I've always get it from friends saying that working at Dell is Hell. This evening was the first time I visited DELL's factory. Managed to find my way there thanks to the guidance from my collegue. I was 20 minutes late because I my nap turns into an hour long sleep. As I'm approaching it's compound, I can see the Blueish logo just light up which matches the color of the sky. The security lets me in despite Christopher missed out my name from the list. After taking my name and identification, he showed me the way to the conference room.

At the same time, I bump into Prema from the Corporate Comms which I get to know from my internship in Seagate. She greeted me right on the gate, but I think it was too spontaneous for me to response. Anyway, she stoped her car by the side and came down to offer me a lift to the conference area. We had some catching up in her car before she showed me thier office, which is much dynamic and friendly working environment than all the offices I've been working in. She showed me her desk before showing me the way to the particular room where I'm supposed to meet the other toastmasters. My first impression in Dell was so good, I wonder how people are complaining that it's in hell? All I can assume is that we always think that the grass is greener on the other side.

The organizing committee has already started, but they welcome me in with a great smile. Unlike the meetings we have in our club, Dell has coffee and tea served in their rooms, projectors and power points all nicely placed. It was our post mortem meeting, and we started to criticize the food, congratulate everyone for the success, suggesting ways of improvement and balancing up the spreadsheet. All in all, everyone is having real fun while solving real-time problem. I get to know more about the toastmasters, amoung that Chris is 6 years my senior (he looks so young!), and Nenek used to be a nurse by profession. That's the kind of working environment I wish to be working on day-in day-out.

While chatting with my friends working there, I found out that Dell Penang has not yet made any plans to support Ubuntu in Malaysia. I've left my name with them and hopefully they will get back to me once they receive good news from their parent company. But unless there's no internal leakage, I'll most probably get to know about the news before them. Thanks a lot to Engadget and Gizmodo's feeds that I get from my Google Reader.

During the JID (joint installation dinner), Christopher lost his PDA phone while playing some game session. The girls took him out for a walk while the rest of us put some money into an envelope. Before calling it a day, Nenek told us how she found out he's born in rabbit year and Joanne managed to make one cardboard foldup that looks like a rabbit for him. Inside the "rabbit" we put our "contribution" as well as signing our names on the rabbit's tongue. That's the spirit of fellowship in toastmasters, when we see someone is in trouble, we'll help up if it's within our reach.

After the meeting, I have a breif chat with Prema over the net. We usually see each other online but hardly talk to each other. Found out a few more facts from her and got to know about the news of other trainees that has already been working in various places. There are only a few people which I can start freely express myself linguistically without worrying they think that I came from Mars. Among those are Prema, Ming Zheng and Irene. It's good to have a nice fellowship like this after spending most of my time alone working in front of my computer.

Side note: I've agreed to help Mr Heah up as the secretary for Area S4, I'm sure there are more chance for me to meet new faces and get to know people who looks towards the same goal.

Labels: Friends, Toastmasters