Sunday, May 13, 2007

Sydney Photo Blog: Sydney Harbour, Blue Mountain and Wildlife Sanctuary

Sydney Harbour at Circular Quay, Night View

Hotel Aaron at Sydney. Every room is kinda different, and some with tremendously large bathroom.

Sydney Waterfront

Hop-on-hop-off bus, AUD 33 per person. Slightly too expensive, and it's too difficult to cover some many places in a single day. Might as well take the public transport.

Cruise around Sydney, definitely worth it.

Bondhi Beach, pretty alright.

Koala at Wildlife Sanctuary. These babies sleep more than me (more than 20 hours a day).

Blue Mountain, the blue-ish air cause the evaporated gum from the trees.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Sydney Tour

Mei Ru is having her working trip at Sydney now, and is asking my opinion on where to go about. I wish that I can have a vacation again; I wish that we can travel around together and I wish for many things in life, haha.

Sydney is just another city, with surprising fewer cars on the road and wider sidewalk (as compared to an Asian city). Every city which is near the waterfront is a nice city, as you would get many beaches, waterfront real estate, cruises and water sports. The blue water and sky just make the city much more attractive, not to mentioned the nice weather during the autumn.

Circular Quay
Circular Quay is my favorite part of the city, where we have the skyscraper view, the Opera House, the Harbor Bridge, a busy water front with ample sidewalk and open space. The view is equally magnificent during the day and the night. With the cruises around there, we could travel to the many beautiful islands and beaches. The cruise view is simply amazing as well, with many yachts on the water and waterfront real estate which I felt like owning one of them.

Waterfront Houses and Yachts

Opera House

Floating City Island
Again, I wish I can felt relax again with nothing on my mind. Perhaps Melbourne is a better place to stay for long term, but Sydney is definitely more exciting. But if you are rich enough, Sydney waterfront with a yacht should be a good choice. I always imagine myself one day to have a waterfront house, either near the sea or a nice river stream, with some hills and greenery. Until that day arrive, a lot of things to be done and taken care of.

Outside of Waterworld

Waterworld


The Rock

Monday, May 07, 2007

I miss you

She had left for oversea work while I was on a working trip, and I miss her a lot.

I believe I was not a very sentimental person since I was young. I seldom cried by myself (unless someone scolded me), I never cry during a movie and I hardly remember I misses anyone. Perhaps I was slightly afraid when I move to KL for my studies, but I settle down pretty quickly. So I never quite felt that I was emotionally attached to anyone, or perhaps I never quite felt loneliness before. I occupied my time by watching VCDs, playing video games, pickup a few computer skills, read a few comics or perhaps ultimately, meet my brother and sister for dinner or movies occasionally on weekend.

When I grow older and get closer with my family, and have a girlfriend which I care very much about, I become more sentimental. My emotion are affected by movies easier than before, I started to think of and misses people around me, and I start to wonder if I had been a good son, friend and boyfriend. I had become more emotionally attached to people around me.

I start to wonder if I had been a good friend, and I did I treat my friends well. Who is my best friend? Did I treat him or her well? I guess the last station to have a best friend is during our secondary school period, where we are all naive, have a lot of time and spent at least 5 years together. It’s slightly harder to accomplish that during college and working life. But even for my old buddies, we didn’t hang out very often, it was like once or twice a year. Perhaps it’s a matter of if we want to hang out with our friends or not, or did we have the time to do so before we grew too far apart. The same goes for my parents, how much effort do I spent caring for them. Are they my first priority, or my last?

Most of the time, I tried to be self sufficient: meaning to be independent, able to take care of myself and depends less on others. I keep myself occupied. I guess somehow I had changed, either because of my age, the nature of my work or due to my disrupted thoughts.

Is this a good sign? For one thing, people around me are more important to me nowadays. On the downside, I depend on them more, and in return, I would care more about them.

She had become a very important person in my life, as I am more emotionally attached to her. This is something very new to me, and I hope I don’t create too much of an emotional burden on her. Somehow I think it’s a good thing, but I am worried at the same time as well. I am worried my dependent might become a burden. Without the dependent, our relationship might not have improved as well.

I found that she had become better, more capable and getting busy with many new adventures. I need to support her, as much as she could support me. It is kinda contradicting, where both of us needed support, and we still need to support each other. There is no perfectness, where we only do good with what we have.

5 days of reality, 2 days of sanctuary

I already know life is full of shits, yet it’s still a pool of shit we lived in. I dedicated 5 days of my life to secure my future, and I spent 2 days to enjoy my current state of life.

Work hard and play hard, is easier said than done. But the truth is, if you don’t work hard, you can’t really play hard. And if you work too hard, you don’t really play, and vice versa.

Recently I got back slightly of what I used to call “life”. Games, computer games. I was addicted with DOTA for a few weekends while my girlfriend is busy and when I need to release some mounting pressure from work. It had been a really long while since I was hooked with any games, and I thought it was impossible for those days to return. Games is time consuming and unproductive, and at times, it is a necessary part of my life. Though I still didn’t manage to totally let go of myself and transform into a full game addict, but I am not really complaining. Time has changed, priority has shifted, and I have different “games” in life to play with. A visit down my gaming memory lane is satisfying in some sense, to be able to get addicted again.

I have all sorts of activities for my 2 days of sanctuary, such as some light gaming (not really frequent), sleeping (my favorite), watching TV (my bad habits), and work on my pet projects, to go for short vacation and of course, to spent time with my girlfriend. On the other hand, the 5 days of reality isn’t doing too good. I am trying to escape from reality; I am having fear.

Someone told me fear is False Evident Appearing Real, but I wasn’t quite convinced by that. Fear can be paralyzing, and I know that very well. Fear need to be overcome by taking action, which I am aware of and trying very hard to conquer it. I need to be myself, not having fear, not escaping and not finding excuses to be lazy. That is something I try to do at the start of every week, before retreating to my sanctuaries at the end. Perhaps not having a timetable for most of my days could be a real problem.

This week, I am going to try with discipline, especially shutting down the TV and the sleepiness. I might have fail for many weeks, but I don’t really have a choice but to keep trying. I believe everyone has some problems, and most people actually share the same set of problems now or before. It is the problem of life, which shall exist as long as we are still breathing. No matter how hard you try to clean the shits, they just keep coming. There isn’t a day where you stop cleaning your house.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Of Lawyers and Programmers

What does lawyers and programmers have in common? They depend heavily on their skills to make money, even though when they are the boss of the company. In a successful law firm, they attract top talents as partners, and to strengthen their raw skill – legal capability. They don’t actually look for a manager, or a CEO, but a great lawyer.

Shouldn’t a software house be the same? Why are we recruiting top managers or CEO to run the company, and why aren’t we attracting top programmers to join as partner instead. Perhaps techies are not good at sales or finding business opportunities. But how about lawyer? Are they good at running a business or finding more business opportunities? Does a law firm have a CEO or manager who doesn’t know much about law? Can a software house have a CEO or manager who doesn’t know much about software development?

I think software house should behave like a law firm, attracting top programmers as partner to strengthen the development capabilities of the company. Good programmers are hard to come by as employee, and even harder to retain them over time. But if they are part of the company, then it’s a different story all together. They are more willing to contribute, as it determines how much they will be getting in the end.

How about the issue getting business, should the top programmer go out and become the salesperson, or employ a few salesperson and hope for miracle to happen? I wonder how the law firm manages to do it. To become an entrepreneur, I guess you have to be all rounded as well. Is a lawyer who has his own practice an entrepreneur? Is a doctor with his own clinic an entrepreneur? I think they are, just that they provide service rather than goods, and they are the boss as well as the top employee in the company. Can a software house be the same? A law firm can have a few senior partners, some junior lawyers and more legal executives to help out. Perhaps a software house can have a few senior developers as partners, some junior programmer as helper and perhaps some support and QA engineers.

An ISV is not meant to be run like a big corporation like any other business. It should be run like a law firm, lean and mean. Not everything is meant to be run like Microsoft, so try to act more like FogCreek.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Time not Enough

Although time is not enough, yet you still can decide how you want to spent it, and who you want to spent it with. No matter how busy or how little time you think you have, you still have to decide how you want to spent it.

When time is good, everything will goes smoothly. As you stumble upon some shit, you can be certain it’s not the last of them. Perhaps it is only through tested hardship, only can you know what you are made of, and are you the man you think you are. Everyone think that they are ready, but they are not, until they are tested.

Perhaps everyone need to be tested, again and again, that you are who you think you are.