1 Month in 1 Blog Post

Dear Emma,

How times flies... I already been enslaved for a good +1.5 month. Things been progressing rather "interestingly" at work with the introduction of my team local team lead from US, which happens to be a female (and cutey) from US... It's super RARE to see a Javammer that's female + cute + wears dress... Thank you God and God bless America!

Anyway, work wise things been a tad slow in terms of progress... mainly cause we have quite an array of new techs... Overall however I think we did okay. Managed to slay a sh*tty task last Friday which sorta lift up the team's mood, since we been stuck trying to setup a local version of US stuffs for development.

My taste bud has been push to the limit as well. Already bored with the food choices in Bangsar South... Sampled almost every restaurant within walking distance and the food are VERY pricey, some taste okay while other taste like crab crap. Planning to suggest we take car to Midvalley (heck I willing to even volunteer my car) for a change in lunch options. I do however find it odd that most people in my office tend to tah pau from the expensive "Mixed Rice" and dine in the office pantry. Sure finding a seat is hard in the food court but surely after spending 8 hours everyday x 5 times a week, one must be eager spend time outside their work area whenever possible? Yet again maybe it's just me that is messed up (or don't love my work enuff to eat at my workplace)... 

My US trip has been set on the 17th of May, and have applied the Visa and etc. Will be going to the interview with the US embassy on 5th of May, got some concern on how fast will the VISA application be approved. We're be going to the land of virgins aka Virginia. Will be bunked up with a junior in my team. As for activities, from what we are told so far, the nearest tourist attraction is Washington DC which is famous for their museum and political landmarks (Whitehouse, Lincoln Memorial & Reflection Pool)... *Yawn* Behind our US manager's back, we been talking about utilizing our weekends to do more *interesting* things like visiting the great Niagara Falls or even

The trip to these 2 places however will take atleast a LONG 6-7 hours and we got only 3 weekends and most likely we gotta deduct 1-2 weekends for team building events the US guys plan for us. We have more wild ideas like Grand Canyon, San Francisco or even Magic Mountain but these location is just too far from Virginia.

My personal checklist when I get to US:

1. New Balance Minimus Shoe
2. Times Square @ New York 
3. Statue of Liberty @ New York
4. Letterman and Hello Deli @ Broadway
5. Visit Pilates old home @ New York
6. Hotdog @ New York 
7. Pizza @ New York
8. Central Park @ New York
9. Maid of the Mist @ Niagara
10. Virginia Beach @ Virginia
11. Buffalo Wings
12. Demolish an American Cheese Burger
13. Eat at Taco Bell
14. Twinkies
15. Visit Trader Joe's, Costco, Walmart
16. Smoke Marijuana

Looking forward the trip. Hopefully kwai mui  (nickname for my cute team lead) will be joining us for some of these activities... lol... Oh Emma, you feeling jealous? Don't worry, I'll be sure to send you an email from US...

Coming back to reality, nothing much outside my new work to b*tch about this 1 month... Well, there's the stim boat buffet Monk Inc dinner I attended last week, which I ended up with severe cirit birit (diarrhea)...

Also notable 2 occurrence where I meet with some old colleges at Midvalley which tend to be my favorite haunts after work to waste time (to avoid wasting time enduring the peak hour jam). One was with my 1st company senior at Burger King. I was queuing when I thought I saw him. I had to short internal debate if I should greet him or not since he showed no signs he noticed/recognized me. I finally decided to greet him since why shouldn't I greet him? If I recognize wrong guy a simple "sorry" would suffice. It was indeed my senior and we had a short catch up session. Apparently, he was buying some dinner for his wife + childs. It's sometimes hard to noticed the passage of time within yourself till when you suddenly noticed that time has slipped pass your grasp... My senior is now doing his own business at Midvalley. Somehow the conversation ended up with my relationship status, which is btw is still single and available but not hot. My senior gave me a few advices to change my status but did point out on the loss of his personal time when children came into the picture. Some make me feel good things which he said was that I change quite alot, I no longer looked like a Geeky Bookworm I looked 6-7 years ago. LOL, I evolved into a BAD (Balding Antisocial D*ck Douche-bag) now!

Another meeting was with my former colleges nearby the Bowling Alley. This one is a bit bittersweet for me cause among the colleges was the college I stupidly tried to gave my heart to. Apparently only one of these colleges saw me and say hi to me while the rest walk pass me as if I was just another random guy in the mall. And somehow I felt like being a "invisible man"... Maybe I am... But seeing her smiling, happy and etc among other colleges does bring some degree of happiness inside of me. Somehow I feel a part of me still haven't really forgotten the feelings I had for her yet again I think I will never forgot those feelings... And having move on, I think I should cherish those feelings I had for her once... They're prove that I'm not so apathetic in life like I think I am...

A long winded blog entry, hopeful the next blog entry won't be in another 1 month time.

Sum of a person's life

Dear Emma,

“It's difficult to understand the sum of a person's life, some people will tell you it’s measured by the ones left behind. Some believe it can be measured by faith. Some say by love. Other folks say life has no meaning at all. Me? I believe that you measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you”. – Carter Chambers, Bucket List

Work @ Slavery Inc

Dear Emma,

Been quite sometime since I last blogged. Quite busy with work, not busy working at work but rather adjusting to the new work timetable.

For starters, my work starts at 9am and I need to endure the f*cktasticuclar federal highway route to my office. My flexi hour benefits only is opened to me when I reached the 6 month "I'm confirmed" mark so I have to drag myself from dreamland to work as early as 6am in the morning. 1 hour to do my morning rituals... eat, caffeine, bath, jerk off, etc and leave my house by 7am. Then cums the long 1 hour 30 minutes drive to office.

This is without a doubt the part of my new timetable I hate the most... Why? The reality is I can reach my office in around 30-40 minutes, the rest is the result of jam. And what frustrate me the most is the fact these jams are really a result of yours truly "Malaysian Selfish + Retarded Drivers". You think that everyday also same problem, most drivers will get smarter and drive at the appropriate lane or dun "slow down" when they reach the hotspot, but noes... same unbelievable sh*t everyday... And dun even get me started on the authorities. Most of the time, where they are needed most, you won't see them, where they not needed most, they will be there "creating" more jam! You'll see shit like traffic police parking his motorcyle in the middle of the road causing a massive jam... At bottom necks like exits from federal highway, Kelana Jaya exit after Sunway Bridge, you won't even see these f*ckers shadow when there's a need for someone to "saman" a bunch of these selfish retarded drivers... The most common problem often occurs a exits from main road. The typical MO is left lane is for exit but the exit is jammed, hence causing a long queue so so mother f*ckers wan to jump queue by driving in the middle lane and cut queue from there. This result in the middle lane to also get jammed causing even middle lane cars to cut into the fast lane. End result every lane also jammed. It always stump me why I can drive faster in the left lane compared to the fast lane leading me to believe in the idiot-icy of Malaysian drivers that are too lazy and selfish to drive at their appropriate lane. And those onlookers when a car breakdown at the emergency lane, sigh... I wish I had a big foot truck so I can *crash*

Moving on to my new workplace, parking is rather easy to find and my company does cover for my parking fee so no biggie. My office however is located at the 18th floor sometimes it can be quite slow in the leave especially when there's a lot of people stopping the lift in between the floors. Office is very nice, but I'm not too keen on the open seating concept they implement here. My team mates however sorta sits at the same place, so no biggie. Coffee machine, tea, biscuits, tv, xbox, locker... Lunch here however is rather dull affair. Not much tasty food unless you're willing to fork out $$$. One super perks however is a lot of department (Sales, HR, Audit, etc) is located in this office, so quite a number of pretty chicks running around in this office which is a welcome change compared to the nerd rage programmer gals... Culture here is so far quite positive...

As for my team, 3 batangs including me. One of the batang used to be my ex-collegue a few years back. At the moment my team manager from the US is here to manage us for a month before another expat will be send to manage this bunch of monkeys. Good news is this expat is a girl, at least it's not another full sausage fest affair. The 1st week, they arrange sorta a orientation for newcomers and even arrange a brainwashing bootcamp on the 2nd week. My manager then gave us access to some online tutorial materials to self read to prepare ourself for the task that we will be assign in the future. Sadly our first task is to add some functionality to the existing project built process which is more of a configuration and rnd work rather than programming. Quite tough as we're still wet on the way they build their built (which involves using Clearcase, Ant, Jenkins and Sonar)... Get to play with Ant and Jenkins but I'm not fond of configuration related work, if I was I would already be a System Administrator rather than a Software Developer de. My great virgin trip to Virginia, US is said to on the mid May. Also have chance to experience another version of scrum implementation under my US manager, a rather eye opening experience.

Security at work however is a pain in the @$$. My company is REALLY paranoid on security. Imagine needing to go thru a proxy to browse anything on my laptop even when I'm connected to my home network, my browser is configured in such I need to connect to their intranet to be able to surf from their network. Development is entirely done on another VM, so my laptop is actually a terminal to connect to my development area... And the policy of using 3rd partys jars/software... sigh, everything also need request permission... A lot of overhead, especially in development...

I'm still having problem adjusting to my new timetable especially the 3 hours daily up and down travel time. I feel just burnt out when I reach home. I try my best to go to the gym so at least I exercise a bit but found myself just too tired at times and lazy. I also suffering a lack of appetite to do the online training material due to this.

So my overall conclusion on my new timetable is a above average rating... While I enjoy the new environment and more managed software development process, I do have to distaste on the lack of opportunity to try out the latest tech and bloody chore to travel to work daily.

Slavery Inc

Dear Emma,

Yes, back to Slavery Inc in 8+ more hours.... After taking almost 5 months break, I'm bored to death and is actually looking forward to work...

I'd probably start b*tchin bout how work sucks in 2-3 weeks time but that's me living my life... Life is a flat circular... The endless work-suffer cycle that bounds us workers class peoples of the society...

Oddly, I don't feel anything special towards going to a new work. Maybe cause I already experience this experience so many times already... Just another work... Typically the 1st day + week of work tends to be one word "boring". I'm personally lowering the bar in expectation... The less you expect, the less disappointment you get.

So here we go again...

Motorola Project Ara

Dear Emma,

Call me slow in tech, but I only heard about this Project Ara + Phonebloks concept yesterday. Incase ur also slow in tech like me, Project Ara + Phonebloks is a rather innovate idea to make our current smartphone from this

to this

Personally this concept of lego smartphone rings a bell for me since I'm a Javammer. You see, in software design we design our software to be modular and flexible so we swap/change a part of the code without impacting the whole system. This is done with usually via a well thought of interfaces and sometimes with the aid of the framework we're leveraging to build our system on. By breaking down a system into smaller chunks of parts by functionality, we end up with tiny components which focus on doing something well. Having such tiny components tend to make it easier reuse, replace, and test.

By designing a smartphone the same way, we get the same benefits as well. Imagine having a camera component we can swap once the market releases a newer model without changing the entire phone. Want more RAM, just replace the RAM component with another higher RAM component available. Spoiled display? Just buy a new display component and replace just that in your phone. A lot of interesting implications...

The idea is quite similar like our desktop computer was design upon, which bring me to the possible challenges this concept would face. It's the same problem as our desktop computer, the component we can swap/replace in our computer is bound by the motherboard. Say my motherboard only has a DDR RAM slot, I can't just replace my RAM with a DDR3 RAM since the slot physically is different to begin with. So why do DDR and DDR3 RAM requires a different slot? Simple, innovation in design of a better RAM.

The crucial area in the workability of this modular smartphone lies at the motherboard of this smartphone and how it's not only going to allow attachment of different types of component but as well as how it's going to manage newer model of this components which might physically require different physical shapes and sizes. What if one day, we found a more efficient design for the smartphone motherboard itself, can our old components be use in the new motherboard? If not, we're gonna go down the same route as our desktop as well, and this modular smartphone is only modular for a couple of years.

Since we got some mad geniuses in google and motorola, I do hope they are able to find a fix for this issue as oppose to simply following the same path as our desktop. However, I'm not so optimistic on this as from the perspective of sales, the only way they can sell us more is if our phone becomes obsolete.