The Blue Notebooks

Have you ever heard songs, songs that depicts the dark silent turmoil in your heart.

Multiple strings, all playing different notes. Disconnected. Haunting. Chaotic yet melodious and soothing to a troubled mind.

Shocking. Intensity. Clarity.

détaché traîné

I am not angry at what you did. I am just terribly sad. How could you? How could you have betrayed the trust?

Real Love

Once in awhile, you come across a song that just hits you at a particular point of time in your life and through some unseen energy, infuses it with your soul.

The last time this happened to me was 3 years ago when I chance upon Fiona Apple's version of Across the Universe.

This happened to me again recently. And it so happens, it is another one of Beatles' song.

Real Love

All my little plans and schemes,

lost like some forgotten dreams.

Seems that all I really was doing

was waitin' for you.

Just like little girls and boys,

playing with their little toys.

Seems like all we really were doing

was waitin' for love.

Don't need to be alone,

No need to be alone.

It's real love, it's real,

Yes it's real love, it's real.

From this moment on I know,

exactly where my life will go.

Seems that all I really was doing

was waitin' for love.

Don't need to be afraid,

No need to be afraid.

It's real love, it's real,

Yes it's real love, it's real.

Thought I'd been in love before,

but in my heart I wanted more.

Seems like all I really was doing

was waitin' for you.

Don't to be alone,

No need to be alone.

It's real love, yeah it's real,

It's real love, it's real,

Yes, it's real love, it's real,

It's real love, it's real,

Yes it's real love, it's real,

It's real love, it's real,

Yes it's real love, it's real,

It's real love, it's real,

Yes it's real love....

Ody

* Updated: This post is about two months old.

A few weeks back, I went out to get Cel a puppy.

I did the unthinkable by getting her a POODLE. You know, those ugly looking monsters which are shaved all over and their furs puffed up at all the wrong places to provide the image of glamour.

See, that was the stereotype I had of poodles before I got Ody. But after extensive research online, poodles are believed to be the second brightest dogs out there. Anyways, we've decided to name him Ody after Odysseus from the epic Greek poem Odyssey.

Talking About Professionalism or the Lack of.....

I have recently been working on a rather complex contract. There is the Singapore team that takes care of project migration, then there is the Malaysian team that takes care of the company's internal IT helpdesk and BAU matters. 

So we have to interface with SG, MY and the internal IT helpdesk. There is this constant invisible tug of war between all this team. It's seriously a headache. How do you build and implement process when the bottle neck is the customer itself??!! 

But anyway, I just wanted to comment on the difference between the teams in Singapore and Malaysia. During the entire migration stage, our main interface was Singapore. Professional and focus people albeit a little too emotional at times. But they know their stuff and they make sound decisions. 

Now that the migration has come to a close, they are shifting the management of my services to the MY team. This is where the joke starts. The MY team is clueless of what is happening! They come to us with non-relevant request and just keep pointing fingers at us whenever something goes wrong. 

It is embarrassing at how inefficient the MY team is. They have no idea of time as seen from their constant absentee and unpunctual attendance for conference meeting. I mean they have no idea of proper meeting etiquatte. 

The contrast between the SG and MY team is so obvious. The SG team always attends the meeting prepared as we. But the MY team are all over the place. It is so frustrating that it isn't funny. And this is suppose to be a MNC. Is this the kind of quality that Malaysia produces??

And they are suppose to manage US???!!!! Die lor like that!

China's Religiousness

I was having a chat with some Chinese colleagues of mine today after our training session. We were discussing on the topic of religion. As much as I am aware of the fact that China have been under communistic rule for the past 3 generations, it is still hard to comprehend such a large majority of Chinese that has lived without any form of religion or spirituality.

Coming from Malaysia, where Chinese are synonymous with ancestral worship and the worship of Buddha, it comes across as strange that the majority of the Chinese in China are atheist. They referred to ancestral worship as superstition. I for one do not see ancestral or idol worship as superstition. Religion, definitely. Faith, maybe. But superstition it is not. 

Superstition is when you believe that the back of your ear will get cut if you point at the full moon. Superstition is when you pray to Jesus for a parking lot in a crowded mall. But faith and spirituality is a mixture of ancient teaching, historical facts, awe and belief. 

As per communistic beliefs, everything can be explain through science. Religion is primitive and has no part in a modern society such as China. Religion has limited men for too long. It has tied societies down with fear and ridiculous practises that has bound human kind for too long. We are at the mercy of immoral religious pretenders. We are susceptible to the holier than thou syndrom.  It creates a gap and it separates neighbours and more often than not it creates  unnecessary tension. 

You see, I can understand their point of view. I can rationalize as an atheist. But the one thing that an atheist will never understand is spirituality. Spirituality is an extension of faith. It is because you have faith in the unseen that you are able to enjoy the fruits of spiritually.  It is through faith that you experience divine peace. A light at your darkest hour, hope in your neediest hour. 

But this will always result in the age old argument of the chicken and egg. Why do we need faith when men has proved since time memorial that we are able to make it on our own accord, without religion, without God?

Perhaps, faith keeps us on track to goodness. 

Lingering Thoughts

I woke up this morning feeling a sense of emptiness in me. A longing for something that I never thought I would. 

The week after I left Pune, I thought to myself, good ridance. Onward to Dalian, more developed city, where I can understand the majority of the public and the majority of the public can understand me. 

At least that was what I thought. But now, after moving here I suddently missed India. It is indeed strange. I longed for the lazy weekend mornings, the travels and the life. 

Was there really such a deep connection? Was it the Ganges or the Deccan or the Himalayas? They will always be cherishable memories, but their recollection has been clear as day despite time.

Was it the life there? The sunrises and sunsets? Or was it the flocks of wild parakeets in the heart of the city? To go into detail would be too much. The food, the country side, the literature, the people, the spirituality, the colors, there will be no end. 

One can never really understand India. To the outside world, India is chaotic. The traffic, the people, the lack of a system, but it is everyday life to locals. It was everyday life to me for three and a half years. 

Somehow, life just take all this chaos, put them together and you get the functionality of one of the oldest surviving civilization in the world. Something always affect another in this land of the free. 

Yet I feel this would change very soon as modernization and development continues in India. 3 and a half years is a long time and it has been a difficult but good chapter in my life. 

Lunch time reading

Barisan National 2008 Manifesto

KeADILan 2008 Manifesto

You decide. 

Dalian and the Western Perception

Have been too busy to blog lately; you know all those stuff associated with relocation, traveling, moving,  shopping, having fun and of course, work. 

So how's Dalian?

Dalian is pleasant. Considering China's history, Dalian is pretty much still in it's infancy stage. It's population is half of Pune city but in terms of area mass it's twice the size. It's your typical Chinese city. Efficient public transportation system, good infrastructures, but what I like about it is its beaches. The air is fresh, with a nice constant breeze in the summer. It's going into autumn now. The winter is something I really need to prepare myself for. (-14? I'm gonna freeze my balls off!)

So how's China? Not much surprises, I have got my dose of culture shock back in 2001 during my first visit here. But i am beginning to accept that there are some truths in the western criticism of China. The Beijing Olympics came and went. The opening was spectacular,I mean do you expect anything less from Zhang Yimou? And there was the reports on the lip-synch incident, and the graphic touch-up of the foot steps display but really does these things matter?

A sloppy argument would be that this was the showcase of China's capabilities, technology, talent and beauty. But that's not the point I would want to make here. That would be a heavy dialogue on ethics.  The point I want to make here is really the western's perception of China.

No doubt there are a lot of prejudice resulting from the fear of a socialist superpower, but the western media is also guilty of playing on these sentiments. Take for instance the recent contract I have been working on. This German company has recently sign a US$25 million contract for my company to design, implement and support a solution for their ICT needs. The support was contracted to be provide from our Dalian centre. 

Three weeks before their services go-live, they tell us they refused to let Dalian support their network. I mean what the hell? Nine months of running around, designing the network, building the support model, recruitment and training and they say they want to pull the plug?

And you know for what reason? They are afraid that their intellectual property might get stolen. Their management stated that there have been reports that the Chinese governments are putting spies into MNCs to steal their intellectual property. Employee espionage is what my manager calls it. So of course I got pissed off. I did my research on hacking and wrote a report on how our centre in Dalian is not able to steal their intellectual property. 

It was too far fetch. But after further discussion and reading up on the matter, I realized that perhaps there really is something for this westerners to fear. Considering the lack of ethics in the Chinese people, it is no surprise that they do not follow copyright laws. I mean I have read of a Chinese company that copied an entire motorcycle from India and selling it in South American.

So I am not surprise that this company was cautious. But the government? Planting spies? I mean we are no longer in the Cold War era. So you see, there is a certain level of prejudice here. Anyways, the reality is that it is just not possible for our engineers to be stealing their IP from our centre here.