Value of an education

On the train home yesterday, there were three girls seated a few rows in front discussing the futures and dreams. I didn't go out of my way to eavesdrop, but they made it easy to overhear as they all seemed rather enthusiastic.

Listening to the conversation, it seemed the girls were still getting to know one another, but their acquaintance was due to them all attending the same dance college in the city area. So their discussion was about their backgrounds and dreams. None of them had finished high school and thus the only thing approaching tertiary training was going to be their dance training.

They each expressed an earnest passion to travel the world, working as a dancer as they enjoyed all the excitement of moving from country to country. Sounds nice, until you realise that although it isn't impossible, it unfortunately is more likely to end in tears.

You could blame movies, as many movies revolve around people chasing and achieving dreams that we all share. But perhaps it is because they also haven't had a wiser person around to guide and mentor them.

There's nothing wrong with pursuing a passion, but one needs to be intelligent in recognising levels of risk and being able to have a fallback, or being able to recognise when you may have to let the dream go.

I've had dreams of running my own business, and even got quite serious at one stage about running my own go-kart track business. To the point of beginning TAFE business training courses, and completing a draft of the business proposal and revenue projections to submit to the bank for funding.

In the end though, I weighed up risks and realised that there wasn't room in the market for it to succeed. People love the stories of underdogs that beat the odds and become success stories, but what they gloss over and ignore is the fact that countless more fail than the ones that succeed, and its often not due to a lack of effort. And in some cases, someone who succeeds will do so at the expense of another.

Basically, it isn't all as golden as the movies would make it out to be, and not everyone can win.

You need a back up plan, and these girls with the dreams of being a dancer and seeing the world did not have one. If you read the interviews with successful Hollywood actors, many of them share the same story of beginnings which involve living from hand-to-mouth, while going to every audition to try to make it.

So if only a few make it, imagine how many didn't. And if they don't have another career to turn to, what happens then?

My point? If you have a friend or family member who has an exciting dream, but one with risk or a limited lifespan (e.g. you can only be a professional soccer player while your body holds out), then be the voice of wisdom in their life. Don't extinguish their dream, but help them to at least think about a plan B, in the event that plan A doesn't happen.

Late bloomer

I've been a software engineer for 16 years now (well, just a glorified code monkey) and have now only just crossed a milestone:

I have finally actually used inheritance in some code I've written.

I've known what it is for many years, and I'd seen examples of it, but never actually ever created anything with it. I might have finally graduated from n00b. Go me!

Don't like...

In any corporation, one of the biggest outgoings is salary. If you talk to any corporate accountant or payroll master, and they'll tell you that alot of money goes towards people's salaries. Hence companies want to know what employees do, and hence timesheets feature quite commonly in the private sector of the corporate world.

I shouldn't really complain, because in many regards I have it easy. To hear a full rant, talk to any lawyer, clerk or accountant employed by a firm. They have to account for their time in as small as 5min increments, as it all gets billed to customers.

The reason for this, is that the clients who pay the money to a company for a service, often want an invoice so they can see where that money is going, and to give them a chance to see whether the costs are reasonable. You can understand it when you go shopping at the supermarket or take your car to the mechanic, as when you see a bill for a few hundred, then obviously you want to have a chance to make sure that no 'extras' are being slipped into that total.

So my company does the same. At the end of each day, I need to fill out a sheet detailing the time I spent on different tasks and different projects. My "cost" to the company is then recorded against each project so they can determine how much that project cost in the end.

Now where my gripes for this post come from, are that my role is odd. I'm like the courier that provides supplies to the office. I'm a necessary part that supports a number of teams on different projects to extend test automation, but I don't do any automation or test itself. So sometimes the work I do, supports several projects, and other times it is for stuff that isn't in the pipeline yet. Now from a project costing point of view, I'm an undesirable component, hence many projects that are tight on funds end up telling me to not bill to them. Way too many times, my timesheets get rejected by managers who don't want my costs on their project, even though my work that day may have benefited their team.

So I don't have to provide the fine resolution reporting that some people have to endure, but I do get the run-around alot when it comes to just filling that thing in.

Its the neighbourhood

I have a short route I like to walk when I need to get away from my desk. About 3 times a week, I'll just need to get away, and go for a 15min stroll for some fresh air and exercise.

On my stroll, the first 500metres will pass 5 law firms and one private investigator office. One deals with property actions, such as settlement and conveyancing, the second deals with corporate law for business. The remaining 3 law firms specialise in what they call "family law", which encompasses all those relationship breakdown items such as alimony, divorce, divorce settlements, contesting wills, custody, pre-nuptial agreements, and the like.

5 law firms seems like alot, and 3 out of 5 on family law also seems a little disproportionate. Part of me wonders if its to do with the 3 brothels that are also within a 400 metre radius of where I work.

More than a generation gap

One side of my family has chinese heritage. My wife's family has chinese heritage. There is a fair amount of immigration from various asian regions of people who have chinese heritage, and along with that comes people who have grown up with certain cultural norms.

Norms that I don't understand and really dislike.

Now this isn't a racist rant. It's a post about the "aunties" that come with this demographic. The aunties are the older ladies of chinese background, who are around my parent's background and fall into the age bracket where people are either close to, or already have, retired.

For some reason, these aunties feel they can take certain social liberties, particularly with the younger generation, when it comes to the things they do and the things they say. Some of these include:

• "Have you put on weight?" (Ummm... no, you haven't seen me in 3 years, and I'm actually the same weight as before)
• To get your attention, they pull your sleeve urgently, even though you're in the middle of a conversation with someone else. Or worse, they pinch your arm, or poke you firmly in the shoulder.
• They walk up to pregnant women and without asking, greet them by placing both their hands on the woman's pregnancy bump.

If I returned the favour in any of these ways, I'd be considered rude. So can anyone tell me how this works? Because the next aunty who asks me if I'm getting fat, even though they weigh more than me, is going to get the same question right back.

I'll pass thanks.

I like the occassional soda, and with Burger King doing their $1 frozen Coke, it makes it hard to resist on a scorching summers day.

But the Australian government has been pushing pretty hard with their adverts seeking to educate people against the hidden dangers of continual junk food indulgence. This one, which was in a recent saturday paper made me start thinking I'll have to look at skipping the frozen cokes now too.

They suddenly don't seem to taste as nice, now that I've seen this.

Watch for blindspots

One of the blogs that I read frequently was from a fellow who used to be a bouncer at nightclubs, but through a variety of opportunities created, in part through his talent with words and storytelling, he has been able to transition away from that world into something more office orientated and now runs his own business. He still makes amusing and occassionally insightful observations into a culture that I've never understood. Despite the coarse language, I had always deemed him to be thoughtful and balanced in his judgements.

One of the themes that crops up in his blog is about how much he notices that people judge by appearances and this is something that he has experienced personally. Being a fairly muscular individual and not being blessed with a welcoming, or even neutral, facial expression, he has occassionally suffered not being given the benefit of the doubt when accused of harassment or bullying. As a result, when stories come up in the media of an individual being accused of similar things (while investigations are ongoing) this blogger frequently takes the side of the accused, because of his own experiences.

His recent post seemed to reveal a degree of hypocrisy that surprised me though. He reiterated an instance where he had been deemed as guilty of bullying, just because his size was significantly larger than the other individual who felt intimidated by the blogger's appearance, although the blogger claims he had always been nothing but reconciliatory and professional towards the other individual. He then follows up with expressing his support for Richie Incognito who the blogger acknowledges has been recorded saying racist, misogynistic and threatening statements to another sportsperson. Its one thing to judge on appearances, but when there is a record of the individual speaking and acting in that fashion, that's no longer being discriminated against.

Which makes me realise that at times, it can be easy to get caught up in our own experience that it can completely cloud our own ability to evaluate things properly.

Its important to maintain perspective.