Improvement of the race

It just got better....

This afternoon, my wife happily announced that according to the Teacher, my daughter is currently running 3rd place, and not just in her class but overall the prep students in the school. I know that it's still somewhere in the middle of the academic year, but... holy shit.. that's still great news!

When I was a young student from kinder up to highschool, teachers would always say I had it in me to excel in class, but I was just lazy. And I really was. I preferred loitering and playing around and really just not giving a rat's ass. Once in a while I'd study, and whenever I did... I would excel and would even land in the finals of quizz bees, or get some stupid awards. This happened a lot in my grade school years. And then I'd lose interest like the usual... I think I just didnt understand what the fuss was all about.

Because of my student experience, I guess I have always been understanding of "people" like me. I mean people with potential to excel, but arent really interested in paying attention. My Highschool years were primarily full of pranks and stunts, and whatnots that got me into a lot of trouble. I even had my own personal section on the Guidance Counsellor's log book of mischief. I survived the last 2 years of Highschool without bringing anything to school. I never submitted notebooks, I never brought books with me, I didnt even have papers for quizzes, nor pens to write with. I survived through the generosity of my classmates, literally one day at a time. I am not too sure about Junior year, but I am 100% certain that on my Senior year, I never... not once... came to school with proper uniform. There was always something that I'd violate. It was either brown shoes, printed undershirt, my short-sleeved shirt didnt have the official school patch, or no ID. Things only changed when I went to College, and then I met my future wife which irrevocably led to studying going back to shit.

When you become a parent, I guess one of the questions that you really ask yourself is, What kind of a father would I be? And you think about your life as a kid and how things were back then, and how things are now, and how you want everything to be perfect for the little one. You think a lot about how people you know do this Father-Daughter thing, and instinctively try to assess things that you would do differently or the same. I told myself that I'd be a cool Dad. I wouldnt be the strict type. And I would try to convince myself that I'd be very understanding if she "inherits" the same laziness at school. This hasn't really hit me smack in the head until I heard the news this afternoon. It felt so good to know that she is doing very good in school. I am so proud of her and now I don't want to let this feeling go.

The truth is, I feel a bit guilty. I knew that there were times that I'd be less patient about guiding her with her lessons and assignments. Sometimes, I just flatly refuse. I guess it doesnt help when you've already exceeded your patience quota for the day because of the clients you work with. I hate it that my daughter, or more precisely my family gets the butt end of my day. Why do shifts work this way? Why do we spend the better part of our energy doing stuff for other people and let the last ounces, when you're tired and irritated, be with your family?

Maybe she would be 1st if I helped her study more. I dont really know. I only know that I dont want to be one of those Dads that are too bent over backwards into forcing their kids to be A-1, regardless of being deprived a life that is both interesting and fun. I dont need her to be on top of her peers everytime. I would enjoy the occassional icing on the cake, yes... but flowers will always blossom at their own time. After all, she is my daughter... and she will never need to do anything to impress me.

Times have really changed...

Earlier this week, my 5 yr old daughter came home from school with good news. She brought home her report card and was very anxious to show me the good grades. And they really were good grades. Nothing makes a Father prouder than to see his child developing as an improvement of the race. Honeslty, I wasnt a very good student when I was her age, I practically made a cue stick out of the pencil when I was taking the entrance exams to primary school. Didn't say too much of me as a student then, but obviously said a lot about me as a budding pool player =)

Of course, I told her that there would be a reward. Unfortunately, I found out that she already had something in mind... actually two things: 1) She wanted to go to Disneyland Hong Kong and 2) She wanted me to buy this toy car that we saw in the mall some months ago. It was actually more like a mini-car complete with battery-powered motor, gas and brake pedals, working steering wheel, and even some decal strickers on the fenders. This was the mini-car that kids could actually ride on and drive around. It was obviously expensive, maybe something too expensive to buy a 5 yr old girl. After all, I already bought her a remote control car a couple of months ago. Sure she played with it for a couple of weeks, but now it's just one of those "shelved toys".

Times have really changed. I remember the toys that we used to play with. Pieces of wood tied together to resemble guns, or flattened bottle caps to throw as shuriken. We had a blast destroying banana trees and gumamela flowers to make soap bubble blowers. Every kid in the block knew how to climb a tree, even the girls were potential competitors to getting the better guava or aratilis. We occassionally even dared to climb the big mango and duhat trees.

I remember being such a F'n headache to my parents by coming home covered with mud, or suddenly having flesh wounds and scratches from climbing a tree, or playing swords with sticks, or exploring dark basements trying to find spiders we could torture. I have several battle wounds from being such a bundle of joy then. I've been stitched in my head twice. First when I accidentally head butted an exposed nail while we were crawling under a house, and the second one was when a playmate tripped me while I was running... giving me a nasty gash on my chin.

I've had a couple of bike accidents as well. There was a time when I fell off a bike and hit my forehead on the concrete pavement and got cut pretty good. My friend and I freaked out when blood started to come out. I got on my bike and quickly kicked my way home. I passed by several people that were obviously shocked. I really couldnt blame them, I would probably be shocked myself if I saw a kid riding a bicycle with his face covered in blood. And then there was this time when I literally flew off of my bike while attempting to break the neighborhood speed record in a downhill ride. I ended up landing on a bed of rocks, my head hitting one of them just missing my left eye by an inch or so. I was literally knocked unconscious from the impact. I guess I have a pretty thick skull.

I also have a couple of stitches on my left arm from a wound I got when I fell off a mango tree. And then you have the "normal" wounds and cuts from just playing around the neighborhood. No special stories... just the usual gash from running, tripping, or wrestling with the other boys, or being hit by a stick, or a rock. Or just plainly being stupid about exploring places that were obviously not for kids. But then again, I think it was pretty common during those days for kids to get scratches or gashes from just being kids and playing around the neighborhood. Maybe not as much as the ones I got, but you know what I mean.

I think about all these and I look at my daughter and I tell myself... "What a fucking relief to know that they don't do the shit we used to do." Can you imagine seeing your kid run home covered with blood? Christ! She will never know how to climb a tree, no playing with sticks, or throwing stones, no wallowing in the mud to make artificial clay. HELL NO!!! I think the mini-car is starting to look more and more appealing...

It also looks like she might get the Disneyland trip too. She's been seeing the Disneyland HK from all the TV ads in cable. The truth is, we really have been planning to go to HK for a few days. My wife is planning on taking the NCLEX/RN there, and we've been thinking of spending a couple of extra days there with my daughter to double as our very own vacation.

Oh well... What the hell are we working our ass for anyway, if not to give our family the stuff we didn't have...

Yahoo Web Beacons

If you are like me, you are also bothered by programs that come attached with spyware or malware underneath the "real" programs and install themselves and report data behind your back.

As such we use a lot of antispyware programs, firewalls, and anti-viruses as our arsenals since studies have shown that no single tool has been ever shown to rid us of all of these F'n buggers.

It might benefit you to know that Yahoo itself has their own way of tracking statistics for their "partners". It basically keeps track of the sites you visit to improve their "advertisment guiding" function. Although this is declared in their privacy clauses, this is enabled by default and the clauses themselves are deeply burried underneath a lot of mumbo jumbo that not a lot of us will care to actually read.

To some, this maybe a benign issue, but to those who wish to be excluded from this, I offer you this information for a way out:

1. Go to the Yahoo Privacy page and click the "Cookies" link under the "Special Topics" column.

2. Click the "Web Beacons" link under the "Reference Links" Column.

3. On this page, click the "click here to opt out" link toward the end of the third paragraph under the "Outside the Yahoo! Network" title.

4. A page that says you have been out of the monitoring program will load. Close the window and DO NOT click the "Cancel Opt-out" button, otherwise your action will be cancelled!

5. You're done... Happy anonymous surfing!

Once, I had an idiot for a boss

I finally got confirmation emails from Vendor X on launching the online assesment exams. I am supposed to get certified as a Solutions Architect by the end of the month. 1 exam covering sales and marketing stuff, 1 exam covering basic product essentials, and 2 technical exams.

I've been trying to delay taking these by giving all sorts of alibis. Even got lucky when their online assesment website went down for 3 weeks due to some technical problems. Fucking worthless certifications... I never believed in them. I've worked with certified people before who were complete idiots. It amazes me how they can continue to fool people in job interviews. As my Singaporean boss always says, "You never really know until you work with them."

I remember working for Company Z once, I was hired as the Technical Lead and was sent to Israel a couple of times to train and work with a partner. The technology was relatively new, and part of the learning process was trying to understand how industries could benefit from it. Just before my second trip, the President decided to hire a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) to steer the company in the right direction. That's what we all thought, or at least what we expected. He was technically my boss of course, and I heard he used to be based in HK as some sort of IT Manager for several years so he looked very promising.

The guy already had more than 10 yrs experience in IT, so I was naturally expecting a very experienced and technical guy... even someone who I can potentially learn from. I heard he wasn't really into Software Engineering and was more of a Networks/Data Center kinda guy but I'm totally cool with that. However, after the first few meetings with him, some things were already becoming evident. There were a lot of things that he didn't seem to understand... including standard stuff that you would expect from a guy with that kind of experience. In meetings, he tended to dwell too long on arbitrary issues, a lot of emails were also sent bouncing back and forth asking about even the simplest things, mainly technical issues. So I was already starting to smell something fishy. Whenever we talked about technical stuff, he would never really contribute any ideas... always just the passive "You think so?"... "Have you tried other things?"... "Are you sure about that?".. or finally "Let me know how it goes". But what really started to bother me was when he sat us down to talk about his "Marketing Plan" for the next year. It was pure bullshit. My female colleague who had a MBA from Ateneo actually walked out of the conference room. I tried to convince her to come back, but I ended up not returning as well.

And so we finally went to Israel (this was my second trip), and everybody was still relatively optimistic about what he can bring to the table. The entourage was myself (Technical Lead), a female colleague (Lead Analyst), our new CTO, and the 2 big bosses ... the EVP and Pres. The 3 of us went there for an intensive training and the partner was very hospitable and even extended as the privilege of having their very own CTO (a guy who has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie Mellon Univ) and several Product and Development Managers to do most of the module trainings for us. I mean, this is as good as it gets. These people are REALLY good! And when I say REALLY good, I mean they're fucking A-1! Very sharp! In fact, I was so impressed from my first trip, I remember getting butterflies in my stomach whenever they referred to me as "colleague". Jeezaz, I thought to myself... How lucky am I to be working and learning about AI technology from these people? It was such a humbling experience.

So being in the midst of these people, you would obviously be very careful about what questions you ask, or what points you raise. There was no way that I'd let these people think that I was way over my head, which I was... but they didn't know that. And so the training commenced and their CTO (PhD guy) gave us the high level overview of the Enterprise Architecture of the software suite. He even went on to give us small anecdotes about how each of the components evolved and how he built most of them (yes, he was the original engineer who built the major components). So that was such a huge treat.

Unfortunately, this was where everything started to get ugly. My boss, the new guy, started asking questions that were really stupid. Some of them were really far out on 3rd base that PhD guy would repeatedly answer:

"I'm sorry, But I dont think I understand your point" or "I'm not sure I understand where you're getting at" and he would really make this sincere face like he missed something.

And my God was I so embarassed for our company... I remember being so tempted to butt in "Forget it PhD guy, just go on with what you were saying." or more bluntly "Why dont we just pretend my boss is in mute mode and just ignore him altogether?"

Holy Crap! This douchebag went on and on for the entire week. Dammit, I felt embarassed everytime he opened his mouth. There were several technical topics that I was very much looking forward to, not only because I knew they would be really juicy but I was hoping it would be too technical for him to even dare to ask a question. And boy was I so wrong about that. I can still remember the fucking smirk he would put on after asking a space cadet question. Obviously, he thought he made a valid point, totally oblivious to the fact that he may have well just put a sticker on his forehead that said "MORON!" After a day or so, our lecturers would be looking at me with a "WTF? smile" everytime he did this... obviously already understanding the awkward predicament.

The only good thing about all of it was, I got everything on tape since we were filming the whole training. And we went through the tape several times back at the office while training the other people who werent able to make the pilgrimage to Tel Aviv. Nothing made my day more entertaining than seeing him make a total ass of himself on tape.

[smile while reminiscing]

To make the long story short, he was fired after a few months for incompetence. Of course no one was surprised, except for me wondering why it took several months for them to figure that out.

I heard from one of my ex-Engineers that he recently ran into douchebag CTO at RCBC Plaza in Makati. Apparently the idiot has somehow managed to fool another company and is now working as a Senior Manager of some sort. Good Luck!

The Hiring Process

I got another call from a head hunting firm this afternoon. I've been getting this a lot lately since I've been actively applying (dunno how these people figure out you're in the look out for a new job... I think they have sources from internal HRs of other companies... can't really figure it out, but their sources are very good). And so she was basically, asking for my permission to forward my CV to their client. We did the usual phone interview and she asked me about some standard stuff and I asked some standard stuff. I said ok, and she said she will let me know how it goes.

I'm not really new to the hiring process. I don’t know how many interviews and technical/behavioral assessments I have had to go through in the past. I think I've almost heard and seem them all.. standard questions, techie questions, situational questions, odd questions that seek to catch you off guard, and those tiring behavioral ones.

I'm not really a big fan of psychological assessment exams anymore, but I know that I'm relatively familiar with them. I use to get a lot of kick in answering those types of exams and reading about how they are analyzed when I was a lot younger. I know it was a fucking boring hobby for a kid, but back then it seemed pretty cool to me. So now when I am subjected to these types of evaluations... I am always tempted to purposely sway it towards a "textbook" explanation that the evaluators will surely have... just for the heck of it.

One time, we were asked to draw a house, a person, and a tree on a blank piece of paper. Of course, I knew that this was supposed to be a way for them to evaluate our projection of unconscious material. The drawing itself is obviously not assessed on how good you can actually draw, but by the small nuances that you supposedly subconsciously project in your drawings, i.e. like how the branches of the trees are either extended upward or sideward, how the windows in the house are located, or in what dimension was the person drawn... Was it facing the side? Front view? Were the hands and fingers shown? clenched fists? etc... Of course, this is all bollocks to you and me, and I would strongly object to being profiled as a shy person because I drew the person with both hands in his pocket. But what really weirds me out with taking these exams today is... how effective can this really still be, when I know exactly how it will be evaluated? Come on.

Do I draw the house walls thinner so they can say that I may possibly have weakness in my ego? Or perhaps make it thicker and suggest that I may have problems in anxiety and a need to extend boundaries. Perhaps I should make the roof really detailed with a chimney stack complete with smoke coming out, and really go into details by adding asbestos bricks? Maybe they can see this as me having extra attention to detail, ideas and creativeness. Perhaps I should add some more windows and doors to represent my openness and willingness to interact with others? Maybe I should also include curtains to express that I am a private person?

Frankly, I don’t really remember all the details of what I drew. I did remember spending quite a lot of time looking over the other drawings and getting a kick with evaluating them. I also do remember that I never got that job. I think it may have been because of the fact that when I drew the person, I ran out of space and had to cut his legs from the knee. They probably saw it and said... scrap this guy, he doesn’t seem to have a sense of grounding and balance. Oh well!

Still, my worst experience to-date is when I applied to this IT company in Ortigas. They have been posting several openings in JobsDB for several weeks and I applied for the Project Manager position. After a few days, I get an email for an interview appointment. I go there to find out that there are around 50 people waiting in the reception area waiting for their turns to be interviewed. I did know that not all of these people could possibly be applying for the PM post. The company did have multiple function vacancies. Besides, a big majority of them didn’t look like PM material (they didnt look old enough). I did go in and went straight to the reception lady. I was of course expecting that management positions aren’t really subjected to the usual rank and file hiring process. Usually, you dont make management candidates wait for an appointment. If the appointment is at 9am, then it is expected that the interview will commence at 9am, regardless of the fact that you have more than 1 candidate scheduled for interview that morning. If you have 3 applicants, you schedule them 1 hour apart. If I found out that all 3 of us were asked to arrive at 9am and then wait for each other's turn, then I would be out of there in a minute. Rank and file usually follows a process that can be assessed as a group, and your application is mostly the call of the HR department so they can play with you as they wish. Management positions however are not really assessed by HR, but by executives. HR gets the standard data from you, but they arent really in a position to figure out if you'll do a good job of leading the development of a new software that will be shipped to clients in the US in 3 months time. I don't mean to be condescending about all this, I just mean that I've been there before... and I know what it feels like to wait for 2 hours while they interview 6 other people first. I am just happy now that because of the position, you get to expect certain standards in the way prospective employers treat you.

So I finally get to talk to the recruitment officer. She is obviously going to have a busy day, judging from all the people out here. She gives me a Personnel Information sheet and asks me to fill it up. I take it and walk away to look for a vacant seat... there are none. So I go through the form while standing in the middle of the lobby and I see questions that bother me. They were already asking for personal and financial information that was clearly unethical. I immediately thought... what kind of company asks for stuff like these before they hire a person? They had questions like how many children do you have, do you own a car, where do you live, are you renting or do you own your house, do you have any criminal record.. etc.

I mean some of them were so inappropriate that it would have been illegal to ask them in the US. In fact, the only approriate way of asking stuff like these is.. "Are there any reasons that would prevent you from fulfilling your job, should we hire you?"

What was really surprising to me was that this company is actually based in the US, and has now just recently opened a BPO arm here in Manila. They should've known better. In fact, at the bottom of the page, they even had printed fine letters that said "We are an equal opportunity company... etc. etc." Really?

I promptly asked the recruitment officer about these and complained why they would need this information for the application. The answer she gave me shocked me. She actually said they would be using that in their evaluation. I couldn't believe it. Point blank without hesitation, obviously believing that there's nothing wrong with what they are doing. Why in the world would you need to know if I have children? Why would you give a flying fuck about where I live? Why would all of these information factor into your evaluation of how fit I am for a particular job? Jesus Christ this is profiling to the very core! I gave her a piece of my mind and made sure I was well in range enough to be audible for everybody in the lobby... in short, I made a scene. I told her that because of that, I am withdrawing my application as I wouldn’t want to work for any company that practices unethical profiling. I grabbed my jacket and walked out. Fucking interview appointment made me cancel another meeting with a friend... I should have known better.

It's so sad because I have done my own evaluations before. I've interviewed a lot of people as potential team members and frankly, I've seen this in my own company as well. This happened several years ago... there was a time when I forwarded a good Senior Engineer candidate to our VP, and she turned her down in an instant when she found out that she was 2 months pregnant. Fucking sick! We argued about it for a few days since I couldn’t believe she would have that bias, being a married woman herself. What an insensitive prick! Don’t these things make you sick to your gut? It's so depressing to know that this is still happening in the corporate world. I eventually resigned from that company as soon as other unethical practices became very evident.

I hear they're not doing too good these days. Serves you right motherfuckers! What goes around, comes around.

*************************

It's the big boss' birthday here at client site today. Every year, people here both employees and consultants alike have learned to look forward to this day. Not so much about anything else, but mainly because of the food. Like last year, everybody enjoyed a treat of excellent pasta galore. I particularly loved the beef stroganoff and the squid ink. After I had my fill of that, I looked for the spinach dip that they served last year. Apparently a lot of people were also looking for that, but they didn't have them today. That dip was absolutely the best tasting dip that I have ever had the pleasure of tasting in my entire life. It was really, really good. Too think that it wasn't even meat... Ha!

And so the whole afternoon was mostly spent carbo-loading. Pasta.. pasta.. and more pasta... and if you still wanted some more, there's potato salad at the end of the long catering table.

Manny Pacquiao

Yesterday was a day of celebration for Filipinos. Manny Pacquiao stopped Velasquez on the 6th round. I'm sure a lot of people would've liked to see Velasquez drop on the floor after a smashing left hook from Manny, but the win was a TKO nonetheless.

People have been talking a lot about this fight, specially after Manny lost the last one to Morales some months ago. I've heard some prominent sports analyst talk about that fight saying stuff about the decision being close and all that... but really, Manny clearly lost that one. He was obviously outclassed and outperformed. Morales was all over him, scoring on left jabs while eluding Manny's hooks. The truth is, Manny isn't the classic scientific boxer type, he's a slugger. And Morales was a more experienced guy and that was exactly what he displayed in the fight.

I dont know how much interviews and analysis have been done following that defeat, but come on... Manny deserved to lose that fight just because it went all the way to the 12th round. If he won then it would have been REALLY controversial. Besides, who would want Manny to win over the score cards? Its a win nonetheless, but Manny has always been a heavy puncher and that's what people expect from him. When we go and see him fight, we dont want to see some fancy footwork and scientific boxing... we want to see him beat the bejeesus outta the poor guy. We want blood... we want the guy to fall flat on the floor, and hear the referee make the 10 count. We want a convincing win. An undisputable win. Not a win from connecting 3 more jabs than the other guy. Who the fuck wants that?

Morales and Pacquiao are set to go at each other again some months from now. So Manny, we will be celebrating your very recent victory and yes of course you will come home as a hero and the crimes of Gloria will be put aside for a minute, but you better make sure you beat Morales' ass to a bloody pulp next time.

So stop complaining about your last promoter and how he took advantage of you. Dont be such a cry baby about it. Sorry to have to say this to you, but you were a sucker Manny and you let him do that to you. You know what they say dont you? It is a moral crime to let suckers keep their money. So from now on, remember that YO DA MAN! and if you dont like how things are, just fuck it and fire the guy.. the bastard!

Good luck on your next fight with Morales... Mabuhay ka!