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The Zen Life: Slow Down Sunday, May 11, 2008 | Work I've been reading some books and online articles on how to improve my quality of life by slowing down. So here's a short story of how some small things seem to have changed my life bit by bit...2007 was a crazy year. I joined a new company, worked overtime almost everyday, did midnight conference calls to the US about twice a week on average and even stayed over at the office once. Things started to take a toll on my life. I had less time with my girlfriend and family, I spent lots of money on cab or parking since I work late and wake up late, I eat unhealthy food every day or eat at odd hours, I never exercise and almost stopped my RC and music hobbies. To break out of the madness, I usually get out of home on weekends to hang out with friends - I spent money on movies, LAN games and fancy dining. Towards the end of the year, I had to take a compulsory 1 week off from work which was meant for a holiday break, but instead I spent the week covering for my mobile phone retail store partner who went on a holiday. At the end of the year I realized that a year has passed but I haven't really saved a single cent or taken a break, so I reflected a little and thought about the things that happened - is all this money chase worth it? People tend to talk about "financial freedom", but I found out what it really means is to have freedom of time. You can have all the money in the world, but time, my friend, waits for no man. Ironically true for my case also; without time, I didn't have money either. Kelvin returned to Singapore after spending several years in NZ. We met up and I was surprised how he looked much more radiant, healthier and certainly happier than when I remembered him back in my army days. I was happy for him, although I still believe he needs to get himself a girlfriend before he turns gay. So we chatted and I figured his lifestyle in NZ was much different than in Singapore. The pace in NZ was slower and the physical and personal space he had was larger. There, he lived alone and away from his family and had escaped all the distractions of modern city life. He had time to work on personal development. He took up dancing, cooking, and some other interesting sports. He ate healthy food and exercised regularly. Yet, he managed to chalk up considerable savings. In Singapore, people might think he's either a millionaire, or a millionaire's son, but he's not and had his humble beginnings as a workaholic like many of us. Many of us in Singapore tire ourselves every day with our hectic lifestyle. We constantly stress ourselves out and eventually turn into creatures of the modern society. It's barely 2 years after I got my driver's license and I was already driving like a maniac. It worsened day by day as I got frustrated with the idiotic drivers and terrible traffic. I became very temperamental. I even kept a chipped 50 size nitro helicopter blade in my vehicle as a "weapon". I turned into a road rage. On the MRT, I bashed through people who do not give way when the train doors opened, and even once pulled an auntie out of the way of the exiting crowd. At the same time, I was reading several books - mostly on business because I was covering almost every role in the company - software development, infrastructure and systems, training, hiring, project management, business development. However, I found out that the recommendations in them are consistent and advised telecommuting (e.g. working from home), working part-time, or generally spending less time at work. Although most of these books were written in US context, they apply to us locally. My company had our off-site at the end of the year, and our boss talked about increasing revenue-per-employee. As he talked I began studying the business model of the company and found out a hard truth - the business model revolved around hourly billing and to increase revenue per employee to triple what we had now (the "target") I would have to work myself to death. Then came the bonus package which was disappointing with the usual excuses of loss revenue, inflation, cost of purchases, etc. I became increasingly frustrated at work because I was dealing with a client who believed in "good communication" and I had to make calls twice a week past midnight local time to the US. The calls were mostly unplanned, and had very poor agendas. I spent most of the time on call without saying a single word. At the same time my boss began enforcing that employees have to arrive at work on time, with the reason that we depend on each other and a missing team member would mean delayed work. Not without reason, but for a guy who sleeps at 3am, the policy is nonsense. With the increased work load and insufficient staffing due to rising employment costs, other "senior" employees in the company began to also start their responsibility push - with quite a fair bit sent in my direction. Then came Chinese New Year 2008 and I took a couple of days' off around the period to make it a full week away from work. On the first day of my supposed "vacation" I got awoken by a rude SMS requesting that I reply an e-mail. I blew my top - I wrote an e-mail, CC'ed a bunch of people including the boss, and demanded an explanation why a simple task such as replying an e-mail had to be done by me during my vacation. I would gladly respond if it was something of a disaster or emergency, but certainly an e-mail reply could wait, or could be answered by someone else. I made a firm request to opt-out of a team and go full-time with infrastructure and systems instead. After all, it was my strength. When I returned, I was reassigned to a new seat in the back room, together with a very aspiring young man who runs a marketing company. My seat was then given up for a new guy who worked with the team I used to work in. Slowly, I began re-organizing the way I worked, and how I responded to people's request. I knew I had to get away from development-related work, which was the cause of the bulk of frustrations I had. Software development in Singapore (and probably various parts of Asia) is pathetic at best. It has been outsourced to various parts of the world, especially Asia - with India being the most prominent. It has become a commodity and thus evolved into a price war. Writing software for people has no value because most of the time, the intellectual property does not belong to you. You slave over last-minute change requests, bug fixes, and get entangled in the neverending "in-scope" or "out-of-scope" discussions. Don't get me wrong - I am not a bad software developer, neither would I dare call myself an elite, but I write decent code and I love to write code. I have a passion for software, but I told myself - I have to get out of the damned. I switched back to systems work, where the perceived dollar value per hour is generally higher than software. Systems work usually require some form of local presence, and is occasionally performed on an emergency basis, giving almost double the hourly rate than usual. I turned a cold shoulder towards most software development related tasks or requests and paid more attention to systems work. I cleared out pending tasks and took and active role in restructuring and improving existing systems. As I moved further away from software development work, I removed the dependency that other employees in the company had with me. Soon, I was taking control of the situation and thus also control of my time. Since I don't work late any more, I took public transport 3-4 times a week instead of driving or hiring a cab. This turned out to be very positive as oil prices and cab rates has begun to surge. For the unaware, it now costs about S$0.20 of fuel for every kilometer of travel (assuming your car's FC is ~10km/l). A trip from home-work-home would be approximately 50 km, or S$10 of fuel. A day's parking in the CBD area costs S$16.50 plus $1.50 of ERP. There was no season parking in the area I work. Add these up and it works out to over S$600 per month on just fuel and parking alone! My girlfriend was also complaining about my driving rage. I started to drive slower, signal early, give way to others and enjoy the music over the radio. My car's fuel economy improved from the lighter footing. I threw out the "weapon" in my car and if I see a retarded driver, I would just say a few words and laugh it off. There was even once I gave an angry cab driver who stared at me a stupid grin and a "thumbs up". He got so furious you could imagine seeing smoke from his ears. Imagine how funny the whole situation turned out to be. I bought some insurance policies for health and savings, invested my CPF money, and also started exercising. I jogged weekly with my polytechnic classmate Justin Loy, and began to pick food with less calories. Last month, I took a weekend off and went for a getaway on Bintan Island - an hours' boat ride from Singapore. While I was there, I spent my time enjoying the beach and reading books. I began to see how I would want to live my life and started to put a plan together. It has been barely two months since I started the change and am already beginning to feel happier. I spend more time with my friends, family and loved ones. As I continue to work towards my freedom, I will write them on my blog. I hope this article would help many of you out there facing the same dilemma as I did. Cheers, Justin posted by detach at 10:33:19 PM | permanent link | 7 comments Interview Wednesday, January 31, 2007 | Work Woke up darn early today with the dark rings all over my eyes due to the lack of sleep. Picked Eric up from Lau Pa Sat and then proceeded to his office to fix up the server problem. Somehow the VM running his domain controller had shut down. It might have been a power failure, but I am still unsure. No traces in the logs. Anyway, restarted up the VM and got back to work. Windows 2000 Server boots in a snap. His machine was not top notch BTW. It's just an old Dell Poweredge 1500SC server with dual Intel Pentium III 1.13GHz, RAID5 SCSI U320 and 1GB of RAM running VMware on Linux as host O/S. SCSI does help a hell lot in VMware. Later we found that the domain logon problem was caused by the Speedtouch ADSL router. Its DHCP server was enabled (even though I disabled it last week?!) and so all the desktops were actually obtaining IPs from the router and querying the wrong DNS server for AD domain name resolutions. Dang. Went around the office rebooting computers and logging in to check if the shared drives come up. No lunch. After that I dropped by Fook Hai, grabbed some Belt CP parts to fix up someone else's Belt CP - put under my tender loving care. Bought some wire heat shrink tubes as well hoping someday I would redo my bad wiring work. Got an 11T 2.0mm pinion that I later realized doesn't fit my heli motor. Then the moment of the day. Interview at Duration Inc. All thanks to Jessie I managed to find this company hidden in historical shop houses between pubs and clubs at Tanjong Pagar. It was a pretty cool working place. The interior looks more like a flat than an office. The work culture as described sounds cool as well. Of course I'll still have to hang around to see for myself the real thing that goes around in there. What I really like is that these projects they're getting are from the states. It gives good exposure to be collaborating across the globe. If you deal with quite a bit of Singaporean companies... govt. especially, you know they suck most of the time. So the interview went well. Questions ranged from personal to technical to even general knowledge. The job scope seems like a good challenge for me after a whole year of adventure on my own. I guess it's also a good way to supplement my hobby. Hehe. So I hope I can get a fat pay check and get all the things I ever wanted. Top on the list is some few thousands in savings, a properly set up RC heli, any car in fact, just to zip around during the weekends. And of course... I need a new computer/laptop. If CKS said "wah", you should too. Check out my computer specs below. I use it to do my daily work... Photoshop, Internet, e-mail, programming, VMware... you name it! Intel Pentium III 800MHz So... don't bitch about your computer. I still run RealFlight G2 on this stuff! And... there's an Intel Pentium 90MHz sitting under my desk which used to be my home Linux server... 90MHz, mind you. My mobile runs a faster processor than that! posted by detach at 12:44:36 AM | permanent link | 4 comments Worst IDC Experience @ Pacific Internet Saturday, September 30, 2006 | Work Pacific Internet has been the worst IDC I've ever had in so many years. I've sent numerous complaints against the service levels and none of them were actually acted upon. This makes me wonder how they'd gotten the "best ISP award" year after year. Recap of what happened today: I arrived at the IDC 0011 hrs to have my last server and switch removed and migrated to a new IDC. After quickly shutting down my server, I carried it out to the front entrance at approx 0030 hrs. Security guard asked if there were any servers left inside. I said, no. Security guard asked if I sent a termination letter. I said, yes. Security guard checked his lists, called the NOC, and then told me I can't remove my server. I told him that I had to, simply because I have already planned my migration today. By hook or by crook, the server had to move. He said he couldn't do anything, and that he's just a security guard following orders. Fine. I called the NOC myself. I spoke to this chap and he told me he doesn't have my company name on file either. I told him the same story and that I am willing to leave one of 2 "servers" (which is actually a 3com managed switch) behind and even my identity card. But still, no. I couldn't remove my servers. I said, call the person in charge, and he said he'd call me back. About 10 minutes later, he called back, and told me he couldn't do anything. I was furious. I told him I had a migration schedule and that I have several engineers on-site at another IDC waiting for me and that all these are paid for. I made it clear that if this screws up, I would claim all charges against PI. The NOC chap said he had no choice and he was just an employee following orders. So I asked him what are mobile phones for and that he should call whoever he could. This whole thing went thru and fro for the next hour or so, until I got really fed up and I said: "This is impossible! What if I'm a customer and told you my server's faulty and I needed it to be replaced. Am I not entitled to remove my server? I am the FIRST name on the authorized list for entry to the datacenter. If I'm not authorized to remove my server, then tell me who else is?" "But you have already told me you are to terminate our services..." "NO! Look, let's forget about whatever I've said and just put it that I have to remove my server because it's faulty, is that OK?" "No, sir, the problem here is that you have already informed me of your motives..." "OK, don't waste my time. Let me have your manager's number." "Urm, I can't release his number to you sir." "Er... ok. I'll call you back in a while." Another 10 minutes passed, and he called back, again with the same answer... NO. I offered another alternative solution. I told him, "Okay, why not I bring in another server after I've moved this out? That way we'll have two machines in there just like how it is now. I can even leave my identification... my 11B here with my photo on it. I'm not going to run away with just one server." (Some silence) "Urm... OK, in that case, you'll have to bring the machine in first before bringing this one out." "Look, I'm not talking to you here at 1 am in the morning just because I want to bring a server out. I'm doing this because it's my job, I have a schedule to meet, and the fact that I HAVE faxed in my termination letter and that I HAVE sent an e-mail regarding a termination notice as well. This is NOT the first time I'm having such problems in Pacific Internet that messages are not passed down to the security in timely manner. Pacific Internet is multi-national, you're telling me they don't even have a proper system to track customer's termination requests?!" (This time, longer silence.) I continued... "I'm already willing to make one trip back here to replace the server I've removed with another one. No, I'm not going to bring a server here FIRST, and then bring my server out. That's double trip. You can check that the replacement is working. I will give you the IP address and you can do a ping." (Some more silence.) "OK... urm.... Mr. Lee.... you keep your words, I will let you take that server but make sure you bring another one back." By this time, it was 0140 hrs. I was at the IDC for over an hour just to get my server removed. I drove like a mad dog down to Qala to get my server installed and made a trip to office as well to get an old computer to dump back into Pacific Internet. I arrived at Qala 0200 hrs and was done by 0220 hrs. I was back at Pacific Internet at 0240 hours and got it all settled by 0300. By the time I arrived home it was 0330 and I still have to reconfigure my server. I was well behind migration schedule by over 3 hours. I'm not letting them go on this one. posted by detach at 05:21:05 AM | permanent link | 1 comments Boycott Starhub Tuesday, April 04, 2006 | Work Just this morning -- at the most critical moment where everybody in the office just arrived and are replying e-mails, our Internet service was interrupted. I called Starhub and their customer service personnel told me that our Internet has been suspended due to 2 months of overdue bills. We checked and one month was indeed overlooked (Dec 2005) but we did not have a copy of their bills. The Feb bill was about to be paid out and March bill has yet to arrive. It's not like we owe them thousands of dollars and we are a business subscriber paying a premium for the very reason that our business depends on the Internet line. Without warning, they cut our line off. When I asked to have it re-activated, it takes 3 working days. I will proceed to claim all business losses against them. It's not as if their Internet access didn't give me problems. The modem they gave me breaks down once a week (due to overheating over the weekend) and I have to reset it every monday. Sometimes their line goes down due to "maintenance" which I was never informed of. From today onwards, I boycott all Starhub's business services and I am terminating our Internet subscription with them as of today. And for the better, I am changing my ISP to Qala, which is more than 50% cheaper than Starhub for double the speed. Meanwhile, some open Wireless network would keep me alive for a good while. posted by detach at 02:07:57 PM | permanent link
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