My New Workplace

Assalamulaikum,

Life as a working person is no longer the same as a student. There are certainly no homework and lectures to go. But there are subtle differences in term of the hours that we spend each day at home and at work, our interaction with our coworkers, how to be a proactive and the most importantly on how to meet or exceed the expectation of our employer. That should be enough for the introduction of this post...

Right now, I have been working for about 3 months at Holcim Canada as a Supply Chain Analyst intern and about another 12 months to go before I start my 4th and hopefully my year at UofT. It may be weird to some of you about a year internship program that I undergo at the moment. At UofT, we call it as a Professional Experience Year (PEY) but at other universities, it is usually called as a coop program. If you think about it, you might think that this program is just a waste of time because you have to graduate a year later. But for me, the experience to work in Canada prior to graduation is a valuable experience for the future. A year is an ideal period of time for a company to train a student in their respective fields compared to 4 months summer vacations. And the most importantly is that you will have a better cv prior to graduation and have the higher chances to be called back by the company that you have worked before. I don't want to go on and on telling about the benefits of doing pey or coop's program.

View from my office

Welcome to my office..haha

Above are some pictures that I have taken from my office. A bit introduction about Holcim Canada, it is one of the biggest building materials and construction companies in Canada. It has several divisions such as aggregates, cements, concretes and constructions. For me, I am working under Dufferin Aggregates. Even though my nature of work is 90 percent office based, I have visited a couple of quarries and pits before. So, I know a little about how the quarries are operated and how the rock blasting is done and some other stuffs haha... but not that much..

As a Logistics or Supply Chain Analyst (I don't really know which one is my real position name actually).. I work cross functionally to improvise, maintain and troubleshoot the current logistics and supply chain operations. It involves developing new tools and improvise current tools such as shipment analysis, order management tool, incident management tool, inventory, daily and weekly vendors reports and so on and so forth. Also, I will help my manager to analyze the logistics performance and make decisions based on the tools that we have.. It really requires a lot of analytical,  problem solving and programming skills,  especially in excel vba... It is a great job, considering that you will have to do a lot of different things every single day and it is always all about problem solving and process improvement.. As a chemical engineering student, all of the things that I have said earlier did not not really seem like a chemical engineer job, isn't it.. But for me, to gain this kind of experience in such as big and reputable company is much more valuable. Maybe after grad, I will work more in the production side in the cement or concrete plants. Who knows? But after all, engineering job is all about problem solving and how to make things work better.. I hope that I can continue my job at my highest performance for these 12 months period...

That's all for now..Till next post

Job Hunting Mode ends

Assalamualaikum,

It has been quite a while since my last update in April. Today I just want to talk a little bit about job hunting. At one point of our life, we will reach this time where we need a job badly and we have to prepare our best for it in order to compete with lots of other people who are also looking for the same job as we are. To clarify here, this post is not intended to give you any job interviews tips or tricks, it is merely my thought and expression that I had during my time searching for a pey job.

Sometimes, it can be quite frustrating and time consuming to prepare for a certain interviews in term of the company's backgrounds, go over job descriptions and practice to answer the common questions such as 'tell me about your self' and many other things. Usually, we believe that we have prepared our best for it but it turns out to be not what we are expected. To some extend, looking at most of your friends who succeed in securing their job even though they look less smarter than you..haha.. make you feel that you are so dumb and loser. But it all depend on your luck, passion and how much preparation that you have done. At the end of the day, Allah knows the best for our life. We just need to keep increasing our efforts, prayers and always be motivated. And yeah, at last I got a job in a quite big company and I am so relieved and thankful to Allah. 

Even though, I do not really graduated yet from my studies and I have one more year to go, being able to work/intern for a year in a company related to your field of studies before entering your final year, getting a lot of money and having higher chances to be employed after your graduation are quite an astonishing accomplishment and experience for your future career.

I hope that a lot of my friends out there that still do not have any jobs either for internship, pey or permanent position will get one soon.

Post Final Exams

Assalamulaikum,

Yesterday was my final paper of this semester and right now I'm officially done with my 3rd year. I can't believe how fast time flies when you suddenly realized that you have only one year left or 2 more semesters to go before wrapping up your undergraduate studies. Honestly, this year was the toughest year I would say compared to the two previous years with a lot of workloads and serious chem eng courses. My prof said during the last lecture that once you guys have past the 3rd year, you have all of the required skills and knowledge to be a chem eng. But still, what I learned was still basic and not really advanced at all. I know that once you are in real working environment, everything is gonna be different and challenging. Right now, I am really looking forward for the summer here and still I didn't secure a job yet but I have one last interview this Friday. For this time round, I hope that I can do my really best and I wont disappoint myself.

That's all for now.

What to expect in Chem Eng Undergrad

Assalamulaikum,

This week is the final week before the final exam starts. So for my team and I there is a lot of report, assignment and project that need to be submitted. Being a productive student, finishing works at the eleventh hour is a norm right. Here, I just wanna share one of the projects that I have successfully completed on time. In order to prepare the chem eng student to the plant design project during our forth year, we need to do a mini plant design project. My team needs to design the reactor, distillation column, heat exchangers, controllers, valves and other tedious stuffs for ethylene hydrogenation process. Here, I attached the P&ID for the process.

With still one more year before grad, now I know what the hell are people in chem eng doing in the real working life..Well, there are many fields and job scopes actually that I can work in. One of them is working as a design engineer..As what I did in my project.  I need to design the chemical processes in order to produce the desired products that I want, so I decided the reactants that I will use, the type and size of the reactor and separation column and many other freaking stupid stuffs..haha.. there is a lot of thing to consider in order to design a chemical plant I mind you.. One of it is of course related to the safety requirement. Failures or accidents in chemical plants can  cause a disastrous damage and can cost lots of life too..

Plan for the future

Assalamualaikum,

Right now it is actually almost 3 am in the morning and I don't sleep yet. It is not that I have works to do at the moment but I'm just wondering about my uncertain plan for future.. Maybe my plan for this summer... As I don't get any job yet whether in Canada or Malaysia.. so I can't decide what to do next after my 6th semester final exam. I have about 3 more weeks to receive any job's offer and to make a decision.

Last Monday, I had an interview with Holcim, a cement and concrete manufacturing companies with a lot of expertise in construction field. I have yet to receive any news from them... I hope something good will happen next week..

What I would say, after SPM until now, I didn't really have any proper plan for my future. The moment I received MARA offer to study in Australia based on trials result and the moment I received the JPA scholarship to study in Canada and I rejected MARA..haha.. a lot of things happened and I didn't really have a full thought and control of my action actually. During high school, I'm thinking of doing something related to software engineering or electrical engineering in the future.. but it ends up I'm studying in chemical engineering instead.. and last couple of weeks one consulting company enquired me whether I am willing to do the acca, something related to accounting after my grad..and I said yes..haha.. I can conclude here that a lot of decision that I made through out my life was based on what somebody is willing to offer me..But someone else would say that it is the rezeki that anyone else wouldn't get and I should be really thankful for it

After all, I pray to Allah so that I can get a job here...please...

A new chapter in my life

Assalamualaikum,

After a very long time without any post, I suddenly decided to write something here. Well, there is a lot to catch up since my last post in July last year. It is almost the end of my 3rd year actually. A couple of weeks before my 6th semester's final exams. It has been a very challenging and tough year I guess, with those labs that last for 7 hours but it is worth while experience I would say. Familiarise your self with all of the equipments that will be used in industry will be beneficial as an engineer. I am right now quite familiar with those piping, heat exchanger and distillation column stuffs.

Another new chapter in my life would be my nomination as the president and vice president of Malaysian Students Association of University of Toronto (MASAT)...haha.. I need to write its full name here. I haven't actually hold such high position since my primary school. But, I feel I have the motivation and determination to serve Malaysian community here better and being involved and taking part in a lot of activities here. At last I have been elected as the vice president with a very tight margins. Congrats to the president. She is the first women president here..haha.. Nvm, I think I can work well with her for the rest of this year and next year.

For info click here

http://masatoronto.blogspot.ca/

I think that's all for now....