Month: May 2008

“I don’t know.” … “That’s a good answer.”

There is another rerun of the movie – Contact in cable TV. I love the movie, the story line, the special effect and the acting. But I love most is the last few lines in the movie – yes, I can wait two hours just for that 15 seconds …

KID : Are there other people out there in the Universe?
ELLIE : That’s a good question. What do you think, huh?
KID : I don’t know.
ELLIE : That’s a good answer. A skeptic, huh? The most important thing is that you all keep searching for your own answers.

When was the last time you heard a teacher said “That’s a good answers.” to a student who answered “I don’t know.” to a question ?

You see, the most important thing is – keep searching for your own answers.

I will not be broken

Last week hundreds of thousands people went through their lives’ worst setback, it is about time to search for recovery and reclaim their lives. According to the book, I Will Not Be Broken, there are five key stages of overcoming a crisis:

  • First, face the facts. “None of us will get very far without first examining our circumstances, relationships, and feelings. We will need to be ruthless in our self-assessment.”
  • Second, we need to choose life, not death. “We must consciously choose for our lives to go on in a positive way.” We can choose happiness and create options for a positive future.
  • The third step is to reach out because no one thrives in isolation.”We have to let people in our life into our life.”
  • Next, we need to get moving, to think of the future and develop a plan for achieving goals.
  • Finally, step five is to give back. “You must give to a community in order to belong to a community. You can become a volunteer, a community leader, a donor, a social change agent, a future peer supporter.”

Obsession

Couple of days ago, there was a blog post about how Gmail team improved the loading sequence, trimmed the 24 http requests down to just 4 requests. A few utilities and tips were covered in the post, but I think the key messages they sent across were “the need for speed” and “the obsession of great performance”.

In the good old days, we measured the greatness of a program by how fast it could run, how small the runtime file was and how smart the logic we coded. It’s the obsession of great programming, you know. Compare this to the generation of developers we have now, the first question they usually ask about a new task of programming is “where can I copy it ?”. What a difference ?!

I can understand the merit of DRY (Don’t repeat yourself), but really, there is no shortcut to be a great developer. The only way is – obsess to your work !!

Tin Hau birthday parade

Tin Hau, also known as the Queen of Heaven and Goddess of the Sea, who enjoys a special place in people’s hearts thanks to our city’s long maritime history. Many people celebrate Tin Hau’s birthday every year and the most famous festivities is a spectacular parade through the streets with teams of performers, including lion dancers, dragon dancers and other artists. Some photos (click to enlarge) …

Touch the dragon for good luck I am tired Dragon dance

I'll get the job done Dragon dance Big head boy