Changes are in the wind (Part 2)

Cuppa was down for a few days because his computer was attacked by a trojan horse.

It was the careless mistake on my part, but nevertheless I still blame M$ for making an operating system so insecure, and so hard to secure. Though I spent a good 4 days to wrestle with the trojan horse and finally admitted defeat and reinstalled windoze, I won't cover the details here.

This is because I have things much more important to ponder upon.

As all my readers know, Cuppa is going to hit the 30-year old stage and therefore wants to sit down and make a plan.

I have thought long and hard. Here is the list with descending order of priority (i.e. most important first)

0. Have a family (as the continuation of 'long term relationship')

1. My career

Item 1 has a few branches, to make my story short, I artistically drew a schematic (as Einstein said before, Cuppa can be as artistic as possible, but not more, so bear with me)
As the schematic shows, I am thinking to change field. Right now there are three options:

- MBA
- Management consultant
- Start on my own

Given three items and I can choose 1, 2, or even all of them, I have 15 options (count them!). But for simplicity, I just outline two routes which I think will be more viable.

The red path shows I will get an MBA first, then look for consultant job, as most people do. The problem is the cost of attending a good school.

The blue path is slightly different: Go into consultation first, get MBA, then go on my own. This route is more economical, because almost all consulting firms will pay for its consultants' tuition (of course, given the consultant behaves well). The problem here is the entry barrier into consultation without an MBA.

You definitely have observed there is a big gray 'FAMILY' word embedded at the back, and that actually forms the corner stone of my plan. It is always on my mind, and I mean what I said.

Personally I feel the red path is more desirable if I choose to attend Harvard or Sloan, though I am not sure if I am connected to reality... (does getting closer really makes sense in this case...?)

What happens if I choose to stay as an engineer?

I like engineering job, and problem solving is a fun thing to do. However recently there are a few issues that really concern me:

Push Factor: More and more engineers quit engineering around the world. Though this could drive up the salary, but most probably this will encourage employers to hire from other lower-income countries.

Environment: IT and EE have been changing far too fast and keeping up with the changes isn't too fun of a thing to do. Especially when it is my career is on stake. I no longer think it is cool to recompile a kernel 15 times just to shave the image size by 10kb, and I can't keep up with all the latest and coolest embedded technologies and programming tricks out there.


This is alarming.

Instead of holding slogans and burning politicians in effigies, I prefer to seek alternatives.

Changes are in the wind

I feel I am getting more and more unrested these days.

Maybe it could be Singapore's non-stop traffic, or the meow'ing from near-by cats, or my recent promotion, or my decision of deliberately not emailing someone, or the urge to travel the world, or the need to change jobs, or or..., the fact that I am hitting 30 very very soon.

When I hit 20, I flew out from my hometown and gave US a spin. Picked up a degree or two, made a few pig-dog good friends, cooked some classic stir-fry dishes(read: fried broccoli with beef, and fried beef with broccoli) that can make F.Stream or Mr. Snail questioned in disbelief "You cooked broccoli again!???!! Can we eat out for this meal then....?", and looked at world from different angle and perspective.

I have been working for close to 5 years now. In retrospect, time really flies. In these years I have learned alot of new things, but in the process I also realize how much things I don't know. At this juncture of hitting 30-year-old, futile as it may seem, I am trying to seize the moment and do something. Just as a gesture, an attempt to nail a stake at the river of time.

But what next??

I have pondered quite a lot on what to do next. However I still fail to reach anything concrete and therefore a closure to my never-ending adventure to the jungle of life.

Luckily this jungle still has computer for geeks like me. May god bless your computer never crash. Beep.

Cuppa On Weekend

I went back to Singapore on Thursday and have been sick until now.

After 2 weeks of goofing, I am not particularly productive, and most of time my mind just wanders to far-far-away-land.

I found out greenery is important for my well-being. At home when there are trees just outside my room, I feel much more relaxed . Here it is a gigantic concrete jungle outside of my place. Indeed Singapore is a garden city with a lot of trees, but if you want to live near and see those trees, there are premiums you have to pay.

On Saturday I didn't have much mood for a heavy meal, so I went to eat a bowl of veggie soup and yam rice. Not bad, the stall is just outside the Eunos MRT station.

Veggie soup, yam rice, and tea with milk

On the following day, I went to Toa Payoh to meet up with a friend and I 'discovered' there is a very nice park with a large pond just opposite the Toa Payoh terminal. The garden is designed with a touch of Zen. Thanks to the dense trees, I felt quite cozy even though it was 2 in the afternoon and the sun was spewing its full spectrum of heat and lights down.

Tortoises having sun-bath

There are fish and tortoises in the pond. I admit I already passed the age to throw stones at the tortoises or use the tortoises as stones. I took a picture and moved on.

World's Local Bank?

[Updated: Feb 13, 2008]
This is resolved yesterday (Feb 12).

The bank officer still failed to locate the registered mail. In fact, she said there was a registered mail sent from KL, but somehow it was 'bounced' back to KL. But when I pointed out there was NO receipt or mail stub left at my place for me to collect the registered mail, the officer was unsure why this was so. What amazed me was KL resent my check using only regular mail and again the bank officer couldn't explain why. My guess was because I had closed my account already and this service-level is what an ex-customer gets.

Finally I signed statutory declaration and a few forms to declare the previous check as null and void. Then the local HSBC bank re-issued another check to me on the spot. Phew, I never know closing an account is so difficult for HSBC.

======== End of Update ===========
Recently I have a really bad experience dealing with HSBC Malaysia.

The story goes this way: While in my hometown, I wish to close the account that I have in Penang. However after more than one month, there is still no sight of the account balance which is supposed to come in registered mail.

After endless phone calls, the bank officer in my hometown still fails to get hold where the registered mail is (present tense, because it has not been resolved now).

I am totally disappointed with HSBC bank.

Big and Small

A murderer is a person who kills another.

A serial murderer, is a person who kills a few people.

What do we call a person who kills thousands of people?

Historically there is a term for that: hero (or heroin).

Next example:

You borrow money to buy a property, if you can't repay the loan, you lose your property to the money lender.

What if a million people do that? The money lenders are told to freeze the interest rate and government injects money to bail them out.

Here we can see there isn't any absolute right or wrong in this world, and everything is pretty subjective.

Killing is a crime? Not if you kill the enemies.

Borrowed money must be repaid? Not if the number of borrowers is large enough and election is close enough.

When pondering upon the world. Do keep in mind the stage is full of mortal beings who aren't necessarily consistent and sane.

Wish everybody a Happy Chinese New Year.

Cuppa is in his hometown now. IDD and web access are limited.

Gong Xi Fa Cai (Translation: Have a prosperous New Year!)