Golden Rules for Career Success

I got this from my brother.

Golden Rules for Career Success - Richard Moran

Working as a business consultant all over the world, I have discovered some basic career-related rules that everyone should know—but many don’t.

• Business is made up of ambiguous victories and nebulous defeats. Claim them all as victories.
• Keep track of what you do; someone is sure to ask.
• Be comfortable around senior managers, or learn to fake it.
• Never bring your boss a problem without some solution. You are getting paid to think, not to whine.
• Long hours don’t mean anything; results count, not effort.
• Write down ideas; they get lost, like good pens.
• Always arrive at work 30 minutes before your boss.
• Help other people network for jobs. You never know when your turn will come.
• Don’t take days off sick—unless you are.
• Assume no one can/will keep a secret.
• Know when you do your best—morning, night, under pressure, relaxed; schedule and prioritize your work accordingly.
• Treat everyone who works in the organization with respect and dignity, whether it be the cleaner or the managing director. Don’t ever be patronizing.
• Never appear stressed in front of a client, a customer or your boss. Take a deep breath and ask yourself: In the course of human events, how important is this?
• If you get the entrepreneurial urge, visit someone who has his own business. It may cure you.
• Acknowledging someone else’s contribution will repay you doubly.
• Career planning is an oxymoron. The most exciting opportunities tend to be unplanned.
• Always choose to do what you’ll remember ten years from now.
• The size of your office is not as important as the size of your pay cheque.
• Understand what finished work looks like and deliver your work only when it is finished.
• The person who spends all of his or her time is not hard-working; he or she is boring.
• Know how to write business letters—including thank-you notes as well as proposals.
• Never confuse a memo with reality. Most memos from the top are political fantasy.
• Eliminate guilt. Don’t fiddle expenses, taxes or benefits, and don’t cheat colleagues.
• Reorganizations mean that someone will lose his or her job. Get on the committee that will make the recommendations.
• Job security does not exist.
• Always have an answer to the question, “What would I do if I lost my job tomorrow?”
• Go to the company Christmas party.
• Don’t get drunk at the company Christmas party.
• Avoid working at weekends. Work longer during the week if you have to.
• The most successful people in business are interesting.
• Sometimes you’ll be on a winning streak and everything will click; take maximum advantage. When the opposite is true, hold steady and wait it out.
• Never in your life say, “It’s not my job.”
• Be loyal to your career, your interests and yourself.
• Understand the skills and abilities that set you apart.
• Use them whenever you have an opportunity.
• People remember the end of the project. As they say in boxing, “Always finish stronger than you start.”

Stack of photos from phone

I've downloaded a stack of photos from my phone.


On June 18, I received this RaboPlus hardware pass code generator for their internet banking. Read Rabobank 6.6% online saving account for details.
Oh, recently Australia has increased the interest rate again. The Howard government does not particularly welcome that as election is coming soon. But I'm happy as most banks followed by increasing their rate too. At this time, Raboplus is standing at 6.7% while BankWest at 7% (12-month introduction rate)!!


On July 6, I received a very heart warming gift from a Malaysian auntie, ChoonHo's mom. She was here on holiday for 2 months, I was the first new friend she met here in Perth and we had 4-5 good chats altogether. And before she left for Malaysia, she knitted me this scarf as a gift. Each knot is a blessing, she said. I'm so touched. I'm so blessed.


On July 7 (obviously), I got this cool parking docket.


On July 19, I witnessed a police chase. Some car thief was chased down by 8 police cars. It was raining and didn't want to get wet. So I only got a photo of the channel 9 news car illegally parked on verged.


That night, I had dinner with my housemates at HKBBQ. The tofu dish is fantastic!

So is the BBQ

and the squid.



On July 26, I took a panorama of my desk using the stitching program that come with my k800i.

Big Bowl Noodle House on William Street

I've downloaded a stack of photos from my phone.

On 18/6, I went to Big bowl noodle house the first time. It's fantastic! Big bowl. It's extra noodle is FREE! Very satisfying.
My favourite is the beef noodle soup.

The beef stomach noodle soup is great too.

Minced pork noodle is good too, just a pity that there is no vege.


The seafood one is pricey and ordinary. The cheese baked noodle are pretty good too, good to share, a bit too heavy for one person consumption.

Oh ya, the best bit is the chilli! Very very good sambal chilli. The price ranges from $8.90 to $14.90. Recommended!
And the friendly identical twin waitresses added a bit of fun too.

And when I googled to find more information about the shop, I found this blog that has many photos of the place, and a closer look reveals that it's actually a friend of mine, Kok Wei's blog. Hi! Kok Wei.
It has the address and shop front photos there if you'd like to try it.

Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman

As part of the National Science Week activities, there was a public lecture by Prof Richard Wiseman titled "The Luck Factor". Richard is a professor of Psychology he was a magician before that part of his career started. It was a very entertaining lecture with magic tricks and public psychology experiments. I was fooled too! Fun!

Jason found one of the experiment online. It's an experiment to count the number of basketball passes among 3 white-shirt players. It's hard to get it because there are also 3 black-shirt players to confuse people.


There are some more cool experiments by Richard Wiseman on youtube and his quirkology website. I was fooled by the colour changing card tricks!

Transforming the Mind, Yunus-style

Transforming the Mind, Yunus-style by Marina Mahathir.

There I listened to Dr Jonathan Mann articulate a very new concept to me, that a person's health is directly related to the human rights he or she is able to enjoy.

What underlies Prof Yunus' motivation is something extraordinary in these cynical times: he has total faith in the human spirit.In believing that every human being is at heart an entrepreneur and has skills that are under-utilised, Prof Yunus revolutionized the way we look at the poor. No longer are they to be looked down as incapable, unreliable, too ill-educated to better themselves. They are human beings who happened to be born in difficult circumstances which are no fault of theirs. As Prof Yunus likes to remind people, "Poverty is not the fault of the poor".

UWA EXPO

It's Open Day again. This is my 5th time volunteering at the open day, and it's the last time also.

I helped set up most of the vision demo in the morning and talked to visitors about all these projects that I seems to know from listening to the creators explaining about them in previous years.

Most of the demos are from last year or year before. A couple of interesting thing to note：
1. A really cool face recognition system using a simple webcam that we downloaded from here. Visitors just love it. If you have a webcam, you can test it out too.
2. On last Friday 5pm+ I decided to print out a huge poster of Chinese Ascii arts to cover a big white wall in our demo lab. So I go to the code that I haven't touched for more than a year and got it to do what I wanted in 20 mins. Felt pretty good about myself. The end result is a 8x8 A4 sheets of Winthrop tower made up of Chinese characters. A couple of visitors were very impressed by that. One of them said "It's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life!". I was happy with that.


More photos are on my photo gallery

Online Virtual UWA

A quick note on the virtual UWA project I've been involved. It's launched last Friday and well received. All the ungodly hours spent on the 3D modelling was glorified.

Read the story here.

This Winthrop Hall model is one of my work.


The virtual UWA is online at http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/virtual and you can choose an avatar and see many panorama views of UWA. Need to download the BS Contact to see it, the instruction is on the site.
At this moment, the 3D models are not up yet. Eventually they will.

Meeting with my minister

Last Friday I was invited by Somun the student coordinator of AMBC to attend a meeting with the minister of International Trade and Industry of my country - the YB Rafidah Aziz. She and her team of representatives are on a trade mission to Australia and Perth is their last stop.



She speaks well, with a sense of humour and a no-nonsense kind of attitude. Her directness is quite funny at one time when she was directing the delegates' attention to one of the information CD and here's what happened - she took out the CD, looked at it and said "What is this CD about? I can't even read the title, the title is too small! Who prepared this?" and she looked at her subordinates, "These people just played with graphics, what's the point of putting the twin tower, fireworks so big and you can't even read the words!"


The lunch was great! Well, it's at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.


And it's a courtesy of the Malaysian government. I felt a bit uneasy about that so I made it a point to make some contribution out of my attendance.

Over lunch I got a chance to talk to the director of a software company in Malaysia that just signed a partnership contract with an Aussie company. They might be able to get me a job when I get back. I also got in contact with the treasurer of MASCA WA, Everlyn, a nice young curtin student, I also caught up with Kay Sen, ISS liaison officer at UWA.
(ya, it's more natural to look at the LCD instead of the lens)

After the lunch, that's the student meeting with minister and 4 members of parliament who came along with the trip. The minister seems down to earth during the dialog, she made it very safe for us to ask questions and express our concerns, by asking us to address her as Auntie Rafidah and treat her like an elderly relative. That worked quite well and many Q&A was exchanged. One student got a smack on the hand by addressing her straight as Rafidah. One asked her about the state of Proton and why the import tax for cars is still so high and she shared some interesting stories about the past managements which I won't reproduced here.
Another student touched on the education system that focuses more on paper than practical and she answered as it's a culture that is ingrained and needs to be changed.

I got my guts up and ask her opinion on the concern that I have which I think is shared by many young non-Malay professionals who are currently overseas, ie I'm going back (or some are thinking about going back) to serve the country but am deterred and frightened by the many racist remarks of ministers and unfair racist incidents towards the non-Malays. Her answer was along the line of - "for god's sake, please do not ever look at any issue as Chinese or Malay or Indian! We are all Malaysian! There are some idiots who said something inconsiderate and that does not represent the mass of the parliament and the government's view." I hope it's the true words and not just lips service.

Then another student raised the issue that they don't have a venue to organise event for Malaysian students, the Consul General briefed that there's a plan of Malaysia House under AMWA to accommodate this need. With much hesitation, then being pressed by the minister, the student expressed that AMWA members are mainly Chinese... And "Auntie Rafidah" straight away told off the student right on the face that "Do not ever think of going down that path!". And she reiterated that Malaysian is Malaysian, not Malay or Indian or Chinese! If there's to be a Malaysia Hall, it will be for all Malaysians.

Seems like we still have a long way to go for the nation building, but I'm glad that the minister took the strong view of "all Malaysians" and taught the student a lesson! The director of the Malaysian Student Department from Sydney also reiterated that its department is there to help all Malaysian students, not just the government sponsored ones.
Also, a new officer to look after Malaysian students here in Perth was requested as Perth has about 4000 Malaysian students, the second largest in Australia, and the minister was supportive about it, and it may just happen next year.

At the end, we took some happy snaps. Overall, it was a great meeting.


More photos are on AMWA photo gallery, which I maintain.
http://www.amwa.org.au/gallery/