the holiday

Last night I watched “The Holiday” in HBO. This is one of a kind romantic comedy. I must say that the story is very funny, and also original. Starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Jack Black, the movie offers two complete different sets – the big city LA and rural Surrey England. Surrey is indeed a great place. It’s like England in the era of dark magic. And I don’t know somehow, I really love the way British people talk, their dialect seems classy to me.

 

In brief, the story begins with Iris, who still fall in love with Jasper, her colleague at a London publishing house. She really believes that Jasper also feel the same way too. However during the company’s Christmas party, jasper announces his engagement with someone Iris already knew. And Iris feels like fall apart. And she wants to leave, try out a new world during Christmas off.

 

Another life, another scene Amanda has just recently found out that her boyfriend is having affair with her receptionist. She dumps him, but somehow Amanda doesn’t feel any sadness. She is wondering if there is something wrong with herself and decided to take a break from hectic job as movie trailer producer in LA. Provided the fact she is alone during Christmas, and she thinks her life can’t get any worse, she decided to register into temporary home exchange program in the internet. It turns out that Iris also offers her house through the same program and they both temporarily exchange their life. That is the beginning of new life and how finally they find their true love.

 

For me the most interesting part of the movie is the wonderful scenery of surrey, villages shere and wonersh. Definitely, I should go there someday. And not to forget to tell, I guess Cameron diaz is really a good kisser =D

 

morning glory

The best thing of living in remote area like this is that nature always has its own way to celebrate the morning glory. Today, I walked around the office and smell the typical kind of grass. And then after a while, I saw a really big beautiful bird, white feathered-look-like-swan around. I chased after her, but like any others wild bird,  she took step away to safe zone. I tried to capture her. - ok not physically -  with my camera. But she already noticed, and fly away. The same thing with what eagles did last week.

Welcome to the insomnia club

Exhausted but just can’t fall asleep. I need to sleep immediately, but it seems my brain can’t rest. Well, frankly speaking, I have something in my mind - a dispute - I guess the most important thing for grown up people is to know how to be grateful. Unfortunately, the thing is hard to posses.

Anyway, tomorrow will be a busy day for me. I have to keep my energy high. I have to sleep.

learn more study less

Currently I am reading the holistic learning strategy book. It’s good actually. According to it, human’s brain obtains information by developing construct, and highways that connect one to another, along with its model. Simply to say, while computers store information through routines, we human create models, interconnectivity through neurons that makes us –unlike computers - easy to recognize pattern. There are 5 steps as basic strategy of holistic learning. They are namely ‘acquire’, ‘understand’, explore, debug, and apply. At each step, test step performed in order to get clear understanding whether we may proceed or not. Anyway, it sounds like certain methodology in software development life cycle. I don’t know exactly the name is. It’s been long before with software engineering I guess.

 

Anyway, it’s a good book. Learning how to learn is the very basic thing. It’s like investing in an oil company which the price is skyrocketed nowadays. So it is worth reading during my spare time. Let see how much I improve on this =D.

Speak Up

I doesn’t take years to figure out what went wrong here. Indeed, no perfect places. People are loosing courage to speak up the truth because when the truth is bitter, you may loose your job. And for some people, loosing job is loosing identity.

Yesterday though, I managed to tell and present something to the top. Somehow I feel disappointed with the answer, though it seems so sweet on the surface, but deep inside covered beneath it, something bitter hidden. And now, I decide to reopen my cv, modify it with recent information and intend to spread it again, haha.

I don’t want to loose my will to speak up what goes wrong. But through time, it seems that my words slowly become echoes.

I feel disappointed. Is it only a feeling driven by emotional prejudice? Or my brain finally knew that the whole things become make sense?   

discipline!

I looked at a mirror and somehow in its reflection, I saw myself indecisive, indifferent and also in a brutal chaos.  People get older but they don’t necessarily get wiser. In my case, I am older, but still no change, it is the same me some years ago. Oh my…I do really need a way to get myself control over myself.

Mediocre excel engineer

For the last days, I’ve been working hard with excel. The more I use it, the more I realize that understand how to utilize excel can bring you to unexpected places. That is to say, Microsoft excel is really powerful tool. OK, probably not the tools, but the concept of spreadsheet itself. You can use it as simple database, treat it like simple programming tools, and even develop viruses by spreading macros. Surely I never realized that, it seems that my fluency in excel is far from perfect, still mediocre indeed.

 

No believe I am mediocre in excel? Last week my fellows who happened to be the project manager ask me to develop simple macro that act as a bridge to our ERP, that is Ellipse. Yeah, the reason is simple. Jakarta resources are hard to get these days due to resource conflict with global. So instead of asking for them to develop simple business object report and therefore should waiting for resource prioritization, we decided to develop our report accessing directly to and from ellipse itself instead. And that requires macro. Dude, honestly I never develop macro before. I didn’t even know the environment, and even how to print hello world. That is something as a baseline start before you begin the journey with new programming language along the way. So basically, I need to learn VB. Well actually, the language itself is no surprise if I must say. Some similarities are found among languages, and although syntax and even certain things are different, I believe that the concept of programming remains. I must say I rather satisfied with the result. I was managed to develop macro that act as a bridge to ellipse – this is something commonly under Jakarta control –

 

Today and seems two days ahead, I will busy myself with developing POC. I should gather information from reports already available in order to get certain required result. The thing is, the report I develop should be generic and dynamic depending to data supply.  And that means I should be familiar with formulas, even with advances one. At first, I feel terrible since I am not used with excel formulas. But I realize that it was a possibility to learn, so then I like it. OK, probably not really like it since I really made a mistake with some formulas usage, wrong applying criteria because forgetting the trim function, and of course with the reference stuffs. And it took me 3 hours to realize it.

 

For now on, I guess I should be really familiar with excel. It is indeed a powerful tool. Utilize this and other office tools such as word and power point, really can take you to unexpected places.

 

I am excel engineer, yet mediocre..

paradigm shift

I just finished reading the mindset book - it is the book that I previously mentioned about-. So according to it, the most important thing is how to shift the way of thinking from judge or be judged framework into learn and help learn framework.

Some important points mentioned in the last chapter:

1. Diagram of Nigel Holmes, I promise to scan and include the graphic later on.
2. List down and answer all questions below:
   1. What are the opportunities for learning and growth today?
   2. When, where and how I will embark my plan?
   3. When, where and how I will act on my new plan should there be any changes to the previous plan?

Sounds promising!

The troubles of mindset

I am in the midst of reading a book titled “Mindset, the new psychology of success”. The book caught my attention since it was written by Caroll Dweck – a stanford professor who widely regarded as one of leading researchers in the field of personality and psychology development. At least that is what the book says. Simply, I want to know how mindset determines people’s fate through some experts point’s of view. And guess what, after reading some chapters of the book; I think I have picked the correct book.

 

So, what is the trouble with mindset? Well, according to her, people can be divided into two groups. Those who possess growth mindset and others who own fixed mindset. And people can be judged as the first or second one by only analyzing their actions, what do they do, and what do they tell

 

Someone with growth mindset is a learner. They see the world as a set of learning tools. They feel joy of processes, and they catch failure as a feedback. On the other hand, someone with fixed mindset is a nonlearner. They see the world as a set of test tools. They feel really good when they succeed, and they feel terrible when encounter failure. Nonlearners afraid of failure. Yet again, when they failed, it triggered another failure and they world of ‘ableness’ become shrinking. Another case, when nonlearners encounter success, they truly believe that they are gifted, and supposedly to be special – be born special than others-. There’s nothing good with these people. Being failed and being success lead you to..so to say hell.

 

So what the hell that mindset thing has to do with me? It troubles me since I have already pick a side and unluckily, I picked the wrong side. I am so fixed mindset. When I failed, I feel that I am not destined to do that and  when I succeeded I feel to much joy that I think I am really special and gifted. Learning something for me is a means to prove my self whether capable or not whether gifted or not.

 

You may say: “No way”, you may not believe me. But, I remember when someone asked me to attend golf course for fun, but then I said no giving excuses that I have no time. The truth is, I am afraid to accept the fact that – whether it’s not yet about to happened – I am really dumb at swing. When someone asked me to join a band as a singer– Haha, you may think that this must be a joke, but actually it’s true – I said no, giving an excuse that I don’t like it very much. The truth is I am so afraid of the challenge. When people asked me to be a partner in badminton play, I said no, when people persuaded me to join karaoke with them, I said no – giving an excuse that the activity seems worthless and no value added. The truth is, I am so afraid to know what I am incapable of. I am so fixed mindset. And I realized that if I kept this way, I won’t learn much. I do really need a shift.

 

So then I close my eyes, turn off the TV and AC, open the window and then whisper to myself saying “Hilarious, hilarious expecto patronus” [OK, probably not that much], I need to change. I don’t want to be this way forever. I want to be a learner who enjoys the process of learning itself not only the outcome. I want to see this world as a series of learning tools, not a series of fortunate and unfortunate events.

 

 

Between Competent Jerks and Lovable fool

I just read Harvard business review magazine archive June 2005 edition. Yes, it was old but something interesting about the title. Competent Jerks, Lovable fool and the formation of social networks. Given two dimensions combined together- likeability and competence -, the paper explained that people can be divided into four different archetypes.

 

The categories are namely incompetent jerk, competent jerk, lovable fool, and lovable star. The lovable star is of course the one who is desperately wanted. Their competence score is high, and so is the likeability score. They own both brain and personality. On the other hand, incompetent jerk is the most desperately avoided. They are fool and also jerky. Everybody agrees to hate them all.

 

The question then raised when it comes to determine the grey area of competent jerk and lovable fool. Which of them is preferred than another. After managers from different set of companies being interviewed, they agreed to say that people with competency although jerky is preferred than the one who is lovable but fool. But, yes there is a but. In practice, the reverse turned out to be true. Personal feelings play a more important role in forming work relationships. Managers tend to choose less capable person but lovable than more capable one but jerky. Well, at least that is the result of research of Harvard business school professor and assistant professor of decision sciences Fuqua school of business. The competent jerk is mostly avoided and lovable fool is actually mildly wanted. Provided the fact that they are coming from respected university, I am sure that the paper was supported by sufficient quantitative data before get into the conclusion.

 

So the moral of the story goes with only one word. Behave! Haha. Being fool is acceptable but having bad personality is a big NO!