Observations from a Berlin (christmas) Market

I've been posting abit more to facebook recently - laziness, i suppose, and i forgot to update this blog. :(

anyway - this, and the next few blogs are more updates from the facebook notes (what i can post)..

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I rave.

I rave with a passion.

in this case, I'm raving with my arms flailing in the air, raising dust, the dead and hell. ;)

This was an ongoing nag and thought which i had from the trip to berlin (see my other note earlier) - and I thought to wait abit before posting this message, just so that i could cool down and sort my thoughts.

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Having been in the christmas market for almost 8 out of 12 days, the performing musicians were used to my presence, my camera and we have oft spoken during their breaks.

The friendship - if you could term it as such - had become one where i was forbidden to give money - "because you have already given so much".

fiddlesticks, or so i thought! I've enjoyed the music and I feel that the labourer is worthy of his wages. but they meant business and i was physically restrained from giving - even when i attempted to do so. since then, we have shared refreshments (on them), wine (on them) and the occasional smoke together...

I was also invited "backstage" - the area behind them where you get good accoustics, a good view and more importantly, you get to enjoy the warmth from the only working heater in the whole area. (the heaters tend to run out of gas fast - so while i could keep warm by drinking lots of glühwein, i would have been able to see pink elephants without the use of magic mushrooms. we wouldn't want that now, would we?)

.. having a backstage view of the ongoings was great fun: i get to see some of the best pieces of action, but unfortunately, i also get to see how tourists, or passerbys are.

... while it is normal to throng pass given the crowd size, there are some who stayed to enjoy the music but went by without giving. and there are those who took pictures (tourists, probably) and enjoyed the entertainment and went on their way. (i got photographed several times as part of the backdrop. i felt like i was in a zoo)

lets see. what can i say about contributor demographics?most of the people who gave are in their mid 30s-50s. i.e. older people. younger people seem to be more reluctant to give. of the older group that gave, gender tend to be equally distributed. from the younger crowd that gave, the females tend to be more generous.

here comes the embarrassing bit: through the whole time there, I've not seen another asian giving money, despite the fact that they were filming, photographing, listening and enjoying the music.

i'm embarrassed that i need to state this: ASIANS ARE REALLY EL-CHEAPOS!!!!

maybe not all. but you know who you are.

post from Facebook - In a Berlin (christmas) Market (an exercise in mental visuals)

I've been posting abit more to facebook recently - laziness, i suppose, and i forgot to update this blog. :(

anyway - this, and the next few blogs are more updates from the facebook notes (what i can post)..

..

This was hurriedly written at the christmas market in real-time (04 Dec 2008, 17.43 german time), without grammar check/spell checks available. do excuse the mistakes.Do share this moment with me..

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we are now at the christmas market at "unter der linden", one of the most beautiful areas in berlin.

its cold - with people warmly dressed in winter clothing. We are now standing in corners where there are alot of round tables, all grouped around gas heaters. Most of everyone here have something warm in the hand - a warmed mulled wine, hot chocolate or some other warm beverage.

The area is flooded with soft yellow lights - the type that you would expect for warm pubs. The lights provide a very gentle ambience that helps people to relax and talk, and adds to the gentle atmosphere at the tables.

Despite the cold weather, people are still frequening the market - some to enjoy the atmosphere, some to try out the wines (and other goodies). Its quite a family affair - people of all ages, couples, even those with young ones are often spotted.

At this particular corner of the christmas market directly opposote our table is a street musician playing the violin and accompanied by a guitar. His playing may have been amplified by a microphone, but it is suprisingly lovely instead of jarring.

many came and stopped, captured by his expertise with his instrument. even the attention of of the young were captured and they stood, listening to the delightful redition of various pieces..The mastero's latest performance - "The Swan" sweetly fills the air as we continue into the evening..

knee pads!! i got knee pads!!!

woo hoo! I got new kneepads!!!!

for those who are wondering - "why does he need kneepads?", the answer is - because i do photography.

well. after kneeing a lot in rough terrain, some muddy, slimely, some stoney, and others just painful, i realized that i need some way to prevent myself from killing myself this way. since praying doesn't seem to callouse my knees as much, another solution finally came to me: get something to protect my knees. and the skate board people just have a great solution to my problem.

sure. other photographers are going to look and stare. but who cares? when it comes to kneeing on hard rocks (nothing to do with the cafe), they will have their pain, and I will have my .. kneepads. ;)

limitations exploration: a theoretical discussion.

one of the limitations of photographs is that alot of interpretation is left to the viewer. A friend pointed out that "a picture is worth a thousand words". of course. they come from the different interpretation.

It is however interesting to note that the element of imagination is often required from the viewer - given certain pictoral elements composed in the picture, how does the viewer see it? how does the viewer interprete the ongoings?

some have scoffed - "we cannot build a society on imagination - we live by hard facts and cold science." How true. but we have first conceived ideas from our imaginations, explored it with our thoughts before attempting to verify the hypothesis. Without imagination to go beyond the fixed boundaries of our knowledge, no new knowledge seems to be birthed.

since multimedia - video, etc, seem to eliminate the need for imagination- could we claim (loosely) that such things actually make us "more stupid" and less able to launch our minds into the unknown? This seems to be an overly big generalization, but it feels plausible.

the wave rolls on..

as more information pours in, one can't help but to feel the frustrations that others are feeling. How could lives be so cheapened and demeaned? are humans no more than cattle, measured in terms the absolute profit they bring to a company?

of course, having survived a corperate blitz one year ago, I was familar with the situation unfolding before me. the memories are still vivid.

what can we say? nothing. except perhaps this: if you see a member of the top management and a snake, kill the management first. You're more likely to survive the encounter intact when facing a snake.

.. i'm not sure that people are treated like cattle: at least, cattle (cow, that is) is holy in india. here, they are treated as trade goods, to be disposed of when the value is no longer present.

of rats, snakes and management.

The news just broke: another management decision is having a tsunami impact on the lives of people working there.

And given the profile of the current employees, most of those affected are unlikely to follow the relocation plan, but instead, will be forced to leave the company.

I would personally describe the people on top as "rats and snakes", but somehow, that seems to be derogatory to the rodents and reptiles.

I have yet to find a term that is lower than that.

I'm back!

After being in bed for a week with a darned viral infection (overwork induced thing), I've finally gotten away from that virus.

I'm now back in office - and happily sipping my coffee. Gosh. I missed the coffee, the hair-yanking while dealing with new technologies and the head-banging sessions.

Colleagues (both the caring and the cautious ones) were asking - "well. are you healthy again?".

I couldn't resist it - "physically or mentally?"

you know its bad when..

your neighbour who lives on the floor above you ( a motherly figure) stops to talk to you at the front entrance, and tells you that you need to slow down and do less. especially when she belongs to the generation who believes that "hard work doesn't kill you. I'll kill you if you don't work hard"

gee.

a lack of service..

am writing this from Aachen Hbf (main train station) now. Have tried to get some service from the local service personnel at the train station, but was informed that the computers are experiencing a glitch.

I'm tolerant with computer glitches. In fact, i believe in gremlins. But what i find it difficult to understand is the fact that there are no fail-safe systems for the customer-service people - such that a failure would result in a lowering of service levels.

while it is all good and well to say "such fatal errors don't happen that often", "we could live with the risk" and "it costs so much more to have a good system in place" (i.e. get good engineers instead of the crappy ones), the costs in terms of loss of reputation and potential income is actually so much higher.

i would love to see a computer company provide a compensation service system - when a system provided fails to live up to a certain service level (under normal situations), the company will willingly compensate the customer for loss of income. This calls for alot of confidence, guts and good engineering!

the making of ghost towns..

the wind blows.. apart from the sound of dead trees creaking, nothing seems else seems to be present.


you walk down the hallway - and the echos of your steps break the omnious silence.. and the echoes bounce off the far side of the hallway.

where did everyone go?

.. on the left, a hastily scribbled note can be seen pinned on the signboard. you approach it only to see the words are written in red. blood-red.

suppressing the urge to throw-up and run, you grimly try to decipher the cryptic words:

"first there were a group of us. we knew it was bad, but we thought we were strong enough. good enough.

Then it started. First they eyed us, as if to pick up the first victims. We stayed true to our honor and bravely fought. but it was too much for us. Friend after friend fell, dragged screaming to whatever awaited them. it seemed like regardless of how good we were, it didn't help us fend off these attackers.

God help us! I hear them coming. There are only 6 of us left now - and I don't believe that we can survive the next wave. Oh God have mercy on our souls!"

the rest of the note was covered by a big red stain..

grimly shaking your head, you prepare to explore the rest of the ghost town...



I'm referring to the beheading downsizing trend that many companies are doing now. When will they ever learn that it costs so much more to find and train good talents, than to downsize?


written in tribute to those selected for the chopping board. I share your pain.

seeing and understanding

scientist, as a whole, are a cursed race. these are people whose curiosity and minds give them no rest until they have probed the unknown.

surprisingly, it is also this trait that allows any artist involved in the creative arts to perform well - be it a photographer, an oil-painter, a musician, a writer or even a dancer. Curiosity is needed to investigate new possiblities, and much imagination is required to see possibilities and areas of potential development.

having this trait, however, can be a cursed thing: what happens when your mind is fixated on something and you are not able to get some rest? what happens if you are just so curious that it becomes a very real concern?

I have seen, yet i do not understand. and my mind and curiosity gives me no rest for now. Perhaps all will be revealed in time, but for now, i will need to let curiosity gnaw at me, my imagination lead me, and graciousness guard my mind.

holy cow! this is getting spooky..

Was looking at one my favourite comics and found the depictment of a whiteboard. and the resemblance is strong enough for me to start getting worried.

take a peek at it.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1091

A look at Real Software Engineers...

Its been a while since I last wrote my regular blogs, and looking back, it seems to be filled with complaints.. so let me repent and attempt to do better.

I've been noticing over the recent years that there is a distinct difference between real software engineers and others (who are in it for the money, or just wannabes). Since I promised not to complain, I'll just focus on the software engineer bit.

Real engineers seem to have the following characteristics
1. they get negative with time.
Its a professional hazard. I mean, name me one other profession that has to think about failures even before it happens. Good codes does error handling in a respectable fashion and we test for possible errors even before it occurs. Is it any wonder that most good engineers are cynicals?

2. They have a cast-iron bladder control
again, its a byproduct of the profession. we tend to stay for long periods at our desks, being lost in the process of writing or debugging code. And sometimes, its just so exciting that we can't bear to take that 5 minutes to dash to the Loo.

3. Real Engineers are slightly warped.
Software engineers are mentally warped. as a very basic proof: who else in their right mind would want to spend hours sitting at the screen, debugging abstract problems that cannot be phyiscally modelled? and the scary part is, the engineers enjoy it. Only two other groups of people are more warped: the theologians and the philosophers. (Oops)


Having stated some common characteristics of software engineers, let me construct a method to describe the poweress of an engineer. Using the "level" terminology used in role playing games, we can describe engineers as the following (only levels 1-10 are described. the rest belong to the demi-gods category):

Level 1:
Learns about the need for logging. logs alot. lots of useless logs.

Level 2:
debugged his first live system, and wishes that he logged more. starts realizing that his previous work was rubbish.

Level 3:
realizes that he needs to know concurrency, else his system cannot scale. (don't laugh. there are places where concurrent-styled programming are discouraged because "its not safe").

Level 4:
Understands that the lessons taught in computer science 101 and 102 are not for show: there really is a producer-consumer problem. Death by starvation, livelock and deadlocks are real concurrency problems. Start buying text books and hitting head against the wall when faced with such problems.

Level 5:
Tends to overengineer systems. Small systems become large. Large sytems become unusable.

Level 6:
Knows how to avoid previous problems, but runs into another set of problems altogether: previously unusable systems are now usable, but its hard to impossible to describe. Diagrams showing "how the system works" tend to look like spider webs, and span 16 pages. Consequently, such diagrams are often used as wall paper.

Level 7:
starts to develop "glow in the dark" problems. What else can you expect after being exposed to such amounts of monitor radiation?

Level 8:
Having attained this level of expertise, he is left alone by the project manager to handle death marches. A death march is a project where
a. lots of heroism/sacrifice is required for the project to succeed
b. the engineers tend to get very suicidal or depressive (and often thinks about going to tahiti)
c. the phrase "DOOMED! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!" is often heard in the halls. alternatively, Beethoven's fifth is often sung to the words "DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM!"
d. coffee intake rises dramatically
e. heads are constantly banged against the wall. the engineer might even have a "BANG HEAD HERE" sign on the wall somewhere.

The plus part: he is constantly challenged. The negative part: his assignments require him to "walk on water or drown". No fun.

Level 9:
is often required to do "15 seconds reverse engineering". i.e. given a piece of code which he had never seen, he has to give an answer to the question of "what does this code do?" in the extremely generous 15 seconds alloted. (these questions typically come from non-software engineers). Engineers at this level often have an aura of divine light around them: after all, they need solomonic wisdom in order to be able to state confidently what something does.

Level 10:
smells death marches in the air and are able to get out of the situation fast.

Heroism tends to wear out the hero..

Am rather exhausted now. The development for that product is at an end, and I'm worn out.

its bad enough that i had to teach basic computer science. Its worse that i had to do code reviews. Its horrible that I found the same mistakes inside, despite having told the wanna-be engineer about it.

then on looking inside, i found that the *word to do with going forth and multiplying* code does not work.

looking back, the project took 6 weeks, if i didn't have to teach him and wait for him, it would have taken 3 weeks. And I wouldn't have to suffer the pains of baby sitting, and the pains of teaching someone who is obviously not listening.

even though we were supposed to work together, a loose estimate of the work i did would be something like 95%. i.e. at least 95% of the code was written by me. gosh. no wonder i'm feeling tired.

I've been getting so stressed that I started to have dreams about my work. in one dream, i woke up feeling greatly relieved. I found a solution to my work problems! but as my mind recalled the solution, i started frowning.

what was the wonderful solution?

QUIT THE DAMNED JOB!

the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Let XXX be the name of the application I'm working on.

from a colleague - "XXX has alot to do with voodoo. There are too many occasions where i spent eons trying to locate the problem, but found nothing. but after laying on my hands, it started working again"


I'd claim that we had a gremlins infestation, but i guess voodoo would do as well.

Leadership games..

It seems like it is again, a time for dumb heros, of victims heroics, of hot-air inspiring speeches, of heart-stirring warcries and of leaders.

Every good company needs good leadership in order to grow (as in, grow in a sensible way. company merges, dumb takeovers, stupid hirings don't count), and in the effort to have more people leading the dumb masses, my company started leadership training.

The first steps of leadership training apparently involves what is written at the delphi: "Know Thyself". The participants are required to fill in a multiple-choice questionaire that taxes the limits of intelligence, patience and privacy.

I'm not sure, but afaik, great leaders tend to result in great results. Looking in history, those who have achieved much (attila the hun, al capone, J. Edgar Hoover comes to mind) seems to have stood out. and I betcha that they didn't need to fill out any questionaire!

[real life] Ping-pong, aka "Watch my backhand!"

The ping-pong opponents squared off on the grounds, glaring at each other. The first serve sent the ball swiftly across, with maximum impact. Being ready, the opposite player intercepted the ball, and returned the ball with god-like speed. Almost breaking the soundbarrier, the missile reached the first player - whose vast experience in ping-pong served him well. With amazing dexterity and expertise, the challenge was met with great gusto.

stroke for stroke, serve for serve, the ball hyperspaced from one end of the table to the other. Sound barriers were tested, sonic booms almost produced, and the laws of physics defied.

(at the first instance where established laws of physics were proven wrong, Einstein was heard turning in his grave, and all physics doctorates were declared null, void and useless. The gravity of the situation was getting from serious to absurdly stiffling.)

With a final stroke of genius, the first player hit the ball with some ancient technique that had long thought to be lost from the ping-pong world. The serve was so successful that the ball broke all limits ever known to man, and burst into a fiery meteor. The opponent was utterly consumed and the game was conclusively ended.

No, that was not some scene from Balls of Fury. Its not from some futuristic street fighter game either.

Its actually a visualization of how responsibilities were thrown from department to department, with each department trying to make the next department shoulder the work.

The Olympics might have been over, but games are definitely still ongoing.

today's little contribution to the darker side of life..

from today's darker side..

Colleague: "what is that word to describe the ability to inflict maximum chaos on many people?"

Me: "erm. i think that's called terrorism"

"Huston, we have a problem"

MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

That's approximately the correct response to my current situation. Owing unforeseen circumstances (a change in business priorities), a pending business trip was cancelled. I was in a conflicting state of mind: should i be upset that my plans were changed, or should I take the opportunity to rest?

being of (relative) sound mind, I opted for the latter and took 3 days of leave.

That didn't sound so bad, except that 5 minutes after leaving my work place, I realized that I did not have anything planned. and knowing the crowd of people i have in aachen, that amounts to 5 days of complete isolation! :(

I wonder if I could do a rip-van-winkle and sleep the time away..

..i'm a dilbert-fan, in a dilbert-world

hands up, all of you who remember the "I'm a barbie doll, in the barbie world" song (it was the rage in the 90s, if i remember correctly)

lets take that irritating tune and apply it to the following lyrics:
"I'm a dilbert-fan, in a dilbert world
life's confusing, and we're sinking"

uh-oh. work kills (and other things)

In the recent weeks, Karoshi made the headlines again.

Colleagues, anxious to prevent an unpleasant contribution to that statistic, forwarded me that article with the tagline - "see? don't work too hard".

me? work too hard? .. not really. at least, i've not beaten that victim's 90 hours per month record yet. I came close to it (in terms of the rate of overtime hours per day), but i've not touched work at that volume for quite a while (because i'm too old exhausted to do so). Did that in singapore, perhaps, but not here. yet.

its the "yet." word that inflicts a sense of forebrooding. it is a word full of promise. and dire images of things to come. (!(true==true) == true). dogs and cats cohabiting. sheep beating up lions. taxes coming down by 50%. Harry Potter becoming a computer scientist.

Much of this sense of misgiving is stirred by the recent kickoff meetings for a new project. To be put simply, it was just an ideal idea to be developed based on verbal descriptions. (i.e. we are supposed to listen to what the other side says and try to guess intelligently deduce what they want.

Sounds simple, right? except it isn't. Its envisioned by people who spent their time reading tech books, but have no absolute *swear word deleted* knowledge of how to do it in real life.

"gee. i read in that book that time travel is possible. lets do a time travel machine."

In english: its "shit level" (or number of consecutive "shit shit shit shit shit!" I'd exclaim) "level of difficulty" equivalent would be somewhat like "it must be fast. it must be good. it should have been finished yesterday".

but that would, of course, still be a gross understatement. In fact, "fast, good and yesterday" would be like informatik-heaven. the real accurate description of what needs to be done would be more like "needs to perform at warp speed, reads your mind, understand the klingon language and probably exhibit the intelligence of the genetic offspring of Hawkings and Einstein." All to be done fast (as in "by october").

and I'm supposed to figure out how to do all that based on two one-houred meetings with no written specifications? hm.. you know. i'm starting to wonder if my pay is sufficient for this..

I have just this question for the head honcho indian chief tribal head senior staff there: how long was it before his last slave died of karoshi?

chat transcript

friend: Russia and many Eastern European countries are so strange in their thinking

john koh: wait till you see the asian ones

friend: I can't even imagine, but I would love to see it

john koh: sure. we chop off hands, imprison people for the slightest things, and sometimes, even cane them

john koh: singapore is known as "disneyland with a death penalty"

friend: they STILL chop off hands?

john koh: leaving stumps. yes

john koh: its quite bad

friend: why do they do that?

john koh: people keep getting into hostilities after getting their hands lopped off

friend: I mean, what's the penalty for?

friend: stealing?

friend: fighting?

john koh: studies indicated that after the loss of hands, perceived hostility levels are much higher than with hands.

john koh: the increase in perceived hostilities are thought to be caused by the inability to shake hands

gosh..

was just looking through a photography book at amazon (the "look inside" feature) and came to the index at the end of the book. This entry caught my eye

dissatisfaction defined?

for those of you who are old enough to remember the song -"I can't get no.. satisfaction", the composer left a cardinal question unanswered: what is satisfaction?

i can't answer that either.

but i can say is, being dissatisfied is like having an unscratchable itch.. irritating, but nothing you can do about it.

you'll scratch your back and I'll scratch mine..

Working in an office full of different cultures, its inevitable that the occasional "do you have this in your country" comes up in a discussion.

Today's discussion is about backscratching. (Don't ask! it just happened)

Being totally inspired, I did a search on the internet to see the various types of backscratchers available, and decided to share my findings.

(Btw. if anyone knows the people at blogger, can you tell them that their HTML formatter sucks? I looked at the automatic generated code and nearly fainted)

(Images may incur copyright infringement. if anyone protests to their images being used, drop me a note)

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Futuristic version

(from amazon) Made of steel. For the extra "hard-to-rid" (ultra-strength) itch that is more than skin deep. And its telescopic (if you look carefully).

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For those precise itches that can be pin-pointed

The "back scratcher" shirt. Useful for people who have others to help them. Helps the mind to develop geographic and dimensional skills too. Might help in battleships..

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The Traditional Solution

The "shirtless, but cheap" option. This solution runs on cereal and maybe some candy, and is traditionally endorsed by generations of ancestors from every culture. May have some unintended consequences from using untrained labour. (drool, baby food, etc)

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Demo: usage of the standard backscratcher

Usage of the backscratcher demonstrated. (standard model). Beware. Other models may vary in usage methodology.

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Futuristic version

If electronic toothbrushes are better than the regular version, what about a battery operated version? (see? A different model does have different operating instructions).

I wonder what happens when you run out of batts and you're in desperate need for a scratch..

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Different strokes for different folks

Differing sizes. For the various degrees of itch, obviously.

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The how-to for the futuristic version (engineering skills required)

For those days when you are stranded on a deserted island and need to construct your own telescopic-extendable backscratchers. For the engineering inclined, obviously.

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Other variations

Various "ends" types of backscratchers. Note: DO NOT, i repeat, DO NOT use any backscratchers if it has black "finger nails". Its probably poisoned.

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Quality of backscratchers?

Found this pic on ebay. The claims are.. extraordinary..

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Last but not least...

The student edition. Useful for scratching backs, heads, faces.. And can be used for writing.

unbelievable

what should you say when a team of under-accomplished engineers propose to undertake projects of heroic proportions?

here's my take on it -

"1. people with such abilities are usually comfortable with logic programming languages: prolog, lisp, etc. based on the reasoning abilities they've exhibited so far, i think that its safe to assuming that they can't do it.

2. people with such ingenuity (i.e. able to do projects of such level) are usually working for NASA, NSA or even google. since they are not there, unless their talents have been *really* sorely overlooked, its again safe to discount the possibilities of them succeeding.

3. people of this level usually emit vibes or have a white aura around them. It makes us normal computer scientists fall to our knees and worship, at the same time, muttering "get away from me, for I am sinful". That is not happening yet. (Besides, I've not been hit by lightning nor struck deaf, mute or blind)

4. perhaps divine intervention might be their help, as it was for the psalmist. but looking at the weather conditions, its raining water. not fish. nor frogs. nor pennies. rivers are not turning into blood. neither are three wise guys riding over the hill to worship the messiah. So i think we are not likely to get a divine visitation."


.. and if by some miracle they succeeded, i think they just wasted their one in a billion chance of achieving the impossible: they could have written a "lottery number generator" and shut down all gambling establishments.

as expected..

they'll party if they win. they'll party if they lost (which they did).

am refering, of course, to the european championship, which, thankfully, is over. Its not that i don't share the sentiment of loss for my host country, but its just that when deprived of sleep, i get kranky. and sick. very sick. and mentally disturbed. shall i go on?

now that the whole thing is behind us, i am waiting for the ruckus to end, and I'm turning in to bed.

finally!

oh hurrah. Germany is in the finals. now can we get back to sleep?

its 0030. on a weekday. and I'm awake.

on the street outside my apartment is a whole convey of young hooligans enthusiatic football idiots fans who are honking their car horns in wild abandon, in celebration of Germany's entry into the finals.

i should have done my rain dance. Why doesn't it rain when you need it?

good. we got in. now can we get to sleep?

Fresh Wide-eyed Gullible

Today's fond memory came from a presentation I made to a group of young engineers.

Fresh from the uni, they still smelled of .. fresh academics - you know - the type who are easily overwhelmed, and are surprised that programs don't work.

After reading one of my slides, this fresh-guru-wannabe came up to me and said "hey! That was cool! I have to look up the syndrome you mentioned!"

what syndrome? Look for yourself..



I would have loved to comment more on it, but Tommy Lee Jones already beat me to it:
"Damn, what a gullible breed."

seasons

We had a long winter-like weather, with a slow incoming spring here.

The changes were not obvious: it started with a slight thawing and longer daylight. The breezes teased with different temperatures - warm and soft, followed by harsh and cold. It felt like nature was reluctant to wake its children, so the call was gentle and soft.

with spring comes certain changes - the colours for one. trees bloomed into life, with their shades of colours. flowers, those growing in the fields, blossomed and announced the seasons with their colours. the startling blossoms of colour on the ground were almost in competition with those on the trees.

walking along the way, if one is close enough, you could detect little hints of fragrance from the trees. the fresh scent of spring. the smell from the flower blossoms. the gentle smell of life-awakening.

are we in spring or already in summer? I have no idea. but the awakening call from hiberation has been sounded - and all of nature has responded to it.

office happenings..

we are in abit of a fix right now, doing stuff which we'd rather not gladly do, for people we dislike enjoy working with, in the vain hope to get a future which we are clueless optimistic about.

well. what can we say? That's just shit life as normal..

anyway, on this fine day, this conversation just happened:

german colleague A: - "oh dear. why did they ruin every system they touch? i just debugged their environment yesterday. how did they corrupt it today?"

me: - "in asia culture, we would say that you did something wrong in your previous life and had bad karma. this is a punishment for your past deeds."

me (aside to colleague B) - "i noticed that you are very quiet"

colleague B - "I have nothing to add. i get the feeling that i am being punished for something too.."

me: - "exactly. how else could you explain the fact that you are stuck in the same office with me?"

the universal accident

after 7 years in germany, I've finally come to a startling conclusions about german hair-dressers. They have a psychic-link to each other. I have no other way to explain my observations otherwise.

Having looked like smoky the bear for about 3 months, (hairy, scruffy, etc), i finally decided to cough out the 15 euros for a haircut. Since I was in a big hurry, I decided to go to the hair dresser around the corner. I used to go there for a reason and stopped for a while. I wonder why?

well.. it wasn't a bad hair-cut in the most general sense of the word. I was asked how i would like it - so after he mentioned using the lawn-mower to trim the weed-like growth on the sides of my head, i agreed and paid not much attention.

He did a good job. It was shortened. Unfortunately, he did not stop there: he went on to work on the top of my hair.. Since I was sleepy,and it was too late to protest, i just shut my eyes and hoped for the best.

the results were pretty ok - if you don't mind looking like you just finished your army training. It was at that point that I remembered why I refused to get a hair cut there: no matter what i said, they would always give me the same hair style.

To make things even more intriguing, I found that my chances of getting the same hair-style at other hair-dressers are approximately the same. Lets see now.. that's that nice place with the older ladies giving hair cuts. There's that nice saloon with younger ladies, but apparently i got the same hair cut.. then there's this place (cheapest among the lot for the same cut, with a shampoo at the end. its quite worth the price because the other places do not offer hair-wash). Then there's the other place with nice and patient young people, giving the same hair-cut at a much inflated price.

really. Imagine this. This youngish-looking asian guy enters into a hair-dressing place, plops himself into the seat, and before anything happens, they get the idea "asian. that means military". I could just go to any hair dresser, sit down without saying anything, and get the same hair-cut from any place in germany.

Do they go "okayyyy. here's an asian guy. He needs a hair cut. I'll give him the asian hair cut"? Do they have a SOP for "how to: the military asian hair" in their School of weedcutting Hair dressing? Or maybe they really have this subconscious psychic link to the great-hairless deity governing all things to do with hair-cuts..

Next time, I may have to do a bruce lee impersonation of sorts to get some decent hair.



I've long given up saying that I had a haircut. I usually say "No, I had my usual accident". That seems more apt somehow (not that its an accident from their point of view), especially when its not what I intended to have. Despite the amount of protests I raised, I've yet to find a hair-dresser who would "give the customer what he wants".

first post in 2008

Well.

Its been a while. Not that things have not been happening, but things *have* been happening. Which means that life has been abit too interesting.

Humans are possibly the most self-contridictary creatures ever created. We complain when things are boring, and we complain when things get too exciting. If we factorize all these into the lowest common factor, the conclusion is - "we complain".

I'll start this post by saying that the week just started. And canteen food has never looked as interesting as in 2008. (Or rather, the translation for canteen food has never looked as interesting). Let me just put up a few highlights:

Monday: "coloured rice" - I wonder if it comes with pink, red, green, yellow, purple...

Tuesday: "Torpedo Noodles" - Hm.. gotta be careful with this one. you can lose your teeth and kissing equipment easily

Wednesday: "Pork Spit" - Ok.. lets hope it does not include phlegm as well. :P

.. and so on..

Who comes up with these translations anyway?