martyfartywarty

I just finished cleaning up my email files at work as today is my last day, working in a sponsor company for my IT3. Ironically, my first day and today felt exactly the same, despite the 6 months period in between. I didn’t feel comfortable with my colleagues, just like I first met them, and I didn’t feel that they are going to miss me much either. Just like strangers who always sat around them but have no relationships, they probably wouldn’t find my absence much of a difference.

Good on them then, they shouldn’t be feeling sad because I am not worth it. I’m feeling a little bit sad but yet indifferent about leaving the place. It is just that I didn’t do what I think I should have done. Six months is a long time to be stuck on a desk doing nothing much than surfing the net (ok maybe I’m exaggerating a little), but yet it was short enough to make me unstirred about whatever had happened and was happening. Until now, until it is too late to make a change.

¹

my face progression in IT

There are several causes to this that I can see on my perfect hindsight. As usual, I stuffed myself with too much things to do, without realising that I am very unorganised. I mean, I have known that all along, but I never thought about it properly. For the session that has just passed, I have a 9 to 5 job every day. Nonetheless I took a job as a lab supervisor for 2 classes at uni. I have a course on Wednesday and that goes from 6-9pm, and I was also doing Thesis A throughout the session. On top of everything, I took a president position in BITSA, a student organisation for the degree that I am doing. Just the contact hours are enough to make me tired most of the nights and to sleep extremely well, but the worse part was that I couldn’t discipline myself enough to do all my homework on the weekend.

It all went kaboom when recruitment hit me. Suddenly I had to fill in so many application forms, despite the fact that they were all asking exactly what I had listed on my resume. Cover letter was a biatch and I hated making them. Luckily I didn’t have to go through many assessment centres, thanks for going through a scholarship degree that has been well known and established since 1989. I did, however, have to go through quite a fair bit of interviews. Each of them may only take an hour or so, but I still have to prepare for them hours before hand. After the interviews, usually I felt so anxious too.

By the time I managed to score a job, things at work had started changing. I then had taken a fair few days off here and there. My colleagues were starting to doubt my reliability of being in the office everyday, and because of that, what started from not having that many jobs, turned out to be worse. At the same time, uni work had gotten a lot busier because it was getting closer to exam time. Assignment was due, thesis proposal was looming. I thought “Screw this, I didn’t sleep much last night doing assignments and yet here I am at work not doing any much useful”. So I started adding more “work” into work. I was more productive in my overall game, but my work commitment gradually fell through the roof.

I chatted less to my colleagues and went out less with them. Our usual conversations were not there anymore, and I gave up on trying to be a better employee. I waited until today come.

And it has, but it isn’t a day that I can look back and said that I am satisfied with myself.

1. http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1018480 [↩]

¹

The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. ~Doug Larson

I’ve been thinking about this word for a while. Just like how the universe wouldn’t get formed if even just one of the physics constant was a little bit different, it always makes me wonder what other life I can have if it didn’t turn up the way it did. Would I be happier now? would I be happier later? or is there even any difference?

Do you often wonder about this?

Happiness of course is whatever you want to define it as. To me … it is a state of which I am satisfied with myself. People keep on saying that happiness is a journey, not a state. But to me it is a state, so be it. I am talking about happiness that is more to just being content. It is not a state when you were happy when you eat your favorite ayam goreng, or when you get pooed by a bird (it’s a lucky sign according to the popular chinese belief), or when you manage to get a decent job. Once you are happy, you will be happy for a while because it is an accumulation of joyful events in your life. That kind of happy. I know I’m not being as clear, but my mind is currently clouded anyway.

It’s easy to define what was happiness in the prehistoric era. The challenges for those times were to avoid being eaten by other animals, and to feed the stomachs. Therefore the moment of living itself brought happiness to The Flintstones. Challenges correlated with happiness. Once culture and civilisation played a part in human’s life, suddenly filling our stomaches required us to get a job. So, we of course had to get a job. We did that, and then we were happy, again. A typical life of someone who lived 1000 years ago would be: born -> got a job -> (maybe procreated because that also made us happy :p) -> held the job for the lifetime -> died. Simple.

Happiness is a need for all of us. The prehistoric people were at the bottom of the pyramid, and Maslow said it is a normal progression to crave for more satisfaction in life when all the lower satisfactions have been reached. At the top of the pyramid, there are self-actualised people. Most of us fall into this category - people who are working toward fulfilling our potential, toward becoming all that we are capable of becoming. But here is the thing: what is it that each one of us are capable of becoming?

I am graduating this year. I have yet to come to terms with it. I won’t have ’student’ as my occupation anymore very very soon. I won’t be able to pay concession fee anymore (damn), and there are few more tidbits that come with it. The end of uni opens up a big hole about what can I become? Decisions have to be made at the end of the day, regardless of how much I wonder what it would be like if I decide otherwise². Ignorance is bliss and I wish I won’t spend more time thinking about it. Hobos sleeping on the road only worry about whether they can get food and a place to sleep for the night. Why the hell do I need to worry more?

Well I hope I will be able to find my happiness, sometime even in the faraway future, and I hope everyone who have to make similar decisions as what they are capable of will be, because thinking about it too much will make life less enjoyable.

ps. Gargh my last post was two months ago! &#@%#*! Work, recruitment and thesis are really stealing my time away…

1. photo by lusi [↩]
2. it reminds me of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost [↩]

I haven’t blogged for a while now, especially nothing much for this year. Part of the reason was because I went to Japan and US for a holiday. There could never be too much of a good thing, but sadly it had to end, and now I am back in Sydney - ready to begin 2008, or maybe still not yet…

Despite what I am doing now, the holiday was fulfilling. I went to two countries which I have never travelled to, and found cool observations that were totally different to what I was used to. Japan was for 10 days, and US for about 3 weeks. Not a bad time-waster activity eh? :p

Ja Pan

the soft-toys enjoying the view from shinkansen

It was a quirky country - for no matter how many times I’ve heard about Japan, I was utterly amazed at their idiosyncracy. So much to mention about this land; I don’t know where to start. To begin with, everywhere in Japan was very clean (as what you would’ve typically heard), but there weren’t many rubbish bins around! I could find one in front of the convenient stores (good old seven eleven) but most of the time my bag served another functionality as a waste pod.

One of the best part of staying in Sheraton was the heated toilet. I regularly spent quality time in the bathroom, and this feature has just brought it to a new level. I could spend ages on the seat, reading books or sometimes carrying squirtle (my laptop) to play around. The bowl came with a remote control that I could control even from outside the bathroom door. Dryer, bidet, different water pressure, you name it. It’s all there. The one in Shinagawa Sony Building was even better. It had a flushing sound button which, as the label suggests, triggers the controller to make a flushing sound. What for? That is what I still couldn’t figure out until now +_+

from the left: stop button, 2 buttons to clean the bum, bidet, dryer, then pressure controllers

Everything in Japan was well designed. The power plug had a automatic rotating cover to make sure that unused plug would be safely covered at all times. The ticket machine received the tickets whichever way I slid it through, no need to look for where the arrow is pointing. The sewer cover was beautifully decorated with sakura pattern and other patterns.

sewer cover in Nagoya-jo (see the castle in the middle?)

What made me realise is that it doesn’t take that much effort to do, but most of the time people don’t think about it. The tables in the restaurant have little ledges underneath the table top for ladies to put their bags on. It doesn’t take that long to attach those ledges, but it is rare for us to think about it that far. Most carpenters probably just stayed with the common way. They assume, if something is already mass-produced for a long time, it will be good enough to stick to the previous design. Design starts at the beginning not at the end; it’s not an afterthought¹. They need correct attitude to open new ways of thinking like the Japanese.

Another example of their prominence would be their train network. I imagine it would take at least 50 years for Sydney cityRail to achieve something equal to what Japan currently has. This was how complicated Tokyo’s train network - stations every 2-3 km allowing residents to go to every nooks and crannies in the area. JapanRail also had another network which include Shinkansen and other slower trains. Shinkansen could go as fast as 300 km/hr, really makes Sydney trains run like snails. In terms of schedule accuracy, the train would get there exactly to the minute (including inter-state ones). Ah life will be so easy in Japan, at least in terms of transportation.

But here is the quirkiness. Japanese are mostly slim and slender, thus I can hardly see any potential for the Biggest Loser to be popular there. Yet their most popular sport is Sumo. When it is in season, Sumo-chans go on match everyday, and Sumo-shows are broadcasted almost the entire afternoon. They are huge and fat. There is nothing muscular about them, except when they are fighting. The curtness of the match shows Sumo-chans immense power and control to triumph against their opponents in that split second. It reminds me of cockfights in Indo; feed the chucks so they would win. Exactly the same but definitely more addictive than watching cockfights. I still watched Sumo-chans until when I was in SF, thanks to NHK.

The Japanese were ridiculously polite. I was amazed at the guy that always stood outside the hotel lift and bowed to every guests entering and exiting the elevator. He was always smiling. The shuttle bus driver would say ‘Hai, doumo arigatou gozaimasu’ to every single person that went off the bus. That is about 20 times per run. Imagine he does 4 runs every hour, for at least 6 hours work: 6 x 4 x 20 = 480 ‘Hai, doumo arigatou gozaimasu’ per day! This guy was always smiling as well. Sometimes the politeness was just too much to bear and I wished they could be more like normal human being.

Conversation was not extremely easy though, even though I can speak a little bit of Nihon-go. I used to learn the lingo over 5 years in Indo, but the last time I touched the book was about 5 years ago. Hence I could hardly form a proper sentence at the beginning. I learned to use body language especially to the older people, so that they will correspondingly respond the same way (at least I could understand better then). Japanese will rarely respond in English no matter how much they understand them. Maybe because they consider it to be impolite to speak with broken english. Knowing Japanese was useful especially when I went outside Tokyo.

Japan is rich and stunning, travelling there was excellent. There was no need for tours and it was extremely safe. I felt a lot safer there than I do in Sydney. If you are looking for a place for a holiday, I would suggest this destination. Sometimes JetStar has some sales, like to go to Osaka for $380 one way :p I am tempted go again…

ps. I am less inclined to write about my US trip since you can easily see the US-culture (or the non-existence of culture) in the TV and the Net. There were nice scenic views and great buildings there, but other than that, it was mostly man-made within the last century (especially the sky in Julius Caesar Vegas).

1. http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2006/08/from_design_to_.html [↩]