Fairness

The world isn't a fair place. I guess that fact contributes to many of the global problems such as poverty, starvation, high infant mortality rates, broken pencil leads, etc.

Though for some reason a lot of people want to think it is. I can see why. It would be a much nicer place if everything was just fair for everybody. Then people will get what they deserve, all the time. Yes, thats nice.

But I don't really see how people can expect the world to be fair. It wasn't made in such a way to make things fair. Things aren't exactly evenly distributed around the globe. Just look at the natural resources. Australia, which is some tiny percentage of the world's surface area, contains 30% of the world's uranium deposits. The middle east gulf nations hold pretty much every drop of oil we've found. The rest of the world by comparison is like a drop in the ocean.

What are people really talking about when they mean fair though? I'm just going to take my cynical point of view: when people say fair, they mean that THEY or people close to them get their fair share. Even when they say things such as "oh, its so unfair that the Somalians don't have toilets to poo in", nothing gets done. I mean, you don't exactly hear about a lot of donated toilets in those world vision commercials. So fair isn't fair unless its fair for you. I don't count myself out of the majority. Recently, I've found myself saying things like... "its so unfair, how come I don't have one?!" Its a bit of a rhetorical question - I don't have one because its not fair.

Heres another way of looking at it: Maybe the world is actually fair. Maybe the things I think I deserve don't actually apply. Perhaps a higher being has put down a rule that you don't actually deserve a piece of chocolate if you can't afford it. Maybe that higher being is money.

Crazy

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse: Stealing bananas is the new craze.

Suffering from a bad case of the hiccups?

No? Well I am. Hiccups are no fun.

It amazes me that somehow your belly can just have random spasms for no particular reason. Like your diaphram has gone on holiday and doesn't know how to do its job when it gets back. Or maybe its just complaining about the lack of food/air and blowing things out of proportion. Well if it is that, at least its getting my attention.

OK. Now its gone. Maybe blogging will become one of those home remedies.

kekekeke and such

The whole ^_^ phase is crazy.

Yes, it looks like an Asian. So do a whole bunch of other things. But then, so does this.

Shamelessly ripped from Sam's blog

Dingaleedoo

According to at least one person, this effort in arsehole prevention/rollback hasn't completely worked out. Yes, its possibly about me, and yes, I'm a self-centred bastard. But somewhat suprisingly, I'm not particularly proud about it.

I realise that in these kind of situations, no amount of justification is going to fix it, because nothing beats loyalty to others more than self centred bastardism. Nor do I expect anything good to come of it. So my move is a pass, and I obviously don't play chess very well.

Did I ever mention I was lazy coward? Or maybe I'm naieve in thinking that life is meant to be simple. Maybe its not, but at least forgive me for the attempt at making it so.

Please note: This is not attempt to win votes. I'm only running for a seat in parliament next term.
Shrinks from the scathing comments which will surely ensue.

What I learned in the last hour

Apparently Windows XP doesn't actually need a hard drive to be set up in the BIOS to be able to read it. Oh what a waste of time last night was :(

Be like the water...

Yes, its true. I have no warm blood...

Or so goes the analogy. I'm not very emotional. Sometimes its like I'm totally ignoring the thing thats going on. It makes me a little bit inhuman. So when people are bawling their eyes out or getting all excited about their next big trip to disneyland, I just kind of sit there with the 'meh' expression sitting plainly on my face.

Frankly, most of the time my view is too practical. Perhaps its the cynical view I have on life. Things are there, then they go away. Everything is just temporary, and by the time you get used to it, its time for things to move along. So theres no real point getting all excited or sentimental about anything. Even plans you make for next week can fall apart the day before.

The same applies to people in life. We all know they're not going to be there forever. I'm not saying that we should keep our distance from each other so that when the inevitable happens, we won't feel as hurt. I'm saying that life is precious enough not to spend time dwelling on what was or could have been. Learn from your mistakes, and move on.

This isn't meant to be a self help guide on how to deal with grief. Its only a liquid perspective on life. Theres way too much crap out there for you to be able to control enough to control every aspect of your own life.

Seats

It seems that I don't really stop talking about public transport, and that I always have something to gripe about. I'm not even going to bother to try and defend that point of view, probably because its true.

But this time its not even about the transport system itself, its about some of the people who use it. Its about those people who seem to think that their bag is more important than another person. These people get on the train/tram/bus, walk to an empty or nearly empty row, and sit their fat asses down on one seat, and dump their bag on another. I've got nothing against this when the bus isn't full, but when other people have to make an effort to find an empty seat, perhaps they could take the initiative to remove their bag.

Its actually quite annoying when some people do this during trips where it is quite obvious the vehichle is going to fill up. This includes rides INTO the CBD before 9am (and usually a bit after) and rides into the suburbs after 4:30pm. When you get on a bus, you pay for your seat (or in recent months, a place to stand). If you really want another seat, buy another ticket for your precious bag.

The whole thing also applies to fat people. Yes, so you're bigger than other people, but if you take up two seats, let two people sit, and you can stand. It helps you lose weight if anything. Think about all those calories you'll burn straining to keep yourself in an upright position the whole way home. Its not going to replace the gym, but its a good warmup before you get there. (Bad karma warning - don't laugh at this, its not bad karma if its the truth.)

On the flip side of the coin, we should be asking why others don't ask them to move their bag. If they're an Asian, they'll probably understand. Public transport is even more crowded where they came from. If they're not, just ask them to move their bag then sit really close to them afterwards. It will help with their social anxiety problems.

So you see, theres a silver lining to this. Just make the most if it.

Budget Roundup

Normally you don't really expect the spending to go up in government budgets unless something is wrong. That could be because its an election year or due to other things like a struggling economy. But the Australian treasurer seems to have come up with a economy stimulating budget without the need for it. Though its probably a good thing to spend all that cash lying around.

This isn't a bad thing. In fact, it means things are a lot better for us. Theres the oppurtunity for more jobs, and the tax cuts mean we have more money to spend on things, or at least to help us with the cost of petrol guzzling cars.

I'm happy with it.

Time to waste another hour of my life

Perhaps I should just do today's sodoku. Its probably a much more fulfilling and intellectually stimulating thing than anything else in the lecture.

I think today's topic is UNIX. I wonder what else I've been working on in computer science for the last 4 years. They finally get around to it in IS.

Assesment Centres

One down - two to go... so far.

You know, sometimes I think it would be so much easier if you could just go somewhere and beg them to give you a job, and you'd get one based on your personal merits and how those merits would make you perform on the job. Then I realised thats what the whole selection process is trying to do.

Its not always successful though. Somehow, theres always duds who get through. In fact, the correlation between how well someone performs in an interview situation and their performance on the job is only about 0.14. If you use a structured interview, this jumps up to something like 0.2. Assesment centres aren't that much better. Its something like 0.4. If you correlate the performance on the job and their cognitive ability, it would be about 0.6. Thats quite a big difference, which makes me wonder why they even bother with interviews. I guess sometimes its just so that people don't think you're completely ugly - and therefore could perform better on the job. Fair enough. We don't want an office full of ugly people after all. Thats it, I'm not getting hired.

For the job application writer

Since the whole university graduation thing is coming up quite soon, there has been quite a lot of time spent doing applications for jobs. Most of these applications have questions tacked onto them, and you have to answer them to finish your application. Now, most of these questions are quite irrelevant to the topic at hand i.e. how you're suitable for the job. They ask you the about a whole scenario - what was the situation, what did you do, and what was the outcome, for a whole bunch of things. For example, "Describe a time when you used teamwork..." etc. The whole idea is that your past behaviour is probably a fairly good indication of your future behaviour. However this relies on the idea that the person being asked the questions doesn't lie. A fairly far fetched assumption in an interview environment where they're not really going to know if you do.

So what caught me out the other day while I was doing one of these applications was this question: "Why are you suitable for ?" Then I realised - I'm not. There is no way I'm really quite suitable for a company which designs and builds large physical structures from the ground up. I have no idea whats involved, there is little that attracts me to something of that nature, and the whole idea is kind of well... unsuitable.

I guess this is a lesson to the people who actually write these applications. Perhaps they should put in more of these questions because they're hard, they'll weed out the people who aren't suitable, and its another question to add to the application.

So whats the solution?

I should have actually just included this in the original post, but oh well, its a bit late now, and its going to seem like a doozey.

Since winter is nearly on our doormat, threatening to slam the door shut in a bout of anger, we should use it to our advantage. Nobody likes taking public transport when its raining, cold and hard to get a seat. It makes it even worse when people on the same ride as you have diseases. Mainly the infectious ones like colds and flus. So what I propose is that everyone just pretends to be sick about every day of the week on the bus. That way, people have less incentive to take the same bus as you.

To get out of it, they'll drive, or find another mode of transport, leaving more room on the bus for you and the rest of the sick people. Oh what fun.

I could elaborate, but one of the 'big 4' consulting firms just told me to shove it (in a much more polite way), so inspiration isn't really holding up.

Talking to myself

The lack of blogging is bad. Well, it makes me look a little bit insane. Not blogging that is, its the substitute I have for blogging. I just seem to be talking to myself more. Its quite disturbing, even if I say so myself.

So I'm hoping that the blogging will pick up, and that I'll have stuff to say, and that I'll seem less insane to myself.

Or maybe I should find myself some more friends.

A bit of overlap

I just had a lecture for a subject called Operating Systems. Now I'm in a lecture for a subject called Business System Design which is about Operating Systems. Somehow I think I'm wasting my time.

Interviews over the next two days... Looking forward to some hardcore questions. Well, not really, but its one way to psych me up.

Which file extention are you?

Such a geek thing to do...
border="0" alt="You are .jpg You are very colorful. Sometimes you forget things, or distort the truth. You like working with pictures more than words.">
Which File Extension are You?

Tis the season to be *cough* ... sick

Its quite strange how the public transport system works. It could be just my bus route, but somehow theres quite a difference in the services. (Warning: whinge factor 10)

"But what do you mean Ez?"

I'll tell you what I mean, and for a low monthly fee of err... actually just buy me food - I'll let you know the solution to all our problems. So the problem is this - the bus route starts at 6:30am or so in the morning, taking all the working commuters into the central business district (CBD) for their daily office job. For my bus route, this comes about every 10 minutes until 8am, when it stops becoming every 10 minutes and reverts to coming every 30 minutes until it stops at around 6pm. So during the period between 6:30 and 8, theres about 10 bus services. This is completely fine. The buses aren't too crowded, theres only the minimal amount of people standing, its generally on time, and theres been a minimal fuss about this in the past few years.

On the other side of the coin the commute back home is a nightmare. For all the people that the buses take to work in the morning, there aren't quite enough buses to take them back. When people normally start work at 8:30am or 9am, they'll finish between 4:30pm and 5:30pm. But the problem is, between 4:30 and 6pm, theres a total of 5 buses to take people back. So we have to cram 10 busloads of people into 5 buses for the trip back. Not exactly what you'd call optimal.

Its also a lot harder to stand on buses than it is on trains. Trains usually go in a straight line, slow down left often, don't have to stop for traffic lights, and don't go around hairpin turns. Buses have traffic lights, bus stops every 200m or so, and do hairpins right before hitting the freeway. Something a rubber handhold isn't quite going to help you with.

I promised the solution to this problem... It'll be short and sweet, but just wait till next week. Or view the source.

Feeling anxious? Too bad

Its been a bit slow. No thats not quite true. Its always a bit slow for me. Everyone else seems to get quite stressed about things. Some people even get stressed about everything. Apparently stress isn't even the right word - it all comes from the magic thing otherwise known as anxiety.

An analytical approach to this would suggest that people get stressed because things which are 'important' in their lives have a significant amount of influence. For some, important things will range from the breakfast they have in the morning to the way they tie their shoes. If you're anything like this, maybe having anxiety attacks is quite a common occurance for you. Maybe you spend a large part of your life crying youself to sleep because your significant other started smoking (for those of you whre this is true, find a non-smoker). Ironically, these are usually the kinds of people that say they can't handle so much stress.

Others are a little more reasonable. They understand that theres only so much time in a day, and they need to prioritise those things which are really important. So its only when these kind of things have problems (like you don't have enough money for rent) that they get a little stressed. Maybe you'll lose your job if you don't get that report on the desk in the morning.

Then theres the other extreme. Nothing really means all that much. They realise that not only are a lot of things quite trivial, they can see that theres another way to do something. Its not the end of the world if you lose your job. Pick yourself up and plod along some more. It sounds like they're a little depressed most of the time. Or maybe they've just discovered the secret for themselves.

Take a chill pill.

April FOOOOLZZZZ

OK so I missed it by a couple of days. Shoot me.

All will not be well

Another boring post:

Been playing xbox.
Been doing assignments.
Been doing some graduate applications.
Been bumming around a lot and visiting grandpa.

EDIT: As per request
Been hanging out the whole of Wednesday with Kerry.

A quote change

The chicken or the egg?

The seed, or the seedless watermelon?

Grrr...

Stoopid Xbox. Doesn't even turn on straight out of the box. Wheres the quality control!?

Vegetarians

After reading a whole bunch of other blogs, I realised how boring a blog can be when all you talk about is what you did. Its far more interesting if you actually have a topic to write about. It gets even more interesting when nobody has a clue what you're writing about - so then they comment. So this one is a bit weird, but I think it makes sense.

I never understood vegetarians - especially the ones who just don't eat meat for the sake of it. They give lame excuses like "Oh I just don't like the taste of it." Theres a lot of things that I don't exactly like the taste of either - like tofu. But if its mixed in with something else then I don't really have a choice, and I just eat it all together. They can't seem to do the same with meat. It has to be completely meat free.

Theres also the other humanitarian reasons. Apparently a lot of this kind of thing sprang up after the movie 'Babe' came out. For those of you who don't know, its a movie about a pig who acts like a shepherd dog. So people don't even eat meat because they think that they're killing something with feelings. They feel evil by doing it? What my response to that is: How do they know that vegetables don't have feelings? Maybe they just can't express them the way animals do.

Its also supposed to be healthier. While this can be a good point, meat is quite healthy too. It has a lot of protein, iron, and lots of other goodies. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying we should become exclusively carnivores, we should eat green stuff too, its just more efficient to have a combination of both. Thats how we've evolved after all.

Another thing I don't understand is how a lot of vegetarians eat fish and seafood, but don't eat other types of meat. Now I'm quite sure that fish and shellfish are considered animals. They could have feelings too! If you're asian and vegetarian I'd understand. You don't need to have a good reason to eat seafood. You eat it because
a) You're told to eat it by your parents and
b) Its in your blood. You couldn't stop eating seafood if you wanted to (or even if you're allergic to it).

Ez's Bible Bashing corner:
You can't be Christian and vegetarian. I find this rather amusing. According to the old testament, God put the animals and the plants here to serve humans. That was nice of Him. So you're not really doing God's will (i.e. using them to your advantage) if you're not eating them and using them to plough your fields.

So if you're vegetarian, or even better, if you're both vegetarian and Christian, we'd like to hear from you. It will help me on the road to understanding the universe. Until next time!

Anyway thats it. Onto the boring things:
I put an order down for an Xbox360. So don't expect me to talk to you on Thursday night.

Its that time of night again

I seem to be whinging a lot in these posts. Sorry. I just don't have anything intellectually stimulating to write. So what I can do is kind of combine a whinge into an intellectually stimulating post to make it look like I'm not whinging. Actually, you could probably guess what I'm going to write about already.

Theres something about night time which makes me think of the weirdest things. It probably helps that nobody is around to steer my thought on to a more rational and productive train of thought. Night also naturally makes me think about stupid dark things, like death. So tonight we're exploring the wonderful world of death.

Death is something thats shared by everyone. One of the universal inevitables in every earthly culture. Yet cultures have their own way of explaining death and in many cases, what happens after. Its quite interesting how there is such a large variety of views concerning death, and almost all of it speculation. Theres heaven, theres hell, theres paradise, theres reincarnation. Its quite impossible to see which one we actually end up going to or through. So we'll consider some of the possibilities.

The Heaven/Paradise and Hell view:
So we've got this really cool place you end up in where God/Christ/St Peter/Allah dudes live if you were 'good' during your time as a living being. You can also take a short cut to this place if you just repent your sins (and you're Christian). On the other hand, we've got this firey pit of torture you can go to if you didn't spend it quite so well. Sure, thats all fine and dandy.

Now we've got the choice between
a) going to paradise with a bunch of nice virgins (adultery anyone?), sitting and hanging around with God (Genocidal vigilante - Noah and the ark), and hanging out with all the other do gooders and others who took the shortcut.
OR
b) going to 'hell'. Supposedly the worst place you could possibly imagine, and then some, hanging out with non-believers and an angel who had his wings clipped who founded the place. Kind of makes you wonder where all the people who didn't get accepted into heaven went before hell got invented. But lets not dwell...

Its a pretty easy method for getting into your place of choice. Either ask for forgiveness, or blow yourself up in holy war against Western civilisation (depends on what culture) for option A. Or just go about your daily life for option B - you're bound to do something evil at least once. But watch out, you only get to choose once, and once you've made that choice, you're stuck with it for eternity. Thats right - forever. And you thought your 80+ years of life on this world was long... This will be so long that you'll forget what life was about, which kind of defeats the purpose of an afterlife if its supposed to be what you deserved from what you did during your life. Almost like putting someone in jail because they fell off their bed while sleeping and crushed another person to death in the fall.

Reincarnation:
YAY. Not a large proportion of the population really WANTS to die. So the idea of reincarnation kinda says that we don't actually die. We just err.. get born again, into a different body. The soul is still there, whatever that happens to do. In addition, we also get the oppurtunity to do stuff... no wait. We can't remember anything from our previous lives. So whats the point of this whole reincarnation thing then? To reach Nirvana... that weird arse heavy metal band which just screams out nothing. OK maybe not. Its just the nothing part. Nirvana is nothingness. We just keep getting reincarnated until we reach this nothingness. Awesome.

Just as an aside, some Christian teachings say that Hell is actually nothingness, and they don't want to go there. Its quite strange and interesting how the Hindus' Nirvana i.e. nothingness, is somewhere they want to be. The juxtaposition conflict in what they see as a desirable is quite profound.

Bag of bones:
Now onto my favourite part of the post. My own personal belief. I like this bag of bones idea because theres no strings attached. SO after we all die, thats it. The brain shuts down, the heart stops beating. Theres no other sensory perceptions after that. In fact, the heart could keep beating, maybe in some other person's body, which would be really cool.

The soul? There is no soul. The soul is another abstraction for personality. It doesn't actually go anywhere. It just helps a large part of the population think that there is more to life than just what they are. There might be, but I doubt your soul has anything to do with it.

This sucks

What sucks? This whole thing. Well... to tell you the truth, life sucks. Again. No, this isn't something about how depressed I am (although its quite possible I may be just a tiny bit), its actually a rant about, well... uni.

Actually no its not. I don't know what its about. I think it sucks how I've only got about 11 hours of uni a week. Only 9 of which I go to. Maybe its because its spread over 5 days, and there isn't really any work given to me to do. Well, there is, but not yet. So for the past few weeks I've kinda been sittin on my arse doing bugger all. This is compared to the past year or so where I've been working or studying pretty much full time hours throughout the year.

I just feel more lazy than usual. Somehow, for some reason, I feel the need to be productive. Its strange, I know. I should really go find a job of some kind. I've been looking, kind of, but theres too much contract and full time work out there, and really not much in terms of casual stuff. At least not the casual stuff I want to/ can do (a lot require at least a few weeks of full time training). Someone give me something to do.

P.S. I'm going in to uni early tomorrow to start my project. Which is due in... 8 weeks.

Just because I like the sound my keys make when I type

Theres really nothing to say. Or at least theres really nothing I should be saying. It almost as if this rather empty blog just needs some filling up. But the problem is I can't find anything to say.

No, really. Nothing.

WOOOHOOOO!

"Can't stop the big machine, too many wheels turning..."
Mr Earl - Batman Begins

And on the other side of my life:
*plonk*

The Centrelink Experience

I'm becoming quite mobile with my blogging thing. At the moment, I'm sittin in my car outside the Computer Science and Information Systems building, blogging. I feel so lazy. Its as if I'm not actually accomplishing anything at all. Uni seems like such a drag. I've got 13 hours each week, but its spread out over 5 days, so it seems like everyday I go in, nothing actually happens.

But today I went to Centrelink in the morning. As I said in about mid Jan, I didn't have time to take documents to my local customer service centre. Wasn't as exciting as I thought it might be, but then I'm not really sure if thats what I should have been expecting.

So after a long wait, some photocopying of documents and some random garble, it was over. Theres a two week wait to find out the outcome of the application.

Dang

I think I'm swearing a lot more than I used to. I'm also quite a lot more vulgar than I used to be.

Basically I'm turning into more off an arsehole. Sorry people. I'll try to change back.

:S

Some gold

I got a complaint from Karmz yesterday that there isn't enough GOLD material on this blog recently. The last one was supposedly the small Viet theory (another reason why people shouldn't actually take this blog seriously). Point taken, but its kind of hard to have something to write about when theres nothing around to inspire you.

So I'm opening it up for suggestions - anyone want to know something about life, something about what happened to them the other day? I can probably come up with some rather ridiculous theory as to why something happened, and make it relatively fool proof, just give me some time.

Civil Litigation

Its back to uni. Back to classes and back to the relatively lazy life. What I'm worried about now that I'm going to have heaps of time to just sit around and do nothing. So today I'm sitting with Sam and Age in their Civil Litigation lecture. Basically they learn how to sue other people and take their money. No wonder this subject is so popular, the theatre is quite packed, and I'm probably taking some poor law student's seat.

I guess thats where lawyers get their repuatation from?

Alright, enough vague incomprehensible gibberish. Its time to say something thats significant. Now just to find that ...

Crazy night

I think my life has just turned upside down. Its really weird, and its related to the other night, but its kind of strangely intruiging as well. Not only for you guys who don't have a clue about my rather vague ramblings, but also for me.

Or maybe I'm just still hung over.

A good day at work

It was good more likely because I didn't actually do much work. This week is the last week that I'll be working there before uni starts, so I'm kind of taking it pretty bludgey. There isn't really that much left for me to do anyway.

So what did I do instead?

Well there was the presentation. I was a bit (ok, very) nervous about it until it actually happened. But when I actually got into it, it was okay. I'm not sure how that works because I pretty much just did the powerpoint presentation, then winged the actual presentation part. Somehow, people were somewhat impressed. Big ego trip...

The other thing was lunch. This was meant to be because its the last day that I was free to do lunch with my department before I leave. There was Indian food, mango lassi, and somehow they paid for it. I wasn't complaining at all, and the food was good!

Lastly there was the intern meeting. One of the guys from equity research came and talked about what he does. Its actually quite interesting....

Anyhoo, that was my day.

Presentation tomorrow

I got talked into doing this presentation tomorrow at work. So basically I have to show people what I've been doing at work for the past 6 weeks or so. I can't believe theres like 15-20 people coming to watch. High stakes game!

Oh well, at least I won't be doing any 'real work'. I just hope the application doesn't crash during the presentation. How embarrasing...

Can't Sleep again - The small Vietnamese Theory

I don't know if this is the way everyone else is, but normally when I think about things, my mind flitters from idea to idea. Somehow I manage to cover quite a broad range of things in the space my sister thinks of a few. Usually I don't dwell on anything for any prolonged period of time, and take the quick and simple solutions to problems along thw way. Take for instance what I'm doing now - Can't sleep, so the soluation is to sit in bed with my wireless stuff and blog.

THe problem is now that I seem to be stuck thinking about a couple of things over the past week or so. I can't seem to get them out of my head. Its quite frustrating actually. I'm just so used to thinking about things and solving the problems (if there is one), or discovering something.

As an aside,, while on the way home from badminton the other day, I came up with a rather ridiculous theory as to why theres so many small Vietnamese people in this generation. So it goes like this: The Vietnam war was aroud '79. So there was a lot of stuff going on, lots of people dying and so forth. In that kind of warfare, snipers were pretty dominant. So if you youi're tall, and in the jungle, you're more likely to get shot than if you're small and in the jungle. It deson't really matter how far you can see, but rather on what you can see. In desert warfare, thats a different story - theres nowhere to hide. So during the years that the war was going on, all the tall soldiers were more likely to be shot than the smaller ones, thus restricting the gene pool in the country to generally smaller people.

This works well because most of the Vietnamese people I know are around my age. So, if the war ended in '79, the adults who survived would be having kids soon after that. So for everyone remainging in Vietnam, they're more likely to be procreating with people who haven't been shot during the way (i.e. the little people). Little people and little people make more little people.

Okay so thats turned out to be more than an aside, and it certainly wasn't what I've been thinking about for the last week or so, but I thought it was pretty good, and couildn't really find any holes in the theory...

I think we'll just leave it at that tonight.

Changing Soh's Life

In all honesty, this probably isn't the best thing to post about, but nobody else has posted anything interesting at all recently. I'm just going to use that as a rather flimsy justification as to why I am. However, I'm going to keep it deliberately vague in an (probably futile) attempt to protect my reputation.

Supposedly I'm the quiet one in the group. Some might even say the quiet achiever (me not being one of them). Hardly anything ever happens to me. So when something crazy happens, its quite a big thing. Evidently one of these things big enough to change Soh's life happened during the events of yesterday's evening. While I can see where he's coming from, from my point of view, I'm not really sure what to think of it. I guess it was quite an eye opener about some people I've only recently met to say the very least.

I have to admit, it was fun though. We almost didn't end up even going out because I was feeling lazy and it was starting to get late too. In the end, it was probably a lot better than sitting on my arse at home and watching it get fatter by the minute.

Oh and somebody hit me on my neck :/ Its bruised =(

Saturday night

Still only half sober from tonight. Borrowing a line from Soh: Tonight was err... "Interesting"

There was something good...

I was going to write about something else, but its changed.

There seems to be a lot about what we're going to be doing next year, since a lot of us are finally graducating from university at the end of this year. Some of us have even already got options lined up for next year already. So they know at the very least what they'll have to fall back on if nothing else turns up.

I don't often think about my future. Usually I just take it how it comes. Towards the end of last year, and the start of this year have beena little different. I've had to think about what I actually want to do with myself, and more importantly, how I'm going to do it.

To tell you the truth, I don't really like it. It makes you a bit more mature, which is kind of good in some respects, but you come to the conclusion that you're actually growing up. While having responsibility is usually good on the bank account balance from a occupational point of view, but not really when it comes to life in general. More responsibility just means more things to worry about and do, so the laziness part comes back into it as it always seems to do.

Lets just say I'm not looking forward to it.

Birthday

Another weekend post, but I guess this time its something special. I had my 21st birthday party this weekend. It was pretty special because well.. it was my 21st. The night was really enjoyable, and I probably didn't get as drunk as I had planned, but I think thats kind of a good thing, bceause nobody else was really getting drunk, and its not good to be drunk at your own 21st anyway.

Its probably a bit arrogant to say this, but it felt good having a bunch of people who are all there to celebrate something about you. Even though a lot of people probably only went for the free food and the free drink, I'm just going to pretend they didn't :). Nah, its just nice to know that people think you're special enough to go out of their way to get you a pressie and hang out with you for the evening, then stand around for ages trying to decide what to do next, and then realise that what got decided isn't rreally something they want to do anyway. Oh well.. I guess kareoke isn't for everyone.

Presents were nice however. I got some shirts and a tie and a wireless mouse and keyboard, so now I can be really lazy. There was also a webcam, so those of you who feel like having a chat, just you know... message me. But I'm not into all that kinky stuff okay?

People from work got me a pen and a business card holder... which is kinda optimistic.. but we'll see how it goes. Maybe if they have enough confidence in me, it'll be all good and things wil turn out okay.

There was also some cologne. Obligatory, but always makes you wonder about what the giver things you smell like. Its okay though... I think... maybe it was just that time I was playing tennis with them... and sweating... yes... that must've been it.

Anyway, after that we went to kareoke. Most didn't go, but that was kind of expected anyway. Oh well, thanks people for coming anyway, even if you had to be somewhere else earlier and stuff.

P.S. People who actually know me can ask for pics and video if they like.

Awwww

Not much has happened. I had my birthday day... which was nice. Theres a dinner thing tomorrow night, which will probably be very nice too.

This was nice also.

My doggie is gone :(

She's gone... mainly due to family politics and squabbling.

I miss her already.

I'm back to normal now... I think

No, I haven't got a chick, nor have I been or even seen a gym.

I did, however, shoot some things this weekend (virtually of course).

This is bad...

Having a bit of trouble sleeping. Couldn't get to sleep last night until about 1:30am. Its almost 2am now and I'm still having trouble getting to sleep. Have to get up both days at 6:30 - 7am. I don't know if its related to the previous post, but chances are it is. Nothing happens by coincidence, or by an act of God (but that one is between you and the insurance company).

What the?

I really don't know whether I should be blogging about this. Its almost like I'm fishing for sympathy, but I'd rather not get any extra because of it.

The day goes like a normal day now. They're longer because I happen to be both getting up earlier and doing more with the time that I have. That is, I'm not just coming home and sitting on my arse. Theres things to do, like walk the dog, do the chores, make chit chat with relatives. Computer games have become only a small part of the evening, but I often wish I could spend more time playing them. It makes the time go a bit faster, or slower, depending on what I'm doing or if I'm doing anything.

Half of me is quite unhappy at the moment. The other half is actually quite confused as to why that is so. It really doesn't make any sense at all. Its quite a constrast to my sister at the moment who is completely smitten and quite enthusiastic about everything she can put her hands on. As I mentioned to Tez the other day, a couple of weeks ago I couldn't have really complained about anything, and nothing has changed since then, but I just don't feel the same. Some things have just become meaningless, and I don't enjoy some things as much as I used to.

One of those things would have to be conversation. I'm sorry if I'm anti social in the near future or have been recently. Its quite deliberate, and I'm really not thinking about anything else, I just don't feel like saying anything. Yes, thats probably exactly what I used to be like at school, and its relevant because the last time I felt like this was probably at school. Even then, I haven't even changed much. Its not that I think nobody wants to hear what I have to say (I've already known that for a while), its almost as if I can't be bothered saying it.

I'm not quite embracing my irrationality as of this moment.

Bit of a downer

Haven't really been myself recently. Somehow I don't seem to be enjoying things as much as before. Theres a bunch of things I guess. *sigh*

One quite big possbility at solving this rut is to get out more.

Short and sweet

For some reason, last night turned into one of those huge D&M conversations even after getting back home around 2:30am. Some of what was said will remain unsaid, but theres one thing that I think I discovered about myself which I thought warrented some attention. Somehow it just evolved came from a bunch of rather unrelated topics we were talking about and kind of thinking about it on the way home.

You'd like to think that humans are rational. In many cases, it would be quite safe to say that they are. The whole basis of economic theory is on that assumption, and we normally live our lives thinking that we are relatively rational, with the odd exceptions. E.g. Drunk, homeless people mumbling profanities on the way to where ever it is they go to when they're drunk and homeless. We see these outsiders as crazy and at the very least, a little hard to understand.

I realised that we're actually not all that different. For periods in our lives, we're quite irrational. Its part of what makes us human, and if you try to suppress that, then you're probably not going to get the whole 'experience' thing out of life. Theres some things you can only really do if you're not thinking straight. Somehow to me, they can be the most interesting and enjoyable things you can do. We shouldn't be shunning away from our illogical side, we should be incorporating it into our lives. This is not to say that I endorse crazy people, I'm just saying that we should live with and make the most of what we've got.

Basically, its irrational to think that we're rational, because we're not. Now thats a pretty paradoxial statement, but I'm sure you'll understand what I'm trying to say if you stare at it and run it through you head enough times.

Something of note

Office chicks are HOT.

I think its the suit that just does it for me.

Visit to the new place

The company I'm working at is going to move locations in about the middle of the year. I won't even be there when they move, but they had these tours on. So a bunch of us went down to the new place and scoped it out. The views there are a lot better than what they have at the moment, which is nice. The other plus thing about moving is that theres a lot of new things that come in. For example, furnaiture, err... new places, new security passes. Its nice.

In addition to that, I went to see 'Memoirs of a Geisha' tonight for Grace's birthday thing. It was actually quite good. I went in not knowing what it was going to be about (except maybe a geisha) and without reading the book either. Normally when I see films based on books, it turns out quite disappointing, but since I hadn't read it, the movie didn't have my imagination to compete against, so it did pretty well! Probably a 4/5 stars.

Last night

Yesterday was the last day at work for one of the people at my old work place, and he had a going away thing. I'd known Owen since I'd started there and I think its been almost a whole year. Its sad to think that I probably won't see him for a very long time, if at all.

There was the usual drinks thing, then got transferred to a small club again, just like the Christmas breakup. It was also an oppurtunity to catch up with SK, one of the guys who left the company a while ago to go to India. He's back, and being his usual self, just kinda wandering around and being as lazy as he can be. I should be one to critisise someone about being lazy, but hey, I understand where he's coming from.

I left pretty early, because getting public transport home is next to impossible for me after 10:20. But Justin had come down from Sydney and was doing kareoke in the city as well soo....

After I hurt everyone's ears, we went home.

- All this after forgetting to bring my wallet. This post brought to you by Terence and Justin.

The past few days

Its been an interesting time at work. The whole corporate culture thing hasn't really been a thing at the last place I worked at. Its probably because all I really talked to was my direct line manager and the people in my team. At this vacation work place, theres a lot more interaction with other teams and so forth. Its probably because we're more a supporting role rather than in actual operations, so we're responsible for a bit more.

Meetings are a new thing for me. My last job only had team meetings that really didn't accomplish much at all. All we talked about was how the team was going, and only a couple (out of about 10) people actually said anything constructive. 'Real' meetings on the other hand have a bunch of agendas, set things as goals for further work, and even have a printable agenda. I went to one of these and it was actually quite interesting. It involved the IT people supporting a system, and the manager of the people who used the system. I didn't really know what they were talking about most of the time, but I guess thats what kept it interesting.

So guess what? I organised my first meeting the other day. It was about the project I've been given to work on. It involved the HR lady (the business owner of the system), and a couple of IT people. We worked out quite a bit and it gave me some more work to do over the next couple of days.

Politics at work isn't all that prelevant either. I guess being an intern for two months kind of excludes you from that aspect of it. However, I'm not really looking forward to any increase in politics. Its just really annoying, but I guess it helps to keep the lunch break with people interesting :)

Oh Damnit...

I knew I shouldn't have done it...


You're My Little Pony!! Sweet and innocent and
happy, you make people want to spew burrito
chunks. Even a Care Bear could kick your ass.


What childhood toy from the 80s are you?
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Thanks Michelle!

What I've been up to.

New years eve:
Eat - drink - eat - play xbox and cards

Since the 4th of jan:
Work

Just this last weekend:
Singstar on Friday night (I'm a hopeful)
BBQ on Saturday (as per pics)
Hung around with Terence on Sunday (Yes, we were bored)

Tonight:
Dad's birthday celebration
Its the first time I can actually remember where dad actually got into the whole celebrating thing, even though short lived. It was actually really suprising

Other news:
I need to go on a diet.

Saturday BBQ

Words may come later...
Incriminating Photos.

My first day... and second day

I probably should have written something about my first day of vac work yesterday, but there wasn't really that much to say, and I clearly had more pressing issues to write about. On the first day at my previous job there was a lot of talk about public transport. Theres less about public transport lately because all I do on the bus now is just go to sleep. I almost missed my stop on the way back today, but I'm just lucky that I only get off at the last stop on the way in to work. Anyway, theres nothing more to say about public transport in this city.

Yesterday was just an induction day. Somehow I'd convinced myself that there were a few IT interns starting alongside me, instead theres actually only one intern per department. That sort of thing does things for the ego :) There was just the usual meet and greet, OH&S stuff, harrasment and discrimination stuff, and then the legal and compliance stuff.

Near the end of the day we all got dropped off to our relevant departments. I'm kind of removed from everyone else. IT seems to be stuck in the corner somehow. Oh well, its not too bad. At least I don't feel like I'm in a big chicken farm. The others just have rows and rows of desks and stuff.

I also found out a lot more about what I'm meant to be doing over the period. There is a lot of BCP so I'm helping to do some stuff that will help in the event of a catastrophe involved. It looks a little exciting, but then, not really.

All us interns seem to be getting along pretty well. We've been to lunch the past couple of days. Most of us don't really seem to be doing much. Others seem to have their hands completely full.

All in all, its going pretty well.

P.S. I started writing this yesterday, but only finished it today (6/1/06). Sorry.

The redistribution of funds was never so complicated

It seems to me that the Australian Welfare Agency (Centrelink) has gone mad.

This is what happened:
- I applied for Youth Allowance.
- I gave them my TFN.
- They say that they're gonna use this TFN to do all sorts of stuff.

In addition to that, they want something to verify my previous year's income (which should have been lodged with the ATO) in addition to some payslips (which is fair enough).

However, they also want "proof of birth". What I want to know is why someone who doesn't exist want to work, study, and pay heaps of tax. Moreover, why would someone go to the trouble of working that much, and studying that much just to claim a measly few hundred dollars from Centrelink. They might as well just keep working.

On top of that they also want other documents to make that 100 point ID check. This doesn't include the birth certificate. Chances are that if you don't have a bank account, you're screwed in this department. Theres not too many students I know which have defence discharge papers, shooters licences, or security licences to make 70 points. Nor are students likely to have children's birth certificates, divorce papers, educational certificates (thats why they're studying), mortgage papers, a registration certificate from a professional board (another reason why they're studying), and also unlikely to have participated in any Australian Defence Force tours of duty, thus denying themselves access to a Veterans' Affairs Gold card (all worth 40 points).

They don't make it easy for people who don't have time to pop on by their local Centrelink customer service centre. For some reason, only original documents are acceptable. I'm certainly not going to mail my bank/credit card, Medicare card or driver's license to them. If I do, in the off chance that I find myself with measles on the weekend, its going to be a nightmare. Firstly, I get pulled over by cops on the way to the hospital/doctor without a license. Then when I walk the rest of the way to the doctor/hospital, I don't have a Medicare card so I don't get reimbursed the exorbitant amount they charge. Finally, to top it all off, I can't even pay that amount because I don't have any cash left in my wallet because I'm unable to withdraw any funds from the bank.

I'm delaying my application for Youth Allowance until semester starts again.

Reflecting on the year gone by...

So its 2006. Normally people would say something about happy new years around about now. But I've already missed it by a few days and it doesn't feel any different being now that I have to write 2006 instead of 2005. I like using it more as a milestone rather than anything else - kind of like birthdays, but thats a whole other story.

2005 kind of went like a blur. I don't really remember anything extremely significant. Whether that reflects on what I feel is important or that nothing really important actually happened is probably up to you to decide. I suppose I should do some sort of list as to what happened. Lots of other people seem to be doing the same thing.

Lets see...
- I turned 20.
- I got a nice job.
- I found out that working and studying sucks.
- I have money!
- I bought a laptop
- I did pretty well at uni
- After a very harrowing experience of rejection after rejection, I finally found some degree related vacation work at the first place I applied to.

Thats about all I can think of at the moment. Feel free to add to it if you feel like it.

Systemic Issues?

I wonder why it takes them a whole day to replace something thats broken. Technically the company I work for is meant to be an IT services company. Yet somehow it has trouble providing those IT services to the people who work there. The last time this happened, it took us days to get back online.

Anyhoo, I shouldn't really be complaining. It gave us the oppurtunity to sit around and do a bit of nothing. Actually it turned out to be a lot of nothing, and an extremely long lunch break. But hey, not really our fault. Its not like we shouldn't take advantage of the situation to have some team bonding time. In the end, we ended up going to the client's place to do the work that the client was paying us to do at our own place. They weren't really complaining either I don't think since nobody actually knew who's fault it was.

Not much I can do about it I guess.

System Issues

We can't access our client's system, so instead, we're all just sitting around doing nothing. Well... almost anyway.

Yesterday was beach day. The weather forecast was almost perfect. So we got off our arses and headed down to Torquay to have us some quality boogie boarding time. After getting stuck in Geelong for a while, we eventually made it there at around 12pm. It was pretty packed and full of people, but a claim was staked on our little part of the beach.

Isn't much else to say about the beach really. We just did what we normally do when people go to the beach. That is, sit around, get sunburnt, have a swim around, do some boarding, and then have a bit of a perve. Or maybe that was just me...

Work breakup and stuff

Friday was supposedly our Christmas breakup at work. We just went to have dinner, went to some other place for more drinks, and then went to a small club type thing. It was actually quite fun. Dinner was ok, drinks was fun for a while. I think I'm over beer now too. For some reason I just can't take it anymore. Beer just tastes like wee now for some reason, and it makes me wanna throw up.

It kind of counted as a farewell for another person at work. He's going to another part of the company for a while, and nobody is sure whether he's actually coming back. So.. that was a pretty big thing I guess.

Christmas eve - Mah jong and Carols on TV

Christmas -
Had some trouble getting up in the morning to go to work. Eventually made it. It wasn't very busy at all. The only good thing was that afterwards, we got to eat heaps. After that, I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day. Ended up sitting around for a while then heading out to someone's place to sit around. Then we kind of moved to Tez's place to sit around some more. Awesome.

So OVER Christmas

Its true.

Going to see the movies

Its about time I wrote something. Even somebody at work noticed I hadn't really updated this blog. I didn't think they even checked it anymore. Although... my team leader found out I had this only a few days ago. Anyway - need to write something.

Its also a long time since I went to see a movie... that is.. at the cinemas. Apart from there being nothing out that I really want to see, its almost like I can't be bothered.

Now I wonder why I even went to see them in the first place. Movies are nice to watch, but going all the way to your local shopping center (or casino as the case may be) with a few people to watch something where you don't really talk to each other seems kind of pointless. At least I think you're not meant to talk to each other during the movie unless everyone finds it really boring. Talking kind of ruins it.

A lot of the movies we've been to see over the past couple of years have been just that - movies. We don't do anything else before or after. We go to see a movie because its a movie we want to see rather than as a social event. It doesn't really help that we always seem to watch the 9:30 session, and by the time we get out, either nothing is really open or we don't have any money to gamble away.

In the end, I think I'd just prefer to go to a close friend's place (a friend who is close, rather than a close friend - lazy) and watch movies they happen to have. Its a lot easier than spending all that money and time going some place else for pretty much the same thing.

Don't take this the wrong way. I'll still go to a movie if something good is on, I was just pointing out all the bad things :)

Coming soon! - Ez griping about going clubbing

An update

Its not very often that I update anymore. I just don't feel I have a lot to say. Now if I were even slightly American, that probably wouldn't be true. If you've ever watched Fox news before, you'll know what I'm talking about. Its probably bad to generalise about the entire country via some very yappy news channel, but oh well. I do my generalising based on whatever empirical evidence I have, and if that doesn't work for you, then err.. whatever. So this post is just an update on what has been happening (or not happening as the case may be) in my life.

I learned how to play 500 today. Thats the card game if nobody knows what I'm talking about. Actually I was taught how to play a while ago, but at the time, I didn't really have a clue what it was about. But also after learning to play some other related games such as Hearts and Bridge, it worked out. The scoring system is just really weird.

Also, this Christmas I've decided I really can't be bothered with gifts. Maybe it shows my growing apathy towards the world and the people around me. I like to think that its just me being lazy. Maybe its because I realize that Christmas doesn't really mean all that much to me - the celebration of somebody's birthday is irrelevant if I don't really believe that person exist(ed). On the more commercialised side of things, spending money for other people at some single point of the year isn't exactly the most sincerely generous thing to do. I find it extremely superficial. And that just makes me sound like a pompous bastard. Oh I'm of all sorts today.

The weekends while working

Its quite different when you have weekends during uni and when you have weekends while you're working. During uni, weekends are just another part of the week. You can still go out and have fun during the week, and do whatever you happen to do. Some people even just take time off uni to do that. That is, err.. skip some classes. But when you go home, you can have assignments to do, exams to study for, etc.

On the other hand, if you're working, usually your days off are just that - days off. Work isn't a concern until the night before you have to go back again. You'd only have to worry about work if you had a job where you had to be on call. But then again, you should get paid a whole crapload if you were called in. You should only really be thinking about work if you're a workaholic, and you take work home with you.

But weekends seem more precious somehow. Maybe its just me, but somehow I manage to fill my weekends with things to do all the time. I guess its nice to have friends who invite you to things :)

I'm still here?!

Staying late at the office is actually pretty scary. Nobody is around to talk to, although I can hear some clicking of keys from the other side of the office. Maybe I should clarify that by saying nobody I know and work with is here to talk to. The only consolation I have is this giant TV sitting next to me. Can't watch anything on it though. One possibility I have is to blog on it, but somehow I don't think thats going to work.

Corporate Working Life

From my rather small level of experience with the office life, I've decided to write a little about it. The office is a contrast from what I've always been used to. There are of course always the perks that come from being with bunch of people for long hours and weeks at a time. That is, the relatively high level of gossiping about peoples' private lives and goings on. Other things are different.

One of the best things about working is that when you get home after a long day, chances are you won't have to think about work any more until the morning. That leave s you free to watch TV all night or whatever you want. Studying and working at the same time sucks, as when you get home, you realise that you still have that huge assignment thats due tomorrow and you haven't finished yet. Although it does give you a little incentive to start early on those.

In contrast to previous things such as school and uni, the type of gossiping is quite different too. I guess this in part comes from the vast difference in age and siginificance of the gossip. For example, a romantic relationship in the office is usually of more significance than one with people studying the same subject at university. If, God forbid, you happen to get into one of these with someone in a higher position than you, it can work well, or if it turns out bad, could be disasterous for your career. So for many people, its not a road they're usually willing to go down. For others, its an oppurtunity to move up the food chain.

I guess that leads on to politics in the office. Somehow, its remarkably similar to school life. Theres a few situational things which make it so. Firstly, you don't get to choose who you're with. School classes were set for the whole year, so when you get into a job, the people that you work with won't change until somebody either leaves or gets hired. Its a little different from uni where you have more of a chance to pick your friends and the people you hang around. So basically, if you're working with somebody you don't like, its probably a good idea to just get used to it. Talking about them behind their back normally doesn't really help the situation, because in an office, rumours spread like wildfire. Trust me.

Another thing is that there will be some manager person who has authority over you. In school, this was your teacher. If you got along well with them, you'd probably do well. Otherwise, you weren't going to get anywhere. Take for example a certain Mr. Geography/History teacher at my high school. For the whole year, he didn't even know my name. In the end, I got 50 for the subject. To his credit, I'll admit that I can't colour in very well, but my geography is probably better than your average person. I think he decided that it would be harsh to fail anyone he didn't know, but it wouldn't do to have them do really well either. I guess thats what happens when your manager doesn't know who you are either. Performance reviews probably aren't going to be glowing.

So people who want to move up in the company suck up to the managers. They get noticed, and then they get promoted. It sucks how that works (or how it doesn't). Politics is just something you have to deal with if you're in the office. Although this is probably a lot less prevelant in a smaller organisation. There aren't that many people to suck up to, and less people to do it.

Although probably not specific to an office working environment, an organisation's culture is also important to a job. I'm not talking country culture here. We'd normally be used to the culture of a country we're in, and if we're not, that'd be a whole other blog post. We're talking about the culture specific to a company. A supporting culture is probably a lot better than one which is focused on individuals and ambition. At least for the comfort of the employees. Its a pretty big topic, but if we just have the idea that its important, that will do :)

Anyhoo. Thats all I've got for now. Anyone else?

I hate interviews (and the selection process in general)

*sigh* Its over. I finally found some sort of industry related work to do over the summer. Hopefully it'll make finding a job some time after uni a lot easier. I was quite worried about it for a while. Everyone else seemed to get offered something a lot earlier, and for a while there I was content to accept the fact that I wasn't really good enough to get into anything. Although, I didn't really try that hard with companies like Deloitte and those sorts of companies. I think by the time I got to them , I just couldn't be stuffed anymore. They were all the same. Long, draining, and required a lot of things to be made up.

It kind of makes me think that I should have tried a little harder.

To get the position I was offered today was probably the longest selection process I've been through for a job. Well at least in terms of time required to go through it. Actually, Coles Myer may have taken longer, but I'm glad I didn't get a job there now.

Anyway, so the whole thing involved firstly a web based application which involved some psychometrics and the usual things involving employment etc. Then... just last month I finally got called about it. Took them long enough! 3 hours of psychometric testing later, and after some more anxious waiting time, there was the interview.

Apparently, the correlation for somebody's performance in an interview and their performance on the job is only something like .24 (if you use Pearson's d, the closer the number is to 1, or -1, the more likely it is that the two factors are related). Moreover, if you used an unstructured interview format, that is, if the interviewers just ask what they feel like asking instead of sticking to a script, then the correlation is something like .12. So I find it rather ridiculous that its the most widely used selection technique used to choose people. Other things like intelligence testing have a lot better correlation figures. I think that goes upto something like 0.6 for management related positions.

How much easier would it be if you could just do some sort of test which would be related to what sort of tasks you would actually do on the job, and you could be selected on that? I'm sure it wouldn't actually be too hard to set up. Although I guess for some jobs thats kind of unfeasible, (as they may actually need extensive training to do the job), it would still make sense in a lot of situations.

I'm guessing its because employers just want to make sure that you're not some sort of psycho axe killer who goes around bashing stuff up when they need to. Although... some of the people my current employer just recently hired sort of lean in that direction.

For those of you who asked, and anyone else who's interested, heres some of what happened today:
I actually got into the city quite early. The interview was only at 10am, but I was so used to going in to work at 9 that I got up around the same time and only left slightly later than normal. I ended up sitting at maccas eating breakfast, and just trying to kill time. Its not good to get there TOO early, so I've heard. 15 minutes was about right. It gives time for the receptionists to watch you reading the Australia Financial Review, as if you're actually interested in the economic markets. It was kind of funny actually, the receptionists got up to take me into the interview room, and they said I could take the paper in with me if I wanted to read it while waiting for the interviewers. I did so of course, what else was I meant to do except stare at blank walls?
Yeah.. so they come in, you say hello, shake their hand, etc. The usual and expected. Then they have a small chit chat about yourself. It turns out that the IT manager there lives in the same suburb I do. Helps with the whole getting to know each other thing.
Then they go through the structured part of the interview. I was told that it was going to be a behavioural one, and thats pretty much what it was. For those of you who are so sick of doing those web based applications, this would have been just like that except you had to do it on the spot, and also in person. So its hard to make things up. Thus, most of what I said was really quite honest, except for maybe a couple of things :P
So the things were the usual: Explain a situation where

you did something wrong

you felt really stressed/were under lots of pressure

something didn't go to plan

plans changed, and how you dealt with that etc.

Then there was the obligatory question: Where do you see youself a) at the end of your uni course, and b) in 5 years time?

I actually thought about that one for a while. Like... during the morning, and last night. Couldn't really come up with a coherent answer. It was quite unexpected, because when they asked, it just came to me. This is not to say that you shouldn't have a prepared answer for this type of question, I just didn't have one before I went in. My answer consisted of what would have been almost pure honesty. I said I don't know. Its hard to say because I'm not really too familiar with the industry, and the lack of experience hasn't really allowed me to see what kind of oppurtunities are available.

Apparently that was sufficient because the nice HR lady called me later to say congrats.

WOOHOO!

A big investment bank just offered me an intern position during Jan/Feb!!!

Thats a big load off my mind. Now... Just to turn down the other bank that offered me an interview. MUahahahahahahah!

Gold is up over $500US an ounce

Thats the most interesting thing I've heard all day. I'm so sick of 'buddying' with new people at work. Its really draining. Hopefully that will all be over soon. They're meant to start on ... actually its tomorrow!

Lazy day

Today was one of the laziest days I've ever had at work. Not only was it a Friday, it was really nice outside. So after actually getting to work early for once, we helped to train a lot of new people who are coming in. Then... we somehow got an unusually longer lunch, and even an extra break during the day while they were fixing some stuff up with the system.

Almost at the end of the day, I got another call from another bank, about another summer degree related position. Twas nice. Things are looking up! Although I don't think I should become too hopeful. Ah well, theres always my current job as backup.

blah

I have to start off with the obligatory excuse for not blogging so much recently: I just haven't had the inspiration. I think it has something to do with being stuck at home or being at work the whole week. Nothing has actually happened.

Had my 2nd last exam today. It was okay.

I have a psychometric test tomorrow for an intern job at a relatively large organisation. In addition, I also have a psychology exam. The exam is about Industrial and Organisational Psychology. Part of that is the selection process and the methods they use to choose the right people. How oddly ironic and somewhat appropriate.

Exams

I forgot to say how I think I went.

Welll.. Meh.

God... again

Because I've got nothing better to say.

While I'm waiting for the next episodes of my favourite TV shows to finish completing their transition, I'm going to blog. And because I'm a relatively boring person, theres nothing to blog about in my life.

My sister and I were having this discussion the other day, after she read my previous blogs. Actually, she refers to it an as argument, but I don't think I was really trying to argue anything, I was trying to understand something. Everyone seems to comment on hers like I'm the bad guy. Well fine, I'm the one who's going to hell by their standards, so whatever.

What I was trying to understand was the issue of faith. I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out why some people do make that 'leap of faith' and choose to believe in some higher being. The way I understand it now is that nobody actually understands God well enough to answer all the questions that seem to crop up about his existence. So in the void created by the lack of understanding, people have filled it with faith.

I don't think anybody really knows this, but sometime in year 12, when I was having one of those 'meaning of life' crisis, I went round to the local Christian gathering. This was about the time of the 9/11 thingy, so there were some flyers going around saying something like "Why did God let this occur?". So, procrastinating instead of studying for my exams, and trying to solve my rather bad state of depression, I figured I'd go and listen to what they had to say.

After a bunch of loud shouting (which seemed to be directed at me, I think I was the only gentile silly enough to read the flyer and attend), their arugment in a nutshell to explain the suicide flights was that God works in mysterious ways. I thought, omg, this sounds familiar. But nonetheless, I stayed behind to ask questions. Nothing they could come up with could actually go any further than that. Shouting at me doesn't really help the situation. I was after reason, not noise.
"We don't profess to know God's will." was their general gist of evading questions they didn't know how to answer. Well, neither do I, but I know that if I were God, the 'much greater good' would overcome the free will of a few suicide bombers who didn't really believe that I existed anyway. The sacred free will vs sacred humans lives thing. Maybe its because free will outlasts human life. That makes sense at least.

So I think that congregation still has faith that God let that happen because its all part of his plan. The preacher that night thought that part of that plan of sacrificing 4000 lives was to bring me into the fold. I guess he read that one wrong. There was another bloke who wrote this small book about God. It attempted to explain things. I read it, and it didn't really say anything I didn't already know (or hear about at least e.g. God loves us all awwwww *hugz*). I think I've still got that book somewhere.

Anyway, lets not get into the whole FW vs GP debate again, we've been over that.

So the hole that faith seems to fill is a big one for me. For others, its a matter of simplicity: God obviously exists, because He makes a big impact on my life. He creates a world where I'm mostly happy, and I have things which make me so. I should be thankful for the things He has done. Theres two problems (at least).

1. One is in the explanation: They assume that God exists or that the scriptures tell the truth, and then use this to justify the events. Normally I'd like to infer things from other things which are quite likely to be true. E.g. Pens write, I have a pen, therefore I can use the pen to write. Whereas 'believers' tend to think, I can write, pens can write, therefore I must have a pen. You could have a bowling ball dipped in paint and roll it around a large piece of canvas, but I'm not sure if thats writing. Assuming the conclusion and then using the conclusion to explain things isn't a very good approach.


2. Another is in the way they form the causal link between God and all the things that happen. Oh crap, I just realised this goes into all that FW and determinism shit again. Nup, screw that. Wait... I've got something. People pray to God asking for things. (E.g. "Please help me to do well on my exams...", "Help me get some more friends who are nice", or a more altruistic one: "Help me to help others") Let's see where I can take this without touching on determinism.
   Theres a lot of conflicting views on how God is meant to be a part of your life. To some, he heals illnesses, solves worldly problems, and generally does nice things. To others, he's only a spiritual guider, supposedly leading people towards what they imagine he wants them to be. There are a lot of published instances where poeple have said that their belief in God has somehow allowed them to escape some life draining disease which the doctors said was terminal. Somehow, I don't see how they get to that conclusion. Don't rubbish me with that 'Oh it must be God, what else could it be?' thing. It could be anything. Maybe it was a misdiagnosis. Maybe the doctors don't actually understand the disease well enough to explain why it happened. We don't even understand how or why we develop different types of cells yet, so understanding the rest of the body could take a bit of doing. Jumping to a conclusion of a higher being, wayyyyyy beyond our level of understanding, imbuing one person with the ability to overcome a terminal disease, the silently retreating, isn't exactly rock solid. Maybe aliens landed during the night and transplanted their prostate while they weren't looking. I think thats got about as much of a chance as the God one.

Faith does not remove the need for reason and justification. It just bypasses it. When people talk about testing faith, I think they're referring to testing whether their rational thinking would overtake their somewhat hard to justify beliefs. I don't see why people resist. Unless reason is the devil, and heaven is the ultimate mindnumbing place where absolutely no rational thought takes place, I'd be inclined to go for reason.

Forgive me for being blunt, but I think faith is a layman's way of looking at the world. Its like saying... 'Oh I can't be stuffed figuring it out, I'll just go by what you said even though it doesn't really make sense'. Seeking to understand something, and having the ability to admit the lack of understanding in something is more wisdom than just having the faith to believe. I know I always say "Whatever you say" or just agree with most things, but a lot of the time its to reduce conflict. But for the things that really matter, I'll take a stand.

As for Fi's idea of listening, yeah, sometimes we're not always right.
"god's always listenin to mE i can vouch for that" (Fi, 2005)
"God exists because I say so" (The implcation?)

Awesome

I just woke up at around 12:45. Since then, I've been studying for my computer science subject - interactive system design. I think I've finished. Thats a record for me. I even managed to answer the questions to the past 5 years of exams. Well.. at least in my head and not on paper, but its not hard. They haven't changed much over the past few years, and they always ask this one question about affordances, constraints and natural mapping. Theres also always a question on key stroke level modelling. So thats about 20% of the exam which is pretty much set.

Too bad its a hurdle requirement to pass, otherwise I might have just answered those two. LoL.

Corporate Ethics

OK. I think thats enough talking about God for one week.

So tonight we're moving on to something a little bland. Thats right, you guessed it, corporate ethics. Now what do we mean by corporate ethics? Well, I don't actually know, so we're just gonna wing this one.

Theres a bunch of people going around arguing that corporations should be socially responsible. That is, they shouldn't take advantage of people, or the world in general. They should also give back to the community. For example, some guy at work managed to get a grant to give to his kid's kindergarden. All he had to do was apply, apparently. I thought it was kind of silly because only organisations nominated by employees could possibly get grants. In a way, its limiting the types and number of organisations which could obtain such benefits. What happens to the others?

What might be a better idea is to reduce the cost of their products to their customers, so that they can use the money they've saved to buy their own treehouse and donate it to the kindergarden. Better yet, they can spend it on booze.

Maybe it doesn't count because its a mega organisation which Australians seem to love to hate. I don't think I should say which one it is explicitly in case some suits rock up at my door threatening to disconnect my grandfather's cable tv. He lives on that thing.

Anyhoo. I'm here to argue that corporations shouldn't really need to do things like that. Companies (at least in Australia), are treated as separate legal entities from the people who own and work in them. One great thing about this is that if the company goes backrupt, the shareholders get away scot free. Unless of course you get caught. This is always fun when you pay youself heaps from your own company and then it goes kaput'. Then you get investigated and people in suits start raiding your pacific island and stealing your holiday boats :( .

Companies are created to simplify things, and make money. If you owned a company, it would probably be to make money. As a corporate entity, they have fixed levels of income tax (currently at 30%), which is a lot less than the current top income tax rate. They also let a bunch of people own it, which is different from a person. A person is still a legal entity but you can't own one. At least not in this country.

So why do people argue that corporations should be socially responsible? I don't know really. I guess its because people want to get over their own stupidity and want someone to blame when they did a big boo boo. Theres numerous examples of such things, heres two off the top of my head:

• I heard of this thing where this large bank was approving car loans to aboriginals at the top of Queenland. They were all living on centerlink benefits, so it ended up with people having something like $20 to live off every week after they made their loan repayments. I don't see this as socially irresponsible, I think its stupid. Not only are the people borrowing money a bit silly in biting off more than they can chew, the money lender is also kinda stupid. Which bank would lend people money if they know they can't pay it back? Thats right, the Commonwealth Bank. This is not to say that this is the only bank that does this. Banks lend money to dole bludgers all the time. Sittin on their arse and using their credit cards until they run out of limit, then go get another credit card. So I'm stereotyping, whatever...we'll get to that another day.


• Everyone knows about those people who have ridiculously high phone or internet bills. There was this whole saga how some poor sod who had a bill in the thousands of dollars. So what they did was go on telly, tell their sob story, and then somehow managed to get most of the bill written off. People should learn what they're getting themselves into. Sure, if you're new to the area, find out about it, consider some alternatives, then make your choice. Don't go blindly to the biggest thing you find and embrace it like Winni the Pooh Bear, however huggable it may be.
  

Ok I've had enough. Corporate Ethics is a load of crock. People aren't going to buy your products because you sponsor charity events or cancer curing organisations. Or maybe I'm just an evil capitalist >:D

In other news

1. Somebodys cat got shipped to France by accident.
2. Tomorrow is a public holiday (Melbourne Cup!) but I'm working, and will gets heaps of $$$$.
3. Exams are next week and I haven't started studying
4. Daylight savings has started and its scary

Next... Intelligent design

Keeping in line with this week's theme of writing heaps, its time to shoot down the idea of Intelligent design. I'm not going to take credit for this one. I actually read an article in a magazine which had most of the ideas I'm about to put down.

For those of you who don't know what we mean when we say Intelligent Design (ID), let me lay it down for you. Basically its the notion that this universe is too well designed, too well structured, for it to be made by chance. The idea is that it could only have happened if someone, or something, wanted it to happen out of concious thought (or whatever the alternative to thought may be).

So thats their argument basically. The world is too perfect to have been made by chance. I think its silly because nobody actually knows what the alternative is. Nothingness, including the non-existence of space, is hard to imagine. I mean, you could imagine it, but all I can come up with is blackness. The thing is though, even blackness is something. How can you possibly have nothing?

I'll be one of the first to admit that this universe does seem to be rather nice. I mean, the weight of a quark is supposedly good. Apparently if it were slightly different, the universe would have collapsed in on itself before it even begun. The thing is though, we would never be here to consider the possibility of intelligent design if it were different. Now I don't know whether the existence of this 'perfect universe' is actually enough to say that someone designed it. The existence of a universe would only show that one exists, not that something created it. Its like saying I have good eyes because I must have eaten some carrots. It could be true, but it is impossible determine the cause you only know the effect.

Then we run into the age old infinite question of, if it was made by something, then what made that something? To put it more explicitly, if a God made the universe, then who made God? And so on and so forth. It just goes nowhere, and then we're only delaying the inevitable. These questions are always fun to ask, however.

Lets say something did design the universe. I wonder how many they flopped through before they came up with this one. Universes that go backwards in time (Red Dwarf anyone?), or what about the one where they didn't get it right and it flopped before it even started? The possibilities are only limited by our imagination, or those of our creators. It kind of reminds me of thse time in chemistry when we were trying to separate some flammable liquid or something, and instead of it falling through the tube, it caught on fire. Oh the memories. But I digress...

This is not to say that ID is such a bad thing. They've got a theory, and trying to find evidence to support it. However, the only evidence they have is existence. The problem is drawing a substantial argument to link the two together apart from "just because".

Oh the mysteries of the universe... This one is almost as hard to figure out as why Soh is always late. I have a feeling that one will stay locked away for all eternity.

God's plan

There has always been this thing about fate. Many religions preach it, astrology certainly preaches it, The Matrix has some elements, and so does Mortal Kombat: The Movie (I am the one). What is it about fate that we find so attractive?

Keeping with my theme of bagging Christianity most of the time, I've decided to do just that. Justification of fate from a Christian point of view seems to revolve around the notion of God's plan. From my somewhat limited reading of Christian stories of rebirth and divine intervention (its so short, I'll list it: Run Baby Run, starring Nicky Cruz; The Hiding Place, starring some Jews, I think and most recently, The Cross and the Switchblade, starring a minister with a cameo appearance from Nicky Cruz), they all seem to mention God's plan. The novels appear to basically present the author's narration of what they percieve to be God's plan working in their own lives, and how that has brought more people to Him.

So lets assume God's plan for people does exist for the moment.

Free will is another theme which is on the other side of the fence as fate. Belief in free will allows people to percieve that they have more control over their lives, that what they do has some impact - the whole cause and effect thing. As a side note, positive affectivity, i.e. the belief that one's actions can and will have an effect on one's life, reduces the risk of stress *insert fatalist comment from devoted communist here*.

Yet Christianity also preaches free will. God gave us free will, thats why Adam and Eve ate the apple from the tree. I, however, eat apples less frequently. Enough said about Christians and free will.

So how does God's plan (GP) fit in with Free Will (FW)?

I don't think they contradict too much. Apparently if you freely devote yourself to God, thats what it is. However, the problem lies in interaction. Fi says that God has someone for her, where they'll be perfect (in terms of being a spouse). Now, lets skip over the statistical probabilities of finding that said person, and that he exists. What if he doesn't quite follow GP? What if he's using his FW to marry some other person?

Moreover, whats to say that GP even involves having the best of things? Bill Gates is apparently the anti-christ, and he's doing quite well for himself.

I'd say Fi's pretty screwed. Maybe its because I don't believe in 'the one'. I think more along the lines that people grow to love each other and all that stuff.

Oh well, apparently it still all works out. Whatever happens, they can always just fall back on 'God works in mysterious ways'. Seems to work for just about everything, as long as you have faith.

I think I've asked more questions than I've answered. But I think I'll sum it up in a take home message:

(GP + FW) ~= Pig Wif (Read into it)

Life sucks, just do whatever. Maybe it'll work out.

P.S. Don't actually read into it if you don't get it to start off with. Its very obscure.

P.P.S. I have finished my psych assignment

Just an update on me assignment yarrr

Ok, so I missed "International Speak like a Pirate day" by a few months. Better late than never I always say. Although if you're going to be late, at least let me know so I can keep sleeping.

Currently my literature review is on 1789 words, not including references. I'd say thats actually pretty good considering I slept at around 1am last night without doing any more work on it since the end of uni that day and I've had several hours of uni today. Whats even more impressive is that my list of references is currently sitting at almost 2 pages,. Thats approximately 600 words in references speak (according to MS word), or approximately 4 times as many references as I have for my average assignment.

Too bad I haven't actually read a single one of them from start to finish.

Its the end of semester! Well.. almost

Last week!

Bad thing about it is that we have exams, and I've actually got an assignment due on Thursday, and I worked this evening, I'm probably working Wednesday and I'm probably working Thursday too. Oh well, at least I've kind of started on the assignment. I've actually written about 700 words already, which is a good thing.

Time for an update

A few things have happened since the last posting:

1. IS Ball
Probably wasn't one of the best balls I've been to. Not enough alchohol basically. Also, the music wasn't that great. They kept skipping the good songs and had some really weird techno stuff mixed in between. You can see Garry's new thing for some pics. Alice also had some too, but I dunno whether its ok to put them up.

2. Actually I dunno what number 2 is
It felt like I did a few things this week, but apparently not. Played tennis again with Age on Tuesday morning, but thats about it really.

A week of nothing

We're extremely understaffed at work. A string of people leaving and being unable to work, including a few people who are about to leave makes it very hard on a small team. It doesn't help that I'm not there either.

Other than that, nothing much is new. I have to find a new place to have lunch. The usual places are starting to get really boring and stuff.

The weekend went by so fast

So fast in fact that when I woke up this morning, I thought it was Friday.

Funny thing is though, I remember being really really bored on the weekend. I didn't actually DO anything except come into uni on Saturday and do my group assignment. The only other thing I did outside of the house was eat dinner at the restaurant. I think I skipped lunch and breakfast. No wait, I had lunch at red rooster on Saturday. Ah, its all coming back to me now (not Celine Dion style however).

As for what I did today... well.. almost missed the bus, came into uni, went to class, visited Terence at his consultation hour, went to class again, went out for lunch with relatives, came back to uni to do group assignment and now I'm sitting here, still at uni, blogging.

I'm actually waiting for dinner. Supposedly we're going out to some place in the city. We're not actually sure where we're going yet, but I'm sure it'll be some half baked place.

The other day when I was watching Batman Begins again, I noticed what made me like it so much. It was the music. That Hans Zimmer dude is so good. He also did the music for Gladiator, The Rock and The Lion King, just to name a few. Then I realised those are movies which I really liked as well (The Lion King is one of my all time favourties). I think its those really tense and inspirational scores he seems to come up with all the time. Its really inspriring of course, and it fits the scenes they've made in the movies really well.

Just today's 2c.

Something to write about

Or to write about nothing. There is actually nothing to write about, because I'm so bored tonight. Maybe I'll go see a movie by myself or something.

Another one of those strange things

I've noticed that our small circle of blogs seems to be a little funny. When one of us stops writing for an extended period of time, others seem to pick up the slack. Or maybe its the other way around. Maybe when one of us sees the others writing, they feel they don't need to write and 'fill in the gaps'.

Take for example last week. I didn't write a single word. In that week, Adrian wrote heaps. Even Sam wrote something once (however small and miniscule it might have been). The VMs seem to have bouts of inspiration, if thats the correct term. Theres occasional spurts of posts. Even Kerry, who normally only writes one or two posts a week came up with quite a few recently. Eric and his smallish blog is steady but seldom updated.

Now Adrian hasn't written anything, I've written a bit, and its like the amount of writing has more or less stayed the same overall. I'd blab on about harmony or chi and ki, but I don't think thats really relevant.

It was just curious to see the patterns. It doesn't really bother me why it happens, as long as I have something to read. Damn selfish of me :)

Home Alone

Tonight is a little lonely. I'm sitting in my room by myself, with nobody else in the house. My grandparents have gone on holiday, and so has my aunt. My sister is out at some church thing, and my parents are at work, as usual.

It may seem weird to some, but I'm rarely at home just by myself. I've always been used to having other people in the house with me. No its not because I'm popular, though sometimes I wish I were, its just that theres always some member of the family who's usually here. Usually my grandparents or aunt are at home. I'm used to the fact that my parents aren't at home, I don't think theres been more than a total of a month worth of nights where they've been at home earlier than 10pm in my entire life that I can remember.

This is not to say that its not that bad a thing. The experience is quite weird right now, and theres no nagging grandma or bored grandpa to distract me from what I'm doing (which was watching Batman Begins, again). It may just take a little getting used to... the serenity. Which reminds me of a strange thing my workmate was saying to me.

So heres the situation: You're on a really long road trip, playing Eye Spy.

"I spy, with my little eye, something starting with 'S'."
"Street sign"
"Nope"
"Shit"
"Nope"
"Steering wheel"
"Nope"
*Fast forward half an hour*
"Okay we give up, just tell us!"
"Oh you guys! SERENITY!"

Now who can actually SEE serenity?

Anyway, too much digression, or had I already finished what I was going to say? Oh well, that'll do.

No I'm not dead

I've been meaning to write for a while, just unable to build up the motivation to do so. I've also had something to write about for a while. It seems like a good idea to me, but will ultimately turn out to be a flop. Notice the conviction there. Ah.. literary genius in the making.

Chinese Product Quality

Firstly we need to define quality. It is not in the sense it has been used in the past i.e. with acronyms such as HQ, AQ etc. I didn't actually even know what those meant, nor the ranking system behind it. I think its only the guys who know. But I think I'll just leave it at that. Quality is (partly from dictionary.com's definition) as:

Superiority of kind: an intellect of unquestioned quality
OR
Degree or grade of excellence: yard goods of low quality

To me they mean the same thing. So to me that'll be enough.

In modern times, China has been associtated with low levels of quality. I shall now attempt to explain this phenomenon.

One of the problems with the Chinese culture is its selfishness. While it is officially a communist country, in reality its more of a dictatorship. The politburo controls everything, and the Communist party a.k.a. "The Party" supresses anyone who opposes them. It is only in recent times, with the advent of the Internet, that many of the Chinese have been able to speak out against the government. The Party epitomises the selfishness of the country. Many, dare I say, all of the members are in it to gain something personally. I don't mean to say that everyone is like that, and China is not the only country who has this kind of problem. We're all selfish to one degree or another.

The other issue which contributes to the problem is the short-sighted nature of a lot of Chinese people. This is probably true in a visual sense as well, but thats not really the point. Chinese will do whats best in the short term e.g. buy whats cheap even if its useless, sell dodgy products because possible punishment would be a relatively long time away. In fact, I'm in a room where the priority is actually going home right now instead of doing their assignment thats due on Friday. Gladly, I doubt anyone of them read this blog on a regular basis.

I don't actually wish to support this claim by any evidence, because this isn't really meant to be a substantial argument, plus I can't be bothered. Its just an inference I've made from my err... rather small period of life experiences.

Chinese, and quite possibly Asian people in general, are damn cheapasses. Yes, so I'm Asian too, and I'm a damn cheapass. From our sample size of one, we can generalise this to the rest of the population.

If you combine the above three propositions, you reach a conclusion where if the Chinese produce a product, we'll make it cheap, sell it even if its dodgy, and then it becomes your problem. If its your problem, we don't care about it anymore, and we won't spend any more resources on fixing your problem because... well... its yours. Following from this, if we're not prepared to fix your problem, we don't feel the need to reduce the problems that you have, that is, inproving the quality. Adding in the short term outlook, we couldn't care less if you are coming back to buy any more stuff later down the line.

In sum:
Selfishness + Short term outlook + Being a damn cheapass = Doing stuff at lowest cost == Low quality goods.