A little bit of heaven

To start by saying that if this post in anyway smells sentimental, that might just be what it takes.

So Steve Jobs passed away.

Not sure what’s the odds, but just watched A little bit of heaven from Nicole Kassell. She isn’t usually my favourite director but this one hit me, hard.

You might wonder, even though each and every one of us is going to die sooner or later, but that unknown of certainty somehow fences off the fear and helplessness, yeah, feelings again. Imagine this, you now know it is close, you try to keep the hope high like many others, but damn sure you know it is coming, very soon, what do you do?

You don’t need me to tell you how much of an impact Steve Jobs has created, in the daily lives of yours and mine. I have no intention to run through the story of Apple family and all the tasteful products, ventures. What I am wondering is, how he did it, in the last days of his life, how he faced what was coming, what he chose to do and more importantly, what not to.

So in the movie, Marley is told that her day is coming. She went through the possible emotions, I would too, to realise that there is nothing you can do to avoid what’s going to happen, be angry, sad, nonchalant. What she really missed, was the fact that others around her will go on with their lives, one way or another. I know it is hard to swallow, but it starts to become obvious to me that it is not just about Marley anymore, it isn’t. Because she is loved, she is the other end of emotion linkage. Now the natural thing seems to be, how to fill in the gap which will be created, when she is gone, to return the love, take the responsibility.

Easy to say, I know. It seems insane to ask a dying man to hold on to all the commitment, responsibilities. Wrong, so wrong. We usually view these two things as heavy weight stuff, I mean really serious stuff, right? The truth is, a person with commitment, responsibilities is a happy one. I would have sense of fulfilment, sense of purpose to life, before anyone figures out the ultimate question. Those bonds are what define us. Be true to your heart, would you indulge yourself, not for a day, not for a week, but for eternity? All of sudden, what Steve did starts to make sense to me. It was sad to see his condition getting worse that he has to step down; it was only admiration when you look at his seven years of fighting with cancer. We don’t really see that, do we? I didn’t. I only see a man keeps breaking the rules, and keeps telling the world what it really wants to hear, in an honest way.

So Marley died, after planned her fun funeral party celebration.

Steve Jobs passed away, with little pieces of many hearts.

I did not realise I have tear in my face when Marley said to her friend “Renee, I’m just gonna say what I came here to say which is, I am sorry. It really hurts me when you started distancing yourself, but it’s ok, I get it. A new baby coming and me… leaving. It’s not fair having to be so happy and so sad at the same time, is it? Our friendship is one of the best things in my life and I am sorry that I’m not gonna getto know that little boy…”

Eric Schmidt in his tribute, quoted Steve, "Steve and I were talking about children one time, and he said the problem with children is that they carry your heart with them. The exact phrase was, 'It’s your heart running around outside your body.' ". Many coverage tell the story of how he arranged the last days of his life, on his terms. Steve Jobs called in to offer advice for iPhone 4S launch, right before his death. How much is it too much to say what one cares about his creation and what emotion attach is that?

Many seem to share the belief that Steve Jobs is one of those opinionated dog, although incomparable genius. I don't see it that way. I actually think Steve Jobs is a man full of emotion, not just passion, and his great ways of knowing what people want to hear and have, before we know them ourselves. He is the ultimate salesman - he has our trust, money, respect; now with him gone, pieces of our heart too. His genius is as much as in design, product strategy as in marketing, if not more.

Steve Jobs is not my hero. He merely taught me how to treat my life, or the rest of it.

Time vs energy

A small flash game got me thinking, time vs energy, only it might not be that simple relationship as exchange.

If you are lucky enough, you would have probably realised already, in essence, time is all you have, and all that you have to lose, if any.

Typically, when you start to engage any activities (just by the way, in my world, it will be defined as in projects), it's likely that you would be thinking about how much time and resource you're going to put into this gig, and whether or not you can afford it. Simple inference tells us, all that resources usually you obtained by exchanging time that was running on your watch, be it hourly or contractual repayment. In professional world, we have one fancy thing normally named as project plan, which usually consists of a bunch of milestones and period of congregated effort estimates. Alright, there we also have people's name beside the coloured bars/items, depends on which religion of project management school you're from. My point is, it doesn't matter as long as we view it as we have been doing for God knows how long. Timing is just about everything we care about, everything we check against, everything we breathe with, everything we rely on our lives to tick with, to certain extent. I feel psychologically, it came from the needs for us to be in control our daily shit, a false sense of knowing where we are and where we heading. It's funny how time and space is really no difference, Kudos to Einstein.

Now, what I really want to talk about, is energy.

Only a handful smart ones know that time is irrelevant if you want to live your life in a non-mediocre way (accidentally, while I was pondering the content of this blog, friend recommend 4-hour week). Let's get this straight first - I do not believe you'll be able to be the geek you want to be when you are clueless at timing. On the contrary, I think we should be master of it. The difference is, where the real focus lies. For me, being able to manage energy and understand how it develops and evolves at different stage of your life is critical. With that, have a easy grip on the timeline is going to be natural. Working by hours will always be limited by Laws of physics, in terms of how much you are likely to gain. Your income will depend on your continuous efforts in time, instead of quality of decision or unique skills required.

So if time is an easy reference we can always look up to, energy is not. The best reference we have is probably those society elites. Nonetheless, a certain period of full concentrated energy can deliver results which would be difficult, sometimes impossible to achieve in a usual time-is-the-God manner. Why? Simple. When you have a target, and you are fully charged for it, it's much more likely you'll get it; otherwise, your ambition, passion or whatever you like to call it, will more likely to be worn out in the mist of motionlessness, with nothing come out the other end, sometime, even if there is something out, it won't be meaningful anymore.

Now, most people could not keep a constant charged state to be ready to engage whatever is coming their ways, some could but very few. Thus we have to be humble enough to learn how to tune our energy state and know when we should be ready to strike. Fluctuation is in the nature of energy. The other one is defined by law of conservation of energy - energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another. It really doesn't matter how many days you spent on your couch reading books or playing games, skiing or diving in the middle of nowhere, do what you like. Just make sure when the mission is called, you know you'll be ready to go for it, like you never had before. That energy, is what I call something of note and can make delivery happen.

Look around you, if you think most people around you are busy in serving the system, you might be in the wrong crowd.

Play Google Scribe

The following lines came out of Google Scribe, with only me input first word following space bar (accepting whatever suggested by the prediction engine). It's funny to see whatever got into this person/algorithm, no matter who you started with, it always ended up at "world of the living room and dinning room..."

I have a lot of people are not aware of any other person or entity that is not the case for the other two are the same as the one in the same way as the first step in the right direction for the future of the country and the world of the living room and dining room with a view to the sea and the mountains...

You can also use the following command to create a new one and it is not a valid stream resource in D minor for two violins and a cello player and a great deal of time and money to the poor and the rich and famous and the most important thing is to get the best of the best in the world of the living room and dining room with a view to the sea and the mountains...

He/she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Company and the Group of Seven and the Ragged Tiger Deluxe Plastic Sled Blue and White Porcelain Vase with Flowers and Fruit of the Loom Men 's Boxer Shorts collection of the best in the world of the living room and dining room with a view to the sea and the mountains...

It is a very good job of it than I do now is to get the best of the best in the world of the living room and dining room with a view to the sea and the mountains...

Update 20/04/2011: In fact, later it turns out, no matter what word you chose to start with, it always ends up in the world of the living room and dining room :)

Inbox tolerance value

I have zero inbox tolerance (IT).

Every email drops through spam filter will be consumed immediately. Email processing always has been top priority thread in my daily task scheduling. Yes, my system works pretty well by interrupt handling, be it an engineer or manager schedule; I also have the bottom half handling to allow interrupt pre-empt if you're a Linux geek and really interested.

Secondly, I never group emails into sub folders, categories or any kind. It's simply a waste of time and counter-productive. You have From (who raised the matter), To (who should care), Subject (what's the matter), what else do you need to bring it out more easily? Whenever I saw a ever growing tree of folder structure, I am thinking "who are we kidding here, are you really gonna efficiently penetrate through this depth and get what you want from some emails you don't even remember whether or not you have consumed". I bet by the time you actually got the email, if you're lucky, there is a big chance you've forgot what's for, and all the reasons why it matters.

Also, just for the record, I never bought the excuse that 'I am too busy to check my emails', 'I have actual work to do to be interrupted'. While we're so comfortably making these alibi for us to
shy into our own little geek caves, away from brute truth - communication is what really make or break.

What I should have provided is the definition of email consumption. Based on the From, To, Subject (surprisingly, little credit is given to priority field, due to the obvious abuse), every email is processed with either immediate response, noted, ignored, fyi'ed. (You might have picked up, yes, I never deleted emails.)

What's your IT value (number of unread/number of emails in inbox, per day)? Why is that?

Leave shit to where it belongs

Nowadays, there are tons of blogs, books, tips about how to get things done and why it's important to do so.

What I want to talk about however, it's how to leave shit to where it belongs, and why so. This is assuming you're a self sufficient and proactive cell. At certain point in time, you find yourself couldn't let go any screaming customer emails or plan of attack to any critical issues. Instead, you find yourself repeatedly coming back and dip into every project meeting, on every email thread of all issue discussion, being the one cooking the plan involves parties others don't even know they exist in the organization. In short, you're rock'n'roll, you are kicking ass.

Maybe or may not be, some part of you feels bored and tired of repeating this exercise and you just know that you can do a good job as this is what you do, what you grew up from. But, your team doesn't really appreciate what you have been doing, of course your hard working and attention to details have always been very convincing, however, they didn't learn much. At the end of last project, they are just identical to what they were. Why? Because you didn't leave shit
to where it belongs.

I know you don't like not being the centre of the gravity, I know you also hate 'not-in-the-loop' for everything, maybe you still hold sense of insecurity for not being able to review code from every part of the system, or you just couldn't understand how maker's schedule runs outside immediate firing line. All these share one reason, you don't know how to leave shit to where it belongs.

What you will probably realise is, there will not be void in a positive team environment, to which hopefully you're part of it. To give'em space and leave people chew and grow on their responsibility might just be what you need to really inject sense of ownership into this team, you being there or not.

So, leave the shit to where it belongs. No one likes when shit hits the fan. Nonetheless, you need the shit spin out from the fan to test your defensive system, more importantly, how well your system performs under negative impact. Let go of the shit so you could have a chance to take care of something which might present real challenges, such as fan is broken.

Plausible deniability

I have not given this enough though until someone came to me and said, "hey dude, are you really gonna throw everything you have to this project? Aren't you supposed to just play safe?"

The point is, you have to be safe to be able to achieve what you plan for. On the other hand, if you spend too much time in looking for plausible deniability, guess what, you just create an atmosphere where everyone's main interest is not in getting things done, but in getting asses covered when shit hits fans. It is not easy, however, just to keep your head down, ignoring all politics around you and your project team, naively thinking it is a single-threaded project execution. Make no mistake, it never was, and will never be!

To have a project without pissing everyone off, yet still coming out with expected results, is more of an artistic execution than a by-the-book exercise. Obviously, a happy and motivated crowd will just ease off those expected and unexpected impedance, not mention initiatives. If your goal is really getting things done rather than being tragic hero, you should know that when you are gone, by whatever reasons, your project gone with you, be it a car crash, a mis-interpreted message, one wrong recruitment, one careless comment. I might have made it too dramatic than reality, it is likely that some of these problems will not be one if you weigh them at different levels.

It is imperative that a project leader shows his/her full commitment and always ready to go extra miles to make things happen. I have plenty of examples that crossing the line of being THERE or "let's try it next time" really lies in how much you want it, in another word, if you started to look for plausible deniability, using brake when you should be on full gas, you're pretty much out of luck.

Hit the high notes

Nessun Dorma is one of the few musics I can understand but love. Everytime when I hear it my blood pressure goes high and my eyes waters. Sounds too sentimental huh?

Why I like it? For very amateur reason, the powerful high notes, wave after wave. When someone hits those high notes, you think, wow, this dude is good, there is something in there, this guy has it!

Not everyone can do it, fortunately. That makes it special and meaningful. Similarly, not everyone can be a star in what he or she does. That's the way it is, the way it will be. People who can hit those high notes are so rare species. When you are looking for talents, no doubt you want the best, most of them pricey, but you still want them. They give different perspectives, achieve different levels. I am addictive to high notes. It makes me wonder whether that's what we are seeking in lives.

Choice

I was exhausted from a long stressful week with a tough customer, although exciting but I had enough for that week, waiting for a flight to get back to my two months old baby girl. I had always tried to get to the gate in the last five minutes. Right back then, I have been waiting in the lounge for more than an hour already. How eager was I to get on that plane, you get the idea.

Then the voice came on, "I am sorry to announce that the flight from xxx to xxx is delayed, DUE TO weather condition..." Crap, that's my flight No., I guess that's the thought flying through many brains. That's what I was thinking anyway, AND weather was marvelous!

Anyhow, this is the third announcement in a row, another two hours delay. Lounge started to get noisy and less peaceful. (This is what I learnt before - when you can't think of a good excuse to cover the bad situation, telling the truth is the better choice, and the easier one.)

Now the idea that five hours of my life would be spent in this airport, I became a little nervous. After the interruption from the charming machine voice, I had to put my book away. What could be worthy enough for five hours of my time here in this place?

While I was thinking and searching, the service desk got more and more crowded. Impatient faces plus angry voice make quite a scene. Well, I could be a nosy geek sometimes so I started to watch. Apparently most of the airline folks had lost their nerves, they were being questioned, by many people, being requested with some quite wild compensation ;), being even nudged in not quite a friendly way. Well, it's Friday, and we are all in a hurry.

Just before I lost my interests and wondering whether my eyes should be cast somewhere else to capture a moment at least pay back some of my time, there was this small but firm and calm voice slip out of the crowd. Following that, I saw a girl, in her twenties and blue white airline suite, starting to pick up the panics and iron them one by one. She accepted the responsibility, (I should say that from the wearing, she was not the gal who was in charge.) made arrangements to
those reasonable requests while declined/dodged some 'interesting' ones. The one I liked the most is that she didn't make up excuses, nor did she make false promises to try to shift the shit. Of course when things went wrong people would shout, "get the manager, we want to see the man in charge, we want to 'do something interesting to him' :)". The girl reached her manager, who didn't really match my expectation, as his reply over the microphone was "there is nothing I can do, the choice is yours."

Now there looked like going to be a riot, and I mean it. A lady pointed at the calm girl, "you people are all liars. How can you take responsibility when your boss doesn't want to, even he doesn't care about his company.". The girl replied, "I do, I care about my name on the tag on my suite. Please write my name down and you can always come back to me if these arrangement went wrong. I care about my name so I won't let it happen." I was quite impressed, I have to say. This was not some kinda movie lines that she doesn't need to worry about nothing what she might have to face in the next scene as it's just all fantasy. I walked/squeezed to reach her and tapped in the shoulder. When she turned around in a hurry, I said, "thank you, you made my
misery a memorable experience."

What went on there is irrelevant to this post now. I had what I was looking for. There is a choice and you are the person who can decide to pick or to ignore. She made her choice, by standing on her feet, by not avoiding. I am not sure whether she truly believe that to be calm is the right thing to do or she just remembered her professional training. But to me, she did a wonderful job, and she certainly made her point - she cares about her name on the tag.

When we finally got on the plane, I had my hours paid.

A pity - Google's leaving China

On my very first day back from China to UK, the same question has been dropped on me 5 times in a row, "what do you think the whole Google's pulling out of China thing?". Frankly, I didn't know what to think, perhaps its the jet lag thing or just because the trip was too hectic. Now, after couple of days, my brain has finally settled to its usual place - I don't like the taste of it!

Last news I heard on the similar thread was Google was accused (rightly) of scanning a large amount of Chinese books without authorisation. Finally, the case was settled by Google's apologies upon an alibi "inadequate communication" with the authors. 2 days later, again, on the same page, same name, Google is now taking a high stand that it will initiate "A new approach to China". Reason being that it has detected some "sophisticated attack" to 20 companies with the intent of fishing information from a group of Chinese human activists' gmail accounts. More than that, Google waved its American power stick and convince Washington that this is a non-trivial political matter.

First of all, without taking this too far, I am a huge fan of Google, of its products, its engineering philosophy, its superb marketing and productionisation abilities, most of all, the assimilated talents it has.

I don't like the taste of this though, even that I know I would probably offend someone, inc. my closest friend. But this JUST DID NOT make sense. It doesn't take a genius to read the contradicts Google has presented here. If this really is an ethic battle, Google just lost it two days ago. In what on earth position it is to do so? To pull out from an undeniable largest emerging market just because there are organised hackers who have launched 'sophisticated attack'. Come on, who are you kidding Google! Not mention many God-fathers in this generation who helped to define the networking, security are working in Google, since when did the hacking stop in any public information network?

Admittedly, there are restrictions and information censoring in today's China, and there are many. I do not believe this will disappear easily, nor do I believe it will be quickly. I was also somewhat annoyed that I can't get to my blog, facebook, even twitter accounts back in China. However, China as a developing economy entity, there are much to be improved, consolidated. Just try to remind ourselves, which developed economy entity has not gone through a phase of transition? Much to be said with regards to communism and single party government. But we are here to do business, in a real world. When you want to manage information, yeah, you do that, but in what name can you stop others to do the same? Why can we only allow Google fishing everyone's account and information everyday just to be able to pop up relevant advertisement for its own profits? Surely it doesn't really differ from politic profits essentially.

There are many speculations in terms of the real reason behind this decision. Some says Google.cn has never really performed up to expectation, regardless tens of billions of dollars has been thrown into the pot. Unfortunately, Google has officially blocked its own way to China, with all the right or wrong reasons. My financial advisor told me one thing, market has its rule, its intelligence. It takes a genius to try to understand it, not mention overpower it.

It's a pity for China, Google represents a type of culture, an idealism. I am sure many young people feel somehow lost without their spiritual leader in this technology sector. It's probably the time for a new star.

It's a shame for Google. I would have shown my respects if it decided to pull out because of its performance, instead of an excuse-searching exercise.

Sense of direction - what is a plan?

We love spontaneous, and the feeling of capable to do so.

We also fear clueless as life sucks if you are not in control of your own daily shit. To keep a peace of mind, we try to predict what's gonna happen and what we can do about it if you won't get morning coffee tomorrow. As most of us are incapable of seeing what is coming and have difficulties in figuring out how on earth what happened on the other side of this lonely planet could possibly affect our own well-being, what we did in the end is guess at best, the difference is how much effort being spent to conclude such speculation.

What gives us security facing unknown is the sense of direction. Ask yourself what will cause panic in your head, driving in a foreign country or broken GPS. To me, making a series inter-dependant guesses is to draw a line from where we are to, hopefully, where we want to be - a plan. We are trying to form certain level of security when there is no such things fed from outer space.