A time go give and take

Decision; Influence; Constraints; Uncertainty

These are a couple of factors which I tend to overlook yet speculate upon especially at times when I really don't need to! Frustrating yet crucial. 

I have mentioned before that my goal was to build my career in the telecomms/mobile technology industry with hopes to shape this industry in the future. That is my ultimate career aspiration period. 

But why is it that I lost track of this goal? Did I forget? No! Did I just lost interest? NO!!

It was due to several factors:

PERCEPTION: I had the perception that it was all techy stuff which shaped the industry. IT IS NOT! It is true to say that people may build the largest boat with this being on the the greatest feat of mankind. But what use is this boat if it was never used in the first place? What use of it if no one ever knew or was unable to use it at all? 

I see this the same way in the telecomms industry. We serve not only to give you the best technology, but also to ensure we do it in the best way possible and in the most creative yet novel manner you could ever imagine. 

So what happened along the way? I was weak in the technical discipline. I lost focus and perhaps it also skewed my career aspirations. I seeked alternatives which I never considered before. Yes I would agree this is a form of which an individual grows and develop. Well this happened to me and I started looking into management consultancy. The incident which sparked this was the talk by Accenture back in 2009. I sat in for the company presentation and I was astonished by the contribution of a corporate firm not only in the corporate world but more importantly in the telecomms industry. Food for thought at that point. Adding to that, Mr. Stockley (Entrepreneurship fellow) inspired me by telling us that consultancy is a channel to open more doors. So that was a very compelling factor that I COULD find what I am passionate about then.

I started looking into consultancy jobs for the next 2 years. The result? I have failed in every single case interview. I felt as if I wasn't fully equipped. My mind was not tweaked to fully accept this method of critical thinking which is crucial for all consultants no matter his field of interest. In a sense, I was INADEQUATE. I believe all I can do for now it so practice and practice but the doors have seemingly shut itself or rather....... I have allowed the doors to shut. Bummer T.T

On a brighter note, I soon realized my long term goals (concurrently to say the least). Even if I stepped into the world of consultancy, I would want to see myself contributing in the telecomms industry as an end game. So the question is...... WHY not just do it from the start? And I have gotten my answer. 

To the ME in a few years down the road. Did you realize your dreams? Or did you let your dreams manifest YOU instead?

Nevertheless, I am very grateful for the opportunity with blue-green. I have heard that it is a really awesome programme and I am truly looking forward to it. Adding to that, the people are just astoundingly fantastic! These are the people who have made such a great impact in my life within just a short time frame. I am truly thankful for this opportunity by itself.

Time to hit the books for the final show down.

Until next time ;)

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

There is a saying that passion overcomes all obstacles. And I am a believer.

The past couple of days has by far been the most memorable and cherish-able moments of my entire life period. Here's just me throwing a couple of keywords to recap the whole experience:

(1) The PEOPLE: I've met some of the worlds most extraordinary individuals. Yea they were great achievers, highly capable and most importantly, they loved what they did for a living and that is something I admire most. 

(2) ACCEPTANCE: There are some who touched me on the inside; the people who accepted me as an individual. No lies, no acts, just pure old me and I have never felt this feeling for a long long time. It just softens me up on the inside and I have learnt to that I don't need a shard of prickly spines protecting me. I have learnt to open up.

(3) CONFIDENCE: It is true when they say the only way to learn to carry yourself better is through sheer hard experience. In the past couple of days, I have never pushed myself so hard, to think, to be confident and to influence. More importantly the need for coalitions which blossomed into friendship at the end of the day. 

(4) IMPERFECTION: I have learnt to realize or perhaps a little self realization that behind every success lies a certain degree of imperfection. It took me awhile to realize this today but I started to comprehend both as an individual and to consider the adversity of a situation similar to what I have gone through. Sh1t happens to me and everyone else too. 

Overall, it was an awesome awesome few days. The UKEC career fair was awesome^20. It made all this possible and reminding me of my goals once more. Focus, appreciate and NEVER go astray. 

Until next time ;)

The Bigger few of the Big ones

Small time period for lots to happen~

Quite a bit has been going on in the past couple of days. For a start, I've been rejected by pwc. lolz. Kinda expected from the outcome of the case interview. Ah well. Like what mom and dad says, it's just not meant to be. Citi isn't replying me at all. Screwed. Deloitte just sent me their version of a 'rejection' as well. Sigh. So that's 3 down the drain.

On the bright side, ACN has put me through to the final stage of the assessments. Case interview and yes one for the road. Will be giving it my best. Also lined up = interview with Sunway and Proton. Still on the wait for Maybank. 

Well big big big day tomorrow. Interview with the big Blue in the morning and Blue-Green assessment center in the afternoon. Sure hope I'll be alert and proactive throughout the day. Might come home for a bit to get some rest and freshen up. 

Oh man the nerves. Put logic aside and make the impossible possible.

Until next time ;)

Final few days of Undergrad

What a week!

It's Thursday! Wait ok it's technically Friday now which means...... its the last day of Spring term! 2 more lectures to go and 1 SES report to submit hopefully by Saturday evening or Sunday. Yosh!

I spent the whole nite last night finishing up my background report. Well its not compulsory but I guess it'd make a good impression since my other supervisor has probably not much of an idea on what I've been up to since we've only met twice in Autumn term and not even once this term. Busy busy man so I understand. I managed to get my draft ready at 4.30am. lolz. Good thing my meeting was at 4pm the next day so I slept in and continued touching up in the morning. Or should I say in the afternoon :P

Dr. Herrero seems pretty pleased with my report (or at least I think so) and as usual he pointed out one of my really silly errors which I seem to commit ever so often. Zzz..... Other than that we had a casual chat and that was it! That's that for this term.

Headed to the EEE labs to finish up my report and received my Marketing presentation mark. 'A' all the way baby!!!!!! Take that Imperial business school students! Really glad with how things turned out and most importantly, I'm glad I was the one standing in front giving the presentation on behalf of my team. Something I've always wanted to do at least once for a business module in Imperial and I've done it. 

Spent the evening finishing up the report and immediately sent it off to my 2 supervisors. Surprisingly my other supervisor replied within a short period of time. I guess he's still working at his desk at 7pm. Says that he's pleased with the progress of the project. Great stuff. Well worth the effort even if this report counts for nothing :P

Yeap that's that for the 2nd last day. Another day 2mrw and hoping for it to be a really productive one. Chao outside!

Until next time ;)

Oh btw.... goodbye pwc. Screwed. lol

Y U POST 2 POST IN A DAY???!!!

You know what they say, those that give it their all shall be duly rewarded. 

I got an email about 2 hours ago from Maxis!~ It was an invite to their recruitment day in London this 30th!! ZOMG. YESSSS!!! I got through!!!!!!! 

I'm guessing it's gonna be something like an assessment center. Currently trying to get some info on this event to get prepared. Anyways, imma gonna give it my all! Yata!

Until next time ;)

Y U NO NEW POST?

Interesting interesting? Interesting week!

Ok so here's quick sum up of what happened in the past week:

(1) Of course my week started with the case interview at pwc. Zzz.... thanks for the experience

(2) Marketing coursework is due in less than a week. It's just a presentation so no biggie. Well that's not really a problem if you're not the presenter. Well... I AM TEH PRESENTATOORROR. Lolz. For some reason my team has to point fingers to the Msian guy with no proper accent to wow the crowd. Yay!~

(3) Made a start on the SES cw2. Uncertainty and more uncertainty so nothing much that was achieved. Will need to wait for further explanation hopefully during this Friday's lecture.

(4) Weekend was purely contributed towards the Marketing presentation prep. And I just remembered that I was required to complete the MMAP online assessment in 10 days from the previous week. Oh man. I didn't want to leave a bad impression by completing it on the 10th day of course so I was practically practicing the regular SHL numerical and verbal reasoning sample questions which I got off Vai and that was practically my whole Thursday-Sunday. So I decided to get the assessment done on Sunday night thinking my home internet connection would be pretty stable at that time of the day. Well that appeared to be the least of my concerns. The questions were FREAKIN HARD. The difficulty was on par with the assessments I had at Oliver Wyman in the previous year. More of the "complete 24 questions within 20 mins" type and I NEVER MANAGED TO FINISH IT. The questions weren't numbered but I definitely did not finish them. SHITZ..... imba to the max. Imma just praying for the best and that they were looking not for completeness but rather in terms of competence. 

Pray pray pray. Dear g0d. I pray that you put me through to the next stage and I promise I will make up for everything then. I PROMISE! 

So the other concern was with regards to the Marketing presentation. I was never the "salesman" type of guy and I never had much experience in front of large crowds. Not to mention business students this time. Imagine putting an engineer in front of a crowd of business students asking him to sell them something. lolz

It went pretty well actually. I had one of this "when your mind just blanks out" kind of moments during my first 30 seconds of the presentation. Literally after listening back to the lecture recording (lolz yea I was kinda recorded) and there was about 1-2 seconds of silence and that's when my mind decided to make me look like a fool. Haha but it was smooth thereafter. Good stuff. I'm quite glad I was the one to present on the day. Something to build me up towards my next challenge.

So yea. Great korean dinner with Kwang, Wai Yee and Zhi Jian yesterday. Will probably be seeing them more often around uni nowadays ;)

4 more days till end of term. 1 more FYP background report and 1 more SES cw2 and that's it!!!! It's just jobs, exams and FYP in summer. Work work for now. Better get off my lazy @ss.

Until next time ;)

Case Interview eh?

Case interview FTW!!!!!! Well no.... it's Case interview WTF!!!!!!!!!

Feeling all spruced up in the morning I woke up at 6.30am and made my way to Embankment at 8.20am. So I was actually about 15-20 mins earlier than my expected commencement time which was at 9.15am. 

The PWC office was rather discretely located but cool looking nonetheless. Arrived and checked-in at the reception. No they didn't even offered me a seat. It was ----> print name tag ---> off to the conference room. Fak I didn't even manage to take a piss but eventually I did anyways. Haha. I was put into this tiny conference room which was fit for probably only 4 people. Really nice concept and equipped with its own hot beverage dispenser. lolz. 

So the receptionist attending to me handed me a pile of notes. It was the case which I had to work on and it was FREAKIN 25 pages! lol. I jumped right in considering that I only had 40 minutes to go over the content and formulate a solution. 

The case was about a water filtering/distillation system services company which suffered from reduced market share and annual turnover. So obviously from the material it illustrated some customer relation problems which gave rise to their initial downfalls. So the COO came up with a Super Customer Programme which was tailored to address this problem. Well it didn't work out very well and that was essentially what I had to do. To find out what went wrong and how it can be fixed. 

The case was pretty dense and I had some trouble deciphering all the information. Well it was my 2nd even case which I have attempted period so it pretty much equates to a big LACK OF EXPERIENCE. Well I tried my best at the time and I used VC's framework to work through the case. It helped in a way that I had a direction rather than diving in blindly and randomly suggesting solutions which didn't solve any of their problems. Am I right?

Well 40 minutes passed as if it was only 20 minutes. I was sent to the waiting lounge and I quickly collected my thoughts and prepared my material to be properly presented. The interview was conducted over a video conference with Malaysia by these 2 consultants in Malaysia. So they mentioned it would be a role play and that they were about to enter a board meeting in 20 minutes. My task is to brief them about the problems and suggest them my solutions. Well... I went down the typical route in explaining EVERYTHING based on my framework. Well.... they stopped me and told me to cut to the chase. lolz. Probably my fault then. But so I went on telling them the problems and why these problems arose. Then I gave some suggestions but they didn't seem to pleased with my responses well.... namely from one simple phrase which they questioned me: "Is there anything else?". LOlz fak. That's like code for "dude...... tell us something we don't know". 

Dammit. No matter. I guess that case didn't go too well. Oh well at least it's good experience for my next case and I'll just pray for the best la. Haha.

Just got put through to the next round of assessments for Accenture and Maxis. Time to get the gears moving.

Oh and my blardy marketing group.... had to point at the Msian guy to present on behalf of the group in the coming group presentation. Zzzz..... I guess its good experience nonetheless. Just hope I do a decent job.

Until next time ;)