Imposing views

It's both hilarious and sad to see those who pro or anti a certain country, political party, race or whatever really, who are so sure of their righteousness that they simply closed off and write off anything that's opposing their view.

They are so sure of the information they get from whichever media that they reject anything the locals who are actually living in the thick of it think or say. To these people, the locals are just brain-washed, the locals are being suppressed, the foreigners who actually went to live in the thick of it to experience it first hand are just liars, or paid by the opposite view.

Living in another country, anything that doesn't agree with the second hand information they received singing to their tune, is fake, filtered or just lie. There is only one "right" view, and that's their view.

Funny how they insist on enforcing their way of life, their notion of everything really, to someone else, regardless of what the locals actually feel or think, because they know best. The locals don't know what's good for them, the locals deserve better, what's good or better is of course by their definition.

Really, don't believe everything you read (including my view), since they are more often than not, bias according to the writer's perspective or personal agenda.

The locals living in the thick of it are not idiots. They know what they want, they know what's good or not good for them. They can make their own choice.

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.

Pleasant surprise

Got a surprise when I checked my payslip yesterday. A pleasant surprise.

There is this entry called 'Patent Award', first time ever I have it in my payslip.

I know all along there is some monetary reward for submitting innovation that made successful patent filing. Just that I didn't really cared much about the reward amount since I just wanted the achievement of owning a patent.

So I am already very contented when I got not one but two last year. Achievement unlocked, hehehe.

My vague notion of the monetary reward is in the range of a few hundred dollars, especially given the number of inventors sharing the pie. Well, I am happy to say that my notion is off.

I don't know if the patent award I received is for one or both of my patents, but I am truly surprised by the amount. Wow!

Now I can understand and believe many of the stories I heard, and also better understand the behaviour of some colleagues. Yes, now I know.

Sure is a good investment of time and effort.

Other |sane side| category entries.

有感而发：养不起自己

二零二一年三月二十四日。

今天算了算自己的经济状况，和叫情人老婆仔估计未来退休后需要的生活费。

结果很沮丧。

把所有一切算了进去，才勉强可以供给一个人生活，还要是有车、有房、没有供孩子大学、股票高价、兑换率好、利息如预期的种种情况下才行那种。

所以看来我还是需要在适当的时候去世才能确保情人老婆仔过她预计的生活。

希望到我退休前会有什么奇迹啦，唉…

忙碌苦干了这么多年，退休后还是只养得起情人老婆仔，养不起自己。

很可悲。

有感而发 |系列|

Imbalance

Broke record this year! I actually completed my tax submission in March, first time since I started work.

It has always been in April, usually late April near the deadline, when I finally drag my slacker arse to do the tax submission.

So ya, this year I have exceeded expectation.

But anyway, that's not why I am writing this entry. I am writing this because every year after I have done the tax submission, I feel totally imbalanced.

My hard-earned money, taken just like that, to feed those good for nothing monkeys. Got a decent few for a short while but overwhelming majority is just useless. This current bunch that wasn't even voted in by the people is simply a disgrace.

Why am I working my arse off to feed these unscrupulous, shameless, underserving scums? It makes my blood boil.

Other |runaway rants| category entries.

心语细述

同事朋友问起，我也就照实回答。毕竟没有就是没有，有就是有，没有必要隐瞒。

一向来我不在乎分享的、我又觉得值得纪念的事，我都写成文章上载到这部落格。这是我告诉全世界的方式。

我对垃圾邮件反感，也讨厌那些滥发讯息的人，特别是滥发照片和图案。同样的讯息滥发到全部平台，甚至同样平台的各个群聊，就不懂得网址链接吗？让有兴趣的人点入链接去看，而不是剥夺别人的选择权硬逼那些没兴趣的人删除。

所以我自我警惕不要做类似的事。所以我分享在部落格，而不是把同样的文章全文滥发到我的各个社交平台。

当然，我知道没几个人关注我的部落格。其实那很好，因为我能够知道哪些人是真的在乎，会从我部落格的分享来了解我的近况。

心语细述 |系列|

I went out (10)

Since the previous entry of this series, I was out of the house five times, so my total out of the house count stands at 53 as of today.

49th outing: went out to BP lab for flu vaccination on 24th of January, it's during the MCO2.0 period so I am glad I was stopped by the police's road block to enquire why I was out and about, thanks for diligently doing your duty!

50th outing: went to office on 27th of January wanting to pick up a validation unit that I helped designed, but that last system was not working, so went out for nothing.

51st outing: went to office on 2nd of February to pick up a validation unit, got an older version system for my second attempt. Bought lunch home from Batu Lanchang market.

52nd outing: went out on 21st of February to deliver Chinese New Year gift to a dear friend, who's more like family. Took the opportunity to drive the car to keep its battery healthy since it's been more than two weeks.

53rd outing: went to office on 17th of March primarily to spend the meal subsidy money, bought lunch home from Batu Lanchang market.

As of 18th of March, a year and a day (366 days) have past since the beginning of Movement Control Order on 18th of March in 2020. I have been out of the house 53 times in 52 weeks, so 1.02 times per week on average, or about once every 6.9 days.

Yes I am out of the house about once a week on average for the whole year. Trust me I could have stayed home more, contentedly, and not go out if I didn't have some of the obligations. I did and am still doing my part in the fight against Covid-19.

Here are the main reasons I went out:
- drive around to keep car battery healthy: 9
- work at office: 20
- bank: 1
- grocery: 1
- pick up takeaway meal: 8
- dine in restaurant: 1
- clinic: 2
- customer service: 1
- car service: 2
- pet shop: 1
- chauffeur duty: 5
- law firm: 2

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.

Fourteen hours

A bit more than seven hours yesterday, a bit less than seven hours today.

That's the overtime I did these two days, including the forced ergonomics breaks but excluding the lunch break. Fourteen solid working hours.

Work/life balance aside, since this is absolutely not healthy and not balance, ironically can only get this kind of solid hours all for work in the weekend, or out of normal working hours, when there is no interruptions in the form of meetings or instant messages from colleagues, project leads and managers.

I am about twenty hours into the generation of the thermal model, I think I probably can complete the components and parts generation given another seven hours of solid work hours.

That's just having all the components and parts created, and does not mean the model will run smoothly. New model or model with major changes usually has problems in the first solve, and needs a few rounds of debugging. This particular model is more complicated than usual, so it would be a miracle if it runs smoothly in the first solve.

In the course of generating the thermal model, I found several issues in the reference mechanical model, which has been through at least two engineers. It takes a thermal engineer to spot the issues in the mechanical model, what are those mechanical engineers doing?

Again I have to use my own judgement and make some assumptions and modifications, in order to not gate my progress. But I know very likely they will come back later down the line with their corrected version that will invalidate what I have done up to that point.

Tired of doing other people's job for them. Tired of being the one who did all the revisions and modifications because the others couldn't provide quality work in the first place.

Look at my, grumpy old git. This work sure is bringing out the worst of me.

Other |wretched workaholic| category entries.

认命

项目更改又更改，之前花了五个小时完成的仿真模型部分又要重做，唉…

开会又开会，怎么越忙的时候就好像有越多人要找我开会？我需要时间来工作啊！

说什么工作和生活平衡，屁啦！不加班根本就无法完成工作。

认命了，这周末注定要加班了，所以今天晚餐后也不开工了。反正周末也要劳累，今晚就放自己一马。

就是这么命贱。

随兴随想 |系列|

Love letter

*Sigh*... The eternal struggle between those who primarily talk as their job, and those who actually do the work that produces results.

Well, maybe just a single-sided struggle, since those who just talk has nothing to lose.

Talkers often have very unrealistic notion of the time and effort needed for doers to perform and complete their task, and being talkers, they tend to schedule endless meetings to satisfy their own sense of working and contributing.

Those meetings more often than not are just a waste of time, time that could have been more productive to the doers actually doing their work.

Coincidentally I am currently reading Hack Attack by Nick Davies, and here's a quote from the book that I can completely relate to: "At best, news managers are desperate for copy, so they won't give reporters the time they need to work on stories; at worst, they are little people with big titles who think they should prove themselves by interfering all day long."

So couple the unrealistic deadline with the back to back meetings in normal working hours, I am only left with working overtime to get things done. Over and over again.

The constantly changing project direction does not help, so I am perpetually stuck in a working overtime loop. Unhealthy, demotivating, frustrating.

So when I finally couldn't continue no more yesterday night, well, in the early hours of today since it's past midnight, instead of shutting down and going straight to bed, I took time to compose and then sent a "love" letter to the program lead and various managers.

Giving them a piece of my mind in a politically correct manner. At least I think I wrote it politically correct... *shrug*

And I stated squarely that I will not be meeting the unrealistic deadline, and asked them to better understand the time and effort needed for thermal simulation. I also told them my time and effort would have been used more beneficially if the project direction does not keep changing, that the modelling effort could be used to fine-tune, to perform sensitivity studies, to optimise the system.

Doubt anything will change, but I hope they feel my "love".

Other |wretched workaholic| category entries.

Continuous learning

My self learning of BaZi (destiny code) progressed slowly, but at least surely. In the next reading session I will most likely complete book 2 of the series.

While I learned stuff in the earlier chapters of book 2, I was demotivated going through the later part of book 2. There are quite a few chapters towards the end that rubbed me the wrong way.

In those later chapters the author kept mentioning advanced concepts not yet covered and kept using them to explain stuff, which only adds to confusion and sense of disconnect with the current content.

Also, quite a few analysis examples done on deceased famous persons felt like forced fitting of BaZi to me, so instead of being convinced, they felt more like hard selling, which is something that I innately dislike.

The end result is a lost of credibility, I felt discontented, my trust in the knowledge I am learning diminished.

But I persisted, and the very last chapter of book 2 redeemed it somewhat when it touches on practical analysis, showing a systematic way to do BaZi analysis and provided many useful summary tables for easy reference.

So ya, another session and I will be done with book 2, then I will spend some time doing my own notes before moving to book 3.

The learning journey continues.

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.

厌倦

已经失去动力，厌倦了这项目。

不在乎他们讲些什么，要些什么了。

不值得再为之打拼、加班，反正都是徒劳无功的。

也没有耐心解释了，同样的东西要讲几次才会明白？

尽管设下那些不切实际的议程和期限吧，反正我不会为此加班赶工了。

拼了四个月多五个月了，还是在那改变方向，反复地循环…

累了，厌倦了。

随兴随想 |系列|