Working late

I just read this on CNN: Long working hours linked to high blood pressure.

Ironically, its now almost 9pm and I’m still at work. Yesterday, I worked till 1.30am and I’m expecting to leave no earlier than that today. I sure hope that that mention of “sudden death from overwork” in the CNN article is an exaggeration…

Father, Son and the Holy… Womb?

USA Today has an article about how the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is just short of adopting a new policy on alternate gender-inclusive phrasings for the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Some of the propsed names include “Mother, Child and Womb” and “Lover, Beloved, Love”. The first thought that came to me when I read this was that this could only happen in the States, where “political correctness” and “human rights and equality” are foremost. Read Pastor Mark Driscoll’s blog a funny take on this issue.

I find it ironic that as much as the US tried to separate state from religion, they are now letting politics (which to me is almost equivalent to the state) influence religion. Do we need to present the bible in a modern context/language? Yes, and that’s how we keep getting updated versions of the bible (eg. NIV, NASB) but do we really need to change the meaning of the bible in order to suit the prevailing culture? No. “Mother” does not mean Father, nor does “Womb” mean the Holy Spirit.

Cycling the Burke-Gilman Trail

I cycled to Seattle today on the Burke-Gilman trail which starts at Marymoor Park in Redmond and goes up North around Lake Washington and back down to Gasworks Park in Seattle. The trail is 27 miles (43.5km) one way and passes a number of parks and nice expensive houses along the lake. Its a relatively flat trail with a slight uphill gradient in the last 5 miles.

I had cycled this same trail there and back (54 miles or 87km) 2 months back and almost couldn’t make it back. Now that I’ve actually converted the number of miles to km, I’m starting to realize just how incredibly brave (read: stupid) I was to attempt that two-way return trip by myself. I was totally unprepared and unfit for that ride.

Anyway, today’s ride was much more pleasent. I went with some friends (and friends’ friends) who mostly rollerbladed, so that limited how fast I cycled to a comfortable speed. Not only was I cycling slower but I had company, and that really helped to take away the monotony of the middle 20 miles of the ride. From my epic 87km ride 2 months back, I remember only the first and last few miles. Everything in between was a blur of pain from cramping up or from sitting on the bike seat for too long. Also this time, thanks to some ingenious planning, some of us drove our cars to Gasworks early in the morning (7.30am! On at Saturday morning!) so that we needed only to blade/cycle one-way there and then drive back. I even had a chance to rollerblade the last few miles when I swapped with someone who had enough of blading.

New office

I moved offices today. Actually, to be more precise, professional movers moved offices for me sometime last night. In order to prevent us unfit computer nerd types from injuring ourselves moving stuff, MS has a policy that all office moves be done by professional movers, even if its just to an office down the hall. All I had to do was to pack my non-computer stuff in boxes and the movers will take care of the rest. One thing I was especially impressed with was that they took note of how my various computer systems were connected (which is quite complicated) and set up my systems in exactly the same way in my new office.

The reason I’m moving offices is so that I can be closer to the rest of my team. Due to space constraints when I first started 4 months ago, I had to be placed in an office on the first floor while the rest of my team was on the third floor on the other side of the building. It made collaboration (more like question-asking) rather inconvinent. Now that someone on my team has moved on to another position, a space opened up for me on the third floor and I was quickly moved upstairs. I like my new office, its brighter and much bigger. I’m still sharing it with someone else though, but my officemate, who is also on my team, is a cool guy. He has had lots of experience in the computer industry and I really enjoy talking to him and listening to his experiences. Here’s a photo of my new office. My table’s the one on the right side.

I’m already experiencing the advantages of being closer to my team. I feel more motivated at work, perhaps because people around me are working on the same stuff as I am but more likely because my manager’s office is just 2 doors away and I can’t slack off too much… hehe…

Americanized Chinese food

Being in the States for 4 years, I’ve had my share of Americanized Chinese (abbreviated AC from now on) food. From Crab Rangoon (cream cheese mixed with pieces of crabstick wrapped in wanton skin and deep fried – doesn’t taste as bad as it sounds) to General Tso’s Chicken (pieces of chicken dipped in batter then deep fried and served with some red spicy sauce – very greasy) I’ve had it all. A common theme to AC food would be that they are mostly deep fried. Besides the two abovementioned dishes, you can also commonly find deep fried spring rolls, deep fried coconut shrimp, deep fried sweet and sour pork… you get the idea. Its sad to think that many Americans will think that that’s all there is to Chinese food. I remember the many times I’ve gone to Chinese places with Americans and ended up ordering Cashew Chicken or Kung Pow Chicken (where do they come up with these names?) due to popular demand.

One skill you tend to pick up after suffering through endless meals of AC food is to be able to tell a place that serves authentic Chinese food from one that serves AC food. The simplest way would be to look at the name of the place. If the name has one of the following words, “Grand”, “China”, “Peking”, “Golden”, “Chopsticks” or “Palace” in its name, be very wary. Also, any place with a catchy slogan such as the one below, is a no-no.

What the heck is a “modern” Chinese restaurant? Perhaps they use electric stoves instead of charcoal burners to cook their food. Or maybe they’re running Windows Vista Beta instead of Windows 3.1.

Anyway, if you miss the tell-tale signs of an AC place from its name or slogan, you know you’re definitely in one when you’re given a fork and a spoon instead of chopsticks. Also, take a look around and you’ll notice that all the checks would come with complimentery fortune cookies (an American invention).

Talking about fortune cookies, here’s one of my favorites:

followed closely by:

check out www.weirdfortunecookies.com for more funny ones.

More about the ash (no cramps this time)

I spent most of today cleaning up from last week’s Mt St Helens climb. I started by unloading my car (yes, I’ve been driving around the entire week with a damp tent and sleeping bag in my boot.. ermm.. trunk). I then gave my tent a good wipe down to try to remove the ash. Note that I said “try”. Ash was everywhere, even on the inside walls of the tent. I have no idea how it got there. I finally gave up and just set up the tent to let the fabric dry off. Needless to say, I got a few strange stares from my neighbors as I was doing this on the grassy patch between my apartment and the parking lot.

Next, I washed my car. To see the multiple layers of dust (first layer from Dosewallips State Park three weeks ago, the second layer from the unpaved road that I had to drive to get to the Cascade Pass trailhead two weeks ago and finally the last layer of ash from St Helens) wash off with the soap and water was the most satisfying experience I’ve had the whole week. I like the feeling of driving around in a clean car. The cleaning continued with a thorough vacuum of the interior. However, no matter how hard I beat the carpets, I couldn’t get rid of the dust. So I decided to throw them away. I’ll buy new ones tomorrow, after all they were quite old and I’ve been wanting to buy new ones for a long time already.

The language I speak

Today the Singapore DAC, the “official” Singaporean group at MS somewhat like a SSA (Singapore Students’ Association), had a rather belated National Day celebration. They managed to get their hands on a copy of the National Day parade and screened it for us. There were door gifts of the usual Contact Singapore freebies (no orange umbrellas though…) and also food (what Singaporean event would be complete without food?). I got the chance to meet many of the other Singaporeans working at MS and it was a relief to be able to break out in “lahs” and “lors” again. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read up on what Singlish is here.

And since I’m on the topic of Singapore and language, I’ll bring up a hilarious incident that happened to me some time back…

So I was in Denver, CO a few years ago with my Mum and we decided to stop by the tourist information booth to ask some questions. When we were about to leave, the service rep at the booth asked where we were from (apparently they keep a log of the number of visitors they get and where they are from), and the following conversation transpired:
Guy at booth: “Mind if I ask where you are from?”
Me: “Singapore”
Guy at booth: “How do you spell that?”
Me: “S-I…”
Guy at booth: “Nevermind, I’ll just write China.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Another common misconception about Singapore is the language we speak. I have been told more than once by Westerners (Americans in particular) who just found out I’m from Singapore that, “You speak such good English!”. On the other hand, I’ve been told by Chinese from China, “Ni3 de4 guo2 yu3 jiang3 de2 bu4 chuo4!” (translated: “You speak very good Mandarin Chinese!”). Although with my standard of Mandarin, the later is much less frequent.

Sometimes I’m just not sure what people expect Singaporeans to speak… Swahili perhaps? For the record, the official language for business and government is English, the most common non-English language is Mandarin Chinese while the official language of Singapore is Malay (its a historical thing). Go figure. Other languages you might hear in Singapore are Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka (all Chinese dialects) and Tamil (a language from India).

School is taught in British English. Hence, you’ll hear me refer to the trunk of the car as the “boot”, “gas” as “petrol”, “elevator” as “lift”, “line up” as “queue up” etc. In addition to English, every student will learn his/her mother tongue. That is, if you’re Chinese, you’ll learn Mandarin Chinese (I qualify Mandarin Chinese as I recently found out that when Asian Canadians say Chinese, they actually refer to Cantonese), if you’re Malay, you’ll learn Bahsar Melayu and if you’re Indian, you’ll learn Tamil.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the tiny island state I’m from, there’s a great entry on Wikipedia about Singapore.

And as much as I try to keep my blog understandable to all, the following T-shirt about Singlish is way too funny to leave out. I apologize in advance to all the non-Singaporeans who will catch no ball.

(One interesting afternote – Blogger’s spell check doesn’t recognize the word “Singaporean”)

Of ash and cramps

Well, most of you know by now that I climbed Mt St Helen’s last weekend. In short, it was a tough hike but with amazing views. It was a 5 mile hike (one-way) with a 4800′ elevation gain to a altitude of 8600′. The hike involved lots of scrambling over large boulders and the last mile before getting to the crater rim was an endurance testing shuffle up slopes of volcanic ash. For some reason, my legs started cramping 3/4 the way up and a 1/2 hour rest didn’t do much to alleviate the pain. Eventually I just decided to push on despite the cramps and finally made it to the top.

Needless to say, I could barely walk the next day (twisting my left ankle several times on the way down didn’t help). However, it was all well worth the effort. The views were fantastic – we had a 360 degree panorama of the mountains/volcanoes around us with Mt Rainier, Mt Adams and Mt Hood (all volcanoes in the Northwest) clearly visible from the top. Looking down into the crater, we could see the new dome which is slowly building itself and we could also see and hear the occasional rock slides off the sides of the new dome. (Go here to see an annotated photo taken from the crater rim).

Being on a volcano, ash was everywhere. It was on my sandwich, in my mouth, in my hair and, worst of all, on my camera lens. Hence, if you look at my St Helens photoset, you’ll see the images getting darker and darker as the hike progressed and my photos on the crater rim were especially dark. Here’s a photo (courtesy of David W) taken of my ash-covered legs and shoes near the end of the hike. Left sock pulled down a little for more dramatic effect

In other news, I’m looking forward to my first weekend in a long time of not doing anything (or at least first weekend of not having anything planned). But knowing me, I probably won’t be able to sit still.

About programming

Today I had one of those “Argh! Why have I been so stupid *slaps forehead*” moments which is so typical to people in the programming field. I finaly managed to solve a problem that has been bugging me at work for the last 4 weeks, and the solution was simple and made me feel extremely stupid for overlooking it. In short – if you ever need to use the GDI+ library, REMEMBER THAT YOU HAVE TO CALL GdiplusStartup() BEFORE USING ANY OF THE CLASSES IN IT. Forgetting to do such a simple thing cost me at least 4 full days of pure agony, trying to figure out why a simple class instantiation kept returning NULL pointers. (Ok, I promise that’s as technical as I’ll ever get on my blog)

However, it only hit me today that one of the biggest differences between programming in school and programming in the real world is that I cannot just give up on a programming problem I’m stuck at and expect just to have to swallow losing a few points on a project. In the real world, being stuck at something raises the possibillity of the entire project getting stalled till the problem is resolved. I guess the seriousness of the work which I’m doing is finally slowly dawning on me. I’m surprised that its taking so long, perhaps its the laid back culture at MS which contributes to such a slow descent into reality.

Tired

I feel I ought to say something about my Mt St Helens climb, but I have been just too exhausted the last two days to exercise the writing part of my brain. Entertain yourselves with the photos first: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelxia/sets/72157594237624298/