Towards Marriage

I am finally tieing the knot this winter, and it had been a long journey (well not so long by many people's standard, just couple of months short of five years). And it was a very interesting and fun journey. There were joy, laughter, tears, and pain. There is no guarantee that life after the wedding ceremony will be all rosy, but I am confident it will be a happy ending eventually. It is a learning process, and I am learning everyday to be a better partner.

And that involved a lot of 'killing' of myself.

There were four phases I went through. I am uncertain if everyone went through the same phases, but this was what I went through.

1. Time
This is pretty obvious, but the first thing I had to learn to give up was time. Time for myself. Time for other hobbies, events, friends. This is hard, and there are times (no pun intended) that I seemed to have neglected her. As human it seems naturally to think that the other half will always be there, and we tend to seem to prioritize other people over the other half. This is obviously wrong. Nothing nor noone can be more important than spending time with them of course. This may be the first thing to learn to give up, but at times I still fail to do it.

2. Body (Health)
This might be an interesting aspect. You might think that even after being married (or dating), you are still entitled to eat, drink, or do whatever you like to your own body. That could mean vices like drugs or smoking (the more obvious ones). The more subtle might be an unbalanced diet (only meat and no greens), or excessive (whatever that comes in egg yoke), chocolate, etc. Why give up ownership of your body (health)? Well, put myself in the other half's shoes. How hurting would it be if I pass away due to my poor management of health, leaving her alone in the world (regardless if we had kids or not). Is this (eating junk food) love? I might be taking things too extreme, but I think not.

3. Money
Again an obvious point. There are alot of expenses involve in forming a family. One has to reduce the buying of luxury items, and almost cut down to bare necessities. Luxuries could come by only a few times a year, instead of the current few times a month. Of course, luxuries differ from person to person. To one, comics might be a luxury, to another, that could be branded apparels. But whatever it is, one has to spend less. In fact, even luxury items purchase had to be discussed.

This is tough.

4. Life
My life is no longer my own. Probably the toughest to do. In the past, I could just agree to taking up any job or responsibility. But that is not possible now. My dreams for the future are no longer my own. She has to be in the dreams too. Career or job change has to be discussed as well. But then, that also means I have to share responsbility with her life, her decisions and career. I might have lesser of my life, but in exchange, I have more of a life.

In the end, marriage seems to make me less of myself. But that does not necessary make it a bad thing. More happy times together, a better health, no wastage of money, and a better life.

End of national liability

Time sure flies. As of Jan 2010, I have completed my national liability. Completed my six year reservist cycle. And by Mar 2010, transferred to mindef reserves.

That makes a total of ten years in the army. A chapter of my life over. Time to grow fat and lazy without worries (other than health concerns).

Looking back, it's been a very interesting walk. Made lots of friends who would likely last forever. Did some fun stuff and dumb stuff. We pull through some amazing stuff. Probably still could not believe we walked the 72km route march, and did the airborne.

I could not believe i went through them as well. I could not swim well. I could not run fast. I'm not exactly strong. But somehow i still made it through the training. With support and encouragement from friends.

Many would call ourselves a tightly knitted family. Bond together by our unit identity. Even now, when I encounter someone who were from our unit, even if they are my senior or my junior, a bond immediately happens. Magically. One might even give preferential treatment on matters just because we are from the same unit. The sudden bond is THAT AMAZING.

Besides gaining entry into this brotherhood, the army did help to shape some aspect of my character. That never give up attitude. Getting work done. Sense of urgency. Following orders first and question later. Being responsible.

Sure, this time could be better spent on studying or working, as many have argued against the need to national service.

But the army is truly a phase in which boys grow up to be men. I can never understand why people would go all sorts of way trying to avoid it. Maybe because I was fortunate enough to be at my unit, therefore I could not understand.

You may lose a headstart in work with those time, but you gain experience and friends to finish life.

PS. Sure it sucks that i just missed out on the $9000 monetary award for serving national service, but what I gained are surely worth more than that.

PPS. In fact, tagging a monetary value on the time felt kinda insulting.. But I guess if you had to serve, might as well get something back. Though $9000 is hardly alot.

Short term economic gain over long term health

I was watching Okto channel the other day, where they featured a group of workers extracting sulfur near a volcano in indonesia.

Sulfur extraction.

And there were sulfuric fumes in the area too.

All the workers had for protection was a piece of cloth to cover their mouth and nose, a pair of rubber boats for the walk up and down the area, where they carried the sulfur rocks in two baskets connected by a pole, on their shoulders.

Talk about health risk. Their shoulder is slightly sunken in, some even exposing slight flesh, as the pole was rubbing against their shoulder as they carried the rocks, and those rocks are heavy. One of them even showed off his ghastly teeth, suspecting the deformation caused by the excessive sulfur fumes.

It was a relatively high paying job. They earn around $10~20 per day, I think. Or was it $1~2. I could not recall. But they earn more than farmers I believe. But they could not hope to earn it for too long. This is, after all, a job with health hazard. One day they might just collapse during work, dead from all the fumes.

Then the scene cut to a professor in US, who said something along this line, "They chose short term economic gain over long term health".

The professor might not have meant it as a critisim, but I felt offended by that statement. This is clearly a statement from someone who had never been poor.

If anyone had a choice, would they do such a work that is so health-hazardous? He had a family to feed. A wife and two children. They had no other skills. Not many people had the luxury to be educated. They might not even know their letters (alphabates).

One might said that farming is a safer choice. But farming has its risk too. Natural disasters, climate changes. Fire. Anything could wipe out a harvest. And who could he rely on to feed his family?

The same could be said of many other cases. We looked at someone and wondered how they could work under such conditions. It could be one where the person had to endure embrassment, lack of pride and dignity, health risk, mental stress, etc. It could be where the person was living in an inhumane environment or working in one. And we called them names, urging them to live more like a human, and leave the place.

We were never in their shoes. They could have no choice. We had never been poor where we were unable to find our next meal. We had never been in a situation to dig for food from a rubbish dump. We had never been poor enough to sleep in a cockroach infested place. They found a way out of that, and despite it being inhumane, they had meals, and a place to stay.

Rather than critise them about being 'stupid' and 'short-sighted', a more responsible action should be to help them. I have no right to critise them, but neither do I have any idea on how to help them.

I respect the indonesia workers. In fact, one of the person was trying to work very hard to save enough for his children's education. Surely so that his children need not live the same life as him. He is a great father, risking his life so that his family could live. Truely a man.

Insurance, and negative thinking

I am covered by a few insurance plans, some investment related, and one medical/health related. But looking at the economy recently, I wondered about the wisdom of continuing with investment insurance.

This is not just my own sentiment, but it is the same among many of my friends. Even some collegues. The general sentiment seemed to be that, if you are doing some investment, you had better invest time as well as money into it. Relying on funds either from banks or insurance does not yield high return on investment, if there are any at all.

So, most of us conclude that, what we really need to be insured for, are medical/health. Especially one that subsidize heavily on hospitalization fee. We all know of how expensive medical and hospitalization are in Singapore, and the government is definitely not helping much, preferring to force us to save up for these 'rainy days' with CPF schemes. Medishield help to some extend, but definitely not enough.

And so many of us had to buy additional insurance to cover the cost on our own. And of course, a pure medical/health insurance require you to keep paying a fee every month, with no money coming back to you, unless you managed to get hospitalized and use it.

Something struck me as I ponder this. We are generally encouraged to think positively. Think of all the good and positive aspects, to move forward. Negative thinking are bad. It ties us down. It limits our potential.

But here we are, applying negative thinking to our health. We have already forsee that we would be hospitalize in the future, when we get old. We already speak as if we know we will be operated upon. We would not have good health, and would sink a lot of money into medical fee. Our potential for a happy, nice old age has already been overwritten by images of senility, drooling and rocking in old chairs, lieing paralysised on beds, tubes attaching our bodies.

If that is not negative thinking, I am not sure what is.

You might call me extreme, and you might claim that this is not negative thinking, but planning for the future, and it is always wise to plan for the future.

I have two replies here.

First, if one is planning for the future, then why not start living a healthy life now? Stop smoking, stop drinking excessively with alcohol, look at what one eat, and exercise regularly (ok I am guilty of the last two actions as well, and I am looking to remedy that in the coming year). A healthy body is an indication of the lifestyle one live. If one works under tremedous work and mental stress, the body would break too. Rather than work like a workaholic to earn a lot of money, and then spend an amount on that on insurance, why not just spend more time enjoying life in happiness with friends and family?

Second, if you say planning for the future is wise, then why stop at planning future for just yourself? Is it wise to use the money to insure on oneself so that one could live longer, even if with tubes and needles hanging around and into you? Would it not be wiser to spend the money on the less fortunate, perhaps those in the third world countries who do not even have sufficient to eat, or poor children who do not have the luxury to be educated? Is it not a better 'ROI' for the world to invest in these people, and make the world a better place?

Stop having negative thinking about the future, and employ positive thinking on what you can do for the present.

'Professionalism' in work

I was chatting with my collegues, and something blurted out before I could think through properly (I should learn to control my tongue). Not that it is anything offending to them, but I am definitely making a sterotype here, which is bad. We were talking about doctors being highly paid professional. And I commented that surgeons need to be able to not commit too much emotion into every operations. First off, I apologize for the sterotype. They should be emotionally attached to their patients, and view all of them as precious life to be saved. What I said was rather unthoughtful. The reason I made such a statement was probably the result of various movies and drama. Usually the kind who cared most are the ones who are deeply affected when their patients die. And watching them suffered made me ponder if it would be better if they did not invest such emotions in the patients.

And of course, in movies, the other extreme of the sterotypes appear too. There will be those who treat it as a job.

'Professionals', as some would call themselves as. Patients are but items to them. A trophy to their 'resume' if successful. Forgotten quickly if failed. In fact they would target those operations or patients which would make themselves famous. Perhaps a famous politician, or a rare disease to operate on. And if the success rate is too low they would avoid the operation. All the media publicity, and none of the 'work ethnics' as some might ask of surgeons and doctors.

And following up that was a joke made by my collegue. That we as solution/software provider should probably employ the same 'attitude'. To not be personally and emotionally invested in our work. Defects will always exist. There will always be requests and additional requirement changes.But solution/software development is not the focus of this blog.

I take pride in my work. I try to make it as defect free as I can, within limits. Workarounds and compromises can be provided if a defect cannot be solved, and changing requirements, if reasonable and easy to do, could be implemented.

But if you applied that in the context of the doctor, that would be akin like a doctor telling a patient to avoid walking because there is no way to properly heal his legs (a workaround to a defect), or telling a patient that he has no cure and he has to live with it (an irritating but non-fatal cancer), or even to just take a nap when he could not bear the pain in his head (rebooting the machine when the software crashes).

What am I driving at? Honestly, I am not sure. I'm just slightly confused here.

If I, in my work as a software developer, employs such an attitude and 'professionalism' to my projects, should I be upset at how doctors and surgeons are when they treat life lightly?

Of course, the main difference is that one of them deals with life & death, and the other, while.. not that critical most of the times (though if we talk about software for the space shuttle, airplane, etc those are as critical, and bank software might indirectly be life threatening too).

Guess before I criticize the work ethnics of others I should look at my own work ethnics. No, make that a general statement for criticism.