"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