Hiring remote foreigners? Slow your roll, hotshot

"If I allow remote work, I'd be better off hiring programmers in Vietnam."

Sound familiar? Because that is the sound of millions of employers all over the world repeating the same old tired line. If I had a penny every time I heard some small-time Towkay-wannabe mouth off about how they'd save so much money by hiring foreign workers remotely rather than letting local talent work from home, I'd be absolutely rolling in it.

If I had a penny...

If you think this makes me sound dismissive, that's because I am. I am dismissing this line as nothing but bluster and hot air. And sit tight; I'm also about to explain why... in the Singapore context, naturally.

When it makes sense

If it's a huge MNC like, say, IBM, whose head office is in the USA and opening a regional office in Singapore, then yes, it makes total sense. Because they're already doing it. Their hiring and legal infrastructures are made for this. Even if the company is not at the scale of a large corporation, but still a respectable size, it might still make sense. It has to; plenty of these companies are doing it. The alternative is that all of them went nuts at exactly the same time... which is scarily plausible in these crazy times.

A game of expansion.

When hiring is done by the book, the host country (in this case, Singapore) and the remote country (in this case, Vietnam), both have agencies that will handle the legalities. I know because I've worked as an Agency Contractor before. These are absolutely a thing.

And of course, these agencies aren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They're a business; they expect to get paid. This will eat into whatever employers think they're saving by hiring foreign workers, remote or otherwise. But that's OK - even if these tech companies don't save that much per foreign worker they hire, at scale, it tends to add up. Enormously.

When it makes less sense

A tiny tech startup trying to follow in the footsteps of a large corporation without understanding basic realities of scale, is on what I would charitably refer to as a "fool's errand". How many would such a company hire? Five programmers? Maybe ten? Whatever the company saves in wages, is nowhere what a larger company saves when hiring hundreds of these people. And if that pittance actually counts as a win, I would be deeply concerned about the finances of said company.

You sure you can
follow in those
footsteps?

I remember a time when Steve Jobs was considered the man to emulate. He was known to be a bit of an asshole, but he had undeniable talent, and thus he succeeded in spite of being hard to work for, or with. People took it to mean that in order to be as successful as Steve Jobs, one had to be an asshole. The end result was that we had quite a few Jobs-wannabes - basically talentless assholes with big dreams and even bigger mouths.

My point is, imitation may be the highest form of flattery; but for those ill-equipped to carry out said imitation, it becomes a liability quickly.

Also, consider this: any employer who isn't comfortable with employees working remotely on an island as small as Singapore, will be significantly less comfortable with employees working remotely out of Singapore.

If your employer is threatening to stop all this WFH nonsense by hiring more WFH programmers from beyond Singapore's shores, it doesn't take a genius to understand that the math does not quite add up.

When it starts being stupid

And it's at this point, where some employers will go, "Well, I'll just skip the red tape and hire direct from Vietnam, then."

Really? You're going to bypass all the legal and pertinent protections that hiring through the proper channels brings you?

How well do you know your own local employees, much less ones you hire from overseas? Do you know their residential address? And even assuming it's a verifiable genuine address, have you ever tried to navigate Vietnam using just a residential address without any understanding of the local language and conventions?

Pray tell, if the foreign software developer whom you don't know from Adam (or Minh, or Rajasamy) decides to sell your IP to the highest bidder, introduce malware into your code base or do any manner of damaging and illegal acts for profit or simply for amusement, how well do you expect to enforce your legal rights? Remember, they're not operating in Singapore, your home turf. Unlike local employees, these are foreign developers under a different jurisdiction where legal enforcement is already significantly harder - now made even more difficult because, y'know, you so cleverly bypassed the proper channels.

That's just the most extreme cases. Let's consider some less extreme but still very real considerations.

Time zones aren't that big an issue. This being Southeast Asia, assuming the employer is not adventurous (or foolhardy) enough to hire from further abroad, the time differences are off by a couple hours at most - an hour tops in the case of Vietnam. It'll need work, but it can work.

What's arguably a bigger issue, is culture. Just because you are all presumably communicating in English does not mean you speak the same language. Nuance gets lost in translation, especially if you're speaking through a computer screen. Honestly, colleagues have enough problems just communicating face-to-face, in the same culture, in the same language.

Don't cut through
this red tape.

And the most relevant question of all: Why, in the name of all that's right and holy, would anyone put themselves in this position just to save a few thousand bucks a month? Does a company that needs to save that kind of chump change so badly, really inspire confidence in you as an employee?

Anyone old enough to run a business, is too old to be this fucking dumb.

Hiring foreigners isn't foolish inherently. Hiring foreigners remotely isn't either, though significantly riskier. Hiring foreigners remotely without going through the proper channels? Reckless, and potentially illegal. Don't do it.

Conclusion and disclaimer

This is not meant to be any kind of statement against Vietnam. Vietnam absolutely does have a wealth of tech talent at affordable prices. I've worked with quite a few. I was only using Vietnam as a convenient example. I could easily have said Myanmar or India.

My point isn't that employers shouldn't hire foreigners remotely. My point is that it's not something that can just be hand-waved. Employers who have the experience and capability to carry this out, won't be talking about it because they are already - as Nike likes to say - just doing it. Or at the very least, taking cautious first steps. And the ones who are bringing it up casually as leverage during a discussion about remote work, will in all probability continue to just talk.

Your employer is not stupid. But if he's using hiring remote foreigners as a threat, he probably really hopes you are.

Tạm biệt hẹn gặp lại,
T___T

A Software Developer's Vacation in Malacca

Somewhere in the past month, I was flirting with the idea of taking a trip to Malacca City in Malacca, Malaysia. The wife was away, and I basically had free reign. One of my friends from Kuala Lumpur that I'd met on the Clubhouse app, had a counter-suggestion - we could meet up in Kuala Lumpur and take a day trip to Melaka!

Didn't sound too bad an idea, to be honest. I could use the company. And a local guide could help point out all the beautiful places I might miss.

My company was entering the busiest time of the entire year - the December festive period - and if I wanted to clear any leave at all, it was going to be then. Fingers crossed, my colleagues wouldn't bother me much during my trip. Being the head of a one-man Infocomm department comes with inherent liability, and these were the risks I had to manage.

The trip begins!

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur to spend the night in a hotel room, then my buddy came over in the morning in a charmingly beat-up Toyota the likes of I haven't seen since childhood. We had a simple and leisurely breakfast, then headed off. The morning traffic was horrendous until we hit the highway, and then we were looking at miles of open road as the palm trees whizzed by.

When we finally arrived in Malacca after a couple hours, I was greeted by the sight of what looked like a huge inflatable dragon coiling around the main archway. It was a weird cross between cheesy and oddly majestic. It did occur to me that this area looked strikingly Chinese.

The day was hot, but due to a sudden shower an hour before, the ground was wet with puddles. Not a great combination.

Jonker Street 

Now this was one part that reminded me of Armenian Street in Penang's Georgetown. Tourists milling around was a dead giveaway, but also the little quaint cafes here and there that looked too "touristy" to be authentic. The numerous shops selling all manner of Malaysia-themed knick-knacks was also a huge callback to my time in Penang.

I succumbed to the temptation and bought a refrigerator magnet. And only because it looked hand-made.

Somewhere along the street was this cheesy monument of some seriously ripped dude with this shit-eating grin. To this day, I'm not sure if that bust was built in earnest or mockery. This guy was apparently a bodybuilder in addition to being a politician.

I had the chance to look out along the Malacca River. Nice. Reminded me of Singapore River, except without the glitzed-up banks.

Food 

We had a break at one of the numerous places advertising Vietnam Coffee. Let me just say, for the record, that Vietnam Coffee just isn't Vietnam Coffee if you're not drinking it while squatting on the roadside on a tiny stool in Saigon as motorcycle traffic roars by you... but on a hot day like this, it worked in a pinch.

Later on, we had chicken rice in one of the numerous shops. The specialty appeared to be balls rolled from chicken rice... but honestly I ate it just to be able to say I've done it before. What was more interesting were the bean sprouts - they were large, fat and crunchy. I was told that they were a special breed known as "Ipoh" sprouts. Nice!

Museum and Art Gallery 

Lunch was done and we headed off across the street to this red building, called the Dutch Square. It used to be a fort and was now home to a museum and art gallery, among other things. For lack of something more obvious to do, the museum was first.

Now, honestly, there've been many people who told me to "read a History book" during online arguments, as though that qualified as the final word in any debate. History just happens to be one of my least favorite subjects. What I was about to see, however, was a virtual smorgasbord of violence.

You see, Malacca used to be an object of contention between Malaysians, the Dutch and the Portugese. Apparently the Malacca Straits were very important territory. We went through floor after floor of paintings, text and dioramas depicting acts of bloody battle. Stabbings, shootings, blood and agony, it was all there. Not for the faint of heart, that's for sure.

I saw weapons on display too - sabers and guns, with bullets the size of the chicken rice balls I'd eaten earlier. Military uniforms. Model ships. And my absolute favorite... miniature replicas of Malacca back in the day, depicting how it looked like at different periods in history. I could have stared at this shit for hours.

This was capped off by the sight of this badass statue of Admiral Cheng Ho at the rooftop.

The next part of this visual tour was the art gallery just next door. And, to be honest, there was quite a bit of art on display that I just didn't get. Some of it was historical, and those were actually the easiest to look at. The more abstract pieces? Call me a Philistine, but not so much.

The last part 

After leaving Jonker, we made a side detour. It was a white building by the seaside called the Encore Melaka, and it was an absolutely beautiful theater. Neither of us really felt like shelling out a hundred bucks for about three hours of their entertainment, so we just hung around outside.

And, in my case, took pictures like some tourist. Which I was.

By the sea, this sign proudly proclaimed the area to be The Maritime Silke Road, and even provided coordinates. Shit, this place was all kinds of fancy.

The curse struck again... 

Almost every day, I'd review my messages and see that there was stuff to attend to. Some of it I could defer till I got back; the others I had to attend to by the next day.

Honestly, it was annoying AF. It was like, the effort I'd put into an automatic vacation message and informing my co-workers, just didn't exist.

But this is what happens when you're a one-man Infocomm department - there are no reasonable expectations of a complete day off. Something goes wrong, and even if it could be looked into by someone else, the first instinctual response is to contact me by WhatsApp or send me a MS Teams message.

I'm not blameless in this regard though - I get such a summons and even though I'm supposed to be on vacation, I can't help myself. I just have to respond. This is something I need to seriously work on. As to how, for the moment, I have no clue.

What a vacation!

Short, but sweet. For real, though, this struck me as a good place to chill out for an entire afternoon if I felt like it. Maybe even for a few afternoons. And as of last week (or earlier) there are direct flights from Singapore to Malacca.

Speaking of which, I actually experienced the biometric scan when returning to Singapore's Changi Airport, days after it was reported in the local paper. Pretty cool. Traveling in and out of Singapore as a citizen wasn't a huge hassle to begin with, but this is going to make things even easier.

Stay tuned for more vacation updates!

Your travelling techie,
T___T

Film Review: Child's Play (2019)

"Hi, I'm Chucky! Wanna play?"

Anyone having childhood memories of this has gotta be old as dirt, and that unfortunately describes me. I was eleven when Child's Play came out, and while I can't say I've watched all of the sequels, I did managed to catch Bride of Chucky ten years later. Fast forward more than twenty years, and a reboot of Child's Play just appeared in cinemas.

Was I excited to watch this murderous psycho doll at work again? You betcha!

Warning - spoilers ahead (duh), not for the weak of stomach!

As would be expected of any Chucky movie, this flick is full of gleeful violence and campy humor. But I'm not going to try that hard to avoid spoilers. Fuck that shit. If you're watching a Chucky movie, plot twists are probably not all that high on your list of priorities.

Also, I got the pictures below of the dolls, from the Internet. It's just to illustrate a point and I'm not trying to profit off this, so please don't sue (or eviscerate) me.

The Premise

Andy is a shy boy with a hearing disability. One day, his mother gives him a present - a doll named Chucky which has an AI chip. The doll is capable of connecting to the internet and learning all the things it sees. Unfortunately, it learns all the wrong things, and without any inhibitions against violence or understanding of boundaries, it soon becomes possessive of Andy and this snowballs into a bloody homicidal spree. Along the way, Chucky even picks up the ability to control other toys via the Internet of Things, and as you may expect, it's total mayhem from there.

Unlike the original Child's Play which was a supernatural thriller about a serial killer whose soul got transferred to a doll, this movie is a tech horror thriller about the Internet of Things and wayward machines. Nothing new there; that theme has been pretty much done to death (pun intended) since Skynet in the era of The Terminator. Still, we're here to watch Chucky stab some hearts and slit some throats, and trust me brother, that little bastard delivers just the same.

The Characters

Mark Hamill voices Chucky, the friendly toy turned slasher robot. And just in case you think Hamill is too much of a good guy to voice Chucky, remember that he was the voice behind The Joker in the JLA Animated Series.

Gabriel Bateman puts in a strong performance as Andy Barclay. Bateman plays the shy antisocial Andy well, isolated as much by his hearing disability as by his awkward social skills, and later on his increasing paranoia. He reacts superbly to the growing horrors that Chucky introduces to him.

Aubrey Plaza is Karen Barclay, single mother to Andy. Plaza brings a certain sardonic wit to her character, and shares good chemistry with her onscreen son. She also provides a fair amount of fanservice later on when a voyeur peeks at her in the shower.

Brian Tyree Henry as Detective Mike Norris, the good-guy cop who befriends Andy and acts as a potential love interest for Karen at the end. Equal parts badass and jolly everyman. I last saw him in Widows as a very different character, and I think it was a good casting choice here.

Carlease Burke as Mike's mother Doreen. Burke is a hoot. Her Doreen is a nagging mother and sassy black woman all in one. I was sorry to see her die. She gets easily the best pre-death line in the entire movie.

Ty Consiglio as Pugg, the crass teenager who ends up befriending and helping Andy. Fun to watch, hope to see more of him in the inevitable sequel.

Beatrice Kitsos as Falyn. She personifies Girl Power here, and is a reassuring voice of reason.

Marlon Kazadi as Omar, a bratty teen who also winds up becoming Andy's friend.

David Lewis plays Karen's cheating boyfriend Shane with as much unlikeability as possible, and his eventual death is both horrifying and satisfying. I actually groaned aloud at the scene where he broke both legs. It was so good.

Trent Redekop as Gabe, a creepy voyeuristic basement-dweller who happens to be very good at electronics.

Tim Matheson as Kaslan CEO, Henry Kaslan. He had this prim, proper signified air about him and I was hoping he would make an appearance beyond onscreen advertisements. Alas...

The Mood

It starts off with a storm, and we're introduced to the factory where these dolls are made. After a cringey starting sequence I honestly could have done without, it's pretty much sunshine and daisies, and gradually gets more unsettling as Chucky is introduced. There are plenty of laughs here, and even later on when Chucky starts embracing his inner psychopath.

At the end, things go way over the top with the violence, but it's all rip-roaring hilarity.

What I liked

The tech-themed update on this old-school horror flick was great. I loved it, not just as a tech; but as a person living in the now, it appealed to me. It made things relatable. Chucky is now a WiFi-enabled gadget that can be accessed via a mobile app. Neat!

The Child's Play franchise is famed for its unflinching delivery of the good old blood and guts, and this movie did not disappoint.

Aside from Shane and Gabe who were supposed to be detestable, the other characters were likeable and this contributed to me, as the viewer, being emotionally invested in seeing them survive. The actors really seemed to be enjoying themselves. Pugg, Falyn and even Omar warmed my heart when they stuck with Andy to put Chucky down. Mike and his mother were a lovable bickering mother-son pair. Karen and Andy had a great dynamic going, too. Damn, I even felt sorry for Chucky! All the pint-sized maniac ever wanted was a friend!

The theme song was deliciously cheesy. It keeps running through my head now!

Cheeky references to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Robocop!

What I didn't

The factory sequence was pretty lame and illogical. It was set in Vietnam, and the suicidal worker was seen programming Chucky to remove his violence inhibitors. In Vietnam, if you are this skilled, you probably don't need to be in a factory taking shit from supervisors.

The updated 2019 look for Chucky is not an improvement over the original. One of the reasons why Chucky was so frightening was because the doll was really cute and innocent-looking before it began its rampage of carnage. The doll in 2019 looks creepy from the outset (resembling a midget Steve Buscemi from Con Air), and when it starts exhibiting malevolent behavior, somehow this takes away from the menace.

From this...

...to this? Seriously?!

Chucky is seen needing to stand on a chair to get to knives on a table. How is it at the end, he can leap at Andy? Makes no goddamn sense. Totally inconsistent.

Conclusion

The reboot of Child's Play isn't for everyone. You might be a huge fan of the original and hate this one on principle. But honestly, as a techie, I loved this version. It gave me all the in-your-face bloodshed I've come to expect, along with dark humor and sinister vibes.

All in all, if you don't take your movies too seriously, it's a real scream. I know I had a ridiculous amount of fun.

My Rating

7 / 10

This movie absolutely kills it!
T___T

Your Place in the Food Chain

People can be very judgemental. And this is especially true in the world of tech, where skill and enthusiasm levels vary wildly.

Just recently, I saw some very self-righteous comments on Quora (wow, what a surprise) about how programmers who are in it just for the money should get out of the industry that we all love and let only the worthy remain, or some bullshit like that. And I found that really disturbing.

First of all, yes, I've always been of the opinion that if we don't love what we do, we are in very real danger of being replaced by machines. And that loving this trade, being willing to make sacrifices for it, will make life easier in an industry where life is often not easy.

But I would never say someone who is only in it to make a living, can't do the job. I would only say that if you don't love to code and you are in the position where you have to code constantly for a living, life might be more miserable than it needs to be. That's common logic. It certainly doesn't follow that people who have interests outside of software development, or indeed, are interested in other things more than software development, have no business competing with me for jobs. Some people are dispassionate but smarter than I am; they'll add more value than an enthusiastic but relatively unskilled worker like myself.

I mean, there are countries where poverty is rampant and coding is one surefire way of getting out of that cycle. So a dude codes simply because he needs to eat? What in the ever-loving heck is wrong with that? Needing to not starve is a perfectly legitimate reason to do any job.

Non-tech examples

We live in a world where opportunity abounds, and those with different skills can find their niche. Yet, often, due to circumstance, people are forced to use means considered, shall we say, inglorious, to achieve their ends. This isn't such a big deal; the world is what it is, and we all have to make do.

Networking skills.

I have a friend who makes this big song and dance over his extensive network, about all the powerful people he knows and how he's on first-name basis with them, and so on. If you ask me, he comes off as really desperate to impress, but that's neither here nor there. The thing is, there are people who accuse him of toadying up to powerful people. Is that necessary? Is it wrong to be proud of your networking skills? Is having networking skills even something one should be ashamed of?

And I have other friends who seem really proud of how they're able to broker deals, sucker people into parting with their money and manipulate them with misleading information. Negotiation skills FTW, amirite? Yet we have people accusing them of being morally bankrupt... come on. Have you ever considered that these guys would choose to make big bucks honestly if they were capable of it?

See, here's the thing. Some of us aren't that smart, aren't that talented, and yet manage to secure well-paying jobs. I consider myself privileged to be a software developer - a halfway-decent one, at best - in a world where there are more programming jobs than there are programmers. How many people worldwide, more gifted than myself, are in a position where they are actually well-compensated for their skills?

The world isn't always fair. In fact, very often it's the exact opposite. And very little of that is your fault exactly. You don't get to choose the circumstances of your birth. You don't get to choose what you're naturally good at. You don't get to choose the environment you grow up in. You only get to choose how you make things work using what you have. Some people are born with disabilities. Some are dyslexic. Some are born pretty. Some are stronger, faster or tougher than others. These are the cards you're dealt; now play your hand!

And as such, there's no need to judge others. Sure, everyone has choices. But not every choice is appealing. Sometimes no choices are appealing and we simply have to do what makes the most sense.

Not everyone has good choices.

A couple years back, I was in Vietnam and got a cheap foot massage in some spa. My masseuse was a young woman... with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration. This being Vietnam, she did the pragmatic thing and simply did whatever got her better pay - a masseuse in Ho Chi Minh City rather than a senior accountant in Hanoi. Was she wrong? She merely adapted to her circumstances. What else was she supposed to do, sit there and gripe about how unfair the world is?

For a more extreme example, there are young girls from poorer villages in Cambodia, Myanmar, Philippines and Thailand. And yes, Vietnam. They don't have much of an education. Some of them work as domestic helpers in Singapore. Some earn their money having hot, nasty sex with tourists. These are their circumstances. Plenty of local women, with their fancy Diplomas and Degrees, may look down on these women. They may feel they're of a higher class than them. They may go, "no matter how tough life got, I'd never resort to that". Well, honey... these things are a lot easier to say when you're born in a country with a strong economy, a country that subsidizes education, that ensures the chances of you needing to sink that low, are just about nil.

Statements like that bother me because they reek of arrogance. Not the kind of arrogance that's honestly earned; that I can live with. No, I'm referring to the kind of arrogance that has nothing to do with ability but everything to do with privilege. Do people actually think they're better than some hick from a third-world backwater? Newsflash - they're not. None of us are.

Not everyone can be
the King of the Jungle.

This is like Mother Nature's food chain. There's a place and a role for everybody. Not everyone can be the lion. The ecosystem would collapse if everyone was a lion. Sometimes you have to be the flea in the lion's fur. But there is no shame in being a flea if sucking blood from unsuspecting hosts all you're designed to do.

You're a goddamn flea, what else are you supposed to do?!

Likewise, there is no shame in having powerful contacts if leveraging on the power of others is what you're good at. There is no shame in helping stupid people part with their money if spouting hot air is the only thing you're good at.

If you're good at something, make it work for you. If that's the only thing you're good at, and you don't have many other viable options, then hell yeah definitely make it work for you.

We all have to figure out what we're good at, and what the world will pay for. That is our place in the food chain. Not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer or architect. Some of us have to be drivers, cooks.... and yes, to get back to my original point at the start of this post, coders.

Unlike Mother Nature's food chain, there is a chance you can break out from that role and assume another role. And again, it is our environment and the circumstances of our birth that allow us to do just that. How many are born in a country that isn't constantly at war? How many have access to an education; indeed, take it as a God-given right?

The takeaway

You're not inherently better than anybody else. Remember this. Unless you succeeded despite (and not because of) the conditions of your environment, you have very little to turn up your nose at. Exercise some humility, judge less, and get off that high horse. It goes a long way.

Don't take life lion down, yo.
T___T

How I Became An Agency Contractor (Part 2/2)

With all my rumination over and done with, I replied expressing interest and the interview was on.

I showed up in my standard interview attire, and to my surprise, I did not get asked any technical questions. Well, not if you think stuff like "how many scopes does AngularJS have?" counts. The interviewer was the guy who would be my team lead for the next year or so. It was relaxed; unremarkable. The interviewer informed me that the company was a tech corporation. And not just any tech corporation - one of the largest tech companies worldwide. Contract position notwithstanding, it would be a huge step up from the usual penny-ante minnows I'd had to deal with the last decade.

Editor's Note: The company shall remain unnamed till I cease to work for them. I'm old-school that way.

A nice shiny business card.

The interviewer also informed me that while I would be doing work on that company's behalf, this would not officially make me their employee. I would, technically, be an employee of the Recruitment Agency. He asked me if that would be a problem, and I was astonished. Why would officially being an employee of that company be such a big deal? Bragging rights? Opportunity for promotion? A nice shiny business card with my name on it? I was 39 years old, and past all that now.

The Negotiation

After the interview, the recruiter informed me that I had passed, and we would proceed to talk about my pay. Initially, I had named a salary figure I considered to be outrageous.

They did me one better. They raised it by five percent.

Instead of trying to bargain me down like some of the cheap bastards I've encountered, they were going to pay me more than what I asked for. This was the first time I truly got the feeling that I was playing for the big boys now.

One very long form.

The recruiter then, to my horror, gave me a fifteen-page form to fill in. He explained that this company was functioning as an onsite vendor to a Government Statutory Board, and that the Contract position was meant for that role. So as per Government regulations, I had to fill up that fifteen-page form, also known as the G50 Clearance. I moaned and whinged about it a fair bit, but you know what? At least they didn't ask for my fucking "O" Level Cert.

In addition to that, I was supposed to go for a second interview, this time to meet with members of that Government Statutory Board. The second interview wasn't too bad. To my pleasant surprise, the interviewers had actually gone through my website, and, I assumed, read the posts and tried the demos. That was one of the very first vindications of my effort in setting it up.

Waiting

Now all that was left to do was wait. The information I had provided on that humongously long-winded form had been sent to the Government Statutory Board, where they would take up to a month to check everything out and determine that I wasn't some spy from ISIS, or something.

Those few weeks weren't spent idle. I swam daily, wrote code and did a lot of reading. Now that I had all this free time, I spent it on honing my craft further in preparation for my new job. I was reading up stuff that wasn't just programming - it was everything else related to development. Code clarity, CSS, Web Typography and Colors for User Interface Design. I even picked up Ruby!

I read a lot.

In addition, I watched online web tutorials, caught up on TV that I hadn't had time to watch (like Silicon Valley!) and basically enjoyed life and capped each day off with midnight walks around the park with the girlfriend. My morale had been simmering as I remained cautiously optimistic, but now it was positively soaring.  It was basically weeks of doing stuff I'd always wanted to try, and never quite found the time. Well, now I had time - in spades.

Starting the job

When I finally began my first day in the office, it actually amounted to more waiting. Apparently the machine supposed to be assigned to me wasn't ready, so I spent time reading up procedures and practices, and getting to know my colleagues. The majority of them were from India, with a few from Burma, Vietnam and Philippines. With a shock, I realized that I was the only Singaporean at that level. Not that any of them noticed - with my complexion, I was actually mistaken as someone of some other nationality. The Indians thought I was Burmese, the Burmese thought I was Filipino... and I'd rather not think about what country the Filipinos thought I came from.

It was rough going at first. Everything was in C# and I was having trouble remembering how to use Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server after more than five years of not touching the stuff. It did eventually come back to me but it was an uphill battle. There were days I felt almost totally worthless, and days I felt at the top of my game. There were people I took to, and people I couldn't stand.

In short, it was great.

I wasn't the smartest man in the room, though I was probably one of the oldest. But I'd left my ego behind from day one, so admitting when I didn't know shit, wasn't at all difficult. Plus, that fat paycheck helped. Getting paid that much while expectations of me remained low? Learning all that useful shit while, again, getting paid? Knowing that they let me in because of what I could do and not because of the color of my passport? Absolute heaven.

Epilogue

All in all, I lasted one year, and then they renewed my contract. I've been here eighteen months now, though my contract's expiring this July. It's been a wild ride.

Have a good work week,
T___T

Macintosh Matrimony

Wedding bells a-ringing!

Remember back in March, I wrote a piece on a friend who loved Apple? Well, my buddy here just took his love to a whole new level.

His name is Jermyn, and a couple weeks back, he held a wedding shoot with his girlfriend-turned-wife Suat Huang (lovely woman, by the way) at - get this - the newly opened Apple Store along Orchard Road.

How's that for devotion?!

Photograph by Weili Yip Creations

Then something even more glorious happened. The story got picked up by various news outlets. At first, it was mostly those from Singapore, such as The Straits Times and Mothership.

Then Mashable and The Inquirer and Time picked up the story. Then Zing, a news outlet from Vietnam, where they're just returned from their honeymoon. Then UOL Estilo, from Brazil. Then WAPA, from Puerto Rico. Rambler from Mother Russia. And finally, so far, Sohu from China!

Holy shit.

Dudes, they say the path of true love never did run smooth. In your case, it traveled the goddamn globe and back. According to Jermyn, it was all the wife's idea. Gotta say, that's brilliant.

Hey, but I have something these news outlets don't. For one, I was actually a guest at the wedding. I was there. I even put on pants (there's an inside joke in that circle about how I don't wear pants, but that's nothing more than a vicious lie. I do wear pants... sometimes).

From left: His Teochewness,
the bride, the groom,
Cheryl Tay
and Jarrod Luo.

And I have pics to prove it! Suck on that, Mashable et al!

Positively orgasMac idea.
T___T

The Jover Touch

A couple weeks ago, the battery of my LG smartphone began taking on a bloated appearance, like it had engaged in a torrid one-night stand with the charger and gotten itself knocked up. This meant it was time to get a new battery.

Naturally, I headed down to Sim Lim Square, one of Singapore's hotspots for IT merchandise. Horror of horrors - it was a ghost town. Granted, it was hardly gathering cobwebs and filled with shambling zombies. But it was definitely a far cry from the days you couldn't walk five steps without swerving to avoid some other visitor. The problem was particularly pronounced at the high levels. It was barely 7pm, and shops were closed. Closed! Around the second and third floor, more eateries had sprung up. I could have sworn I even saw a barber shop! Sim Lim Square's days as an exclusively IT stop looked to be over.

A chocolate shop? Wait, what?

A small cluster of eateries
among conspicuously inactive shops.

A western food section
where an IT parts store used to be.

The most striking change, of course, was the first floor. The row of dodgy-looking shops touting mobile phones and accessories had been replaced by spanking new, expensive-looking brand names showroms for laptops.

I call this The Jover Touch. You know the story about Midas, who turned everything to gold with his touch? Well, a certain Jover Chew seems to have done the exact opposite.

It was June last year when Jover Chew, boss of Mobile Air, and a few of his employees were arrested on charges of cheating and criminal intimidation, among others; and finally sentenced in November.

Mobile Air's shenanigans had been going on a while before this, with CASE receiving complaints from customers who had been burnt by their practices. One woman went through the trauma of having to count about 1000 SGD's worth of refunds in coins at Mobile Air while Chew taunted her.  And shortly after that, a video of a Vietnamese tourist crying and begging for his money back on his knees at Mobile Air, went viral.

At this point, Jover Chew had gone too far. He had made himself impossible to ignore.

Most people can accept a man trying to turn a profit - that's what retail is for, isn't it? So that rascal Jover Chew used a few sneaky tactics. No big deal, moving on.

The fact that he picked on low-wage earners and people who had little power to stand up for their consumer rights, was rather more disturbing. This makes him a little shit... but he's no more guilty than many employers in Singapore in that regard. (Fess up, how many of you like employing foreigners because they can't stand up for their rights?)

But all this is small potatoes compared to gangster-like behavior used to intimidate customers, and humiliating them. Laugh at a man as he begs you on his knees for money you cheated from him? That was totally unnecessary. What a bastard. Money can be earned back, but dignity is priceless.

Jover Chew has been sent to jail. And it is my opinion that he deserves every day spent behind bars, every cent fined. All of it.

One other thing concerns me about this entire affair. Perhaps I'm mistaken as to the legal process, but it is absurd that this was allowed to go on for so long despite numerous reports, before this bunch of miscreants was finally taken to Court. While it may not be the truth, perception is everything. And public perception seems to be that in order for the legal system to get off its arse and start working, the public has to first make enough noise about it.

I think it goes without saying that this should not be the way. And it is hardly reassuring to the man in the street, who has been brought up to have absolute faith in Singapore's brand of justice.

So - yes. I obtained my new battery. But it was a sad day. Hopefully Sim Lim Square recovers from this bout of consumer distrust.

Just something to Chew on,
T___T