I am crazily downloading the free books from internet, reading averagely 2 books a day. Most of them are detective stories, I favor Japanese writers' work. However, most of them are really old (the writers were born around 1930, pre-war Japan). These are all Chinese translations. I rarely read novels in English, the sticking factor is just somewhat lower than Chinese ones. I think Chinese is still the most comfortable reading materials for me, perhaps all the English writings draw me back to the studying for exams experience.
It is so amazing how badly written some novels are. The logics do not seem right and you can spot the inconsistency so easily. How they got the book published is really a mystery to me. Regardless, it is still my entertainment most of the nights after work (refuse to go drinking with my colleagues, partly because I hate the public transportation - I live in the country side and most of the partying places are in central amsterdam... And partly because I am really exhausted after the whole day of work. It is just better to spend an hour in the gym, sweating for an hour then take a hot shower, um, I think this is more relaxing).
I innocently downloaded a book by Suzuki Koji, the Chinese name of the book is "the fairy tales of 7 nights". It sounded interesting, I am expecting someone being killed and some smart detective came out to solve the mystery. The story began with 4 young folks died for no reason and the journalist vowed to get to the bottom of it. The story unfoled into a strange sort of answers, totally illogical and inconsistent (I still cannot understand why the powerful spirit hated the media so much but killed herself before she can avenge this grave insult to her and her parents). Nevertheless, Suzuki is very skillful writer, the horror was woven in slowly, tension raised, and I cannot sleep at night with all the lights shut.
Perhaps human beings are built to fear, fear the unknown, fear the uncertain and the unpredictable. Horror story writers deftly stir up the vivid imaginations, the horrifying images arose from your bottom of heart.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Birthday Party
party ...
party more ...
party square ...
I personally never think birthday is a day worth celebrating at all, but I guess this is one of the most-have of human social activities (imagine, without it, we don't really have execuse to party). But why birthday? I hate to be the center of attention. I'd rather hide in the corner and drink like Great Gatsby.
I declined every drink/dinner/party invitation, I don't even go lunch with anyone in the office, I prefer stay home and read. As I get old, I become less amiable and friendly toward colleagus. I am more into being alone, I go to the gym alone, rollerblade alone, eat alone, and drink alone. I think I am going to lose the ability to talk to people soon. Making the project successful is my top piority, why should I spend time making friends. Oh my god, I am turning into a really awful person and the worse of all is that I don't see it as a problem.
I was dragged into the social event on Wednesday night. It was held in a bowling alley and surprisingly I had so much fun. I don't think I have ever touched a bowling ball since I left Toronto, surprisingly, I did pretty alright after the first game. Sports is so fun than just drinking yourself silly. The dinner was alright, trying hard to make conversation with people sitting next to me, but due to the fact I haven't been talking to these people socially much before, conversation dried up pretty quickly. Ha ha, I am old enough not to feel ackward, I just kept eating.
The dancing was also pretty fun, people hanging around the dancing floor that relaxing atmorsphere sort of making me feel very high, gee, the last time I was on the dance floor must be ages. I was told that I surprised everyone that I can party like that. I fell asleep on the way home, the jetlag is really killing me. Wabbly bicyling home from the coach stop, happy birthday to myself.
Dutch Project
Perhaps this bank is not really an investment bank, not sure why people I have met in the bank are really relaxing. One of the bank managers, the decision maker didn't turn up on Friday, I was like, hello, where is he? His colleagues told me oh, that's Daddy's day. He doesn't work on Friday. What is the deal? Because Dutch law says you can only work 35 hours a week, if he's put in more than 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday, he is forbidden to work on Friday.
I was speechless, gee, go-live critical issue, deadline is pressing, and the decision maker has gone home for the day (oh no, he simply just doesn't turn up). This is even worse than the central monetary control bank in communist Beijing. Things like this occur from time to time. One week before the parallel run, the environment team out of blue found out there is no support procedure, i.e., no one is really monitoring the overnight batch run (PS1). I was again speechless, isn't that part of environment teams' responsibilities?
Even during the parallel run, the batch job has failed during the night, no one really know who they should call and how they can handle the situation. They have to get in touch with me because no one really understand my design of the system and how the core system bridges to other upstream/downstream systems (although I tried my best to document everything, no one can be bothered to read them). I am just overwhelmed. This is the most unorganized project I ever worked for, though I have so many managers, I am the only foot solder doing the dirty work.
Frustrating, but the bank manager bribed me to stay with them with a bottle of 18 year highland park. Damn, that's really delicious.
I was speechless, gee, go-live critical issue, deadline is pressing, and the decision maker has gone home for the day (oh no, he simply just doesn't turn up). This is even worse than the central monetary control bank in communist Beijing. Things like this occur from time to time. One week before the parallel run, the environment team out of blue found out there is no support procedure, i.e., no one is really monitoring the overnight batch run (PS1). I was again speechless, isn't that part of environment teams' responsibilities?
Even during the parallel run, the batch job has failed during the night, no one really know who they should call and how they can handle the situation. They have to get in touch with me because no one really understand my design of the system and how the core system bridges to other upstream/downstream systems (although I tried my best to document everything, no one can be bothered to read them). I am just overwhelmed. This is the most unorganized project I ever worked for, though I have so many managers, I am the only foot solder doing the dirty work.
Frustrating, but the bank manager bribed me to stay with them with a bottle of 18 year highland park. Damn, that's really delicious.
Hotel Survival Guide (4)
This is the 4th episode of my hotel survivial guide. Actually, I was put into a very nice service apartment in Amstelveen during my stay in Netherlands. Many of my colleagues urge me to move to the party town, central Amsterdam. But I just see no benefit of doing so. I quite enjoy not partying, I read and spend long time sleeping after work. Amstelveen is a quite residential area, staying in the high floor, through the window, I can see the whole Amstel river area and the flatness of farmlands to miles.
This establishment has 300+ rooms and it is normally filled. The hotel management throw monthly party, through which I realise there are tons of consultants shipped from India for ABN AMRO, ING (We are going to talk about the inefficiency of bank IT project in the future). Another interesting thing is that many Korean or Japanese companies set up their European operation centers this area as well. I guess it has a lot to do with the easy-goingness of Dutch and Dutch tax law.
I had the agreement with the bank to have a 6 week 2 week roation if they would like to engage my service. Every time I check out of the apartment, I left some of my kitchen stuff, bicycle and rollerblades with them, await for my next return. So far it works out alright. The problem is that you don't really get the same flat every time returning to the service apartment. One day I came back from work exhausted, my mind was really occupied and I duly climbed up to the first floor and tried to unlock the door with my cardkey. Damn, it didn't work. I spent a couple seconds thinking what's wrong with my key then I realised, shit, I was moved to the 5th floor.
Similar thing happened before, I was checked into a nice hotel in Melbourne, after the super long flight (I think I was flying from Beijing, transiting via ShangHai, and the flight was delayed for 3 hours, the total travel time is about 20 hours). I was so tired and hungry, after dropping my bags I ran out to get foods. when I returned, I tried really really hard to think what's my room number. I remember the floor but not the room number. I didn't really want to spend any energy to get down to the front desk (also really embarrassed), I came up with a brilliant idea, I am going to try my key with every single door on the floor, ha, there were only 20+, I think I should be lucky enough to get it before half of them ran out.
I wasn't that lucky, also, I was afraid to be spot by other guests. I had to get down to the front desk, asking for my room number which they only gave me 30 minutes beforehand.
This establishment has 300+ rooms and it is normally filled. The hotel management throw monthly party, through which I realise there are tons of consultants shipped from India for ABN AMRO, ING (We are going to talk about the inefficiency of bank IT project in the future). Another interesting thing is that many Korean or Japanese companies set up their European operation centers this area as well. I guess it has a lot to do with the easy-goingness of Dutch and Dutch tax law.
I had the agreement with the bank to have a 6 week 2 week roation if they would like to engage my service. Every time I check out of the apartment, I left some of my kitchen stuff, bicycle and rollerblades with them, await for my next return. So far it works out alright. The problem is that you don't really get the same flat every time returning to the service apartment. One day I came back from work exhausted, my mind was really occupied and I duly climbed up to the first floor and tried to unlock the door with my cardkey. Damn, it didn't work. I spent a couple seconds thinking what's wrong with my key then I realised, shit, I was moved to the 5th floor.
Similar thing happened before, I was checked into a nice hotel in Melbourne, after the super long flight (I think I was flying from Beijing, transiting via ShangHai, and the flight was delayed for 3 hours, the total travel time is about 20 hours). I was so tired and hungry, after dropping my bags I ran out to get foods. when I returned, I tried really really hard to think what's my room number. I remember the floor but not the room number. I didn't really want to spend any energy to get down to the front desk (also really embarrassed), I came up with a brilliant idea, I am going to try my key with every single door on the floor, ha, there were only 20+, I think I should be lucky enough to get it before half of them ran out.
I wasn't that lucky, also, I was afraid to be spot by other guests. I had to get down to the front desk, asking for my room number which they only gave me 30 minutes beforehand.
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