zushi's place

Recently had two coworkers leave my org at work, it was really interesting to see the differences between the responses of departure.

One had joined the org one or two years ago, and in terms of heartfelt email messages from others, had a hero's send-off despite the short time here.

Another had worked in the org for more than a decade, so he had objectively much more impact on the world – and though there are a good amount of emails of appreciation, it was a much more muted type of farewell.

This made me think about something – in books and talks, we sometimes encounter abstract philosophical questions that are kind of hard to relate to. For example:

“Do you want a more happy or a more meaningful life?”

Or:

“Would you prefer happiness over knowledge, or vise versa?”

It's really hard to think about these types of questions in the abstract, to the point that they aren't really compelling as thought experiments. But if we frame it as:

“Would you rather be fondly remembered by your coworkers, or have a higher impact on the world?”

Then, at least for me, the question becomes much more interesting.

To be fair, I recognize that the question is a bit of a false-dichotomy. Often times, the two doesn't really conflict all that much. But I also think it's not unusual for this choice to actually come into play every now and then, and in those situations, the choice that someone makes can say a lot about who that person is.

— Categorized under: #philosophy

The orchids in the kitchen started blooming again. I actually wasn't too sure whether the orchid's doing well earlier, so it's a bit of a relief.

Since the plant is dormant for ~9 months, it's sometimes hard to get feedback on whether the routine of “place by window water twice a week” is doing something or not. Being pretty new to taking care of plants, it still feels a bit strange that such a simple formula can lead to such elaborate blooms – like if someone came from the future and told you “the solution to world hunger is pistachios”, you have to scratch your head for a bit before taking that as an answer.

Not that all the flowers are doing so well. There are a few other plants that requires a bit of attention that needs to be looked into.

While the orchid is relatively forgiving, some of the other leafy plants I have do look at bit yellow. There were some that were adopted from a friend, and since there was a period where she couldn't care for them, parts of them have already dried.

I'm actually guilty of this too – there was a small plant I neglected for a few weeks last year, and although it's well care-for now, I think a part of it will just always be yellow.

The lesson learned here is that houseplants are not very forgiving. So now I should try to figure out whether to trim the dried leaves or leave them be.

Around this time last year, I wouldn't have thought much if I visited someone who has a bunch of healthy green plants around the house. My experiences since then have taught me that those people probably have at least a bit of chops to be able to keep the plants happy over time, at least at this day and age. Props.

— Categorized under: #irl

I remember a conversation with a friend about how although both of us like making creative things, neither of us were particularly interested in cooking since it's so temporary in nature.

In that particular conversation, we were talking about cooking the context of art, but I wonder if it makes more sense to talk about cooking in the context of...... well, talking.

A conversation that's not particularly deep could still be nice in the sense that it, for a while, makes both sides happier. This isn't really any different compared to how food makes both sides happier (assuming there's someone to share it with).

So I wonder if those who enjoy cooking see it more as an interaction, rather than a creation – or perhaps something in between. When thought of that way, cooking seems pretty easy to identify with.

— categorized under: #irl, #random

One thing that always surprises me is the payoff ratio of job negotiations.

From observation, in tech it's not uncommon to get ~10k (in bonus numbers) per hour of effort in a job negotiation – that's more than 100x a junior developer's usual rate.

All it takes, it seems, is some knowledge of the market and pretty thick skin.

If the 10k is in pure salary, which is still not unheard-of, then that hour would likely have been that person's most monetarily productive hour ever.

For this reason, I generally feel ok – even good – if I fail a small negotiation but learn something from the failure. It's good practice for situations when the outcome of negotiations is 100x-1,000x higher.

— Categorized under: #finance, #communications

Postal letters are a pretty recent invention in the grand scheme of human's evolutionary history. The world's oldest postal service was established ~4,400 years ago, and back then it was only for kings and nobles. If you were a commoner back then, and you wanted to be in touch, you had to either talk in person, or just not at all.

It's interesting to think about this in the time of quarantine, when most communication becomes written, and face-time becomes exception to the norm.

The instant messaging features in the past few years have largely been try to make texting seem more in-person:

• The emojis act as substitutes for tone and facial expression.
• The typing indicators prevents people from talking over one another. * The various “like” buttons imitate facial expressions
• The “sent” and “seen” indicators solve the uncertain receipt problem.

But try as the IM apps may, they can't solve the cultural problem of vague norms around communications. When someone sends an instant message, did they intend to start a real time conversation, or did they intend it more like a memo? Is it rude to not respond to a message if it doesn't lend itself to a response, or would it be overzealous to try to respond to everything?

Unlike in-person-conversations where the norm is straightforward, in the world of IM, each person has their own rules. I think this causes a lot of confusion for a lot of people. What's interesting too is that there's no simple model that stands out as being the best, and regardless of that, since there is often a lack of direct feedback in these messages, it's unlikely for the IM norms to ever converge...

Is there a good personal or systematic solution to this? I wonder.

— Categorized under: #sociology, #psychology, #communications

For whatever reason, I've always found writing in blogs that I expect no one in particular to visit to be quite comforting. Although I've never had a super-long-running blog, every now and then I find myself to be jotting down some new entries in some new, unfound corners of the internet.

Writing for nobody else seems to strike the right balance for me. Not private enough to be rambly but incoherent, but still private enough to ditch a lot of self-consciousness and talk about all kinds of weird and interesting things out there.

Though social media can be fun every now and then, sometimes I do still miss that comfy space.

Like late-night conversations and personal reflections, I think blogging still has a cozy spot in my life.

— Categorized under: #meta

Recently I have been feeling a strange sense of nostalgia for things that I have made in the past. Yesterday I went though my old hard drives and dug out some compositions I made with a complementary copy of Sonar LE ~10 years ago. As expected, they were not great. However, I found myself pleasantly surprised by some of the ideas I had back then. I had thought that I remembered all my old compositions well and could recreate them from memory, but that turned out to not be true, and I was glad that I preserved the files for these songs.

Then today I suddenly remembered a game that I had made during high school. It was called “Tower of Heaven” (not to be confused with the released game Tower of Heaven). It was a slower-paced platformer in the vein of old Castlevania games, and the maps were strictly linear. The premise was that every child, as a rite of passage, needs to ascend the Tower of Heaven alone and discover what lies at the top. It took a month to make and had something like 12 levels, several bosses, an intro montage, and a proper ending. It was quite self-contained.

All in all, it was a game I was proud of. However, I never did show the game to acquaintances. The reason was simple and interesting in retrospect: I took materials from other games. I took characters from Luna: The Last Hope, enemies from Mother 3 and Zelda Minish Cap, and music from Etrian Odyssey 2. Despite the genre differences for these games, the end result felt cohesive. However, in the Western tradition that's not something one would properly release even on their own sites. So besides maybe the 4 or 5 people who played it back then, the game sat in my harddrive and was gradually forgotten.

Remembering that game this morning, I came to realize a lot of things.

First, I think that mainstream creators' perception (note: not law) of copyright are probably unnecessarily restrictive in terms of material reuse. I think that using existing art assets from other copyrighted works to create new works is in itself undervalued as an artistic challenge. I think that Jazz, Zines, and Doujin Games follow a tradition of material reuse that is much more fluid and as a result generate many more stellar works. Furthermore, I think the strict perception of copyright reduces educational opportunities for up-and-coming creators by creating a higher barrier to entry.

Secondly, I found myself surprised by the satisfaction that came from making something under the mindset “let me do the best thing I can from what I have” rather than “let me improve so that I can make the things I imagined.” There is a lack of anxiety in the former mindset that encourages play and exploration, and while the latter mindset is important for making quick improvements, I think now I wouldn't mind letting go of that thought every now and then.

Finally, thinking about the game, I understand better now the Japanese Doujin mindset of “making something just for fun”. I remember debating with a friend about whether art has value if it was never seen by others, and now that I thought about Tower of Heaven, my response shall be “100%, no doubt”. Even though I barely showed the game to anyone, it was something that I had fun designing and executing on, and captured my perceptions at a certain stage in life. For some reason, just that was enough to make me happy whenever I think about it.

I think that at some point in the near future, I will be making my way to the top of Tower of Heaven again.

— Categorized under: #gaming, #at