Thursday, October 27, 2011

Conspiracy

According to Dictionary.com,

are as below:

1. the act of conspiring.
2. an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.
3. a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose: He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the government.
4.Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.
5.any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.
 
The most common definition should be No. 2. A plot by 2 or more person to do something illegal / evil / unlawful and etc.
 
You can read the short or long version. :P . Long version starts first.
 
##LONG version #
Why am I talking about conspiracy? Well, let's just say I have some first hand experience about it. I don't say I'm a saint, but I would be guilty as charged by conspiring with these people. Imagine you're part of a group,  where most of them like to have McDonald's for lunch, naturally even you're not really a fan of McDonald's, you would still join them. So, naturally when you go out with them, you try to have a good time with them while they enjoying your lunch. Hopefully, the next time they have lunch with you, they would go for something that you desire. If not, you could always voice out your opinion.
As a tightly-knit group, they would try to accommodate you as well.
But, if when you're going out lunch with them to McDonald's , you decide to show your sour face,  cause a commotion when everyone is having their lunch; you probably can stop thinking people joining you for lunch on something you like.


Being in a group, you probably need to respect the rules or do's and don'ts of the group. If you decide to do something else in the norm, you can expect yourself to be condemned by the group. This , however , applies only if you're in a social circle. Meaning, if the group you're with , are fans of that basketball team/soccer/football team that you're NOT interested, you could  always keep quiet when they are talking about the their favorite team. You could always do a pissing match just to spite each other out of the name of fun as well. But, that might get old after a while. However, if you just can't find a way to have fun with this group, you could always opt to join another group of people who have the same interests as you.

 Humans, after all are social species. But, if every group you joined, you made a ruckus , causing everyone in the group to dislike you in one way or another, all the groups will one way or another decide to conspire to go against you. Certainly, when you're in that kind of condition, it's not an easy feat to survive. Let's assume you're a student, studying in an environment where your classmates don't want to join you for lunch, OR your fellow classmates just feel uncomfortable by your mere presence ("helped" by people who conspire against because of you wronged them way too many times), OR they ignore your presence when you talk to them.
Then, it's probably a good idea to
a) look for another place to study.
b) behave like their part of a group.

Option (b) might still work, but it's going to take a long time for people to change their mind since your image/reputation was tainted by people that conspire against you.

Option (a) would be the easiest, where you start anew and this time you should at least try to make it right.

But, not everyone has the luxury of option (a). (That would a be a different story at work.) So, before you want to say / do something that might cause the group of people to dislike / hate you, think about how would you feel if they did to you?
##LONG version # 

#SHORT version#
If you're in a group, make sure you understand the terms / habits of the group. If you decide to do something else out of the groups' norm, you could always ask the group members whether something is OKAY or otherwise. If you decide to live as a lonely human being for your entire life, always cause a commotion wherever you go.


#SHORT version#

If you have real life examples about this, do share in the comments section. :D
















Thursday, October 06, 2011

I must absolutely blog about this. (Steve Jobs passed away)

2 events / things inspired me to blog about this:
1) The passing of Apple co/founder , Steve Jobs.
2) The reality tv show, The Buried Life.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine introduced this youtube video to me.



Steve Jobs , never completed college. Yet, he was able to start up a company that was able to change the world. But, I'm not saying tertiary education is useless. It takes guts and "street-sense" to take risks and do things right. There was something that he said was very inspiring to me
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

If you can't find something you love, don't settle. keep looking.

For myself that means a lot to me. I've worked for around 9 years, I've changed from tech support to a programmer job. From AREV to ASP, ASP to ASP.NET and now PHP and soon ActionScript. I think I'll be learning a lot more. But I think I should change my mindset now.
I shouldn't be just looking for a day-in-day-out job as a Flash developer. I should looking much much further a career in IT job, probably a job that allows me to manage a team of people.

That is what I should be looking forward. But in order to do that, I have to very good in what I do. I was quite interested in watching animation (never doing one :P), but Flash is good for doing both (animation and coding) .

This is my 3rd job now, I think I seen my fair share of people who are good managers, good coders, but rarely both in one person. But if there is one, I really have tremendous respect for these people. Each of these people have their pros and cons. It's up to on how to work things out.

okay. seems like a bit out of topic here.


About Buried Life. It's basically a tv show that inspires me people to do great things by asking this question "What are things that you want to do before you die?"

In Steve Jobs commencement speech, he mentioned a similar question / issue. "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

When we think about today or tomorrow is the last day we're going to die, we will feel we achieved so little, we would've done more. We will work harder to achieve that target.

On Buried Life,


In this specific episode, Ben wanted date Megan Fox and during the process of finding a way to date Megan Fox , met a girl who was scared of roller coaster known as Silver Bullet. What inspired me is that since this girl was so scared of roller coaster, The Buried Life crew(??, sorry I don't have a better term for that), decided to take this girl to the roller coaster help her conquer her fear of roller coaster.

She conquered her fear with their help. That has inpsired me to think about what good things I can do before I die.

So, when we go to work tomorrow, when we go to class tomorrow, think about this, "if tomorrow is the day we're going to die, what are things that you want to do before you die?"