Archive for March, 2006
March 30th, 2006 -- Posted in rants |
From today on, I will not be updating this blog as much as I used to… or rather, that’s how I am starting to get used to.
Reason? What else but my work load?
For my new scope of work and tons of things to catch up, I am already neglecting my wife and my family… even my dog. I decided that with whatever time I have left, I should dedicate to them. Hence, only an occasional update will be seen here when there is a good story.
At the same time, please continue to check out this site for updates once in a while. I shall be actively updating the blog once more when things get better… soon, I hope.
To my friends and all… Take care until then.
March 25th, 2006 -- Posted in graphic art |
The Little Fella
SWF animation by Tokyoplastic
Using AMD64 technology
(Also check out their earlier production Drum Machine)
March 23rd, 2006 -- Posted in rants |
Finally I have some time to post something during work hours. Past few days have been crazy. We have all in the department clocked in more than 15 hours per day since the week start.
Then our dear manager came to tell us early in the morning yesterday…
Mgr: I don’t want to see all of you killing yourselves doing what might not be necessary.
Me: So does that mean we don’t have a send the recon?
Mgr: No you still have to send them.
Me: Does that mean then that we don’t have to show the numbers?
Mgr: Yes you’d still have to show how you reconcile.
Me: But no need to be so precise, right?
Mgr: Yes, just a topline reconciliation will do
Me: Ok, so we’d give a recon with only the two numbers and the difference in one number, should be sufficient right?
Mgr: Not enough. You’d have to show what those differences are
Me: That means we’d still have to work out the whole thing, right?
Mgr: Theoretically speaking, yes…
Me: ...
Ok… I lied. My manager did say something along that line but I made up most of the above.
Bottomline is: what’s the point for asking? The company wide policy is to encourage work-life balance, yet the demand of workload is huge. I understand this policy is to encourage employees to work smart, not hard. But when expectations/requirements aren’t streamlined, there is no way we can see the workload lessen to practice the work-life balance.
(Aiks! Just hear me talk! I’m speaking office lingos now.)
A colleague just sent me this:
Mr. Narayana Murthy is undoubtedly one of the most famous persons from Karnataka. He is known not just for building the biggest IT empire in India but also for his simplicity. Almost every important dignitary visits Infosys campus. He delivered an interesting speech during an employee session with another IT company in India.He is incidentally,one of the top 50 influential people of Asia according to Asiaweek and also the new IT Advisor to the Thailand Prime Minister.Extract of Mr. Narayana Murthy’s Speech during Mentor Session:
I know people who work 12 hours a day, six days a week, or more. Some people do so because of a work emergency where the long hours are only temporary. Other people I know have put in these hours for years. I don’t know if they are working all these hours, but I do know they are in the office this long. Others put in long office hours because they are addicted to the workplace.
Whatever the reason for putting in overtime, working long hours over the long term is harmful to the person and to the organization. There are things managers can do to change this for everyone’s benefit. Being in the office long hours, over long periods of time, wakes way for potential errors. My colleagues who are in the office long hours frequently make mistakes caused by fatigue.
Correcting these mistakes requires their time as well as the time and energy of others. I have seen people work Tuesday through Friday to correct mistakes made after 5 PM on Monday! . Another problem is that people who are in the office long hours are not pleasant company. They often complain about other people (who aren’t working as hard); they are irritable, or cranky, or even angry. Other people avoid them. Such behavior poses problems, where work goes much better when people work together instead of avoiding one another.
As Managers, there are things we can do to help people leave the office. First and foremost is to set the example and go home ourselves. I work with a manager who chides people for working long hours. His words quickly lose their meaning when he sends these chiding group e-mails with a time-stamp of 2 AM, Sunday. Second is to encourage people to put some balance in their lives.
For instance, here is a guideline I find helpful:
- Wake up, eat a good breakfast, and go to work.
- Work hard and smart for eight or nine hours.
- Go home.
- Read the books/comics, watch a funny movie, dig in! the dirt, play with your kids, etc.
- Eat well and sleep well.
This is called recreating. Doing steps 1, 3, 4, and 5 enable step 2.
Working regular hours and recreating daily are simple concepts. They are hard for some of us because that requires ‘personal change’.
They are possible since we all have the power to choose to do them. In considering the issue of overtime, I am reminded of my oldest son. When he was a toddler, if people were visiting the apartment, he would not fall asleep no matter how long the visit, and no matter what time of day it was. He would fight off sleep until the visitors left. It was as if he was afraid that he would miss something. Once our visitors’ left, he would go to sleep.
By this time, however, he was over tired and would scream through half the night with nightmares. He, my wife, and I, all paid the price for his fear of missing out. Perhaps some people put in such long hours because they don’t want to miss anything when they leave the office. The trouble with this is that events will never stop happening.
That is life!!! Things happen 24 hours a day. Allowing for little rest is not ultimately practical. So, take a nap.
Things will happen while you’re asleep, but you will have the energy to catch up when you wake. Hence…
“LOVE YOUR JOB, BUT NEVER FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR COMPANY BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN THE COMPANY STOPS LOVING YOU”—Narayana Murthy
Quite an irony, isn’t it? We want to work hard yet want to have a good balance… So many wants from different perspectives.
March 19th, 2006 -- Posted in music |
The Kings of Convenience were in town the last week… and I missed them!!!
(And my dear friend Mel did try to remind me… but it was too late. Nevertheless, thanks for the reminder, schweetiee…)
“The Norwegian pair creates lulling acoustic melodies and sing harmonies beautiful enough to make Simon & Garfunkel blush.” – Boston Guide
Once upon a time there was a fearless Nordic duo, who waged war on the world armed with only two soft voices and two acoustic guitars. Their names were Eirik Glambek Bøe and Erlend Øye, and like their Viking ancestors they crossed continents to bring their songs of love, heartache and life to the world beyond.
Soon strange tales began to filter out of an odd pair, who’d met at an inter-schools geography contest as children (which Erlend won by drawing a map of the world freehand from memory) that had later reunited in song, in a gloomy rock band that did Joy Division covers called Skog (Norwegian for Tree).
Destiny however had other plans, and soon it was goodnight Skog and the Kings Of Convenience were born.
With their delicate lush lyrics, the indie-pop duo were thrust into the public eye in 2001 with a magnificent debut album Quiet is the New Loud which sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide, garnered strong reviews and a cult following to boot.
Kings of Convenience is credited for spearheading the New Acoustic Movement, in the tradition of Simon and Garfunkel and Nick Drake. Fans of Belle & Sebastian and Elliott Smith would likewise be seduced by these sweater-clad dreamers.
One of the signature single “Misread”, which I believe many know the band by, is my favorite. It has meanings so real to most of us… on friends who have misread our good intentions and only left us with nothing more than disappointment.
Check out other songs at the
Kings of Convenience Jukebox or my past blog posts
I Don’t Know What I Can Save you From and
Toxic Girl.
March 19th, 2006 -- Posted in story |
This is already the first hours of today, yet it is not yet tomorrow. Theoretically, once it’s past midnight, it’s the next day. Yet as long as the sun hasn’t risen, it is still today.
What brings us near towards tomorrow, when we feel less for today? We either feel delight in looking forward for a better tomorrow, or we dread it. Either way, tomorrow is treated with more attention than today.
Why not today? Why tomorrow?
Perhaps it is just our human nature… that we anticipate an improvement in tomorrow when today isn’t that great. Or, we try to drag today by wishing tomorrow may never comes (when it definitely have to) not realizing today is still today.
What about yesterday?
Yesterday is the culprit for making us remember tomorrow more than today. When we know what happened yesterday, we only think it may happen again tomorrow. But we forgot it hadn’t happened today.
Then we will sometimes remember too much of yesterday that we forget we still here today. And we often forgets that tomorrow is in our hand how it should happen.
Yesterday should be a lesson we learnt to help us to get by today, and tomorrow should be a target we set based on goods and bads of yesterday.
So we live today. And embrace tomorrow as another today when it comes.
Don’t rush… just walk.
March 18th, 2006 -- Posted in movies |
Just when I was replying a comment a minute ago, I thought and remembered about the power of music to spark what usually is left of an inspiration I feed on…
So I turned on my iTune, which I had not yet used since I last updated the software last week.
(Plays the “Bullet” album by Trafik)
So I really do not have passion in my job. I really do not feel during my day-to-day of work feeding any sense of satisfaction to my soul. I was merely working for the good money it brings. I am falling into my own version of a corporate life hell…
I have been convinced that I had been lying to myself.
________
So why am I still here in my job?
It’s partially my innermost fear, a fear of not achieving what I had initially dreamt of. I just could not bring myself to even think of sacrificing what I have established for my career, on top of the investment my family had put in for my studies.
Oh~ Nvermind that. I’m just thinking aloud
The world is big, and my dream of becoming a graphic designer is just a profession too popular. There is hardly room for more designers, and it takes a whole lot to make one visible out of the world of blinding colorful graphics. And it requires lots of PR skills too, to get exposure and your work known to the world. I would need lots of help.
There I go again…
So what else left for me from what I have? I have some business background. I understand what a FMCG company needs and wants. Bottomline is just to get the common public to buy more of whatever you are already selling them. That’s the art of marketing. Great strategy?
Nothing that innovative actually, if you ask me. You may make the world a market place for overstocking, but other than the real products you are selling it is actually the dreams you sell with the products that consumer wants.
Simple yet a great idea? It’s nothing new actually.
That is exactly what the true masters of marketing already know. They create the dreams and sell these dreams with their products. Whether or not these products are up to the value, the true overstated value comes from the dreams.
Now for a little media design appreciation…
Check out this Golf GTi ad adapted from the original movie scene? What does it try to say? Is it trying to create a feel of classic (being a classic VW model) Gene Kelly dancing to a modernized (“updated” as literally mentioned in the ad) version of Singin’ In The Rain?
The funky Kelly may not make any sense to the new design of the car, but it hides in the subconscious a dream we all wish we could keep but will never been able to… that is, to re-live the beautiful memory with the advancement we have today. Logically that is not possible, but it just does the job of tinkling our senses.Find out what influential media designers think about their creativity and the power to influence the world in this short film “Polinate”.
Most of what we buy today is ‘inspired’ by the media. Renewed packages aren’t enough.
March 15th, 2006 -- Posted in poetry |
Was it J for John?
Was it all a hoax?
Was it all for nothing?
Was it J for joke?
Was the sky that blue?
Was that Chicken Little?
Was it the bell ringing?
No it’s just J’s idea of a joke
So that wasn’t J for John.
It was J for something else.
J for Jack? Jane? Jim?
J is only a Joke
Nothing calls for J no more.
Not an ‘i’ nor a ‘k’.
Just a letter in the alphabet.
J is THE joke.
March 12th, 2006 -- Posted in weddings |
Tonight at wedding banquet of cousin YongLiang & his Indon bride Yulliana…
Nice catch, Cousin!
Whooh~ You sure looks like Chow Yun-Fat from this angle like Yuli said, Bro
YL: Make sure you enjoy yourself, Uncle
Uncle: Already did…
Cousins
Aaah… The post-10-course-dinner effect
‘Big Eyes’ Beauty…
... & the ‘High Forehead’ Beast 
That’s another international marriage in the extended family! Initially, we had a cousin who married a Canadian. Then one married a Hawaiian. I married a Thai, and now YL married an Indon. Who’s next?
March 11th, 2006 -- Posted in photography |
Took these pics of rain clouds brewing in a distance in the car this evening.
Huge clouds in the blue evening sky
Can you see the faces?
I saw more than two faces
March 10th, 2006 -- Posted in coffee thoughts, people |
Woke up as usual with an unusual dread for a Friday morning.
While having coffee before dressing up for work, I thought about what I’m doing for a living and what other aspiration not fulfilled.
Here’s my list:
- Get my driving license
- Write a book
- ...
...then I got mind-blocked. I have no idea what else I want (except being a dad, in time to come). All those things which I longed for, either (1) I already got, (2) I have yet to realize that I want, and (3) I have given up wanting.
Most of the things I’ve already gotten, through monetary means or achieved from hard work, are either taken for granted for or forgotten how much I wanted them. Take being an fully independent adult, for example. When I was younger, there was always this thought that I wanted to step out into the working world so as to earn the means to get or do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to.
No money + Lots of time = Nothing to do
However, now that I’m already here, work has become a part of me that I have hardly time to think about what I wanted to get or do.
Some money + No time = Can’t do anything
So it seems that I have gotten over and forgotten how it was like to have free time with nothing to do. So what’s the point of trying so hard to fulfill the anticipation in the first place?
I was told before that I should be working hard to prepare for a kid and the future retirement. I don’t disagree, but is that all there is for life? Is my life all about providing for somebody else who will one day end up like me, providing for my grandchild?
I sipped on my coffee.
To think that I will one day be watching my decendents pondering over the same quesiton of ‘Is this all worth it?’, I can hardly feel the justice to my duties.
But they are my duties… and duties are duties aren’t they?
Who defined these duties anyway? Culturally, we are brought up to think that it is our duties to breed and provide for our offsprings, so that they will be equipped to do just the same as we do. Turning the table around, we are the ones who decide if we accept these duties. Nobody can make us assume our fates against our will.
That’s easier said than done. To
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