So the news has it that Accenture had dropped Tiger Woods as their representative, while Tag Heuer retained. I would think that these decisions were taken with business consideration in mind instead of morality stance.

Personally, I dont care about his private life at all. This may sound ironic, as I’m about to write my concern about media obsession with his recently uncovered extramarital affairs. But my concern is only that all this is causing Tiger to take an indefinite leave from golf.

I’m not a fan of golf. But I’m a fan of geniuses. Tiger qualifies as one of the best geniuses who register most success in their sports career. Others in mind being Roger Federer, and I am a fan of these two. I play neither golf nor tennis, but their achievement of total success are inspiration to me in many ways. The fact that Tiger had extramarital affairs did not trouble me, because I never saw him as morality spokesperson anyway.

I just hope the media frenzy over this matter will be over soon. Or better, for Tiger Woods to still be back on golf course doing his usual best despite every negative whisper around him. I hope it’s the latter, although I might be expective too much. ( Cristiano Ronaldo comes to mind, when he gave his superb performance despite being booed during 2006 World Cup against France. If Tiger could do that … ).

It’s already the beginning of an end. It’s the first day of the last month in 2009. Despite my very selfish way of life, I still had moments of joy, despair, frustrations, pride, regret. Plain life, like a pendulum swinging between good and evil, between success and failure.

Retrospectively, I dont think I have achieved much this year. Regarding Go, I am glad that I managed to get 4 wins in both Nanning International and KPMC tournament. Also, I managed to create a new (secret) account on KGS and maintain it at 5d, although ‘idazuwaika’ and ’sensemaker’ account (which are more representative of my current strength) are still at 4d. Those achievements however fall short of my resolve during the beginning of the year. Overall, I am neutral about my Go. The pendulum aint swinging between emotions or perceptions, save for a minor, occasional vibration.

Health .. ! Sad to say, it’s progressively going backward. During the desperation times of managing my thesis, I had successfully gained few kilos. I dont feel good looking at the mirror nowadays. I also consumed large amount of caffeine, sugar and snacks. Of course, I dream of being a hard-core programmer, but living on soda and snacks like one was not part of it. Haizz.. gonna take a lot of effort to reverse the damage.

Knowledge acquisition .. ! I am kind of pleased to have gained a substantial understanding of Trusted Computing technology, due to my research on its application in Internet Voting. And along with it, I had familiarised myself with Qt C++ GUI framework during the project development for demonstration. I had wonderful moment using Qt Creator and Qt libraries. They allowed me to focus on my project without too much overhead.

Skill acquisition for this year is zero. Or negative to be exact, if I take into account of my degrading memory of Mandarin Chinese. At one time, I also managed to memorize katakana and hiragana of Japanese writing system, but now they are gone too. I am embarrassed being reminded of my super failure in this part.

There’s only one month left before the end of year. I dont think I have the energy to go at any more personal goals. I rather prepare myself with knowledge and skills to make 2010 a better year.

I feel bad for my blog. It used to be quite active, with me writing my life in hope to share my thoughts with others besides being a personal journal that I can revisit to judge whether my life is interesting or not. But lately, I have been too busy with my Master thesis and consequently had to abandon this blog.

I did not expect my project to be very challenging. Conceptually, it was easy enough. I wanted to study the capabilities of Trusted Computing and then use them to tackle problems inherent to Internet Voting. But it turned out there were too many suprises. Configuring tpm-emulator 0.61 from Mario Strasser, and TrouSerS took weeks, since I was not familiar with Linux. I also had to modify and recompile tpm-tools to make some of their options work.

Also, during the course of my project, I probably have read and reread “A Practical Guide to Trusted Computing” for about 6 times, and funnily I enjoyed gaining new understanding every time. Oh I’m so geeky

So .. what’s next for me?

Should I be focusing on my work, achieving top performance and patiently climb the corporate ladder?

Should I ride on current momentum, and do a PhD part-time?

Should I be gaining new working experience as freelancer and putting myself into different problem domains?

Should I create an idea, rigorously work to implement it, and launch a startup?

Honestly, I am not sure of what my decision will be. Right now, desire is burning in me to just implement everything I have studied and read. I have some ideas, but revealing them now would be premature.

Hmm, the number of readers of this blog is declining rapidly. Cant help it, been to busy for updating anything. The past 4 days, I have been working on two global issues assignment, firstly a group work about China and its rise to superpower, and secondly an individual work regarding G8 and its commitment towards eradicating global poverty.

I have to say, despite the short time allocated for this subject, I have learned tremendously a lot. Perhaps it’s because I previously knew so little about global issues, hence can easily absorb the intros and the fundamental theories. I am eager to learn more and actively participate in various discussion although for now, I’m too tired.

Yawn…

A better life awaits after I finish my part-time Master in a month (hopefully). Until then, this blog has to suffer for a while

Efficient.

There is no way I can afford to be less than that. I need to submit two assignments on global issue, the first about China’s rise as superpower, and the second about effectiveness of G8. After submitting the two assignments, I will only have a month left to finish my Project 2 : Securing Internet Voting System with Trusted Computing Technology. That’s actually not my project title, I’ve forgotten the actual title after a month of not touching project. I’ve been touching something else.

Funnily, I still procrastinate and write this blog post.

Regarding Go, I completed the second league but the result is not yet published on MWA website. Also, from 23rd September to 30th September, I will probably be representing Malaysia in Nanning, China for Nanning International Weiqi Tournament. I will also probably be representing Malaysia in Korea Prime Minister Cup in Jeonju, Korea from 22th October to 27th October. Both “probablies” were there because I am not sure whether my employer will grant me unrecorded leave or not. They suddenly make fuss about the invitation letters not having letterhead.

I might as well fit in a little update about my work here. I have finally completed the VBA Excel programming to track our team performance although from time to time, there will be new feature request from my superior which requires me to continually do the development. Honestly, I feel like a real programmer now , although in reality I really should be doing sales consultancy and familiarise myself with various telecommunication products.

Okay, time to start writing about China rise to superpower. The superpower term is wide-ranging, and may cover economic, political, military and technological prowess. Anyone who has any idea that they want to share regarding this is most welcome.

Today is rather different from usual. Firstly, my hair isn’t straight anymore. I had all the straightened parts cut out, and I’m back to my natural appearance. Received few weird glares and glances at the office, but could not be bothered to explain why I had haircut. Actually I didn’t want the hairstylist to cut my hair so short, and I thought I had already told him so. Nevertheless he still did, and I did not see it coming. Literally did not see, as I took off my glasses during the whole session.

Another change was, for the first time, I took LRT from home to office instead of driving. I was naive to think that I would get a seat, just because I boarded the train at the first station. Heck, it was already jam-packed even then. I guess I will go back to driving to office again.

Also, for the first time, I slept during lunch hour. It felt so good, so peaceful. I’m seeing myself doing this again, as part of a new lifestyle, new routine. Imagine, being able to sleep one hour late every night and have it replaced during lunch time. I could be more productive at my side work, or Go while eating less everyday. Eating less is becoming increasingly important day by day.

6 hour sleep at night, 1 hour during lunch time. 7 hours of sleeping is certainly more than enough. Perhaps on certain days, I could have just 5 hour sleep at night. Great

LET’S SKIP LUNCH !

Finally, weekend has come. It has been a rather stressful week for me, because I had to do two presentations in front of potential customers, showing off our products from both technical viewpoint and package offerings.

I am not scared of doing presentation. But I really need to know my subject. So basically, prior to the presentation about IPVPN ADSL, I had to really study how the technology works, how the devices are connected together etc.

Turned out all those not relevant to the presentation, no one asked me that detail. But I needed to know them to summon enough confidence to present.

Now that weekend has finally arrived, I would like to state few things that I would like to achieve.

1. Play with Windows 7. Windows 7 Release Candidate is out and available for free from Microsoft website. Google will bring you there.
2. Play 10 Go games, review 3 Shusaku games and do 20 Tsumego. Not enough, but I’m tired of overaiming and not achieving them.
3. Watch either Terminator or Angel and Demon.
4. Service my car

Okay, that should be enough. I’d like to have more rest than usual this weekend.

Thank God it’s over. Semester 3 is over! I could not finish the mini-labs assignment, but I am glad that the deadline had passed. I cannot soldier on for another day, another night. I dont feel good to shortchange my employer for another hour. Eyebags are starting to develop, and since I belong to narcissistic Facebook / blogging generation, that is simply not tolerable.

There are many things that I need to address. Firstly, my health. I need to start detoxing, cleansing my system from caffeine. Dispose fat. Lead an active life. Sleep slightly more than usual (I dont like sleeping).That is my first priority.

Secondly, get better at my work. There’s plenty of learning to be done quickly, which had been hampered by my assignments. This should not be too difficult to do, because I love my work anyway.

Thirdly, play more Go! I have been stucked at 4d for 2 years now, destroying my momentum of 1d/year. The challenge is not to get back at the pace, but to pass the 4d stage at all.

Fourthly, building a website. This WordPress blog is too limiting for me. I want to be able to host various files, and make use of plenty of attractive web technologies. And, somewhat earn money online.

Fifthly, renovating my room. It’s terribly messy, and it does not even have a bed, despite having lived there for 2 months. Told ya I’m not a fan of sleeping.

Sixthly …
Seventhly …

Plenty of things need to be addressed. There should be around 15-20 “addresses” in total. As time is too precious, this makes a nice travelling-salesman problem, dont ya think? Any genius mathematician can help me here?

Got old pictures of myself from a friend.
I miss university life.

It’s nearly 10 a.m. now, and I am at San Francisco Coffee surfing Internet. As of now, I’m officeless … more grandly known as ‘floating’.

I had previously cancelled my plan to join R&D, and decided to stay in the corporate mainstream. The Human Resource Department (HR) then sent me to Solution Integration Unit (SIU), to fill a Solution Consultant position. Well, I went there, only to find out the position was not even vacant. So, SIU is now telling me to wait, while they are sorting out matters with HR. And, I always prefer waiting with a large cup of Cappucino, in a cafe, with a Wi-Fi connected laptop. I have another job interview this week, so at the moment, my career could have been any of two radically different stories.

Over the past few weeks, I had plenty of career advices, from colleagues (ex- and not) and friends. If fact, interviewers as well. Some said I should join a department filled with seniors, so that I could rise easily replacing them after they’re gone. Others said I should join a young team instead, to build network and have more fun at work.

Well, I guess, both advices have pros and cons. The first advice is only relevant if I plan to stay at one particular job, and patiently wait (without cappucino and Wi-Fi) to succeed my seniors. For the second advice, there is possibility that network and fun might amount to nothing. Competition will also be high, and also, I am not the best networker in town.

Anyway, the conclusion is, first advice is better if I plan to stay long at one particular job, the second one better if I want to jump around between jobs quickly.

Actually I couldn’t care less about job, career etc. The problem is, that’s what people first ask me about whenever they see me. Family wants to know how my work goes. Old friends will ask, “where do you work now?“. Old colleagues, ex-schoolmates, etc etc. I suppose that will be the first thing asked of me, if I attend a blind date as well.

I want a more meaningful thing to do, not simply living for the society and to gain respect. Not even simply for my own survival. Something which has the flavour of “meaning of existence”. Something that shows me why I am what I am, something that takes me beyond my maximum potential.

Something worth dying for ..

Am I at the top of Maslow’s pyramid, or I just take everything for granted?