Adventure in Johor, Malaysia

— Yuan-Lin Hsu, Information Technology Engineer, Information Technology Dept. II, CTCI Corp., Group Shared Services

Could you briefly tell us about yourself?

Hello everyone, I am Dieter, IT engineer from the Information Technology Dept. II. I was assigned to Track 4A 1440MW CCGT Power Plant project in Johor, Malaysia as site IT engineer in 2018.

What made you join CTCI?

After graduating from the university, I joined a software company which sells information security products. Although the scale of the company is small, with only about 35-40 employees, I still learned many things besides trouble shooting, such as sales techniques. I was trained as presale who needs to sell products through demonstration, answering the questions our customers had and solving all the problems related to the products.

Two and a half years later, at the age of 26, I realized that I should find a more reliable, world-famous company to advance my career path, and CTCI gave me this opportunity. At CTCI, there are many talented and diligent people who work together to achieve the same goal -to turn the company into the most reliable global engineering service provider- and I am very thrilled to become one of them.

Could you give us some examples of the foreign culture and people that impress you during your stay (when being relocated)?

There are about 3,697,000 people living in Johor: 1,996,667 (59.7%) are Malaysian, 1,093,651 (32.7%) are Chinese, and 234,115 (7%) are Indian. This means you can easily find Chinese culture and cuisine everywhere in Johor.

When I was mobilized to the T4A project, the TCF was still under construction. I had to contact vendors to acquire IT devices and discuss with our sub-contractor how cabling work of server room and office should be. Sometimes, the vendor or sub-contractor looked like Chinese but we still used English to communicate at the beginning. After a while, we realized that we could both speak Chinese fluently and thus it became easier to switch to our native language to discuss things more efficiently. You always feel more comfortable talking to strangers in your native language.

On weekends, we used to shop at a nearby night market. There you could find as many things as in Taiwan. Some examples were spring rolls, chicken-pie, fried rice and noodles, steamed buns, bubble tea, and much more. These familiar and delicious food surely made us less home sick, giving us enough energy to work hard and more efficiently. The weather in Johor is very hot even at night, so people like to order ice-tea or ice-milo to cool down themselves while having lunch and dinner.

How do you get rid of work stress?

Many “freshmen” were assigned to T4A project. We may have more than two years of work experiences or have worked in other projects in Taiwan, but this was our first overseas project. As we all had the same background, we soon became good friends. Our common hobby in Malaysia was watching movie. The movie theaters were new and clean, and more importantly, very cheap! We watched many Marvel series, such as Black Panther, Avengers, Captain Marvel, etc.

Other than watching movies, we would also go to Karaoke. Chinese pop music has become quite popular around the world these years, so we could easily request songs just like we did in Taiwan.

On public holidays, we would arrange trips to broaden our horizons and release our stress. For example, there was once when eight of us from different departments took a bicycle trip around the historical and beautiful city of Malacca.

Could you share some interesting experience you had when working in CTCI?

Compared with my previous work experience, the work scope in T4A project required me to build network and system environment so that project members could send and receive emails, use 3D design software, dial calls between headquarter and site office, verify face ID and make attendance records. Of course, I have encountered challenges and difficulties, but I always assured and encouraged myself: No one was born to know everything. Try to solve problems on your own even if the progress seems small, and these trouble shooting experiences will become the nutrients to success.

In the T4A project, we used time lapse solution to record the progress of construction work. Three cameras from different locations took one picture every 15 minutes during working hours over 24 months.

You wouldn’t be touched until you see the time lapse video. Day after day, the structure in 3D model software has become reality.

I really cherish the friendship with T4A members and the days when we overcame obstacles together. These wonderful overseas work experiences make me a better and more confident person!