It was indeed a shock to me when I get to know that my Super Senior in al-Terror, EC Lim, was resigning, about two months ago. At that moment, my mind scanned through various moments, which I am going to share here.
March 27, 2001
Yep, that was my first day in al-Terror. I still remembered meeting CP, Boon Hoe, Wei Hun, and Lay Kuan in my first ever conference call with San Jose (with Eugene Gomez and Giao Pham on the other side of the line). Okay, this is the team that I would work with closely. Or so I thought - until I heard an unfamiliar name - EC - throughout the conversation. And, after the meeting, as I opened my Outlook mailbox for the first time - voila, this guy Eng Chui Lim (EC lar) sent tons of email, even 3 weeks before I was officially hired (trust me, I still have those emails)! Later did I find out that he was attending some sort of training in Singapore. And, I also learnt that he was our FLEX big brother.
A week later, I got to meet this guy. Man, he was serious and stern looking! Well, as I knew that he is the Super Senior leading a group of Advanced and Junior Engineers, I would expect that sternness. Words like, "have you checked the failure across conditions", "please dispose the lot", "please talk to planner on this and that", etc became routine official conversation. And, being the only family guy in my team (family guy as in having wife and kid), I guess he was a man not easy to befriend with. Or so I guess.
Sometime in September 2001
Al-Terror was going to have a company-wide annual dinner on October 26. One of the events during the annual dinner was the Karaoke competition. I was kinda surprised that one of the participants is - guess who - EC lar... He picked a Mandarin song called "Go Go Cat", and recruited me (together with other 7 colleagues) as backup dancer. We had so much fun! And, that's when I started realize that EC is a person who works hard and yet plays hard too, And so, I began to treat EC as a friend rather than a stern senior. And, of course, on the annual dinner night, we did have fun - with the "Go Go Cat" dance (that got cut off due to technical error), with the cheers for EC, and with beer and dance in Rozel's. (Got hangover, so no more comments)
Some time in early 2006
Through the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality assessment, I found out that I am an ESFP person (in layman terms, it means "Let's Make Work Fun"). As I poked my nose around, I found out a few other ESFP. Guess what, EC is one of them! Yeah man! Let's together make work fun!
Some time in mid 2006
I was caught with one of FLEX issue, while EC was moved out of the FLEX team into the Hardcopy II rollout team. I still remembered that, the issue was so big that additional manpower was being pulled in. And, guess what, EC was back into the FLEX team supporting the debug! In the midst of towering stress, my other fellow colleagues and I were jokingly saying that it is hard for EC to fling FLEX.
Some other memorable moments also slowly popped up in my mind, like:
- Karaoke session
- Day trip to Serdang
- Water polo in one of the quarterly events
- All the todi-drinking trip (nah... I didn't have chance to go for any of them)
Well, all these memories are dug out of my sub-conscious memory for a purpose - to hide the fact that I am gonna miss the person whom I gained the most knowledge from throughout my 9 years working life. Although he has led me in the FLEX team for merely 4 years, his leadership in the team did leave a permanent mark to the existing FLEX team as well as the upcoming teams spawned. At least, he does leave a mark in my life.
I am not going to elaborate much here, or else Google will ban me for using up too much space for a single blog post. My personal message to EC:
"I re-activated my blog site just because of you. You better pay for my air fare if I come to visit you in Melbourne! Just kidding. Do take care, and may God bless you in wherever you and your family go. We are definitely gonna miss you."
