Something about Germany from my Point of View

1. Everytime you dine at any ordinary outlets, you need to put your dishes at the designated place. This is includes fast food outlets like McD or KFC. How do you know it is ordinary? Well, most of the meals are less than 10 eur. At least I think so.
2. You can smoke almost anywhere and then throw your cigarettes butt anywhere you like. That explains why Germany is not so clean. But please don't smoke in shopping mall or public transports. I used to visit Siemens Turbomachinery at Leipzig, and you know what, they smoke in the staging/workshop area like nobody business.
3. If you can't speak Deutsch you will feel like stranger. However most counter girls/boys in place like main central station or airport can speak english better than most of my colleague here in Germany. You better learn Deutsch before you come here.
4. So far I haven't found even one free wifi in Germany. All are paid wifi.
5. Germany has no toll booth. You can use the highway for free and most of them with no speed limit. Germany famous with this thingy.
6. The fuel price keep changing from time to time according to world market price. The highest so far I have seen was 1.69 eur per litre. Not sure what RON it was. They also have RON 95.
7. If you travel to Germany, make sure you don't bring meats with you. This is includes raw or instant like Berahim.
8. For Malaysian, you are entitle for 90 days free entry upon arrival. If you want to stay longer than that, you need to apply for visa.
9. The public transportation is the best in the world. Every locations are connected nicely with public transportation which includes tram, bus, suburban train, regional express train, underground train, and inter-city train.
10. Most movies are well translated to Deutsch even in cinema. But they do have cinema with original language but it hard to find. People here claim that Germany has the best translator. Well I second that, they could mimic the voice of Shah Rukh Khan exactly the same, in Deutsch of course. Can you imagine SRK speaking Deutsch, it's only in Germany.
11. They have unique allergy to sun with temperature above 20 DegC in sunny day. They will love to have a barbeque. The past 4 to 5 days, weather was good for barbequing. People who live behind my hotel were barbequing almost everyday from 1600pm until 2100pm or maybe more depending on temperature. When I was in Berlin, I saw they were laying on the river bank and most of the men were topless while the women nicely suit in their bikini.

About a boss

My boss is very concerned about the adequacy of our job. He also has a particular rare allergic for instance we can not touch his laptop monitor if we wish to point something in the monitor. I've seen one guy has been warned. We also cannot put our drink cup close to his laptop, he had criticized me on this matter. Further, I do not really think he likes to eat at ordinary outlets. There was one day in Germany when he was here, he asked me where I normally eat because he wanted to join me for dinner. I replied that my usual would be the Vietnamese or Arabian outlets nearby to the hotel. It ended up we had dinner at one fancy italiano restaurant, and he paid for it. In KL, I've never saw him go for lunch at the stall (he usually don't). If he does, Modestos or equivalent in front of our office will be the place. He took me there once when I newly joined the company.

When writing report, we shall write in details, we must careful with our words, the grammar must be perfect, the format used to be interesting, understandable and presentable. On my second day with the company, he sent me to site for progress meeting. The following day I submitted the MOM to him for review and then we took more than half day to modify my MOM before submit to client. In my previous company, I only took half an hour to complete the MOM and then submitted to client.

Because he thinks he's perfect, you can't afford to make any mistake when you deal with him. My PM for one of the project had been scolded by him when the PM asked whether some part is to be install or not. He replied "I still have the feeling that project manager and project engineer still not familiarize with the FDS. It stated clearly in the FDS that thing is not going to be installed. How can I make this more clearer to you". There are some other few situations that I don't want to describe here, it was either happened to me or somebody else. He once criticized about Petronas which I'd rather not to write about it in here which I second his thought =p.

Well, despite all that, he still has a good side of him. So far, he can be considered as the best boss to me. He's not a cheapskate after all. He takes care of his employees very well. There was one time, he asked me whether I need a parking space at the office. After a few days thinking I replied I have no reason why I should have a parking space. I usually go to the office by train and most of the time I will be away from office. He then increased my fixed allowance another MYR125 (of course he needs to pay more than that for a parking space at Rohas Perkasa), which I think rather a lot more than most of my previous company employee's yearly salary increment. Further, after confirmed employment, he will increase my salary another MYR 500. Is he a good boss? Still not good enough?

Before I embarked to Germany, he gave 500eur which is for 14 days (Initial planning of stay). For reason that the customer does not want to do the FAT at Germany, he then extends my stay until 14 May. That's 36 days in total. I should be getting another 760eur of allowance. Later after that, I emailed him that I want to go back on 19 May because I want to go to London for few days (personal matters). He said OK and he will invites customer for FAT when I come back to Malaysia. Is he nice, isn't he? When he was here a week ago, I asked for the rest of the allowance and he gave me another 850eur. That is 90eur more than what I should get. Almost MYR400 if you convert to MYR.

I still have a few more stories to tell about his good side. But I think I stop here. So far, I am thankful to Allah....Alhamdulillah!