3 posts tagged “books”
It's been a while since my last post. Life has been busy, but not in a particularly blogworthy way (although given my talent for rambling, this will probably become a pretty substantial post anyway).
Work
Work is really keeping me head down, bum up. For this release our team is trying the Scrum model,
which seems to have its good and bad points, like any development model
I suppose. At first I have to say I was sceptical - I mean, putting up
gold stars every day for each hour you worked on a particular task, and
smiley faces for overtime hours? And standing in a circle every morning
to say what you'd done the day before, like Show and Tell time in Year
1? It all sounded a little primary school and gimmicky.
In practice though, I've come to like the close interaction this approach affords with the other people on my team. Something I really hated when I was brand new at MSFT (especially after working in a place as open-plan and informal as EDI) was the fact that from a newcomer's perspective, it seemed like everyone was holed up looking busy and important in their offices, which made it incredibly intimidating to approach them as a n00b with absolutely no prior knowledge whatsoever. I ended up relying heavily on my mentor to learn things, and to be perfectly honest, sometimes having to bluff my way through stuff I didn't really know about.
I've even come to appreciate the daily standup and putting up my stars - when you have to account for your time like that, you really start to think about what you're doing with your day. It forces you to set short-term goals and makes you a lot more focused and productive, which is satisfying, and if something is holding you up, you have a forum for people to hear about it and help you out.
There is other fun stuff, like less documentation, which I don't think anyone is unhappy about (except maybe our PM who published a 12 page long one-pager the other day, god bless him), and the fact that we can actually keep reevaluating during the sprint to make sure our goals are achievable and people aren't working themselves to death. But I think that's enough about work for one post.
Getting off my ass
I've been getting back into a regular gym routine, which can only be a
good thing. My current philosophy is to drag myself there whether I
feel like it or not, and just do whatever I feel capable of doing. If I
feel fine, I run. If my knee is dodgy (which it seems to get these days
after 2 consecutive days of running) or my stomach hurts, I bike or
walk. If I don't feel like being inside, I put on a jumper and gloves
and run outside. The thing is, once I'm there, it's all good, the
endorphins kick in, it's a natural high. The hardest part is lugging my
lazy ass there, so now I take my gear to the office with me and go
straight to the gym after work - because if I come home in between, I
end up changing into my PJ's about 50% of the time instead of my
trackies.
Moving
It is confirmed: I will be moving in with Astha in about 2 months. Seattle. W00t.
Music
At the moment, a LOT of Cat Empire, the Cure, and, surprisingly, John Mayer's new album, Continuum.
I haven't been able to stand his old albums for a while now - I think I
grossly overplayed them in my fangirl stage - but this new one is great
- full of the infectious hooks, liquid groove, amazing guitar work and
thoughtful lyrics you would expect from John Mayer, and a little
something extra that you wouldn't: protest songs. For someone who
listens to and overanalyses song lyrics to the point of obsession, the
broadening of his subject material really made the difference for me -
it makes this album seem so much less mawkish than his previous
efforts. I can't stop listening to it. Kudos.
Books
I'm also in the middle of The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, which Sam mentioned to me sometime in high school, but I never got around to reading. I saw the movie last year and loved it, so when I saw the book on sale at Half Price Books (one of my favourite haunts) I picked it up. Enjoying it so far, and noting all the differences.
The other books on my to-read list:
- Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce - I've been in the middle of this one for about 9 months now - I get on a roll of about 50 pages and then just forget about it somehow. I got about two-thirds of the way through on the plane back from Sydney last year - I really need to pick it up again before I forget everything I've read.
- Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom - another book I'd been keeping an eye out for and finally found at Half Price Books last week. I read just the preface today, and it took me about 20 minutes. The text is small, the language is academic, this is going to be a dense one. But it did win the Nobel Prize for Economics, so it should be worth the effort.
- Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything - this has been on my list for months, and it always seems to get superceded by something else - Bryson is so readable, I know I can pick this one up anytime, anywhere. I would like to finish it though.
- Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma - Tom raved about this one for ages and then ended up buying me a copy to make sure I read it. I haven't opened it yet, but I will, cos Tom has impeccable reading taste (he recommended The Tipping Point too).
- All the Harry Potters - I need to reread them before the
final book comes out on the 21st of July. I'm terribly excited, but at
the same time it's sad somehow, knowing that it's all going to be over
soon. I can't explain why.
P.S. Note I didn't mention skiing in this post once. Oh... whoops.
My juvenile giggle for the week.
What do you reckon this book is about, on first glance?
I hope everyone had a good Christmas.
Alec and I didn't end up going to California - it was just an unfeasible distance for one person to drive in such a short time. Instead we decided to head up to Vancouver for a couple of days. We stayed at Al's uncle and aunt's place, a stone's throw from downtown. The weather was atrocious, so after a little shopping downtown - I am now obsessed with Roots - we hung out at home with Alec's cousin Roger and his girlfriend Rina, who proved to be all-round champions and even cooked us an amazing dinner. In the final hours of Christmas eve we headed off to midnight mass at Roger's church, St Augustine's. It was quite a nice service, and I surprised myself by remembering the obscure 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. verses of Christmas carols that I barely even remember learning - obviously something from 11 years at a Uniting Church school stuck. The power of the subconscious mind, huh.
We spent a lot of the next day helping to make Christmas dinner. Alec's family was having 25 people over for the night, so they really put out a spread - 2 turkeys, some other sort of roast meat, vegies, and all sorts of bikkies and candy and other goodies. I learned how to make stuffing: one of the great mysteries of life finally solved. I headed home on a Greyhound that night; Alec stayed an extra day or two with his rellos.
On Boxing Day Radhika had organised a formal potluck dinner at her house. According to the invite all the girls had to wear dresses and the guys had to wear a collared shirt and tie, which unsurprisingly had the more smartass guys in our group asking whether they could come along without trousers on. I managed to get a nice LBD at the Boxing Day sales for $50, discounted from $200. Gotta love a bargain. When I got home I cooked up a storm and made rosemary lamb pie, rocket and haloumi salad, and strawberry lemonade. Everyone turned up looking absolutely stunning and carrying yummy food - it was a good night. I'll have to post up photos here once I have them from my friends.
The disappointing news of this week was that our ski trip to Schweitzer got cancelled due to last minute dropouts. I was extremely bummed out - I was really, really hanging out for this trip. It would have been great to celebrate new year's in some obscure mountain chalet in the middle of Idaho - no, seriously. Oh well, skiing day trips and new year's eve plans are being cemented as I write this, so I don't believe the weekend will be a complete writeoff.
In other news, I was wasting time on the internet the other day (as one does) and came across this:
They are making a movie of one of my absolute favourite books as a kid. I absolutely adored this book. I sat down and read it in one day when I was ten and then many times over after that. It was the first book that ever made me cry. But I'm sorry to say that, just judging by the trailer, the movie looks terrible. They've turned it into a Lord of the Rings movie! I'm hoping they just decided to put in the most sensational parts of the movie into the trailer to attract attention, and that the book hasn't been transmogrified into some scifi/adventure flick. If they do what they did to Dinotopia, I will be ropable, mate.
