Life Full of Uncertainty

So, my highly anticipated project role in a client at Irvine, CA. fell through and I'm left to seek another project role. Where I will be next week about this time, I don't know.

My friends often express how impressed they are with my hectic travel schedule, often adding comments like, 'I can't imagine doing that for living.' Well, the toughest part of this job is not the travel -- actually, once you get used to the rather regular travel schedule on an extended client engagement at the same client site, travelling to/from client site becomes almost as mindless as a regular commute -- but the anxiety in not knowing what the next project is in times like this.

Transitioning between projects is almost like switching jobs -- with all the anxiety, stress, eager anticipation, hope, reflections, excitement, dreadfulness and myriad other (often conflicting) feelings associated with moving from one company to another.

Please hope for an awesome project opportunity for me, friends; the anxiety of not knowing what's in store for me next eclipes the disappointment of not getting the chance to be in southern California.

Read: Good to Great

Good to Great definitely lived up to its hype as ‘The Business Idea of the Year” (by Fast Company – a great magazine, BTW), with solid argument for the reasons why some companies make the leap from a ‘good company’ (the middle-of-the-line players in an industry) to join the ranks of ‘great companies’ (consistently high performing companies such as GE and Intel).

The more business books I read, the more I realize that the main points that these books seem to drive are relatively simple that you can probably summarize them in a paragraph of bullet points – actually, I’ve seen advertisements for these ‘executive summary’ types of Cliff Note service in the back of respectable business magazines… tsk… tsk… It is the reflections on the key points, and supporting data and findings that provide effective base for the insights that illuminate these main points that distinguish a great business book from just good books. (*chuckle*) Good to Great was worth skipping the Cliff Note version and poring over every single page of it. In fact, even the Appendix (which takes up about ¼ of the actual volume) was an interesting reading, as the author and his team conducted a rather exhaustively systematic approach in digging up the supporting data, and the Appendices were chock full of revelations just as interesting as the ones that made the cut in the main content.

The key concepts behind what enabled companies to go from Good to Great are:

- Level 5 Leadership
- First Who… then What
- Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)
- The Hedgehog Concept
- A Culture of Discipline
- Technology Accelerators
- The Flywheel and the Doom Loop

Each of these concepts, on its own, is worth a few minutes of contemplative reflection. For me, however, true epiphany hit me at the END of the book, when the author raised the question, ‘Why greatness?’ then immediately followed up with the following:

Indeed, the real question is not, “Why greatness?” but “What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?” If you have to ask the question, “What should we try to make it great? Isn’t success enough” then you’re probably engaged in the wrong line of work.

....

Whoa.

(Sorry… I could not resist the chance for another gratuitous Keanu Reeves imitation.)

Of course, Mel Gibson’s famous ‘not all men live…’ line in Braveheart also falls along the same line, but I guess why that line (Mel’s, I mean) is committed into most viewers’ memory is because it’s not just William Wallace’s admonition toward his cowardly countrymen (the flashy kilts and semi-homoerotic camaraderie notwithstanding), but a stirring reminder to the audience that a life without meaning is not a life worth living. (And ‘greatness’ transcends all classification boundaries in whatever men actually do; it is the ‘greatness’ that counts more than ‘great in what?’)

I doubt that ‘Wisdom According to a Scotsman: William Wallace Speaks’ would have made the #1 Business Book bestseller list, but Jim Collins’ arguments were just as revelatory – minus the burly, rough machismo a la Mel Gibson dramatization.

It’s worth a reading, friends… pick up Good to Great. (Or I’d be more than happy to loan you my copy for a pint of Guinness… er McEwan’s, I mean)

Lean on me

Friends do not have to explain; you can sit together and revel in the fact that you don't have to speak to be heard by a friend.

It's been over ten years since I've been friends with Tom, and he's one of those guys who have passed through the test of time throughout they myriad changes in our fortune throughout the years. Interesting thing about me and my closest friends is the fact that we're nothing alike and my closest friends are nothing like each other, either. (I often wonder what that connection is which binds us together in friendship despite the obvious differences; and I do not have a ready answer for it.) Tom and I are nothing alike.

I really, really hate Chemistry, and Chemistry 101 was the course that I struggled with the most in my freshman year at University of Illinois. In fact, even after surviving through four years of uber-geek level math courses and the ridiculously arduous engineering classes required for the degree in Electrical Engineering, it is the mention of Chemistry 101 that makes me shudder to this day; I really, really hate Chemistry. Nonetheless, it was that course that brought me and Tom together.

He was a junior in Biochemistry whom other life science majors have referred to when I approached them about a particularly vexing chemistry equation, and we still talk about that story of how polite and courteous we were when we introduced ourselves to each other:

• Me: "I'm so sorry... may I trouble you for a minute? This should be such an easy thing, but... oh man, I'm so enbarrassed; I should have paid more attention in class..." ('Man, who is this geeky dude? Check out that thick bio-chem text book?')
• Tom: "Oh no, no trouble at all. I'm not sure if I am knowledgeable enough to be of help, but I can take a look at it, no problem." ('Man, what kind of idiot needs help with this shit?')

We must have repeated this story a hundred times over, but we still burst out in hearty belly-laugh every time, followed by a nod, click of the beer glasses, then the inevitable call for "One shot~!"

Ten years into our friendship... we got a chance to snap this picture together the past weekend at the lecture hall in the Chemistry Building where they still teach Chemistry 101. Tom now has an adorable baby girl, Erin (note the pink diaper bag by his feet), he works seven days a week trying to expand his mobile phone business, and combining that with my hectic travel schedule, it gets harder and harder for us to meet up these days. Nonetheless, this makes each time we get together that much more precious.

They say that when someone allows you to bear his burdens, you have found deep friendship...

Korean restaurant music

There are certain universal things that you take for granted; you never think twice about them.

• The rule of thumb of pairing a delicate fish dish is with some delicate white wine.
• Anyone who chooses “Brown Eyed Girl” in a karaoke bar will get the entire place joining in on the chorus.
• They should always be playing some non-descript “Italian Café Music” in an Italian café.

Now, here’s something to chew on: “What kind of music should be playing in a Korean restaurant?”

That question came up among my buddies during a lunch one Sunday when I realized that what was playing at the restaurant were pop songs right out of some top pop music compilation (for example, from ‘Now That’s What I Call Music!’ CD series); except that instead of Shakira and the Killers, these songs at least a decade old, if not two decades! When I pointed this out, everyone exclaimed, ‘hey, now I see what’s been kinda off about this place today!’

We sat through an unsolicited listening of ‘Yesterday’ (Beatles), then ‘Like a Virgin’ (Madonna), ‘My Way’ (Sinatra), then finally ‘Wind of Change’ (Scorpions) through the rest of our lunch while we finished up our food, giggling in disbelief. It was just God-awful.

I’ve since been paying particularly keen attention to the ambient music in the different restaurants I’ve been dining, and the results are startling. For example, a Chinese dinner through a listening of ‘The Four Seasons’ (Vivaldi) felt entirely ridiculous; mushu pork and classic orchestra music does NOT mix! A respectable restaurant that blasted ‘Kryptonite’ (Three Doors Down) made it feel like I was in the wrong place; it felt like I should be sitting in a drab, hole-in-the-wall bar with an outdated jukebox instead. And you should never play anything by Cake in a ‘cool’ Japanese sake bar if the interior is supposed to exude euro-sleek coolness. (Actually, you should never play Cake unless you are a bar in Wriglyville that caters to the ex-frat-boys-from-Big-Ten crowd.)

So, coming back to my original question: What kind of music should be playing in a Korean restaurant?

The sun is but a morning star

Browsing around the bookshop at the Theodore Green Airport in Providence as I was awaiting the boarding of my flight back to Chicago, I happened upon a gorgeously bound version of the classic, Walden. Often quoted, overly cited, yet seldom actually read, this is actually an intriguing selection to pick up at an airport bookshop; especially if it's a LONG flight.

It's amazing how serene things get in a flight when the cabin lights are dimmed and passengers are either dozing off or poring over their magazines or notebook computers illuminated by the reading lights and the familiar white-blue glow of the computer screens. The baritone hum of the jet engine filters and muffles distracting noise, and the scope of your world focuses onto what the tiny reading light above you illuminates on your tiny fold out tray. Reading of Walden deserves steady concentration that such isolated surroundings can provision.

I think that keeping in mind the concept of volatile truth -- the drive to preseve what is beautiful and non-changing, yet remaining open to the perenial changes -- is key in sticking with this book all the way to the final chapter which ends with the following words:

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
There is more day to dawn.
The sun is but a morning star.

Henry David Thoreau (Walden)

I really love these words... and the beauty of these words can only be appreciated for those who have walked on the path Thoreau wanted to take us to through every page of this work, uninterrupted...the puns, the subtle allusions and most of all, the persevering spirit that embraces what is real. It's something that I did not realize when I first read this book during college for a Comparative Literature course where my reading session was interrupted by a myriad trivial things; and even while I memorized the lecture notes to pass the exams, I never really got it back then.

Pick up this book, friends.