Yawn 72

8 May to 26 May

2021-05-08

Log migrated. Settling down for the day with some piano music at 0434 hours.

Got a bit of programming done for work by 0531 hours. Time to nap.

2021-05-09

Standard drama theory: now looking forward to the Emergency Eid Goodies Announcement from Putrajaya. (Fifty million dollars in e-wallet handouts drops nine days later.)

2021-05-10

Saya tak berape suka dengan orang yang hanya suka melawan. 

Orang yang hanya suka tak lawan pun saya benci sekaligus.

Sebab hari ini hari memperasakan isu SK x Ain pulak.

2021-05-11

Very excited ... if I can find an hour to sit down and do it, our outlets will be able to place Transfer Orders from Google Sheets ... and the Procurement Officer can receive a live notification in Corporate IM. 🙂

2021-05-13

Rats. Mechanic doesn't want to fix my distributor timing until after MCO. So I actually have to listen for engine knocking to pedal it off, instead of driving with ANC.

2021-05-15

So I don't know much about TV - today I stepped out of the cave a bit, and learnt that I can connect my phone to a HDMI monitor via any Chromecast device.

2021-05-16

Inbox zeroed, down from almost 10k emails 48-hours ago.

2021-05-19

Reflecting on the first two days of integration into the new (second) job. Just going to focus on not getting fired for now. Up next, figuring out how to make 50k Ringgit/mo without spending more than 60 hr/wk on the job, and without becoming a veblen good (i.e. underperforming consultant).

2021-05-20

So I figured out that since my jobs are split between the online games industry, and the hospitality industry, the unifying concept is that I work in the entertainment industry. Oh.

Nihilism is a question of values, like religious belief. Some religions are humanistic, some are theistic, some are nihilisitic. Being nihilistic doesn't mean I don't care about people ... it just means that I believe that caring is ultimately wrong and the golden rule of do-unto-others means I will reorientate myself away from caring whenever I have spare energy. Lol

2021-05-21

Survived the first week of new job. Time to catch up on work this weekend. Still pretty backlogged on multiple projects. 

First up, enforced eating. Maybe a spot of work, then enforced sleep. Hello Friday night lights.

Friday review:

1015. Woke, washed, and selected costume specific to requirements of (P1, P2), my day jobs. 

Drove to storeroom to locate item leftover from last year's work (P3a), for sale to some bloke from Facebook Marketplace. Item located.

Proceeded to photocopy shop to photocopy audit reports for signatories of a corporation in transition (P3b). Realised wallet is at home. Returned home, then returned to pick up copies. 

P3b is running late, so I needed to slot in a clerical issue (P1a), and a meeting (P1b), first ... quick dash from PJ to KL. Allowed colleagues to prep a little between P1a and P1b, so got breakfast at the outlet, and there withh other colleagues addressed pipelines for social media (P1c) and org chart rationalisation (P1d). Returned to office, sealed P1b.

Dashed back to PJ to complete P3b. On the way, illegally dictated guidance on P1b that I wanted to wrap up. P3b got closed off all at once, due to active participation from stakeholders - highly grateful. 

Dashed off of to KL to begin work at P2. (P2a) the first order of the day is systems phenomenology, to figure out the nature of nouminous data structures. But the work day is short as two hours later (P2b) the company annual dinner kicks off. We gather by remote conferencing, then dine together in various local offices. P3a has by now, cancelled his order.

Meanwhile I have tended to (P4a) numerous realestate agents by shoving them into WhatsApp. (P4b) is a mortgage broker who seems fo be relying on a single valuation (ill serving) to apply to multiple banks - I report this to the sales agent handling my purchase. Following P2b's conclusion, I get groceries for bestie (P5) and drop them off, saving some tomatoes and yoghurt for myself.

Back home, I rest a little. Then I tidy up P4 affairs. (P6a) is a former staff who is now my part-time PA - we go over our tasklist, and then (P6b) we do a little coaching on financial planning around professional certification.

I clear small issues branching off from P1 and P3. Then I tidy up my inboxes and wash. Now I write in bed, in a dark room, to piano. 0614.

(I did try to chat up a few women, as usual ... no notable progress at intimacy was made today. Guess that's P7. Ok, to sleep, for real.)

2021-05-22

Bestie requested a flower she was craving - sent a flower - also picked up a copy for a new friend. New friend takes good photos of flowers.

Published a public copy of the real estate data I have been collecting. Hope others maintain it. Unlikely - but I have done what I can to put it out there.

Kicking back for a few minutes before I decide how much work to do this Saturday night.

Ok, the least I can do after grooming is fix up some holes in our marketing operations.

2021-05-23 

I need to stop forgetting to take my wallet to the office. I now owe a lot of people a lot of money.

2021-05-24

Today's coffee is ... plujka from a Nespress-compatible pod ... testing this out because I want to do it in office later.

Filed taxes for 2019, 2020. 

I am still not taxable.

🙁

Finally got time to read up about my new friends and the alleged sins of their fathers, leading through webs of text all the way up to the Chief Justice herself. So very interesting.

Time for a nap before banking.

A good week, in terms of productivity - remedial productivity. All in, a little zany. Must try not to get distracted. First a short break, then to see if I can get a little work done before bed. Or should I aim for after?

2021-05-25

Hm. Have reached that stage in life where I need to understand devops, UIX, data analytics, finance, and talent management in Mandarin. I guess it was bound to happen at some point. Halp.

2021-05-26

Enforced waking, and work, and wash-up, and car workshop.

Malaysians trying to sign up for vaccines : Selamat Hari Desak

Things my Malaysian friends complain about: you hire a guy to protect you; then you fall sick and ask him to buy medicine; he takes a long time ... it turns out he is setting up a medicine business to resell the medicine to you; you want to hire another guy, but there are no more good guys to hire; they're all afraid of being offed by the bad guys. So you wait. Also your medicine is now very expensive.

Music practice after work.

Checked on my AWS Lambda prototype - it's still there. 

Wow. Cabbies in KL now make 30 RM/ just idling. The price of co-working in a KL cab is 30 RM/h divided by occupants. (Used to be RM2 for 2km, + 10sen/150m; now it's RM3 for 1km, + 25sen/200m)

2021-05-27

Banks (etc.) seem to now be offering life insurance up to 100yo. oh my premiums ...

UEM really has turned Kiara into a 3D ghetto after all.

Putajaya is an good term for swearing at politicians. Unfortunately it has somewhat sexist connotations, so not ideal.

New distributor, drive-shafts, and starter motor - cost/km up by 3.1 sen. And one loan application submitted. And first meal of the day. Need to catch up on work.

The Worst Kind of CSR: what makes a "Social" Enterprise?

Charity, is the worst form of Corporate Social Responsibility. My initial advice to someone asking how to differentiate their social enterprise from antisocial enterprises ... was simply, that they should identify where "society" sits on their Income Statement. I'm using technical language, so bear with me.

Perhaps the easiest way to explain this, is whip out the tradition Income Statement (or "P&L") and present it to the student sideways ... literally. First consider the notion that every line represents a counterparty, and that the sum of all counterparties is what we call our "society". It is possible that some activities of a business are not captured on the P&L, but that these activities still affect counterparties ... that is precisely what would be meant by saying, that some part of society has been left out from the P&L.

Now turn the sheet of paper sideways, so that the lines of the P&L are travelling across the table, parallel to the student's line-of-sight. Then consider that the counterparties on each line have a sense of happiness ... and that this happiness level has nothing to do with whether they are income- or expense-counterparties. Someone paying you an income may be happier OR sadder than someone you pay. Presuming that our P&L is also sitting flat on a table, we can then graph the degree of relative happiness of each counterparty in the plane that is perpendicular to the table top - for example, if happiness were a line rising above the table, and sadness were a line descending beneath the table.

Build that chart, and it should give you a pretty succinct idea of whose lives you're fucking up on a daily basis. Making more lines rise above the table is what makes an enterprise more "social".

---

Alternatively, you could model happiness as a currency, but then you'd have a multi-currency P&L ... which you might then abstract back into one base currency for reporting purposes. This would make apparent the transmission of value across currencies ... putting us back at the kind of social enterprise which is structured to "fuck things up over here, make money, and then hand it out over there," literally the worst kind of CSR, as I was saying.

Duty of Care : Executives regarding Board Members

We often revisit the question of "how much should executives push back against the preferences of board members?"

Quick take:

(1) Board members are hired to protect shareholders.

(2) Executives are hired to protect board members.

(3) If you are an executive, and you see a board member potentially injuring their future self, then raise it as a concern.

... if you can't see far ahead enough to know a board member's situation, then you're not able to work effectively to do the job of protecting board members.

Quick take 2:

(4) Once you're at the C-suite (and often before that) you may want to view your roles with your bosses as, "you are our business partner", rather than "you are our instructor".