I.T. and Business Travel

I love taking photos at airports. It is where I experience the anticipation of exploring distant places and the comfort of arrival and coming home.

Today I learned about the approval of my Schengen Visa application. While some people find this quite trivial, I was thrilled when I saw the confirmation email from the Belgian Embassy this morning, telling me that I must book my flight to Belgium and send them a copy of the e-ticket before they can release my passport. The prospect of travel always excites me, and the idea of traveling to Europe with all of my expenses paid makes me feel even more blessed. Some people scrimp and save to go to Europe, but the opportunity was easily given to me and I'm very thankful.

Of course, this is not entirely the universe's doing. I'd like to think I have a hand at landing these opportunities because of my skills and credibility as a systems analyst. My previous Senior Manager reached out to me recently and mentioned that she recommended me to this project--perhaps she liked my work ethic and my previous performance and thus believed in my ability to deliver another implementation. Despite the fact that I was only trained and did not have any project experience in Oracle On Demand, I told the interviewer that I can still leverage my 8 years of experience in Siebel Development on this project. I was vocal about my willingness to learn and be retooled even if it meant resetting my technical skills back to zero. Medyo pa bibo ako. Hahaha. Shortly after my interview, I got a deployment notice and was told that I was selected to fly to Belgium this July. The thought that I was going to learn about Cloud Computing to keep up with this emerging trend in CRM Applications excited me. I will also be undergoing further training with Oracle University in the next couple of weeks, so that's also something to look forward to. 

View from my hotel room during one of my business trips.

Throughout my I.T. career, all of my projects allowed me to travel and live in another country for more or less, two months each time. These business trips differ from my personal travels because I was given a chance to immerse myself in the culture of my host country for a longer period. My personal travels usually last about a week with with friends whom I'm completely comfortable with, so I tend to stick with my group and simply enjoy the novelty of my surroundings. With business travel, I'm forced to get out of my comfort zone because aside from the challenge of getting used to the environment, I also needed to adjust to the people I meet. Business travels require me to establish good working relationship with my colleagues and clients from my host country in order for me to perform my job as a consultant. I ended up being friends with my colleagues from the US and Australia, that we also spent time together outside office hours. They showed me around the city, taught me their slang, invited me to their homes, and one of them even spent Christmas with my family here in Manila! 

People in transit. I used a lomo camera for this. 

Prior to the news of my onshore deployment, I didn't know crap about Belgium aside from the fact that they have really good chocolates, beer and waffles. I did a bit of reading and now I know that they are also known for their diamonds, their fries, jazz music, and of course, their art. I'm writing down my bucket list and must see places in Belgium, so hopefully I get the chance to explore and tick them off one by one. 

Travel is one of the perks of being a consultant. Aside from the free airfare, lodging and daily allowance, what I like most about being an I.T.consultant is that I get to work in different projects to widen my knowledge in application development/project management and meet all sorts of people. Surely other jobs have more opportunities for travel, but hey, I'm thankful that I still get my own share of free boarding passes. :)

What are the perks of your day job?

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Geekstuff: Programming Isn't So Bad

As I have mentioned in my previous post, this blog is dedicated for documenting my journey as an aspiring creative. My goal is to improve on my illustration and calligraphy skills and pursue a more creative life, while still working full time as a Systems Analyst in a multinational I.T. Company. You will read about my dreams (and baby steps) of pursuing my passion , but I will sometimes write about my current job too. Reason behind this double life, it's a long story, but it might be a little too familiar.

Early in my career as an I.T. Consultant, I requested my manager if I can switch roles from being a tester to a developer. I just graduated then from my company's Bootcamp Training in Siebel 7.5 but was given a tester role in my project at the time. There is a part of me that was interested in solving problems, and while I wasn't a huge math fan, I liked programming enough to make it the foundation of my career. I suppose I found the work involved in testing quite boring, but that's not to say I found programming exciting either. I was somehow interested in it and I was adept enough at it to be able to step onto the next level of the corporate ladder. When I switched companies after 4 and a half years of staying with the first one, I was given a supervisory role and programming took a backseat. I no longer have specific deliverables and tasks pertaining to programming, but my work involved training resources and leading my team. The increase in my responsibility was inversely proportional to my hands on work with programming and after 7 years, I have been involved mostly with Siebel Functional Design and Business Analysis work as well as Project Management. I still use Siebel Tools to investigate on defects and provide solutions, but I was eventually faced with the reality that I am not that technical anymore since I started becoming a lead. It was to be expected since I am now more geared towards Project Management. There is still so much about Siebel that I don't know and I have handled resources who are soooo much better at programming than me. Life of a programmer is sometimes boring, but it's sometimes fulfilling too. 

Siebel Tools. This is where programmers create and configure objects (Tables, Business Components, Screens, Applets etc) to make it perform and behave based on the Functional Design

image from siebeltraining.info

Since one of my teammates took a sick leave today, I had to work on fixing a bug in the system that was originally assigned to him. It took me a while to debug the script because of its complexity, but it also felt familiar. Talking to yourself while debugging, putting breakpoints to check the values of the variables per function/method, validating objects, compiling the code and unit testing, and each time the algorithm fails, a compulsory sigh or cry of frustration is heard somewhere in the vicinity of my cubicle. It takes hard work, research, patience, resourcefulness, creativity, lots of logic and coffee to become a good programmer. First algorithm doesn't work, try another approach. Does it work? If yes, then optimize it. It's such a great feeling to figure out a solution to a problem, even if sometimes you get "duling" because of those brackets and parentheses. Nakakamiss din pala mag dev! Developers usually  talk out loud while tracing the lines of code of someone else's algorithm and today's monologue included:

• Okay, if this.GetFieldValue("Comm Method") = "Call Outbound", then.. *checks value in the watch window* O TAMA NAMAN BAT DI NAGWOWORK?!
• (While compiling the code) Please, gumana ka na!!
• Teka san niya sineset itong Profile Attribute na 'to?
• Hindi natin pwede ilagay yan diyan, magfafalse yung condition!

Siebel User Interface

image from Siebelessentials.blogspot.com

Kanina, I was literally kilig when my code worked and was ready for check in to the server. I was really smiling with my teammate who was peer reviewing it. Today I felt like a programmer again, and while art is my calling, I am reminded that this job isn't so bad. :)

If you are currently in a job that is different from your true passion, you don't need to be miserable. I suggest this article for you to read: 9 Ways To Be Happy With A Job You Don't Like

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Moonrise Monday

Ah, Monday. It's the dreaded beginning of week madness. Things are starting quite slow because it takes time for me to get back into I.T. mode. So. What do I need to do today? Ah, metrics reporting for the past week. I shall create my report to see if we are on schedule and on budget. First, I enter all my resources' actual hours in the Project Plan. Next, compute for the Cost Performance Index and Schedule performance Index based on the Earned Value, Planned Value and Actual Costs. George Harrison's Let it Down plays in the background then transitions to E-Pro by Beck. I sent this to the Senior Manager for review coz this will be seen by the client from our Management System.

Then I meet up with the Senior Manager for resourcing discussions. She asks for my recommendation for certain roles for the next release and asks for help for some management documentation to be reviewed by the client. The Foo Fighters play in the background, Summer's End.

I go out for lunch at about 2:00 PM. One of my resolutions this year is to actually leave my desk during lunchtime instead of eating while I do my work. This way, I get to appreciate my time--that sacred one hour supposed to be spent offline and away from work without any guilt. I take the stairs and decide on where to eat. Today, I go to Coffee Bean and get myself a Chinese Chicken Salad. It has romaine lettuce (obviously), almonds, fried noodles, fried wanton wrappersand asian dressing. I dunno if I like it. It has too much wanton wrappers to make it look like the bowl  is full. I brought my notebook, a pencil and my ice cream eraser with me and start doing a sketch of Suzy and Sam from Moonrise Kingdom on my red Scribe notebook. This is where I keep most of my drawings these days, kind of like a diary. I recall Sam's fur hat and boy scout uniform and Suzy's heavy eye shadow, pink sunday school dress and her binoculars. Jim and I watched this movie last Saturday and I told him I wanted to draw the characters. This movie is so peculiar, we both think, but we enjoyed it very much because of the overly stylized setting and visuals. The story wasn't extraordinary, but the way it was told was so strange. Wes Anderson has a weird yet beautiful way of telling stories.

I go back to the office and take the stairs again. I finish the draft of the work package. Later on I find out I *might* go to the US for 6 weeks this February. I pray that it pushes through on March instead because my family has planned a trip to Sagada on Feb 21-23 and my relatives will be going for a visit in Manila on Feb 10. I print my Passport Renewal Application Form that says my renewal schedule is on Wednesday. The final decision about my business trip will come in later this week.

After all my tasks are done, I meet up with Jim and we talk about the day's events and the recent news of my impending trip. Oh dear, magiging uso nanaman ang Skype! The day ends with Jim bringing me home and giving me a hug before leaving our front porch.

Long day, but it's still a good Monday. :)

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