Gotten my first .Mac

Being a PC user since the year 1999 when I first intercepted with Windows, I have never touch any ‘Macintosh’ (Mac, Apple) Machine before.

To me, Apple has always been known as ‘Sleek and Sexy’ but ‘Expensive when comparing on par with PC notebooks of the same price range’. Thanks to DST’s promotion, I had just gotten myself a macbook version 4 at a total cost of BND 1329 ($1299 for the Mac and $30 for DST number). Why Macbook out of the 4 promotional packages? It is simply because I want to learn the idea behind Mac (Steve Job).

There are two main reasons that made me select macbook over others.

1.     I won’t be needing any anti-virus or anti spyware/adware program because mac is invulnerable to those. (most likely)
2.     Macbook have a longer battery life.

At one point, I almost considered getting Dell XPS with Window Vista pre-installed. My thought is deterred when I start thinking about their tradeoff, that is, the marginal utility (benefit) of acquiring a PC with Vista is lower than getting an Apple Macbook. This is because I never played a Mac before and I am interested in learning it.

In my opinion, It is better to (risk and) try out what Mac is offering now than never. I still have the chance to decide which system I should cling onto in the future. It’s never too late to change.

Troubles that I had encountered so far:

1. Mac does not have a standard toolbar like Windows do. It is a PITA (Pain in the ass) if one is chatting with more than 5 people. (Depending on your workload). There was once where I was chatting with 3 people (only!) while doing my work in word + minimal browsing. It is very hard to maneuver around the chat box. There’s no ‘blinking-chat-tab-in-the-toolbar’ indicating that you had not seen (or clicked, or read) the latest reply from your friend, so there’s a tendency that I will forget that I’m still chatting with somebody when I am concentrating other program. (Due to the absense of the toolbar). No wonder some said that their productivity increased when using a Macbook. Lol

2. A dent in the pocket, specifically the wallet. We needed protection screen, protective keyboard cover, cover protector and others. These do not come cheap.

3. Difficulty in finding pirated Mac software in Komunis.

I like

-  Scrolling with both finger pressed in the trackpad.
- Moving across ‘windows’ interactively.
- the brilliant ‘spotlight’ function to search for anything inside the mac.
- ‘space’ feature.
- their savvy and slick interface.
- the ‘dictionary’, ‘sticky note’ and ‘calculator’ feature in widget.
_ ‘expose’ feature.

There might be more pros and cons, I am still learning and exploring the shortcuts as today is the second day of acquiring the Macbook.

Small piece of advice who wants to convert from Window to Mac: Make sure you got the time and patience to adapt to the new software.

In summary, this Macbook 2.1 Ghz Core 2 Duo + 120 GB + 1GB Ram + GMA X3100 is enough to serve me at the moment in surfing, word and basic multimedia. I am upgrading from a sad Acer Celeron M, 40GB + 256 MB Ram + GMA 950!  Lastly, I love gaming but I don’t think I will spend my time in that area for now. Overall, I am really satisfied with the Macbook. (I will blog when I don’t. LOL)

Time Is Merely Enough

Time Is Merely Enough. (T.I.M.E)

I’m sure we all had ever complained about time being not enough to watch movies, hang out with friends, do assignments , works or revise for an exams. This usually occurs when there’s too many things to do with limited time. Just like the basic economic problem of scarcity. We have limited resources to build many things, can be applied in time as well. Therefore we can say that a man have limited time to do things.

Since humans came out with the solution to the problem of ’scarcity in resources’ with allocation of resources with opportunity cost, i guess the problem of ’scarcity in time’ can be solved by giving up something in order to allocate time for something else. I am sure that most people may already understands this for example that, by going out with A, i will be unable to do sports B, but WHY are there people (not all) complaining that time is not enough?

I think, time is not enough lies in the way of thinking of an individual. Firstly we must understands that, by doing one thing, you are ALREADY giving up the opportunity of doing another (maybe interesting) thing. For instance, I am writing this post now, but it is not right for me to say that ‘time is not enough’ for me to SLEEP, because I CHOOSE to blog rather than sleeping. Do you get what I’m trying to say?

Therefore, a person playing basketball regularly CANNOT complain that he does not have time for badminton or any other activities. He had ALREADY allocated (chose) his time for basketball, he should not complain much about others because he is giving up the opportunity to do other things. Well, he couldn’t probably DO (PLAY) IT ALL simply because TIME is limited. Same goes to a person who read novel often, CANNOT (Don’t have the privileges) to complain that he/she does not have time for watching movies. Once again, we are on the same direction, right?

For someone who seek money will always search any part time work available. IF his/her friends call him out for outings or parties which is in clash with his work, then he CANNOT complain that time is not enough too, because he chose this ‘working’ option himself. It is either social life or money for him for the day. This is actually an actual case which falls on me and I know that I couldn’t complain.

In life, there is just too many TIME KILLERS and it is 100% impossible that we can do it all. For example, play basketball, badminton, squash, soccer, watch all Chinese tv shows, Korean dramas, Japanese movies, take photos, do web design, attend parties non stop, research and do comparison on all A’s and B’s in the world, write beautiful calligraphy, get to learn all Greek’s mythology, understands all cultures in the world, learn all the languages in the world, learn drifting, racing, formula 1, debates, sleeps, go diving around the world, maybe get to know all the name of fishes in the world and -insert-your-time-killer-here- and so on. It is just impossible to do it all with the limited time! (unless you are immortal, outoftopic:mummy3:backtotopic) That is why, everyone choose which TIME KILLER to specialise in and have no complains being unable to do other things.

Guess it is now the end of my ‘time’ allocated to write, now it is ‘time’ to sleep. It’s 12:47am now and I need to get up as early as 6am tomorrow. Is the 5 hours and 13 minutes enough for me to recharge fully for tomorrow’s hectic schedule? I will know tomorrow, time is merely enough. Ciaos. Thank for reading, readers. =] Do you agree that ” time is not enough lies in the way of thinking of an individual” ?

LR and my first Canon EOS

Greetings fellow readers, hope you guys didn’t get bored of the RTB Singing Competition Round 2 appearing as the first title once you log on to http://yclife.wordpress.com. I spared myself some time to write an update, life has been quite of the same routine until 20th July 2008 where I acquired something new. Continue reading along to find out. (NOT skip down).

Since the post of Silhouttes of Silverplay at beach, I’ve been using Adobe Lightroom for various photo adjustment. It’s powerful and fun application to play around. One doesn’t need to have great skills to edit the cropping, change colours and settings to achieve a style that you like. For new users, its under the ‘develop’ tab to create magic and exaggerate fake colours after importing images into LR. The colours in the picture below is fake, just like the colours of the cloud in Silhouttes of Silverplay at beach too.

// The original colour of the background is orange. Can we call this silhoutte?

// I love this shot. Got it by shining the Me2u bear in an angle using a desk lamp. After archiving the light direction, I used LR (Lightroom) for adjust White Balance, Vidnetting and Colours. It’s the benefit of having a sister who got these cute stuffs. What’s my benefit to my sister then? hm..

// We went CheeseBox, (or is it CheezBox? or CheezeBox?) for lunch yesterday. The picture of the curry is dull when i transfer it straight from the camera. I have used LR to ‘increase the taste‘. (Note: It’s not the best Curry picture, I just snap at it when it arrive, but it definitely look tastier than the one without editing, -i’ll post it below).

// This is Amilyn, another candid with increased contrast to darken the messy hair.

// Jeewei, a black and white style.

IF one is lazy to ‘drag the slides’ in LR left and right to find the right colour, he/she can just hit on the ‘present‘ (a pre-set style) available and get instant auto effect. Like this one below,

// Carmen in Sepia mode with one click. Fast & Efficient.

I mentioned about the dull curry photo right, here it is.

// the dull curry. does it seem to taste better in the above picture?

Without dragging the ‘Main Topic’ here for too long, let me proudly present my EOS 400D! I have just one from Barri from BruneiForever. All the pictures in this post are from the 400D. After owning 400D for 2 days, I’ve been bringing IT around everywhere I go. Pictures from here onwards straight from the camera without LR edits.

// So far, I had eaten Satay with IT.

// I shoot my sis with IT (this doesn’t sound right…)
Btw, with a cleaner background AND a better laptop, this can be a potential “go broadband advert’s” photo.

// I drove with IT.

// Last but not least, I’ve slept with it. (ok, I’m assuming 400D is a female)

These are the few shots which I took after acquire 400D. I hope I’ll be able to take more amazing shots. Let’s see how far can I go with the 400D + LR + Photoshop combo. The real cost of this hobby comes AFTER you get yourself a camera, now I need a Camera Bag, Tripod and a 50mm f1.8 II lens. Maybe a faster new notebook (I’m still using Celeron M, 256MB, 40GB!) , Camera flash and definitely more lens in the future.

Something about the author (SATA) - Out of nowhere, I felt that my command of English language deteriorates. All these years, I’ve been using almost same grammar and vocabs without much improvement in my creativity. I realised that whenever I write, I just type what I wanted to express in simple english and just post it. (including this post too). I’ll be reading more starting next week and hopefully I’ll come out with a good coverage on the Final Round of RTB’s Mandarin Singing Competition 2008.

Many exciting events is going to boom in my life (just a forecast), I am going to buy an organiser to keep myself organised. One of them is the formal acceptance into UBD (University Brunei Darussalam). I have some great plan ahead in UBD. Where will we stand 4 years down the road? Will my circle of friends in UBD friends for life? That I’ll stuck with them for years and become family friends eventually? This includes Shenny, Carmen, Kaiping, Hanwuen, Jenny, Joanne, -insert-your-name-here- as well as friends from KB namely Chiuyen, Emily and of course, more to come. (Maybe, I’ll make one ’stress’ post about these soon).

With 4 years down, how much would we evolve? what kind of skills we’ll obtain, will they be a new personality change in us? What kind of part time work will we land on? Would there be any financial problem again in UBD? What club to join? Would we get any trophy in 4 years period? Will my blog rolls increase to 100 people? Will Shenny finally get her CV out in 4 years? =p

Nevertheless, I look forward in knowing new great friends and I don’t want to live through the 4 years in Uni calmly. Let’s do something great & memorable starting on 29th July 2008 (Orientation) onwards!

Readers, don’t get drifted too far in your sea of thoughts, pop back to present and reality & start clicking the ‘comment’ button (beside the title) for the usuals. Thank You very much.

Time Killer & Basket of Interest

Greetings Readers, This is categorised as one of the ‘thoughts and musings’ post which tends to be long, or stressy (as KP called it). Hope you guys can read through all and find it meaningful! =]

This post focuses on why time is not enough and what ‘did’ we do to killed time so efficiently. What do we get in killing all these time?

First and foremost, ‘Time Killer‘ means one of the thing you can do to kill (spend) your time with. One of the ‘time killer’ that I experienced is Gaming. Time is definitely not enough to play games as entertainment or leisure as much as we enjoyed in the past. This is especially true in terms of those games which hooks for hours like The Sims, World of Warcraft, Maple, with our other commitments or ‘time killer’ in life, I am avoiding gaming as far as possible. I think that “The Sims” as a good game to waste one’s life because you are managing another person’s life instead of managing yours. What if all your rooms and houses and dirty while the your Sim houses are luxurious and clean? Players are actually spending thier time and effort in controlling another person’s life to perfection while reluctant to do the same to thier reality life. Sim players, care to share the benefits of playing it?

There are of course, games like Dota or Maple which can suck your life as well. I loved Squaresoft (Square-Enix) so much that I ever promised myself that I’ll play every Final Fantasy games they release but I find it hard to keep my promise especially with other ‘Time killers‘ which I’ll be discussing later.

—

If Gaming doesn’t seems like a ‘Time Killer’ to you, let’s have a look at Dramas. You’ll agree with me on this, especially girls without doubt. If you begin right now, to collect all the dramas in the world, I bet you would not be able to complete all. Let’s break down Dramas to HK Dramas, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore’s.. there’s just so much. Time is really not enought to watch all of them.

Btw, Heard ‘Xiao Xun’ and ‘Wang Dong Cheng’ is releasing a new drama. There goes another roughly 40 hours to waste on that drama. LOL.

I’ve not listed out all yet, ever thought about ‘Anime‘? All the bleaches, naruto, Dragonball, Slam Dunk, Prince of Tennis, Samurai X, Hentais and more to come. How to watch them all? A real ‘Time Killer’. Worst if the anime have a ‘rewatch’ value. More hours wasted. IF your life revolves around catching EVERY Dramas and Anime (hardcore), you’re almost done for.

Wait, there’s TV SHOWS too! “Guess Guess Guess”, “Wo Ai Hei Se Hui”, “Prison Break”, “Heroes”, :CSI”, “Desperate Housewifes” and x-rated movies. How to watch all? lol. What about the latest Movies? I don’t need to explain more. We only have so-so hours in a week and if we allocates all of our free time into games + dramas, movies, animes, we might be able to do it. however … (read on)

—

Other than spending time watching dramas and games, there’s more things in life to keep you ‘alive’ and not being idle at home, that is “Friends Gathering“. It is meant to socialise, share and discuss on the latest stories, experience and issues confronted. Humans is naturally a socialising creature and socialising will further cost us time. Hence, another ‘time killer‘. Now we have more things to allocate our time in a week, gaming, drama, anime, and friend’s gathering.

—

Wait, Sitting in front of a TV screen for gaming and dramas is not good. Social gathering based only on eating and shopping will not help either. Teachers told us that we need to Exercise!

Guy A : “EXERCISE?”
Guy A : “No time for you, pui“

Let’s recall, gaming, drama, anime, gathering and EXERCISE! How to allocate our time then? Another ‘time killer‘. Be it Badminton, Soccer, Softball, Basketball, Tennis, Swimming or anything.

—

Internet has affected us so much that we tend to spent long hours in front of the PC to online for checking mail, facebook and others. The word ‘facebook’ here is too vague, it can be broken down into.

Facebook
1. Find Friends to add
2. Upload Photos & Albums
3. Tag on every photos
4. Widgets & Applicaton > Typing Speed, Superpoke etc
5. Simply FFS (Friend for Sale)

A simple FFS itself within Facebook is considered a ‘time killer’ too.

There’s more! Blogging, YouTube (poisonous), Forums!! (sgforums, hardwarezone, clubsnap, BBF), All these is within the category of ‘Internet’. ‘Dating’ is another strong ‘time killer’. I won’t explain each and every with details, just reflecting how we are actually doing these ‘time killers’ without knowing it.

—

As discussed about about these ‘time killers’ is good at sucking their life out of them, however, it doesn’t mean that these ‘time killer’ are of no benefits.

Benefits of Gaming – Improving eye-to-hand coordination and reflexes, learn new English, makes you an interesting person (discussed later)
Benefits of Drama – Gain more knowledge on matters (esp dramas), be smart (CSI), be inspired to play sports (Prince of Tennis). Lastly, be the ‘interesting person’
Benefits of dating – emotional control, emotionally growth, ‘interesting person’
Benefits of Social Gathering – Information Exchange, gossips, share and discuss views.
Benefits of sports – active, good reflex, healthy, ‘interesting person’

—-

You might have wonder why all types of ‘time killers’ gives benefits such as ‘interesting person’ ? Read on,

All of these ‘time killer‘ actually makes you an “interesting” or “someone of value”. For example, knowing the latest drama or sport news allows you to be the ’shining star’ during Social Gatherings. You share, discuss and become the spot light. Someone who don’t have a ‘time killer’ will not make them an interesting person.

Case for someone who don’t have any real ‘time killer’ and are not considered ‘interesting people’ will be like.

Someone A : “you know that Lakers did this this that..?”
Someone B : *unable to respone* then > can’t move on with the topic
Someone A : *Tries again”
Someone A : You watched “Kungfu Panda” already? It’s nice and there’s this…”
Someone B : “Haven’t”
Someone A : *View Someone A as an uninteresting people if they can’t manage to speak on the same vibration.

Become spot light in group discussion, pushes you up in “Maslow’s hierachy of needs’ because once achieving spot light, you’ll gain recognition, respect and trust which are what human are moving their life to. (i guess?).

And all your ‘before-regarded-as-time-killers’ are now your weapon to socialise!

‘Time Killer’ of Gaming become useful in sharing, like
Someone A : “Hey! My Sims gave birth to a baby girl!”
Someone B : “That’s cool, My Sims just broke up yesterday..”
Someone A : “wow..!” (and so fourth)

Time Killer of reading Blogs become useful in discussion, like
Someone A : “Hey, you read the latest’s yclife?”
Someone B : “Yea, it’s about the “Time Killer” right?
Someone A : “Yup, that’s the one, but i think…”

And more..

For those without ‘time killer’ or ’specialisation’ in something, you would not be able to tell stories and you’ll be left out on corner and be a shallow person.

—

Further stress on specialisation.

With unlimited things to do in life with limited time, the best is to filter out what you want and focus on it while leaving out the unwanted ‘time killer’. Time is not enough problem arises when one is greedy and wanted to ‘do/play’ alot of things in his life. If one see life as ‘choosing the suitable things to do’ or ‘getting the right basket of interest’ to do, then he wouldn’t complain about the limited time.

In choosing an object/subject, as applied in economies, pick the subject that you like which will gives you maximum utility (satisfaction) and forgone the one which gives you the lowest utility (satisfaction). By combining all of your ‘basket’ of interested subject, it makes you who you are.

People with interest will hang around more with the people with the same interest because they achieve satisfaction and knowledge through sharing and discussion. Someone ever said ‘people you hang out with makes you who you are’, but I think that phrase actually came from, ‘you interest makes you who you are” first.

For eg. You likes dota > you join dota friends > you’re in dota’s group of friends > you belong to the dota people.

There’s so much things in the world to do, in order not to completely kill time by doing everything, pick a few (something useful) and focus on it (‘time killer’), it pays in the end. After mentioning all these Gaming, Drama, Anime, Internet, Exercise and Social Gathering, do you think we left out something? STUDY! Don’t forget to allocate some time for it too. Lol. However, it is highly recommendable to invest some time for the basic activities like fishing, parasailing, travelling and others. Be a JOAT with ’specialisation’!

So, What is your ‘basket of interest’ and what is your major ‘time killer’? Is it productive or non-productive for your personal growth? Do share and leave comments. Appreciating your presence.

Something about the Author (SATA) – I promised that I’ll post yesterday right? But I’ve not sleep since yesterday so it’s still considered within my ‘day’. There’s no pictures in this post also, I’ll try to re-edit if I’ve the time. Thank you for reading!

Deciding on an English name

I’ve always wanted an English name because my Chinese name is hard to pronounce (for non Chinese) and it’s not always easy to remember. I think it’ll be good to have one so that people in Uni or people I met can remember my name better. Now it is like,

Somebody: “what is your name?”
YC: “yen chuan”
Somebody: *noted and forgotten it later*

—

Funny scene happened when I used “Kenny” as my English name.

Someone A (is someone who reads Kenny Sia’s blog but don’t know me)
Someone B (is someone who don’t know who is Kenny Sia’s blog but knows me.)

So it happens..

Someone A : “Do you read Kenny Sia’s blog?”
Someone B : “Kenny Sia? You know him also?”
Someone A: “Yeah, he’s MY friend!”
Someone B: “YOUR FRIEND? REALLY!? That’s cool!” (to know Kenny Sia)

Later she (someone A) just found that that the Kenny Sia she meant is the kuching blogger, not me. She (Someone B) thought it is me because she saw me using “Kenny” when registering for the free try out at Fitness Zone in Brunei. Different nicks mean more complimentary try outs at the gym.

—

Realising ‘Ian’ is not a good nick after all.

I used Ian before because it sounded like my middle name ‘yen’. I stopped it after realizing the ‘bad Chinese meaning’ it formed when reading it aloud. My name is “Sia Yen Chuan” right, so,

“Ian Sia” = Eyes Blind in Chinese!
“Sia Yen” = Blind eyes in Chinese! Wth.

“Ian Sia Yen” = lol~

TO make things worse, the Letter of YC (YenChuan) sounds like
“Why See?” in english.

LOL, why see!? Should be blind? YC should be blind? Wth. Off with Ian. Haha

Standard “Sia Yen Chuan” = Blind boat
Facebook “Yen Chuan Sia” = yenchuan blind.

What’s with my name?

—

Now, I’m deciding on an English name which I’ll grow old with. Any suggestion? Probably,
Albert, Daniel, Jayden, Vincent, Nicholas, Victor? Or back to Kenny or Ian?

Jayden Sia sounds nice no? =P
Nicholas Sia? (Nicholas Xie? Xie Ting Fong? Ying wei ai shuo yi ai?)

Something about the author – yclife.wordpress is formed because I don’t want to tell people, my link is ‘yen chuan 2 0 4’. They got to remember my Chinese name and numbers as well! Therefore, I think YClife is more practical than yenchuan204, if they manage to remember that it is at wordpress instead. That’s something new to be worrying about.

Jayden is busy with his exams these 2 weeks. Nicholas drink coffees to keep him awake. Daniel will not be blogging soon. Albert’s sister will be singing on RTB singing competition this Sunday. Vincent’s friends are joining as well. . Victor hopes to receive comments on this post. Kenny is joining HSBC’s tri extreme II. Ian is excited about the audition. LOL!

Specialisation and Generalisation in Life

The idea of this post, “Specialisation and Generalisation in Life” arises when I was deciding my on future course and this topic have been discussed several times among my friends. A degree in “Business Admin” and “Accounting and Finance” were the options I’m looking at in the Business Faculty and what makes them difference is their ‘General’ and ‘Specialised’ attributes respectively. Let’s look more into Jack-of-all-trade (JOAT) and Specialisation.

Specialisation and Generalisation in Interest or Hobby

Having a hobby creates value in a person. A person who has a Jack-of-all-trade’s hobby isn’t going to have a better value than a specialized hobby. For example Ignatius Chin, without his specialized interest developed in GO, he would not have reached the stage of what he is today. Try imaging if he spends time in Basketball, Photography, Blogging, Bowling, Pool and Dancing altogether (a general interest), he wouldn’t have much time to train his GO, no time to mingle with GO members and without a strong GO background, he can’t even set up a GO Association because he can’t no tutor. With his passion in GO and bringing his dreams into reality, he is rewarded with lots of friends, invitations for GO tournaments from overseas and more to come. He is now someone with ‘value’.

There is also one important point in the above paragraph. By specializing, you evolve and be better! Hence it can bring you up one level in terms of hobby, the ‘Hobby Ladder’.

//Xinwen playing “One Colour Go” mode with Haidar. They are able to differentiate which ’stone’ belongs to them! Normal Game of Go uses Black and White Coloured stones. Xinwen is the founder of Brunei I-Go Association, such achievement at his age. (Left: Xinwen, Right: Haidar)

The Impact of Specialised Interest (or Hobby):

It creates an image, someone will think of you because you have a specialized interest.

A specialized interest in something is going to have a different effect when compared with a general interest. For example,

Girl: “Hi Johnny, who are you idols?”
Johnny: “Oh, I like Fish Leong, Lee Shen Jie, JJ Lin, Jay Chou, Power Station, Ayumi, BoA, Akane Souma, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung and so on”
Girl: “I see, that’s a lot”

This is an example of a general interest. It is of course, useful when he has some knowledge on every of the idol mentioned but the impact is not present. There is not much of a ‘image creation’ here. Let’s take a look at the second example.

Guy: “Hi Joanne Chau, who are your idols?”
Joanne: “JAY CHOU <333!!!!”
Guy: “Oh, I see”

Do you see the difference here? It provides people with a better ‘image’ of you rather than the ‘general’s one’. When people talk about topics on Jay Chou, one will probably remember Joanne more, “Oh, Joanne likes JayChou a lot’. Johnny, in the case here will be left out more as ‘JayChou’ is one of his “general interests” only.

Now let’s try our ‘brain power’

What’s about Joanne?

= JayChou, definitely!

What’s about Johnny?

= Ayumi, JayChou, Power Station, Andy Lau… (How much more can you remember, just by reading from the text above?)

At the end of the day, who would give a stronger impact? The answer is clear

Specialisation and Generalisation in the society (life).

Being straight to the point, majority of professional job in life starts from specialization too! Lawyer started from a specialized degree in Law, Accountant starts from a specialized degree in Accounting (& Finance, ACCA etc) and Engineers is not left out too.

Therefore, it goes like this
Law Degree -> Assistant Lawyer (Trainee) –> Full Fledged Lawyer —> Attorney

If, for example, you’ve got a degree in Business Admin, a general degree, your career path will start out as

Wide Range of General Job -> (HR detects your specialty) –> Moves you into your specialized area, eg. Marketing —> Starts to climb the corporate ladder

Yes, with a general degree, you will have a broad selection of job at your hand. However, you start out as Assistant or Officer at one of the random department. After you’ve gained knowledge of that particular department, in other words, turning from a general field into a specialized field then only you move climb up the ladder. Therefore, it is considered ‘slower’ because you still need to be specialized before anything else.

I believe, generalization comes only AFTER specialization. For example

Marketing Officer -> Marketing Assistant Manager –> Marketing Manager —> Branch Manager (a general). Therefore, the a General degree comes after you climbed several ladder and required to know a little bit of this here and that there. I do make sense, don’t i?

The idiom ‘No man is an island’ applies very well here. Every community in the world is built up on mutual independence. In a typical village, there’ll someone who do the farming, someone who do weaving, someone who serve as a doctor, someone who is in charge of education, serve as security guards and so on. All these actually happened in the primal age where people ‘specialise’ in their strong attributes like hunting or rearing cows, they ‘exchange’ their service or end-product of their specialization for another person’s service or end-product in the form of barter trade. They are inter-dependant on each other. It is quite impossible for a person to survive if he were to do all (Bao Ka Liao) (eg. hunting, weaving, animal rearing) because he wouldn’t have enough time to manage plus he could not really ‘improve’ fast from his ‘jack-of-all-trade’ work, aka, can’t climb his ‘hobby/interest ladder’ fast enough.

In Business Studies, we measure this by ‘productivity’. By division of labour, people are being more productive hence are able to produce more with each labour doing different segment of their work and combine them together. In Economics, we measure it by ‘efficiency’, by specializing, people or country can increase the total output without increasing the total input. Therefore, these specialized people or country benefits from trade or even more, international trade.

We are in fact doing trading as we speak. We offer our service, specialized work in exchange for money. We use the money to buy service or specialized work of others in return.

The metamorphosis of specialization to generalization

Taking JayChou for example (yes, I love JayChou). I don’t think he’ll be so famous IF he knows a little bit of here and there (general) about lyric writing, music composition, sing, rap, acting, directing MV and directing a full movie. It is from a simply ‘lyric writing’ and ‘composing music’ first, moving on to ‘rapping’ and ‘singing’. As he gain more exposure, (climbed the ladder, upgraded) he can do a little bit of acting and lastly, directing a movie. JayChou is now a general person that outgrow from his specialized lyric and music composition.

Therefore, one of the ‘missions’ in life is to find a real specialized interest, stick to it and be good at it. This is why we always hear ‘Finish what you’ve started and do not stop halfway’. Of course, before we actually ‘start’, spend some time to find what’s your ‘path’ is.

Joke: Do not take something useless like smoking as your ‘path’ and smoke until you are the ultimate and greatest smoker on earth. HAHA.

//even tho this looked a bit cool

Benefits of Specialisation

When you are doing working on/enjoying your specialized interest, hobby or job, you look great, if not sexy. Have you ever heard of a Chinese idiom, “a girl with full passion or concentration is the prettiest”, it justifies my theory here.

//A pretty girl is just a pretty girl; a pretty girl who plays piano elegantly (for example) is 10x more sexier.

//Actually, he looks kinda cool here with his specialization. HAHAHA

To stress the importance of Specialisation

Heck, even a degree in Law has their own specialization too! There’s Community Law, Corporate Law, Criminal Law, Immigration Law, Intellectual Property Law, Legal Research & Writing Tax Law and others. (I bet Kaiping would know better). An Attorney also further specialize in their area of interest, for example, there are Trial attorneys, Appellate attorneys, Plaintiffs’ attorneys, Defendants’ attorney and so on.

Worst, even a ‘General’ degree in “Business Administration” have their own specialization too! Like Marketing, Business Information System, Human Resource, Logistic, Public Relation, Sales Management, Hospitality and Tourism, International Trade, Project Management, Banking & Finance, e-Commerce and so on. They are afraid that students who opt for Business Admin without majoring in any of the field would become ‘Jack of all trade’ and ‘Master of None’ where employer would have difficulty allocating you in their many department.

Again, don’t overly specialize yourself till “I ONLY know how to play pinball in life”, “I ONLY know how to eat in life”. =P. Funny that even ‘bad people’ specialize too in being robber, theft, kidnappers, rapist, hackers.

What are your specialisation in life? Have you found your ‘mission’ and stick with it yet?

//”I specialize in scandaling all famous HK stars!” – Edison (edited dialogue)

Something about the author – Guess what, despite all these specialization thoughts, I’m opting for a General Business Admin degree in UBD. =X If you read till the very last bit and enjoyed, why not drop me a comment here, I would be ultimately inspired to write more.

I’ve decided to move from blogger to wordpress in the end because I wanted to try more things out. I didn’t regret though but cbox is not recognized in wordpress, so readers, please drop your opinions in the form of comments now. Thank You. I felt like I’m writing an English Essay with around 1500words! Maybe I can produce a mini-life-book too. I hope ‘these’ kind of post don’t bore you out, my next post (hopefully) won’t be post like this one, but more on my personal life. Take care everyone! *coughpleasecoughcommentcoughplease* =P

*Edit* I think with specialisation, it makes up of who you are. Hanwuen? Oh the dancer, Kaiping? Oh the education freak, or analyst. PK? Oh the Holland guy, Marketing Guy in Brunei. Shenny? Ah, none other than Yunho + Fish Leong, PingChai? Ah, the Brunei Dota Player. Mable? Ah, the blog designer in MD, IngSiang? Ah, the IT Pro. Amilyn? Ah, the straight A student. Carmen? Ah, the SunYanZi singer, Jestina? Ah, the food craze blogger. Lastly, Yenchuan? Ah, the……………… (open for comments)

What relates me the most? Yenchuan the…?

Life as a Graphic Designer

Note: Working as a Graphic Designer (GD) made me felt like I’m a workaholic, this post focuses on the lifestyle of a GD, in case you’re interested. In spite of working as a Graphic Designer (GD), all are of my thoughts and opinion only, may not reflect the real voice of any GD out there. This is a long post without any visual image to compete for your attention, read on if you’re interested in my thoughts / GD, if not, [x]

In the past, I thought working as designers or any artist have the a maximum length of flexibility in their work, that they can work and design whenever they want, it is true to an extent if the project concerned doesn’t have a tight deadline AND if they are a freelancer. If you’re not a freelancer, your normal working hours will be the typical 8am to 5pm, if not 5am if artworks are being rushed, like a horse rider rushing their baby to the finish line in a horse racing competition.

My previous view of a GD changes after I work as a GD before. I was a GD in an advertising firm of creating monthly advert magazine. We have a designer’s room and a team of GD working for different projects; our work only revolve in creating artworks to suit the clients, which are brought in by the Sales Team. It is fun because we get to know the market’s latest promotion if any particular company agreed to advertise in our magazine. Prestigious companies like HSBC, Thomsom Furniture, Sugar & Spice, Big Thumb, Premier Motor and others like Darussalam Holdings were our clients.

We didn’t have a real Art Director to ask for opinion on the layout/design, the Sales Team and the Manager is the Art Director themselves. A draft will be sent to the respective company for confirmation, if they like it, confirmed straight away with minor detailed changes. The most problematic is when they change their artwork more than 4 times; it’ll be a headache for the sales team and us GD. However, if the Sales & Marketing team failed to bring in any business, we are free to explore our design techniques, read magazines to learn their layout etc. I even have the time to create my initial D’s wallpaper on blog (Chris, remembered?), produced a Jay’s Initial D Soundtrack to sell (Shenny, remembered?), Gifts (Chiuyen, remembered?) and others. I was so free. =P

My current position of a GD is an in house GD, meaning I deal with artworks concerned with the current Travel & Tours company. My Art Director is my manager himself too but he is a great one on layout and concept. However, I am the only GD so the work load is still there. Projects came in whenever my Art Director wants something new, be it website, brochures, concept plan etc. My work here is not like an eraser being contained inside a pencil box because I’m exposed and sponsored to go Ulu Ulu Resort for taking photo with the late G9, assist and enjoy dealing with printer and staffs from other groups of companies. The printer here stands for the real printer company who specialized in printing all sorts of medium, from A4 to A0, wooden carving to huge banner.

In summary, those are the working experience of mine as a GD. Both requires

`you to have a basic knowledge in Photoshop and Illustrator.
`you to understand what’s design and layout (layout)
`you to be ready whenever they need you, even offday!
`you to work more than the normal 8am to 5pm.
`you to have a flair for colours (mix and match)
`you to have a basic understanding of printing requirement (eg CMYK, 300dpi)

If you want to dabble and get your feet wet in the graphic design world, be sure to know some PRO and CONS of it. This is purely based on my opinion.

Firstly, it’s the title.

Guy A : “What do you work as?”
Me : “Graphic Designer”
Guy A: *Amused*

Aside from being proud holding the GD title, not many would know of the long hours, all the uncountable efforts that one usually put into their work. All of the amendments made over many times, the rejected concept/artwork and the extra effort to produce another “Confirmed Layout” for the client. Every now and then, the client/art director would say “I want it like this, make this darker, logo bigger, this one you move there and put another one in” without knowing it’s not that easy to make changes, especially if the artwork revolves around more than 1 application. Worst is that the computer you’re working on is an antique. (Not applying to mine)

Maybe the previous conversation (above) would change if the “Guy A” is a “Graphic Artist” himself.

“Guy” : “What do you do for a living?”
“Me” : “Graphic Designing”
“Guy” : *Kasian* + *Sympathy*+ *insert all the available condolences here*

HAHAHA.

Secondly, the Satisfaction from a completed artwork.

The satisfaction from a completed, confirmed artwork is actually the ‘reward’ for a GD. The feeling can make you go high as if you’re on caffeine and can make you smile out of a nowhere. If your artwork is published, printed BIG in the street or circulates around the country in a form of magazine etc, this can make you feel like you’re carry a $10k money while walking around the street. (FEEL only la, temporary and unrealistic some more)

No wonder some people view artist as an abnormal people because of their weird behavior (of smiling out of nowhere). HAHA.

Thirdly, different viewing angle.

By appreciating people’s art, it makes me view things differently. For example when admiring a new advert, normal reaction is to find out what promotion they offer. I would rather analyse their layout, “oh, so they added this concept here to make it like this”. I love the design type of ‘Branding advertisement’ more than ‘Informative advertisement’ because their concept is very special.

Lastly, the pleasure.

I enjoyed doing the graphic because I keep doing different design after completing one. Work is never dull because all artworks are different. Zooming in and out, editing text, applying effect sounds like a ‘game’ instead of a ‘work’. Passion is the word. In addition, I get to travel to Temburong to shoot photos, gain exposure with Jan and David, try out Window Movie Maker to create new presentation and more. Work is never a routine or monotonous duty because every artwork is one of its kind.

However! Life as a GD is not as good as what I’ve written.

Firstly, the long working hours to meet deadline.

This will leave you completely having no social life if your job is constantly racing against deadline. (its either company have good business OR they company trying to make the best out of you without wanting to employ additional GD to ease the work load) How to paktoh like that? Even if there’s time allowance for paktoh..

Guy: *thinking hard to assemble new layout*
Girl : “Dear, take a look at that diamond advert! So nice”
Guy: “AH HAA! I can use something similar to this layout!”
Girl : “Dear?”

Secondly, at times, your Art Director will force you to churn out a design in a very tensed time limit,

but what if, coincidentally (ngam ngam) your creative juice in your brain is ultimately dry. You will feel as though you’ve been checkmated in a game of chess. (= GG) To make matter worst, the game doesn’t end just like that, and your opponent (Art Director/boss) will keep pressuring you to turn the tide and draft out something.

Thirdly, the pay and competition of foreign workers.

Firstly, a GD’s pay in Brunei is incomparable to the other country’s. And, a company can just employ a FT (foreign talent) who can do GREAT design, felt blessed with the pay, willing to work long hours and won’t come online and comment how bad GD is appreciated. This is happening in our neighbouring country too, singapore. Check out their forum on this issue

Things just got hotter in page two onwards. (Mable, this will definitely interest you too, in sg somemore)

In conclusion, this is something to consider when venturing into design. If you wanted go in the design line, be the best and survive or be normal and just take it as a hobby. Nowadays, graphic editing software are very common and online tutorials are everywhere! A lot of people are proficient at it too, be it photo editing, website layout, simple brochures, event cards or gifts. Grow or else our rice bowl will be taken over soon, by the “dynamic-portfolio-hungry-design-graduates-who-don’t-mind-any-pay”

Please comment your view on this, your comments are my inspiration and motivation to blog more. Please do not react like this when you see me asking for comment. HAHAH

//the only picture here, please do. HAHA

About the author – I’ll be deleting some of my previous entries of 2005 and 2006. I felt that those post are very immature and unnecessary, in addition, it is quite a mess and crap too. When I was thinking about this post, another idea came about, therefore..

Next: Specialisation and Generalisation in Life