New Kid On The Blog

Today was my third day at work and I already had tonnes of work. The first day was full of admin stuffs. I cleaned and dressed Dominic up before I left for work. At the office, I was assigned a buddy who would get me through my first week. His name is Andrew Martin. The first thing he did was to bring me to HR so that I could get my security pass done. They needed my passport but I was prepared and had it with me. However, despite my UK Visa, HR needed another written confirmation from the Home Office to prove my Visa - passports are easily forged, it seemed ... as if a letter was going to be more difficult to forge. Anyway, I made a call to the Home Office and they told me that a letter will not be issued as long as I had an independant Visa. HR then told me that they will issue me a temporary pass - which would last for 24 hours - while they checked up my passport.

The walk from my office to the HR office took about 10 mins. The Sky campus is extremely huge with buildings labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 .... and I think there are more. By the time I got there I was sweating despite the cold weather.

Security is extremely tight in bSkyb. Every door, every gate requires a security pass - including the canteens. The security card is also a cash card, i.e. we can top it up and use it to buy food from the canteens. There are two canteens. There are machines in the canteens where we top up our cards. There are also change machines as the top machines accept only coins. The canteens were supposed to be subsidised, i.e. the food are cheap. I find that it is cheaper than it would be outside but I still prefer Astro's method - where we were given RM50 a month to spend in the canteen. I wish Sky had given me £50 ... that would be very nice!

The first day was full of admin stuffs. I had to apply for business cards, network access, IT Service Desk account, HR Portal account, etc, etc. Andrew briefed me on New Media projects and introduced me to 1/10 of the people in the department. There must have been more 100 people in the room but I met only about 10 of them. In every project, there is a Project Manager, the Analysis team, the Design team, the Development team, the Testing team and the Business Owner. I am in the Analysis team of Sky Anytime on PC - i.e. watching Sky TV on PC. Other projects are such as Broadband PC Games (which Andrew is working on), Sky on Mobile, Sky Broadband, eSales, eServices, etc. Within the Analysis team, I am the in the most junior of the organisation hierarchy. My title is Business Analyst. There are at least 20 Business Analysts in New Media. Above us are Senior Business Analysts, a Lead BA, New Media Manager and so on and so on.

In the afternoon, I gave Nanny Maria a call at home. She told me that Dominic had been crying a lot that day. He must have missed me as much as I've missed him. He became better on the second day. On the third day, I even forgot to call!

By the third day, I was already swarmed with work. From the moment I stepped into the office, I started working non-stop, through lunch and the rest of the day. Despite that, I managed to leave the office by 5.15pm everyday. Dominic would be waiting for me. I would prepare dinner. The 3 of us would have dinner together, then bathe, some Internet, some books and off to sleep.