A friend once told me that I deal life as if it was a chess game. Always thinking ahead. Always trying to predict the opponent’s next move. Its useful to anticipate things and plan. The thing with chess is that it has a finite number of states. It still takes a supercomputer traverse all the possible moves(or at least all the reasonable moves) but still its finite. Life unfortunately is like that. If you don’t know everything that will affect a possible outcome, your computation is useless. A mentat is only good as the data that is fed into it.

I’ve been working as a software developer for some years and have worked on lots of projects. For various reasons, unavoidable or not, project plans seldom reflect reality. I saw the futility of planning too much. More than planning, it pays more to know what is your goal, what is your current status and how you steer to your current state to the desired state. Knowing what are the essential and not so essential is vital. I never said that there should be no planning. Just don’t plan too much.

I was a bit late though to apply it(not planning that much) in life. Everytime I  make a decision, I will try to predict all the possible outcomes. The realist in me will have a bias on a bleak future. Sometimes its better not to look far out into the future. It’s because you usually can’t. We usually based our prediction on what we know. Unfortunately there are a lot of things that we don’t know. Those things that we don’t know, we can’t anticipate. And those things that we cannot anticipate is also a factor on the possible outcome. Knowing where you are happy and knowing what you can and cannot lose is more important than trying to think too much on what will happen.

Now I just enjoy the moment and damn the future. I will just lay out my goals, plan a little then live life. For someone who likes to know what will happen in the future, the pervading uncertainty is really gnawing at my soul. Thinking that you know what will happen is a false sense of security anyway.

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This has been the shittiest week I had so far. Its a bit personal. I just wish that it will be over soon.

Happiness is…*

*Yesterday some of my friends’ decided to have “happiness is <insert your own text here>” as their YM status. I could not think of anything yesterday though.

Last Two Minutes

I started writing this on New Year’s eve and planned to post it before the 1st of January. Alas! I fell asleep and got a lot of house chores to do.

Went down to Starbucks this afternoon to get my daily dose of caffeine. Saw the cute barista there. She was not pretty but she has that really cute smile. Never really talked to her before except for one time when she remarked that I’m a regular customer. I did not see her for a few months. After Christmas she was back. Anyway while she was collecting empty glasses I was able to muster the courage to say hi and talk…

Alan: Hi!

Girl: Hello. What are you doing this evening?

Alan:(did not expect the question) err.. dinner with friends. How about you?

Girl: Playing mahjong with my friends.

Alan: You were gone for a long time?

Girl: Yeah. was in HK for vacation. Its my last day now working here.

Alan: Where are you working next?

Girl: Going to study. School will start.

blah blah blah

Girl: Ok see you around!

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I so blew it up. I did not ask for her number when I should have. Either I’m not really too keen on it at that moment or I’m just a bit concerned that if she says no, the whole office will know because I am with my officemate at that time.

I remember an actor saying that what wins an Oscar are those scenes that made a lasting impression, not the whole two hour of movie.  If there is any consolation because of my lack of courage and wit at least I have a good “scene” before the year ended.

Damn that smile.

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I did not know how it started but I was discussing Star Trek with one of my officemate. I’m not a Trekkie. But I do watch some Star Trek episodes and movies once in a while. The Borgs are cool. And I never knew that there were a species stronger than them until I started to read wikipedia.

After a while the conversation drifted into girls. My officemate remarked that I should not be that nerdy and all. Discussing Star Trek with my eyes lighting up like a child gives that nerdy signal. Totally unattractive to girls. I casually remarked “I won’t sell my soul”.

*BTW there is a new Star Trek movie in 2009 with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto(Sylar in Heroes) as a younger Kirk and Spock. That would be interesting.

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When it rains it pours. My latest project was a disaster. From lousy requirements, lousy execution, lousy configuration(my fault) and a lot of bad luck.  Up to the last week of deployment the directory where the application is supposed to be installed is not ready. On the day of the deployment itself the storage team needed to fix something. We deployed on the 11th hour, figuratively and literally.

It did not end there. Apparently I made a mistake in the configuration. A really big mistake. Good thing that the project was really not that critical.

Moral of the story: It does not matter if bad luck hits you one after the other. As long as you are lucky at the same time. It cancels out. Its like a basketball game wherein you just scored a point higher than your opponents. A win is a win. The score does not matter after it.

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For this new year I won’t have anything specific that I wanted to do. Except that I will work on something interesting. Geeky and and a bit work-related interesting kind of thing.

For 2009 I will just have some guidelines on how to live my life:

-As much as possible try new things. Don’t be uptight. Loosen-up a little. Don’t think that much. Just do it (and ask the number damn it).

-Be honest. Say what I really feel. Say what I want. Be who I am regardless of who I am with. If you are a jerk then be a jerk regardless of the people around you.

-Stop being conscious on what other people will tell or think. This is a bit related on the item above. But this merits a place on its own right.

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The last two months have probably the MOST impact for this year. So many things happened, from euphoria to sadness, from losing and gaining friends, from hero to goat. Its a seesaw of emotions, an oscillation of feelings. In the last two minutes of 2008, I came out alive. Scathed, but on top by a point.

The 11th Hour

I’m just fresh from a production deployment on the 11th hour before our change freeze. It literally on the 11th hour. We did our deployment an hour before the change freeze. The project was hit by a series of bad luck. We had the usual unstable requirements, some implementation changes(perl to groovy), applying tickets late in the project life cycle and a bunch of misspellings in the deployment directory. Some could have been averted(late application of tickets), some risks could have been minimized(requirements) but some are just simply bad luck(misspelling of the deployment directory).

It was stressful, but it was fun in a certain way. I was laughing the whole time because of the bad luck that came with the project. If we don’t have those ridiculous amount of bad luck this project would only be stressful. Those “I can’t believe this is happening” moments are the bright spots in this project.

Its a year’s worth of negative karma. I hope I burned them all this year.

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It’s hard to lead people when their livelihood does not depend on obeying you. And if your team has a lot of people having strong personalities, its a very rough terrain to tread. I learned these things when I led our team for the Christmas decoration contest. You have those people who have strong personalities, those who can’t help that much because of valid reasons(family) and those who doesn’t want to help at all.

Sometimes in a group project you really don’t expect some people to be of any help. Some really does not have the talent to do what needs to be done. But at least help in those things that you can do. Even I was not much of help on our Christmas origami project(I’m bad at folding papers). Aside from leading the team all I did was buy the materials and help in setting-up the decors.

We won third place.

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My laptop’s case has cracks. I have brought this to the service center twice because of the cracks near the hinges. But this is out of warranty now. Maybe its time to buy a macbook next year(if don’t see a silver 31mm lens).

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Just had my year end review last week. I don’t care much about it. As long as I don’t get kicked out of the job its ok. I don’t care about career that much. But I do want to achieve something next year. I guess I really need to get a bit serious next year.

The Standard Chartered 10km run was fun! My legs are aching now but it was worth it. I’m gunning for the 21km run next year or at least a decent time in a 10km run. I clocked 1hr 9 min.  I hope I can bring it down below an hour.

My lack of stamina reared its ugly head again when I hit the 6km mark. I was walking more than running at that stage. My running pattern was to run fast initially then slow down at the end. I was planning to train to run slower but run longer but now I’m having second thoughts about it. I tend to injure my leg when I run slow.

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The best things in life are unplanned. After working on the Christmas decors last Friday, my officemates decided to go to DX0 to party. It was a blast with all of us dancing. The place was a bit empty though. Only 4 tables were occupied. But that did not prevented us from partying and dancing like crazy.

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The Christmas decoration judging has been moved forward on the 12th. Im not so sure right now if we can finish it by that time. As usual I’m having difficulty trekking the personality landscape that our team have. Damn it!

I was not able to do my three wise men origami for our Christmas decoration. The diagram is a too hard for me. So I searched the net for an easier model but I could not find one. Tried to look for origami in the central library but its all loaned out. In the bookstores there is a christmas origami book. The three kings in the book is too simple though.

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Finally! I bought an MS Arc Mouse. The black variant has a better finish. But I was struck by school loyalty so I choose the maroon variant. I hope they will release a silver version though.

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I brought my mattress my old house to my room. The mattress that I have in my room is the spring type. Its a bit uncomfortable when you lie on it for a long time. The new owners will renovate the old house that we rented so they are giving away all the furnitures and appliances.

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We had our offsite last week. We had this game where we need to come up with a musical presentation within 45 minutes. Having musically inclined people and natural leaders within the group, we came up with the best presentation. I don’t know if it is because of lack of ideas or lack of leadership that the other groups gave subpar performance. The way to determine the winner was to vote. Vote the two best team except for your own group. We almost lost. There was a tie. We only won because of our team leader’s skills in rock, paper and scissors.

This is one of the few reasons why democracy sucks. The system can easily be gamed. When the moderator announced that we will vote I know for a fact that the team that everyone thinks that will get the least vote will get the most.

Last year when I visited him he needed to hold on my shoulders to walk. He was too proud to bring his cane. He even flipped over when I tried to walk fast. That got me scared.  I heard a loud thud when he fell with his back first.

I had him called by their office receptionist. He was taking a long time to come out. Maybe his condition was a little bit worse than before. After twenty minutes of waiting, he finally got out. I was right. It got worse. He is now on a wheelchair. His motor skills are deteriorating.

I rolled him off the building. We were going to Teriyaki Boy at the gasoline station. It was opposite their building.  He was surprised that I know how to push a wheelchair. He told me that when he and his officemates go to KFC they just push him down on the slopes(when the slope is a bit steep its better to pull the wheelchair with the back first). I reminded him that my father is a paralytic.

While crossing the street I asked him what made him change job. The reason was growth. In his old job, all the code are splattered on one place. In his new job the codes are better and he was able to use different Java frameworks like Spring, Struts,  Acegi etc. I was surprised. Its as if he has no dilapidating condition.  He  is still thinking of growth. He is still thinking of his career. He is still upbeat on his future.

As we chat during lunch he is still as tactless and loud like before. He told me how his teammates were annoyed with him because he was telling them that they are contradicting what they say the day before. He even has this girl he was eyeing. He was actually eyeing two. But the other one is not giving him any attention.

Live your life as if this is your last day. Screw that. Today I learned to live your life as if you will live forever.

Two million worth of friendship*

It was down to five briefcases(or six). Johnny Litton and Maurice Arcache, partners in the now defunct show “Oh No Its Johnny”, was asked by the Deal or No Deal host if its a deal(get the PHP 320K) or no deal(open another briefcase).

The looked each other. The two and one million briefcases(the two highest briefcases) are still unopened. Maurice said: “deal”. Johnny disagreed. One more try he said. After all, they have been having a lucky streak so far. They sought the audience’s advice. Deal! They consulted their families opinion. No Deal! Its even. The audience told them to deal, their family told them not to deal. The looked at each other again. A few seconds later, Maurice told Johnny: “I will go with your decision”. Johnny then said: “Ok”. He then said “No Deal!”, then he pressed** the deal button. Everyone was surprised and gave him a look of disbelief.

Screw the money. Hooray for friendship!

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Note:

* Their briefcase contained two million

**Johnny said it was an accident

Only insanity is capable of beauty

I really like the essay, How Beauty and Love Are Meant to Be Incomplete and Crazy. It was recommended to me by my teammate. Below is probably the best paragraph of the essay.

Only insanity is capable of beauty. Because, it is only that, which will allow a body to be used towards a senseless end. Beauty does not make sense. It is not achieved by prescribed achievable steps. It is mistakes and accidents and forgotten selves. The impermeable grounds of logic are neither broken nor desecrated. They are merely surpassed. The mind gets left behind. Beauty has no use for it.