First Dutch Lesson

Didn't really do much today. Morning went pass so quickly until I couldn't recall what I've done. Had meeting with a bunch of suppliers for 2 hours in the afternoon. They are all manager-ranking, highly profiled and very experience people. They are tyring to sell their service/product/idea and to convince my boss to choose their technology in the upcoming multimillons projects. No surprise they sent 5 managers to present their portfolio to us, and they are travelling all the way from Germany and Belgium. If they get my boss sign on the dotted line, I bet they will have grand bonus next year.

Had my first Dutch lesson just now. Need to do more practice on my own leisure. I really want to learn this language, at least to a level where I manage to understand the news and able to read the newspaper. I hope I'm not too ambitious. We shall see.

Weekend's coming. Looking forward to it.

More Coffee

I had dinner with a group of my young colleagues (a.k.a Young Shell, this definition includes all employee below 35) from my department at one of my colleague's house. There were 9 of us, all from different countries in general --- English, Irish, Dutch, Algerian, 2 Indians, Turkish, American-Serbian and myself from Malaysia. What a combination in so called "Global Solutions", and none of us are above 30.

Recently Royal Dutch Shell is hiring a lot of employees, particularly in technical field. I can see that my department is undergoing some sort "evolution", perferring young and fresh "blood" to experienced hire. No doubt this is to tackle one of the problems that the company is facing ---an aging organisation, where in 5 years time about 30% of the employees in GS Amsterdam are eligible for entirement. Pretty serious huh.

I've decided to continue the routine of waking up at 6am and arrive the company at 7am. I'm not sure how long this will last. Anyhow I feel good to work in the morning, after having a cup of coffee and breakfast in office. Taking about coffee, my coffee consumption recently has increased exponentially, 4 cups of coffee per day in considered the norm.

Time to bed. May it be a good start tomorrow.

I Want Internet At Home

Tomorrow is the starting of my 3rd working week. Day by day I'm trying to learn as much as I could and I'm given more and more responsibilities. I hope I'm able to deliver a great and up-to-standard job at the end of the day.

Again, we spent most of our time doing DIY, shoppingsss, cleaning and unpacking on weekend. There are more things to do on upcoming weeks but all I could say is we are getting closer to a "home". We are always exhausted at the end of the weekend, at the same time we are pleased with the outcome of our hardwork.

So far I have no complaint about Dutch's efficiency, apart from this stupid internet home-connection issue. We applied for the broadband since early Oct, until now the connection is not activated, not even the landline !!! By the way, our service provider is called KPN, the customer service is as bad as Vodafone (for the sake of your reference how bad is the service). The only thing they do best is to take money from your account and leave you with endless problem.

I'm looking forward to this coming Saturday and Sunday. We are expecting some new gadgets like Plasma TV, DVD player and HiFi and fridge to be delivered to our place. Hopefully we will have the internet connection as well.

Gonna be a busy week ahead. Pray that God will continue to strengthen me....

Ambition

Sometimes I wonder why I ended up in the Netherlands. I have never dreamt to come to this place, but my ambition was to work as a chemical engineer in Shell when I was in high school. That's the reason why I chose this field during my undergraduate.

I have no idea what's chemical engineer about when I was in high school. Indeed, I was wrong to think that Chemical Engineer studies a lot of Chemistry, but I learnt mainly Physics and Maths when I was in undergraduate.

Now my job scope involves everything, Chemistry, Physics, design and R&D. In short, all these are pretty technical and involve many brainstormings. These are all what I used to dream doing when I was young. I used to think Engineer sounds cool and challenging !!!

My job scope in Shell so far still convince my traditional thinking, although I once thought that Engineers are close to nothing, commonly known as a group of scumbags or higher-class technicians with poor salary. I hope I’m good enough to defend these statements in future, finger crossed !!!

I’m going to start having Dutch lesson next week, 15 hours in total and divided into 10 sessions. I will then decide whether or not to continue the course, if I have time. Afterall there are always huge disadvantages for not knowing the local language.

I hope I will love this country during my stay here, literally known as “The Low Countries” – The Netherlands.

Highlights

Here are some of the highlights of my updates recently, since my last blog update:

(1) My first week in Shell Global Solutions went alright so far, everything is under control. I'm quite happy with my job scope and the working environment. My main activities involve more R&D in the beginning, and then some design work 2 months later. Currently I'm assigned a large amount of money in my research project. I can't reveal how much it is, but I can give you a hint it's more than my previous 3-year PhD research funding in Imperial. Indeed, industrial and academic funding are totally different scaling.

(2) I found a Chinese church in Amersfoort, about 20 mins cycling distance away from where we reside. Our first church attending was last Sunday. Some of the worship songs are in Dutch, the sermon is conducted in Cantonese-Dutch, cool huh??!!! Hopefully I can pick up Dutch more easily once I start having Dutch lesson next week. Also, I bought a Chinese-Dutch version Bible, sounds like I'm pretty enthusiastic in learning Dutch :p .
There is about 20 to 30 people attending this Chinese church, majority of them reside here permanently. The adult to youth ratio is pretty high, no surprise they only have youth fellowship biweekly. Also, the fellowship takes place 20 mins away from this city, also I was told there's only 10 attendants each time.

(3) Last weekend we spent most of our time doing DIY. Our house is getting more and more equipped and well decorated. Hopefully before Christmas we can fully furnish our house and get all the little fixings done.

That's about it. Shall write more when I have time.