressing his opinion, and as we discussed further, he keep on stressing to not drive in any part of Norway at that time due to the wet and snowy road condition and none of us girls have any experience driving in snow.

As if stressing his opinion not enough, he did finally make a point by saying: "In fact, I don't allow you to drive." and he looked serious about it. He did mentioned he was worried about me.

I laughed and replied, "Ok, ok, point noted."

The entire time I did not really tried to justify why and how we can proceed with driving, I was just accepting his feedback. But maybe he was so worried that we will still choose to drive, and therefore he emphasize his objection by saying so. Risau betul pakcik tu :)

If its other feminist, they would probably felt patronized by his statement, but me hearing it at that time, aduhhh... cair weh. Pick line tak pick up line.. jatuh makin dalam dah aku ni.. parah betul..haha.

Moments like this with him are the things I held on tight in my mind. Kept locked and compartmentalized in a permanent section of my memory as I know there is slim to none chances for this to happen again. Past few months we were a bit distant. Somehow we grew apart, and my Kim's time yesterday was enough for me. I'll look for other opportunity maybe next 3-4 months. I'm good for now.

Kim is sweet like that. Sweet without actually being a sweet talker, he's very direct, tak ada ayat bunga2, falsampah semua. Everything he said is blunt, and I don't think he's faking it. Tu yang buat hati makin terikat. I am easily turned off by sweet talker, I can talk to them but will never trust them. There is a certain negative pre-conceived notion about them that prevents me to do so.

Ok, enough for now. Noting it here for my memory, the sweet one this time. Till next time, wassalam.

Email...oh email...

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh...

How do you manage your email? Work emails to be specific.. For me, I glance through the email, especially if its from my boss and my team mate. If I need to look into the detail, I'll come back to it when time permits. But the important thing is, I will make sure that I know who sent what email and on what issue. Apparently almost all colleague of mine and my dear boss don't do that. Only the trainee bother to read my email.

We have an event yesterday, a global event and I was the focal point for our team. I have summed up where and when each of us needs to be, but they just don't bother to read the email. Sama ja boss ka colleague ka.. And knowing that I did made the effort to tell them personally via SMS, verbal and even go to the length of printing out my email and asking my colleague to pass to the boss as I was rushing out and didn't managed to talk to Mr Boss yet.

Somehow this colleague, he was not properly listening to my request, gave the printed schedule to another colleague which already know where she is going. Lo and behold, when I came back to the office, the boss pester me with the question, 'So where do we go, do we know yet?' And my boss is the typical pushy Chinese boss that keeps asking multiple questions before you can even answer the first one. Frustrating ok! Bad enough he didn't read my email, and now he did not get that bloody piece of paper that I printed out.

This is just one example, and its on social event. There has been way too many occasions, my work email was not read properly, things that I have completed, he keeps coming back to me. I know they may have like 200+ unread email, but for God sake, don't do this. We are a team, I don't how many times I've said, read my email, its all in it. Up to a point I drag him to see my screen, go to my sent item and showed him this is what I sent you. The details are here.

Somehow I wonder how much hijab can Allah's put to some people that can they be so blinded? Geram betui...

OK, enough rantings for today. Till next time.

Wassalam. 

P-290, my weekends for the next 2 months

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh...

Seems like all my travelogue could not go pass Day-1 eh? Hahaha.. malas ya amat! So now, in order to get myself back in the blogging mojo again, let me share one thing that is for sure I will need to write, at least once a week.

I have been enrolled to attend this course P-290 HSSE and SP in Projects in June this year. Its part of my IDP (Individual Development Plan). Brace yourself, you'll be seeing more of these Shell abbreviation in the future..hehe..So here we go... This course is to be done via 2 phases, first one is the course pre-work, that we need to submit weekly assignment and upon completing that we will be attending the F2F (face to face) course in June. There is a learning portal that we log on to and obtain all the course and reference materials. The assignment has to be submitted no later that 11AM Sunday every week. Failing which, I will not be allowed to attend the F2F. We don't want that, do we? :)

So from this week onwards, I will share with you my assignments. The reason that I am sharing here is:
1. I need to get back my writing mojo, so this will be a good warm up (I hope!)
2. I am almost 100-200% sure that none of you are working in the same company and would be attending the similar course in the near or far into the future. Therefore, there will be no issue of copy and paste of my assignment.

Question 1:  Consider what you know about leadership in general and HSSE and SP leadership in particular. What are the key attributes of good HSSE and SP leadership?

A good HSSE and SP leaders has few key attributes that can be measured against them. A leader must be authentic. He/she must be able to communicate his/her own vision of how Goal Zero can be realized and what is expected from the working team ensure that the vision can be achieved. The leader must also shows his commitment by either leading or participating in core HSSE activities such as team HSE meetings, management reviews and incidents investigation. 
Another key attributes of a good HSSE and SP leader is to be mindful of the HSSE risk associated with the business and how they are managed. He/she must also be able to obtain assurance that controls to manage the risk are effective and a leader must take appropriate corrective action if he/she thinks the condition is vice versa.
A good HSSE and SP leader should be able to collaborate with different parties at different level in his/her organization. It’s important for the leaders to be able to engage, influence and align join venture and contracting partners on the importance of HSSE leadership. The leader should work with the key stakeholders to identify areas to improve HSSE performance and agree on the improvement action plan. 
Last but not least, a good HSSE and SP leader should be able to ensure that his/her organization is well motivated. This can be achieved by the leaders themselves coaching and developing the personnel in effective HSSE management. Leaders should ensure that individuals are hold accountable for their HSSE behaviours and performance and corrective actions such as consequence management should be applied consistently for any non-compliance. Leaders should also make clear that performance reward include HSSE behaviours as one of the criteria, and the leaders should provide constructive feedback to personnel/contractors in that regards.  

Question 2: Early in a project, it is necessary to manage the HSSE and SP risks for the front-end phases and at the same time, take in the big picture view to ensure that the right strategies and agreements are in place for HSSE and SP risks. Leaders have to make sure the project identifies all of the risks, technical and non-technical, and strikes the right balance between them. What key actions should leaders take to make sure that HSSE and SP are properly integrated into the project design with the right balance?

In order to ensure that HSSE and SP are properly integrated into the project design with the right balance, the proper HEMP process should be applied. It prescribed that hazards or risks should be identified right from the first project phase in order to assign the right controls and mitigations. This exercise requires a multi discipline participation. Leaders should ensure that various discipline are given opportunity to play their part since the beginning of the project. During the risk identification, a risk brain storm tool called TECOP (Technical, Economic, Commercial, Organizational, and Political ) could be used to confirm the both technical and non-technical risks are identified. Once the risks are identified at early stage of the project,it will then be used to develop the HSSE and SP plan. The plan will be able to capture all necessary works that needs to be conducted throughout the life-cycle of the project and it will provide input to a seamless integration with all other project elements such as cost and schedule. 

Question 3: During the construction phase of a project, the leaders have a significant impact on the safety culture of the site. Describe some key actions a leader should take to establish a strong safety culture?

First and foremost a leader should understand what are the current safety culture on site. It can varies from pathological to as high as generative. Having understanding of the culture, leaders would then understand the gaps from what he expects the culture that he/she expected and formulate an action plan to close the gaps. Part of the action required to close the gap is to provide appropriate training to the workforce.
A leader should also ensure that the project premise capture safety as part of the deliverables throughout the project life cycle. A clear target setting by the leader would help the organization to achieve a good safety performance. Based on the premise, a more detailed safety program can be planned and executed to help create a proactive safety culture during construction phase. Workers should be engaged on what they are expected to achieve with regards to safety. The focus of project should emphasis the same importance of executing the project successfully and safely. 
Another aspects that a leader should focus in is the welfare of the workforce in the construction phase. For example, workers are required to use the correct PPE during work activities, hence its the responsibilities of the leader to ensure that there is enough resources that supplies correct PPE for the workforce. Other general well-being of the workers should be considered as well such as health. 
Once a good safety program is being implemented, the leader should make sure that the execution are being monitored and also make provision to recognize the good safety performance within the work crew. This would further motivate others to apply good safety culture on site. It is highly recommended for a leader to provide constructive feedback to the team. The same applies for non-compliance whereby when a wrong safety behaviours were observed, there should be a clear consequence management to be taken. Actions to deal with non-conformance should not be just on the surface. In order to inculcate a good safety culture, the real cause of the condition to happen (might be a person or a process) has to be managed as well.

Don't be fooled into thinking that I came up with the answers myself, its all in the course materials. Though it may seem like a copy paste exercise, I have to admit its not that straight forward. I have to present the answers the way the questions asked for, which is not that straightforward in the course materials either. The truth is, I have the materials since last year, tried reading it few times, but nothing sticks. Only when I started to do this exercise, I began to appreciate the materials and able to relate a bit more. Guess that's the aim of the exercise anyway. 

Its been a while since I read for the intention of answering questions (read: study). Hakak dah tua dik...hehehe. Respect those that can continue formal education till old age. 

Till next time, wassalam.

Day 1 - 18th February 2016

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh...

Day-1 started when we were picked up from the hotel at 8AM. We stayed at Sal Salinero Hotel at Moshi Town. The town is some 45 minutes away from Kilimanjaro Airport.

Our things are packed in 2 bags, 1 duffel bag that contains the whole that we will need throughout the climb, sleeping bag, clothes, socks, junk foods/ snacks, summit clothing and many others, max weight should not be more than 15 kg. We were given packing list right after we registered and I bought most of my items in US. Another bag is our day pack (back pack). This one should not exceed 5kg. It should contain things that we need during the day, such as water bottles, snacks, toilet papers (or wet wipes) and some other things.

Note: Include the picture that I laid out they whole things, prior to packing!

Danie fixing Sophie's water tube

We stopped by the warehouse as Robert and myself needs to rent the duffle bag and we did not advise the company that we hired earlier.

The collection of things that are up for rent is humongous! You can almost come sehelai sepinggang but just be ready to wear 'bundled' stuffs. Hehe.

After that the bus took us straight to Machame gate. This one of the few entrances to Kilimanjaro. At the gate, our things are being weigh. The porters and guides are all busy now loading and unloading our stuffs. Back in the old days, a porter can carry any amount of load, but due to health and safety reason, the park regulates that max load for a porter is 20 kg. So on top of our 15 kg duffel bag, the porter still needs to carry their own things.

Machame Gate

How far are we from the peak?

We finally started walking at 11AM, after all weigh in and registration is done. We have been told to take it slow, the guides and porters will keep reminding us to 'Pole-pole' which means, slow-slow. The estimated walking time for the first day is 7 hours to reach Machame Gate (10.7km).

Maybe the first hour of the walk into rain forest. 

It rained a little bit along the way. At around 1PM we stopped for lunch. I can't really ate anything solid. So I just finished the fruit juice from the lunch box.

Some moss, don't ask me the scientific name, I wouldn't know..hehehe..

Higher up the elevation

I got to the camp around 1630H. We made it within the expected timing which is good. First day was quite rough for me as I was having too many things in my back pack. I had all the 3L of water, which I only drank 0.5L of it. When I did Stong-Ayam back in 2001, I discovered that I could not drink a lot of water during the hike, I loose my breath rapidly. Found it the hard way. So for this climb, I didn't really drink much during the walk, but I make up once we get to the camp.

The middle one is the tent I shared with Sophie

Me, Sophie, Richard, Jac

Nelson (chief guide), Robert, Andy, Dingo, Arash

The chief guide, Nelson had a daily meeting with all of us, all climbers are monitored for O2 content (signs of dehydration) , max heart rate, and some other general health conditions. Due to the high altitude, we were also required to take Diamox, to prevent any altitude sickness. Even if you take the pills, there is no guarantee that you'll not get the sickness, but hey, its better than nothing.

The funny part is, we consulted the doctor in Shell IA, and he prescribed us 250mg tablet, take 2 tablets, twice a day. But when we consulted Nelson, the recommended dosage is 125mg twice a day which is actually consistent with Travel Doctor's advice. I took 250 mg tablet twice a day, and I do get the overdose symptom, which is tingling feeling (sort of numb, but not quite) on the figers. Luckily Nelson mentioned about it, else, I would have been really overdosed!

We went to sleep quite early, 8 PM~ish, but I could not really sleep. I always have issues with cold weather. I have a good sleeping bag, rated until -4 degC, but somehow my feet was cold. I tried putting on heating pad and sock, it didn't work. So ended up was awake every few hours due to the cold.

Before I end the post, here is how our toilet looks like. It took a little bit of skills to operate it, but I was fine with it. Till next post. 

Wassalam..

Kilimanjaro Trip: How it Happened...

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh...

I've yet to pen down my US journey, and then I'm off to another destination :) This one more challenging than any other journey that I've been through, physically and mentally as well.

Flashback few months back, towards end of year, there were loads of parties that was thrown by the expat communities in RA. One birthdays after another. During one of those, I overheard Sophie talking to Richard about their plan to hike Kilimanjaro. Somehow I was not my usual self, I asked to join. Haha.. I never really had a proper conversations with any of them, hence, by right I would not be inclined to jump in any kind of conversation with them. Best case, I would just listened by the side and when nobody realized, I will disappear into thin air..haha. :D But somehow the topic is way too interesting to be passed. I've been thinking about hiking Kili for quite sometime. Pretty sure I mentioned it to Kim sometime back, but he was not into it (though he is now somewhere is South America, hiking the Atacama dessert, Andes mountains).

Back to the hike, upon expressing my interest, Sophie sent me all the required information, dates were being discussed and I did told them, that my plan is conditional. If and only if my boss WK agrees to let me take leave. The plan is to go in Feb 2016. I will be away from final week December until first week Jan. And for me to apply another leave in the span of less than two months, may invite dissatisfaction from my boss point of view. :P Somehow luck is on my side, WK agrees to me taking leave again..hehehe. I clearly mentioned to him about all my leave plans, the short time span in between and also the fact that he will also be away for CNY in Feb. He said OK, he must have been in a very good mood..hehe.

So the rest as they say, is history :)

I will be jumping back and forth (and maybe backdate the entry as well) just so that I can properly capture the chronological sequence of our adventure. We'll see..hehehe.. I may not backdate my post, now that I have come to think of it..hehe.

Machame Gate - where we started the walk

How far to the top?

Point no 4 interests us very much, coming from Nigeria..hehehe

Here are some sneak peaks. Will try hard to write more for the day to day adventure. I gave up doing that in IG as I think it would be too much. Blog is a much more proper avenue for lengthy sharing like this :)

Till next time, wassalam.