Welcome back!

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Hello hello! I'm baaaaaaack! Yup, I know, my last post was like 2 weeks ago. You might wonder, "Where have I been?" Well, a lot has happened in the last 2 weeks, but the most important factor that kept me away from blogging is that I was busy with my internship.

Hmmm... it wasn't that I was really, really busy. I can actually just blog when I get home from the office, but the 'work' I had at the office really tires me and once I get home, I'll be so exhausted and have no mood to blog.

Notice I said 'work'. For those not in the know, I've started my internship program at Technip Malaysia last week (11th April, to be exact). I know, most of you guys would be a bit blur as in what company this Technip is. When I first applied for this company last semester, I thought it was some small engineering firm. I thought wrong.

Technip, FYI, is a huge EPC (egineering, procurement and construction) company headquartered in France. It's mainly involved in the oil & gas industry. Speaking of oil & gas, as do me, you might only think of companies like Shell, Petronas, Exxonmobil, and so on. We thought wrong, you know. Those companies are the main players in the oil & gas industry, but for them to take care of everything related to oil & gas, including building offshore drilling platforms, petrochemical plants, and so on; it would be a huge strain in their resources to manage all these constructions. Thus, they sub-contract these construction activities to other companies such as Schlumberger, Technip, and so on. FYI, Technip is the 3rd largest EPC company in the world.

Enough about Technip. What work I'm doing there now? Well, I'm placed in their mechanical department, and it's a boring job. For now, since I don't know anything, I'm supposed to observe how the other engineers in my department do their work. My supervisor does give me some assignment to work on which is related to what they are working on in the department, but it's generally a boring job. It's really purely design work. Totally academic. The work I'm doing is closely related to the Mechanics of Materials, Materials Lab, Engineering Materials, Mechanical Design and Engineering Graphics subjects I did during my years at Uniten, such as the determination of stresses, thickness of certain parts of the product I'm designing, analysing drawings (which are waaaaaaaay more complicated than the technical drawings I learned at Uniten) and so on.

But yeah, as I said, for now, my job is to just study, study and study how they do their work. I have some data sheets that they provide for me to calculate certain properties of their products, but that's just about it. What's for sure, there'll definitely be no hands-on work to be done, i.e. no going offshore, visiting factories, or anything like that.

Well, that's just about it lah actually. Every day since 11th April, itu je la yang aku buat. Then, when I get home, although it might feel that I did nothing much at work, I'll feel so tired and then I'll fall asleep at around 12. Hmmm... Patut la orang kata bila dah keje ni, macam takde life. Now I'm joining one of those work zombies.

Ahhh... It doesn't matter. As long as the pay is good. ;) Did I say to you guys that I get paid an allowance of RM500 per month? Hehehe... and Technip's salary for it's staff (at least engineers) is RM2400 for fresh recruits and RM2700 when you've been confirmed (the usual 6 months period lah). And they can claim overtime, at the rate of salary per hour (divide your salary by the amount of normal hours work per month). And what's more, if your basic salary is less than RM3000, your overtime rate will be multiplied by 1.5. And they have no working Saturdays.

Compare that with TNB. Their starting salary is RM1900 and after being confirmed, they get RM2300 per month. No overtimes. Work every Saturday (except 1st and 3rd, of course). But TNB has other incentives, like easier to get low interest house, car and computer loans, and so on. But still, just like how my cubiclemate said, the difference in interest rates and loans that I can get, I can cover that up with the larger amount of salary I get per month.

Wow... these incentives just make me want to try and secure a job at Technip. I don't think I can, but I'll try my best. But to do that, I must perform extremely well in my internship, in order to make me attractive to my prospective employers. Wish me luck!

But seriously, those engineers really know what they're doing! When I'm at the office, I feel so kagum watching them work, talking about stress, pressure, thickness, materials, bending moments, welding, fillet radius, mm here mm there, drawings... wow. It's like they know mechanical engineering by heart. I hope I can be like them.

Posted by Nikman Shah at 11:41 am
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