UltraCrepidate

“Punishment for dreaming is the obligation to move for the dream. If you cannot then you'd just rot in your own self pity; destroyed by the grandeur of the dream.” -Gunim

I understand finally.

This weekend, I had some time to get life organised again. To move my rusted body once more to the beats of the music. Wash my dirty laundry, clean the apartment and some time to face my demons…

The one in particular is the root of my coldness towards people coupled with my desire for a challenge. I have yet to explore the full extent of its origin. It's a hard demon to vanquish.

I am ready for friendship now.

I can feel it. An overwhelming change in my personality. In the core of my person.
I remember saying this whole shfield last year about the same time. But it somehow felt fake. As if though I wanted to believe that was happening.

This time, I felt strengthened. I can feel the energy coming out from this new view of life.

Only when you've lost everything will you begin to appreciate what's around you and life became beautiful.

Life is beautiful.

Anger rushed through my veins envigorating my blood like cocaine to my mind. Yet I felt drained of all energy, bones brittle to the touch with my skins barely hanging on to my softened muscles.

A perfect orchestra of dissonance.

I never knew that being cancelled felt like this. Dismissed, like a useless doll, thrown away by the owner for the new barbie.

It's official. Our project is cancelled. A whole year of hard work. For this project, I've sacrificed my passion, betrayed my soul and tortured my body. What do I get in return for it is a simple disimssal.

All those sleeplesss nights. Days at work where I have to supress my own emotional rages. Hopes of salvation and needs to be understood. I put all these aside and became the iron man of work. I cheered and laughed with my co-workers betraying what I really felt like.

Till today, then I found out that I can't even force a smile. I have failed in every aspect of my life, sacrificed them because I held on to the single thought of succeeding in this project.

Now I am left alone to pick up the shattered pieces that I call my life. A whole year of work for nothing.

I can't remember yesterday, nor can I remember last weekend anymore.All that is left fresh in my immediate mind are the ever ending whispers of technology.

There's so much hatred in me with no outlet. I don't like feeling this way, but I can't help it.

All I can say right now is… OUCH!

So, it's not looking good at all. Gerod said that HP will not go into mass production with the current state of audio AD performance. SO that means it's either going to be a delay in the schedule or they drop the project. And the market would be gone if they do delay the schedule.

We are fucked and I've done all I can. Our project was not a failure. We got everything working fine. We failed at the performance factor. The performance can't beat what's on the current market.

But the stupid thing is, they never indicated that in the specs at the beginning on what they want. Now, they try to push our ass and make it our fault… which they can, cause they are the one with money and we are the one who'd be dead if they don't go into mass production.

All I can ever think of now. Is that there's salvation in the end.

Yes, the past two months, I've been working, pushing myself over my limits and forgetting about that I am a human. I do that I know that after this month, everything'd be ok. That a result would come out of all these.

I was told today that it'll last for 2 more months.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I will be 24. I have to work… it is a national holiday and I've already worked through my weekend.

“If this is engineering, then I am going back to Canada to work at a coffe shop as a waiter” I told my co-worker sitting next to me.

Do you know how good I've become? It took me 1 month before in school to understand and produce a protocol interface.

Today it took me only 2 hours under constant pressure and interruption to rewrite the whole fucking digital serial connection protocol. But I don't really care about this.

Funny, how I thought I've escaped, but it came back right away.

Too much pressure, too much things to do. Not enough time. RTL redesign, audio performance testing comparison, presim possim, ambassador of the two company.

The leaders need to fucking figure out what they plan on doing and sign it with a golden pen. I am not made of steel and I will quit if they keep pushing me like this and then blame me for mistakes. And I hate having something I've worked on for a while becoming useless because the upper managements suddenly feels the other way is better. And I am still required to complete the new things at the date which we set for the old ones.

There's my complain for the day. Sorry folks, I hate having my weekend being blown away by work. Most of all, I hate having to work on national holidays after my weekend is screwed.

Finally, I hate how I am not compensated, except for cheap words of praise by my boss. Talk is cheap dude, I need action. You still look at me like I am a piece of shit who doesn't know anything.

HP has money period!

When their engineer came over, they bought an NT$ 15000 speaker system to test audio performance and still whine about not getting the one they want.

Now I am listening to it, with its bass on. Fuck it feels good. I don't know how long its been since I've been moved by good bass. Taiwan has no bass in their musics.

I realized today that the dance cell in me started diying because of a lack of good music at full potential. Feeling the sound wave pressures is how I charge myself up.

There's a certain charm about listening to two women chatting about dancing and people's dance style while sitting, totally focused on the fishing rod I held trying to feel if any shrimp is taking the bait. At 3 am in the morning, beer in hand directing a crescendo of teasing and deadly flirtation of bait and food.

It feels great, when you flip your arm and am embraced with the heaviness of a hook hitting target.

Waking up from this though can be a little bit shocking. Especially when today I had to accompany Gerod with audio testing as well as taking him out to lunch and dinner while convincing him that the performance is better than anything.

I don't get paid for it, I am good at it and my boss is taking advantage of it. But he is the kind of person who couldn't respect these kind of skills. For him, the only thing that's worth anything, is a person's technical skill. Yet I don't care, I like interacting with people. I find it refreshing from the daily boredom of looking at circuits. Circuits on paper, circuits on computer and circuits on the board, circuit in the chip.

Depression is over. It lasted shorter than I thought.

Crap… I can feel it, I can feel myself distancing from the real world little by little. THe chase of this one bug is slowly turning my mind into a machine that chunks 1 and 0 out at people passing by the road. I've become one of those jokes that I read in one of the engineering books about engineer's lives.

It's way past the 5 weeks overtime limits now… I can't keep doing overtimes anymore. My mind is dead and I am very emotional right now. I need time to properly deal with my depression yet I can't. I'd get hit by waves of negative emotions at work and I'd have to instantly block it off because I am interacting with boss and client.

Hewlett Packard's VP are coming over the weekend, and we have to pull overtimes to accompany them. Doing their jobs for them…
Let me ask you a question. How come when one thigns falls apart, everything else unrelated in your life falls aprt as well?

HOly fucking jizzwiz.
In the span of one week, I've lost 1.5kg. 3 days ago I was still complaining about the fat belly I am developping.

DAMN! It took me a whole month of inactivity to gain 1kg and a fucking 9 to gain 2kg in total. CAN I SAY UNFAIR?

Awake with a hang over, the air feels different.. It is oddly familiar with the feel of a Canadian morning. Crisp clean cool air triggering a chain of nostalgia all over my body.

Last night: I asked god to stop this pain and admitted to god that I am lost and don't know what to do. I need and want a purpose in life.

Thank you Ms D. for being there. Now I can't ever bitch about not having someone like that anymore.

This morning, I received an email from an old acquaintance of mine. A reply on a question I asked him a long time ago. About why he believed in god, with an invitation to his wedding. Checked the date, August 10th, just about the time I have to get out of the country.

Coincidence? Or I am just believing it is? I've decided that for once in my life, I will follow.

Well, no good news is coming from anywhere in my life. My dance partner stood me up, twice… Did I do something wrong? I did not pursue her and I don't suck as a dancer. God is it always like this with women in Taiwan? No integrity?

Work project failed and we are scrambling for a working chance at respin. Deadline is September 19th. Or we all go unemployed. An 8th person left the team. Our team's turnover rate is now a whopping 50%. Yeah, nothing is ever higher.

My life sucks ass. I'd go through long periods of intense work, Responsibilities with scraps of time to wash my cloth. I'd get detached from reality… from humanity for an extended period of time. When I do get a few days of normal life. What I had built as normal life before had already flickered away. The short contact with reality, only serves as a sharp contrast of the sorry life I have as a human being. Each time, it reminds me of how I should be living and makes me depressed about how I am farther and farther away from that goal.

I am not getting a raise, and the average canadian mcdonald cashier earns more than me with less work and less complexity of tasks than me. People in the corporate world treat me like shit, because I am the youngest with the least experience. I need to know people like me, young professionals at work who just started out.

This sucks and not even dancing sooths my soul. I hate whining about it. Sure, I understand that people only get attracted to people who are upbeat and fun. Who'd want to be around someone depressing. But it's getting harder and harder to smile. It feels like my facial muscles are locking into a frown. There's nothing I look forward to anymore. Nothing brings me happiness anymore.

There used to be a time, when plain white bread taste like the best thing in the world. Oh, I am now 70 kg. Gained about 2 kg of muscle. But I do not feel any pride in succeeding that.

The first lesson I learnt about the world of buisness is that you need what your enemy has.

The person you hate, those whom you hold a grudge against, the opposite sex that disgust you, will have what you want and you have to suck up to them to get it.

Disgusting isn't it?

I remember talking to people during my university life and there'd always be this person who inspired them in their life. This one person who helped and listened to them through their difficult times.

How come I don't have one?

Do you know the feeling of failing after giving it 120% of everything you got for a whole year? To fail as a person, to fail as a tool and to fail in life.

For once, I am glad of excessive sweating while I dance. No one noticed that there were tears in my eyes the whole time. They were blinded by the overpowering emotions of my dance… but I still dance along, without a permanent partner by my side to return. It's like I am emitting all my emotional energies, into this endless void that sucks it up with my life energies together.

Sitting in Starbucks sifting my favorite coffee made it a little bit better, but I still couldn't fight it. Oh well, I haven't been depressed for so long, it's time anyway. But life continues on and it doesn't give mercy to those who trap themselves in emotional turmoils.

At night, with the windows open, I'd play Jennifer Charles' music and gaze upon the dark industrial city outside the window. It is the perfect song for a setting like this. All I need now is a cigarette between my fingers to make it a perfect shot for big screen movies.

I am going to slowly changing to spymac for my blogging needs. I've been using it for the past few months and it seems pretty stable to me. Though livejournal beats spymac in terms of stability and speed, I prefer having a larger user groups and a free photo album.

Online acquaintances are weird. They know your secrets, sometimes even more than your friends, yet you've never met before. When in trouble, you cannot depend on them like friends do.

Yet they know you inside out.

I complain about having too much work, yet when I have time, I realize that I don't know how to enjoy life anymore.

I've been dieying to get my hand on one of the touchscreen laptop. It costs $60000 NT and my income is only 32000 NT. Another major expenses would be my dancing costume. I need 30000 for a tailsuit and 10000 for a latin costume.

So that means a whopping 100000 NT in total spending…
Let's see,
Food: $6000 per month,
Apartment bills: $5000 every two months.
Dance lessons : $5000 every month.
Bus pass $2000

$15500 spending per month. 16500 savings… 6.1 months

I need money! I want that raise!.

Yes! Day off tomorrow! Haven't had those for a month. Mmmmm, I want to sit in Starbucks with a coffee in hand and write on Daedalus's rugged brown sheets while divulging myself in its sensual smooth leather cover.

It's the first practice with my dance partner. At the basement of shi fan university's all girl dorm. It felt sooo familiar… an open space with just me and my partner practicing, while passerby's staring in awe. It was like this, a year ago and I felt fear; the fear that I'd stay here.

Work is fine now. Things have settled down and people are treating me differently now. They've discovered that they need me, that even though they know how to create and use something. It is I, in the end when everything is connected together, who will fix their problems.

My heart slumped when I discovered the receeding hairline. I am too young to have that. But between then and now, I've had no time to sit down and be a cry baby about it. It's a sad realization that I will have to kiss my dancing career goodbye if I do start going bald. Great fucking ass. That world is too demanding of one's appeareance.

I finally got time to cut my hair short so I don't have to use so much gel… not that I use them anyway. But it feels good to look sharp again:

Well, people are going to get raises soon. I doubt I will get any, cause the boss doesn't like me that much and he's never seen any of what I did. I wonder if mentioning that Asus tried to get me to work for them 4 times that I'd get a raise. They wanted me just for the 3 languages I can speak and the engineering background.

Bus 908 is the best bus I've ever been on before. You can never get on it during peak hours, because the bus driver hates peak hours. He doesn't care about getting more money, he just want to be the best bus driver ever.

The bus, is clean with little personal touches here and there. He knows everyone who's going to be on that bus and waits for them to get on.

When I, a stranger got on, he asked me where I am going, because normally, at 10 AM, the customers are always the same ones.

Je sent du caffeine dans mon urine. La prochaine symptome va etre la male a la gorge suivi avec des irregularite du coeur. Mon collegue m'a dit un fois:” Il exist des jobs ou tu travail moin mains obtenir une meilleure paie.

La genie c'est fou. Le R&D sont des mission impossible.

The fact that I am surrounded by instruments costing more than 100 thousand dollars doesn't seem to phase me yet. I've never thought about stealing them and just live off the interest for the rest of my life.

Everyday, I break equipments that cost more than a thousand dollar and everyday we discuss nerdier stuffs than bytes and binaries; The stuff that made up of binaries.

We joke about how the stuff works when VDD and GND are shorted together, but burns when we disconnect the line.

My boss is a 30 year old male who lives at home with mom, dad and brothers. His mom does his laundry.

This is the life of engineers in Taiwan… and I feel I am slowly being corrupted.

Why am I not quitting? They need me and I won't quit on people who need me.