A piece of advice

Let me offer you one piece of advice: Do NOT take advice from other people! No other person can ever know your situation as well as you know it yourself. Perhaps they can offer some other point of view or a different perspective, but in the end, you need to take that information and absorb into yourself, so you can decide for yourself which way is best. Do not rely on people to choose for you. Learn from them and incorporate their knowledge into yourself. And then decide for yourself. Be it ulterior motives or lack of familiarity, no one can give you a perfectly clear answer. Trust yourself.

Involuntary procrastination?

I’ve seen procrastination defined asputting off something that you can do right now until much later, even though you would benefit from doing it right now. A lot of people relate that you shouldn’t put off something that takes only 5 minutes to complete. Doing it right away gets it out of your mind and out of the way. In my situation this doesn’t seem to work.

I have so many 5-minute tasks at work that I never get around to the real work. In the 5 minutes that I spend on one short task people will bring new 5-minute tasks to me and it’s impossible for me to keep up. As a result I spend my whole day solving 5-minute problems without making any real progress towards the big goals. I have some projects that I’d love to work on but I simply can’t concentrate on my work long enough because I have too much small things that require my attention as well. Imagine a painter wanting to paint his masterpiece but being forced to draw ten different crappy paintings at the same time because other people are demanding him to work for them. 

I have a period at work between 1PM and 3PM where I request no one to come to my desk so I can concentrate on my work. This works for people who work for me and might have questions, but it doesn’t work in the upper direction of the chain of command, so still people will come to talk to me or ask questions. Besides that I often have urgent deadlines or other side projects that need coordinating during this time, and as a result I find myself with a serious lack of ‘die-hard development time’. I can’t get in the flow of things. The only time that I can concentrate on my work is after 6PM, when most people have left the company. And by that time I’m usually so fed up by all my annoying little 5-minute tasks that I don’t have any brainpower left for a big project, so I just go home. Woe my lack of efficiency.

Unbelievable

Life never quite goes the way you expect it, does it? Sometimes you have a bad luck streak for months, and then suddenly all good things happen all at once. For me, this somehow seemed to coincide with a long period of boredom and a sudden period of totally unexpected news, both good and bad. I remember one of the lines from Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: “wait long enough and people may surprise you”. That is so true indeed, and I take great pleasure in being surprised again and again by the people around me. 

Anecdote: last Friday I flew to Beijing. I asked Northwest to give me a window seat, which I got. Sitting next to me was a Japanese woman, maybe in her 40’s, with a face mask, looking a bit anxious and ready to get airsick. Five days later I requested a window seat again, got it again, and next to me was again the same anxious Japanese woman! Amazing. Of all the flights we could take back to Japan, and of all the chairs in the airplane we could have been assigned to, somehow we ended up sitting next to each other twice. I would call it a sign of god, but she was married, so better luck next time, I guess. 

The time I spent in Beijing was nice. I wouldn’t call it uneventful, but I took it easy and didn’t rush around a lot. I took my time and relaxed, but at the same time my wonderful host Amyko-chan was stressed to the max with work, even on Sunday and on her day off. I hope that she can be less busy in the near future. Thanks to her I spent a great three days in BJ, and I managed to throw off all work-related stress of my own that had been piling up for months. It’s been a while since I went on holiday. 

Life is not so bad for me right now. I’ve got some good things to look forward to. The Christmas holidays are the first thing on my mind at the moment, but I’m also thinking ahead to the period after Christmas. Winter is coming, and it’s time to make some good new year’s resolutions and decide a path for myself. 

Enjoy life and the world will be your playground.

Beijing, why not?

Went to Beijing this weekend. Met Amyko. Took pictures. Did a bit of sightseeing. Did a bit of shopping. Did a lot of relaxing. Good. There’s something strange about China. Something that makes me feel at home. It’s so different from Japan. When leaving Japan and arriving in China, I found I disliked Beijing for everything that was different from Japan. After leaving Beijing I found I disliked Japan for everything that was not like Beijing. 

Crowded, chaotic, dirty and smoggy! That’s Beijing. But it’s also huge, wide and with lots of atmosphere, something that Tokyo lacks in a lot of places. You can’t find the kind of.. moody streets that Beijing has in Tokyo. Beijing has a history, and you can see it. The brick walls of the city speak a lot more than the cold neon lights of Tokyo. 

Without going into detail, I present you a rather poor picture of the back side of the Forbidden City. As usual, I promise to post more pictures later. If I’m not too lazy o_0

Chinese chess

About one year has passed since I began a language exchange with Zhao, a Chinese guy living in Japan. In the beginning we conversed in English and he would teach me the basics of Chinese, mostly the pronunciation and basic conversations. Alas for my lack of talent in learning a new language, as my progress was very slow indeed, although that might have something to do with my lack of interest as well. Several months after that we switched from the tedious step-by-step Chinese learning towards something that interested us both more: Chinese chess. 

I’ve gotten better since I first started, and I finally managed to win a game against Zhao about a month ago. Today we played again, and I won the first game, but I lost the second game due to an oversight in the end. In fact, every loss of mine has been due to an oversight in the end. I miss a crucial move and don’t realize that my king is in danger, and the next thing I know he already checkmated me. Usually I’m too focused on getting his strong pieces instead of going after his king directly, and that’s why I lost. Recently things are going better though, and I really enjoy playing. It’s a great exercise for my brain, provided that I’m awake enough after work to concentrate on the game. I hope I can get better

Rest

I went to Tokyo this weekend. Tried to explore the city a bit by doing a random walk. I had decided to walk in a random direction with the goal of trying to find a temple, any temple would do. I started from Kudanshita and walked towards Akihabara, although not on purpose. In the area in between I found nothing but large streets, boring skyscrapers and all kinds of stores. But nothing interesting. No temple, no mysterious tiny alleyway leading to a hidden place, no traditional Japanese houses, no parks, nothing. Just Tokyo. 

Even Akihabara was not like it used to be! The electric town exit seemed to be under construction, and the building that housed 90% of my favorite stores was closed down. I didn’t bother to spend more time in Akihabara and I went on. Eventually I reached Asakusabashi, which is certainly one of the more interesting stations I’ve seen in Tokyo so far. It’s tiny, very tiny. It gets dark very early these days, so at this point I just gave up and went back. 

Things I have learned this weekend:

• Tokyo can be extremely boring and ugly
• I no longer have that happy feeling that I used to get from Akihabara
• Weather does seem to affect my mood. I prefer colorful days

Well, that’s all for today. I really should update my blog more. 

(Side note: to be in touch with Buddha you must have a clear mind and a balanced soul!)