Sunday

It was a pretty relaxing Sunday despite my decision to actually get some works done today. I ended up reading most of the time, a book that I deemed evil, which I hope that it would help me to learn and counter evil, instead of me being taken over by the book, hopefully.

I jogged to get my Malaysian takeout tonight. On my way there, I stumbled upon a female jogger and I tried to race her, but I think that I actually lost, not a good sign. After that, I got lost a bit on my way home, but I passed by a new neighbourhood and I encountered some new stuff. I also found out that there are quite a number of fireflies living around here, who accompanied me when I jogged.

This might sound a bit troubling for some people and I hope that it does not bite me back in the future, but I think that there ought to be some good takeaways from the following incident. When I was chilling at the balcony at night, a girl/lady living in the apartment opposite started changing without covering her windows. I tried not to watch and I did not do that, because she will probably be upset if she finds out that somebody saw her changing. People ought to be more careful with things like this.

Good night and hello, weekdays.

Soul of the World

I just finished reading "The Alchemist" and I got very excited about that. The book has taught me a great deal almost about everything, which can be summarized as the soul of the world as abstracted by Paulo Coelho in his book. He had indeed written the book in the language of the world which is represented entirely in human languages but emcompasses all and more than just human languages.

I believe that I have gained the appreciation of reading, again, which I used to have years ago. In fact, I have not only regained, but have also seen a greater aspects of reading, especially when it is compared to moden medias like movies and speeches, which I have been indulging in presently. Because of the tie into my past, it has actually invoked my memory about elements in the past that I have already forgotten intentionally and unintentionally.

In addition, I have learned more about the author, about the friend who borrowed me the book, maybe about everyone around me, about God, or pretty much everything. I am somewhat glad that the author is a believer in creationism and God, which I have been trying to put more trust in, that he has shared his testimony and influence of spirituality to me through this book.

I guess that these are the characteristics of a good piece of writing and I would gladly recommend anyone to have a go at the book. In any case, I personally find that the story is presented in an amusing and entertaining way, so the reading would be a good laugh, at least.

Other than that, I have accompanied my friend to the Superstar K3 audition at Times Center. It is a popular Korean television talent series which rounds up passionate singers. It is an interesting new experience to meet and see people who are chasing their aspirations.

I guess that I've observed Sabbath yesterday, doing the interesting things written above, so I guess today, Sunday, is a working day.

 

Weekend Fun

The corporate Summer party on Saturday was a memorable one. There were paintball game, zorb, field games, carnival games, all kinds of sports, sky-flyer and even bumper-car! There were also unlimited amount of seafood grills, latin grills, fruits stand and free flow of beers and cocktails. In addition to the activities and food and drinks, there were continuous performances like dances, singings, jugglings and dj-show at different parts of the party site. Most important of all, everything was totally free and we got almost half of an island reserved for ourselves!

The wild party must have costed the corporate a bomb to cater for the thousands of employees and guests who attended. I don't know the exact figure but I am guessing that there were more than 5 thousands attendees, how bigger can it get! It definitely showed the corporate's commitment to cherish and reward its fellow employees. We are all a very lucky bunch of people who are privileged to have all that fun, to consume the huge amount of resources fed to us. I just hope that the extravagant spending would be rightfully justified with better productivity at work and more progressive contribution to the society, especially the underprivileged ones.

Despite the tireness from the evenful day on Saturday, I decided to go on a movie marathon at the theater on the next day to catch up with the new Summer movies that I haven't been able to watch. I wanted to watch Pirates of the Carribbean, Super-8 and X-men: First Class, but a gap in between the first two movies made me watch Kungfu-Panda 3D to pass the time.

I had a lot of expectations for Pirates.. but it was just mildly amusing. The story is a spinoff of the Pirates trilogy, it lacked surprises and there was nothing much to see because the entire movie was like a monotonous showcase of Captain Jack Sparrow's typical ridiculous manner. Kungfu-Panda has a heart-warming story with lots of funny actions, as expected. Super-8 was interesting and engaging with its enthralling plot and well designed and executed identification between the audience and the characters in the movie. I love the zombie film shown at the end of movie credit screen. X-men was the most entertaining show of the day because of its action-packed nature and the ever-intriguing human-mutant superpowers. It is way better than the wolverine (which is another monotonous one-man-show of a single character) and I think that it is more enjoyable for the people who have been following or watching the movies in the series.

Almost one third of the Summer has gone by and it has been pleasurable so far, I am looking forward for more fun!

Friday

The interns at the company had a 30 seconds flash mob dance today, but apparently a lot of people are already informed and went ahead to wait for the performance. 

In the evening, there was a sudden heavy downpour of rain which engulfed the city and blurred the city skyline, it was quite a striking scene. The rain water was leaking all over the subway station too, bad maintenance but I actually enjoyed the sound of water dripping and splashing down a few levels below the surface.

There was a man in mid-30 playing angry bird on his smartphone in the train, is he a happy man or a bored man? On my way home, I stopped by bestbuys to take a glimpse at the new thinnest and lightest tablet from Samsung but unfortunately, the official release day isn't official at all and the tablet wasn't out for display. Anyway, the sales representatives at bestbuys are still as clueless as ever about the complete facts of the products they're selling.

Summer party tomorrow, will be going to a spectacular island, hopefully.

Bigger Fatter

A minor check, I presented my preliminary prototype to my manager, it was pretty much alright and he raised some valid points worthy to be ponder upon. Now I have to work on the middle-tier and backend logic to breathe life into the application. The difficulty arises from the complications of the existing infrastructure, so the major challenge upcoming is to learn and understand the ways in and out of the machines.

Kar Won is back in business after closing off for two days, so I had my tasty authentic Chinese food for lunch again. For dinner, I made my 3rd visit to the famous food cart at 53th St &  6th Ave to get their lamb and chicken platter, with the mysterious white sauce.

Fatter paycheck, bigger deduction, fair enough.

Stress-free Day, Not!

The day just went by furiously with me trying to get the mockup prototype done. If we push too hard, we will push the good things away too, what's the point.

Dream Chaser

My housemate had done the thing that he likes the most this evening - performing for the audience. Even though it took him a while to make the momentous decision to go all out for the radical change of life in pursuing his true passion. It is definitely an all or nothing move and I wish for him that he will succeed in the future, with much grace and wisdom. 

While for me, I guess I have fully adopted the drill of intensive office life, which is constituted of more or less 8 hours of cummulative works at my desk everyday. I still pretty much enjoy the atmosphere at the workplace, with a good amount of snacks provided, and the opportunity to practice what I have learned in the school. I must continue to be positive in seeking and cultivating my humility, focus and passion in everything that I do.

I have to admit that I am losing the drift of keeping up my writings here, as evident by my absence in the past few days. However, I am truly determined to never give this up again this time. I must keep writing and improving so that I can keep a good track of my journey here and the valuable lessons I have picked up along the way.

When I took a leisure walk with housemate last night, he showed me the overpass over the highway nearby. The busy highway with  the towering retaining walls along its sides and the drowning but enthralling traffic noice have given the place a one of a kind charm indeed.

 

 

 

Summer Tan

I met Summer yesterday, who was smoking hot and flaring. Even though that was nothing too uncommon back in Malaysia, it was nice to get exposed to something different once in a while, after I started my office life. The heat coupled with the team games, and the toilsome team games had mercilessly burned me out and left me dried, with muscle sores.

I was very exhausted that I fell asleep while I was reading at night, only to wake up two hours later at midnight. However, I couldn't get back to sleep after that even though my body was in dire need of resting and recovery. The weird signal had prompted me to watch a video of a sleeping seminar this morning, but alas, I was interrupted halfway to get to a meeting, to get back to work.

To talk about work, it has already started to become a customary daily chore, which can be quite a grind at times. The assignments are still somewhat challenging and the colleagues are all nice and intelligent, but indeed, even the most interesting task in the world would get more and more dry should we do it repeatedly. In addition to that, there is literally an infinite amount of work because there is never an end in perfecting all our inherently imperfect products.

Nevertheless, it is still a fact that I get distracted quite a bit during work, away from my objective and focus of socialing humble, working productively and learning diligently. I need to constantly change from the inside to remind and motivate myself, to deal wisely in managing mental and physical resources.

I think that I have finally learned the value and gained the appreciation of Friday and the incoming weekend, in the eyes of an employed person.

Productivity

Does my producitivty reflect my passion? Then I need more, of both. I was still pretty slow at work today, unable to fully engage in focusing my efforts.

My housemate showed me his audio gigs today, he's a young and passionate free lancer in the entertainment industry, specifically in music. He does emcee-ing, DJ-ing, recoding and other related stuff. At least it is something new and I'll be looking forward to be exposed to new experiences.

Summer is still here, continue to build passion.

Fallen

.Fallen.

Mindset

Friend and his family just came to visit the big apple today. It was nice to have company and to accompany them a little bit.

It is probably a common sense that travelling with family does have various ups and downs because a typical family is consituted of individuals with different energy levels and personalities. Some people get tired faster, some people have their own objectives, some people just care less about whatever, and ultimately not everyone can be completely satisfied and that is when self control of each individual is tested and true colors are revealed.

During the sightseeing, there were indeed some unpleasant disgruntlements which I had perceived uneasily but I held my peace. From my perspective, these conflicts should have already been expected because who else know the family members better than the family members themselves. At these times, spitting disgraceful complaints is definitely the least helpful behavior wanted. 

To keep everyone and every planning in good term as much as possible, each family member should be able to actively refrain themselves from committing certain unconstructive acts because they know the family and they must have seen these conflicts coming.

It was also interesting to see how different people with different background perceive the same things differently. There were first-time visitors, visitor who was revisiting, and me who represented a resident in this city. Because I have personally gone through all three in stages to arrive at my current position, it looked as I was seeing parts of me in them and how I have acted in the past.

Somehow, I feel glad that I have (and unlucky for some parts) become who I am today, compared to the lose-gun-beggar who yelled and terrified people in the subway. But I am guessing that that person must have gone through something which I will probably never fully understand and hopefully he will get better soon.

It was windy and cold up on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building tonight, but the view was pretty impressive.

Chilly Day

The temperature was just nice yesterday but it was a little bit chilly today. So many people here, but not as many warmth.

The good news is, after spending one clueless day over-thinking about what is my new assignment at my work, my worries are mostly gone and I now have a primary direction to pursue, thanks to the meeting with my manager this afternoon.

On my way home, I've come across another street trumpet player who played in front of a shopping mall, under the evening sun. His melodious tune kept me entertained while I waited for my lamb gyro from the street vendor, but unfortunately, I emptied my pocket to purchase that gyro and have no cash left for him.

So this is my Friday night, the dawn of weekend, where I am still pondering if I should go work a little bit at the office tomorrow, unpaid.

Surprises

At home, I was surprised by the fact that my spacious and air conditioned could make me sick, while my housemate's relatively smaller and non-airconditioned room can be more cozy and cool.

At work, I was surprised by the harmonious and easy-going atmosphere at the offce. Then before I left, I accidentally run by a security loophole of the secured building when I was exploring the staircases.

At the subway on my way home, I was pleasantly suprised by a trumpet player who played so wonderfully on the train even as the train is moving and swaying sideways noticeably.

Surprises keep me alive.

Zero

With new phase life comes new urge to blog, with amplified anonymity comes ample ingenuous. Again I will try document the bits and pieces of my encounters in life, with my honest and sincere desire to share, and that there will be nothing to hide, because I have nothing to hide.

Another day has gone by at the busy big apple, where I have taken in another day worth an uncountable number of faces and behaviors in the diverse community here. Suffocated with bombardment of new information and very spicy street hawker's Indian food, there will be a change in my work where I will have to put less attention in learning and more in working.

In the coming weeks, I will be breathing and living in the world of data and codes with the new colleagues and manager whom I have just met. I will do my best to be a humble coworker with a useful and motivating presence.

With a prayer in remembrance of God, be blessed and thank you, the end.