Regarding income levels in Singapore and Asia in general

Let me share two things – first the photo attached this message.

Secondly – an article on Yahoo

Quote: ‘Firstly, the pay is really good. For SQ, we can easily hit S$4,500 a month’

Now, one if the striking features of Singapore life for a person who moved here from US (excluding NY’s Fifth Ave) is a drastic difference in income levels. Gini coefficient for Singapore is way higher comparing to US. Translating into plain English – there are people who make awful amount of money and the rest, for them $4500/mo is ‘really good’.

If you read expat forums, especially opinions of those coming from US, you will get a conclusion – relocating from US to Singapore one should earn no less $180 000/year to afford same quality of life.

If you read further you’d see that 180K is not that high. A recent article showed that >50% of Western expats are earning $220K/year or more. In those forums you will see people with income $15K-20K/mo AND their rent is paid by the company.

Yet again, among locals $4500/mo is ‘really good’.

There should be no surprises that this situation generates anger and resentment among locals. Last week 4000 people protested against government plans for possible increase of population to 6.7 million in 2030. In online forums ‘white trash’, ‘foreign trash’, ‘white baboon’ is a common titles addressed towards foreigners.

Yes, obviously there is income discrepancy but there is something in Singapore society (and in Asia in general) needs to be fixed first than pointing fingers towards foreigners.

Let me share one more quote from the article: ‘Within two months, she had bought her first S$3,000 branded bag‘ (emphasis mine)

Now, I have a conviction that for an _average_ US consumer/household, even when you are 26 years old, would not spend 2/3 of their/her/his income on a FIRST (SIC!) handbag. I have above conviction because I have not seen $18 000 handbag in my whole 13.5 years of life in States. And here shops selling those are commonplace, one of them is right next to my office.

Second detail to add to the picture is that here in Singapore (and generally in Asia) older generation lives on allowance of their children. Situation is more paradoxical taking into consideration that for Singapore citizens and permanent residents have mandatory contribution of 1/3 of their income into retirement fund

While it was always the case in any poor society, this situation is common in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan too, in addition to Singapore which would be no way considered as poor countries. And the same time older generation is broke while in US and EU order generation is the the one who has highest amount of disposable money.

I think that explanation of this paradox is that consumerism manifested itself much uglier in Asian society than in States/EU. Again, spending 2/3 of the income on handbags in Singapore or 50% of income on designer dress for 6y old in Japan (as it was mentioned in Economist) is pretty normal and acceptable.

And at the end – something is really wrong with the society where one is considered to be a better person just because he or she has more money.

Well, there should be no surprises with the end result. Look at the mirror first before starting blaming others.

IMHO

The new begining

It has been one year since I’m ‘officially ‘living in Singapore. I used quotation marks because I actually spent almost 1/4 of the year outside of Singapore. Now it is time to have some year-end summary.

First – financial: my income clearly went down after relocation. Singapore’s tax rate is half comparing to my overall pre-relocation US tax rate, however now 1/3 of my _pre-tax_ income goes to pay rent. If anyone would tell me 1.5 year ago I’d end up in a situation like this, I would not sign the contract. But I did and I did it before I arrived in the country first time (that was my first mistake). But at the end, not everything is measured in monetary terms – I made some interesting discoveries and got confirmation of some of my own theories and ideas. Let me outline them:

I discovered that my ability to adjust to a different climate is way better than I thought. One thing is sure right now – I have no problem with heat or humidity or combination of both (which is killer for most of people) I can adjust to both of them quite well. After arrival I had to spend most of my time in air-conditioned room, now I turn aircon only couple times per week for several minutes. The only problem with climate/temperature I have is cold environment – I will get sick when air temperature drops below 10C/50F for more than several days.

I also confirmed that I do not have a problem living in different cultural/language environment, but taking into consideration that it is fourth time I am moving from country to country that should be normal now.

Now I work slightly more – before I was working 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, now I work >10 hours a day, often including weekends. However this is purely result of (as my team lead correctly pointed) my inability to delegate tasks to other people and desire to do everything on my own. This is something I clearly need to fix, but don’t know how I can do it taking into consideration of my stubbornness…

However the greatest discovery/affirmation to me was regarding all the things we take as granted and not noticing them. Now I can write whole essay about this. See, we – human beings – strive for familiarity. We get used to good/nice things _very_ fast and it is getting extremely difficult if familiarity in conjunction to good things goes away.

I’ve been living in California for 13.5 years – this is the longest period I’ve lived in one place of my adult life (since I turned 16). And at the end of those years I really wanted move somewhere else – I got bored. What I did not released that living in California/Bay Area in general is much better place to live if you compare it to the rest of the world.

That realization came only after relocation, which again was confirmation of what I wrote couple of paragraphs above. After moving to a new environment initial excitement goes away soon and we are looking for familiar things which would give us some confidence. And if you don’t find those things, then it brings anxiety, rejection of the new reality (‘how do you like the new reality? – I am totally against it!’)  and desire to back to old familiarity.

But if I look at my own situation after a year… well, I gained more, which could not be quite expressed in monetary terms. And because of this I think my decision to move to Singapore was right and at the right moment

I managed to travel to seven different countries: I’ve been in Germany, Switzerland, France (if one considers Strasbourg a part of France), Turkey, Georgia, back in States tree times. I’ve been in Japan three times and was able to practice my elementary Japanese (and completely failed doing so).

I was able to personally meet most of my colleagues, connect with them and gain/reaffirm their trust.

I was able try amazing variety of local food and witness cultural events.

I was able to see my family again while I was on road and now it seems that I could see them more often than before.

I do not take all this as granted – I do release that I am extremely lucky to have life experience like this and less than 1% of people even in First World counties can afford or are able to live like this.

I am also lucky to have (so far) good health, to be fit (however there are different opinions about my weight and how ‘normal’ it is)

I have the job which I do love – no doubt about this, otherwise I would not do it. I have team members who are smart and hardworking.

I have people at work I consider as role models and try to be as good as they are.

I am looking forward into future with optimism, no matter how challenging it could be. I’ve learned that success is to go from one failure to another with enthusiasm (as Sir Winston Churchill put it) – this is what life in US taught me and I am really thankful now to have this mindset.

However I want to say one thing at the end – all of this would not happen without uttermost support from my wife who clearly suffered much more during the whole process and sacrificed a lot than I did.

Thank you Connie.

About 10 mintues of world fame

Well, it seems that I am on my way to this.  Do not pretend that to have a ‘world’ fame yet, but yesterday’s case definitely was a right step on that direction. At a corporate holiday party my wife and I were dragged on stage by band when they were playing Bee Gees’ ‘Stay Alive’.

And for next 10 minutes we danced mix of Salsa, Hustle, Cha in front of roaring crowd of several hundred well educated/paid white collars.

Damn it felt good.

About countires and airline reservation systems…

Singapore Airlines website reservation system does not know that country ‘Georgia’ exists. Here is the proof:

But they do know that Armenia and Azerbaijan does exist…

And when I was speaking with their reservation agent (an Indian guy of course) over the prone I had to assure that such country does exist, no, it is not US State I am talking about and finally asked him to go and look at google maps.

Well, they did update my passport information, however on my request when the country which passport I have will appear in the list I got an answer that management must confirm my claims.

Nice…

Hello world! Well, acctually hello to the new place

Welcome to WordPress.com.

and yada, yada, yada…

Anyway, I’m moving to WP from LJ for the various reasons. One of them is that I hope that I will have a new beginning soon. If that happens details will for sure follow.

My previous LJ journal will stay for some time but I intend to delete it eventually. When – no idea.

About recruiters, part 5

Got an email with the fascinating subject line today:

We want you to come back to India

The best part is word back. Seems my cover has blown.

Damn.

About expenses

Last month I spent more on Starbucks than on groceries… go figure.

P.S. Starbucks expenses were $23.32 and groceries – $20.79

About corporate stupidity, part II

The Cole’s Axiom from the Murphy’s Laws states the following:

The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.

An Axiom is defined as ‘a proposition that is not proved or demonstrated but considered to be self-evident‘ thus does not require any proof. And yes, the consequences of Cole’s Axiom are self evident, both globally and locally.

Consider a global example first: MTBE. First it was required to be added to gas for faster burning and lead to introduction of a new gas tax. However, several years later it was discovered that MTBE contaminated groundwater and soil and requires its removal. Which obviously required introduction of another gas tax. Needless to say that that the first gas tax stayed in effect.

A smaller, but still considerable example I  personally witnessed last week and I’ve already written about this in past. In the second example, one quite a large company decided to ‘be green’: eliminated all paper cups from its cafeteria and replaced them by reusable ugly plastic cups. Well, after several month of operation it was discovered that:

a) despite requests to bring used cups back they continued to disappear in large quantities. Because:
b) despite warnings and notes that cups are not disposable number of them ended up in trash. And
c) because they are made from non-destructible plastic they (surprise!) will not disintegrate and will poison the environment. Which
d) caused the company be fined by landfill management.

Last, it was discovered that washing these new cups over period of several month generated more expenses in utility bills then it would cost entire year of supply of paper cups.

So, last Friday entire population of ugly plastic cups have disappeared (еo the joy of everyone who had unfortunate luck to drink coffee from them) and paper cups appeared back in cafeteria.

But that had not happened before cafeteria management managed to place an order for 1200 plastic cups to replace disappearing ones….

Hey, do you wanna have 2000 plastic cups?

About new IT hype (and other stuff)

On the stretch of US-101 from Sunnyvale to San Francisco’s last exit I’ve counted no less then seven billboards with word ‘cloud‘ in it. Surprisingly, on the way back there are only three cloud billboards.

P.S. In addition to that there are four billboards with itunes/Beatles, three car billboards, three with wireless providers/cell phones, two banks, two computer/electronics manufacturers, two beer and one each airline and insurance companies.

This is a striking difference from the scenery I’ve seen in Vegas where alongside of I-15 I’ve counted five billboards offering lawyers/traffic school/bail bond bond services and in Houston where there are plenty of advertisements offering to sell your home in less then six month or promising to keep your home from foreclosure. Apparently they target the same recipients of such services because they are next to each other on billboards in most cases….

Well, the place  where one lives defines mentality…One more proof of it….

About aliens and software

There is decades-old question formulated as Fermi Paradox. That question become even more actual since NASA released their Cosmic Census estimations – where the hell are those damn aliens?

Well, I always had a suspicion that aliens existed (‘suspicion’ – because I could not be sure). Now I am, after getting knew a little bit SAP NetWeaver software and its internals.

That’s because this software, its architecture and management defies any type human IT engineering concepts and logic.

See, aliens do exist. They simply disguise themselves as Germans.

About recruiters (yes, again) and some (interesting) positions…

Got following email today, which I’m publishing whole except the contact information at the bottom:

—-
This is a 1 year contract to hire position in Seaside at one of our client sites.  

 

Skills required include:

Senior Administrator Cisco PIX, Cisco firewalls, F5 Load Balancers, Cisco VPN, Wireless devices.  Must possess an extensive knowledge of Cisco network equipment, with recent experience designing and deploying enterprise level routing and switched networks.  Architect, design, and implement Citrix XenApp, NetApp, VMware VSphere.

 

This position is only open to US Citizens.  You must pass a Department of Defense security clearance– includes criminal background check, drug test, FBI fingerprinting, and credit check (collections, charge offs, past due/negative accounts all count towards the credit check pass/fail).

—–

Hmmm…

Hmmm once again… Is this how three-letter-agencies recruit people nowadays? If yes, seems they also jumped on the train of outsourcing and happily delegated recruiting tasks to these I’ve already mentioned several posts earlier.

Yes, I’ve seen plenty of weird email messages addressed to me. Some of them were from recruiters which were weird enough to be directly published here.

But no job description (apparently, if you want to know what you’ll be doing they have to kill you first) citizenship requirements (OK, I’ve seen that plenty in other messages) with the combination of credit check (I’m surprised that there is no requirement for 750 FICO score) – I think this one tops all previous ones.

I was really eager to write her a reply that I’m hesitant to consider this position because my gut feeling is that one of background checks most likely would require proctorial and prostate exams and GPS chip implanted in a …

About Christmas Eve events

I’d say that watching TRON Legacy midnight at IMAX (it started at 10:30PM), was quite an interesting ending of the Christmas Eve…

About (some) recruiters – 3

My trust in human race’s intelligence abilities (or, at least in abilities of some recruiters to run spell-check of an email before sending it) in the Digital Age is constantly diminishing.

Today I got a following email:

———————-
I noticed your background and profile on Linked In. We have an opening for a Technical Support Engineer Level 3 (Escalations) in both our San Frankcsio and Sunyvale offices. Do you know of anyone who might have an interest?

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you!
———————-

I did write an email to her and asked where these (above highlighted) places are located. Have not received an answer…

About equipment ending up in data centers

Today we got an electricity equipment (somehow related to DC/AC conversion) with a marvelous name  – ‘E-rectifier’.

About corporate stupidity

Since Monday I drive over a speed bump when I’m entering parking lot at my office. There would be nothing unusual in this fact if not the history of appearance and consequent disappearance of this particular speed bump.

Fist time the speed bump appeared last summer and by its appearance terrorized most of drivers who had unfortunate fate to be driving their cars over it to the parking lot. That’s because of height of the bump – it was at least 8” tall and unless one is driving Hummer or full-size SUV (popularly known as ‘D-extenders’), driving over it was not a trivial task. Apparently one of the founders of the company  (who’s Bentley I’ve noticed one day on the parking lot) had the same opinion – at the very evening of Bentley first appearance the bump was gone.

However, Bentley was gone week after and two days after that the bump materialized again. This time it was not as brutal, but sill was a serious inconvenience. Well, we got used to the fact until the founder came back. To my joy, this time he came back driving Porsche and apparently its suspension did not take reincarnation of speed bump well enough. Once again speed bump evaporated and shiny asphalt on its place was bringing pleasure to my heart.

I enjoyed uphill/downhill driving to/from the parking lot for about several months until, as I said this Monday, speed bump appeared again. On its third incarnation it changed shape again and now it is long and flat rather being narrow and tall. Most cars can drive over it OK, however I really hope that third time the founder will come back he will be driving Tesla and once again clean surface will greet us on the same day.

But one thing I wanted to touch is the financial aspect of all this activity. AFAIK each of this construction/demolition had a price tag of several thousand $, which means that constructing, demolishing and reconstructing that poor speed bump five times cost company $25K minimum. Well, for $60 billion Company such expense is not even noticeable in the balance sheet, but out division at the same time can’t get funds to buy backup equipment to run the demos/presentations hosted by executives, watched by tens of thousands of business people and having direct impact on financial markets.

About investments

While looking at October statement from my investment account I’ve noticed very noticeable fact – one of my investment almost after 10 years from the day of purchase broke even. More specifically, Oracle stock I bought Dec 13th in 2000 at $29.50 reached the same price on Nov 1st  2010. But I have a serious doubt that CSCO I bought at $52.12 will reach the same price during my lifetime…

On other note one car I bought for $8900 (the single most expensive item I’ve ever bought) I sold after two years for $9500. Oh yaah –  before selling I drive 15000 miles on it and got into accident which cost my insurance $7500 on repairs.

Much better ROI with with another car: bought it for $2800, got rear-ended at intersection by 17 years-old, his dad’s insurance paid retail value of $4700 for the total loss of my vehicle, I bought back my car for $500 from the insurance – the car was perfectly drivable, drove after that accident nearly two years and finally sold the car for $2000.

Probably universe it trying give me some hint… let me see how much I can sell my current car which I bough for $6700. Now it has 199300 miles on it.

About 21st century office and economy – personal example

While sitting in office in Palo Alto got a call from London from one of our vendor customer support dep notifying that equipment in our Tokyo office has failed. I called our San Paulo office telling them that workload will be switched to their site and sent an email to Bangalore asking them to give ETA for bringing stuff back online. Finally I notified mangement in Waldorff about the situation.

About English coursebooks for schollchildren

I never though that a scheenshot of a page from an English coursebook (created and published in one small country somewhere between Europe and Asia) could be such motivating and inspirational.

About Indian recruiters

Probably you wonder what Ilya Repin’s picture ‘Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire‘ has to do with Indian recruiters.

About (some) recruiters (and humanity in general)

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I’m dealing with recruiters regularly. Well, they are dealing with me –I’m getting at least several messages per week, (mostly via LinkedIn) asking if I am interested in a new project. Sometimes these conversations are quite entertaining. 

Out of curiosity and to see if anything has changed in my perception of humanity’s intelligence I’ve decided to run a social experiment to find out how many of recruiters DO actually read my profile/resume _before_ sending an email/message. So I’ve changed my Professional "Headline" section from boring five word ‘I’m-expert-in-my-field-no-one-is-better-then-me-whatever-BS’ to just one word – Ninja. 

Please remember, my first and last name are in my profile and are displayed to everyone, here is the proof: 

Now, one thing to mention – recruiters who send email via LinkedIn are quite good to craft these messages according to today’s business communication standards. All the emails I’ve received thru LinkedIn have my first name in greeting section and have short but elaborate body text describing who the author of the message is, what position they have available and how my background fits their position. All good, contrary to emails I’m getting from Indian recruits who start their messages with ‘hi’ or ‘this is (17-letter name follows)’ or ‘we have following position (BS follows)’ and so on.  

I have a simple rule – if an introductory business email does not have my name in greeting section then the message automatically goes to trash without further reading and the author is added to the spam list. Rule works perfectly well to eliminate people who have problems with education and business etiquette.  

Back to the situation – two days have passed since I’ve updated my profile and I got the following email yesterday (first two lines): 

—————————————-

Hi Ninja, 

I am a Recruiter with Cisco Systems and saw your profile in LinkedIn.

—————————————-

Nice… Today I got another email with the subject line:
 

————————–

Linux Ninja wanted!

————————–

 

Seems my experiment will have quite interesting results…

 

About American efficency in action

I wrote about American efficiency and approach towards doing business generally better, faster and more innovative then rest of the world. Here is one more example:

About Pneumatics

Let me state from the beginning – I like STUFF.

When I say ‘stuff’ I mean the stuff – the term understandable by every engineer with work experience at least half of mine (and no it is not necessary to be an engineer in IT, BTW).

One of the stuff I like is pneumatics, or in other words all the weird (and sometimes useful) things one can do with a  compressed gas. For example:

• Air Gun was very useful to prevent pigeons from entering into the airspace of our apartment’s balcony.
• During childhood one of my favorite entertainments was to watch how road workers used jackhammer to break up asphalt. The most entertaining part was to see how their body was shaking during such an operation.
• In my credit union’s branch office pneumatic mail is used – the only financial institution I’ve seen using such a technology and that is used in one place only. Again, the most entertaining part of the process is to see how the capsule with bunch of $$$ is sucked into wall’s hole once I press ‘Send’ button and hear WHOOSHOOPSSSHHH!

And many more examples, including (again, from sweet childhood memories) low-tech, mouth operated spud gun (using pen refill cartridge as a barrel) to fire chunks of potato to my classmates in the middle of a lesson while teacher is not watching.

So, when I see and hear ‘Pneumatics’ I’m really eager to see the stuff in action.

Except today.

Because today in Reno I saw Pneumatic Diner, here it is:

I did not go inside because my imagination could not cope with co-existence of words ‘Pneumatic’ and ‘Diner’. I have quite vivid (or in other words – sick) imagination  and the picture what was happening with the food (or a customer) in conjunction to pneumatics was not quite pleasurable for me.

One more reason not to visit Reno.
 

About ‘Remotely Operated Organic Switch Solution’

The story below was told to me by the guy who was one of the founders of very well known startup in IT/Networking industry.  So the story goes following:

One Chinese company started selling a firewall in China using the stolen old code of above mentioned startup. There was one problem which they were not aware – HA (High Availability) in that code was not quite working. So when this Chinese company started to deploy their (stolen) firewall, problems started to immediately show up.

What this Chinese company did? Once they released that there was a problem with HA they figured out that fixing the code which they did not know on a product which they’ve already being selling would be a little bit problematic. So they’ve staffed their datacenter with a peasant hired from the nearby village. That peasant was sitting next to the firewall and there was a phone next to him. His sole responsibility was to turn the firewall off and on when such an order was coming on that phone.

It was called ‘remotely operated organic switch’ solution.

About the predectibility of stupidity

Two things have happened in last couple of days which (again) have direct relationship with money and human stupidity.

First is a story in SF Gate about a guy who stole $5 from IRS on fraudulent tax refund. Three things are fascinating in this story:

1. IRS actually wrote him a check for $5m – the biggest check in history for this type of fraud.
2. They caught him only after someone overheard how one inmate in a federal prison was convincing another to use this guy’s ‘services’.
3. (here is where stupidity comes) after cashing the check the guy deposited money in banks accounts and stayed in US, continuing providing ‘services’.

I think you’d agree that $5m would be enough not only for a plastic surgery but for sex change operation and nice villa in Amazon jungles for the rest of life. Gordon Gekko might be right that ‘greed is good’, but it also proves all over the course of history that greed makes people stupid. And if people are already stupid, greed makes situation worse.

Here comes second, very personal story:

Last week someone got hands on my wife’s checking account. Basically they got account number and routing number (any person who saw/received check from my wife would have it) and using that started to printing checks on different names and cashing them on different places in Southern California. Totally more than ten checks were written on a total amount exceeding $1000. First check they cashed in Wal-Mart (sic!) just for $77, second one was in Dollar Store for appx $120 (WHAT could one buy in a dollar store for that amount I have no idea), third one was written for Luxor casino in Vegas for … $50.

Imagine that: someone had actually traveled to Vegas from LA to write a check to Luxor for $50 – fifty bucks! Not five thousand, not five hundred – $50. But stupidity started to come into action (as expected), well in line to the first Global Law of Murphy – ‘amount of intelligence on planet Earth is constant, but population keeps increasing’. They decided to hit a jackpot and catch big fish: they wrote a check to COX communication for whole $477.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, majority of COX’s business is from digital cable, internet and phone services. TV/Phone/Internet in this country has an address where the service is installed and the person’s name/SSN the service is registered to.

So these geniuses decided to pay their (or their neighbor’s or pal’s) TV bill using forged check (felony #1), from someone else’s account (grand Larceny and felony #2) on multiple occasions (aggravated felony #3).

Honestly, I really try to understand what would motivate one to risk >15 years in prison (separate jail time for each felony) for just $1000.

No need to say that as soon as bank saw the first check written from the name which was not on the account they put stop payment on all of them, called my wife and refunded money back. So nothing was stolen from her. It was stolen from COX, Wal-Mart, Dollar Store, Luxor and other places. And something tells me that these businesses are not going to do nothing.

About expectatons

Ladies and gentlemen,

If for some strange reason I develop supernatural powers please do not expect that I will start flying around and fight crime.

About football – a picture

Today (Jul 2nd) my Brazilian friend sent me an empty email with this picture:

…but apparently it did not help Brazil, they’ve got eaten…

I feel blue…

UPD: He was right…

About World Cup Ettiquette (for Americans)

The email below was sent in one of the biggest IT companies in States where my wife works.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

—–Original Message—–
Subject: [Lost-mind] World Cup Ettiquette

The 2010 World Cup (soccer) starts next Friday, on June 11th. It goes on for
about a month. This is the most popular sporting event in the world and it
takes place just once every 4 years. Anywhere in the world but here in the
US, the World Cup is everywhere and people are bursting with anticipation.
There are three games a day during the group phase and at most 2 games on
selected days during the elimination round. The whole calendar can be found
here:

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/matches/calendar.html

You may be wondering if there’s any point to this message at all. There is.
During the World Cup, the soccer fanatic that has a full time job has two
options: take the month off or keep coming to work while also managing to
watch a large percentage of games. I assume most of us intend to continue
working during this tumultuous month and we face a real problem: in order to
come to work we must record games that happen during work hours and we must
get home at night without knowing the results of these games. We set games
to record, come to work and avoid all external media for the whole day (no
looking at web sites, social networks, etc). But the one thing we cannot
control is our coworkers who already know the results of games.

So, in order to maintain your soccer fanatic colleagues’ fragile little
minds intact during this period I propose the following rule:

* DO NOT, under any circumstances, discuss any games that happen during the
current work day.

And it’s more subtle than that, because you don’t need to say anything. Just
approaching your favorite Nigerian coworker after a Nigeria game and smiling
(or making any sort of gesture) will drive him insane for the rest of the
day.

Why was that person smiling at me? Is it because we lost and they’re
enjoying our misfortune?

Or maybe it is it because we won, scoring a pile of goals. Maybe they’re
smiling because nothing exciting happened.

Or maybe a bunch of people got red carded. Argh! And so on… 🙂

It’s ok to discuss yesterday’s games. There’s no excuse for not being able
to watch yesterday’s games before coming to work.

That’s all. Just one easy rule. Good luck to us all.

Hernan.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

About (so called) global warming

It is May 22nd, 9:45PM, Sunnyvale, CA. It is 50F outside.

I had to turn on heater. On MAY 22ND! In Bay Area!

Who was the one telling us about global warming? Please call him and keep him around while I bring my shotgun.

About the place where I live

…is quite unusual.

I mean – from the prospective of all flying things I encounter around. One of them I’ve already shown. Here is another one:

In addition to pigeons (hate them) in that cage and the mallard duck sitting outside of the cage (still wandering what that duck was smoking doing there…) we’ve got doves, crows, ravens, finches and I’ve even seen a hummingbird once.

And today I saw an American Kestrel sitting on a roof just within 15 feet from me and that made me happy. Because it means that pigeons and doves soon will be terminated from my balcony.

About happiness

Today half of my day was wasted playing Pac-Man. First time after 22 years…

Thank you Google.

About role of electronic communications in daily life…

As a follow-up of my previous post, here is a question – have you ever thought about how much weight electronic communications play in everyday life in US?

Think about it, but before going to my point here are some thoughts:

After living in US for more than 12 years I so got used to the principle ‘how things are suppose to work according my expectations and based on my experience’,  that when I encounter something different or opposite to it, it is either very exotic and unbelievable  (like a panda walking on parking lot of my apartment complex), weird and funny at the same time (like a chimp giving Nazi salute) or looks quite irritating (could not thought out an example right now, you can put your own).

One of such expectations is following:

When I send an email, I expect an answer on it after some reasonable time. Especially when there is a request in that email to reply back.

To my surprise I found that above rule is not applicable when I send emails outside of US and particularly when recipient lives in non-Western country. I found that great majority of my emails sent overseas (even those sent to people I know for years) are not answered on timely manner if answered at all. In most cases I had to pick up a phone after second unanswered email and call. After one such a call I asked my friend why he did not replied. His answer was quite interesting: ‘I thought that if you wanted to hear answer you’d call and not send an email’.  He never thought that being 8000 miles and 11 time zones away might present a little problem, especially when they do not use voicemails.

Which gives us very interesting conclusion: for large part of this planet email is not considered as a reliable and trustworthy form of communications.

Above conclusion is applicable greatly to Eastern Europe in general and former Soviet Union in particular. I’ve seen the same behavior from people living in far-east Asia too. In these part of the world to make something happen you need to make at least a phone call but in most cases it is not enough – you have to meet someone personally.

I thought how many times in last 12 years I had to personally appear somewhere to make something happen. And came with following list:

1.    Getting a driver’s license in  DMV.
2.    Getting a Social Security Card in SSA.
3.    Have my fingerprints and photo taken for Green Card’s background check.
4.    Checking my Green Card case status in USCIS office.

As you can easily see,  all cases above have one thing in common – all of them are related to government agencies. For everything else I’m using Internet and email (95% of cases) and phone call (for the rest, if something is really urgent and needs to be done right now). And I got used to the fact that my emails are not sent to a black hole and I will get my answers back, promptly.

Once I saw a poster in a post office next to the window where people applied for US Passport. It said ‘Remember, when you leave United States you leave our freedom and protection by our laws behind you’.

I do not know what message the author of that poster wanted to communicate to US citizens, but he/she was right in one thing: leave your expectations behind when you leave US.

Certainly above rule applicable to electronic communications too.

Even in 21st century.

About why a server in the datacenter might not be accessible

http://tanelorn.livejournal.com/1611.html

I NEVER though that this might come true. But…

Today morning (when I was on my way to work) in very dense fog a small plane crashed in residential neighborhood of East Palo Alto, hitting high voltage power transmission lines.

Currently, all buildings (7 of them) in the company where I do consulting (it is nearby Stanford) are without power, including the data center I run. The same situation also is in East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo park and large part of Peninsula.

Stanford, including Stanford Hospital is without power and running on emergency generators.

I need to be be more careful… this is one more case what my words materialise

UPD: Three Tesla guys died in the crash. Really sad story… Fortunately, there were no kids in the day care center where plane crashed.

About flying objects

One ‘bird’ flew over my house recently, so I’ve decided to take some pictures:

Other pictures are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iraklin/sets/72157623375155308/

Pictures are taken by hand held Canon 40D with Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM
P.S. BTW, That ‘bird’ is DAMN LOUD when it flies 200m above your head.

About humanity and trust in humanity in general

Two cornerstones of my life philosophy are following: 

I do believe that people in general mostly love themselves or, images of themselves in their own eyes (subconsciously). And overwhelming majorly of them does not have any guts admitting it. 

Secondly, I do believe that most people in general are not good or kind. And if they have an option to do something bad knowing (believing) that they won’t be caught – they will do it. 

So, why such a long introduction? Well, I’m writing this article from a Starbucks (particularly – the Starbucks @ Matilda @ El Camino, next to Borders) where quite an interesting accident has happened about 20 minutes ago. 

I’ve ordered my favorite drink (Grande Breve Chai, Extra Hot), left my Starbucks Card on the counter and went to a restroom; there was nobody in the line before or after me. I came back, saw my card on the same place and saw that one ‘gentleman’ – about age 55-60 was standing there. I stepped for 15 seconds – to take a napkin and when I came back the card was gone. 

See, that guy stole my card in front of me and Starbucks gal when we turned away. And when I asked him directly – ‘sir did you take the card which was on counter’? He without blinking said ‘no’. 

Obviously I did not make any fuss from it – the $15 balance on the card did not worth calling police or starting free show (AKA fighting) in front of appx 20 people. So I paid for the drink, sat down in a comfortable armchair and started enjoying my evening. 

But one again I had a proof that my philosophy is right. I’ve stopped counting how many times it happened before, BTW. 

That’s it. 

P.S. Oh yes, forgot to mention that the very first thing I did before writing this message was to log on to Starbucks web site and mark the card as stolen. Starbucks canceled old card and will send me replacement with the same balance. So that ‘gentleman’ can stick my stolen card to his rear end. 

P.P.S the third cornerstone of my philosophy is following: to afford to be kind towards other people one needs to be healthy, wealthy and most importantly, well armed. Otherwise he (she) will be eaten. Alive.

About past year… and decades…

Have not had an entry in my journal for a while – as my hear gets thinner I’ve decided to employ a policy to listen more and write (speak) less so more people would consider me a wise person.

However while sitting on a comfortable couch and starring at a fireplace (which BTW was never used for its primary purpose while I was living in this place) on Dec 31 of 2009 I looked back one year and two decades to see what has happened in my life, what I’ve accomplished and failed.

Interestingly enough I’d consider my primary accomplishment to becoming well informed realist (or cynical optimist) by acknowledging the fact that World Will Not End Tomorrow.

I’d say that my own existence is a proof of above mentioned statement because in last two decades I’ve managed to get into:

Number of armed conflicts

Four economic crises each of them taking huge chunks of my own net worth, or simply resetting it to zero

Three emigrations

Living on a income less than a poverty level

Working for number of years in a place which I hated

And so on and so on…

So… I’m sure that everything will be fine. Because the worst might happen to you is to find one perfect day that you are dead, right?

About healthcare

This week I had a personal proof that something is very seriously broken in healthcare in US.

Me and my wife are quite healthy – I personally go to see my doctor once a year, for checkup, so does my wife. During such a checkup she was diagnosed with Vitamin D deficiency several month ago.

We currently both are consultants working on 1099. We decided to get a catastrophic health insurance coverage until better option appears and to ensure that we do not have a gap in coverage. My wife called Blue Cross to get such a policy  – we already had the same policy from them for several month when we had a similar situation in past.

She (being hopelessly honest person) filled application forms and on question ‘have you being diagnosed with anything’ put that Vitamin D deficiency. This Wednesday we got a message from the agent that our policy had being denied. Reason – vitamin D deficiency.

No, I’m not kidding.

Moreover, the agent from Blue Cross said that there is NO insurance available for her – even if we are willing to pay more and get ‘normal’ policy, Blue Cross is not going to sell us any.

The worst part of all this is to deal with the question ‘have you ever being denied health insurance’ in application forms of any type  health insurance we are going to apply in future. I have examples when people in our situation answered ‘yes’ on question above and being denied because some other company denied them health insurance in past. I also know people who answered ‘no’ and being denied for lying in application – checking patient’s records are quite easy with computers and SSN.

About American efficiency

I’ve heard this question several times while being overseas – tell us what do you think is most unique feature in America. After some thinking I’d say that it is efficiency and customer service.

The overall combination of how many things in everyday life you can do in America with just a phone call is amazing. The realization is striking when you compare how business is done in some other places (I’ve seen enough). Here is my very personal example:

On Sunday, Sep 13^th (shit has tendency to happen that day) around 9PM I spilled half cup of coffee on (actually in) my notebook. Lenovo’s notebooks are still OK, but unfortunately they are not the legendary IBM’s Thinkpads. So, my T61 did not like how I treated it, said ‘yook’ and shutdown itself. All my emergency CPR procedures did not bring any positive results.

So I called Customer Support at 10PM on Sunday night. Just after two rings and several steps through IVR my call was picked by a customer support rep, who listened to the problem description (heeeeelp, my notebook does not power up!) without asking a single question what actually caused the problem (I shared my coffee with my best friend, my ever loyal notebook). He also gave me case number and said that they will ship an empty box to my address with instructions how to ship the notebook back to them.

The box arrived on Tuesday, Sep 15^th at 9AM – even before I left for office. I took the box and notebook with me, put one inside the other  and dropped at UPS location around 4PM.

This morning, Thursday, Sep 17^th UPS rang my doorbell at 8:30AM and delivered repaired notebook back to me. In the attached receipt with the list of services performed it was shown that Lenovo’s support received my notebook on Sep 16^th, replaced motherboard, keyboard and palmrest, tested the repaired notebook and shipped it back on the same day. I got it the next day, i.e. today and writing this message now.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, look at the following: I’m in California, close to San Francisco, Lenovo’s (IBM’s) customer service phone center is in Atlanta, Georgia, and Lenovo’s repair center is in Memphis, Tennessee. As you can see this triangle is larger than whole freaking Europe or China. But things here work and in other places do not.

Another example, in much bigger scale: a week ago Bay Bridge – the busiest bridge in US (crossed by 300 thousand cars daily) was closed for several days because they’ve being replacing 70 year old section with another, earthquake proof. During the inspection (which was done in parallel to the repairs),  a big crack was discovered in one steel link. The crack was big enough to justify closing of the whole bridge until it is fixed.

So what do you do in other parts of the world in the case lake this? They damn close the whole bridge until the crack is fixed first and after that continue the scheduled work, which likely to manifest in closure for a month, if not more (not counting repair crews’ strike and vacation times).

Not here. The bridge was opened a day ahead of schedule with both crack fixed and old section replaced. Replacement parts and crew were airlifted from Arkansas.

Welcome to America!

About today’s news (below):

The boy set off the bombs around 8 a.m. after walking into Hillsdale High School in San Mateo with at least 10 explosive devices attached to a vest he was wearing, he also was carrying a chain saw.

Ladies and gentlemen you do not understand anything! The boy came to play Doom at school. I’m sure that if authorities search his backpack thoughtfully they’ll find BFG 9000 there.

Voting in open!

UPDATE: On World’s Worst Cubicle contest voting is open. So, I’m counting that my fans will vote for #22 or #23 so I can get my well deserved place in history.

About 15 second of possible World Fame

I’m probably one of the luckiest (or condemned, read below) person that ever existed: not the first time I’m noticing that what I wish for after some time really comes true.

The problem is the following: the realization of that wish comes not the exactly the way I envisioned. Nor does it come in a way to be proud of. There has been more than enough evidence in the past to suggest that everything happening to me is not just coincidence. Or, metaphorically speaking, with my own existence I’m proving someone’s theory…

For instance: When I was in high school I got a camera as my birthday present. I was extremely proud of it and really wanted to take some great photos. Sure enough the opportunity soon came – I was on a day trip in the countryside with my class when suddenly our bus plunged from the highway about 20 ft when going 60mhp. Your truly flew across several rows, landed next to the driver’s seat, quickly got out (unhurt, w/o any scratches, camera intact) and started taking photos of the wrecked bus and screaming passengers. These photos were really great, BTW.

Then, when I first came to the States I really wanted to see a lot of people, drive around neighbourhoods and understand how they live here. So within five months I was working as a pizza delivery boy. Trust me – after nine months on this job I’ve seen enough. My experience with the fast food industry is also one of the reasons why I never order pizza delivery at home. Let me stop elaborating here or you’ll never order it again, either.

Then I really wanted to get a job in IT industry in Silicon Valley. I ended up working in an Indian bodyshop for 5 years. These years arguably were the worst 5 years of my life – I was paid 25% less than the minimum required Prevailing Wage for my position, plus being constantly told lies by the owner that my Green Card was in process. I did get my Green Card eventually – 9 years since starting the process…

Than I really wanted to get a good job and make good money so I can invest in something. Soon enough I was working on two jobs, 7 days a week, sleeping 4 hours a day. I did make some savings and invested them in real estate in Las Vegas. I do not think I should tell what was the outcome of this excellent strategy of mine.

Well… finally I joked that I really want to be world famous. I should be more careful… In 2007 when  my wife Connie and I were in my home town (Tbilisi),  we stopped by  my brother’s friend’s ‘office’ – he was running a digital photo print shop there. So Connie took couple of photos. Long story short – these photos now have great chance to win ‘world’s worst cubicle‘ contest. Make sure that you click on ‘view slideshow‘ and see all of them. On #22 is my brother on right. On #23… well… yes, it is your truly.

About the above mentioned curse… the worst from three old Chinese curses is ‘may you find what you are looking for‘…

I’ve already made a mental rule for myself to stop making wishes… But I’m not sure that it will help.

Wish me good luck…I am afraid to wish it for myself!

About crisis (again)

I had clear manifestation that something is really wrong with economy when I’ve released that I was the only person at Saks Fifth Avenue outlet store (see previous entry below).

Granted, it was 6PM on Tuesday afternoon but I really doubt that even if I visit them 1PM on Saturday I’d be bumping  happy shoppers one every my step…

About Castle Rock, CO and Gilroy, CA

There are number of similarities between above mentioned two places: 

1. Both of them can be described as ‘social Siberia’.

2. Despite #1, both of them are very close to major metro area – Castle Rock is approx 20 miles from Denver, Gilroy is 30 miles from San Jose

3. Both of these places smell – Castle Rock smells like cows, Gilroy offers garlic smell in addition to cows.

4. Both places are almost undetectable from the freeway and at the same time are much larger from inside than are observed from outside.

5. And finally – both places have huge outlet malls with stores of all upscale (and not so upscale) and easily recognizable brands – Saks Fifth, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Gap, Banana republic, etc…

 

Go figure…

P.S. However, there is one difference between these two malls – in Castle Rock there is a Christian Outlet Store where you can buy not only Bibles of all forms, languages and dimensions, but many other things with the purpose to demonstrate to the society your religious beliefs  –  from bumper sticker ‘Jesus Loves You’ (yahh, everyone else thinks that you are an asshole) to smiling plastic Jesus (to hang it on your truck’s mirror next to furry, 2" dice), ALL at deep discounts!
  

About food (and Colorado)

I’ve said in past (in this journal too) that SF bay area is not America and America starts app. 50 miles from each coast towards the continent. Here is another proof of this statement: can you imagine a review in Bay Area about Thai restaurant with following quote?

‘Affordable, exotic eats close to home’

Exotic, my ass… Well, that statement is from Colorado and is said about a great little place – Chef Noodle House which is located Aurora, CO. This place I discovered via Yelp and it was not the only case when Yelp helped me to something good (restaurants, places, etc) when I’m not familiar with the neighborhood.

So, if my schedule permits I try always to stop-by at Chef Noodle House on my way to Denver’s airport to grab something to eat. I have no idea how many hours I’ll be stuck in the terminal or (worst case) in Greyhound’s bus with wings (read – sitting in Economy class of any plane on any airline) and having something to eat is quite reassuring.

Crisis? What crisis?

According to the recent article ‘February could be worst month yet for jobless claims’. Yet I’ve received 5 emails and two phone calls over the last two days from various recruiters about vacant Solution Architect positions. I would not say that all of these positions are outstanding, but at least they sound solid on paper…

About reasons to leave the company

From today’s email from one of my colleague (network/wireless solutions architect)

 

Hi Folks,

You may have heard that I’m leaving The Company.  My last day is Tuesday, February 24th.

I wouldn’t normally write, "for green pastures" but, this time it’s true.  I’m moving to Baraboo, WI to become a vegetable/mushroom/barley/hops farmer, using horses instead of tractors.

No, today is not April 1st.

And why I am not surprised?

I use to make a remark from time to time – if an ordinary person would know in which condition is some (if not majority) of this country’s IT infrastructure of vital service providers (telecommunications, emergency) they’d never touch a phone. I’m not talking about what is happening in datacenters of some big-name corporations and numerous other smaller companies…

Well, no surprise that in the main office of this country apparently situation is not better by any means:

 

 

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.

One White House official, who arrived breathless yesterday after being held up at the exterior gate, found he had no computer or telephone number. Recently called back from overseas duty, he ended up using his foreign cellphone.

Another White House official whose transition cellphone was disconnected left a message temporarily referring callers to his wife’s phone.

Several people tried to route their e-mails through personal accounts.

 

 

 

About TV (part II), or only in America

There was an old anecdote (in Russian) – a drunk husband complains that the TV shows only one program and his wife replies that  the TV is actually broken and he has being watching fireplace all evening.

It’s said that there are three things that you can watch with endless fascination: how fire burns, how water flows and how other people work. Well in America you can also enjoy watching a fire burning without having a fireplace at all. Because only here was someone was smart enough to invent a TV channel which shows nothing except a log burning in a fireplace. BTW, contrary to wiki, this TV channel is permanent, not just for Christmas time only. Obviously you can buy a DVD and tape with the same ‘program’ too.

If you have no TV at home ithere is no problem, you can enjoy watching fire online using your computer. Obviously when a log is burnt, someone comes and replaces it.

I won’t be surprised if I find out that there are other TV channels broadcasting the other two pillars of endless fascination….

About (not having) TV at home

Granted, I do admit that I’m not a typical consumer who fits into that standard American definition of the term – I do not carry any credit card debt, do not have kids, do not work 9-5, I do not go to office to work, do not talk about sports with my colleagues, I do not watch any sport events (except FIFA world cup once every 4 years) and so many other things which I ‘do not’, associating me with general population. Despite that still there are plenty of other people in these above mentioned categories.

But there is one category which breaks almost any attempt to associate me with other general (when I say ‘general’ I mean that winning the Nobel Prize is definitely not a property of an ordinary person) population groups and pretty much unique by itself – I do not have a TV, any TV, at home.

Not having a TV at home brings quite some interesting results and observations. First of all – according to US Census it will get you into 0.1% of US population under the same characteristics – households who do not have any TV set at home. Interestingly enough – almost all of those households (me included) do it by choice, rather than not being able to afford it. Also what those households have in common (and again, this excludes me) is that most of them are religious ultraconservatives. I never thought that one day I can be somehow associated with this fringe group…

Secondly, you can enjoy people’s reactions when you announce this fact in a social event/gathering and/or asking people questions like ‘what is American Idol’? The "Moose in Headlights" look is guaranteed almost every time.

As I said, I do not have TV at home by choice. I do believe that 99% delivered via cable/broadcast is analogue of junk mail and one actually even has to pay to watch it. Amazing, isn’t it? Plus you have to watch commercials in between of that junk food for brain.

Furthermore, with no TV at home  there is no need to "keeping up with the Joneses", no more hearing about stuff you don’t really need to buy, no more constant barrage of information resulting in brain and senses overload. Were we really designed to have constant info input with no down time? I think not.  

Why do I need to have TV at home? I get the information I need from Internet. Also, thanks to MvGroup I can download and watch only those programs I’m interested in – documentaries. I still have no idea why cable/satellite companies do not allow you to select and subscribe to only those channels you are interested in.

However, from time to time there are some quality shows on TV networks. One of these types of exception is House M.D. with my favorite Hugh Laurie. If you’ve seen Jeeves and Wooster I do not think that you can forget Bertie. Hugh is great in both these roles and remarkably has no British accent in House.

So, I’ve downloaded first two seasons (thanks to torrents) and am going to enjoy it next few weeks.

My suggestion? Try turning off your TV for a week, and turning on your imagination, creativity and your BRAIN instead! You might be surprised at the results!

About holiday songs

It seems that I’ve being living in US long enough. Well, really long enough (I’m on other side of Mike’s Clause rule – which states that people living in US less than 2 years or more than 10 years should not claim to have unbiased observations about life in US) so when I hear on my favorite radio (AM 810) Bad Holiday Songs Contest, I can understand why they are so bad. Well, even titles of those songs are bad enough:

Santa, Duck Those Missiles
Christmas in Jail
Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk on Christmas

I’m not talking about lyrics…
 

 

Life moves on or may you live in interesting times

Subj. We are living to way too interesting times and it would be unreasonable not to comment it from time to time.