Believe: Gan Kong Fei (Cohort 2010)

By Gan Kong Fei

Believe! The strongest word that leads my life until today. I felt bad when I received my STPM result, which I never expected such horrible result. I was worried my career would not achieve any bright moment. After all, I was not taking seriously my degree selection. To be honest, the choice of SCR (Network & Security) and UTM was random, which I can’t recall the selection.  Well, things changed drastically throughout my life in UTM.

April 2014 - With the whole batch of my SCR students. After the first year COA final exam at N24 with Ms Marina.

April 2014 – With the whole batch of my SCR course mates. After the first year Computer Organization and Architecture (COA) final exam at N24 with Ms Marina.

Traveling alone from KL to JB in 2009, various life challenges were waiting for me. Fortunately, I was able to settle down with the help from my cousin. Though he graduated shortly after I enrolled, I greatly appreciated his help for every part. When it comes to daily life, the most important is the society. Who’s the one you will live with and rely at outside? Friends! I was shocked with the number of students taking SCR are huge. Then only I realize the trend is coming to network field. Anyhow, I am able to meet with people from other states, from northern to eastern, from west to east Malaysia, and even international students from Indonesia, Yemen, Somalia and others. Tons of memories we created together, like group discussion for courses and class selections, hanging on PSZ (do whatever you want, it’s cold and high speed internet), hanging out and vacation, study and complete assignment (seriously), making noise and get scolded (okay that’s bad), etc, etc. For once in a while, we will have some mini gathering at lecturer’s room, like Ms Hazinah, Pn Mazura, etc. I still remember the joy of drawing that small white board at Ms Hazinah’s room door.

Time flies without you realizing it. The 3.5 years (minus the 6 months of Industrial Training) we spent together just finished with blink of an eye. Various emotions came through each of us, to continue our next chapter in working field.

As the new chapter begins, I started my career on a SME security software company, e-safe systems, as support engineer. Due to limited resource and opportunity to learn, I have decided to move out and work with an ISP company, MyKRIS Asia Sdn Bhd, as Network Operation Centre (NOC) engineer. The responsibility was way heavier and hardly to have free time for break. Though so, I was able to learn many skills and gain experience, either from network or management. I was able to get my first CCNA, while playing around with firewall, WAN Optimizer, Load Balancer, etc. Besides that, not to forget building good relationship with different departments. It will be very useful for yourself when you need help.

Dinner and gathering with colleagues

After two years of working as NOC, I felt it has optimized too much personal time and impacting my certification path. Hence I decided to resign and move on to a SI company, GCiS Sdn Bhd (Group of Glocomp Systems), as network engineer. With wider and more opportunities, I was involved on large projects, such as Celcom core network, TM DNS, MRT or Prasarana, EPF, etc. Furthermore, I have the opportunity to work together with principles like Cisco, LG, Juniper and so on. Beside technical, I have learned project management, presentation, critical thinking and many soft skills.

Out of work life, I have achieved one of my biggest dream, travel to Japan.  It was my very first dream since secondary school. Named as “otaku” (nerds in Japanese), I definitely love with Japan stuff, like anime, comic, games, figure and so on. I was so excited and hard to believe when I achieved it.

And thanks to my eldest brother for getting opportunity to work at South Korea, I have taken this chance to pay a visit and travel to Seoul.

Though we have been living separately and fight for own career, it doesn’t mean we have forgotten each other. We the SCSR class of 2013 gathers together whenever we have the chance!

The old and familiar faces of SCR’13

I might write until hundreds of page for my full journey. As there’s something new on every day and year, we might not note down every single thing happening. As long as every single of them are memories for us, it is valuable. If you ask me, what is my biggest achievement so far? I would say, taking care well of my parents’ financial, living and so on (they are enjoying life and travel around whenever they want). For myself, I’m still achieving to travel every year at least once, because you need time to relax, refresh and learn from new environment. Oh, not to forget, I almost clear my PTPTN, for RM21k within five years.

To continue my journey, I am looking forward to work with MNC Company, like Google, Facebook, while achieving my first CCIE (with just lab test left). Last but not least, break my income over RM10k before age of 30.

Remember, everything can’t be done without one word, BELIEVE.