My Office

Near-Future Plans

The picture above is an artistic 3D rendering of my proposed office plan. The colours are all fake but the partitioning, windows, doors and furnitures are more or less there. The place is already rented and the renovations are done. The partitions have been installed along with the air-conditioning. Now, I am going through the pain of getting Streamyx set up (it’s been almost a friggin’ month!).

My office is divided into several areas. Counter clockwise from the main door is the lounge, pantry, toilet, meeting room, server/storage room, work area, reception. Although not all the furniture is in yet, some already are – all are being bought from IKEA in stages. The lack of stock on some of my favourite items at the store can be a pain at times.

My most pressing concern at the moment is securing some projects and staff. Hiring is a royal pain as it is extremely difficult to find good people. Since I’m taking the solo-founder route, things are a bit stressful as I have to take care of every little detail. The plus side of it is that, I will know how to do everything later, which is important.

I am also learning some patience. I am constantly surprised by how dumb some people are. However, since I need to get them to help me do stuff, I keep my cool and use every trick up my sleeve to turn them around. I have learned that it is always important to keep asking for something until I get it, and ask nicely.

The work area can already fit in 6 people comfortably. If I need more space, I may need to move some furniture or take out one partition – the yellow one in the image above. If I remove that partition, I can easily fit in up to 10 people in the work + reception area. Then, if I need more space, I can hijack the lounge or meeting areas too. But, if I can get to the point where I have 10 people working for me, I will move to a bigger office.

I pray to be able to have some revenues in Q1 this year. That will be a damn good start to the year. I will worry about profits later.

We are all Cyborgs

This is the pitch from Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist. I cannot say that I disagree. She has an interesting view on how we are now a new species of homo-sapien creatures. Mind-opening.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Paying my Dues

Got an SMS today, from my bank, notifying me that my first cheque to repay my student-loan has now been cashed. Okay, that lights the fire under my arse. I now have to work real hard to earn the rest of the money very quickly.

As I like to tell people I have hutang keliling pinggang, so to speak. I’m nose high in debt and currently bleeding cash.

Ganbatte!

Marissa Mayer

The common thread, she realized, was that each of those decisions had allowed her to surround herself with really smart people and to do something outside of her comfort zone. The same would be true if she went with Google, she figured. The guys she had met there were the smartest people she had ever interviewed with, and she had a sense that she would learn more from failing with them than by succeeding someplace else.

On May 1, she declined 11 job offers and kept the Google and McKinsey ones alive. Six days later, she verbally accepted Google’s offer, signing with the company on the 12th—12 being her lucky number.

On graduation day, Mayer was surprised to see Page and Brin there to cheer her on. They were wearing shorts and traveling on inline skates. As they were talking with Mayer and her parents, Page suddenly said, “Hey, I think I may have graduated today. I should go and see.” He skated away, returning with the master’s diploma he hadn’t yet bothered to pick up. Mayer’s parents took in the spectacle with a bit of trepidation. They wanted to believe their daughter was making the right decision, but they couldn’t help wondering about the wisdom of her signing with a company that had no revenue, no clear strategy for revenue, and leaders who skated to their graduation.

From the adventures of Marissa.

Death by Magic!

Regardless of the cause of death, the MACC needs to man up!That’s the only thing that I could think of when I heard the results of the Teoh Beng Hock inquest.

As you may already know, Teoh Beng Hocks body was found outside the building of the MACC one day and was presumed to have either jumped or been forced out an upper-storey window. He was there at the MACC to assist in investigations of corruption against certain parties. In went a healthy man, and out he came through a window.

After the media circus surrounding his death, another one is about to explode, a year and a half later.

The inquest into his death found that there was neither evidence of suicide nor homicide. Okay, let me put this another way. Someone’s body was found to have fallen off a tall building. A police has to either classify the case as suicide or homicide. The person either jumped off the building, or was forced off the building. Bodies do not just miraculously accelerate downwards.

It does not take a genius to realise that the death needs to either be classified as a suicide or homicide, in order for investigations to proceed. If it is suicide, there will not be any insurance compensation and if it was homicide, then there will need to be insurance compensation. Therefore, there are possible legal and financial implications involved.

But it is only in Malaysia, that a healthy young man who was due to marry later than week can die of neither suicide nor homicide.

It was death by magic!

WHAT THE FRAK??!!

The video brought tears to my eyes.

PS: This will turn into an election issue. All the opposition needs to do is to march his crying sister through every ‘shaky’ constituency where there are significant swing voters. That should do the trick.

Unifi in OUG!

Unifi began marketing their services in/around OUG today. I saw their little road-side booths on the way back from dinner and they stuck some spam into my mailbox today. This reminded me of an incident that I had with Unifi about 4 months ago.

I had been observing their workmen laying cables in OUG for several weeks. So, I knew that OUG was in their service pipeline. Then, one day, I found a Unifi box sitting on a pole directly behind my house. So, I knew that all the physical infrastructure had been lain in my area. Being curious about these things, I called up their hot-line and asked some questions. It went something like this:

Me: I noticed that your workmen have completed laying cables in my area and that there is a Unifi box sitting on a pole behind my house. When can I expect the service in my area to be activated?
Unifi: Sir, although we have the Unifi boxes in your area does not mean that we have service in the area. I do not know when it will become available.
Me: …. wtf? ….
Unifi: However, I could put you in our list of interested customers and give you a call when it comes to your area. Would you like that?
Me: Yes, please!

After that, I thought to myself – it is only in Malaysia that an ISP will complete the roll-out of their physical infrastructure to only sit on their behinds and wait for an unknown amount of time before activating service. Every communications engineer knows that the most expensive part of supplying fibre-to-the-home is the laying of the physical infrastructure. The rest is just software!

In a normal business, one would like to recoup the capital expenditure as quickly as possible. So, once the wires have been lain, one would expect the company to immediately start their service. In fact, I would expect their marketing department to begin selling the service even before the cable laying had been completed. It only makes business sense that way!

But in Malaysia, things are different.

As for me, I will not sign up so soon. I understand, only too well, the kind of work that needs to be done and I would rather someone else be their guinea pigs before I install mine. I would like the installers to gain enough experience making holes inside walls before they make some in mine. Also, I hope that their network guys can sort out any operational hiccups before I get my service.

So, I might sign up in the second half of the year – once things settle down in my life.

PS: I have been waiting for the Streamyx service in my office since Dec 15 last year!