ridj.org

i have moved the blog to http://blog.ridj.org, effective polling day.
(polling polling long cham pas…)

or you can click here.

this cracked me up at 1.30am in the morning. afdlin memang dashyat.

a bout of fever went passing parcel around the office last week and finally hit me this week, landing me in bed from tuesday right up to last night. i was sleeping all the time, but somehow found the strength to still get up and go to work as usual. but once i was back home, i would be knocked out cold again, entering a half-conscious magical world where everything was hazy and nothing made sense.

now i am back on track again, feeling healthy and flushed with renewed energy. my face looks a bit slimmer, the jowls are reduced. this often happens when i get fever, but with my healthy appetite, i am sure the jowls will be back in no time.

earlier tonight, my wife was feeling under the weather, no doubt she has gotten hold of my bug, but somehow summoned the energy to follow me to the rally at ang mo kio. it was my first rally experience (i know! how katak-di-bawah-tempurung!) and i was blown out of my mind. i kinda felt excited to be part of this whole legal assembly thingie, where people were all satu hati satu jiwa. KETUK BESI!

hehehe… (remember..prison got no broadband..)

anyway, i am in the midst of migrating ridj.org to its own secured hosting. what this means, hopefully, is that i will be able to set up wordpress on my hosting and make it more customizeable. i am getting sick of this standard template and i think this blog needs a bit sprucing up. so ridj.org will experience a bit of interruption as we commence this Blog Upgrading Program (don’t worry, i won’t ask you readers to co-pay with me…) but you can still tune in to ridj.wordpress.com as the works are going on.

i think the works might be a bit slow, because i can only afford to employ one bangladeshi worker and attempt to make him work around the clock. his name is asad, you all be nice to him now.

(“you know he’s back at it again, when he starts spouting nonsense and his eyes gleam like that” – someone said this once, i can’t remember who..)

This is a transcript of the 2005 Commencement address by Steve Jobs,
CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios.

"Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from
one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never
graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a
college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big
deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the
dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but
then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I
really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My
biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided
to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be
adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be
adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped
out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.
So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of
the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?"
They said, "Of course."

My biological mother found out later that my mother had never
graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from
high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only
relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go
to college. This was the start in my life. And 17 years later, I did
go to college, but I naively chose a college that was almost as
expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings
were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't
see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life,
and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out. And
here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire
life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out
OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of
the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop
taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping
in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room so I slept on the
floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent
deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town
every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna
temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my
curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me
give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy
instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every
label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had
dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to
take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about
serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space
between different letter combinations, about what makes great
typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in
a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.
But 10 years later when we were designing the first Macintosh
computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac.
It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never
dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never
had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since
Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer
would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never
dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not
have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I
was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years
later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only
connect them looking backward, so you have to trust that the dots will
somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your
gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots
will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your
heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will
make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky I found what I
loved to do early in life. Woz [ Steve Wozniak] and I started Apple in
my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years,
Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion
company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest
creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned 30, and
then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?
Well, as Apple grew we hired someone, who I thought was very talented,
to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went
well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and
eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors
sided with him, and so at 30, I was out, and very publicly out. What
had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was
devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt
that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I
had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David
Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.
I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away
from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still
loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one
bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to
start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple
was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness
of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner
again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the
most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started
a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love
with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to
create the world's first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story,
and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to
Apple. And the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of
Apple's current renaissance, and Laurene and I have a wonderful family
together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been
fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the
patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with
a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept
me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you
love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work
is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be
truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only
way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it
yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart,
you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just
gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't
settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went
something like, "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday
you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and
since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every
morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life,
would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the
answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to
change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most
important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices
in life, because almost everything—all external expectations, all
pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall
away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid
the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already
naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in
the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't
even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost
certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect
to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go
home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for prepare
to die. It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought
you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It
means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be
as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your good-byes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy
where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and
into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells
from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that
when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started
crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic
cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and,
thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the
closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can
now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a
useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even
people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there, and
yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.
And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single
best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the
old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday
not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be
cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time
is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be
trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's
thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own
inner voice, and most important, have the courage to follow your heart
and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to
become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called the Whole
Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was
created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo
Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the
late '60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was
all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort
of like Google in paperback form 35 years before Google came along. It
was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart
and his team put out several issues of the Whole Earth Catalog, and
then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was
the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final
issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you
might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath
it were the words "stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell
message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have
always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew,
I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all very much."

i have just returned from a trip to port dickson over the weekend. it was a horrendous trip and my wife and i really chose the worst timing to go over! being the labour day weekend, various m’sian companies had sent their employees to the resorts for some family fun. for a couple like us who wanted to simply get away from the crowd and hustle and bustle of the city life, this meant trouble from the start.

indeed, when we got to the resort (tiara beach resort), there were two things that caused us dismay. firstly, the reception was flooded with kids and some clowns giving out balloon animals to the kids. with all the running around and exploding balloons left and right, getting to the front desk was like treading over a minefield. for my wife, this was a nightmare, since she was always surrounded by pesky kids at work and now she’s driven 200km and find herself surrounded by more pesky kids.

secondly, the name of the resort itself was deceptive. tiara beach resort, ironically, is surrounded by dense vegetation on three sides. the beach is nowhere to be seen. in fact, you have to drive out about 10km to get to the beach. but it was more of a water theme park, infested with millions of kids.

that was our weekend. my wife and i have sworn that we shall never hereforth return to that place again, unless of course, either one of us were to lose our mind temporarily and suggest going there, in which case, the other party is given power-of-attorney to slap the suggesting party back to sense.

ridj in reflection? one tends to be caught up in thought when caught onboard a 5-tonner, wearing something that’s as thick as a ricesack.

attending to business. kesian budak nie, dia kena gigit semut.

it’s all about sharing the laughter.

free counselling session (green facial mudpack also free for 1st 20 customers)
“Ye, nak, ader aper masalah?” sheesh, macam meet-the-people session.

the Pepsi Taste challenge. in a classic show of desperation, brought on by the blasted heat and erratic thunderstorms, we fashion our own champagne glass, and get high on Pepsi Max. (male-bonding session in operation)

ken appears a bit bemused that his new ipod seems to play only bollywood songs.

one of these lovely boys was unlucky enough to have his birthday fall on the last day of the training. as a gift from the rest of us, he got his butt shined good and fine with black shoe polish. for the sake of protecting his identity since he is still a minor, we shall not reveal his name.

p.s. thanks senior medic. the pics are awesome. i wanted to post up the links to the pics but some of them were a bit explicit lah… (a few pictures depicting us watering the plants, if ya know wha’ i mean, yeah?)

These days my head is furiously buried in the pages of Dan Pink‘s Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself.

It’s a very captivating read, about how the world economy is gearing itself in a new direction, where the majority of workers will find themselves self-employed and the markers for success will have to be readjusted.

For me, it is now only a matter of time.

The other day I was talking to a friend’s father, who has been self-employed for many years, dabbling in insurance, real estate and also his own software company, which he runs in partnership with a software engineer based in pakistan. I remarked to my wife how I have a handful of friends who do this.

She told me that there are certain people (of a certain background origin) who will only work for themselves. it is against their belief to work for someone else, owing to their forefathers’ time, when they were farmers or fishermen who only depended on their own catch or crop for survival. I find this interesting. Anyone has further information on this?

in view of the impending may day holiday, and the Pekej Maju yang diberi oleh orang atas, my wife and i are now embroiled in a mad scramble to piece together a small getaway for this weekend. we’ve already had to rule out a few places due to full bookings.

this is the first time that i have been involved in the frontline of this effort of arranging for accomodations. calling up a few travel agencies from the newspaper ads, i realise that they comprise of a motley crew of samsengs and looney characters. one uncle was very rowdy and candid, it was almost as if i wanted to borrow money from him.

another lady proclaimed in a sing-song voice, “we are all fuuuullllyy boooookkkeed!”

seems like the Pekej Maju puts everyone in a good mood this week.

I recently came across a namecard, with the person's name as Ah What.

I couldn't help myself but to laugh out loud. Perhaps it's pronounced as Ah Huat or something, but was mis-spelled on the namecard. Come to think of it, perhaps he has friends named Ah Why, Ah How, Ah Who and Ah Where.

They all go to work in a When. 😛 

ridj in reflection? one tends to be caught up in thought when caught onboard a 5-tonner.

attending to business.

it’s all about sharing the laughter.

one of these lovely boys was unlucky enough to have his birthday fall on the last day of the training. as a gift from the rest of us, he got his butt shined good and fine with black shoe polish. for the sake of protecting his identity since he is still a minor, we shall not reveal his name.

p.s. thanks sugiman. the pics are awesome. i wanted to post up the links to the pics but some of them were a bit explicit lah…