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Sunday, October 30, 2005

Sacrifices??

(recycled...)

We don't live in isolation, so it's either selfish or naive to think what you say/do/decide won't have an effect on people around you, esp those closest to you. If my sister decide something, I may choose to help her because I love her, and to do that I might have to make some sacrifices. Every choice is a sacrifice, because if you choose X, you are sacrificing Y. If the choice is made after careful consideration, the sacrifice might be worth it. Other times, the sacrifices are small or just mere inconvenience. But sometimes, we do regret our choices, and we look back and realize just what we had to give up for the choice.

Yes, each person is responsible for his/her own happiness. But most people also want to make those close to them happy. I make sacrifices to make those I care about happier. Most of the time I am more than willing, and glad, to make such sacrifices, and thus, they may not feel like sacrifices. I also know that many people have made sacrifices for me, especially my parents, and I will never ever discount what they have done for me.

I also believe what goes around comes around. Again, we don't live in isolation, our lives go on because of the continuous help and support from people around us, between one another. It's true that we can't always pay back what others have given us, but we can "pay it forward" and help someone else when the opportunity arises. It's not about what you owe, it's about what you can give.

cybette wrote this at 10:07 AM ... Comments (11)

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Oh L'Amour!

A new fashion collection from Nokia, called Oh L'Amour, was announced last week. I didn't even know these phones existed before that, and I haven't seen any of them in person yet either. Each model in the collection (Nokia 7360, 7370 and 7380) blends "cultural and ethnic influences" with "luxurious touches of the unexpected". More pictures and info can be found here.

nokia-lamour-collection.jpg

In other news, (sounds like I watch too much CNN with Bruce...), worldwide shipment of cell phones in the 3rd quarter has reached record high, up to 208.3 million units. The last time shipments broke 200 million (in one quarter) was the 4th quarter of 2004 at 205.7 million. The 4th quarter usually marks the highest sales (and shipment) of the year due to the holiday season, so hopefully we'll ship even more phones this quarter (4Q-2005).

Nokia's growth over the same quarter a year ago is 29.6%, and we've also increased our market share to 32% (from 29.4% a year ago). Yeah, that's good news. Some other cell phone makers have similar growth (e.g. LG Electronics and Sony Ericsson), some fell behind (e.g. Samsung), but Motorola had the strongest growth of 66% and upped their market share to 18.6% making them now a solid No. 2 ahead of Samsung's 12.9%. This was due to sales of their RAZR and ROKR phones.

I've read and heard complaints of the RAZR and ROKR phones, about how their UI, OS and apps are not intuitive and sub-par. I haven't played with one so I can't comment on that aspect, but still the phones sell well, so it goes to show that having a cool design and a catchy name definitely help. With the L'Amour collection as well as the N-Series, Nokia is at least catching up in the design department. But I think we need to start using cool names for our phone models instead of those 4-digit numbers which never cease to confuse me....

cybette wrote this at 01:12 AM ... Comments (3)

Friday, October 21, 2005

Putting out fires

Weird dream.... I don't know where I was, but there were fires everywhere. In front of me was a car on fire, further away to the right was a patch of something on the ground on fire.... then there's something else, a building maybe, to the far left on a slight elevation, plus another car or a similar sized object to the far right, all sprouting big flames. Somehow I had a fire hose in my hand, and water flowing out of it. So of course I started using it to try to put out the fires. There wasn't really a sense of panic, fortunately, but still there was a sense of urgency to stop all the burning (obviously). I try to divide equal amounts of time (and water) between the different problem areas, but probably ended up with more on the car and patch closest to me. There were other people around me, just hanging around and watching. My hand was getting tired because the hose was heavy and the water pressure was great so it was hard to control. But no one offered to help, not even for a short while so I could take a quick break. I think there were other fire hoses around too, but no one bothered to pick them up. I was a bit pissed, not just because people were not helping me, but also because they were not helping to put out the fires. These are not MY fires to put out, but I did it anyway. I know perhaps they are not THEIR fires to put out either, but... I don't know. They just stood around talking. Something about how they could do a better job than me, the way I was holding the hose was wrong.... etc. HELLO??!! Talk is CHEAP. If you can do a better job, why don't you just DO IT??

Anyway, I already have a phobia of fires in real life. So as you might expect, I didn't enjoy the dream very much. But if more people had helped to stomp out the fires, I would have felt much better....

cybette wrote this at 07:25 AM ... Comments (1)

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Be more aggressive? Assertive?

Was in one of the INS offices a couple of weeks ago to get fingerprinted for my green card (replacing the one I lost). Waited for more than 3 hours... looking back, if I had spoken up, maybe I'd only have to wait for an hour, or less...?

Speaking of lost stuff, they found my handbag. Of course the valuable stuff are gone, including the green card (perhaps they'll try to sell it??). I haven't "unpacked" the handbag yet... maybe not wanting to be reminded of the ordeal.

Selling yourself... I don't feel comfortable doing it. I don't even know what to say at interviews. But I need to do it, I need to ask for what I want instead of handing it to someone else and letting her take all the credit. I need to also say NO to what I DON'T want so I won't get stuck doing things I dislike. Of course we can't always have what we want, but it won't hurt to ask, right? So why I find it so hard? I'm going to take a class next month on being assertive. Let's see if that'll help....

Came across this book mentioned in the Dallas Morning News - Mozart in the Jungle. Speaks of the ugly side of the classical music scene... having attended some DSO concerts recently (and just came back from one when I read about the book), what a stark contrast to the usual image they portray. Illusion? well of course not the whole arts scene is like that, and it may apply to other areas in society and not just classical music, but the fact remains... sometimes it's not about what you really are, not about what talents or experiences you have; but it's really about knowing the right people, saying the right things, and even doing certain things.

Right? Wrong? Who is to judge? But one thing is for certain - networking is important. And a key component of networking is communication, which I suck at. I don't know how to sell myself or say the things people want to hear. So I lose out....

I used to be more confident when I was younger. Maybe it's ignorance... they say ignorance is bliss, and there's a certain ring of truth to that. When I didn't know much, I wasn't as acutely aware of things... so I guess I worried less. Not sure if that makes sense. But there's something that goes like "the more you learn, the less you know". Or rather, the more you realise that you DON'T know....

Watching the pianist's fingers flying across the Steinway keyboard at the Meyerson, wishing I could be one-tenth as good... looking at pictures taken by other people, so much better than the ones I take... at work, at play, always someone better... what am I good at? I don't even know anymore... jack of all trades but master of none. That explains why I'm involved in several projects at work instead of devoting to a single one. End up doing smaller tasks (sometimes feels like piddly shit) instead of a major task that is more visible (and can get recognition for).

And if that's not enough, my ADD is adding fuel to the fire. If I have one thing to focus on, I can try my best to make it work... but I have to juggle several things and it's like... HELLO?? stop distracting me left and right! I really can't multitask very well... my time slices are too thin to be useful for any task. But multitasking is highly regarded in the work place, usually even a requirement in a job description. So I guess I quibbled during the interview...

Plus my memory is getting from bad to worse.

I hope nobody from work will read this...

cybette wrote this at 03:24 AM ... Comments (5)