I've been meaning to check in here for a while, but haven't really had anything interesting to say. Work has been very busy lately - since I work in hospitality and it's the Festive Season.
2013 has been an interesting year. Started off pretty slow, but then ramped up and ended on some interesting notes (both personal and professional). But mostly, I guess I've become better at going with the flow than ever - which is (ironically) probably why there isn't anything very particular to say right now. Or any particular resolutions to make for 2014.
I've definitely worked a bit too hard in the last two months. But this is more or less a self-correcting problem. After the busy Festive Season, work hours will naturally drop off, but I'll be asking for a different roster anyway. So I'll probably be back with some more random ramblings here in 2014.
Merry Christmas and a Happy 2014 to everyone!
Friday, December 27, 2013
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Harder to Think than to Do
I've had some rather rough shifts at work lately, finishing well after 2am in the morning, that sort of thing...
Just today I was reminded of something I read once about Ajahn Brahm. I think the story was that he was a young monk in Thailand, pushing a wheelbarrow while building a monastery. He complained to another monk how hard it was to push a heavy wheelbarrow, and the monk replied: "Pushing the wheelbarrow is easy, thinking about it is hard."
It's amazing how true this actually is. Especially when it comes to mindless manual work where there really is almost nothing to truly get "stuck on" mentally. This concept probably goes a long way to explain why I ultimately find the stresses of manual labouring type work much easier to tolerate than the stresses of "knowledge work". After all, you can't really avoid thinking about the work when the nature of the work is almost entirely mental.
Something to remember I guess. Every time one gets stressed over how "hard" a certain mindless chore or errand is going to be. It's easier to just do it than to think about doing it. ie Just go through the motions and find freedom from it on the other side.
Just today I was reminded of something I read once about Ajahn Brahm. I think the story was that he was a young monk in Thailand, pushing a wheelbarrow while building a monastery. He complained to another monk how hard it was to push a heavy wheelbarrow, and the monk replied: "Pushing the wheelbarrow is easy, thinking about it is hard."
It's amazing how true this actually is. Especially when it comes to mindless manual work where there really is almost nothing to truly get "stuck on" mentally. This concept probably goes a long way to explain why I ultimately find the stresses of manual labouring type work much easier to tolerate than the stresses of "knowledge work". After all, you can't really avoid thinking about the work when the nature of the work is almost entirely mental.
Something to remember I guess. Every time one gets stressed over how "hard" a certain mindless chore or errand is going to be. It's easier to just do it than to think about doing it. ie Just go through the motions and find freedom from it on the other side.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Inverted Routine
So I've been at my new job for almost a month now...
My current daily work routine is almost completely inverted in comparison to "normal" working hours. ie I go to work when others are finishing up for the day and I finish in the middle of the night, and by the time I'm in bed it's almost time to get up on the "normal" routine - for people on very early starts at least anyway.
The thing that didn't occur to me until recently is that not only are my working hours almost exactly the opposite of the norm, but that the "free" portion of the day comes at the opposite stage of the proceedings. For people on usual office hours - it's typical to wake up, go straight to work, come home, and then relax in the evening for a few hours before going to bed. For me it's the opposite: wake up, have lunch, have a few hours off to relax, then go to work - and then go straight to bed right after work.
Of course, this means that the "free" portion of my day has work hanging over it, meaning that it's potentially not as relaxing as it should be. Then again, it also means that you get to "sleep in" every day and wake up around lunchtime, which feels strangely luxurious in a world where having to force yourself out of bed in the mornings to go to work is such a near-universal "thing".
At any rate, it's interesting being on this new routine. When I'm trying to function on more "normal" hours during my days off, it feels a bit like being jetlagged, but it's not too bad. If I tried to shift my "free" portion of the day to after the work stage, then I'd definitely be completely screwed for functioning on the off days. This way I'm managing to (more or less) get back to normal on my days off.
My current daily work routine is almost completely inverted in comparison to "normal" working hours. ie I go to work when others are finishing up for the day and I finish in the middle of the night, and by the time I'm in bed it's almost time to get up on the "normal" routine - for people on very early starts at least anyway.
The thing that didn't occur to me until recently is that not only are my working hours almost exactly the opposite of the norm, but that the "free" portion of the day comes at the opposite stage of the proceedings. For people on usual office hours - it's typical to wake up, go straight to work, come home, and then relax in the evening for a few hours before going to bed. For me it's the opposite: wake up, have lunch, have a few hours off to relax, then go to work - and then go straight to bed right after work.
Of course, this means that the "free" portion of my day has work hanging over it, meaning that it's potentially not as relaxing as it should be. Then again, it also means that you get to "sleep in" every day and wake up around lunchtime, which feels strangely luxurious in a world where having to force yourself out of bed in the mornings to go to work is such a near-universal "thing".
At any rate, it's interesting being on this new routine. When I'm trying to function on more "normal" hours during my days off, it feels a bit like being jetlagged, but it's not too bad. If I tried to shift my "free" portion of the day to after the work stage, then I'd definitely be completely screwed for functioning on the off days. This way I'm managing to (more or less) get back to normal on my days off.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Conditions vs Meaning
I had an epiphany the other day regarding something I wrote almost a year ago in these two posts: Good conditions can totally "make" a job. To the point where they can even override what you actually do on the job.
As I mentioned in the previous post - a couple of weeks ago I basically took a relatively lowly kitchen assistant type job over a software engineering one. Now granted, I'm not exactly super passionate about clawing my way back into the software development profession in the first place - but the feel of the office space at the place I interviewed certainly gave me a bad vibe too.
So the choice was basically this: a BoH kitchen job in a five star resort complex where I know the conditions are going to be awesome, versus a software development job in a place which may very well turn out to be a bit of a codemonkey sweatshop.
I suppose it comes down to what I wrote before about "alienated labour" versus "meaningful work". If you love certain work so much that it aligns with your sense of career fulfillment even when you're doing it for someone else for an external reward - that's great! But when you don't, then it's actually much easier to just step right away from trying to find any real meaning in your work, and truly treat it as just a job.
To some extent I envy people who can do that. The whole problem with me and knowledge work is that I have trouble "whoring out my brain". If an intellectual exercise doesn't truly inspire me, on a personal level, my patience with it goes out the window before it was even in the room. Of course, with jobs which let you keep your head - this isn't an issue at all. The only "challenge" is to put up with a certain level of repetition and boredom, which is in fact relatively easy once you've got some basic meditation techniques down.
Still, it's interesting to think about this from the point of view of "equivalent" jobs too. I never gave this much thought before. But there's definitely a reason why companies like Google are considered great to work for, while your average corporate cubicle codemonkey job is considered to be a burnout-waiting-to-happen. It largely comes down to conditions.
Sure, the content of the work matters too - it's generally more interesting to work on cool cutting-edge technologies than to maintain boring obscure business systems that were designed in the 1990s - but good conditions are what really makes it. And when conditions get past a certain extreme (good or bad) threshold, then even the underlying occupation involved can be overridden by them.
As I mentioned in the previous post - a couple of weeks ago I basically took a relatively lowly kitchen assistant type job over a software engineering one. Now granted, I'm not exactly super passionate about clawing my way back into the software development profession in the first place - but the feel of the office space at the place I interviewed certainly gave me a bad vibe too.
So the choice was basically this: a BoH kitchen job in a five star resort complex where I know the conditions are going to be awesome, versus a software development job in a place which may very well turn out to be a bit of a codemonkey sweatshop.
I suppose it comes down to what I wrote before about "alienated labour" versus "meaningful work". If you love certain work so much that it aligns with your sense of career fulfillment even when you're doing it for someone else for an external reward - that's great! But when you don't, then it's actually much easier to just step right away from trying to find any real meaning in your work, and truly treat it as just a job.
To some extent I envy people who can do that. The whole problem with me and knowledge work is that I have trouble "whoring out my brain". If an intellectual exercise doesn't truly inspire me, on a personal level, my patience with it goes out the window before it was even in the room. Of course, with jobs which let you keep your head - this isn't an issue at all. The only "challenge" is to put up with a certain level of repetition and boredom, which is in fact relatively easy once you've got some basic meditation techniques down.
Still, it's interesting to think about this from the point of view of "equivalent" jobs too. I never gave this much thought before. But there's definitely a reason why companies like Google are considered great to work for, while your average corporate cubicle codemonkey job is considered to be a burnout-waiting-to-happen. It largely comes down to conditions.
Sure, the content of the work matters too - it's generally more interesting to work on cool cutting-edge technologies than to maintain boring obscure business systems that were designed in the 1990s - but good conditions are what really makes it. And when conditions get past a certain extreme (good or bad) threshold, then even the underlying occupation involved can be overridden by them.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
I got a job!
It's been a busy couple of weeks! Several major things have happened in my life over the past two weeks, but I'll just cover the work situation here:
About a month ago I started applying for all sorts of random jobs. Pretty much anything I possibly might be able to get. And then two weeks ago, three of them suddenly came through. Two of them were very promising interviews which looked like they might come up with an offer, and one actually did come up with an offer. And I took it. It's a kitchen job in a five star resort complex.
One of the others was a software engineering role in a small company - so this led to some interesting career direction pondering: Should I try to give my old career another crack? Or should I just go with the kitchen job? Noting that I'd already accepted the kitchen job offer, and it would really be bad form to pull out within a week or two of signing the contract and going through their induction and all. So I decided to go with the flow of least bad karma there. The software company hadn't even offered anything officially yet, so withdrawing that application wasn't really such a big deal.
At any rate, I'm starting at my new job tonight. I've had a very full week of (paid) induction and training, but no actual work yet. As far as back-of-house hospitality jobs go, I don't think you can really do any better. But we'll see how it goes with the actual work tonight of course. And with the routine that follows in the next couple of weeks.
About a month ago I started applying for all sorts of random jobs. Pretty much anything I possibly might be able to get. And then two weeks ago, three of them suddenly came through. Two of them were very promising interviews which looked like they might come up with an offer, and one actually did come up with an offer. And I took it. It's a kitchen job in a five star resort complex.
One of the others was a software engineering role in a small company - so this led to some interesting career direction pondering: Should I try to give my old career another crack? Or should I just go with the kitchen job? Noting that I'd already accepted the kitchen job offer, and it would really be bad form to pull out within a week or two of signing the contract and going through their induction and all. So I decided to go with the flow of least bad karma there. The software company hadn't even offered anything officially yet, so withdrawing that application wasn't really such a big deal.
At any rate, I'm starting at my new job tonight. I've had a very full week of (paid) induction and training, but no actual work yet. As far as back-of-house hospitality jobs go, I don't think you can really do any better. But we'll see how it goes with the actual work tonight of course. And with the routine that follows in the next couple of weeks.
Friday, October 11, 2013
NYRs 2013 - Revisited
I was just looking over some old posts, and noticed my old New Years Resolutions post for 2013...
I totally forgot about it. And whoaaaa! A couple of those have severely "failed", but also not really - there's a context behind it. The context of "going with the flow", which I mentioned in the post itself.
The main thing which "failed" is the Lazy Evening Routine. When I initially looked over that, it looked pretty bad, but now when I think of it - relaxing in the evenings is justified, as life stands right now. I'm waking up very early and doing relatively productive things during the days, back at the end of 2012 I wasn't.
Looking back on where I was at earlier in the year, I'm certainly better at mindfully living in the moment, and going with the flow. There isn't much point stressing about not doing enough with your evenings, for its own sake. Relaxation and wind-down time are totally justified, especially when you're actually doing quite a bit of productive stuff during the day.
This is one of the pitfalls of New Years Resolutions I think. If you get too specific and overplan things, and then get very attached to those rigid plans, they just become a source of stress. And it's better to be results-oriented than routine-oriented. So for example: A goal like "get a truck license" would be a result-oriented goal, while a goal like "don't be lazy in the evenings" is too routine-oriented and subjective. And depending on how your routine evolves, it might make sense to break. Since you're not really being "lazy" if your routine evolves into something where relaxation in the evenings is justified. And besides, I'm not even being that lazy with my evenings - most of the time I do things such as catch up on emails or do some reading.
Something to think about for 2014, if I even bother with NYRs for it.
I totally forgot about it. And whoaaaa! A couple of those have severely "failed", but also not really - there's a context behind it. The context of "going with the flow", which I mentioned in the post itself.
The main thing which "failed" is the Lazy Evening Routine. When I initially looked over that, it looked pretty bad, but now when I think of it - relaxing in the evenings is justified, as life stands right now. I'm waking up very early and doing relatively productive things during the days, back at the end of 2012 I wasn't.
Looking back on where I was at earlier in the year, I'm certainly better at mindfully living in the moment, and going with the flow. There isn't much point stressing about not doing enough with your evenings, for its own sake. Relaxation and wind-down time are totally justified, especially when you're actually doing quite a bit of productive stuff during the day.
This is one of the pitfalls of New Years Resolutions I think. If you get too specific and overplan things, and then get very attached to those rigid plans, they just become a source of stress. And it's better to be results-oriented than routine-oriented. So for example: A goal like "get a truck license" would be a result-oriented goal, while a goal like "don't be lazy in the evenings" is too routine-oriented and subjective. And depending on how your routine evolves, it might make sense to break. Since you're not really being "lazy" if your routine evolves into something where relaxation in the evenings is justified. And besides, I'm not even being that lazy with my evenings - most of the time I do things such as catch up on emails or do some reading.
Something to think about for 2014, if I even bother with NYRs for it.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Urban Decay and Street Art in Richmond
It was a bit of a drab morning today, but I felt like taking a long walk - of the "photo excursion" variety. So I went to a place where I thought the lack of sunshine shouldn't matter much - Richmond. I've been meaning to do this for a while, to check out some of the hidden urban decay scene over there.
I started out at the train station, then walked all the way up (via the backstreets) to Victoria Street, and then all the way back home along Church Street. For those who know the area - yes, that's a pretty long walk indeed. My feet are hating me for it right now.
On the whole the results were not as good as I had hoped, but here's a selection of the best ones...
I started out at the train station, then walked all the way up (via the backstreets) to Victoria Street, and then all the way back home along Church Street. For those who know the area - yes, that's a pretty long walk indeed. My feet are hating me for it right now.
On the whole the results were not as good as I had hoped, but here's a selection of the best ones...
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| "Rhinoceros" |
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| Orange Parking Lot Wall |
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| Chickens |
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| Rusty Roof |
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| "RIP Dad" |
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| Stephenson Street Mural Acknowledgement |
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| Stephenson Street Mural |
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| Colourful Pizza Shop |
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| Alley Near Richmond Station |
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| Angry Looking Lady |
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| Ace Of Hearts |
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| Peeling Facade And Windows |
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| Colourful Staircase |
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| Street Certified |
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| Melbourne Bitter On Mossy Stairs |
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| Dimmey's Stores Spire |
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| Rusty Roof Near Housing Projects |
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| Cracked Facade And Windows |
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| All Nations Hotel |
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| "The System Doesn't Work" |
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| Girl In Bamboo Forest |
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| "You May Be Filmed" |
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| Bird With Goggles |
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| Bird And Dragon |
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| Street Art Between Windows |
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| Freaky Face |
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| Bins And Kegs |
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| Chimney And Blue Sky |
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| Poster Wall In Victoria Street |
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| Broken Asian Grocery Signage |
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| Broken Window |
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| Black Panther |
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| Cracked Wall |
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| Flowers In The Projects |
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| Event Posters |
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| Overgrown Car Park |
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Springtime Walk in Hawksburn
The weather was quite nice today so I decided to go for a little walk around my area. Hawksburn is actually a vaguely-defined "locality" in the eastern part of South Yarra. I'm not sure it even has official bounds, or if it's just a general fuzzy designation for the quiet residential part of South Yarra just to the east of my place. Either way, most of these shots are probably within its general bounds.
Most of what I took are just photos of various flowers in bloom. But there's a bit of architecture too.
Being around all these flowers all afternoon definitely confirms one thing - I'm not allergic to them! It's definitely the grass pollen that comes down from the countryside later in the season that causes the abject hayfever that I get.
Anyway, here are some of the best shots of the walk...
Most of what I took are just photos of various flowers in bloom. But there's a bit of architecture too.
Being around all these flowers all afternoon definitely confirms one thing - I'm not allergic to them! It's definitely the grass pollen that comes down from the countryside later in the season that causes the abject hayfever that I get.
Anyway, here are some of the best shots of the walk...
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| Sunlight Through Spring Canopy |
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| Pink Flowers |
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| Red Roses |
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| Toorak/South Yarra Library |
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| White Wall Blue Sky |
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| Tram Cables And Blossoms |
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| Butterfly On White Flower |
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| Red Flowers |
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| Blossoms And Metal Facade |
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| Orange Flowers |
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| Overgrown Downspout |
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| Flower Peeking Through Fence |
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| Overgrown Abandoned House |
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| White Flowers |
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| Peeling Hawksburn Facade |
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| "Hawksburn Terrace" |
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