Tag Archives: Life

Just Another Sunny Day

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I look outside from my 6th floor office window.  Out there I can see a sunny blue sky, blocky office buildings and grey-white jetliners landing at the nearby airport.  I can almost feel the warmth outside.  I remember the warmth, that I felt while sitting with coworkers outside all of us enjoying a delicious, spicy Arabic lunch.  Delicious.  And totally inappropriate for me, since I try to avoid eating meat on Fridays.  I know that this usually applies to Lent only.  But I’m a traditionalist, and I do these odd little things to remember.  In the case of Fridays I try to remember the sacrifices of God undertook one Good Friday for humanity.

I also like to not eat too much.  The feeling of hunger makes eating so much more pleasurable.  But it also reminds to think about those less fortunate.  Not everyone can go and buy food when they feel hungry.  Not everyone has the option of not going through the day on an empty belly.  There is much to be thankful for.  I wish I could remember all the other things I could be thankful for.

At work I have gained an unfortunate reputation of being contrairian.  I mean yes, there are ways I would do things that would make my life easier, simpler and more productive.  But I guess I complained once too often.  I should of been more thankful that I work where I work.  I work with wonderful people.  I work in the profession I want to work in.  Fear of losing my job tomorrow is less likely than in other companies.  I am grateful.  I just complain of the things that cause stress for me.  I try not to point out all the things that are wrong.  But I must start sounding more positive.  I really should.  I just hate it when I feel stressed.  Stress does not bring out the best in me unlike with some people.  And I absolutely hate it when stress comes in from up and above my control.

I am happy that my friend Marika hopefully will start upon her dream job of working as a freelancer.  She works hard, and does a great job as both a writer and an editor.  I know, I went to class with her.  I read her articles, she read mine.  I learned from her, and her work inspired me to push myself.  I feel a tinge of jealousy though.  Freelancing sounds like a great gig.  A lot of freedom comes with the territory.  I sometimes wish I could go upon such a path.  Maybe one day I will.

A little while later…

It is becoming a rainy day.  Oh well…  Fun going back home.  Interesting little thought, everyday I try working on my wish list.   Sometimes I feel like I managed to go work toward obtaining my wishes.  Sometimes I can’t be too sure.  This back and forth nature is something I have yet to come in terms with.  Still I want to write.  Still I want to learn to code Qt apps.  Still I want to live like an ordinary Canadian adult (I’m not sure what ordinary means… I guess that is a debateable definition).  Still I want my projects to succeed.  I wonder if I’ll be able to achieve all this stuff.  Or is this even up to me?

Bruised and Sore

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Uff! I’m bruised and tired from yesterday’s taekwondo session. The warmup consisted of a lot of running, jumping jacks, pushups, sit ups, and leg raisers. At the end I wanted to pass out from panting exhaustion on the floor. A great workout, followed by practice on kicking and hand motions. There is so much for me to perfect, but I think I’m making good progress. Still I’m months away from a black belt. Give a year or so. 🙂

This morning however I could not be bothered to get up. Or rather got up stiffer than a stiff. And sore, and parts of my anatomy (limbs I mean, I don’t know what you are thinking about) aren’t fully cooperative.  Movement in general today feels constrained and straining. I’m sure it will wear off by the time I go for the next session.

Fortunately, muscular bruising hasn’t adversly affected my thinking. The story and ideas for the novel are rapidly taking shape. And I’m enjoying writing it, since I have not thought out the entire story in such detail that it bores me. Instead every paragraph explorers a new thought and dream. I’m not sure how it will turn out and that is what makes it exciting. Also I started reading up on Qt development. I must say that the more I read about Qt and C++, the more I like those two technologies. I’m already looking forward to coding up my first C++ applications in the near future. Should be quite exciting. And finally a word about my secret project… I’ve done a fair bit of work on it, and I’m just dying to write about it. This project challenges me in everyway that I want to grow professionally and artistically. However I can’t openly talk about it… or maybe I could. We’ll see I guess once I have something concrete to show for my pains.

All in all I am bruised and sore.  But I’m excited with the prospects that appear before me. Little bits of sustained effort are paying off.

Coping with Disappointment

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Disappointments turn up everyday. Sometimes it can be personal like a lost love, a deathly sick relative, a bad business decision or any kind of personal loss. If you run out personal worries, the newspaper will happily provide more: war, crime, job losses, a bad economy, overzealous governments, et cetera ad nauseum. At times it can seem overwhelming.

Disappointments and worries form a good chunk of our days. And yet life goes on. We can not just give up, curl up in a ball and beg for sweet, sweet death. How else could improve our lot in life, ourselves and care for our loved ones? We simply must cope.

I do not claim to be any kind of expert in dealing with these issues. I recommend reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, as a good starting point. I can just say what works for me.

Writing works wonders in terms of self-therapy and self-discovery. Guy Allen, my writing professor recommended writing 20 minutes of just sheer writing about everything and nothing. It gets things off your chest. Dale Carnegie also recommends prayer or meditation. This lets you reflect and in the case of prayer ask for help in coping. Finally work and exercise. Work to keep your mind off things, and to help to see yourself as a productive person. Ever wonder why I talk about work and hobbies so often? And exercise keeps you fit, healthy and again lets you live in the moment. Embracing the moment and savouring it, helps one lead a full, happy and prosperous life.

Good Friday

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Today is Good Friday.  So while a statuary holiday in Canada, I’m not on holiday today.  Rather I have much to do, so I’ll keep this post short.

I wish everyone a great Good Friday and a happy Easter.  A reminder that God loved you so much He sent His only Son to die (in a particularly painful way too) and to rise again.  All this so that we could be saved.  I’m so glad He did so for all of us.

And if you don’t believe that, I wish a relaxing long weekend.  I’ll try to relax after I finish my long list of things to do now.  Maybe I’ll treat everyone with some of my writing, if I have the time.

Also happy birthday to you S.  I’m keeping you in my thoughts and prayers.

Drained

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I just read Marika’s blog on hunger.  And I felt compelled to blog something in return.  But today I draw a blank. Yesterday drained the life and will out of me.  Not complaining, since it was all my invention and doing.  Still the fact remains, I feel drained and without will.  And life feels greyer than it did before.

Today will be another cold snowy day.  Spring came by smiled and then winter came back with a vengence.  My limbs are still cold from standing outside for the bus.  I can now appreciate those early morning commutes, in a warm car.  Yes I got into the office really early.  But I miss the car now, and I didn’t appreciate it when it is no longer there.

Funny how people (at least I think) don’t notice those good things and good people, until you sense their absence.  We miss the light when it is dark.  The warm when it is cold.  Food when hunger strikes.  A comforting voice when there is none.   Yet when all is well, one can take things for granted.  Obviously not all people think like that, some are enlightened enough to know and not have to experience.

I should get back to bed and pretend to sleep.  After my pretend sleep, I will pretend to get up and live as a normal person.  You know the routine, get up, eat breakfast, wash up, dress, commute to work, work, return home, rest or work at home, sleep.  I’ll pretend to smile and be happy.  For the sake of the illusion of normality.  No one really like things out of the ordinary.  No wants to deal with the uncomfortable and inconvenient.  So one pretends it is not there.  If you are talented, you can pretend that you are alive and awake.  But you are just sleepwalking.

Today is an exercise in futility.  Just another sleepwalking existence, followed by bouts of regret and insomnia.

[This post is modern art in writing form.  It was not supposed to make sense.]

Shifting Sands and Schedules

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I’m blogging this entry fairly late in the day today.  I will enjoy sleeping longer and missing being in the office before the sunrises.  At least I will enjoy these guilty pleasures for the next couple of weeks.  Hence my blogging schedule will be thrown out of whack.  But I don’t mind the extra sleep.  I am definitely less cranky and more productive.

I should pick a better time to write this.  But I need a creative outlet.  Fighting with Perl and web applications, and reading reams of documentation can wear a person out.  I look forward to taking a change from Java.  But Perl is not a pretty language.  You can easily write code that you can’t maintain.  At least not easily.  The same could be said about Python, C or C++.  Still Perl can easily win a code obfuscation contest.  And my Perl skills need work.  Still I welcome to the shift from Java and JSP to mixture of Perl and my firm’s in-house RAD tools.  Even if it means wading through tons and tons of documentation.

Another shift is writing I guess.  I’m doing more of it, and enjoying it.  The effort of writing novel still drags on.  I blame my compulsive reading of RSS feeds, and magazines.  Still I like to stay in touch with the parts of the tech world that I enjoy and see future promise.  Also other tasks hang over my head, so it can be difficult to concentrate at times.  Writing and coding projects seem to move at a glacial pace nowadays.  Still they move forward.  I need to shift in Qt, C++ and Python coding again.

Lastly I have a trip to plan and random life tasks to do.  I’m excited about the results obviously.  But such tasks often involve decisions that take time and some can be life-altering.  I’d prefer that the tasks would do themselves.  But unfortunately my not doing them, is just procrastination.  That is what I’m doing right now, procrastination by writing.  I should get back to work now.

It is On My Desk

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No, I’m not mocking Marika’s blog name.  Rather this morning I am tired and uncreative.  At this point, the creative artist starts stealing ideas from more inspired artists.

Over the course of my university career, I learned the elegant art of organization.  The results from just a little effort and some smart thinking goes a long way.  Now I feel compelled to organize, pile, list and label everything.  Not because I’m a neat person by nature.  I just found organized chaos makes one so much productive than in an disorganized chaos.  And I’d rather waste my time dragging my butt out bed in the morning at sloth’s pace than waste time looking for my keycard frantically.  Instead of asking myself, “Where did I put so-and-so.”, I’d rather tell myself, “Great!  Found that things, and did the task.  Now I can do something for myself now.”

This morning I dragged myself out of bed to the sound of a humming computer.  Yesterday evening’s upgrade of my desktop to Jaunty went smoothly.  Except for a few prompts concerning configuration files.  With tired eyes, I clicked through said files, and then went to the task of pretending to be awake.  Some idle surfing later, then I tired to find that blasted receipt so I could expense a piece of hardware.  In contrast to what I said in the above paragraph, organizing papers still eludes me.  After a bunch of looking around I still couldn’t find what I needed.  Saddened I left for work, and tired hard not to fall asleep.

Today starts the first day of a new project at work.  And I start the day extra early for personal reasons.  Should be a fun new project.  But as I look what is on my desk, somethings impress me and others distress me.  The lack of the receipt spoils my attempt of filing my expenses yet again.  The lack of my laptop’s mouse, means a forced existance with only the touchpad/trackpoint.  The lack of coffee in my cup is of minor temporal concern.  I just need to stumble toward the coffee machine down the err… hall or aisle or office space.  I’ll figure out what to name I should call it when I wake up.

Presence and lack of certain items on my desk, help or hinder my efforts today.  The standard pen, notebook, laptop, headphones and USB pen drive means I can be productive to today.  I really miss my mice though.  The IBM branded water bottle is a nice touch.  The bastards never gave me a job, not being an intern and all.  But I like the bottle and soft briefcase I got from them.  The soft briefcase on my desk I could do without.  Paperwork, bills, papers and sad dysfunctional Internet Tablet all hide there.  They will demand I turn my attention at them.  The briefcase is there so that I can’t just wave away the work.  The chocolate bar wrapper sat on my desk until I noticed.  Nice chocolate waffer… not so great substitute for breakfast.  But breakfast I plan to grab from the sandwich bar downstairs once they open in a bit from now.

A welcome change to the items on my desk is the change of books.  Yesterday I finally finished Joseph Tissot’s How to Profit from Your Faults.  A fine read, but a hard read with so much quotes of saints and biblical references.  The books discussed how to deal with sins and all that inconvenient stuff a modern technocrat living in a postmodern positivist-relativist world, sometimes wishes he could wave away.  But alas the soul remains and the fallen nature of humanity is what it is.  Might as well find a way to make oneself better, even by exploiting ones faults.  Today instead I have Mary Beth Bonacci’s Real Love book.  A lighter read about dating, marriage, sexuality and all that jazz from a Catholic perspective.  Normally I don’t mention what I read, due to the obvious personal nature of things.  But today I don’t really care what anyone thinks.  And if I can piss off a positivist-relativist by showing that a logical thinking technocrat feels the need to read “God nonesense” and to delve into “antequated” religious thought, then that will make my day.  Rubbing salt into the wound I’m an anarcho-capitalist.  And I’m building your future world.  Enjoy!  Hopefully I managed to offend someone and ruin their day… just to meet my quota of negative karma feedback. 😛

Also I write this stuff, since I know part of my audience is of a traditional Catholic leaning.  And I just want to throw at least some token support and love your way.  God bless.  As for my open minded, non-discriminating friends, you understand the importance of transparency and free thought.  So I’m sure you don’t mind my occasional religious rants.

Another sort of welcome addition to the desk is the cellphone.  Yes another Nokia device, and not your standard phone.  Before I open up the box and set it up, I’m going to deal with Nokia’s tech support team again.  And Nokia tech folks, you are all wonderful people working for a very forward thinking and innovative company.  Having to send my Canadian bought IT to a repair place in the US via an American address IS NOT very forward thinking or smart.  Since the cellphone seems to have Asian roots, I’d rather not have to send it to Taiwan to get it repaired.  Unless of course you guys want to pay for the shipping, in which case I have no qualms.

Anyways enough of my rant today.  I need to get a coffee, reboot and get some work done for my dear, generous ex-client before I get to work on my new project.  Take care everyone.  I hope I haven’t offended to many of you.  Or my rant was not too long…  Have a happy April Fool’s day.  Avoid becoming a fool today.  Just adding some more words to get the word count to over a 1000 words (1006).  And I’m off.

Grey Clouds, Sunny Outlook

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I get into the office really early in the morning. These past fews I normally got greeted with a dark sky and street lights. Each day the sunrise earlier. But each day the sun would rise, brilliant lines of yellow, orange, red and pink would form across the skyline. In the distance the CN tower, banking towers and skyscraper condominiums would cut dark silhouettes into the brilliant sunrise.

Today I see the dark grey dramatic underbelly of clouds stretching across the sky. The morning greyness feels even greyier under this ceiling of cloud.

Today I am in a cheerful mood. Two more days until my work project changes. A few more tasks and I’ll be able to write my novel without interruption. I also finished reading the book I wanted to finish before the end of Lent. Kubuntu Linux has infested my work laptop. The new upcoming release of Jaunty (9.04) feels and looks amazing. Everything works out of the box, even the webcam and the Bluetooth mouse. Finally I’ll be able to catch up on correspondences. And start working on learning Qt and maybe a natural language (French or Italian?).

An Encore

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I didn’t update my blog yesterday.  Life turned out busier than I could imagine.  I am still catching up on things.  I took on so many tasks.  I have a trip to plan.  Writing and reading just piles up around me.  I’m not sure in which direction I should concentrate my efforts.  My efforts to catch up look comical at times.  And my only wish is that I too like those Hindu gods, could possess extra sets of arms and infinitely divideable attention, so I could actually finish everything.  Yet, with all the additional emotional chaos in my life, I still manage to move forward.  In the past, I would of just curled up and moaned myself to sleep.  Today I no longer have that luxury, I need to execute my plans and execute them well.

So a quick update is in order.

Writing

I’m still maintaining my daily blog entries.  Not a simple task at times, I keep on scrunging around for topics to write about.  I’m not sure how my PWC friend, Marika manages to update her blog twice a day and still find time to write books.  I’m marking her as yet another example of the craziness, creativity and sheer amazing output that Finns are capable of.  My own novel writing ground to a halt.  Too many distractions and too many random tasks are to blame here.  However, the novel is moving towards an iteration of an earlier novel idea and elements from other ideas.  I plan on dredging up those previous stories, modifying them to fit the theme and context of this novel.  It’ll probably end up looking like a post-apoc scifi “Jungle Book” of sorts.  If you can get that around your head, great, now help me understand it! 😀

Coding

I’m changing gears at work, so hobby programming is not on my list of high priorities at the moment.  I plan on getting back to Qt as soon as the rest of my life falls into place.  Also I’m holding back from contributing to the KDE and maemo projects for a bit.  I do need a bit more motivation to get involved.  Many using the platforms more often will make that happen.  But still need a working IT before I can even think about developing for maemo.

Life

Learning to feel at home driving.  Cellphone enroute.  Things starting to fall into place.  I just need more time, to get everything done.  Working on bring some sanity and regularity into my life.  This should help on the health side, cut down on giddiness, increase productivity and increase self-satisifaction.  With the warmer weather coming, I plan on getting out there more often.  So projects might need tabling until I have more time.  And a big thing is a planned trip, which will resolve certain important and nagging questions in my mind.

Sleepless in Toronto

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It is  too early to blog this morning.  I’m sitting in at work in an empty office space.  Alone, just a few lights and mostly in the dark.  Still dark outside with some street lights, the slow moving lights of communter’s car and random distant lights of various colours.  The sun still has an hour or so to make an appearance.  The ever present hum of the server room, and my own typing on my laptop’s keyboard fill the silence.  A quiet time.  A time for reflection.

I spent the last few days in reflection, wondering about the future.  Many things have happened to me in the past while.  Good things mostly this year.  Not always things that I recognized or expected, at least not in their current shape and form.  But that is life: organic, uncertain, growing and unpredictable.  In mechanistic mind, the complexity of interactions and the nature of things make life appear chaotic.  Cause and effect and free will and randomness appear.  Surprise should not arise in my mind.  The universe, built upon the chaotic foundations of the quantum world attains regularity from its design and the laws that govern it.  Chaos only appears, because God built a universe where free will can and truly exists.  Causality only paints part of the picture.  This should make me happy, but it also brings indecision.  Causality enforces the consequences of my actions.  But the underlying chaos gives me the freedom to decide and choose my own actions at any given moment.

I realize that today, I stand in a bright and hopeful future.  A future I could not predict or imagine.  No one expected that I should live on the other side of the ocean, far from my family and far my ancestor’s homeland.  Or maybe homelands, since the fate of many nations and peoples form the history of humanity.  No one expected me meeting the friends that I have.  Not ideal people, but good people who help and guide me on my journey through life.  No one expected my working where I do.  I neither planned nor expected such a company existed.  Nor did I plan on working with such a group of friendly, ambitious and professional coworkers.  I definitely never planned nor wanted to work with people so closely, as I do as a consultant.  But over the course of my life, I grew into these situations and all these things shaped me as I do.

So why should the future to look different in nature?  How large of leap it should be not to expect love from an unexpected person from an unexpected land?  Will it be truly so?  Who knows, but God.  And even He lets us play with this toy, the universe  He fashioned  exclusively for us.  His judgement may be swift and fierce.  But His kindness toward such a clumbsy, silly and pathetic race of beings as humans are, is infinite.  And He comes to our aid when we need it.  But I am going on an aside.  I say this publicly, cause I intend not to offer up excuses or lay obstacles to this person.  And I’ll let fate, circumstances and nature run its course, whatever that course may be.  And whatever those effects may be.  I trust God will deliver the right person to me.

It is too early to write this morning.  I have spoken my mind, which my experience tells me most people don’t want to know or hear.  And I may not enjoy their critism or them turning from me.  But I’m not writing for them.  They do not care about me, and I’m less than enthaustic about them.  I write for the person who said yes, when so many others said no.  Even very interesting others, but as sad, as arbitray this decision may seem, they had their chance but chose not to act upon it.  Their loss.  And I turn my attention to this person, and say let us see what comes of this.

It is too early to write this morning.