Firstly, this is not about the template change of this site. It’s been around for a while. There’s really no need to apologize if you didn’t notice. I myself was so consumed with other facets of my life that I almost forgot about extending the contract for the site’s hosting and domain.

I believe the relationship of me and my blog has been like the Myanmar government and the employees of the public sector. For long, the suffering of the public sector and the insufficient salary for a sustainable life is ignored by the goverment, with constants rumors of big pay raise every now and then. In this analogy, me being the government and the blog being the employee of public… Nevermind. Bad choice of example. Back to the topic.

Why mmhan 3.0?

For everyone, there have been significant changes in life that could be considered a new version and with the most recent change I have brought it to the version number to 3.0.

What are the earlier versions you ask? Well, 1.0 was when I have migrated here to Singapore to study at SP, it was tough, an unknown territory and full of surprises, both good and bad. 2.0 was when I started working, a better, more independent version and little more reckless, if I may say so myself.

Now with the most recent change, I have taken it a bit further.

What’s new in 3.0?

#1 Leaving Comwerks

The most significant change is that I am no longer a salaried employee who has this safety net by the end of each month. I said my farewell to the most wonderful people at Wunderwerks (Wunderman and Comwerks) at the end of March. It had been a very good experience to have worked at Comwerks and I have learned a load during my stay there.

When I started I was merely a PHP, Javascript, Java and Flash Developer, and by the end of it, I mastered CakePHP as a lead developer of an enterprise CMS and a plethora of other Cake apps in my portfolio. I also picked up Objective-C, bits and pieces of Silverlight, QT and Android Development. I even enjoyed some times wearing the SysAdmin hat.

On the business aspect, I played my role as producer, account manager and project manager depending on the the weather of the day. I even trained a roomful of clients for quite a few times too.

It wasn’t all smiles and fun at all time of course, as much as I could deliver on other aspects I struggled quite a bit with my punctuality ever since I started. My willpower is always weak when it comes to the time to sleep, trying to squeeze out another hour of the day everyday. In retrospect, I could never thank the good people at Comwerks enough for putting up with me and my almost-perpetual lateness.

It certainly has been very hard, making the decision to leave Comwerks that it lasted a while with me going back and forth in my mind. However, oppurtunities arised and a decision had come to made which brings me to other changes.

#2 MyanmarCarsDB.com 

MyanmarCarsDB is an online classified website strictly for Myanmar car market, mainly for those who are buying, selling and importing cars to Myanmar. Friends and colleagues ever since college, Wai Yan Lin, Wai Phyo Kyaw and myself collaborated for the founding of this site and it was launched on 4th Janurary. The market response was so good that we had to speed up everything that was in the pipeline to respond to the demand.

It meant more responsibility on all of us and more time required from all of us. This contributed enormously in the decision #1 and the changes were accomodating to this.

So far we have heard unverified rumors from many of our target audience, the subset of those who has access to the internet knows of and make use of our site. We are in the progress of taking the next step. Stay tuned.

#3 OneSolved

A wise man once said “Don’t put all eggs in one basket.” As exciting as #2 may be, it’s still not good enough, not yet. I have learnt quite a number of things about web design agencies and the industry here in Singapore which I am not going to let it go to waste.

For that reason, I have joined OneSolved as a …. Well let’s just say I have joined OneSolved. In a smaller team, in these days, the title you hold rarely reflect the hats you wear anyway.

Things have been exicitng and dramatic here too. With great flexibility comes great responsibility too. Apart from that I can’t yet tell you anything conclusive yet.

Do let me know if you are a designer/developer based here in Singapore though. Feel free to get in touch if you’re looking to get some web application done as well.

#4 The timeline

Thanks to the 7-habits, I started to look things from a higher level for a while now. “Begin with an End in mind”, one of the habit said. With how things are going in my personal and professional life, the next three to four years are going to be the most exciting years yet.

I will definitely be updating this blog from time to time. I understand that with microblogging and tweets these days, blogs (except from network blogs) have been something that’s out of date now. Call me old, if you’d like, but I like the blogging medium much better than squeezing in all my thoughts in 140 characters to be read out of context.