Alvin Lai

Here’s a google video of Microsoft demoing their new voice recognition software:

Watch it here

Pretty funny, when “mom” becomes “aunt”, and the action of “select all” becomes “double the killer delete select all”.

Hilarious! Enjoy

On my way back home, I’ve stumbled on the podcast of Steve Job’s commencement address at Stanford university while scanning through for a song.

For the 15 minutes waiting for the bus, I went through his speech again and I thought it would be useful for me to jot down the salient points of his inspiring speech.

Here’s it. I hope to make a difference like what Steve has done with his life and I believe you can if you’d like to, too.

1. Connecting the dots

   • Follow curiosity and intuition
   • Find out what’s facinating, beautiful and subtle
     • Might not have any direct practical application
   • Impossible to connect the dots forward
     • Believe that God has a way for you
     • Trust in something, believing that the dots will connect down
       • the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart
         • even if it leads you off the well worn path
           • that will make all the difference

2. Love and Loss

   • Still love what I do. Rejected but still in love. Start over.
   • Getting fired – heaviness of being successful replaced by
     • lightness of being a beginner again
       • Less sure about everything
     • Freed and enabled one of the creative periods of his life
   • Awful tasting medicine but the patient needed it
   • Sometimes life hits you in the face with a brick, don’t lose faith
   • Only thing that kept him going was that he loved what he did
   • You got to find what you love
   • True for work and lovers
     • Work gonna fill up large part of life
       • Only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe what is great work
       • Only way to do great work is to love what you do
     • Keep looking and don’t settle
     • As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it
     • As with any great relationship, it gets better and better as the years go on

3. Death

   • “If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right”
   • If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
   • And if it’s no for too many days in a row, I need to change something
   • Remember that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool that I’ve encountered to
     • help me make the big choices in life
   • Almost everything – all external expectations. pride, fear of embarrassment or failure
     • All fall away in the face of death
     • Leaving what’s truly important
   • Remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking
     • you have something to lose
   • You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart
   • No one want to die
   • Death is the destination we all share
   • Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life
   • Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking
     • Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice
   • Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition
     • They somehow already know what you truly want to become
       • Every thing else is secondary

Early morning hitchhiking road, the kind you would find yourself hitchhiking on
– if you’re so adventurous

Stay young, stay foolish.

Why? Because you’d never know if the company you’re interning at would be thinking to outsource what you’ve been doing for them.

My boss was thinking of this, but was worried about company policies regarding outsourcing work to students. Then I said no problem, my friend and I could easily set up a sole proprietorship.

Nothing’s confirmed, but interesting developments nonetheless

Have a blessed weekend!

It’s interesting and even feels flattering when people from all over the world use your pictures for their stuff, as evidenced from Kojay’s Blog.

I just thought that it would be nice if he could acknowledge me a little, like say “Even our singaporean counterparts love them, like Alvin Lai from Singapore!”

Then after notifying me that he has graciously linked to me, I would naturally link him back, resulting in increased traffic for both parties, a win-win situation!

I’m not complaining, just thinking of some unexplored territory here

Take my pictures if you like, I don’t watermark them but please drop me a note! I’ll be more than glad to get to know you better

It’s been a while since I’ve last blogged and apologies for the lack of updates. As some of you would know, I got myself a 9-6 job, and other than getting involved with the a group fantastic guys who are planning a major tech conference next year that aims to bring the tech student community to the industry, I’ve met up with up with the local Singapore Ruby community, not to mention undertaking freelance web projects and even meeting a brilliant IBM sales executive!

You could imagine how little time I’ve left after the routine work day, evening jogs, project management and squeezing a short period for quiet time.

TGIF and having some time on my hands after finishing 2 mini projects, I thought it would be only appropriate if I blogged my thoughts, analysis and important bits that I’ve learnt along the way during my absence from blogging.

You see, I’ve been a firm believer in carrying a paper notebook around, doodling whatever thoughts I might have in the interim. It might sound trivial, but it really helps in brainstorming and connecting the dots of whatever points on paper. This happens something along the line, like when you have the points on paper, your brain don’t have to keep the points constantly in your head. Very much like Random Access Memory (RAM), once I’ve cleared and transferred whatever thoughts from mind to paper, ideas pop up easily, connecting the dots, which is pretty enabling to see new things that would never have materialized by mere mental idea bouncing ninjitsu.

One of the recurring thoughts I’ve been having during this period of working a day job (which was interesting in its own way, no doubt) and doing stuff you would normally classify as “extracurricular”, is:

Would I want to work for someone else all my life?

Why do a startup?

Are startups for me?

In the process of blogging about this and referring to the thoughts I’ve jotted in my notebook, I hope to form a clearer picture regarding this issue. Feel free to comment, or blast me in anyway. I always welcome constructive feedback! Honest!

I made this a draft 1 as it’s really a huge topic that would only get better with time and continual revisions. Feel free to comment and give suggestions for a better version 2!

Here goes.

Self Accountability

In a big company, you are inevitably accountable to your boss, and your boss is accountable to his boss and so on. Everyone is accountable to somebody else and are usually working on stuff that would matter to their boss. I’m not saying that you’ll be working on pointless assignments, just stuff that would matter more to your boss in place of stuff that would really matter.

Work on Stuff that Really Matters

Why can you work on stuff that really matter in startups? It’s pretty tied up with the previous point on self accountability. When you are accountable only to yourself or directly to a small group of people (and vice versa), it would be easier to bounce your idea off 3-4 people rather than whole hierarchies of hundreds or even thousands of people. Why? Again because an important decision would affect them and their bosses. This would inevitably result in dilution of the original plan, taking a less risky route with less potential pay offs.

The Big Corporation Image

Working in a big corporation, image, and standardization matters a lot. Putting the military example aside, big companies understandably have to uphold standards too, as it speaks something of their professionalism. As with word “big” in big companies intrinsically meaning many people in the organization, there are bound to be stuff that needs a consistent feel to everything, be it for productivity purposes (for massive collaboration/information exchange), or for branding. You might argue that the initial standardization can be handled and maintained by an administrative staff, thereby “outsourcing” the standardization task, apart from the knowledge workers. But don’t the standards somewhat come across as rules that might be restrictive?

Cubicles and Zones

Been quite much of a knowledge worker myself, I know what it feels to be in the zone. Being in the zone would roughly mean in a state of high productivity, a certain momentum where you just keep on producing, be it coding or designing an awfully creative piece.

The catch is, it’s easy to be interrupted exit the zone. Research has shown that it takes 15 minutes or even half an hour to get back in.

Cubicles, in my opinion, are quite bad for knowledge workers who need to be in the zone to get stuff done. Here’s an example I got from Paul Graham: Imagine programmer A and programmer B in cubicles.

A forgot how to use a certain piece of code. He has 2 choices. Spend 30 seconds reading it up himself or spend 15 seconds asking B in the neighbouring cubicle.

Naturally the latter would be an attractive option, since it would save A 15 seconds. However when A interrupts B to save 15 seconds, B is interrupted from his zone, and it would take him 15 minutes to re-enter it.

So there you have it. A saves 15 seconds while B wastes 15 minutes.

If both programmers were housed in their own rooms, it would take A more than time to get out of his seat, open his door, walk to B’s room, open B’s door and ask him than to check up the code himself.

This results in increased productivity too.

I’m not saying that knowledge workers should always be left alone. They just need a period of uninterrupted time and a private area to work on their stuff.

Communicate all you want and get the info you need, then be able to retreat into your own caves and zones to churn out value.

Averaging

With bureaucracy, understandable risk adversity going on in big companies where safety and accountability is of preeminence, everyone is going to take the surest safest route to doing things. When you discard things that are potentially disruptive (yet valuable), the most capable employee would naturally be averaged out, because they can’t do risky stuff that can potentially make them shine.

Get Done with Making a Living

Reading Paul Graham’s article, thinking of a startup not in terms of a way to get rich, but to get done with making a living earlier. Compressing 30 years of work you love into a short span of 4 years, earning all the money you need to make a living.

What happens next?

You can then continue the work you love with a slight difference, you are no longer hard up for the cash. You can afford to drop bad clients.

All this rather than drag the whole process of making a living over a span of 30 years, a slightly different route which can be seen as risky as your rice bowl is controlled by someone else.

Constraints

This point is probably the biggest red dot, bundled with the previous points of self accountability and averaging.

Personal Bubbles

With all the talk about accountability, constraints and rules to adhere to, staff in a big corporation would naturally have a personal bubble, to protect their self interests. There is only up till a certain point where you can ask them about stuff, suggest improvements, get things done differently with the mere intention of really making things better.

How about startups? Because the survival of the startup depends on the founders, they often have to step out of their comfort zone to make sure they have the competitive edge for the startup. This results in better acceptance of change, again linked to the point of self accountability.

Motivation, Productivity, Reward Cycle

If you’re sincerely passionate about stuff that you do, you’ll tend to do a good job. Sometimes in order to do stuff the best way, you’ll be better ready to take risks.

When you’re allowed to do so, you’ll see results.

This results in motivation to do even better, increased productivity and even more rewards.

And it repeats itself.

Some Lessons

Hierarchies

You must know where you stand in a big company. Be aware of personal bubbles, read body language and don’t get carried away in exploring possibilities when it could potentially be unpleasant for someone else.

Big Companies are Here to Stay

Big companies are everywhere and with an emphasis on safety which results in steady progressive growth, they are here to stay.

Have to Work with Them

Even startups would have to deal with them at some point or another. So it would be wise to learn how to interact with employees of big companies.

Advantageous to

Knowledge sharing is good, as you rarely can hardly get anything done alone these days. When you can contribute to the big companies in a manner they are comfortable with, it often leads to win-win situations.

Better EQ Skills

Since not only employees in big companies have personal bubbles, everybody has their own bubbles to certain extents where change would be uncomfortable. It would pay to understand body language better , understand unspoken feelings and signs. Then complement the situation accordingly.

The user centered soft approach works most of the time.

Thank You. Please Try Again.

Back off if appropriate. Thank for opportunity, don’t get discouraged and try again later.

Got a little confession to make, I’ve only been
making eggs sunny side up:

It was a long time since I’ve had onion omelette, so
I pestered Mom to get those big green onions at NTUC.

So after the evening jog, I got down to work.

Didn’t really think it’ll turn out nice so I didn’t initially
bother to take step by step pictures.

It was only at this stage, after heating the oil, beating the eggs
and cheerfully sizzling the onions till partially brown and
pouring in the egg.

Slicing it in the middle with the (what you call that cooking spade?),
I flipped it, sandwiching the still fluid raw egg mixture.

After flipping it around, it was finally done.

With slight brownish streaks coupled with juicy rings of onions
at 2cm think, it’s something quite nice to munch into (I used 3 eggs at 1 go).

Even Mom loved the smooth in-betweens.

“Wa taste like cake!”

Haha

Oh yea the trick, if you’re wondering, is to use a low flame.

Just hold Command-Option and the Eject for about 2 seconds and your Mac will zZzz..

Nice and quick! No more reaching for the apple logo at the top left!

Excited about this phenomenal language that’s so easy to use, flexibly powerful for most tasks, yet is actually fun to work with?

Then you might be interested to join singapore.rb!

As rssfwd’s author Choon Keat (also a member of singapore.rb) says, “It’s a young group, so be gentle ”!

8 of us from Singapore.rb managed to meet up at City Hall’s Starbucks, with a couple of us displaying makeshift handwritten notepad signs of “RUBY SG” and “Ruby on Rails” on the coffee tables just to draw attention, a first for myself!

Among the ruby fans, there were an interesting bunch dealing with embedded systems, electronic payment (like point of sales), a technopreneur looking at improving workflows and customer relations of SMEs, web designers and developers.

We had a good exchange of how Ruby/Rails had helped them in their work and their hobbyist pursuits, interesting in every way.

There was also an energetic discussion RESTful paradigms for rails

Check us out!

After that feast of stingray, blachan kang kong and pig trotters, we proceeded to the supermarket to get groceries and snacks for the World Cup.

After reaching home and settling down for a while..

“Eh cook shark’s fin liao! Want to take picture?”

“Okay!”

Here you are, more pictures of in progress cooking!

The ingredients

3 cans of Rabbit brand sharks fin soup base

Freshly chopped GARLIC (yum!) and just 1 beaten egg. Dad emphasizes just one egg here, unless you want to sample shark’s fin porridge haha..

From this angle, Dad reflected that it would be better if the garlic were chopped up into tinier chunks.

The Chef Works

Emptying the last drops of cooking oil – just nice.

Fuuu! Sizzling garlic!

Cooking under a medium flame like this.

Looking at this, yea the garlic chunks would be better, smaller.

Pouring in the first can.

Adding water, followed by the other 2 cans.

Waiting for it to boil.

Irresistible close up shots

Dad told me to look out for this, where most of the bubbles would accumulate at the middle, where it’s time to add egg.

Adding egg. As this step is critical to the texture of the soup, it was essential that it was done in a prompt manner, which explains the unfocused picture.

See the clear streaks of egg emerging? Oishi!

After turning off the stove, I once again had time to take another nice close up macro shot.

Served up nicely in a delectable orange melanin soup bowl.

Four bowls with more left in the wok for seconds. This was taken under florescent lighting, maybe this is why Steve said my pictures look disgusting :p

Shark’s Fin soup, XO Brandy and black vinegar. Another lip smacking family feast!

With an uneventful day comprising of creating powerpoint slides for a client and a few games of DOTA, things turned out for a change when Dad suggested eating out.

That means…

Stingray!

Maybe rice just looks extra yummy on green plates. Maybe I’m just hungry.

Blachan Chilli Kang Kong! Fuuu!

This is THE bomb I tell you! Mom even had to instruct the stingray lady to go easy on the blachan :p

And as though that’s not enough, Dad ordered Tur Kah! (Pig trotters)