Sunday, December 28, 2008

When the mind, body and soul reflects...

I am back from a month's hiatus and I must say that this is the longest that I have ever taken...and what great wonders it has done in refreshing my mind, body and soul. Though there is never enough time for me to do all the things that I would want to do, nonetheless the past month has given me greater clarity in my thinking, in especially the areas that have been rather cloudy of late. The need for innovation, creativity and this niggling and constant desire for results sometimes do bug me a little, but I guess this is part and parcel of living it up in a competitive world.

It has been a soulful journey of sorts for me too, this past month. I am seeing things that I have never been able to see, looking at things that I have never been able to look closely, listening more than hearing and reflecting more than mirroring. "What have I achieved so far in 2008?", was one of the questions that kept creeping into my mind, especially as we near the tail end of it! "What possibly could I do even better?"...was the never ending voice that kept echoing into my innermost thoughts?

To tell you the truth, I am never sure about the things that I have done so far in 2008 being enough...I mean enough for me to say that I am completely satisfied about how things worked out eventually. But I do know that, being somebody who will never regret his decisions, and who is a perpetual optimist, I must say that for whatever reasons I do think that I have done whatever that I can to look myself in the mirror and tell myself that I have done good enough to warrant something good. Yup there were things that could be avoided, but I guess sometimes things that are uninvited just show up at our doorsteps, perhaps to test us, or just to show to us that no matter how good your plans are, there are always things that WILL go wrong!

How about the things that I would do differently in 2009? I guess changes need to be done over a period of time, but I am already putting in place plans that will lead me to an eventuality that is even more desirable than before. I have this big dream of starting up on my own, perhaps some form of a training consultancy firm that will enable me to share the joys of learning with others. Whether this will turn out to be a reality within the next 5 to 10 years is something really that I can't be sure of, but what I DO know is the fact that I am not just keeping my plans on the shelves. Learning more about people, about listening to what people really want, about sharing and making people seek their own AHA! moments...I guess I do enjoy looking at people rediscovering the joys of learning and knowing, more so than just knowing something for the sake of seeking a job r being sent for re-training...but more so about knowing something for the sake of really wanting to know it for a greater god-given purpose, whatever that may be!

Gosh, will it work out for me in 2009? God, I don't even know, but what I do know is that I am going to try to do even more...no...not try, but I am sure going to do even more than that in 2008, in order to be a better person in this mortal world!

Monday, December 1, 2008

When your product is THAT good!

I went along with my future colleagues for a talk-cum-presentation by Google and came away impressed, not so much at the variety of products and aps that they are offering or going to offer, which is already quite substantial, but more so at the audacity of how some patterns of work that people like myself have been used to, can be changed because of how good their product is.

1 thing that I came away from the talk is the fact that Google has done a fantastic job in becoming a very effective search engine company. In fact, I was thinking it is so good at what it is doing that if you notice, for example, in their ubiquitous email offering, Gmail, there is no necessity for one to include an 'Add Folder' function, something that perhaps is a no-no for other types of similar application. I was in fact thinking it is because that their engine is so good, that is why the need for folders to organise your emails, much like how I used to do, is rendered now redundant! Is it not amazing how your work patterns changes when you have such a product offering. I guess this is what you call organise chaos!

Now if only they can come out with the micro robots from the movie 'Minority Report', the ones that were sent to hunt down Tom Cruise's character, and tasked them to be the search bots for some of us, like for example, my significant other..ehem, then I think life will be so much easier if we don't need to be organised and let these search engine micro-bots do the fetching for us! Hmmmmm.