richard@work

My flight home (SYD-SIN) is simply great. I have flown in an Airbus Industrie A380, the super jumbo. It’s not until several years more until we see lot’s of them and we take them for granted like the 747s.

The cabin is fantastically big and spacious and the wings is just enormous!

Get that for a coach seat. Leg room is great, the in-flight console is even neater. You’ve got the usual cup holder. But added to that is a garment hanger and a small things holder. The remote control has been upgraded as well. Like the usual controls, it has an added PC-like keyboard. The screen’s big enough to rival other airlines biz class screens. The console has a video in (for your portable video player), a USB port for in-flight document browsing and editing, an ethernet port (not usable at moment, and obviously planned to be used in the future) and a 2nd set of personal lighting. Uber Cool!

The flight map/route is updated as well. The graphics is just a lot more 3D looking, a night-sunshine indicator and a globe-view has been added.

But that’s even not all I am raving about. The in-flight portal is just so user-friendly and a little more graphical. It has an icon-based selector as well as the more traditional control button-based selection. Using the console, you can read files, and edit files as well. The console has a built-in file manager, media player and an image viewer. Files can be read and written to a USB drive (that you plug in to the USB port).

For the more serious types, there is an in-built Star Office (from Sun). Writer, Calc and Impress.

And the PDF reader looks like XPDF! (I have written the PDF using Impress)

I have watched two full-length movies along the way, thinkered with the KrisWorld systems, and the rest is just a restful flight blisss. Just totally cool! What a finale for a homesickess-ridden but productive stint in Sydney.

Until then Sydney. I just couldn’t find the seamless words to describe how beautiful the city is. I’ll definitely be back. Hope it’s on A380 again.

The Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Harbour Bridge

Sydney Harbour @ Circular Quay

More pics here.

Just got back from Sydney and yet I am on the airport again… to Manila, this time. It’s a combination of of utmost happiness and, not sure of the word to describe that feeling when I left Sydney. Anyways, this is just a heads up for my other posts. I’ll be posting them the soonest I come back from my Manila getaway next weekend. Noteworthy will be the loony cabbie I spoke with on my to the SYD airport, experience in A380 and in the Open Source-based apps in the flight itself, and the immediate experience when I touched down. Coolness!

Until then blog.

I’d surely miss Sydney a lot, especially the office.

I haven’t eaten SOA for quite some time now. I haven’t slept with it either. I haven’t heard much about the buzz for some time. So is there really SOA? I do sometimes ask that myself. Is it just a buzzword for salesmen (and IBM & BEA) or is it real? Is it really feasible? My gut feel tells me that this SOA goodness is a real deal. It is just a conglomeration of best practices and best idioms in terms of software architecture throughout computing history. Is it feasible? Yeeeeaaaahhhh!?!? What I mean is, there will not be a system that is fully SOA in every sense. Get real, not even IBM i reckon. There will always be a human factor, there will always be the legacy part, there will always be silos. SOA just glues them together… and presents them as, well… SOA. I guess SOA is more applicable being called SFA. Software Flexibility and Agility. The more you achieve flexibility and agility in reaction to change, the more SFA compliant you are.

Drawing a bit farther from being technical and geeky, I am posting this rare post.

Today I bought a book about financial markets. I am really hell bent in learning the topic by heart. I’d like to learn about money markets, bonds, forex, stocks, futures, commodities market, energy market, and investments and securities in general. This would not just help me to be a bit more proactive in fiddling around my portfolio but also will give me a boost in learning my company’s business. Knowing what I didn’t know is the first step, addressing these is the next.

It is the Nth time that I attempted to draft my development plan (read: training plan). However, for every weekend, I am usually tempted by other activities, hence, deferring the draft yet to another day. Today, I went to a long (and twice) cruise in Sydney harbour. The scenery is just breathtaking. I had my skin sunburnt. It is very cold and yet there is sun. You won’t notice getting fried. Well it’s all worth the deferment of my draft. Cheers.

It has been 6 weeks now since I changed employer… no regrets in letting go. Everyone has to change. Now, I am reaping the rewards. I am enjoying my new employment. Really! I haven’t seen a company that drives innovation to the maximum. It is even part of the core values of the company. I am trilled to learn that we are officially allowed to allot a portion of our paid work time per week to any innovative ideas or projects that we might want to do. Talk about google-style culture. Indeed, it is a haven. Every week, we attend a presentation from a developer who presents his/her share of innovation. All leveraged open source projects as their base, of course. The _fun_ thing is, these personal mini projects gets actually adopted in the medium to long term road plan. This is equivalent to getting a reward and recognition for something you love to do. People innovate in my company because the company rewards them. And the company reaps the rewards for having this brand of culture. It’s awesome I tell you.

Everyone and everything has to change, even yourselves, even the system you work on, and even the society we live in. It is hard to believe that we can survive now without our mobile phones, without the use of our computers. It is even harder to believe that the applications we work with now will still be there tomorrow. Look at DOS.

Innovation performs many roles in change. Innovation plays the cushion for any impact change might bring. Innovation acts as the catalyst for change. Innovation is also a positive and natural reaction to change. If you don’t embrace change, if you don’t innovate, then you’re legacy. Left in the cloud of dust of those who did.

Innovation is not free though especially for those who have long embraced a closed-knit culture or something that is resistant to change. Resistance will be the major obstacle. Also, we should not discount costs and risks. There will always be cost, there will always be risks. But the winners are always those who take the initiative to embrace change, innovate, take risks and lead. It is my personal goal to succeed. And in the future when I, again, decide which way to go on a forked road, I shall bring the culture of innovation from the company I work on.

:::: and some more ::::

I am in one of the best companies to work for. To top it all of, I now train in one of their best offices. Hey, it’s free drinks (alcoholic) at the pantry from 5PM to 7PM on fridays. We can have choices of different brands of wine and beer. I guess the social effect of these non-functional, non-technical activities improves the productivity and morale one way or another.

Shot this from start to finish. Err, I didn’t a picture of it. Maybe next time, next weekend.

I have rebooked my flight two days in advanced. To top it all off, I booked the first flight out of Sydney to Singapore. It this is on an A380 flight. I really don’t expect a totally experience but flying on history’s biggest passenger aircraft is a totally different experience altogether. I have always preferred an aisle seat, but this time, I’d take window. Just this instance alone. It’s a double excitement for me. I have abbreviated my flight home by two days and its on A380. w00t!

sydney harbour by night… just bored and homesick.