Leap Walking

Why Pen and Paper Journaling are Essential in Your Life

August 10th, 2009 § 5

Just found out my article was mentioned in Moleskinerie. So, welcome – readers from Moleskinerie!

I find that it’s almost impossible to do anything without penning down my thoughts in a physical diary or journal of some sort. I now have about four ongoing journals I keep notes on, and I didn’t think it was necessary to put everything down, but now I do.

Why Blogs Don’t Always Work

My initial reluctance to keep a journal was driven by the fear that I wouldn’t use it – simply because I would end up putting my notes on a blog, or on a wiki, or on twitter, or on little text files that I could sync across multiple computers using Dropbox (you can see where this is going)… and that would cause my £14 moleskine left there to collect dust – a thought that just drives crazy.

So, I initially toyed around with the idea of having a blog take care of that. Except that I have more than one blog, each addressing specific types of interests I have. Sometimes, the stuff I think about doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. Also, they need to be organized and polished a bit more before it comes out as a blog post.

Then, there’s the issue of private thoughts. Stuff I don’t want people to know. Or stuff that I’m still sorting out in my mind and I’m not quite done with them yet because they’re quite ephemeral and end up forgetting about them. A public blog won’t be good for that. And I don’t like the idea of protected posts.

So, I opened a private blog. But that didn’t work either, because I needed a computer to do that – and worse, a blog format is almost always linear – and trying to do doodles, sketches and arrows all over the place on a blog is possible, but difficult. I realized that my thoughts were pinging back and forth so often that writing it out as a blog post wasn’t always the best way to express what was going on in my mind.

Minimizing the Paralyzing Fear of not being able to control your own Destiny

Then I was about ready to give up, except that I often worry a lot about life so much that it gets me depressed, and there was just too many things I was trying to sort out in my mind, so I finally got down and started writing stuff down on paper. And doing that just solved my problems.

It wasn’t that I needed to write it down – but getting my thoughts out and putting it on somewhere permanent like a piece of paper was so liberating, it was like a huge burden being lifted off my chest.

And it didn’t just work for personal stuff, either. In fact, a lot of the stuff I worry about is about ideas. Like, how best to communicate something to my boss, or planning the next steps for my next sideproject, or calculating the cost of financing my dream home or something like that. Stuff that gets you depressed when you try to sort it out in your mind without any kind of external assistance, even if they were fairly stimulating when you first thought about them.

The Right Tools for the Job

I drew up a simple diagram (actually took me a good hour) that describes how I view the different tools come into play, and how they help my thinking process, in general. While I still blog a lot to get my thoughts out, there’s a certain threshold I find myself struggling to get past, and this is how I end up using different tools to support my “thinking” needs.

Where I start really depends on what kind of message I’m trying to convey, and what type of output I’m trying to produce. If it’s something public, that I wouldn’t mind feedback on – then a blog or a public twitter message does the job nicely. But if it’s something more conversational (either with myself or personal friends), then I tend to use closed-off communities, or a private blog. Then, there are just other things that are way too complex to be pushing around using blogs or comments on social networking sites, then I ought just to pull out a piece of paper or my journal and start sketching or scribbling notes.

Other folks might do it in different ways, but this sort of works for me for now, and I intend to stick with it. I am starting to believe that writing unpolished scribbles and doodles doesn’t mean that I’m disorganized or incapable of communicating my ideas. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I find that it’s actually part of my communication process, and that it’s a skill that gets better over time.

Getting Things Done through Politics

August 5th, 2009 § 0

I dreamt that I was interviewed for a job by Google a few nights ago. I had this impression that Google was the sort of intelligent, caring, but serious tech company that I could be comfortable contributing to the world through and with. I think this was a way my mind was responding to the fact that there are increasingly fewer and fewer companies who are really looking out for consumers.

Social Media reveals that the world is more ugly place than you thought it was

Maybe this is the curse of social media – a few million voices speaking at the same time, against a few seemingly large companies, who are seen as singular entities that can move in any direction at the blink of an eye. All this talk about how Apple is screwing up the App Store, how new Palm Pre ads are really creepy, and how Flickr is really starting to lose it makes me think no company is ever safe anymore, but senior executives continue to push the ball.

But my dream turned a bit odd as I was given a tour of the offices, and they seemed overly convoluted and the people a bit off. It was reminiscent of a time when I was working in an old-fashioned Malaysian company a few years ago who refused to do things better just because the old ways seemed to be more convenient. The scene played out like a battle between two worlds I’ve been trying to reconcile for the last 10 years.

The solution is to get better at solving things the way we’ve always been: with politics

Maybe I’m being an ideallist, but I’m afraid of working with people who aren’t open to new ideas, and solving problems. Actually, worse – I’m afraid of people who won’t change, for whatever reason. But then, I’m quite like that as well. So it seems like it’s all going to pot.

And I’m guessing politics must’ve been the oldest profession in the book. Which means to say that I’m going to have to learn the art of negotiation, persuasion or whatever else it is people use to get stuff done.

And I don’t think getting hired by Google is going to make it any better.

Finding Satisfaction from Within You

August 5th, 2009 § 1

My wife and I used to live in a fairly large apartment overlooking a lake. It had a huge hall, a full kitchen, 3 sizable bedrooms, and a decent store room. By Malaysian standards, this was considered to be somewhat of a luxury for someone at my age, but at the same time – it was owned by my parents who willingly let us live there and have us pay them back whenever we had the means.

It was comfortable, no doubt, but it was hard to say that it was home. The hall was quite empty because we couldn’t afford to furnish it. We didn’t use the swimming pool and gym as much as we’d like. The only thing I really miss about it is the convenient parking space, which offered shelter from the rain. It was hard to say we could afford a place like this.

Outward looks can be deceptive

Now, we’re in London, in a small rented studio about a third the size of the previous apartment, and we both feel more at home here. Maybe it’s because we both made the decision to live here on our own, and that we’re both paying for the rental of the place, and we’ve still got a bit of room to breathe in terms of spending.

I find that I do more homey things, like cook meals at home, and vacuum the floor, and rearrange the furniture, and decorate the place. I feel, for once, that I am in control of my living situation, and that’s quite a breath of fresh air.

Satisfaction comes from inside you

I think that all of us yearn for a place to belong, somewhere along our adulthood. There’s something about enjoying the fruits of our labor, and a home is quite often the place that one does that. Somehow, with the apartment my parents provided us, it felt a bit like a short cut, and somehow that didn’t sit right with me.

The reason I’m saying this is because I’m constantly re-evaluating my life. What is it that truly makes me satisfied? With consumerism often choking out what’s important to us, it’s good to step back and count our blessings. No, we might not be at the top of the game, in the eyes of someone else – but inside us is what really matters – it’s really not faking it, and it doesn’t go away.

I May Yet Ditch the Internet

May 23rd, 2009 § 1

I Internets, Therefore I Am

Having the internet as a big part of me is scary. It’s scary because I’ve let so much of my life be transformed by it. I don’t know how I got here, but I admit that using it has influenced me to stop watching TV, switch jobs the last few times, change the way I socialize with people, improve my domestic skills, and got me and my wife to pack our bags and move to England.

Also, it’s scary how so much of the future is going to arrive at my doorstep tomorrow. Maybe this is a curse of being a technologist, and one devoted to saving the world through it. It makes me wonder what kind of person I would have turned out to be if I read newspapers everyday, stuck with popular advice, and gone for an RM100k-a-year neck-and-tie job that would’ve made my life more cushy, if we had decided to remain in Malaysia.

It’s also scary how much I believe from the things I read.

I remember stumbling upon Penelope Trunk’s posts and being so inspired by it. Maybe because at the time, I was really feeling depressed at work, and longing for something a lot bigger than myself. That was what got me started with this blog. Somehow I had this impression that work-life in Malaysia seemed a lot worse than it seems, and I actually went around telling people to believe that and that it’s possible to achieve their dreams.

And thinking back, I don’t know if I was right. But I believed it and I still do now… but the point is, it wouldn’t have happened if I had not been living off the internet like some crazed hobo.

Is the World Really Changing?

My wife is fairly net-moderate. She’s literate, but she doesn’t feel she needs to check her Flickr or Facebook page every so often, like I do. Her inbox is filled with emails she hasn’t opened for days, weeks, sometimes months. Her job does require her to administer a Drupal site for the charity she’s working for, but it’s just a job. She’s dabbled with GIMP but that’s because it’s free and I told her to give it a try. The only thing she really relies on the internet for is streaming japanese dramas and mangas from fansub sites. If the internets died tomorrow and cellphones didn’t work, she wouldn’t give a hoot, except for maybe the lack of mangas.

On the other hand, I hang out with people who send twitter posts everytime they enter a pub. A core group of us coursemates organize events purely by @replies, it makes email look obsolete. I open up Gmail, and I get a Facebook notification from a friend who’s coming to visit the UK, and then another, and another, over a span of a week or so. No one asks for directions anymore, because it sounds silly if you don’t know how to use Google Maps. I am assimilating deeper and faster into an industry that lives and breathes technology, and will not sleep until all of creation’s problems are solved by it.

The contrasting realities are two perspectives I find hard to bring together, partly because they’re both a big part of my life.

I sometimes feel it’s like that out there in the world, too. That there’s a gap that’s moving in all sorts of directions and it’s hard to make sense where we’re going to end up tomorrow.

Being Net-Literate Doesn’t Necessarily Make You Better

I made an assumption in the past that you need powerful analytical skills and the ability to make sense of large amounts of information to survive in today’s info-rich world. Yet, I still find people who live in complete silos and have a worldview about as big as a small island. And they get by fine.

I also realized that people will gladly trade their resources for the so-called info-skilled people to do the dirty work, and just focus on managing them. This includes CEOs, managers, politicians, leaders, etc.

My dad, for example, has been running a few businesses for the last few years. I admire his reputation and his keen nose for a deal. He used to fumble so much with technology, but he’s getting better at it. By no means does it dictate the way he runs his life. He has ways of getting around that but I know it’s not about outsmarting technology.

I realize more and more that there are people out there who are successful and don’t need all that techie stuff to get there. They’re made from different kind of stuff, and it’s something I’ve only recently come to appreciate.

So now I’m not sure who’s smarter – the folks who skill themselves in technology to get ahead in life, or the folks who skill themselves in life to get ahead in a technology-driven world.

I know big things are coming ahead we’ve barely dreamed of, and I’ll probably be excited when it comes, but I can’t help but feel that I ended up the short end of a stick.

Jobs During Recession: No Point Worrying

May 9th, 2009 § 0

I feel that the whole getting-a-job-during-a-recession thing is getting a bit bloated. It seems that every so often, I get emails about events offering students help about how to get jobs during a recession, and people are constantly referring to it like the bubonic plague, as though jobs are impossible to come by and that you’d best be aiming a lot lower than you’d wished.

Recession = change, that’s all

While the recession is evident around us, it does not mean it’s impossible to get a job that pays well and gives you satisfaction. It just means that a lot of businesses are forced to take stock of what they have now and what they will be doing over the next few years, forcing a paradigm shift to leverage on anything and everything they can come up with.

And this is not just because everyone other company is doing it. It’s also because entire markets are changing.

The question about jobs during a recession is not about whether you can or cannot get one. It’s about asking what change is going to happen and where you feel you can provide the most benefit in such a opportunistic time as this.

What skills that was useful in getting a job before the recession will most likely apply to getting jobs during a recession. The only difference is understanding the needs of the shifting job market – and not just emerging ones but the “holes” left by people who have moved on from “traditional” jobs.

It’s not scary, it’s like a date

I can’t help but recommend Bolles’ 2009 revision of “What Color is Your Parachute?”. It’s a job-hunter’s classic, and I’ve not seen a book quite like it – because it really gets to the point, and it covers a lot of ground. The only negative comment I’ve heard about it was from some Amazon reviewer who criticized Bolles’ religious reference every now and then, which I felt was completely baseless.

To be honest, I think that if you have never been in various types of jobs, or have never faced the reality of being assessed for employment, then the whole process can be daunting and scary. But seriously, it doesn’t have to. Simply because it’s all about people searching for each other. Like a romantic date, it’s always scary the first time.

It takes a lot of verbal exchange, thinking, manners, courtesy, inquiry, exploration, patience and good old-fashioned friendship. But you never stop doing it. It’s just something that you constantly have to keep working on.

And if you want my opinion, the internet job application process doesn’t quite help with that. Simply because buttons and websites don’t talk back. They’re just lazy ways to send a resume off. There are much better ways to find opportunities for work… and not just any kind of work, but the kind of work that’s the stuff of dreams. The solution? Just keep talking to people, and be open about your needs and wants.

In fact, even if you’re already IN a job and fear for your life so much so that you never ever want to consider moving even though you’re so sick of where you are now… I think you should reconsider. Simply because there are a lot of exciting things happening right now, that have not been happening for the last few mundane years. You just need to keep your eyes peeled and look in places you haven’t thought possible.

Recession – a melting pot of opportunists and scammers

What pisses me off are companies like TheLadders.com who charge an exhorbitant amount of money to “fix” your resume, baiting on people who are in a need for that “one golden interview”. There are better ways to spend that cash. Seriously. Just search Google for “theladders scam” and you’ll see what I mean.

It’s kinda like Swoopo. Not quite scammish, but getting there.

During the recession there are two camps – people who are scared shitless they will do anything to salvage whatever’s left of their potential future, and then there are people who understand that the changing seasons just means renewed perspectives and look forward to a refreshing start.

The good news is that you get to choose which camp you’re in.

8 Months in London, away from Kuala Lumpur

May 7th, 2009 § 0

It’s been officially 8 months since I left home and settled down in greyish London, although the sun has been bright these days.

A typical week for me in London

A typical week involves making sure I get my gradschool work done, which is mostly just writing papers which are due over the next few weeks, thinking what to eat or cook for dinner, anticipating the next meetup with friends (usually coursemates, occasionally Malaysian friends who now live here, and sometimes industry people from the user experience community), or working on web development at my part-time job.

Now that just seems mundane, but I find it a novelty to wake up every morning in my tiny studio (which about the size of my previous bedroom in KL) in Islington (Holloway Road, not posh Upper Street), make myself a meal in my tiny kitchen, surf the web and see what’s happening on twitter, get dressed and head to campus to get some work done in the Main library. I don’t do this every day, of course… to avoid the mundane cycle.

Sometimes I just stay at home and write my papers there. I like to get work done at night so sometimes I work all night and sleep through the day.

Recently, on Fridays and Saturdays, I’ll hop on the 91 bus and take it to Crouch End, to Nathan’s (the guy who hired me), and Rey (the front-end developer), Sonia (the graphic artist), Nathan and I will all sit around his kitchen table and hack away at the system for a good day, with the sun overpowering our laptop screens through the big kitchen skylight.

I’m familiar with numbers like 29, 253, 254, and 91 – all buses which ferry me back and forth from home to the tube stations or school. 12 is common for the price we’d pay per person per meal in £ for dinner at Pizza Express. 592.70 for the amount of take-home pay I get after 2 weeks of coding part-time.

Life in the in-betweens

Life in London involves little pockets of activities during the in-betweens. In-between paper writing, libraries, buses, tubes, code, lunch, weekends and weekdays, and seasons.

I don’t know how we did it with my crazy random schedule, but my wife and I have managed a day out at Hampstead Heath, sips of coffee at Monmouth, several trips to Pizza Express, and occasional shopping along the high streets. It all happens in the in-betweens.

Like when a core group of my coursemates decide to head to the Duck n’ Dive for a pint or two. And cheap pizza at Icco’s, or grabbing a quick cheapy indian takeaway lunch from Poppadoms.

It happens sporadically.

Like back in KL?

It’s quite like it was back in KL. Except that it involved a lot of eating – often in different places. It was always a different place. You never went back to the same place the next day, unless you were desperate.

And instead of walking everywhere and taking the bus and the tube, we always went everywhere by car. It would’ve been almost impossible otherwise. Imagine walking all the way from Midvalley to Brickfields in the hot sun.

And I didn’t drink as much beer and alcohol back in KL. I liked my Kilkenny on tap at La Bodega, but it was expensive so I could only afford one per visit.

Nights out with my good friends in KL were a lot more fun, maybe because we had a lot of good old stories to tell, and there was interesting stuff happening with each of us. It was like a support group, except that you’d get teased and joked about and told off when you were being a gnat.

There was really nothing much happening at work then. The offices were dull. Occasionally there would be interesting projects. But I’d tend to forget than remember them. The only ones I really enjoyed was the ones outside of the office, like the DTAC project that took me to Thailand for three weeks.

The common numbers were 7, which is about the time I leave the office in the evening; 3 for the number of dishes I’d order for my wife and I for taichow on a typical weekday dinner out; 2000 for the average amount of ringgit I’d spend every time I visit Bali; 1.5 for the price of a teh si peng, which is by far my most ordered drink; 83 for the average amount of ringgit I’d spend on a full tank for my Alfa Romeo 146; 2 for the time I usually go to bed in the a.m.

Yes this post was pretty pointless, but at least you get a sense of where things haven’t changed.

Some Advice before you start on World Domination

April 22nd, 2009 § 0

I’m starting to realize I’m starting to age, by the plain fact that old habits die hard. This comes as a surprise to me because I assumed I was part of a generation that trumps on flexibility and adaptability.

A series of litmus tests I’ve applied over the years have shown that I am not very well suited for world domination, as I might as hoped. Alas, I am to resign as an aging craftsman, with propensity for intellectual quips and philosophical debates.

The thing is, you too may find yourself in that predicament.

Have you always believed that you would make it big someday, and are now in the process of executing something grand, and realized you’ve expended 50% of your effort (based on some arbitrary measure) and are nowhere near your target? This, with all the books you’ve read.

Sure, there’re a ton more. And you could always try getting another job.

I started asking myself lately if anything major had changed in my life, and I realized that my behavior hasn’t really changed a whole lot over the years. Here are some of my not-so-stellar ones:

going to bed at ungodly hours
wasting time reading articles on the net, convinced that it’ll lead me closer to world domination
wasting time on twitter and facebook
not sticking to my plans
making quick connections about things I read from the internet, like for example… how mashups are efficient ways to make big bucks (wrong)
watching how other people succeed and emulating bits and pieces (also wrong)

Before I sign myself off as a complete idiot, I’m going to draw the line here and state that world domination requires a lot of WORK. And that work has certain elements that cannot be removed, such as goals, patience, communities of practice, apprenticeship, planning and execution.

A few years ago, I was naive enough to believe that with technology and some life-hackery, I could take shortcuts (money, time, know-how) in order to get what I needed or wanted. To an extent, this is true. I can now listen to my favourite music without having to pay for it.

But world domination is not the same as listening to music. They are two very different things.

I realized that world domination requires at least the following:

Know-How

When I experimented with a blog aggregator to see if it would bring me lots of cash without hurting people and with minimal effort, I was in for a lesson. I realized that I needed to put in a lot of effort and give it a lot more thought.

At the same time, it took me a long time to see the point of stuff like SEO, re-designing my layout, hacking my templates… and getting Wordpress to flippin’ work just killed any desire to make the site better. In short, I was lazy.

Some great ideas are complex to pull off, and there is such a thing as an individual preference – so projection is important, as in – asking the right questions, and being effecient about it. I wasted time mulling over so many different things, executing some, but I failed to analyze good case studies and learning from folks who have done it before.

Respect for what and who are already there

This leads to the next part about underestimating experts, leaders, professionals, systems, processes, and a whole lot of other stuff that can seem very “red-tapeish”.

On one hand, some experts seem like superheroes we can’t avoid quoting them every 5 seconds or so. But on the other, it’s hard to swallow the truth that some people I worked under did have some smarts under that skull of theirs… and I could’ve been a bit more patient at learning the ropes, and reflecting on it.

“I can be like that too”, was a common thought that ran through my mind. Thoughts like, I can start a business and run my own internet company… or, like… I can earn double my salary in 1 year by focussing on X, Y and Z.

And yet, some things take its own pace – you just can’t force it. Might as well sit back, smell the roses and enjoy the ride.

Reading between the lines

Graduate school has taught me a lot about reading between the lines. A lot of people who are relatively unknown who I never used to care about, had spent a lot of time writing stuff that they’ve learnt through their work, and I used to think that I didn’t need to bother about what they cared about. So, I tended to skim read a lot, until I realized I was getting nowhere.

Then, I learnt to dig deeper and search through the work that had been done by the authors, by disecting their arguments, their references… by drawing a more holistic picture of the work itself, in order to get a better understanding of what it was I needed to learn.

The real value is in appreciating the lessons that people gain when they do good work. Because ultimately, these are things I may learn, and that’s where good dialogue takes place in places like blogs, twitter posts, and messages.

It’s not just about “knowing stuff that’s been said already”.

Collaboration

In my six months of working part-time with what is now becoming a real startup company, I learnt that big ideas need good teams. There are things that can be done solo… like, I dunno… selling lemonade.

I was hired as a lead web developer to help build a product, and we started from scratch. It’s now six months past, and I basically overestimated my abilities to build websites. In other words, I couldn’t pull off building a full-fledged site in six months on my own. If there were 3 good people on the team, that would look more probable. And I say that not to quote some esoteric theory, or startup expert.

In recent weeks, a small but formidable team has come together to help this site move along faster, and I’m blown away by the exponential effect good people can do to a team.

World domination is not a solo effort. Even if you’re planning to take over the world by writing a book, that book requires the contribution of people other than yourself.

And sometimes, it’s just worth spending a bit more

As a stingy kiasu Malaysian, I also assumed you could get by with very little. A few things I learnt from working with folks here in London is that it makes sense to use money to move things along.

My wife works for a local charity, where they get donors from all over the place. Her CEO recently bought a huge map that cost a lot of money, for the purpose of sticking pins on the areas where donors had come from, so that she could be reminded of where her donors are and subsequently keep in touch with.

In Malaysian-speak, that’s quite blasphemous to the name of all things good. Firstly because it was a charity, funded by the public. And it would’ve been cheaper to use 32 A4-size printouts of Google Maps screenshots. But taking a step back, it did make sense. It was quick, efficient, and it did the job well.

I can’t imagine the amount of time I’ve lost trying to get things done with the absolute minimum. There are other factors in play, like time, comfort, a sense of provision, or partnerships… that make spending a lot less worse than I think it is.

I could’ve quoted a line from Gladwell’s Outliers, which I think makes sense, but I didn’t.

Anyway, just my rant about World Domination. What’s yours?

Don’t just survive grad school, make it work for you

February 17th, 2009 § 2

This is a response to Penelope’s post about how you shouldn’t dodge the recession with grad school. But before I go on, I want to state that I am in grad school, but I made my decision before the recession came. So for those of us who are already in grad school – this probably won’t matter (since we probably made decisions to do this based on other reasons).

Penelope’s post makes sense for people who are looking for a way out of the recession. And for the most part, I do agree with her. I don’t think it is a good idea to go for an MBA, an MFA, a PhD, whatever – if you’re trying to seek refuge from the storm.

But in a way, I don’t think that’s going to stop the tens of thousands who will end up in grad school. So, if you’re in that camp, well… my best advice to you is not to see grad school as a safe haven. It’s extremely deceptive to think that all you have to do is read books and write papers, and do well in class. There’s a lot at stake and a lot to lose in the years spent in grad school.

Grad school is deceptive

One of the main reasons is this – your professors have their own agenda that’s not the same as yours. They tend to value your intelligence and critical analysis of your work (and will reward you for it), rather than your ability to make money and survive. It’s noble, by all means – but far from practical.

The solution to this is to give them what they want, but get what you need. And what you need are:

connections
skills
‘tricks of the trade’
opportunities

Connections: Know what’s at stake

It is incorrect to say that there is a huge gap between the corporate and academic worlds. Often times, very established leaders and experts move seamlessly between the two, providing an essential bridge for mutual benefit.

I was just given an opportunity to work with Microsoft for my Masters thesis, and I owe it to my lecturer through her connections. In a way, the process felt a little like going for a job interview, because I knew that it would make a difference to know what the stakes were, and at the end of the day – there were some students who didn’t get what they wanted.

Skills: Discern well between learning and applying

Penelope was right in saying that, to learn entrepreneurship, you have to do it. It can’t be gained by just reading books. But I also believe that there are some people who are so clueless they can’t tell the difference between reading a how-to book and saving their own lives.

If you can’t understand how to translate knowledge into practice, you’re in big trouble. If you think that books should be written in a style suitable for adolescents to make it easier to understand, you’re digging your own grave. This brings me to my next point.

Tricks: Learn the benefits of failing

One essential benefit of grad school that you can’t always get in the working world is the opportunity to fail, and fail often. Don’t take this for granted – smart folks know that getting out early and getting your hands dirty is key to understanding what works and what doesn’t.

In my meeting with the head researcher at Microsoft, I made an absolute fool of myself when I claimed that ethnography was the same thing as field studies. It took me a week before I realized this, but they still let me in. Students are easy to forgive, but there’s always a limit.

The tricks aren’t about failing, but learning from them. It’s easy to say, but I doubt that you’d throw yourself in the deep end of the pool if you knew you couldn’t swim. My take: jump first, swim later. There’s always a way out.

Opportunities: Practice, preach and play

From the onset of the course, I was determined to take the road less travelled. While some students avoid part-time work and external activities in order to concentrate on studies, I run the other way.

I hunted down a flexible job that would pay me enough but not drag me down, signed up as a volunteer on a project with the Interaction Design Association, tried my best to attend every single free event related to my industry, and started following industry leaders on Twitter and started a blog to share my thoughts. I got to work with industry experts almost overnight, and it makes a difference when they know you by name and can vouch for your work.

When it comes to push and shove, all that extra effort clearly stands out. If you’re in a really good school with the smartest bunch, you won’t just be able to collaborate – you’ll synergize with the best. There will always be opportunities to learn and lead, take what you can (or should) and run with it.

The biggest problem isn’t time management – it’s focus.

Twitter: Now I get it

February 1st, 2009 § 1

I’ve been on Twitter for awhile now but I’ve only started using it extensively as a:

social graphing tool
messaging tool
friending tool

Twitter works best in two ways:

avid follower
ambient intimacy (credits to Cennydd Bowles for introducing the term to me)

Avid Follower

An avid follower is someone who uses Twitter to see what other interesting people are up to. Recently, a massive surve of celebrities have hopped onto the twitter bandwagon, creating what seems to be a tipping-point of the phenomenon. But that’s twitter for the mainstream. Consider specific industries, especially the web-related ones. Twitter is really great for getting to know prominent leaders in the field, and for getting the latest scoop about stuff around their lives.

Ambient Intimacy

Twitter is also great for folks who want to keep track of each other’s activities. I know it sounds a lot like Facebook, but it’s harder to add someone to your facebook account that you don’t know. With twitter, there’s less problems because it doesn’t reveal a lot about you. People who choose to follow you on twitter should already know who you are, by trusting what you have already published online, or by your twitter history.

It’s for that conference meet-up where you met someone but didn’t want to send emails to over and over again, or that pub meet where you wanted to find out more about the speaker who gave an interesting presentation.

It’s also useful for self-organized groups, such as volunteer groups or charities, where everyone does their own thing, but comes together once in awhile to do something. It’s easy to pick up on a conversation from a Twitter post at the next meetup.

Twitter works for me

I’ve found Twitter to be beneficial for me in the following ways:

exchanging ideas with people from the user experience industry
finding out the latest news or events
exploring opportunities offered by people that I’m following (jobs, promos, offers, etc.)

Some people use twitter for social accountability, or as a to-do list. Some applications extend their functionality with twitter as an alert tool – rememberthemilk is one of them.

But you already knew that.

What you may not know is how fast I can get to know people on twitter, which helps to break down the ice when I speak to people or want to build on relationships.

I recently volunteered for a project involving some really fantastic people in the user experience industry. It was really hard at first to speak up, especially when I consider my relative lack of experience in the field – but because everyone encouraged each other to connect via twitter, I am starting to get to know these individuals a bit better, even though we’ve never met in person.

Filling the gaps

Twitter isn’t a substitute for real face-to-face relationships, but it does fill some gaps – especially in between times when you don’t meet face-to-face with people. It makes sense for some of us who are really busy but still want to maintain good relationships, and for those of us who want to build relationships that cross physical barriers.

I don’t think calling Twitter a “micro-blogging” platform does it justice – simply because people tend to think of it as a small blog. It’s not quite that. There are a lot of things that tend to be published on blogs require more than the 140 character limit that’s placed on each tweet, and people just don’t understand why they would want to blog about walking their dog or eating a sandwich.

So, coming back to the ‘ambient intimacy’ term – I believe it’s really all about that “gap” of relationships you wanted to address – people who you want to build a relationships with or get to know, who aren’t as accessible.

With all that said, I’m looking to meet new people: http://twitter.com/jaremfan

Comparing Work-Life in Kuala Lumpur and London

January 28th, 2009 § 1

Rather than taking pot-shots at one side of the fence, I’ll share a bit of my experiences transitioning from KL to London.

I’d like to state that my objective was for career progression and a change in environment. As a previous employee with a UK company, I had already gotten a taste of London through several business trips. The rain and gray skies don’t bother me that much, since we get a lot of that back home. I prefer the weather here, and that makes a big difference in decision making.

Affordable living depends on a lot of things

As you would expect, London is a very expensive city. But a lot of people stop there. Why is it expensive? What exactly is expensive about it? Does that mean I have to be a rich guy to survive?

Well, it depends. Take a look on the other side. There has been a growing concern about rising food prices in KL. A plate of mee goreng will probably cost you RM3.50 to 4, depending on where you are. It’s not a whole lot, but it’s a psychological effect that ngaws at you, time and again. Simply because salaries aren’t increasing. I believe it is the perception of the value you get out of the entire work-life experience. Everyone seems to be saying the same time – KL is getting more expensive every day.

London is expensive because the £2 you spend on your latte can go to saving up for an ipod touch, which will cost 50 times more. To me, that’s like constantly choosing between having food and having a cool gadget. Most of the time, people choose food. And people drink a lot here. Beers go from £2 to £5? Stop drinking beer a few dozen times and you’ll be able to afford a branded portable stereo.

Lifestyle matters

I think that’s the hardest thing about London, because I come from a country where food is taken for granted.

Of course, not everyone compares London like that. If you compare it to a lot of European cities, well… things start looking more obvious. In Denmark, shops close really early. 5.30pm on weekdays, 1pm on Saturdays. Don’t even think about Sundays. It’s quite the same story in Germany, and many other European countries. The UK is part of the EU, but it’s got a slightly different culture. Maybe you can call it an island mentality. I don’t know.

If you think about it, if you don’t have any place to spend your money, you’ll save more. It’s not easy to do that when London is so vibrant and everyone meets at a pub or celebrates birthdays at posh restaurants.

It’s funny that in KL, you have that too – eating out is very, very common. Especially with people in their 20s to 30s. I think my parents did a wise thing to cook at home a lot. But for me, I was always eating out. That used to eat into the wallet a lot.

Now, I cook a fair bit more. At least 50% more, I’d like to think. Sometimes less, sometimes more. I do it partly out of necessity. And I do it partly because I don’t get home-cooked food.

Work culture

People here address each other by their first names. They don’t call their professors “sir” or “miss”. They don’t call their bosses “Mr. Chan” or “Mrs. Smith”. People work because they can do the work, it’s okay, as long as it doesn’t invalidate their preferences and self-esteem.

I think that a lot of Malaysians are more forgiving, in the sense of getting work done and doing what the boss wants. But it works the other way too – it’s quite easy to assume the boss knows what to do, and it’s easy for the boss to dictate the work.

But here, it’s kind of a peer thing, almost. It’s not quite polar opposites, but there’s a bit more transparency. It wasn’t always like that, though. And there tend to be a lot more small companies who can get good projects. And back home… well… a lot of big projects are awarded based on preferential relationships.

But it’s not bad either way. It’s just two different cultures.

Look and feel of a city

For some reason, the Brits are big into museums and maintaining the charm of a neighborhood. Back in Malaysia there are numerous streets that have replaced so many old ones, I can’t quite remember what it was like 20 years ago. Street names being changed and all.

Here, everything needs to go through a very long process to get approval. Even if Starbucks wants to put their seats outside, they have to put up a sign telling people that they can contest that if they wanted. There are pros and cons. If you live in the neighborhood and don’t want Starbucks cluttering the sidewalk, you can contest that and it’ll probably work.

Culture in the London is a lot more diverse and complex. There are over 7 million people living in the city. There’s a lot happening. It’s quite hard to get bored of this place.

KL feels really cosy in comparison to London. Even if it felt like a lifetime driving from my house to my aunt’s place in Melawati, it’s nothing compared to the M25.

If you’re coming to London, plan to stay at least a week. There’s lots to see and do. And if you’re visiting KL, make sure you plan your journey around food stops. I personally love both cities, but I’m liking London a lot right now.