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Browsing tag: reflections

  • October 29, 2012

    What’s good weather worth?

    Auckland is my hometown. It has a few things going for it – work opportunities, friends and family, ethnic cuisines, and everything from beaches to parks to bush. And as our biggest city, we take amenities like libraries, concerts and the like for granted. Sure, there’s not a lot that’s affordable to do, but if an international band is touring, if they make a stop in New Zealand, you know what city they’ll be playing in. That kind of thing.

    But on so many quality of life factors, it fails hard.

    Public transport? Dire.

    Cost of living? Astronomical.

    Housing market? Out of control.

    English: Auckland Harbour Bridge. The harbour ...

    Auckland Harbour Bridge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    And you can add the weather to that list. After basking under the South Island’s glorious spring skies last month, Auckland has been spectacularly depressing. I’m not quite my mother, who religiously watches the weather forecast every night and practically plans the next day around it; and I don’t think I have SAD, but the weather does have a major effect on my moods. And that effect is generally one of disgust and frustration.

    (That said, moaning about the weather here does pale in comparison to what the US east coast is facing right now with Hurricane Sandy. At least we’re relatively sheltered here from most kinds of natural disasters.)

    Steel skies. Constant rain. It’s impossible to get out and enjoy our parks, beaches and bush – and if we’re cheated out of a second summer in a row, I’m predicting VERY BAD THINGS on a national scale. This blazing weekend just gone was the best, in memory, for about the past year. Here’s hoping it’s a taste of what’s to come.

    On the other hand, one could live somewhere beautiful and warm and sunny in regional New Zealand. But unless you could work remotely and make decent money doing so, all you could realistically aspire to would be working at the local supermarket. Or bakery.  Or something along those lines.

    What’s important to you in choosing a place to live? Does weather matter?

  • October 26, 2012

    Dichotomies and contradictions: Putting your money where your mouth is

    Now that I don’t work in the CBD, and don’t walk down Queen St every day, I can’t get used to not seeing the iconic Borders bookshop below the cinemas.

    “I can’t wrap my head around the fact that it’s just not there anymore!” I lamented to T on Diwali weekend as we passed the dark, hollow building, plastered with ‘For Lease’ signs.

    “You know why they had to close? Because of people like you, who go in there and read for hours without buying anything,” he replied without missing a beat.

    Ouch.

    While that’s not the whole truth – the book and CD industry is in near terminal decline – people like me didn’t exactly help stem the demise.

    In fact, when it comes to putting my money where my mouth is, I fall so far short it’s not funny.

    I love books, but I’ve never been a book buyer. I’ve had a library card ever since I can remember.

    I love good writing, full stop, but I don’t pay for it. Given that this is how I earn a crust … yikes. I don’t have any magazine subscriptions, and I’ve never donated to, say, Longreads, though I adore what they’re doing. In short, I grew up in the age of free content, and wound up in the heart of that industry. I’m part of the problem.

    I love music, but hate to pay for it.  I spent most of my childhood first taping songs off the radio, then pirating music in my teens. Now I pay to attend concerts, but we’re now well and truly into the age of streaming music, which costs nothing as long as I’m connected to the web.

    I love good food, but am loath to pay for good ingredients. We do from time to time – good cheese, good meat, good ice cream, good olive oil… but eating quality is not cheap. In fact, I love food but don’t enjoy cooking. (I’m mired in a MAJOR food rut at the moment. A spot of Food TV revived a bit of interest the other night, but not nearly enough.)

    Do you walk the talk when it comes to your dollars and cents?

  • October 25, 2012

    On saying no (and being okay with it)

    I’ve been on a nay-saying spree lately. And it feels good.

    1.

    I got a sudden rush of interest from students around the start of my holiday last month for help with essays and tutoring. I turned them down, but said I’d be available from October for any future inquiries. Much as the money would have been nice, I wasn’t going to stress myself out trying to cater to them while in the South Island without a computer.

    2.

    I refused to pander to a request that came my way during the course of a work day, one that I was fully entitled to say no to, but still felt slightly guilty about. When it came down to it, the time it would have taken me vs the potential payoff simply didn’t add up.  The whole thing took up far more of my brainspace than it should have, but I don’t feel bad for it – and hopefully I’m setting a precedent for myself going forward. (I have a feeling this may be tested sooner rather than later.)

    3.

    I politely asked a clueless marketing person to stop spamming me. Here’s how it went: she’d send me a link to an infographic, asking if I would share it on our website. She would then follow up with a string of incessant emails asking if I had decided to use it (and in one case, even asking who else I knew that she could approach about it). This cycle repeated for about three different pitches. Apparently infographic outreach is the crappiest of crap tasks, which I can totally understand. But here’s a piece of free advice: stalking your targets is never a winning tactic.

    Ignoring her led nowhere, and an abrupt ‘no thanks’ to one of her countless messages was evidently not a strong enough hint.  I hate confrontation, so I considered simply marking her email address as ‘spam’ and directing all future emails into my junk mail. But I stiffened my backbone and wrote back something along these lines:

    Based on your previous emails, I don’t think the topics you cover are a good fit. You’re welcome to keep sending pitches, but please don’t send multiple emails to follow up. I receive hundreds of emails a day and simply don’t have time to respond to them all

    …managing to resist adding a snotty “least of all, unsuccessful pitches” at the end of it.

    Not that she took any heed of my reply (sigh), earning herself a free and permanent pass straight to my junk folder. Takeaway: do not hesitate to flag and block potential Spammy McSpammersons.

    We’re all busy. We all have too much on our plate. Saying no isn’t a luxury – it’s a must.

    Do you struggle with saying no? When was the last time you did?

  • October 22, 2012

    House-sitting as a lifestyle choice

    While looking at overseas accommodations options online, I started to see a few mentions of house sitting as an option for longer-term stays, and it’s something that seems popular among RTW and long-term travellers. I mean, what better way is there to extend a free stay?

    House-sitting isn’t just for travellers, though. I know someone who lives in Auckland and house-sits, going from place to place every so often, as a lifestyle choice. (Imagine how much you could save if you eliminated housing from your budget.)

    Upon Googling some house-sitting sites, I noticed that one mentioned that many of its house-sitters are professionals saving for a deposit on a house (which is darn near impossible in this country). So how would one make house-sitting work as a long-term lifestyle?

    • You’d need to be good with animals, as lots of people are looking for a pet sitter
    • You’d need to not have a lot of stuff, because moving is a bitch and carting tons of items from house to house frequently would be beyond tiring
    • You’d need to have a car – in a sprawling city like Auckland it’s unlikely you’d be able to stay within your preferred area all of the time, and would probably end up jumping all over the place
    • You’d ideally have somewhat flexible work arrangements – it’d be ideal if you work from home
    • And of course you’d need to be okay with the frequent picking up and moving, packing and unpacking. No doubt there are long-term assignments out there – the woman I know seems to stay put for a couple of months at a time – but nonetheless you’d be always looking for the next place. You’d definitely need some kind of backup plan should you need somewhere to stay between assignments in a pinch (hostel? Friends or family?)

    I briefly thought about signing up to one of these sites, mainly because I spotted a great West Auckland property available over the holiday period and thought ‘what a great way to spend New Year’s without going away!’ But in addition to needing to find someone to take a chance on a first-timer to get your foot in the door with house-sitting (again it’s that whole how do you get experience when nobody will give you experience? conundrum, except it’s even harder because you can work for free to get experience, but you’re house-sitting for free and there’s nowhere to start below that), there’s a membership fee. Too much work for a throwaway thought.

    And as for house-sitting as a lifestyle? I just don’t think it’s feasible for us – that would require buying a second car, cancelling out a lot of the cost savings – and adding the other inconveniences into the equation, it’s not the right path for us at this time. But it’s definitely something to consider. Lifestyle alternatives FTW.

    Have you ever been a house-sitter? Would you consider it as a lifestyle?

  • October 17, 2012

    The two things you need to successfully change your life

    the key successfully changing your life<image via turatti on flickr>

    I have come within metres of a convicted killer.

    Did that get your attention?

    Paul Wood told an amazing story at TEDx Auckland this month. From high school dropout and murderer to PhD, it’s a tale almost too good to be true. No doubt those younger years form a part of his life he’d rather forget and leave well behind him, but it’s a surefire way to gain media attention and can only be a boost for his business.

    His turnaround is a testament to the power of drive and determination.

    Without that that internal drive and desire, you can’t expect to get very far. He identified the negative influences in his life, the factors that were holding him back, and set about eliminating them. Sure, there were setbacks, and it took a long time to work through his first degree and fulfil university requirements while in prison, but after that, he set about gaining another, and then another…

    But he also made the point that he couldn’t have done it alone. Success rarely happens in a vacuum.

    His father visited him every weekend. His professors visited him in jail so he could complete his course criteria. It’s something I’ve mentioned before – you need incredible inner strength and motivation to break a cycle, and it’s damn hard to do it in a hostile environment. Conditioning factors shouldn’t be understated, nor should the importance of mentors and role models. No human is an island.

  • September 11, 2012

    On sunk costs and cutting your losses – a beginner poker player reflects

    By and large, I’m a risk averse kind of person. I drive cautiously. Analyse choices to death. That kind of thing.

    In going along to my first poker night, though, I learned a thing or two about myself.

    I’m terrible at cutting my losses.

    The boys play Texas Hold’em, so every round two people put in blinds to start off with. There’s a sunk cost to begin with, and my general philosophy is something along the lines of ‘I’ve already put in this much; what’s a little bit more?’ And as the round progresses, I’m loath to cut my losses. After all, that last card just MIGHT be my saviour. I’m already down by this many chips. Just see it through to the end…

    I’m apparently also really, really bad at gauging the quality of my hand. When do you decide to play? When do you fold before even betting? I underbet when I had a killer hand, and overbet with a good (but not amazing) hand a few times, resulting in once scaring everyone else off, and once bringing it down to the wire and losing by the tiniest sliver of a margin. I actually played kind of riskily – something I didn’t expect of myself – much like I didn’t expect myself to really push it at all when I got to drive a new BMW on snow last month, yet I did (guess there’s something about a vehicle that a) can take it b) isn’t yours and c) is there for that exact purpose).

    In real life, I am much better at writing off sunk costs. Have done it many times.

    What about you? What’s your poker style?

  • August 3, 2012

    Entitlement – is it really just a Gen Y thing?

    My generation has often been labelled as the most privileged generation in history. We’re spoilt, impatient, and feel entitled to the world, apparently.

    I’ve actually been told before that I don’t seem Gen Y at all. Something about work ethic, maturity, and other such heart-warming compliments.

    Really, I’m just doing my job.

    I will admit that there are things that bug me about some of my peers and those just coming through now into the workforce. Just little behaviours I observe, like the classic whinge about how a monkey could do this job (I CAN’T BELIEVE I WENT TO UNIVERSITY FOR THIS!), or a tendency to throw out the most basic questions (queries that could easily be answered independently with a tiny bit of work on their part *cough Google cough*).

    But I’m far from a paragon of perfection myself. I’ve been wondering, lately, whether I truly appreciate my lot – because it’s a bloody good one, let’s face it. I have a sweet job, one I can walk to (and work from home if need be) with amazing people. Price, location and size have collided nicely in our current house, though it’s uninsulated and drafty (and not immune to mould). For the past six-odd years, I’ve had a devoted guy by my side, who wants to spend the rest of his life with me.

    Yet wouldn’t you know it, I find plenty of things to grumble about (why can’t he decide what he wants to do work-wise? Why did I say yes to doing this awesome feature, even though it means spending hours of my own time working on it?) And that really hit home during the series finale of Desperate Housewives, when Tom points out to Lynette that she’s always chasing one more thing over the horizon that she thinks is the final key to happiness – only it never is (and yes, I promise this will be the last time I reference Lynette in a post. Also, while I was totally rooting for them, was anyone else not thrilled about the way the writers finally reunited those two?).

    But you know what they say about the yoof.

    “The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them.”

    “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders…. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers”

    You’ve probably heard both those quotes before, and know that they’re attributed to Socrates and some dude known Peter the Hermit. For centuries, adults have complained about the younger generation. It’s nothing new.

    I’d be curious to hear from anyone who’s a little further down the track – those in their 30s or beyond, maybe? Did you encounter similar attitudes when you started out in the workforce?

  • August 2, 2012

    Live it, love it, here and now

    live it love it here and now

     <image via kevenlaw on flickr>

    You know the feeling when a new month rolls around and you realise the past four weeks have zoomed by at warp speed?

    That’s me in a nutshell.

    So, I’m trying to be more present.

    For example, I have the best commute anyone could ask for. It’s a 20-minute walk one way. But when it comes down to it, I actually find myself resenting it at times.

    It’s already nearly 6! It’s going to be dark in a few minutes! WHY ISN’T TELEPORTATION A THING YET?

    Which is kind of insane, given it gets in my 30 minutes of exercise a day. Also – not so much on the way home, but certainly in the morning – it’s a really beautiful walk.

    Unless I’m early, I manage to miss the throngs of high school students who take over the footpaths (I’m SURE back in the day I used to make room for people coming through; these days packs of kids refuse to break formation for anything) and can enjoy a leisurely stroll.

    There are ducks in the (filthy) little creek that I cross.

    There’s the divine smell of fresh laundry from the high school (some kids board there during the term).

    There’s a woman who I assume works there, who’s always on the bridge having a cigarette, and who always smiles as I pass her.

    There’s an adorable kid of about 7 or 8, who always greets me with a chirpy “good morning” as I pass him and his mother along the walkway.

    I won’t live and work here forever, so dammit, I need to smell the roses from time to time.

    I urge you: find enjoyment in a small part of your regular routine, and take the time to appreciate it every once in a while.

  • July 30, 2012

    The iPad review to end all iPad reviews, plus the curse and infinity of digital overload

    I may have indulged in a bit of false advertising there, I’m afraid.

    Really, I’m just going to list a few quick points, and frankly, that’s probably all that matters.

    It’s been a month or so since I was issued an iPad for work (an old model – it doesn’t even have a camera). I’ve long been a tablet holdout and  am vehemently personally opposed to e-readers. I don’t care what you say; you’ll never convert me to e-books. I do see the appeal of the iPad for media consumption, but not for anything beyond that.

    I’m still of that opinion, though I’ve warmed to the iPad somewhat. I took it on my work trip to Sydney, which was a good choice. It’s a less obtrusive way to keep up with emails and it was easy to check in on my Google Reader while waiting for presentations to start and whatnot. I can even get close to touch typing on it now, though it’s still a pain to comment on blogs this way, which I would much rather do on a proper computer. Nonetheless, it’s handy for pre-bed online tinkering (compared to my laptop) and T uses it just as much as I do, albeit for playing games and watching Naruto. Obviously the gaming monitor back home is the king of video games, every other screen just seems tired.

    Big is beautiful when it comes to the screen, which renders content beautifully and responds instantly to gestures. My early-gen model is probably about twice the size of the current version, but I’m not opposed to a bit of comfortably solid heft – while reviewing the super lightweight Samsung Galaxy S3 a while back, I couldn’t get over the flimsy feeling.

    But in order to squeeze more out of it, accessories are where it’s at. Special stands to place the iPad at the right angle, so it’s not sitting awkwardly in your lap, on a table, or being propped up either by your hands or something else close to hand. Keyboards enabling you to type out lengthy emails and documents without your hands cramping up. Or, my favourite to date, a combination keyboard/cover – the former works over Bluetooth, the latter through a combination of a physical slot combined with magnetic wizardry. Get that going and you have a pretty neat setup to take anywhere – it’s just as easy as sliding out and unfolding a laptop.

    I do feel that a tablet could eventually make up my entire workstation, and sooner rather than later. When I’m at the office, I hook up my laptop to a larger keyboard and extra-large second monitor; it’s not a huge leap to think the laptop could be replaced by a tablet as technology improves. I firmly believe that it’s all about going for what’s closest at hand, mixed in with choosing the right device for the job (I am a guilty second-screener as charged), but maybe when it comes time to buy my next laptop, perhaps I won’t be replacing it with a laptop at all.

    The good

    • Well, it all comes down to one thing, really, doesn’t it? The iPad is all about reading and viewing content, be it through a browser or via an app. And it does that brilliantly (I love the Twitter app, for one). Beats browsing on your phone any day. Of course the toss-up is that the best gaming monitors are ridiculously more powerful and enjoyable but you can’t bring them to bed, can you?

    The bad

    • A lot of sites (cough *Flash* cough) don’t play nicely with the iPad. For example, I can’t watch iSky content on it, and when I tried to pay our Northern Gateway toll online on the iPad, the fields for inputting my Visa details weren’t working.
    • I can almost touchtype on it … but not quite.
    • I can’t plug my phone into it to charge like I can with my laptop.

    While I’m on this topic, is anyone else out there totally drowning in digital overload? I know a lot of you take online sabbatical from time to time, and occasionally I’ll more or less unplug for a weekend.

    Flipboard helps, of course, as does following good curators who filter content for you. For example, there’s Jason Hirschorn’s media/tech/digital roundup, the new Evening Edition, and new attempts at delivering stringently curated and targeted stories popping up frequently, like Launchticket. I was gutted when Summify was sold, though Twitter now uses that technology to send out its own daily summaries.

    Yet I often feel that reading news and blogs and keeping up with industry happenings is itself a fulltime job. While I do that for fun sometimes, more often than not I actually can’t be bothered. Heck, the majority of the time I just skim over or delete the Hirschorn roundups because I’m short on time, though it’s a valuable digest. Attention and time is finite, which as a content creator, I am also well aware of, treading both sides of the line.

    Keeping on top of the digital world is tough. It takes so much time and effort, and increasingly I’m torn by my love for the web and my desire to unplug from it all.

  • July 19, 2012

    Things I’ve learned about myself while travelling alone

    The nice thing about going exploring on your own is there’s no compromise involved. You go at your own pace, see what you want to see.

    But you are then at the mercy of strangers to snap the obligatory shots of you at tourist spots.

    While wandering open-mouthed around the Sydney Opera House, a lone guy saw me angling to snap a self shot against the backdrop of the famous sail roof, and against the bridge. He offered to take one for me – kindly, I thought. And then he wanted to have a photo of us together, in which he snuck his arm around me. And the photo he’d taken of me … well, a three-year-old could have snapped a better pic. I gapped it down to the lower levels quick smart, and found a nice pair of women with accents that suggested they were from around Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka or similar to take my picture. As I started to leave to head down toward the quay, I spotted the creepy guy not far away looking at me – he’d followed me down.

    I had to make conscious decisions to push myself.

    Not automatically zooming in on the cheapest thing on the menu. Not automatically ruling out any dish involving tofu (I got the battered vegetables in chili miso at Mother Chu’s, and it was the best damn thing I tasted all the time I was there. The catered food was mediocre to dire on most days, so I didn’t feel too bad about fitting in some restaurant sampling).

    Going with the flow.

    When I needed to take a round trip on the Sky Safari at Taronga Zoo in order to get back up to the shuttle buses that were leaving soon, and they were only doing one-way trips, I took a single and caught a ferry back instead – mostly because the people in line behind me, who were with the same delegation, were doing the same (an example, I guess, of how easy it is to find buddies when you’re all travellers in a strange place together).

    Realising just how sheltered you are – priceless.

    I met a guy from Palestine – a place I simply can’t comprehend, a place he’d never left until this month, a place that’s been occupied all his life, a place that doesn’t even have its own currency, he told me. It was beauteous seeing him experience so many things for the first time – first time out of the country, first time on a plane, on a ferry, for pretty much everything that occurred over here.

    He helped me find the Harbour Bridge – an epic mission, which made triumph taste so sweet – so I could see out my hope of walking over it, and I accompanied him to the Opera House. I’ll admit, I had wanted to do it alone – that really is how antisocial I actually am, I’d prefer to explore by myself – but it was all good fun. And come the next day, our last night in Sydney, I suddenly didn’t feel like being alone anymore, so it was nice to have someone to call on to wander the streets together. The city let through some rain that evening, and being a Tuesday it was quiet, but we took a meander around the CBD, my shoes cracked and flooding, squelching along.

    It’s the little moments I want to remember. My face upturned to the sun whilst walking alongside Paddy’s Markets, heading to the leather goods shop I’d spotted days earlier (for the third time; it was closed when I first passed it, and when I went back a second time). Catching the tram without cocking it up and getting lost. Marvelling at the ferry terminal ticket machines, and the auto turnstiles. The sprawling wall at the end of Darling Harbour, engraved with the names of migrant families for generations past, and room for many more in the future. The matte black Lamborghini on the sidewalk outside a showroom on the way to Kings Cross. The sight, smell and sound of Chinatown and its market. The bustle and sheer scale of Sydney fish market. Being so close to an emu at Taronga Zoo I thought it was going to run into me. The sleeping koalas, so small in real life, curled up high in the branches of a tall, thin tree. And of course, lazily wandering the length of Bondi, which despite being the middle of winter, was packed out (though it’s not obvious from the shot here of me and my shadow).

    I need my September holiday to be here already…

    Do you ever travel by yourself? Love it? Hate it?

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