Final weekend in US

Finally it’s the last weekend in US before I go back to Singapore. Can’t wait to get back but also have gotten used to the relaxing life here. This weekend I didn’t go anywhere far but it was satisfying. I drove about less than 2 hours to Sandusky, Ohio. Sandusky is actually famous for its amusement park, Cedar Point. I heard the roller coasters are crazy. The amusement park is located on a private island, somewhat like Sentosa where you can’t walk across but have to drive across and I was forced to pay 10 bucks for the parking. But, it was okay. At least I got to walk around a bit there and take some pictures. I didn’t want to go in and play because what fun is there playing alone. 😀

Then, after that I went over to Battery and Shoreline Park where I could see all the sailboats parked there and Lake Erie. The Americans really love to go sailing. It’s so cool seeing the boats parked there like cars, and them taking it out during weekends and so on. I had a great time just walking along the sea. The people there were extra friendly. At least the 5-6 people I walked past greeted me with a “Hi” or “Hello”. Probably it was either because of my striking red and white striped shirt or I just look “touristy” snapping pictures all the way.

On Sunday I went to Canton, Ohio. There was a football hall of fame there but I didn’t go in. If it was a BADMINTON hall of fame I sure would. :p But it was cool seeing how popular football is over here. By the way it’s American football, not the football that we really know. And American football is even different from rugby, I thought it was the same.

The rest of the weekend was spent shopping. Went to a few different malls. Their malls are mostly one level, not tall and many storeys like ours. I had to start shopping already otherwise I won’t have anything to bring back. Knowing how I normally shop, this was a pretty decent job I did. 🙂

Well, one more week of work now. Going to be a pretty eventful week I suppose. So far, already have an Indians game and a Buffalo Wild wings outing planned. Til next time then.

Work and travel

It’s been 2 and a half weeks in Ohio now. Work is good. I’m working on a project which is mainly to create a program to backup some PLC-s. Currently doing all the user interfaces and form logics using C# mostly. I’m working with 2 guys but I think I’m mainly doing the coding while they think of how to do it. Progress so far has been steady. Loving it and hope can learn a lot of stuff from this and other projects if given the opportunity.

Daily life here is great. Wake up early in the morning and have breakfast in the hotel. Breakfast menu is the same everyday though. But, it has a decent variety to satisfy me. Bread, cereal, waffles (ownself make), eggs and sausages, muffins, fruits and milk. I don’t eat everything everyday. Just a bit a day so that I don’t get easily bored with it. Then, head off to work. People at work are nice. Most of the people will smile at you or greet you. And they like to hold the doors for you even though you’re quite a distance away from it. So I always hurry to the door if I see someone holding it. Lunches sometimes go with colleagues if they ask us go with them or I just go with Chao Yian and Chaoliang. Yea there’s 3 of us over here from the Singapore office. Funny because today we went to lunch with Jim, our Singapore director who’s here on vacation I think. And one of the Rovisys guys commented that half our Singapore office is here. It’s funny because our Singapore office isn’t very big so it’s pretty true. Plus those who are overseas, I don’t think there’s many people back in Singapore. After work, just come back to hotel room and RELAX. Watch tv, chat (to connect with people back home) and laze on the bed.

Travelling’s great too. I think it’s because company is sponsoring me over here. At least the hotel, food and so on are settled so basically I don’t need to spend anything much. So, I can spend all my money on travelling. I only can go travel during weekends though, of course. So far, I’ve been to CHICAGO. Visited Navy Pier, Michigan Avenue, Sears Tower and Wrigley Field. I’ve uploaded the photos on my Facebook here.

Scenery was nice there. Too bad my battery ran out at Sears Tower so I couldn’t take any photos from the top. But, overall I think the trip was satisfying. It’s just so nice to see places and open up your eyes to life elsewhere. However, too long here and I can’t take too much Western food already. So when got chance, we go for Chinese food for lunch. 😀 This weekend we’re going to Niagara Falls. So looking forward to it. Will put some updates about the trip after. 🙂

First time in US

Can’t believe I’m in US for job training after just over a month of starting work. One of the reason I am here is because I am one of (kind of) only 2 software guys in Rovisys Asia. The other being Chao Yian. Why are we here? It is mainly to learn the coding standards in software coding that is used by the company. They hope that we will be able to pick up those software skills and go back to Singapore and continue to work on it there.

So far, I’ve been only here for a day. 2 days if you include the travelling. The flight itself took 24 hours going from Singapore to Hong Kong to Chicago to Cleveland. Most of the journey on the plane, I was sleeping, eating, watching movies. I tried to sleep as much as possible on the plane because I was afraid of the jetlag later. So far I haven’t really experienced the jetlag feeling although many people told me that it would take about 1 to 2 weeks to recover. But, seems like I’m doing fine so far, I think.

I have been to the workplace and oh my, Rovisys Company is so big here. There’s about 100+ employees. I don’t think I’ll ever meet all of them. But, at least those I’ll work with closely I’ll know them. The people are just great here. All very friendly and polite. Looking forward to working with them this one month.

Tomorrow the company is going to have a “College Kickback” event where they will all wear their college wear and they are having a Beer Bong contest. Beer Bong, from what I gathered is a college thing in US where they have beer in something and they let it go so the beer rushes quickly in. Pretty creepy the level the contestants go to. I heard some even kind of programmed a whole machine just to do that. Well, tomorrow I’ll see. 🙂 By the way, as pointed out by my colleague in US, this company is probably the first company in US to be doing Beer Bong AND getting paid doing it. 😀

Til next time then.

Of remote desktops and test protocols

It’s been a month since I’ve started working at Rovisys. So far it has been a pleasant experience and I trust it will continue to be. I’m currently working on a project in Abbott. So most of the time I go to Abbott site in Tuas either by shuttle bus, cab or Matt’s car. I like to go to the client’s place because I like change in environments. Sometimes go to office sometimes at Abbott it’s quite a change. Also, the food in Abbott is subsidized. Although it doesn’t taste that great sometimes but it’s cheap and we get free fruits/salad and drinks. 🙂

Most of my work is done on remote computers because the PI system is installed on certain machines. So I remote into them from any machine and work from there. At times we’ll get kicked off by someone else who is using it as well. But you’ll be surprised at how many machines we can remote into. It’s like living in a world of multiple computers.

Other than coding additions and changes, there’s a lot of testing that needs to be done. These tests are called test protocols and it involves many documentations and procedures such as pre-approval, post-approval. It gets too much sometimes. Every little error on the protocol is rejected by the QA department. Really too detailed I feel. But then again, I guess it’s good in a way because it really affects their production machines and they need to be working properly.

So far I’m satisfied with what I’m doing and also pleased to meet all the nice people around. I think my company is a great place to be at and hope that I can stay for long. By the way, we had a company event last Friday and we went to the Tiger beer brewery for a tour+drinks before heading off to Lakeshore for a BBQ. I had my 2nd “drink” now. Drank 1 and a quarter of a small cup of apple cider. I didn’t dare drink too much because I knew I’ll get quite red after from my first drink experience. A toast to a good and successful career ahead! 🙂

Working Life

It has been more than a week since I started work at Rovisys. So far so good. I have been learning up some new PI software which I have never heard of before. It’s mainly used for automation of machines I think. Anyway, so far we’re just working under the guidance of Matt, also a software guy. I think it’ll take some time for me to start working independently like most of them seem to be like. Mainly because most of the stuff are pretty raw and new to me but I’m learning. I have also been going over to Abbott to do server installations for them. It’s called a domain migration project and they are going to have a plant shutdown for the systems to shift servers if I’m not mistaken. So what we’re doing now is to prepare the systems for it to transfer over when they shutdown at the end of June. That’s almost about it for my first week. It has been an interesting week and I hope as time passes I’ll become more enriched about what I’m doing and be good at it. =)