UltraCrepidate

One hour this time…

This is how long I sat there listening to someone else swearing and cursing at me, my company and my ability to do any meaningful work on the phone. The first five minute was fairly scary, as scary as any angry person swearing on the other side of the phone can get. It caught me off guard because I was in an Engineering mode that promotes exchange of ideas between geeks and brainiacs.
So, after an initial flutter and stutter, my memory kicked in and I switched into what I refer as call management mode. This is when, I really appreciate the skills I gained when dealing with Yo Mama’s is a daily routine. So, how do you calm a cussing and swearing person down? This is what I did.

• Listen, or if unable to, the lack of talking is enough. On extreme cases when the swearing gets too repetitive and lack any new vocabulary, turn on your mp3 player. I suggest buying a creative zen stone for $40 and load it with heavy metal music for this purpose.
• It’s nothing personal, contemplate on the grammatical structure of the swearing if you have to. For some people, this is their style of getting things done and communicating. Treat it like any other customer.
• They are swearing for a reason and usually they are right. However, there’s usually nothing you can do to speed things up because part of your responsibility is to take this kind of shit. So tell them you understand their position which is why you are doing everything you can to speed up whatever process. (Everything you can meaning everything you can within the alloted time/effort to this particular client. This decision is up to sales and marketing)
• Tell them:”I am sorry that this has caused you so much inconvenience.” and repeat what measures you’ve already taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again. (These, of course hasn’t happened, but you will do it after you hang up the phone, I call this time shifting. It’s true and false, but won’t make you feel like a liar)
• Repeat what they are asking you to complete to confirm with them. This will force their logical side to kick in and answer a yes or no. If they say you are stupid for not understanding them, blame the phone line for being too noisy and that you can’t make out some of the (swear) words they are using.
• Apologize. It is your fault. Be a man and deal with it.

It’s getting so impersonal now that I am starting to doubt my ability to actually feel sorry for the wrong I did. I find that my actions doesn’t really correspond with what I feel sometimes.

Bartering. It is the oldest form of trading since the beginning of human civilization and is often viewed as a lower form of transaction by people in the civilized society (Don’t know about you, but I feel that way.) Which is why, I am surprised to find, that something as important as buying a house, in an advanced society that is Canada is still reduced to the rules of basic bartering when it comes down to the gist of it.
All the documents I signed, all the bullshit process that I went through, was so that I can finally write a number down and call the seller’s buff. I chose not to buy a new condo because they usually don’t barter on prices. You either buy it or you don’t. So I resolved to buying second hand homes that’s only been there for one or two years, so I don’t have to pay that extra tax and can play some well received psychological game with people.

Here are some tips for others that might be following this path soon. Although good bartering skill is important, it still can’t beat the right timing which you decides to buy. These are good when there are more sellers than buyers.

• Start the bid 20% lower then the advertised price
• There’s a reason they are selling the house, find out about it
• A final offer is never final, you can always come back with a higher bid. It’s called a shit test
• Don’t let your agent understand you too much, they exchange informations with seller’s agent
• Be ruthless, you won’t see the person again.

As mentioned before, I didn’t start my bid on my dream house. Instead, I started my bid on the condo which will generate the best investment return. Since I don’t care about losing this bid, I was able to offer a ridiculous price (Bid down from $194 to $160). It sends two messages: “I think your place is worth shit.” and “I am ruthless” to my agent.

Of course, because it’s new on the market, the owner turned it down even after I raised it higher a few times. (They get to have their ego for a while) In any case, their final offer was $184 000 and wouldn’t budge. I later found out that the father of the girl who’s selling is staying in montreal to help sell the house, so I gave up because they don’t have any time pressure.

The next one accepted a low offer before I can bid on it so I decided to move on to the dream house which I wanted.

This whole bartering experience goes against my conscious and my belief in how business should be done. I believe that a good partnership has to be formed on a basis of mutual benefit so it can last long and reap benefits. Add that, to the fact that I like the current owner as a person. You can say, I am buying this place because I trust the owner. Yet still, I couldn’t believe my own ears when I bid a ridiculous price and she responded by lowering her offer. I was tempted to go lower, but since it is already very close to what I was aiming for and I like the person, I didn’t. (I did the calculation of their bottom line by getting the purchase price from the agent and adding the mortgage interest plus tax etc to the equation).

So I closed the deal with her on May 10th for $179 500 to buy the condo and this is the previously password protected information.

A total reversal from my previous white and simple layout.

This was designed to represent the previous stage of my life. To show the raw feelings and the roughness that I felt was the central part of that stage. There are no links because the site was designed to focus only on one post at a time. Also, another oddity of that stage. The decision to go with a 1000 pixel width was made after I realized that not many people look at my page in 800×600, with the future veering towards wide screen, I figured I’d try a wide layout to see how the visual effects of text changes. To my surprise, it changed quite a bit.

For example, one lines of text looks really sad in a wide screen setting. It might be better to have a bigger block with two empty lines in order to simulate the feeling before.

The part I spent the longest time on designing this layout? I’d say it’s the background. The interesting fact about the background is that no matter how you crop it. You will always be able to perform a repeat x or repeat y on it without showing any visual artifacts that catch a visitor’s eye. It’s made to repeat, but with enough randomness so that you don’t really register that it is repeated. The feel also differs depending on the size of your cropping. It’s hard to imagine that the background imagine started out as one simple dot doesn’t it? It is my first attempt at texturing the background and I will be playing around with this new way of spanning mashable backgrounds like this in my future layout as well. It ads a certain complexity to an otherwise minimalist design.
I feel like I have to present this to you now before it becomes outdated. I find that the dark and angry scheme unfitting for my personality. It was a temporary mood that spurred some creativity.

We are a mixture of 60 pros and newbies this time and the sun was out shining brightly compared with a rainy day like last year. My squad all decided to spend an extra $90 on top of the $20 entry fee in order to upgrade our package with a more accurate gun, more paint balls, anti fog mask and extra neck + hand protections.

The result of this upgrade netted me 6 kills in the first two games. The better gun allowed me to finally understand the correlation between aiming and hitting the target. I can’t imagine how I managed to do even one kill in my last game with a gun that shoots paint balls everywhere but towards the target. But if you ask me which equipment out of all these did I benefit the most from. I’d say the anti fog mask.

With that I am able to peek around the tree with one eye to quickly assess the situation and devise a path to flank the entrenched enemies which ended up in several enemies getting their ass shot from behind. I thoroughly enjoyed this second match because my squad charged and outsmarted the enemy (With a little help from the guy with an awesome machine gun that sprayed a wall of paint into a guy hiding behind a rock).

The rest of the matches are trickier as the objective changed from simple annihilation to a more logistical one. Objectives included: drug trades, capture the flag and storm the castle. It allowed me to temporarily experience what it might feel like to be in the middle of all these mayhem. The difficulty in communication in a gun fight and the frustration of being pinned down by one well positioned sharp shooter.

I am quite content of my style of play. I am not the type to charge towards the front line and spray bullets at whatever comes. Instead, I stay behind at first to analyzes the situation, assert the weak points and moves towards surprising the enemy entrenched there. Not blind bravado, but still brave enough to rush at the right place at the right time. Makes me wonder, if I can still be this brave when real bullets are in play.

Best moment of the day? Out sniping a pro who has better equipments. I did so by applying my FPS sniping experiences on the battleground. Which involved changing positions after each burst and hiding my head as soon as I see the gun pointing my way. This is way much more satisfying than a head shot in computer games. The real sniping involves a lot of crawling around unseen by enemies, using one eye to peak around the tree and waiting for the enemy to feel safe. It’s all about the possible rewards of patience, of when you catch a group of them unprepared and without cover, then spraying all the bullets at them with your gun.

All in all, great fun. Not to mention all the well endowed women at this particular paint ball battleground. We were all surprised to see a ration of 1 to 5 women to men that can handle a gun well. The full body sore muscles are well worth it too.

Part of the series Environment upgrade.

For several months which followed, my days and weekends were filled with actions. If I was not out driving around with my agent, then I was catching up with some friend somewhere. Add that, to organizing a camping trip, a paint ball outing and you get the typical messy room with discarded clothings everywhere. I can’t believe I lived and am still living in this dump, but it makes sense now that I look back. I am only in my room to either sleep, or use my computer.

“In my mind, nothing matters anymore, there’s nothing bigger or more important.”

After the first round of visits, I came back starry eyed and wanting to buy everything. To think that I can own one of these beautifully decorated condo is something that I never imagined doing. Most importantly, I realized that my views and idea changed as I visited and inspected more and more places. These condos, are a peek into the owner’s mind, a very intimate place where they are completely vulnerable. Vulnerable because you can understand a person from observing the place they own.

The original plan was to buy something really cheap, below $150 000 so I can take advantage of the government’s free $7000 cash aid while paying only about $400 per month on mortgage. It’s like renting a place with the intention to own. The reality of the market taught me a good lesson. You get what you pay for. The places that I saw with the criteria that I set, all had major flaws that will one way or another make living annoying. This is when my dad pitched in, after he got word I am hunting for a house.

The deal is this. He will handle the 20% down payment, in exchange, he owns 20% of the house. When the house sells, 20% of the proceeds belongs to him. He wins by having his money in a very stable real estate market with someone he can trust and I win because it reduced my mortgage payment while increasing my buying power. Of course, I get to pay all the notary fee, tax, maintenance etc. So he gets more out of the deal.

This is when the second round of visit began and I met the current owner of my would be condo.

I believe in the concept where a business deal is the relationship with the person with whom you are signing the contract, not the legal papers that accompanies the transaction. Both Guy Kawasaki and Warren Buffet are backers of this important concept so am I. This is probably why, I believed that this particular condo is the place I should settle in. Because the owner is just awesome. I am the type of person who’s on the suspicious and careful side. So trusting strangers is out of the question and when things are going perfectly, I will always wonder secretly, what’s the hidden catch.

Yet I don’t have any of those feeling towards this woman, who’s so well spoken and confident in her demeanor. I was suspicious of the fact that 3 condos in the same building are on sale, she moved in last year and is selling the condo a year later and the fact that her presentation of the place is flawless. I cannot find anything wrong.

I think I am in love with that place, but I did not start my bid with this place…

Part of the Environment upgrade series

Two things in business: Timing and location. If business is the modern ground in which we wage war, then Sun Tzu’s “Art of war” further emphasis their importance. Timing was taken cared of in my previous post. Now, we take a look at the location.

Please take a look at the map. Red circles the area where population is increasing while the green lines are the area that the metro covers. It is rudimentary, but it shows approximately where they are to you. When I did the triangulation, I actually used a google map mashup of Montreal metro stations and superimposed that with the Thermatic map in photoshop.

Montréal is an island city, therefore the rules of real estate for Taiwan can apply more or less. Land will get scarcer as more and more people want the convenience of living closer to downtown. The problem is accentuated by the increase in car owners each year while the outdated road layout struggles to keep up. This is the first condition: on the island.

It was about two years ago when I rented my current apartment I met my landlord at his house. It was a huge mansion on top of a hill. The inside was filled with exotic artifacts that he had acquired from different parts of the world. These aren’t your flea market bargains off the side of the road.

So I asked him, what’s his secret to success. He told me: “Selling real estates.” Which I was very interested in at the time but had no money to even think about it. So I humbly requested for one tip for real estates in Montréal if that is the only tip he can give for the rest of his life. He told me:

“Buy near metro stations.”

I agree with him whole heartedly and made this is my second criteria.

Combined with the thematic map that Census Canada release, my agent and I started our 2 months journey of house hunting…

It’s only after I went back and visited a competition did I realize for the first time how different I am from the people there. I bumped into old acquaintances, but the interaction remained polite and awkward. Our relationships never grew past dancing and the topic never strayed from it either.

Most of all, I didn’t want to hear about her.

People seem to enjoy being the first to feed me the bits and pieces while I took mental note of those who probed my other areas of life first to determine that I am not ready to hear the facts yet. Thank you for your consideration.

Photographing kept my mind off the past. The numerous engagement with authority gave me some practice in wiggling around them in order to get what I want. Which is, basically, to take my pictures in peace. I don’t know when it started, but it seems that videotaping and picture taking with a pro camera is severally frowned upon. The organizers grant a certain firm exclusive right to sell the art taken during the competition and these people are very adamant in making sure that no competitor is around to steal their business. When is video taping your friends dancing not allowed?

That kept me busy throughout the night, but when it ended, I am still faced with the same question. The setting always reduce me to a pure emotional being, but why was I upset in hearing that she is doing well in Germany? I secretly wished her to grow fat and alone! The reality didn’t go with what I had in mind which unnerved me. Seriously Peter, I thought you’ve grown out of these petty thoughts. Or maybe, the rebellious part of me, the part that gave me that push to start in dancesport in the first place, wished that I did the same thing. That I am traveling the world and having a blast dancing in different countries. But you did you moron!

It put a part of my character in an hi-relief sharp focus. A sudden searing bright light converged on the letters of a question I once asked myself: “What is wrong with me?”. I know the answer and knew it all along. I just never chose to link the question to its answer. The character flaw that I couldn’t grasp within myself is a very silly pride. It explains a lot of my little quirks.

I like to feel special and unique and have my secrets discovered by people and later worshiped. Feigning a sense of mystery in the process

Believe me, words doesn’t do this silly feeling justice. At least, I have now come to term with this and am at awe at how great I felt today, when this simply… does not exist in my interactions with others anymore. I said to myself: “I chose not to live like that.”

These are pictures taken with 1/80 sec shutter speed at focal length of 3.6 and ISO 400. Out of 500 images, only these 15 are presentable. I did not attempt to modify anything because the originals are so grainy that any kind of retouching risks further exposing the defects. To truly capture the fastest movements without blurring in a low light condition present the biggest challenge to the equipment, I think I need a shutter of 1/100 to 1/130 while lowering the ISO to 320. I am hoping that adding an external flash will help remove the noise problem I am seeing so I can capture that ever so elusive perfection in dancesport. I believe I can do it because of my own experience in the sport. Compared with an outside hired agency, I can better predict where the power moves are and when people will likely to pose for a shot.

The thing that posed a challenge to me me at this particular competition was the spotlights they used: very dim orange and pink which forces me to use flash. Perhaps south Korea’s new solution will help me in the future. Having been a competitor myself, I understand the hatred towards getting blinded by the flashes while I dance. Especially the photographers who stands only a foot away and flash you when you dance in front of them. We still need our eyesight intact you know?

Without further ado here are the pictures:

Part of the series: Environment upgrade

Like any good investor worth being called such, I spent a sizable amount of time analyzing the market before I proceed to the actual hunt. Analyzing of the data helps in the overall understanding of the factors in play. It is the part that is the most boring for most, but satisfying when done right. While most people jump straight to contacting a real estate agent after getting their mortgage pre-approved, I silently sat in front of my computer night after night to simply browse. This serves two purpose. One to cool down the initial rush of euphoria, two to give me time to be better informed.

I first waited for the Census Canada’s population density data to release to determine if the island of Montreal’s population is growing or not. A growing population ensures that house prices will go up and that the current slump in the housing market is only temporary as demand increases. I find their 10 year thematic map very useful in determine where the hot spots are to buy.

In a December 2006 post, I predicted a decrease in housing prices around the middle of 2007 and have religiously checked MLS housing prices ever since and read the GMREB report on the housing market to determine that the condition is right and the home prices are indeed decreasing. My findings were that for the first quarter of 2007, the average condo prices in the greater Montreal area decreased by ~3%. Combine this with the US housing market meltdown around June 2006 that added a little to the panic and you see a sudden surge of homes for sale (Canada economic usually respond to US economic changes after 6 months.)

Based on my graphical analysis of historical data on home prices and etc, the housing cycle lasts around 10 years with 2003 being the peak bottom and should see another slight dip in middle of 2007 (this is purely from the graphs.)

Perhaps it is not clear to you in this as the price is in a continuous rise. So I transformed this into a percentage difference graph which made everything clear.

All of these told me that the right conditions have been met and a quick glance at Canada’s mortgage static pushed me to get the pre-approval right away to lock in the interest rate. Why? You asked? Because of China’s exploding economic paired with the rising demand of oil and energy. You see, Canada’s economy is that of a pure exporter of natural resources. 50% of the enterprises that exists here are about Natural resources so the Canadian currency is seen in the world as a natural resources currency. With China going full out growth and development, rising demand of nuclear energy and the forever decreasing “easy” oil. Canada exports copper, uranium and oil sand in response.

The result is a CDN dollar that increases in value and with that, comes inflation. As a result, the central bank of Canada will have to increase the interest rate to balance and along it, the mortgage rate. With this maneuver, I am betting that the dollar will keep on increasing value and that the value of houses will not drop for more than 5%. (11% is the worst case scenario.)

I finally contacted an agent around March 2007 after I began my observation around October 2006…

I was thinking about the chaos theory when a particular property gave me an eureka moment. I knew I am on to something good and there’s this budding sensation within me that screams of sudden crystal clarity. My mind is just too slow to set the logical foundation to understand. I suffered a moment of confusion as my subconscious cried in joy while my conscious struggled with the answer to a big mystery.

Random event happens randomly, but when occurred enough time, consecutive random event will bunch together to form an orderly event. Vice versa. When I realized that the opposite statement is also true I understand the nature of the opposing forces, the ying and yang, the good and evil. That wasn’t the whole picture though.

Events of the same property (let’s call it fundamental property) will tend to happen together until it create a massive event of the same property. At which point the nature of the event itself will change from the fundamental property to evolve into another property. This is the nature and the basis of everything.

The moment I understand this, I understand I have taken a step forward into better understanding. I think, this is the next step up from the understanding of the co-existence of the opposites. If you look at it from this new point of view. You can clearly see that co-existence is the simplest form of the new unified theory, where one state evolves into another and back. The states are defined by our own limited mind. In reality, each iteration of the state gives you a different opposites. It is our brain that forces it into good vs evil or ying vs yang.

Part of the series: Environment upgrade

This is my third move in the city of Montréal. And, as a believer in the “3 times is a charm” motto, I was motivated to make this final move more permanent. Which is when I chanced upon a mortgage calculator that told me the monthly payment for $100 000 is around $500. I thought “Great, it’s just like paying rent except I can sell the condo and take my money back.” This is the hook that got me digging more into the concept of owning my own condo.

At first, I surfed around and used available calculators online to compare the great theory of rent vs own. www.canadamortgage.com is the site I went to. However, I found some strange bug in the calculator when I try to compare best and worst scenarios where my investment can bring in 10% annual return. The result isn’t that much different from that of a 5.25% annual return. So I gave up using the premade calculator. It is either bullshitting, trying to push for people to buy home or crappy coding.

In any case, I can’t trust these calculator so I made my own excel spreadsheet. I found and tested most of the formula to calculate mortgages from this website: http://www.hughchou.org/calc/formula.html. Which allowed me to understand a few principles. On average it’ll go up 6%. 10 year cycle and the tendency for the price to bubble in predictable ways.

It is the worst kind of investment possible as I previously calculated. I didn’t believe that buying a house is as shitty as the random calculation I did. But it is true. Agent fee at %6, inflation at 2%, mortgage at 5%, Tax at 2% and condo fees. The tax itself is equal to my current monthly rent. Who are we bullshitting that we are earning money?

In the end, my biological clock won the debate. Add that to the fact that my current growth is stunted by the restriction in space and having to put up with other’s lifestyle. I proceeded with getting a mortgage specialist to have my pre-approval done.

With that, and a new found resolve, I began my research on the housing market…

Part of the series Environment upgrade.

The actual upgrade that took place for tier 2 are the items below

• New computer (from parts): $700

• Picoo palm sized helicopter to play with my cat: Free

• ATI Radeon x800 GTO 256MB PCI Express To support my would be multi monitor setup. $61

• Guitar hero 2 For my dream that was never there: Free

With those settled and short term entertainment ensured, I lived happily ever after and never thought of changing anything more for a while until this happened. We’ve had arguments between the three of us and yes she thinks me stupid for moving away because of the reason I gave, but I disagree. The main point that I used to argue are quite weak and superficial, it is true because they ARE weak and superficial to hide my true reasoning.

• I can’t stand the child wailing every two hours throughout the night. Especially at this point in my career.

• The poo will stink up the apartment

• It’s only going to get dirtier with a kid in here

What I actually took into consideration is what will happen as the kid grows up. Since I am the only male in the apartment and the fact that the dad doesn’t seem to want to put in any money or effort in raising the kid beside having his last name forever imprinted on the kid’s birth certificate, I will naturally take on the role of the father due to situation and close proximity. My nature and personality dictates that I will put in the effort and help out on raising the kid.

Those things combined adding the fact that I have nothing more to learn from the two flat mates. I made the third most important decision in my life. With the first being to start dancing and the second to stop.

So I am moving out…

Last weekend, I mentioned meeting some interesting people and today I finally get to sit down and compile everything together.

The one I would like to discuss is Brian, a self made millionaire who’s having a blast every moment of his life. He is the first millionaire I met and talked with and I have always enjoyed his presence. He is the type of people who, on his birthday, receives Jaguar(the car, not the animal) as present and hold an annual banquet like the ones you see in movies.

Impressive money aside, Brian stood out by being very free with his possessions. When you visit his house, he freely shares whatever delicacies and discoveries as well as stories of his days as a reckless young lad. I am more impressed by his open mindedness towards everything and willingness to try anything. The younger Brian is the type of person that you’d find sitting alongside you in some shit hole in Africa while backpacking through the continent.

The secret to his success is knowing the right people. One important person in each domain so he never run out of expert opinions and never had to pay for them. When asked how he got so many good friends like that, he replied with: “I earned it.”

There are so much more to say about my encounter, but they are just details of a starry eyed young adult not worth wasting your time on. Things like the two port cigar and a frozen package of deer meat I received just because I happened to mention enjoying them during a casual conversation.

This weekend is less restricting. Spending the time with Mark, Rui and their cat Decimal. I really like their presence because I can be my ugliest self and it won’t matter. I don’t feel self conscious nor do I need to control my behavior around them.

Lethaeus finally get to meet another adult cat for the first time in her life. The encounter was tense at the beginning with everyone ready to jump in and throw the blanket on them if they start fighting and clawing at each other. Dec’s behavior is that of a disinterested ADD cat who can’t keep his attention on the encounter itself while Lethe focused her whole attention on this new moving animal that’s like her. She followed Dec around the whole house, everywhere without taking a break. Yet when Dec turns around and try to approach her, Lethe hissed and crouched into attack position. We are just baffled at the two contrasting behavior.

We went out for some food and hanging out at some unknown place.

When we came back, Lethe was hiding under the bed while Dec is around and about doing his own thing. Lethe turned to life when humen are back in the equation and continued stalking Dec all over the place. By the end of the night, she strut about the place as if it belongs to her. If the behavior of the animal is any indication of its owner’s, I am speechless. At least, I can take comfort in knowing that Lethe is very friendly and open towards strange human.

Here’s something to ponder over the weekend.

As most of you already know, I went through a period of self doubt and questioning while my dancing reached its peak. The dilemna that faced was whether or not to pursue that path with everything I got. I had reached a skill level where to go on means I have to dedicate my whole life and any money I earn into dancing, otherwise there’d be no point to continue. The plane cost of plane tickets to other countries and lessons from world class instructors will cost a fortune.

It is in that situation when I asked myself if specializing in one field is the answer to a great life? The conclusion I reached is a No. Being human means that we are able to process and perform several tasks at the same time. we do that on a daily basis. That is, genetically speaking. When you tunnel and think only about improving one aspect of life, you forget about the other, ignoring the fact that other parts of life will contribute to the improvements as well.
How so? You ask? It’s all in the point of view. When you are focused in overcoming one thing and one thing only, its importance became overblown. Sometimes magnified to be greater than other important part of life. People who are in this situation cannot realize it themselves because they don’t have an outside objective view, or rather, an outside objective view does not exist in the world for them. The possibility is simply not there.

Yes possibility. That’s what it comes down to. When you generalize and know a bit more of the different areas of life, you began to see different possibilities and are better equipped the social skill to mingle and meet the right people, will forever be subject to the whims of “getting discovered” by someone who knows art. But when you have the right social skill to meet the right person and are able to orchestrate an accidental showing of your art while inviting the person to your place, you have a better chance.

“YOU ARE NOT THE CAR YOU DRIVE. YOU ARE NOT THE HOUSE YOU OWN. YOU ARE NOT THE PAINTING YOU PAINTED. YOU ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING BANK ACCOUNT.” You are the decision which made the choice.

From a society point of view, you can see that it is also how human innovate most of the time. A lot of the time, the next piece of gadget is just the same gadget with certain functionality added that somehow improved its usefulness by more than double in a different domain. That’s because the person who thought of adding the function, sees the old gadget and a new way of using it. Is it copying? Yes. Is it innovation? Yes.

Part of the series Environment upgrade

Today, I bought my first house from owner Genviève St-Jean at the price of $179500 cdn. Bid down from the original offer of $189000

I think an emphasis needs to be put into developing a hobby for engineers. Yes, it’s good that they can be l33t at what they do, however having a hobby will increase the chance of the engineer finding a new way to integrate two areas of life together. Even if they failed to do so, someone with an interest in the area will make the integration easier as the terminology, techniques and etc that belongs in the niche group can be understood by such a hybrid person.

As technology develops, co processing with a specialized processor that accelerate certain hobbyist’s functions, you can bet that there are going to be more and more two guys in a garage, dreaming and realizing new hardware. You can expect everyone who knows how to program an FPGA (Which is all engineering graduate nowadays) to try and attempt it at least once in their lifetime.

For this to happen, there needs to be a port used for I/O communication(Which most machien already has, just not enough pins). Hot swappable cpu like the SD card nowadays. Some hardware interconnection technology needs to be developed to ensure that the pin contacts are secure.

I decided to write down the time whenever I feel a coffee craving.

8:30Am

9:25AM

11:16AM

11:52AM

12:29PM

12:58PM

I think I am safely past the withdrawal phase and can say that there are no caffeine in my system left. Therefore, whatever I do now are not affected by the substance.

Immediately I noticed three physiological differences. My muscles get sore after a work out 12 hours later compared to 24 hours later. It could be from my higher water intake or it could be from the absence of caffeine.

The second one is quite surprising. I kept on waking up naturally at 6:30 AM instead of the designated 7:30AM refreshed with less grogginess.

The third impact is that I am gaining weight, especially around the stomach area. To quote a certain person:” You now have a man’s body.” This is most likely because caffeine kept my metabolism at a higher rate than normal.

Compared to others, I think I had it easy. I searched the web and compared the caffeine content of each of the coffee chains and found that Timmy’s only contain 200mg while Starbucks and etc. go as high as 300~400mg. With the standard safe daily intake at 300mg, I am lucky that I never went beyond that with only one cup of Tim Hortons. They might be the most health conscious one out there.

It was the weekend, so things were more bearable. Gee, I must’ve been on coffee for… ugh sudden flash of my first cup of Tim Hortons. I must’ve been on coffee for the past 8 years of my life. That is, on average one large cup double double per day with the record at 5 cups on the last day of my 4 year university project presentation. Maybe more, I remember constantly having a cup in my hand like Julian with his whisky in trailer park boys.

My weekend were filled with activity and I get to meet quite a few interesting people who I will most likely write about later. The activity itself will have to remain a secret for now since my site is getting more and more views from Montreal, I don’t want blogging to mess up my chances.

Which is why, I am not sure if falling into my bed and sleeping like a baby every night is due to the withdrawal or not. Overall, I’d say I am more sociable and more interested in conversations. The feeling of tiredness is also different. It’s harder to describe except by the level of drowsiness. And I feel like I spend less time contemplating about how tired I am. Waking up is easier and my sleep pattern has stabilized. We’ll see how this pan out.

By the 3rd day, I must’ve flushed all the caffeine out of my system.  I started feeling drowsy at around 10 AM and there’s generally no enthusiasm to anything. Total utter rejection.

I went home and immediately fell asleep on my bed till the next morning. Which explained the equally short post long after it happened. I frankly can’t remember much of what happened.

There are times for contemplation where I hide myself from the world to review my past actions. To sit down and lick my wound in the comfort of my own nest, protected from outside criticism. I read, I absorb information and make adjustments in myself for the “supposed” next stage. During these times, I enjoy socializing with friends and picking their brains on some abstract unheard of issues. I read, blog and exchange with fellow bloggers.

Then there comes the time for action, where everyday is a uphill sprint. Timing is of the essence and opportunity would be lost if I don’t haul my ass towards the goal. It’s a time for risk taking and putting myself on the line. During these time, things all have to be scheduled and I am in a constant flux filled with anxiety and adrenaline. I feel guilty for denying my friends the usual meetings in order to indulge in my own pursuit. I only have time to write and record the process.

It feels good to know people that understand this and still stick with me.

The second day felt like a long drawn out war.

I couldn’t focus on anything mundane so I spent most of my time reading. Hard to stay awake and my eyes are sore for the most of the day.

4PM arrived and I noticed some random perspiration. I am also drinking more water than pissing them out. The caffeinated lifestyle must’ve lowered my cell’s water retention capacity and I am just making up for it now. That’s a big deal because water is the key to any physical activity. Perhaps I’ve been performing in a suboptimal condition.

By the end of the night when I have to attend a business social engagement, I was in a better mood and am generally more pleasant and interested in people. An emotion that I haven’t felt in a while. I enjoyed conversations for conversation’s sake.

I never thought stopping coffee could create this much withdrawal and it’s supposed to last from 2~7 days depending on your addiction level. It is not healthy at all.

What a nasty day.

I decided to wear my best shirt, pants and suit to work in order to hide any withdrawal symptoms. I felt the cravings while driving in to work. It came in the form of am image, image of a brown mug with the logo of Tim Horton. As I come to understand later, this is the form that the devil have decided to take on to exercise its option to torment me.

Another craving in the form of that image came and went during lunch. I was really tempted to take my usual hike across the overpass to get my Timmy’s coffee. This walk had been part of my self cleansing journey for the past year whenever I have the need for a focused mind. The reward is the coffee. The journey, a walk on top of the freezing windy highway to be drowned in traffic noise and cool down my hyperactive brain.

Which is why today, I gladly joined my colleagues for a quick lunch at a faraway cambodian restaurant. It saved me from my daily lunchtime cravings.

4PM came and went, I felt extremely withdrawan and struggled to stay awake. The rest was a blur and with a very irritable me getting pissed off by everything.

The night was spent watching DVD and eating junk food. I have a hard time motivating myself to do anything. Not even the prospect of getting money excites me. Everything looks bleak and I questioned my motivation for the things I do. Conversation with roomates seem to alleviate some of the withdrawal, but it didn’t relieve the outlook I have on my life at this moment. The main question being why I am not happy with my achievements and the conclusion is that I am drawing peace from a shaky fundation which rely on having achievements. The peace needs to be drawn from somewhere more solid. Question is, where?

Another question is, why am I drawing happiness from achievements?