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A friend of mine was unhappy with his work and asked when he would make it up the corporate ladder. I shared the following with him and thought it makes a good blog post.

Maybe I’ll elaborate on the corporate ladder part. Big companies (in your case) are big enough that you are actually insignificant. Not just you, everybody else is dispensable. These companies have stood the test of time and will stand even if the key people leave. This is what makes a company – it’s structure. CEO leaves, so what? There’s still many people under working despite his absence. People now know that if you throw a stone, you’ll hit a degree holder.

“There’s many others that can do your job,” says your boss. Sad but true.

The fact is that the corporate ladder is overrated and nobody should sit around a company waiting years over years to climb it. It just does not happen that way. Climbing the corporate ladder in a large corporation is mostly politics. Nobody I know sits around a company for a few years and gets promoted without meddling with some politics. Most who just stay put and “do their work” get at most a measly pay raise and hardly any promotion.

Don’t think about the ladder. There’s a closed door at each floor. You need to convince the person staying there to open it for you. There’s usually only room for one on each floor, and that person has to go up as well. If he doesn’t move, you don’t move either.

The alternative? Either work in a smaller company where your value is greater, or work for a company who would pay you more, or go start your own business.

I guess society has gotten used to the term “urgent“. It’s pretty annoying that people send you e-mails that make requests to be completed in a day or two, citing them as urgent. I guess these people don’t realize urgent doesn’t involve the entire world and applies to their context and not mine. Don’t blame others for your own lack of planning and foresight. I have a lot of other urgent things to do too.

No, I’m not talking about the flight time. I’m talking about the time at which I bought my plane tickets to the time I actually landed in Tokyo. Yes, this is my first trip out of Singapore without much prior planning – the tickets were bought at about 6pm, and the flight was at 11:50pm the very same night. The wife made a very haphazard booking with a hotel and we’re off on an 8 hour flight to Tokyo.

It wasn’t a good idea really, but the wife had an important certification training that got confirmed quite last minute and due to the school holidays, there weren’t any tickets on the weekend. She refuses to travel alone and so the husband must tag along.

I arrived at Tokyo and it was really cold (slighly below 10 degrees C). I had a fugly green winter jacket that I bought seven years ago when I went to China, but it was way too puffy for this weather, so my first stop at Narita International was to grab a decent winter jacket.

Anyway, fastrack a little bit. Most Japanese can’t speak English, and that’s my biggest problem here. Things are horribly, horribly expensive as well, e.g. no decent meal below S$10 per person. Nothing you can really buy for less than S$5 except canned drinks and MacDonalds’. My Hotel is miserably small for S$170/night. The entire room including the bathroom is actually about the size of my bedroom w/o the bathroom. Oh, and also, almost every non-living thing here talks by itself – lifts, trains, doors, pedestrian crossings, restruants, escalators, stairs… I’m serious! It warns you to mind your step!

This is the most automated and robotic place I’ve seen. Even people keep talking non stop – I mean the retail staff. You go to a counter and pay for something, the moment they greet you, they go on saying things (I cannot understand) until you get your change and they bid you goodbye. But the people are really polite and I do enjoy being around this place as a visitor. Working here is probably another different thing altogether. I’m about to head out of my hotel to take a photo of the peak hour rush on a Monday morning.

Tokyo Subway Map

If you think Singapore’s MRT/LRT is messy, wait till you see Japan’s JR/Bullet Train/Tokyo Subway maps. The map above is just the Tokyo Subway alone. There’s the JR and Bullet Train not shown here. Bullet Train is quite straightforward though, it has only a few stops as it was designed to go long distance really fast.

On the side note, while I was walking down Roppongi with my wife this evening, two crazy angmohs (Caucasians) came up to me and tried to poke fun of me – maybe they were cracking some racist jokes or something. I told them off (in English, of course) that “I’m not a fucking local.” I guess they were a little surprised when I responded that way. These angmohs had better behave in other peoples’ country, seriously. I don’t know what they were thinking poking fun of Japanese in Japan. Somebody should kick their ass.

P.S. How is it possible for a map not to be north bound?!? The Tokyo tourist map is not north bound! I’m having a hard time reading it with my compass!

This is in response to a thread I read at MummySG. (BTW, I’m reading the forum because I found posts related to noisy neighbours.)

Hi, have to get this off my chest. ytd was with hubby and baby at BHG Bugis. after using the nursing room to nurse daughter, we proceed to the elevator to go to the first floor to go to liang seah st to meet friends for dinner.

As the elevator just left thus there is no one so we r standing beside the door(not blocking) with dear daughter in her stroller sleeping. then came 3 teenagers(gers in most pro 14 or 16) standing behind us. when the elevator going to reach one of them kept pushing me wanting to get in first. my hubby who saw that told them” sorry we r also going in can wait for a while(cos need to push stroller in , somemore elevator have not even reach yet.”

in the elevator one of them say to the one who was being told”hey he scolded you ?” then she replied”aiya you knw singaporean, kiasu want to go in first.” Wa, my hubby heard that hot , cos they r the one who want to rush in first. he scolded back” dont know who kiasu, keep pushing my wife wanting to rush in front to go in. yourself not singaporean is it.” 3 of them stared at my hubby and of cos we stared them back . then comethe best pt, they got off at lvl 2 n one of them actually scolded softly but i heard “Bas****” CAN you IMAGINE THAT! if not becos im standing inside ,i will go st8 out n ask them,”who you scolding BAS****, BI***. they think i got baby i good to bully or like those ‘chi xiang mother’?sorry, too bad IM NOT as im military trained, those who dont show respect will get it from me(in workplace.)nowadays the teenager REALLY CANNOT MAKE IT

I think there’s two sides to the problem. OK, the teens described here CMI, but why so?

I was at the basement of Century Square Tampines one afternoon with my colleagues. We were at the AXS machine paying our bills. I went first.

For those who aren’t familiar with that area, the AXS machine is in the lift lobby of the basement.

There was this little boy running around and he was hammering on things and creating a ruckus which was already annoying enough. Just when I was about to key in my account number, he came around and poked at my keyboard. I was furious and held his hand and shoved him away. Not exactly very harsh, but not gentle either (because I was already annoyed).

I was done with my payment and my colleagues went next. Same thing happened and my colleagued shoved the kid aside.

I was really angry and I said loudly, “whose kid is this har?” No response.

All these while there’s a couple waiting for the lift, with a pram and a sleeping baby.

Then when the lift came, the father turned around and said, “come boy, let’s go!”

I was like, ?!!!

So the kid was running around, poking at others using the AXS machine and behing shoved away, they just didn’t freaking care. Even when somebody exclaimed whose kid was that, they didn’t care?

I was very angry and told the parents straight in the face as they entered the lift that they “better learn to take care of (their) kid”, in full view of all the lift passengers but they didn’t seem like they cared.

So really, the problem we’re seeing now is contributed by the poor upbringing of these kids. It’s a social problem and unfortunately cannot be solved unless we start looking at how we handle our kids.

If you’re wondering, wow, I’m writing a blog at this hour, well that’s because I’ve been awoken at 6AM+ this morning by my neighbour upstairs.

I had to resort to hammering the ceiling with my fists last night to get them to shut up. That was 1:30AM. Yes, read carefully, my fists. I stood on a stool and hammered the ceiling. This proves that HDB flats are constructed so badly these days. The ceiling vibrated just as it did with the stomping and running upstairs. My flat’s 8 year old BTW. I don’t think my parent’s flat (closing 30 years now) are like that.

I’m thinking if calling the cops doesn’t work and (according to many online forums) even going to CMC, MP and even court doesn’t work, what works?

The government loves to take reactive approaches and maybe I should create something to make it happen. It’s called the “I sabo your neighbours, you sabo my neighbours” portal. I am fully committed to funding this portal as long as it brings me peace. I will start putting a plan to get this done. All comments welcome.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/what-do-school-tests-measure/#comment-127279

Busy at the moment. Will blog later. Link for your reading pleasure.

Before I joined the CS3216 class, I promised Prof. Ben I will do his homework, so I decided I should really do it. Here’s my critique. To save him the agony, I have decided not to write a thesis and keep it short.

Anyway…

So what is Causes?

Technical description. It’s an application in Facebook that allows a user to make a difference by donating to a cause.

Non-technical description. It’s something in Facebook that allows people to make a difference by donating to a cause.

Hokay, enough of rubbish. So Causes aims to solve some problems, and in my opinion it is well positioned to solve what is known as the Social & Economic Injustice.

Socially and economically, we have created great disparities of wealth. A minority of the world’s population (17%) consume most of the world’s resources (80%), leaving almost 5 billion people to live on the remaining 20%. As a result, billions of people are living without the very basic necessities of life – food, water, housing and sanitation.

If the top 20% of the world’s population is 1.2 billion, then I am quite confident that Facebook users are amongst the top 5% (~300 million).

The problem with traditional forms of donation

The problem with traditional forms of donation are that they lack public visibility and transparency on a global scale. NPOs depend highly on volunteers to do all sorts of things like donation drives to keep them alive. There aren’t many self-sustainable foundations like Bill and Melinda Gates around. And if you haven’t forgotten the NKF saga where the infamous quote on peanuts came about, it’s obvious that we don’t really know where the money goes.

Basic Concepts

• The Power to Make a Difference as a Social Media. This app basically demonstrates the power of social media and that it should not be underestimated. As of this writing, the Hope for Haiti Now cause has raised US$42,930 (S$60,617).
• The Power to Make a Difference as an Individual. Unlike traditional donations (I’m referring to the tin-can school boys and girls at MRT stations), this app allows you ample time to search for a cause that you think really matters (than somebody preaching some unknown cause to you), read all about it before you donate. The best part is that it shows you the total amount (transparency) and others who have donated (confidence).
• Transparency. This app seems to have done a good job by naming the beneficary organization (usually registered in the US) and by reflecting the total amount donated. However, the same old problem still exists – we don’t know where the money goes.

Technical Concepts

• Main Navigation. Simplicity is the key. The adaptation of the Facebook UI is great, making it look clean. If you haven’t realized, clicking on Best Of brings you out of Facebook to www.causes.com which completely copied Facebook’s top bar.
• Front Page. It seems like the front page of the Causes app has a similar concept to BOOMZcart. It recommends you potential causes and also shows the causes that your friends are participating in, but there’s some issues I observed.
  • The recommendations don’t seem to match any of my profile interests. Is it a targeted recommendation, or a random recommendation?
  • I see four causes, but they’re all the same person. It should show four unique friends instead.
• Individual Cause Page. In my opinion this has been very well executed by mimicking Facebook’s user profile page. It provides user interaction (via Home tab), sufficient details (via About and Impact tabs), network information (via Members tab).
• Browse Causes. Under the Find Causes navigation menu. It’s broken (returns empty page).

Food for Thought

• Show me the money. Beneficiary organizations should provide detailed breakdown of where the donation money went. I’m not sure if this information is easy to obtain as I’m not a US citizen.
• Real People, Real Responses. What if somebody from the Haiti earthquake came in and said, “Thank you for your donations. My family survived the ordeal.” I would hope this to happen.

P.S. Sorry I wrote this post in a rush and it looks abit random with broken sentences and such. Hope you can understand what I’m writing

Yes, the title comes from the Chinese saying 同人不同命, meaning we are all similarly humans, but we lead different lives.

I just read Jac’s Blog and it seems that she’s so stressed at work until she lost 4kg. While I would certainly need to lose some weight, I think Jac’s not the right candidate for this weight lost programme.

Unfortunately as well, 同hamster不同命. Casper made an escape and when wifey came home, he was not in his cage and we found him in the kitchen drain drowned to death. This is his 5th month birthday. Sigh. Silly hamster, why did you choose to jump into a drain when you could go elsewhere? We will miss you.

And then while some people very heng to stay in landed property, I have to live in a measly overpriced government flat (a.k.a pigeon hole) with a bloody inconsiderate neighbour upstairs who doesn’t sleep. I mean, there isn’t once I see their room lights go off, not even at 4am in the morning. Actually, I don’t care if they don’t sleep – maybe they do shift work – but that’s not my problem. If they choose not to sleep then they should be considerate to the rest of the people who’s sleeping.

I keep hearing wooden furniture dragged along the floor, heavy objects dropping and people walking like King Kong. It’s not occasional – I can tolerate that. It’s persists through the night like a JavaBean. I mean, I can have a great day at work and have a great dinner with friends, but the moment I come home, these noises totally ruins my entire day (and sometimes the next.) These aren’t continuous background noises that our minds could filter (e.g. people chatting, piano playing, traffic). These are sudden bursts of loud noises that makes me jump, irritated and stressed out. It’s not I can’t cover the noise, but it’s so resonant that it overpowers my TV!

Back in December 2009, I tried going upstairs and talking sense into them, but it ended up into a yelling session on the 3rd approach. Then I resorted to knocking on my ceiling with a wooden stick and calling the police. The noises went away for a while, and recently they’re back again. I knocked on the ceiling a few times, but it seems they’ve decided to turn rebellious and knock back. So that’s it, I’m fucking fed up already, I’ve had enough, no more Mr. Nice Guy. I’m going to a psychiatrist because I’m so stressed out, and I am going to send them a lawyer’s letter. If talking and knocking doesn’t work, maybe paying for legal fees will.

Prof. Ben commented that I’m having fun in my previous post. Well, in fact, I really am! I enjoy chatting with my team mates and messing around with my assignment.

Actually if I put myself into the shoes of a student, I might not have done all these. Reflecting on myself seven years ago as a Poly student, I was too snobbish and competitive. I guess most students are like this, especially when they/their parents paid a fortune for the fees. Of course there are some others who couldn’t care less since they felt they were “forced to study”.

But I’ve learnt to lighten up a little. Let me share a short story.

I spoke to a friend A of mine who told me about this guy B whom he met many years ago. B was a very popular figure at many events and A always wondered why. He started to observe B’s actions – B would dress in jeans and tees when others were all dressed up, he’d talk cock at seminars and chat about irrelevant topics at business/networking events. At first, A thought B was an idiot and didn’t take things seriously, but yet he was so popular. A later made friends with B and found out that B didn’t really care what people thought of him and just wanted take it easy and have fun. A saw some light and started to take things easy as well.

Fast forward, A and B are currently successful businessmen.

Unfortunately, I’m not like any of them yet, but I’m starting to take things a little easier. I realize that doing so gives me a broader view of things. When I was a student, behaving the way I did only narrowed my vision as I was all out to impress… god knows who, but back then I was hoping it would be girls.

(Unfortunately, I got my equation all wrong and I found out that girls aren’t exactly attracted to snobbish geekguys.)

In the last few days of 2009, I was on leave and planned my days around meeting people. I made a point to take photos with all the people I’ve met and write about them. At the end of 2010, I will look back at this post to see if anything changed, and if we did what we said we wanted to do.

December 28, 2009

Primary School Friend - Xin Yun

I met up with Xin Yun. We’ve completely lost contact ever since Primary School days. Thanks to Facebook, we finally met around 12:30 PM at Sun Plaza after 15 years! We chatted over a burger and drink at Macs’ and recalled the silly things we did as kids – some of them I couldn’t even remember. This shows that females does have better long term memory. It was a 2 hour long chat. Before we parted, we had an agreement to meet up with the rest of the BBSS 6Q (1994) gang.

Secondary School Junior - Tian Yao

Later that day I went to NUS with Tian Yao to meet A/Prof. Ben Leong to discuss a personal P2P project I’m looking to build. We exchanged some interesting ideas and Prof. gave me some homework (!!!). Then we ate dinner at Marina Square and dropped by Yan Po’s house for coffee where the pics were taken.

Poly Friend - Yan Po

Tian Yao spoke about his job hunting process and I guess the last I heard was that he had joined NCS. Not that I would encourage him to, but the pay package seems decent. We’ll see how he’s feels about his job at the end of 2010.

Yan Po’s still doing pretty well in the job I’ve recommended. It’s something new and hopefully he’s learning more from it each day than his days as a phone operator in StarHub. He should (hopefully) get a VMware certification by the end of 2010.

December 29, 2009

Old IRC Friend - Kelvin Koh

This day started with an early lunch (11:30 AM) at Novena Square with Kelvin. We had lots of constructive discussions that I won’t publicly reveal, but a quick summary is to stop slacking and start doing something while we’re still young.

I spent the afternoon finalizing the curtains for my house which should be delivered sometime early this month, then I met up with Francis and Vanessa at Megumi Japanese Restaurant along Sunset Way for dinner. It was a treat to thank me and Yan Po for helping at an event. The wife was with us as well, to join the fun and awesome food.

Business Associate and Talk Cock Buddy - Francis Lo

Francis has big ambitions for 2010 as well and he’s aimed for a brand new car. His ambitions will be kept private and I won’t tell what car he’s aiming for yet… we shall see at the end of this year.

December 30, 2009

Old KHCO Friend - Edelyn Lee

It was a wet afternoon when I met Edelyn at around 2:00 PM. Actually, I can’t really recall how I met her except for hanging out during the 2004 SCO Mega Concert rehearsals. I drove over to Holland Village where we ate fantastic dim sum at Crystal Jade. Ede’s still pursuing her bachelors’ at NIE as a teacher and she’ll be attached to a school this year.

Poly Friend & Financial Planner - Justin Loy

I was 30 minutes late when I met up with Justin Loy for a swim at Queenstown. We barely went around the pool 4 times before we had to leave and meet up with Hanz at a coffee shop where they both had dinner. (I had to run for another event.)

Poly Friend - Hanz Guo

Justin Loy seems to be doing well as a Financial Planner at Prudential while Hanz’s having fun at Fujitsu serving the largest telco in Singapore. Both of them seem comfortable where they are and I wish them all the best in their careers this year!

MDC Folks - Moses, Jia Jing, Yan Hao

Of course nothing beats meeting a bunch of old friends from MDC. We met at 7:00 PM at TCC Clarke Quay and crapped over dinner. Most of them are still studying, with some graduating this year. Moses is on his way to further his studies, however.

MDC Folks - Tian Yao and Andy Chia

Of course, no MDC meeting is without the king of Pop Chinese Flute – Andy’s back in SG for good and he’ll be stirring up more jazzy dizi concerts.

So that’s all for 2009. It will be an exciting year ahead. Stay healthy and happy!