Today I sms'ed him and he called back. I have not spoken to him for two years at least, I cannot remember when... we are, still the same... there is still the same wall between us, but I have to relearn how to really know my old friend again.
All of a sudden, meeting a whole bunch of people over dinner made me think of that short 5 min call again this afternoon. If we are the same, how do we become friends again? I am not sure, but I am also not too disturbed over this.
Somehow, in the stories of me and my oldest friend, I am always the one who over-dos, over-thinks. I am not sure why, but even now, when I am not over thinking, I still feel ... disappointed.
Can men and women never be friends in a platonic nature? I'd like to say... no.
Pensive. I guess it comes with growing old.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Mizuno Wave Run 25th Oct - My first time on this UPM route
I had a good run this morning at Mizuno's Wave Run. Kind of missed Tey and familiar photographer, so did not have a chance to get my face snapped. There were a few photographers on the road but few of them really "snap" random people's pictures. (Photo from Chan Wing Kai taken from pacesetter's albums)
- First time I ever drove my car to a race for a long while, usually there was Kell Jay or I would drive my Toyota. Its either that or I have really not run a race proper for a long time during the day.
- Arrived at a good time, around 640+, leaving plenty of time to ease into a good parking. Picked up SK along with me, so I had company as well as a decent navigator.
- Started to see the crowd around 7am, luckily I queued for the toilets early. Lost SK somewhere along the way, but I realise he likes to start at the back, so I spiced up the challenge a bit with a bit of a soccer bet, asking for 5 mins. In hindsight, I should've asked for more. Either that or he responds better to challenges than my legs could.
- Could not find Ai Leen or Boon along the way, but saw Philip. This obsession with the pretty vest of stark yellow made it difficult to recognise people in the crowd, though I got to admit, the vest was pretty nice
- The starting point was too crowded for a 4000+ people race. There was too many people, and since this race did not have the chip, the starting was a bit of a disarray, there was no gun even. And the people just started randomly running, cutting across the grass to make ground, and the rest literally walked or shuffled for at least 100m, then slow painful traffic like jog downhill.
- The initial part of the race, at least the first 1-2 kms was a painful slow crawl. The roads were pretty narrow, and at one point, I was even wondering if we were in UPM grounds!
- The most jialat part was the last hill, which incidently was the first hill we climbed, when going from car to stadium, the first hill we ran down initial 500m, and also the last most jialat hill we had to do before arriving back for a quarter stadium finish.
- The race was probably a full 11km as claimed. I arrived around 1.23, if you count the time the first guy sped off and I was still standing around. Got a card which allowed me to claim a medal for 69 position in the category... whee!
- Eventually coming out of the race, I saw Ai Leen who walked mostly.
All, in, I thought it was a decent race, but slightly disappointed with my timing. And, I lost 10-12 mins to SK, which is literally impossible!
- First time I ever drove my car to a race for a long while, usually there was Kell Jay or I would drive my Toyota. Its either that or I have really not run a race proper for a long time during the day.
- Arrived at a good time, around 640+, leaving plenty of time to ease into a good parking. Picked up SK along with me, so I had company as well as a decent navigator.
- Started to see the crowd around 7am, luckily I queued for the toilets early. Lost SK somewhere along the way, but I realise he likes to start at the back, so I spiced up the challenge a bit with a bit of a soccer bet, asking for 5 mins. In hindsight, I should've asked for more. Either that or he responds better to challenges than my legs could.
- Could not find Ai Leen or Boon along the way, but saw Philip. This obsession with the pretty vest of stark yellow made it difficult to recognise people in the crowd, though I got to admit, the vest was pretty nice
- The starting point was too crowded for a 4000+ people race. There was too many people, and since this race did not have the chip, the starting was a bit of a disarray, there was no gun even. And the people just started randomly running, cutting across the grass to make ground, and the rest literally walked or shuffled for at least 100m, then slow painful traffic like jog downhill.
- The initial part of the race, at least the first 1-2 kms was a painful slow crawl. The roads were pretty narrow, and at one point, I was even wondering if we were in UPM grounds!
- The most jialat part was the last hill, which incidently was the first hill we climbed, when going from car to stadium, the first hill we ran down initial 500m, and also the last most jialat hill we had to do before arriving back for a quarter stadium finish.
- The race was probably a full 11km as claimed. I arrived around 1.23, if you count the time the first guy sped off and I was still standing around. Got a card which allowed me to claim a medal for 69 position in the category... whee!
- Eventually coming out of the race, I saw Ai Leen who walked mostly.
All, in, I thought it was a decent race, but slightly disappointed with my timing. And, I lost 10-12 mins to SK, which is literally impossible!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Blown Away
Image courtesy of internet surfing on flickr. Not intended to reproduce for commercial use. This was the underpass at ayala avenue (the underpass was about 15 feet deep at the bottom, including the stairs probably at least 20 feet, all underwater)
Blown away not by TNT, but typhoons...
For those of you who know me, I've been working on and off in the Philippines since Chinese New Year this year, two engagements and a load of opportunity chasing. This blog is purely personal, and about how I missed the typhoons.
I was not blown away, but nearly. The first typhoon, Ondoy in Philippines, but Ketsana globally (whoever said Filipinos do not have nicknames for everything!), hit on Sept 26, with menacing disaster. The first instance of it was the weekend when my brother's filipino maid told us her family was ok, and she was glad I was not in Manila. Then the photos started coming on in CNN on the floods in Manila, how it hit with 1 mth of rain water in one day. Sept 26th was a Saturday and my mum's birthday. Mum has blessed me that I missed the typhoon, not that I stayed a lot of weekends in Manila anyway.
The disaster which wrecked through Manila was quite real, but I was surprised by the resilience of the people. They basically shrugged it off and those who were well to do or able to volunteered and helped. When we visited our client (a telco), they shared incidences of how they mobilised on the Sunday itself. And how innovative telcos were that they helped in the best way they could by offering free load (people unable to topup in a prepaid dominant country) to the phones of those trapped. How they were able to setup mobile charging units and relief centers and call centers almost within a day. Something the government could not even do. These were brave souls who just shrugged off and told me that their family was ok, but the houses were underwater. About personal items lost in the floods. And then there were also many lives.
The second round was Typhoon Parma, labelled a supertyphoon for its wind speeds, and it started spinning to shore on Oct 2, when my big boss came down to philippines for a talk to the client. He was from Chicago, and basically I was heading off to Chicago as well on the next day on Oct 3rd, Saturday morning. He left in a haste, taking a Singapore-London-Chicago flight, which apparently left much faster. The afternoon, people were let off at 3pm, as the residents had their share of disasters and everyone left early to take their family home. The residents of fancy CBD of Makati were scurrying around buying rations!!! I wondered out of the apartment to take dinner at the shopping center given it was one of my early nights, and found most of the shops closed, light rain and many people scurrying to rush rations from the supermarket. My colleagues told me that I would likely miss the flight. I told them "have faith". I believe I could avert disaster as I have always been lucky.
Lucky I was. The typhoon slowed in the ocean and when it hit the shores it was Saturday afternoon, almost 6 hrs after my plane departed. The typhoon was also much more north, and it did wreck havoc to the northern states, and stayed for a week(!!) as a tropical depression (which I assumed brought depressing rain).
During this second typhoon, our malaysian SMS system texted the warnings. Only two of my friends sms me, concerned I was going to be trapped. Even my parents did not sms me. And of the two who sms'ed me, you know who you are - one was a colleague, and another a new friend. Thank you. I would have been blown away and nobody knows better.
I wonder, at what point does someone think about these situations, and reflect upon themselves? Is it only when they are trapped on the roof for two days or when they are two seconds to drowning. At what point do I realise, that it does not matter who or what I do, why I am in philippines, but the fact that I have many friends, family, colleagues, hold a respectable job, at what point is it that only two people bother to ask me how I am, blown away or still standing?
I am once again, caught, blown away by the simple fact that there is indeed, not much to be said about who I am, who I matter to, and that makes me, incredibly sad.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Have Vehicle will Travel ...
My "vehicle" parked for the photo at Lake Michigan. To understand why running is such a big thing in the US, you have to see the kind of places they run ... wow ... Lake Michigan makes me want to run the marathon there ...
Too bad, I missed the signup of the Chicago Marathon 11 Oct 2009.
I had great fun biking on the scenic trail of Lake Michigan, besides the runners - at some point, I was "racing" with some of them with my rented "comfort" bike. Heheh.
My 13.5 hours date with an Apple engineer
Got to break the norm of not blogging and start blogging again, without the burden of the emotional bits. Thought it was funny to start with experiences - this one is one which is close to the end of a whirlwind trip to US recently for training which I stopped by San Francisco and then headed back.
The bad news was that we went through the once in a year storm which delayed the plane after it got out of the hangar with all the passengers, and then it went back and we had to reboard again a few hours later and missed the connecting.
Met a young engineer on the plane sitting next to me on the way back from San Francisco to HK recently. Normally the more you travel for work or business, the less chatty people are - everyone does some courtesy chit chat and then they pour into their work, all believing they are doing the most important thing in the world. This was no different, however, after 3 hrs on the flight and getting unboarded and then getting back on another 4+ hrs later, the tiredness broke the silence. So I chatted up the young dude - he was an engineer from Apple. His earlier first attempt (1st boarding) of being chatty was pretty much a few lines.
Round 1 (1st boarding)
He - "I always forget to bring a book" (on seeing me throwing out a small novel - one I bought at the airport drug store together with some Reeses)
I - "Well, you can always see 4 movies or more..."
He - "You know, one has to diversify"
I - "Ok, maybe different types of movies..." (duh - clearly I was jet lag)
He - "Yeah, the only book I brought is engineering books" (duh - clearly a pretty nerdish reply!)
Round 2 (2nd boarding) - he was very late - and he was sitting in the inner seat, so I stood around wondering if the dude has absconded the flight (after waiting 4 hrs+). Then he strolled in.
I - "I thought you have given up"
He - "Well, not apparently not yet"
After settling down and asking plesanteries of where he was heading out to whether HK or somewhere else... found out he was heading for Shenzen, and he proceeded to tell me about jet lag... eventually...
I - "So, are you an engineer? I saw those engineering books you were reading... " (duh...)
He - Actually I work with Apple in the hardware side. (Me... **ting ting, the most beautiful job** if I were 10 years younger ... now rapt with attention)
I - "Oh, thats interesting... do you guys have a lot of people in Shenzhen?".... and the question I asked twice -- "by the way... what is the next big thing coming out from apple...?" heheh.. of which he twice answered "... now I can't tell you ..." heheh..
Did not find out what the guy's name was. He was quite decently handsome. Found out he had worked 3.5 years in Apple, probably still single, looks around 28+ out of college. Polite young man. Said his please and thank yous and did not ask for alcohol or heavy food or beverage from the cabin service. What was more interesting was a couple of cool things we chatted about in summary, started and was more on iphone purely because I told him I do not like the typing, and he started to explain to me how the pixels worked (!duh... really a pure engineer, even I could not understand!)
Anyway, some other things I thought I'd share here just for fun :
- One interesting experience he related to me was how they would do all sorts of test, one test had been that they found there was a lot of returns of the iphone saying the headpieces sound was not good. What they found was that the headphones had a defect in being very prone to shorting out due to sweat (!!!). The sweat would crystalize in certain parts causing a short and the poor sound. The lab boys apparently tested sweat on a few components and finally fixed it making it more resistant to sweat.
- He said he never got to get a iphone because Apple has return policies and honors them, thus the engineers have boxes and boxes of the phone which are returns - so he has two phones - one hacked jailbreaked and one original.. (and he was so proud of it heheh!) - I reconsidered and did not ask whether the licenses were checked like microsoft does when you login online (this was my biggest curiousity as I owned a apple macbook)
- He agreed with me that Snow Leopard was a bug fix but yet people queue up to buy it... (there finally someone agrees!)
- He explained to me the different types of drop test the iphone goes through (duh!! - heheh)
-I told him where I worked but he seemed to have no idea (!! duh!!! - this guy is really young or katak di bawah tempurung or something!). I proceeded to talk about how we really related to our clients about Apple's customer experience and the store experience - of which he had no idea what I was talking about - heheh...
- I told him about the concept of content is king to software and apple was just shipping hardware consoles to enable this - he also could not understand this (heheh), but proceeded to tell me he knows of friends who now makes a living coding apple applications, but he could not do it as he was an employee, and would probably have to sell it through a middle man... (wah, so innocent!)
This was my first really young experience with a fellow passenger - typically the older dudes sit in the business class or those really yuppie ones who pound on their notebooks. This guy was just so funnily innocent and engaged and it was one of those moments that I thought - I got to tell people that I sat next to an apple engineer - this is really cool. Heheh
Well, I thought I would diversify and be really young about this blog. I am obviously not attracted to this guy. But I was definitely enriched in listening to him talk about his job, especially with a company I thought would be a who's who on the employer's list!
After departing in HK, I reflected that this dude was perhaps one of the most engaged young engineer I've ever met - most of the people I get to hire or work with nowadays are really so dis-engaged, and expects the bosses to shower them attention, but few are engaged, polite, and speak passionately about their work with the light of innocence of this young chap.
Perhaps, there is indeed hope for Gen Y and also hope for Gen X in understanding Gen Y.
The bad news was that we went through the once in a year storm which delayed the plane after it got out of the hangar with all the passengers, and then it went back and we had to reboard again a few hours later and missed the connecting.
Met a young engineer on the plane sitting next to me on the way back from San Francisco to HK recently. Normally the more you travel for work or business, the less chatty people are - everyone does some courtesy chit chat and then they pour into their work, all believing they are doing the most important thing in the world. This was no different, however, after 3 hrs on the flight and getting unboarded and then getting back on another 4+ hrs later, the tiredness broke the silence. So I chatted up the young dude - he was an engineer from Apple. His earlier first attempt (1st boarding) of being chatty was pretty much a few lines.
Round 1 (1st boarding)
He - "I always forget to bring a book" (on seeing me throwing out a small novel - one I bought at the airport drug store together with some Reeses)
I - "Well, you can always see 4 movies or more..."
He - "You know, one has to diversify"
I - "Ok, maybe different types of movies..." (duh - clearly I was jet lag)
He - "Yeah, the only book I brought is engineering books" (duh - clearly a pretty nerdish reply!)
Round 2 (2nd boarding) - he was very late - and he was sitting in the inner seat, so I stood around wondering if the dude has absconded the flight (after waiting 4 hrs+). Then he strolled in.
I - "I thought you have given up"
He - "Well, not apparently not yet"
After settling down and asking plesanteries of where he was heading out to whether HK or somewhere else... found out he was heading for Shenzen, and he proceeded to tell me about jet lag... eventually...
I - "So, are you an engineer? I saw those engineering books you were reading... " (duh...)
He - Actually I work with Apple in the hardware side. (Me... **ting ting, the most beautiful job** if I were 10 years younger ... now rapt with attention)
I - "Oh, thats interesting... do you guys have a lot of people in Shenzhen?".... and the question I asked twice -- "by the way... what is the next big thing coming out from apple...?" heheh.. of which he twice answered "... now I can't tell you ..." heheh..
Did not find out what the guy's name was. He was quite decently handsome. Found out he had worked 3.5 years in Apple, probably still single, looks around 28+ out of college. Polite young man. Said his please and thank yous and did not ask for alcohol or heavy food or beverage from the cabin service. What was more interesting was a couple of cool things we chatted about in summary, started and was more on iphone purely because I told him I do not like the typing, and he started to explain to me how the pixels worked (!duh... really a pure engineer, even I could not understand!)
Anyway, some other things I thought I'd share here just for fun :
- One interesting experience he related to me was how they would do all sorts of test, one test had been that they found there was a lot of returns of the iphone saying the headpieces sound was not good. What they found was that the headphones had a defect in being very prone to shorting out due to sweat (!!!). The sweat would crystalize in certain parts causing a short and the poor sound. The lab boys apparently tested sweat on a few components and finally fixed it making it more resistant to sweat.
- He said he never got to get a iphone because Apple has return policies and honors them, thus the engineers have boxes and boxes of the phone which are returns - so he has two phones - one hacked jailbreaked and one original.. (and he was so proud of it heheh!) - I reconsidered and did not ask whether the licenses were checked like microsoft does when you login online (this was my biggest curiousity as I owned a apple macbook)
- He agreed with me that Snow Leopard was a bug fix but yet people queue up to buy it... (there finally someone agrees!)
- He explained to me the different types of drop test the iphone goes through (duh!! - heheh)
-I told him where I worked but he seemed to have no idea (!! duh!!! - this guy is really young or katak di bawah tempurung or something!). I proceeded to talk about how we really related to our clients about Apple's customer experience and the store experience - of which he had no idea what I was talking about - heheh...
- I told him about the concept of content is king to software and apple was just shipping hardware consoles to enable this - he also could not understand this (heheh), but proceeded to tell me he knows of friends who now makes a living coding apple applications, but he could not do it as he was an employee, and would probably have to sell it through a middle man... (wah, so innocent!)
This was my first really young experience with a fellow passenger - typically the older dudes sit in the business class or those really yuppie ones who pound on their notebooks. This guy was just so funnily innocent and engaged and it was one of those moments that I thought - I got to tell people that I sat next to an apple engineer - this is really cool. Heheh
Well, I thought I would diversify and be really young about this blog. I am obviously not attracted to this guy. But I was definitely enriched in listening to him talk about his job, especially with a company I thought would be a who's who on the employer's list!
After departing in HK, I reflected that this dude was perhaps one of the most engaged young engineer I've ever met - most of the people I get to hire or work with nowadays are really so dis-engaged, and expects the bosses to shower them attention, but few are engaged, polite, and speak passionately about their work with the light of innocence of this young chap.
Perhaps, there is indeed hope for Gen Y and also hope for Gen X in understanding Gen Y.
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