The True Story About The Storm #internship

[caption id="attachment_3987" align="alignnone" width="540"] Waiting to strike.[/caption]

Earlier today, I received an email from our ex-internees, a boy called Taufan. Long story short, for me he's a really dedicated person, down to earth kind of guy and such a cutie too. We are blessed to have him in our team (actually, same for most of the other interns too) and hopefully long that may continue.

This is a story of how my 24-week of internship went on the first half of this year. The Beginning It was around the end of last year when I was so busy looking for a place for my internship. I was about to take an offer from a department in Universiti Utara Malaysia when my senior told me about the internship opportunity in Terato. I gave it some thoughts for a while before I said, "Let's do this!". Long story short, I arrived at Terato Tech on 4 of February 2013. I still remember the day as "The Wrong Dress Day". Well, I was used to dress formally in the university and that was what I wore for my first day in Terato. But it appeared that people at Terato love smart-casual attires. Oh, I was not the only intern at that time. Several other students were doing their internships as well, they were from Lim Kok Wing university if I am not mistaken. And there is another guy who began his internship at the same day as me. The guy is Mohd Rusman Arief, a master degree student from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The Project I worked on several projects with bang Rusman. We were assigned to a kind-of-introductory project on online banking for iOS environment. After the short introductory project (which did not finished), we were assigned into another project about image-based polling for iOS and web environment. I was assigned under Calvin, a senior developer in Terato. He handed me a project to build a web version of an application on culinary. However, I was also assigned(?) under Shariff, Terato's executive who is based in Singapore. And I spent most of my time to work on the projects from him. One of them is a reading book application which is actually a great idea (and a big overwhelming project). But to tell the truth, some of the highlights of my internship came from him as well. The first one was an application on Malaysia general election, PRU.MY. The app was a spin off from the image-based polling app. And the idea came from Shariff. It was the first time I actually made an application which was released to a real market. And to my surprise, one day our boss came to me and show me that the app got a positive response and reached the Top 200 in Malaysia's Apple Store. It kept climbing until finally it reached #1 in the lifestyle category of Malaysia's Apple Store; it even beat apps such as Zara. It was a happy moment even though I could not make the app better. The second was when I participated in AngelHack Singapore with some guys from Terato (Shariff, bang Azril, bang Ajmal, and bang Sergio). We got the invitation through Shariff. We lose, but it did not matter to me. The important thing is I gained a lot of experience and ate a lot of pizza since that was my first hackathon event. It was also exciting to see how people tried to pitch their idea. It really opened my mind that coding is just a small fraction of a life cycle of an application. There are more than just to write lines of codes to get your application to the users. The projects could sometimes became overwhelming and pressuring. But through those projects I could learn and play with some cool tech stacks that I might never even heard of if I take the offer from the university. The People Well, I am quite a shy and introvert person. Most of the time I keep silent and did not converse or interact with people much. But you know what? The guys in Terato welcomed me very well. They tried to involve me in the conversations, they threw jokes to break the ice, they talked and approached me to make me feel comfortable and accepted in the family. Another thing about the guys at Terato is that they are all so skillful in each of their field. I even used to use the term "Code Ninjas" to refer to the developers of Terato in my internship log book. I am not going to mention each of the staffs and tell how I feel about him/her in this post. Because it will be quite not fair since I might even never talk to him/her yet in my 24-week of internship in Terato. So I will just give a big thank to all the people I met and faced for each of the days of my internship. It was a great pleasure to know you guys! You guys raawck! The Side Dish It is a kind of tradition, or unwritten rule; if you mention Terato you should also mention food! :D The delicious endless flowing food is an inseparable part of Terato. I had free and yummy breakfast and lunch everyday (thank you makcik!). And there were snacks three times a week at 04.00 PM (again, thank you makcik!). But I think the highlight is the lunch box session every once a week where we had super-delicious-finger-licking-food (thank you La Rizz!). Oh and we could always eat the snacks provided through the "magic container". The funny thing is, I seemed to be the only one who was not in diet among the people in Terato thanks to my underweight body! :P Other than food, I also loved the xBox section of the office. Every day on lunch time and after office hour ended, there will be a life and death duel on FIFA in this place. Sometimes it was a brutal lose with big scores; not like I have been there though. LOL, just kidding. :P Terato also has a lot of gadgets with the latest addition was the LEAP Motion. Pretty cool, huh? And don't forget the tons of rubik cube that seems like mission impossible to me. I should try to solve some of the rubiks though. The Ending I am glad that today I am still in Terato, getting my hands dirty with stuffs and all. It is because since I was undergoing my 24-week internship in Terato, I realized that they actually accelerated me in learning things related to development (which is web development in this case). I am also more eager to learn about the latest things in mobile and web world. And at some point I might actually become a geek. The 24-week of internship was really saving me up a couple of years where I was left behind in the world of developers. I hope, in the upcoming days I am going to spend in Terato, I can even expand my skill set to mobile development. Maybe this is what it means, to TERATOrize yourself! Regards, Taufan Arsyad (aka Dahsyat)