working for a telecommunications company

Had a bit of an interesting day. As is usual for Wednesdays, I didn’t even get my work computer out until after lunch - rock into work, have a coffee with a couple of people, endure the 2 hour mobile sales meeting, and by that time, it’s usually 11:30. So there’s some time to say hi to a few city people that I haven’t seen for a while.

The arvo then consisted of some serious planning for Friday. We have finally received an engagement document that we need to present to our team of account executives about our new job direction and stuff for this fin year. And because these guys are all pretty new, I have started to work on a schedule of wireless data training that I’d like to roll out over the next few weeks. It will be a whole new thing for me I think… but I am looking forward to it all.

I’m round at Debbie’s tonight… had some very nice beef with hokkien noodles for dinner, and now Debbie is having lots of fun playing games on my iPhone. I’m looking forward to having a go at jailbreaking my iPhone when I get home actually. There’s already some apps out there that assist the phone in becoming a tethered modem - quite cool.

Work has kicked in again.

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. There wasn’t too many emails to get through, but there was a lot to get my head around. Last week, it seems there was quite a bit of talk about sales targets for 08/09, our sales commission incentive plan, and just general job role talk for this fin year. So it was a bit overwhelming at times.

Suffice to say, my job role for this year is almost that job I’ve always wanted - just focused on mobile and wireless data, and moving away from call rates and handsets and basic stuff like that. Unfortuantely, the job I’ve always wanted involved me being a support for things like that, and not having a sales focus. But alas, I will have targets and will need to sell :) Still, it’s pretty tops.

I was all excited about getting home last night and cooking an awesome pasta bake. I felt like pasta bake on Sunday, and Debbie suggested I cook it on Monday night for dinner. So off I went to Woolies to fill my basket with all sorts of things that would make my pasta bake awesome: chicken, prawns, broccolini, mushrooms. And I put it all in a baking dish and into the oven in went. Unfortunately, cos I had so much stuff in it, there wasn’t quite enough liquid to make sure that everything was covered - so some of the pasta was exposed. So consequently, 20 mins into the cooking, the top layer of pasta was badly burnt and I had to throw it out. But once I removed all that, it worked better, and it still turned out pretty nicely. But lesson learnt - when making a pasta bake, make sure the sauce/water covers the stuff completely.

It has been quite the busy week. I’m not a fan of having the end of the financial year on a Monday. By Tuesday arvo I was definitely feeling like I needed the weekend quite desperately.

Wednesday and Thursday were some all-day training things. Found it hard to keep from being tired just sitting and listening. But it was good stuff. And then today has been pretty relaxed too - I packed up my desk here in the city this morning before heading out to Parra to get it all set up so that it’s all ready for Monday morning. We were supposed to have a meeting this arvo about 08/09 sales targets, and so I trotted back into the city… but in the end, it was postponed. That was a bit frustrating, but not so bad. I had some chinese food for lunch, and then just went through some work emails briefly. What’s really strange (for me anyway) is that I haven’t had my work computer on and been logged in since Monday afternoon. It’s quite strange and unusal for me.

Now I’m just sitting here killing time waiting for my boss’s new computer to finish building and get it set up for her. Yes, I’m a mobile sales specialist. :)

One week til Kedron begins. Crazy. There’s still a bit to do… but not much I don’t think. I’m feeling quite anxious… but that’s normal for me. I’m pretty certain everything is done… I just want to get there and get into it.

I’m gonna head home soon and start working on the final hour-by-hour timetable that I like to have. And that is good to have. Then it will be dinner at parentals’ time with Debbie and my sister and Ryan too.

I think I’m going to love working at Parra.

I don’t have a parking spot just yet, but when I get it, it will be right under the building! But until then, the public parking I’ll use is only just across the road. No more 10 minute walk each way!

Peak hour looks like it’ll be a breeze. I just left the office this arvo at 4:45 and it took me 2 minutes and two sets of lights before I was well on my way to James Ruse Dr to head over here to Debbie’s place. So very quick.

Importantly, the two newly formed account management teams that I’ll be working with each day seem tops. Good bunch of people who know their stuff. Definitely going to mean some good sales and at the moment, I can’t see any hassles.

The office is pretty sweet. Reasonably recently rennovated, and absolutely massive desks. After a brief argument with Shay, my device specialist sidekick, I scored the window view desk :) and there is plenty of room around our desk - just need to convince the boss that having a couch there is going to mean increased sales. Hmm, that might take a bit of work.

I’m looking at moving my stuff out there on Monday I think.

I went on a little hunt this arvo for some coffee. I found Hudsons coffee. Very funky looking shop, but in the end I reckon it could just be like just a mini Starbucks - too much money in looking good. The coffee was incredibly hot and nothing to get excited about. The search shall continue on Monday.

But three cheers for 40 minute return trip each day… as opposed to the current average 2.25 hour return! Love it.

What a day that was. I woke this morning feeling quite energised and looking forward to the day. And I finished feeling incredibly drained and disappointed.

I started the day with my monthly sales on $270k or so. My target is $221k per month, so I was quite happy with already making my target. But there was a sale on the table - we’d visited this customer and chatted at length with them on Thursday last week. It was all very positive, and this sale alone was worth $180k. And the customer had said they wanted to decide by the end of fin year - today. So that’s why I was all energised and looking forward to today - it was going to be pretty much the only thing on my mind and I was going to drop anything for it.

And in the end, the only thing we could do was wait. There was a few emails back and forth, and we were missing the mark on pricing a little. But it was still just a lot of waiting. At 4:30, we got told that there was a small gap we needed to make in order to get the signature. We made that gap… but only at 5:45 this arvo. And by then, the decision maker had gone home, and there wasn’t a chance of getting it signed today. That was definitely a massive letdown - the three of us had given so much energy, and I think a lot of emotion to it today. And if it’d come through, it would’ve been one of the biggest months in mobile sales that area of Telstra has ever seen. But it wasn’t too be.

So driving home this evening, I felt incredibly drained and very disappointed. But we’ll get it signed tomorrow or Wednesday, and I’ll be about 80% toward my target for July already… but it would’ve been awesome to have my first month in a new job be the best Telstra had ever seen in that area.

I’m sitting here enjoying City Homicide. I was all excited that it was back last week… but then realised it was this week that it started. I loved the first season, so I’m hoping this second season is just as great.

Everything is happening at the moment.

Aside from the obvious huge thing of marriage and such, Kedron is just around the corner, and I still need to get heaps of stuff done for that. It will be an absolutely massive week, but it will be cool.

But Kedron lands right in the middle of something else huge: I just had it confirmed that I’ll be moving offices - I’m off to Parramatta! :D This is a good thing cos travel time goes from 2 hours per day down to about 45 min per day. There are some farily big internal restructure things happening, and some account executives who sit out at those offices are now coming under our banner, and so we’re providing a mobile specialist resource to support them. And I was the lucky one :)

One of our mobile fulfilment type specialists who I already work with at the moment is coming out with me as well, which I’m stoked about… cos we already work well together and it will be good to keep something consistent.

In the end, the customers aren’t that different to the ones I’ve just gotten used to over the last 6 weeks. The bonus will be that these account executives haven’t ever had mobile specialist resources available to them, so it’s a great chance for me to be able to set the rules about how they engage me in a sale, what I do and don’t do, etc. But the flipside is that they’re quite “amateur” as far as mobile education goes, and so there will be a lot of training, leading and coaching to be done, and that will be my responsibilty.

Knowing that they are going to need a lot of coaching, I felt a little overjoyed when my boss asked me to be the one to head out there. It’s a bit of pressure, cos in the end, I am heading back to management type things, still with the expectation to make mobile sales and hit a $$ figure each month. But it’s all being seen as very positive, and I’m pretty stoked about how it’s all panned out too.

I’m trying to think through a 30/60/90 day plan that I will have to present to my boss in a little while about how I’m going to approach the whole thing and what I want to have acheived by the end of each month. I wasn’t keen on that when she asked for it… but looking at it now, it’s going to make things a lot clearer in my head.

Oh, and this all only surfaced last Thursday… and I will probably start there in a week. :) Here’s hoping that I can actually stay put in one job for more than a few months this time round.

I have a Sony Ericsson K850i. I can’t send MMS messages - I keep getting “communication error”. I want to be able to send MMS messages so I can use Twitpic! Sending MMS messages is also included in my cap, whereas data charges aren’t.

Given B’s frustration back in the day, I wondered if it was a Sony Ericsson thing. I dug through his posts and found the page he’d written for his Sony Ericsson K610i and Optus, and had a play around making some changes and trying and trying.

Nada.

Nothing works. Still keep getting error after error after error. I’ve checked the settings in the back-of-house system for my mobile number, and everything’s fine there! I tell you, it really is the ultimate frustration. This is my job; it’s what I love being good at! And I can’t make it work for myself!!

But after what seemed like a two week holiday, posting to my photo Blogspot directly from my phone has randomly started working again… so I think I’ll just stick with that. Twitpic woulda been fun too.

My goodness, the last 72 hours have been crazy for iPhone Australia rumours. In particular, which carrier(s) will be ranging the phone.

From my personal point of view, I love it all. Can’t wait to see what happens in the next 6 weeks! I’m quite excited that the rumour that began about a month ago (3G iPhone announced in 1st week June, launched in Australia on all carriers in last week of June) seems to still be the latest rumour. A while ago, that dream of an HSDPA iPhone on both 850/2100mHz and not carrier locked seemed crazy. But as June draws closer, and that rumour hasn’t been quashed or proved wrong, it gets more exciting…

But from a work point of view, it’s incredibly frustrating. All the non-mobiles people and customers expect us to have all the answers. And that’s frustrating because Telstra haven’t released anything at all. And very importantly, neither have Apple. I guess people who don’t normally follow all the Apple releases know that until Apple actually say something, nothing is in concrete. There’s just been article after article after article on what “people” and “sources” have said.

This is the latest article that everyone’s talking about in the office today - apparently Telstra are ranging the iPhone. It’s a great wonder who ZDNet’s source is… cos I reckon out of Telstra’s 10,000 odd employees, you can probably count the number of people on your hand who are actually in the know on what’s happening between us and Apple. And I’m most definitely not one of them.

Everyone knows that Vodafone announced that they would be selling it. However, I love how very vague this press release is - no date, no mention of what version, certainly no mention of excusivity… just that they would be selling it. And I find it really interesting that Voda actually annouced they’d be selling it before Apple announced it in those countries - isn’t that very, very out of the ordinary for all the other country releases?

Oh and it’s “understood” Optus will sell it too.

But again, I know better than to trust anything about Apple until Apple tell me themselves :)

What a fun weekend that was. Lots of driving and doing things.

Saturday night was bassing with the women of Toonie Bapts. Steve, Dave and I made guest appearences at their Women’s ministry night helping out in various ways. They’re always very awesome nights, and many of the guys who’ve been along to help wish they could go all the time. And as a bonus, Ellie played some songs in the background as people were arriving for about 20 mins, which was quite cool to just sit and listen to. The boys’ plan of ducking out to Gloria Jeans to get a coffee during the evening was thwarted when GJs was shut. Disappointing.

Sunday was a pretty tops day of relaxing after not feeling so wonderful at the start of the day. A quiet drive up the Putty Rd was in order though, and photos were taken. It’s such a lovely piece of road. I do want to keep going all the way up to Singleton one time soon, and then across to Newcastle, and then back down along the Old Pacific Hwy. Other roads still to drive include the Royal National Park and Sea Cliff Bridge, and also the Old Northern Rd up to Wisemen’s Ferry. Going up into Watagans would be fun too. Ahh so many nice roads in NSW.

I led at church on Sunday evening, and am a bit disappointed in the effort/prep I put in, but thankfully God still used us in the service, which is always exciting to see. And it just made me more aware of the effort I should be putting in. It was acoustic stylings on Sunday evening though - we were drummer-less. But surprisingly, that didn’t bother me much. And an acoustic sesh was actually quite fun. I enjoyed playing with those guys, and the songs really worked. Guess God had it planned all along.

And lastly… fun times last night hanging out with Sam and his lovely Canadian girlfriend, Jenn. It was frustrating getting home from work - clearly I didn’t learn from last week that leaving right on 5pm is a bad, bad thing. And then I was even stupider and thought I’d give Epping Rd a go! But finally at 6:30 I arrived in Thornleigh and cooked some dinner, and we all had a fun time. And even went for an excursion around the block in Micky.

I’m enjoying work being a little bit quiet. Hopefully my new friend will have her computer up and running tomorrow and I’ll be able to start getting her to liase with some of the customers, and can do even less! It’ll be like a mini holiday before I start my new role. Right now, I need to go fetch some coffee and some cookies for a friend who is having an uber crap day.

I thought last night as I was feeling very sleepy, “tomorrow’s gonna be a good day.” I have no meetings, no massive issues hanging around my customers, and we get to have Pancakes on the Rocks for lunch too! I’m counting down to that one - only an hour away now. Yum.

And speaking of nice places to eat… b and I headed for Chilis in Wenty on Friday night to have some bottomless chips and dip, bottomless drinks, and food too. But it was quite tragic to arrive, find all the lights off, and then a handwritten sign on the door saying “Restaurant closed. For information, contact [accountant's business card].” And Chili’s Australia website is no longer existant either. Gonna miss that place. Many fun times were had there.

I have enjoyed being able to hang out with Debbie a lot lately. I went round to her place on Monday afternoon after work. She cooked a quite awesome Romano Chicken, which I’d never heard of before… but had 3 large servings of it cos it was so good. And then yesterday, a well timed meeting in Belmore finished up at 3:30pm and so I was home just after 4pm. Debs came round again and we headed off to my Mum & Dad’s place for dinner and a game of Taboo, which, despite my debates, Debbie and I suck at. Good times though.

Work has been pretty decent lately. Monday was a very big day, but only cos I made it that. There was a couple of major issues that had been hanging around for far too long, and so I just decided I wanted to get absolutely everything cleaned up on Monday. It meant for a very intense and full on day, but a very satisfying one nonetheless. I also heard good news about new job starting in mid-May for me on Friday. And it’s been planned out very well so that I can handover my current job to someone over a two week period, which will mean it won’t be stressful at all. Love it.

It seems everyone’s getting on twitter now. Even 131500 have a twitter page where they post Cityrail delays and updates. Cool.

And Playjerise are playing a show again… hooray! I wanted to see them in February when they were playing at a pub up in Katoomba… but I ended up going go-karting instead. Looking forward to seeing them - they are an amazing live duo.

That is about all. Hmm, that was a post with a lot of substance. There is a blog I want to write about Fall Out Boy… but I will save that for another time.

I don’t know what it is about this week, but I’m just really over work. It seems each day I come in that there’s more big things wrong with customers, and that I have to spend quite a few hours just being a problem solver, while my boss expects me to hit sales targets.

Maybe it’s just that things seem to be going wrong all at once with quite a few big customers.

Either way, I can’t wait for this week to be over. Or at least for the problems to die back down again a bit. It’s making me very tired, and I end up being tired and frustrated at everything else outside work - and I hate it when I get like that. I hate it when my frustrations at work affect things outside work.

Right now though, I need to leave the office and head home for bible study that I’m supposed to be leading tonight. And then still have to try and think about a Kedron meeting tomorrow night somewhere in the middle there.

edit: so I did some thinking about this on the way home (listening to Playjerise helped me to be calmer!)… I reckon that sometimes my expectations of “people” in general are too high. In the end, I work in sales, and in a corporate environment. I know that this area of the world in particular is incredibly selfish - so why does it take me by surprise when they do incredibly selfish things? And take advantage of my efforts?

Without wanting to sound high and mighty, or harsh in anyway, I reckon I need to lower my expectations of “people”. They will always be selfish, rude, take advantage of me. I need to know that, and be prepared for it, so that when it does happen it doesn’t throw me and cause me to get frustrated and angry. Instead, I’ll be ready to react in love and be positive about it.

Just some thoughts that were running through my head…

It’s been a while since I had a work day like this.

I have a meeting at 10:30 over in Strathfield… so I just had myself a bit of a sleep in til 8, and am now doing some quick bits of work before heading over to the meeting. I think it’s a breakfast meeting too, which is a bonus. It’ll probably go through until about midday, and so I think I will just come home and finish working for the day from here.

Nice.

I’m polishing off the last two Burritos from Monday night in a very hurried fashion… cos I’m about to collect B2 and head off to Homebush for the finals of the Australian Swimming Championships! There were a bundle of tickets left over at work today, and so I scored a couple. Looking forward to it :)

Today was quite the up and down day though…

There’s a sale that will make or break my month - if it comes through, I will smash my numbers, if it doesn’t, then I will fail quite miserably. Seems silly to put my eggs in one basket, but there’s a long story behind that. The frustrating thing is that the customer has given us the verbal agreement with the deal. But we’re not allowed to close the sale in our system (and thus count towards my numbers for this month) until we have a signed contract. And the earliest that contract will be in our hands is Monday - the 31st; the last day of the month - because of stuff ups with our pricing guys. Very annoying. And it shall be a very nervous wait…

Other crapness was just annoying customers seeming to descend on me all in a 2 hour period in the late morning/early arvo.

But good stuff what happened…

• Getting tickets to the swimming tonight!
• Realising I have enough reward points in an incentive program at work to buy a hard-disc recorder!
• Job type things that were thought about much earlier in the year seem to be making a bit of headway again. And just general people changes at work are quite exciting and will be.
• Scored myself a new phone - the iMate Ultimate 8502. Came out on Monday. It’s a little beast of a thing - wifi, GPS, HSUPA (7.2Mbps download and 1.9Mbps upload speeds) - definitely the most powerful PDA around at the moment. It’s a bit heavy and big, but I’m enjoying giving it a run.

Onto the second burrito… then it will be time to go.

The iPhone is a wonderful device.

I tend to sit back and think, “I wonder if I even want one… it’s pretty chunky, and that touchscreen keyboard would take a bit of getting used to.” But then someone else I know gets one, and I have a little play with it, and fall in love with it all over again. They are glorious.

The other thing that played on my mind was thinking how awesome it would be as a work phone. But having no corporate email functionality was a big hinderance - cos I really need to be able to get email away from my desk. But today I stumbled across details of iPhone’s 2.0 software update that’s due in June (don’t know how I missed it before now!)… and it will have support for MS Activesync push email! That is very awesome. Very awesome indeed.

However, it would be hard to get away with using the iPhone as a work phone if Optus ended up being the exclusive carrier…

Now we just have to sit back and wait for Sydney’s Apple Store to be built. I have had a sneaking suspicion for quite a while now that the iPhone will be launched when that store is opened. It kinda makes sense. It would be an awesome party, that’s for sure.

And just have to sit back and find out what device Australia will get; will it be a 3G device with iPhone 2.0 software? Or will it just be the current 2G version?

Sometimes work is such a huge roller-coaster.

This week really has been quite good on the whole - finally some decent sales have begun to surface, and what’s more, a massive sale that I get to take off a Telstra dealer, which I am mighty excited about (they’re my competition, you see). So that has generally made me a lot more relaxed knowing that for the first time in 3 months, I might actually make my target across the board. Still praying and doing everything possible to make sure they finalise though.

But in the midst of the overall goodness, I just have days like today that I just feel so very, very frustrated, and almost abused. The sales world really is a horribly selfish place most of the time, and in a lot of ways, such an unloving, ungodly place. I just felt like every customer’s problem was incredibly important, and that when I couldn’t completely solve it, they felt and expressed a lot of frustration. And then when people just come and dump phones or accessories on my desk and say, “oh, this is wrong, you need to take it back,” even though it’s been opened, and it’s wrong cos the customer changed their mind.

If I’m lucky, a typical day only involves a little bit of the above; enough for me to handle. But today just seemed to be an extra high dose. And then, as seems to be becoming a Thursday arvo tradition, getting called into a last minute meeting, which throws my afternoon out. Unfortunately, I’m not really in a position to say no. It just means that the work I had planned for Thursday arvo now needs to get done early tomorrow morning so that my Friday isn’t thrown completely out as well.

So there’s the frustrations and bad day, inamongst the general not-so-bad-ness of work at the moment. It makes sense in my head - the being content at work, but being very frustrated at the same time. But it’s hard to explain to anyone. And sometimes I feel weird and strange cos I constantly change emotions and I go from being happy and calm and enjoying work, to loathing it in the space of 12 and a half minutes.

But I am understood.

Sometimes it’s embarrassing to talk to you,
To hold a conversation with the only one who sees right through this version of myself I try to hide behind.
I’ll bury my face because my disgrace will leave me terrified.

And sometimes I’m so thankful for your loyalty.
Your love, regardless of the mistakes I make, will spoil me.
My confidence is, in a sense, a gift you’ve given me.
And I’m satisfied to realise you’re all I’ll ever need.

And sometimes I spend my time just trying to escape.
I work so hard, so desperately, in an attempt to create space,
Cos I want distance from the utmost important thing I know.
I see your love, then turn my back, and beg for you to go.

You looked into my life and never stopped.
And you’re thinking all my thoughts are so simple,
But so beautiful.
And you recite my words right back to me before I even speak.
You let me know I am understood.
[relient k - i am understood?]

Just hanging out at Mum & Dad’s place after battling some crazy Sydney traffic to get home this evening. I went up to Castle Hill to pick up my poor one-armed father, who is itching to get his cast off next week and ride his bike again… but yes, the traffic getting there, and then just around Castle Hill was quite crazy.

Today was an interesting day. Not in anyway as positive and work-filled as yesterday was.

Firstly there was the extra long, extra boring meeting at about 10:30 that dragged onto lunchtime. It’s not really my customer to look after, but I play a small part in the account, so apparently I have to be there. And find some way to keep myself amused while they talk about data networks, landlines, and other boring stuff. They did talk about wireless data for about 10 minutes which fed me for just a little while.

But the day turned around a bit then - headed down to King St Wharf, and to the James Squire Brewhouse for some quality lunch and red wine with Robbie. I don’t drink any of the James Squire beers, but the food was fantastic. And eating along King St Wharf is always awesome. It was brilliant to catch up one-on-one with Robbie too… it’d been way too long. Loved hearing stories about how much he’s relying on God for all his overseas planning and missioning. Gonna miss having him around to talk nerd and cars with.

That was a good break up of the day… cos after lunch there was time for a short amount of work before heading downstairs for some pointless training. Training on data cards that we launched 5 months ago to the day, and that I’ve been selling and using for that whole 5 months. Intense training too… like how to install the software, and what comes in the box. Great stuff for shop people… stupid stuff for corporate sales people who are expected to know things like that as a staple to getting through a day with our customers. So yes, I left the training feeling like I’d wasted quite a bit of time.

Mmm, that was quite a cynical post, wasn’t it?

Glass of red is almost finished, so it’s time to head home and have an early night I think.

It has been an interesting day. Yesterday afternoon, a pretty sizeable sales opportunity for this month fell through and will most likely close next month now. And this morning another big one took a bit of a plunge. It sucks, cos they were things that were really out of my control; they weren’t things that could’ve been avoided on my part. So I’m wondering where my numbers for the month will come from. Also wondering how gracious my boss will be on Thursday arvo at our one-on-one meeting when I show her my numbers and it is quite clear how far up the proverbial creek I am without any sort of paddle…

Just got met with a customer with another carrier who has 1000+ sim cards in parking meters, and who uses ciruit-switched data to communicate with those parking meters. Incredibly strange, because CSD hasn’t really been used in huge amounts for about 4 years. So hunting around for what our pricing on that is, and trying to be competitive, made for a fun afternoon. It’s kinda like using dial-up internet rather than any form of broadband - except even older, and worse.

Kinda switched off work about half an hour ago… have just been procrastinating here until it’s time to head round to Debbie’s for dinner. She is cooking prawns and champignons - yum :D

Have to be here in the city at 8am tomorrow morning to take my car up to Suttons Holden in the city to get it looked at because of some recall. But there is apparently an awesome cafe just around the corner which I will enjoy sitting in for 45 minutes while they adjust what they need to adjust.

Still here at work. Had a team meeting that only finished at 5pm, so I thought I’d hang here and do a bit more work before I head home. Now just waiting for a program to finish extracting a pile of info from our billing system so I can finish up a proposal, and then I will be outta here.

Today was such an up and down day. I caught up with Carlene for coffee this morning before work, so by the time I hit the office I was feeling quite good about the day! But as the morning went on, a complex and stupid spreadsheet and some frustrating “I’m more important” customers got the better of me… and so I went for a de-stress walk, without my Blackberry, back to my car to get my iPod (my car is parked about 10 mins from the office… so it was a decent walk). And the arvo actually went pretty well after that. Feeling like I’m really on top of everything so far this month… getting a few different things completed to try and close some big sales really soon so that I’m not trying to meet target in the last few days of the month.

Tonight is young adults BBQ round at the pastor’s house. Should be a tops time hanging out with everyone… very much looking forward to it.

edit: actually, while I’m still here, I think I wanna be frustratrated about something.

carrier #1: $39/mth, 5GB of data usage, free USB modem, 24 month contract, excess charged at 10c/MB
carrier #2: $119/mth, 3GB of data usage, free USB modem, 24 month contract, excess charged at 25c/MB

Essentially, both those products are the same thing - mobile broadband. What’s with that? Now I know there’s a lot more to a mobile service than just price, and all the more so for a corporate customer… but come on. If you work for carrier #2, how the heck are you supposed to sell at a 300% premium with a product that still doesn’t match the competitor’s offer! It certainly can’t be done with “we have coverage in more places”. Sorry, that doesn’t quite make up the missing $80/mth.

Just thought I should share some of my everyday pain with you all :) Report finished. Home time now.

So the government have played their annoying card and have decided that Telstra can’t turn off CDMA in 10 days time. I had to laugh a bit when I heard that this evening, cos just this morning I was talking to my uncle about CDMA stuff and realised that the government had been awfully quiet the last 6-8 weeks about CDMA. But then I stopped laughing and realised all the work we’d done with our customers to get them on Next G and make sure they’re happy and fixing any problems really quickly. And now we find out that we didn’t have to rush around going crazy over it all, and we now have until late April!

I’m quite glad I’m not going to be at work next week - I think morale might be quite low having heard that on the news this evening. I’m wondering if we even got told before it hit the media. Anyway… I’m on holidays, so I’m going to try and make that the last I think about it for a week and a bit!

Cos round two of Kedron starts in just a few days. Exciting that I have all day at home tomorrow - I don’t head off to camp until Sunday morning! So tomorrow will be washing day, and just hanging with people. It will be quite awesome I think!

I’m frustrating myself about the program for next week though - I sat down last night and started going through it in detail and getting familiar with it… and just kept getting really frustrated that I didn’t actually plan this program! I’m a control freak. So I’ve changed a few things around and fixed up some timing that I think wasn’t going to work… and we’ll see what happens! It will be nice to get there though - again, I’m a little unsettled now, but as soon as camp starts, it will all just flow and be fine. It’s just the waiting that makes me anxious.

It has been quite an enjoyable week and a half: only working half-days, if at all; many fun times with friends; many fun times with family; and some awesome times at church that have made me feel incredibly loved and part of an amazing family.

But tomorrow I head back to work, and things will begin to head back to normal in that part of the world. While there’s only 3 days of work before I have three weeks off (just that phrase “three weeks off” makes me smile), I think those three days are going to be somewhat chaotic. There’s a pretty major project that needed to be done by the end of next week, with the majority of it being done this week by me before I head off for three weeks. Problem is that I haven’t been able to get any of it done in the last week or two because there have been major problems with the system we use to port mobile numbers across from other carriers (which is what this requires)… and I don’t know if things will be fixed this week. It will be interesting.

Then of course, there’s Kedron at the end of this week. I was thinking earlier on that I’ll be completely fine with everything once camp begins - I’ll be able to roll with whatever happens and just really enjoy the week. But until then, I’m really nervous about everything… I keep going over things in my head and wondering if there’s things I’ve missed. I don’t think I normally get like this in the lead up to the July camps… but I am now. I am looking forward to Yoie and Nick coming over tomorrow evening though - we’ll have a chance to go over everything, and most importantly, some time to pray about everything and for each other. It will be great.

And just when I thought I was struggling with this camp alone, and looking forward to being “just a leader” at the senior high camp at the end of my 3 weeks…

Just as I began to write this post, I got a phone call asking if I could be the program director for said Senior High Camp at the end of Jan. I guess the bonus is that the program’s already done - I just need to administer it during the week. Still… something to pray and think about. But my initial instinct is to say yes… of course :)

That was indeed a crazy day. I’d unfortunately forgot about the Christmas tradition in corporate land - that is, about 2 or 3 working days before Christmas, someone suddenly realises they just need this one little thing before Christmas. Multiply that by 25 (and that’s probably just a quarter of my customers), and it turns out to be not a fantastic moment/day for me at all. It was actually a little funny as I realised that the same thing happened last year… and the year before… but I forgot about it until it hit this morning :(

I left the office at about lunchtime (without lunch) and headed out to Regents Park to collect a couple of orders and play delivery dude and run around western Sydney to get things to customers that apparently “absolutely” needed to be there. All the while, talking on the phone trying to reason with my other customers who I just couldn’t do anything for. Gah… I don’t like it when I can’t get something done for my customers when they really need it.

Anyway, in amongst all that I built myself up to take a bit of a gamble on something… but it didn’t quite go the way I expected. I guess I was confused more than anything, cos I felt sure that I was with God on this one. But I guess I could’ve been just so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I might’ve not really been listening to God. Anyway… I now am quite keen on just stepping back and relaxing a bit; trying to understand what God wants from me and where he wants me to go.

It would be cool to know…

What a crazy month it’s been. The massive amount of orders is no where near being under control (a typical day sees about 30 or 40 orders left in the system… we’re currently at 1100 outstanding orders!)… but I’m starting to accept that and find ways around it to get things done for customers that desperately need things before Christmas.

What I just realised today was that this is basically the last week of the month… and I’m not overly close to hitting my numbers. And that is slightly poo. I’m waiting on a customer to sign this week… and if they sign the deal we’ve put on the table and stop asking 4 million questions, then I should be right for this month. But if they don’t… well, I’m in a little trouble. The commission that I wouldn’t get isn’t so bad… it’s the having to answer to my boss who won’t be overly happy that I didn’t hit my numbers :(

That’s how the sales life goes I guess!

About to head over to The Ranch to have some dinner with b-day. Should be a good evening - even though I’m not very hungry after having a rather massive Yum Cha lunch…

Thursday nights are frustrating - Jamie Oliver is on the TV and cooking up some incredibly awesome food. It’s salivating. He’s just cooked a shoulder of pork in this awesome sauce and when he pulled it out, it just fell apart. Yum indeed!

I’ll be interested to see how Labour move with their ideas for workplace agreements in the new year. My AWA with Telstra expires in January… and Telstra have offered new AWAs to all employees this month - basically renewing the existing agreement for a further 5 years. Now that will either potentially protect us (employees) if the new Labour workplace laws aren’t all that sensational, or it could benefit Telstra because the new Labour laws will be great for employees and not so good for employers.

I have my new AWA with me, and I need to sign it in about a week if I want to renew it. If I don’t, I guess I’ll end up on the new Labour agreement pretty quickly into the new year… But I’m actually just thinking now - I think I don’t even have to sign that one either. Hmmm… will need to think about that this week.

Today was another day out at the fulfilment centre trying to get through some of the backlog with those guys. It was a good day… but I guess a day where I also revisited a relationship that I thought wasn’t around anymore. Kind of strange I guess… I had sort of thought things weren’t happening and so just left it. But it seems to have come back up again. I guess I will just do a bit of praying about it, try not to be anxious, and see where it goes. God always has my back :)

Time for some dinner I think.

It’s been a couple of fairly busy days at work. I am muchly looking forward to the end of next week - no holidays, but it’s just when the corporate world shuts down and so my days become a massive amount quieter! But I think that before then it might get busier…

Today I spent the day out at our fulfilment centre in Regents Park. The guys there are really under the pump with a massive amount of orders to process and fulfilment delays getting greater and greater. So me and another sales guy who used to work there headed out to spend the day there and just be an extra couple of heads processing orders to try and help them out. It was good times, and it didn’t take me long at all to remember how to do everything after 2 and a half years :) I’ll be back out there on Thursday to help out again… not too much work built up today, so hopefully Thursday will be the same.

Tomorrow we have people from iMate and Sony Ericsson coming in to show us their new handsets that are due to be released early in the new year, so that will be exciting. Tomorrow we’re also having a girls and guys bible study dinner, which should also be super.

Still trying to deal with everything that I wrote about on Sunday night… not much has changed at all, but getting back into a week of work has kinda helped it just leave my immediate mind.

It’s been good to see Telstra bashing getting a bit less common. But the ACCC aren’t helping things. A court decided today that Telstra’s “Everywhere You Need It” line was misleading customers. I think that’s pretty stupid that people can’t take advertising with a grain of salt. I mean, I hope that the ACCC go and have a chat with Optus, cos I’ve been mislead for the last year thinking that wildlife are able to operate Optus’ mobile phones.

I’ve actually had a great day today - went into work extremely early to catch myself up on a lot of work that I had to do, and got most of it done by about 9 or 10, meaning that I had the rest of the day for the meetings and work that was due to come in. I had a bit of fun this arvo playing dectective, and hunting through different mobile systems trying to find out who’d been stuffing around with a corporate customers’ account. I found out that it was a retail shop manager… which was strange. So I’ve called and emailed him and am waiting for a please explain. It’s frustrating in the end though - cos we’re gonna have to credit them a few thousand dollars :(

I’ve always wondered why people change their mobile number… there’s some people who seem to change it every couple of years. I always figured that you can take your mobile number to whatever carrier you want, so why change it? The downside of that though is that you leave yourself open to getting annoying prank calls from probably some clowns from high school.

Tonight is relaxing night for me. I’m gonna play a bit of xbox, watch some Scrubs season 6, and get the keyboard out and have a run through of the carols.

It has been a while between posts…Thursday night Kedron meeting went really well. God was with us and we accomplished a lot. I left feeling very excited that all the activities have now been organised. It is now up to me to organise my parts over the next month or so, and also to check in on all the other leaders to see if they need any help too. It’s exciting and peaceful to realise that God is constantly working for us.

Friday… well Friday wasn’t too bad. It was d-day for one of my customers: we were migrating their entire mobile fleet from their old CDMA phones onto new ones. We’d spent the last couple of weeks doing all the preparation, like getting the phones all handed out and training some 70 people on how to use them… and yesterday was the day they were supposed to changeover. But very, very frustrating system issues plagued it all day. The migration kept getting pushed back and back, and then at 4pm I just decided to leave it until Monday cos I didn’t want things happening after 5 when people have already left their office.

It’s not so bad (the two hours I spent just waiting at their office was a bit frustrating though), cos it will all probably be super smooth on Monday. But they were entitled to this credit per service that was changed before the end of November. So I’m gonna have to fight that out with pricing on Monday as well. You’d think it would be a cinch considering it was an unavoidable systems error… but Telstra like to make things more fun than that :)

Today is piano practice day big time. Time to really get into some Christmas carols :) And there is also much V8 coverage to watch - it’s the last round of the championship this weekend, and I will be keen to see Tander lose the championship! And I was going to do some washing too… but this happened last weekend too - I did some washing, and then it started raining. And our dryer is broken. :(

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Just thought I should pass on that this is some good stuff. And it’s true as well. Just in case you didn’t know.

My major anxiety was getting a hold of this device to transfer contacts for a customers’ fleet tomorrow morning. The device I used to do half on Tuesday had to go somewhere else, and I didn’t know quite how it was going to work tomorrow morning. And last night I was stressing about it - but I took it to God and, like I wrote last night, just tried to leave it in His hands.

And then this morning I got a brainwave - I called a Telstra Shop in Parra where a friend works, and they more than happily are going to lend me their device for tomorrow morning - I was shocked at how willing they were to help me out! It was awesome.

I smiled for quite a while after that. Smiled at God, cos he is cool.

We’ve been rushing like crazy the last 10 days to get everything organised for this customer, cos they wanted to change all their mobiles over from CDMA to Next G by the end of Novemember. And we wanted to get everything finished by this week to give us a bit of room, and so that next week would just be the actual changeover. And the funny bit after all that is that the customer just called me an hour ago and said that they’d actually like to put off the change over until mid-December!! So all my rushing was slightly in vain.

But I still got to see some coolness from God, which was awesome. And I told them that I’m still coming out there tomorrow to change contacts, regardless of their change of date :)

I’m hanging out in the lobby of the Westin Hotel catching up on a bit of work. The day’s going pretty much as I expected - this Investor Day is great… but the sessions are so long. All the media dudes are only surfacing into the demonstration area during the breaks, and before and after. So they went back in for the arvo session at 12:30, and aren’t due out again unti 4:30pm. Great chance for me to catch up on some work and grab some afternoon tea and coffee on the Amex… but I can’t help but feel I possibly could’ve been more productive today. Just a little though - the rest of me is enjoying being around all this hype very much.

What was funny is that every guest today was issued with an umbrella. You see, at this event last year, the fire sprinklers randomly turned themselves on and saturated our CEO :)

This all finishes up about 4:30 this arvo, and then I’m trotting across a few streets back to my building for the launch of the Telstra Experience Centre. This is what I’ve been looking forward to. Tonight will be a much more interactive and interesting evening, and I get to wander round randomly and just show off a couple of new handsets - one of which is the Samsung A821, this cool widescreen handset with a tiny qwerty keyboard. Pity it has no corporate email options (ActiveSync email or similar), otherwise it’d fly in the corporate world. They’re pushing this handset with the new Mobile Foxtel stuff which has been upped to 31 channels from 12, and added in a mini EPG for the mobile side of Foxtel. Quite cool. So I’m just gonna be wandering around tonight watching various bits of Foxtel, I think.

Annnnd… just to make the girls jealous, we’re supposedly demonstrating these handsets alongside a couple of Telstra Ambassadors. And the three that will be attending tonight are Brooke Hanson, Petro Civinocevia… and Nathan Hindmarsh :)

I guess the only crap thing about tonight will be that I won’t be home until 10 or 11 tonight. And I have too much on tomorrow, so I can’t scab a day working from home.

Have I mentioned that I love my job? :)

Yes, that’s right, excitement is afoot at Telstra this morning. There’s definitely this buzz in the air.

Tomorrow is Investor Day - a day when Sol invites media people and business analysts from across Australia to a day-long presentation of where Telstra is at and what’s doing in the future. He has used it in the past to announce things too (for example, last year, he used it to announce the Next G network).

Thing is, I arrived at work this morning and found out what we think the big thing that Sol’s announcing is. And I tell you, it’s killing me not to be able to say it. I’m not even allowed to tell my colleagues! This is gonna be a long long day trying to keep this inside me.

edit: Unfortunately rumours snowballed and things got a little crazy. No iPhone for Telstra.

On top of all that, there’s a lot of construction going on in a vacant shop just beside our building here in George St. It’s due for launch tomorrow or Friday. Plus there’s a Customer Experience Centre, which will be a permanent display of Telstra products and technologies that we can bring corporate customers into. That should be up and running tomorrow (presumebly Sol will launch these tomorrow as well). It’s crazy times.

After all that… I just paid of my Powerbook. I now wholly own one G4 Powerbook! Hooray!! I’m trying to sort things so I can escape early and head over to Bam Bam music and look at guitars and such. Oh it is such an exciting day!

I went out at 3pm this arvo to fetch season 5 of Scrubs. I’ve never been able to find it again, and I want to re-watch it before season 6 comes out sometime in the next month. Anyway… two hours later, I returned. I got incredibly distracted by the Myer voucher in my wallet, and new work shirts and ties. So here I am at 6pm still working and paying for my shopping expedition :)

Today was a tops day though - I got this new contract implemented for a customer, and it was quite a substantial one. The 200 odd mobile services that were recontracted have now hit my sales numbers, which was a big boost. But we also got news that a customer has agreed to a tender we submitted that was for 500 new data cards! Big big deal for us. It was quite a good day all round!

 I’m heading home now to hang out for a while, but am heading over to Hornsby to have a late night coffee with a few Kedronites hopefully.

Enjoying a quiet coffee at a little cafe in Chatswood this morning as I wait for a meeting to begin. I was planning on having a bit of a sleep in, and then heading out here for the 9:30 start… but I left the proposal on my desk at work. So into the city I trotted this morning, collected the proposal and then headed out here.

I had a bit of a crap week at work last week - one little issue with the sales team I now work alongside sort of hit a peak. The mobile sales person I am aligned with (who is supposed to be leading all the mobiles opportunities, and engaging me to complete the implementation. But she’s not overly fantastic at her job at the best of times. So when she found out she had got another job and was leaving… things were looking good. However, she seems to have completely switched off doing her current job, despite not finishing up for another 3 weeks. So I’m doing far more than what I should be as far as opportunities and pricing goes.

But it’s got considerably better this week - not cos she’s doing anything more, she isn’t - but because I found out the person who will be coming across to replace her is a champion. He’s brilliant at doing that job (he just currently works in a different portfolio of smaller customers), so I’m going to really look forward to working with him. The work’s still hard for a little while until he starts… but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel :)