2015, In A Nutshell

Salam w.b.t and hi all.

How are you guys been doing? Alhamdulillah, I am doing fine here. As we all know, 2016 is just around the corner. Time flies fast, I mean, really fast.

Time is gold. En route to Aberdeen from Paris

I remember the time I happy, cried, disappointed for various of things. The memories are still fresh, like it just happened yesterday.

A lot of things have happened. A lot of things have changed. Well, we are not living in a static world, are we?

In my head, I have many things to share on this blog but as usual, I don’t know what to start with. Thus, I think I will just share the highlights of events happened in my 2015 calendar.

 

Start working with SLB

It was exhaustive wait. People might know I am working in Aberdeen, but not everyone knows, how? After Australia, they changed my posting to Indonesia. Unfortunately, my work Indonesia visa did not approve as I did not meet the age requirement. I was 23 at the time. Then, the recruiter made drastic changes, he changed my segment and the posting location. I need to go for all the interview processes, all over again. As they can't simply assign me without knowing my capabilities.

I went to Labuan, again. Hehehe…I took it as a vacation.

Sunset view from staff house in Labuan

Making new friends

I make new friends. I work at Sepen, I make new friends there. You know what, during my last day of employment I cried. A colleague said to me, "Chill man, you just work 6 months here. So, chillex". Hahaha…



My last meeting with Sepen folks

Also, I make new friends in Paris. All are SLB new hired, we met in Paris during OFS-1. I never be in one room with so many nationalities, around 20 nationalities from around the world. Only me from Malaysia. I was quite scare at first, like my English is not so fluent. But, things sorted out well.

The largest batch in 2015 for EAF geomarket, they said

I have new friend here, her name is Kanoon. We are based in Aberdeen but stay at different staff house. Despite of different segment, we contact each other as we are still trying to settle down in Aberdeen. Actually, got several other trainees posted to Aberdeen, but I don’t have the pictures with them.

Me and Kanoon, she is from Thailand

I am sure I will meet more people in the future. I need to improve my social skills and also English, seriously. Haish…I am so not good at mingling around with people.

Miss old friends

I miss my friends, all of my friends although I am not being nice to everyone. I did not have a chance to meet up before I depart to the UK. Seriously folks. I miss you guys. All of you. I don’t want to specify the names, because it will be a very, very long list.



Friends

Therefore, I am extremely grateful and over the moon when some old friends randomly PM on Facebook. I really mean it. You know, when you are far from home, and your friends message to say hi, it is a great feeling. The feelings are like, "Owh man, this person still remember me. What a surprise!", "I have someone to talk to. Yuhuu!!".

Hahaha

Well, I know it is from Facebook, but still it is a great thing when the person still has guts to say hi to others.

 

New place, new environment, and being far from home

Home is where the heart is.

I don’t know how to describe this. But my adapting skill are being test to a whole new level. Freezing cold weather, sunlight for less than 5 hours a day, cultures, job, Scottish accent, foods, and many more. It is not easy I am telling you.

Apart from weather, their Scottish accent is quite a challenge for me

I am still adapting and it is challenging.

Despite of all the challenges, I always pray that I will never forget my responsibilities as His servant, my responsibilities as a daughter of my mother, and always stay down to earth. If I am changing, I hope that I am changing in a good way to become a better person.

Feel a "little bit" homesick at the moment

Experienced various of feelings

 

2015 is quite emotional year for me. Hahaha…I experienced various of feelings and emotions throughout the year compared to years before. I learn from the experiences, which kind of helping me to become a mature adult. Wihihihihi

Smile, do and pray for the best

Resolutions

I am learning from the past. I am drafting my 2016 resolutions, in my head. Hahaha….I haven't make my resolutions for the next year. Aiyaa….

But I have a personal diary already. My sister, angah gave it to me as a present. Wahaha…I am sure having a diary is a good start, isn't?

One iron woman, three daughters



I think that’s all I have on my mind at the moment. I hope we all will be successful in everything we do, and achieve success in this world and hereafter, InsyaAllah.

 

So folks, that’s it for now. I will write again in the future. As usual, take a good care of yourself.

 

Salam w.b.t and chow!

 

P/S - Great things are not easy to achieve, need a special formula and most important thing is PATIENCE

 

Another Year, Another Number

Salam w.b.t and hi all.

Reaching 24 years old on the last three days, I get to know myself better.

Trust

I trust people easily, new friends and even a stranger. Yes, I am an idiot for trusting people easily. Every time I meet a new friend, I would love to think they are like a baby. You know, they are ‘white’, pure, nice and no bad side. Yeah, too ambitious right? Anyhow, that is how I want people to think of me, positive. Treat others like how we want to be treated, shall we?

Unfortunately, too much trust I give to people has taken its toll on me. Many events, but it is better to keep it to myself. My mother always advised me to be careful, different people have different heart. However, with the increase of my age, I am learning about people and from my experience. Hopefully, I will be wiser each day.

Style, Fashion, and Me.

Goodbye fashion and style. I am a cave girl. Jajajaja…

When I am angry,

When I am angry, I will be quiet. It is not I don’t have anything to say, it is I am trying extremely hard to stop bad words which are racing hard to get out from my mouth. Otherwise, I will kill others with my words, which I don’t fancy to.

When I am envy,

When I am envy to a specific person, I would not talk to that person for a certain amount of time. I would say I am taking some time to persuade or "pujuk" my heart. Weird, right? That’s how woman deals with her broken heart, I guess.

When I am waiting,

I cannot deal with a lateness or waiting for someone/something that is late. My blood will be pumped very, very, very fast when this happen. Impatient, yes I am. But, when you said meeting at 3 pm, 3 pm it is. It is not that at 3 pm you just started moving your ass from your chair. Understand?

I am stubborn.

This is a fact. I can tolerate on certain things, and also got certain things which I could not tolerate. For example, when you force me to do something I don't want. Let me give you an example, a colleague asked me to go somewhere to monitor the project progress. This fella kept forcing me, I don’t want. When I said I don’t want, means I don’t want. Period.

Anyway, I don’t blame this fella, it is in my DNA to against when people pushing me. But, it takes some arts if you want me to do something which against my willingness. People who understands me know the arts I mentioned.

I am not good in terms of social life

I am not good at maintaining relationship with others. I don’t know why, but when I befriended with a similar person for a long time, I will get boring. Let say, I meet that person every single day for six months straight, I will be boring. Seriously dull. I need to meet people, meet new people. I still got friends, but not many. Anyway, based on an online personality test, I am an introvert kind of person.

I think that online test was a fake. So, dear my future husband if you are reading this, believe me, the test was not genuine.

Routine

Falling into same routine every single day will kill me slowly. Nevertheless, at the moment I am trying my best to make myself calm and composed. I would love to see and experience something extraordinary every single day. So that I can reflect what I have gone through before I go to sleep and think what can be done better next time.

I think that’s all I want to share about myself. Some may take this entry as a way to understand me better, like understanding the reasons why Atiqah is so annoying. Some others may take this as disadvantage to manipulate me. Yeah, whatever.

Either way, I hope you have fun reading this. Hehehe…

Salam w.b.t and chow!

P/S – Who got extra money and don’t know how to spend it? Please, bank it to my account. I need money. PM me for details J

Pursue Studies, Why Not?

Salam w.b.t and hello people.

I always get this from many people, "Hey Atiqah, don't you want to pursue studies?", "Don't you want to be a lecturer?", "Are you going to do Master after this?", and other questions but with similar meaning.

Always, my answer will be “NO”. Then, the common following question from them is, “Why?” Saying “NO” is the easiest part in this situation, whereas the “Why” is the most difficult part.

I have a lot of reasons of why I am not doing Master or pursue studies. When I say ‘a lot’, I really mean it. One sentence would not be enough to describe this. It is not that I did not get the opportunity, in fact, I got two chances to pursue studies at higher level.

The first one was Master in Chemical Engineering at UWA, Perth and the second one was Master in Aerospace at Cranfield University, UK. Both were sponsored, and I declined. You guys must think I am an imbecile for rejecting the chances, right?

I have my reasons, people. Therefore, I summarise them here.

Responsibility

Before I completed my undergraduate course, pursuing studies in Master was not my favourite idea, even now. My goal is to make my mother live happily, fulfil all her dreams, and stop working. I am the eldest, and I have huge responsibilities. Therefore, I must work to support my family. I started to apply for Master when most of my friends did so back in mid-2013. At the time, I was not really clear with direction I want to take, so I just go with the flow. My mother was not really happy with the idea and she was worried. In the meantime, I also found that I did not really into this. I want to work, support my family, and gain money as well as experience. For me, experience is much more valuable than the beautiful postgraduate transcript.

Purpose

If you want to pursue in something, in this case, studies, you must have a purpose. Ask yourself first, “Why do you want to further studies?”. When I first start doing my final year project, I read a saying, “Doing thesis is not about just experimenting or whatsoever, it is about contributing to the academic world”.

From my stance, I am not sure how and what can I contribute to the world if I do Master. During my degree, I did my thesis for the sake of finishing my degree course, not more than that. Consequently, I had a hard time and I did not enjoy doing it. I do not want to go similar experience again and waste another year by doing Master without a clear objective, then regret my decision.

Whatever it is, I do not have any objective to do Master. Besides, I don’t know what course to do.

Schlumberger

Yes, even though I have not yet start, I am 150% confident that I will learn and experience more once I am start working with Schlumberger. It will be the mix of theory and hands-on experience in extremely challenging environment.

And, I am really looking forward to it.

Escape

From my personal opinion, people who pursue studies is like fleeing from reality. It sounds negative, huh? But that is my opinion, my personal opinion. I am sorry if it hurts your feeling.

I often heard my friends said, “With Master, will get a fat paycheck compared to Degree”, “Recruiter’s attention will be more on candidates with higher level of education”, “I don’t want to go back to my homeland yet, so it gives me more time to stay oversea”, “Follow my husband/wife finish studies”, and the list goes on.

So far, I heard none said like, “I love doing research and I believe I can contribute to the world through my research”. None.

Thus, I conclude that they are escaping from reality or should I say, delay their time from facing the reality.

You know, reality is harsh.

In reality, having Master will not guarantee you will get much higher pay than degree/diploma graduate, particularly in Malaysia. In addition, with current state of economy, the employers want the best employees but with low pay. Other than that, HR’s attention will not necessarily interested to the person with higher qualification. It is a competition, real life competition with infinity number of rules.

Whatever it is, reality is bitter and difficult. The sooner you face the reality, the better you adapt to it.

Sharing your experiences, not your theories

In small part of myself, I always want to be a person who shares knowledge. You can acknowledge it as a lecturer, teacher, educator, or whatever. The knowledge I would like to share is the knowledge I got from my experience, not the theories from textbooks. In order to share the experiences, I must first experience it myself.

Someone once said to me, in Malaysia, a lot of lecturers at the universities. However, they are lacking industrial experiences. Not all lecturers of course, only some. These people can only teach from textbooks, which is not really helpful as students can also refer to the textbook themselves.

Back in Australia, most of the lectures have knowledge and experiences in the industry, thus the learning process become more fascinating for me. The faculty always invited the guests from well-known companies in related industry to share their expertise. This is so valuable, and indirectly inspired me to become “the guest” one day.

These are my reasons, and everyone has their own reasons. No problem though, as we cannot force people to accept our reasons, as we also sometimes prone to object other’s reasons. Well, maybe in the future, Allah S.W.T destine me to further studies, we never know. But for now, I am comfortable with my decision of not pursuing studies at higher level.

That’s it from me, people. If you have comments, do not hesitant to drop it below. As usual, take care and Salam w.b.t.

P/S – Sir Lokman, from SLB came to my house last Saturday together with his wife and kids. What an unexpected guests :D 

I am engaged!

Surprise! Yes, I am engaged. Hahaha...Pardon me. I forgot to mention, I am engaged but it is in a dream. Haha…

Please do not misunderstand the above statement.

Before I go any further, first of all, Salam w.b.t. and hello folks.

All of you must be wondering, what on earth has happened to me. In my previous entries, I always shared the updates that already past. In a simple way, the mode most of my entries are in "past tense". Right in this entry, I want to share the current updates about myself. In another word, this entry will be in "present tense". Well, nobody cares Atiqah. So, screw you.

At this moment, I am at the living room writing the post.

About health, Alhamdulillah, I am doing fine. Healthy mind and body, Alhamdulillah.

I have start working. Of course, not with Slb. I will never decline the opportunity to work with Slb, but for now it is better for me to start building my life from scratch. As a start, find a job and work. I got another company in Rawang and I work as a project engineer. I have been working there for three weeks now. The company is dealing with pressure vessels fabrication and tanks with various sizes and functions.

As a new comer, a lot of things need to learn and do. Most of the things went well, so far. The engineer I tag along known as Viki. He is nice and really helpful. Although I asked a lot of stupid questions, he still answer and teach me. Haha…Alhamdulillah, I am grateful because the people there treat me nicely. You know, some people even get cursed on the first day of their working. I am fortunate because I did not experience that. Well, if it happens in the future, it will be a whole different story.

For a start, Viki gives me the opportunity to take charge one project that has 4 pressure vessels. 4 vessels project is considered as a small project, because other engineers like Viki is in charge of 39 pressure vessels. Imagine that.. 

During the introduction, the male staffs asked me what my status is. I know they are just fooling around and I understand that really well. Since I will be dealing with men and working in the environment dominated by men, I don’t want to mix personal matters and work. I would prefer to keep it formal. Thus, I have decided to put a clear boundary to differentiate this and I had my answer prepare beforehand. 

So, when they asked, "Are you married or single?". I answered, "I am already engaged", in the meantime behave like I am reluctant to reveal my status. They just nodded and said, "Oh man". So, end the story about my status. Otherwise, if I said "single", they might ask a lot of questions and the story will be much longer. I am afraid things could go wrong in a long term. In my point of view, this is also like a self defense mechanism. I don't want people particularly men to pay 'extra' attention to me like what happened during my internship. I don't want the history to repeat itself.

Besides, I am inexperienced in handling this matter and I am not yet ready to take this kind of risks. Frankly, I don't really like to discuss this matter in public and I am not ready to jump into this situation. So, if a new person or strangers ask me this, I will gladly say, "I am engaged". I think this question is typically asked by Malaysian, not others. Back in Australia, no strangers asked me. Thus, I did not have to do anything to hide my status.

My mother also advised me, "If you want to hide about your marital status, that is fine by me. However, make sure you do not go overboard".

"Alright mother, I got it".

Well, my mother also used to do similar what I do. After my father passed away, we always moved from one house to another. One residential area to another, from one state to another, and kept changing schools. Then, whenever the neighbours asked my mother questions like, "Where is the husband?", "What your husband do for a living?", my mother's answers was, "He is outstation. Seldom come home". Yeah, something like that. At first, as a kid, I do not understand why my mother did that. After some time, I got it. She wanted to protect us as well as herself. For instance, when we settle down in a new housing area, we sure got a lot of attentions from people, good and bad people. If bad people like robbers know there was no male in our house, and all are girls, anything could happen. Besides, my mother was also working and none to take care of us after we got back from schools. Thus, this was a method to defense our family.

Apart from I am already working, not much going on right now. Oh, I forgot. My youngest sister, Adek came back for a study break last week. She stayed for less than a week, and go back to her Uni. last Thursday. Currently, she is facing a trouble to find a place to stay for the next semester despite many extra activities she involved. She also did not see this coming, and she need to find a place to rent and money is the limiting factor right now. I cannot do much for her as I also just start working and yeah, money. I am sure you can imagine my situation right now.

Angah is also trying her best to get money from everywhere. She joins the online contests, competition, radio ads, and many more. She also apply assistance from Lembaga Zakat Selangor. However, not much luck now as we are not pure Selangor heritance. My mother is a Malaccan, my father was from Pahang and all three of us were born in Kuala Lumpur. So, too many "No" in this circumstance. Hopefully, there will be rezki for us somewhere, in a new future.

In terms of social, not much happen. I met Fakrul in person for the first time. He is also another Slb-new-hired. We used to contact through Fb only and last week we met face-to-face. I can say, although it was the first time meeting, it is like we understand each other quite well as we go through similar shit together. Also, Kamel, new hire also contacted me. I am quite relieved as he also know what type of shit I go through as he also experience similar. What we are doing is, we are trying to support each other at the moment. It does helps me to overcome negative feelings that appear in myself once in a while. I know I will just have to keep holding on and sure Allah S.W.T is preparing a great present for me. I am confident His  gift will be unveiled in the near future. Aisyah also contacted me once in a while and I really appreciate that, Aisyah. Thank you!

Erm, what else…

I don’t think I have any more to share. I think that's all for now. Take care of yourself and be nice to others. As we never know what kind of struggles other people is going through, thus never make it worse by treating them badly. Be kind and gentle.

Kak Daeng and I at Rottnest Island back in 2011

Salam w.b.t and chow.

P/S - Keep holding on folks.

Masuklah Syurga Dulu….

Bila dah berkumpul adik-beradik di rumah ni, macam-macam boleh jadi. Hari tu ada lah perbualan dengan Adek yg ketiga, Shakina. Bunyi azan menandakan masuknya waktu solat, tapi tak ingat waktu apa, rasanya Asar. Masa tu tengah dok lepak bermalas-malasan sambil buat apa entah kat bilik belakang dengan Adek. Perbualannya lebih kurang macam inilah.

Aku: Weyh, dik. Ko gi semayang dulu. Dah masuk waktu.

Adek: Lah, ko gi lah dulu. Lepas ko, orang la pulak.

Aku: Laaa..ko lah.

Dah asyik suruh-suruh, lepas tu masing-masing senyap, sibuk layan hal sendiri.

Aku: Weyh dik. Orang ada cerita, ni macam cerita rekaan orang lah. Ko nak dengar tak?

Adek: Haa, apa ceritanya?

Aku: Macam ni lah. Kan ko suruh orang gi semayang. Ibaratnya kan, macam ko suruh orang gi masuk syurga dulu. Nanti ko ikut. Lebih kurang macam ni lah ayatnya, "Weh kak, ko gi masuk syurga dulu. Nanti orang ikut.". Ko faham tak cerita orang?

Adek: (Berdekah-dekah dia ketawa) Haha..Poyo la ko. Oklah fine.

Pastu masing-masing mulalah bergerak nak gi amik wudu'.

Pengajarannya di sini, kalau boleh buat perkara baik/bermanfaat secara bersama-sama. Sebab nak masuk syurga sama-sama.

Kucing kalau bermalas-malasan, masih boleh dimaafkan