Of the fond memories of coming back to Sendai is remembering all the interesting people I've met over the years. Many of them where international students from all over the world, most of them have gone back to their home countries. All of the ones that I have met were really nice people.
And now that I think of it, I haven't been in contact with most of them since they left. It makes me wonder, what are the characteristics of person that would make them your friend. Perhaps, I didn't articulate that well enough, but I also wonder what is the characteristics of the friend relationship. I've never really thought this before, not until coming back to Sendai, where I used to know a lot of people.
There are still many people that I know here, but I would only call out a few to hang out with. Many of the people I knew, were people I've met up along the way attending events or going out to my favorite bars where there were people I knew. We were all friends in passing. I've realized that I don't live here any more and my connection with these people has gone, though I would say that knowing them has brought plenty of joy while I've been living in Sendai. I've also started wondering about who are the people that I really want to spend time with, the people that I want to do things together with.
After moving away to Atsugi, I've realized that there are not that many people that pops into mind when I do want to do something. Many of the things that I really do enjoying, like going out on random walks or drives are the kinds of things that I enjoy doing on my own.
I have not found many people suited to my style of adventuring or perhaps, pace. Many of the things that I do enjoy doing now are the kinds of things that I can do on my own. Perhaps through some unconcious choices, I've chosen to lead a more solitary lifestyle. A kind of lifestyle where I can go on my own pace. It isn't just pace that I often find myself alone with, but the things I do and the kinds of things I like to think or talk about.
After joining my company and meeting the many new recruits that joined during the same year, there aren't many that I find myself hanging out with. I did hang out with them from time to time the first few months while at work, but the more I hung out with them, the more I realized that I never really did fit in with their conversations.
I met up with a good friend of mine in Sendai just yesterday for brunch. This friend of mine is an older lady in her 50's perhaps close to her 60's (I've never really bothered to ask), but she's always been volunteering and helping out new international students get settled in Sendai. I've always enjoyed our conversations, we would always discuss about our current traveling adventures, the interesting foods or places we've found or any interesting topics about different cultures.
She told me that she always found herself bored when she spent time with other housewives as they spent most of their time talking about the latest sit-coms or the cute clothing they bought for their children. She could never find inspiration in those conversations, but when it came to volunteering and helping out with the international students, there would always be plenty of interesting and fresh ideas.
The people that I find myself connecting the best with were with the international students. This afternoon, I found myself talking with a Columbian friend that has been living in Japan for the past 7 years, that is looking to go back home after graduating.
At this point, he was a little home sick and felt that it was time to go back home. As much as he had enjoyed his time in Japan and how significantly more money he could make by working over here, the place he called home was still Columbia. It was interesting discussing the whole traveling phase, but I suppose, at one point in a person's life, people living abroad will eventually have to pick a time to finally settle down.
I guess it is topics such as these that I would not find myself talking about with people that haven't had the opportunity to live in a foreign country. Especially with a normal Japanese colleague.
I have also found that I don't look at world events or the way of life in a different country the same anymore. I guess I've become more accepting of the differences and become far less judgmental. There are, of course times when I do think when things are wrong, especially when it comes to people getting annoyed at some parts of their own culture... it can be interesting sometimes at what stupid or silly things people end up doing as a result of "tradition."
But anyways, back to the topic of friends. So many people I've met through my time over here have come and gone. Everything has been so transient and perhaps I am looking for something that lasts. The question that I still need to figure out is what is the important ingredient that creates a strong bond between people.
I will leave myself to ponder over it for the next while...
Sunday, May 31, 2009
A Place Called Home
If there was a place in Japan where I could call home, that place would be Sendai. I left early on a Saturday morning, taking the bullet train out of the city traveling 300 km north to Sendai. Every time I get off the train at Sendai station, it feels like I've come back home.
Everything look familiar, every time I step out of the station. The stores, the bustling car and people walking through the city. I have many fond memories of this place. Manly because of all the people I know... or perhaps knew when they lived here.
Perhaps I wonder if it's nostalgia. Sort of like visiting your old high school or university years after graduating. It's like the place hasn't changed but the people are all different. The place feels familiar but yet somehow detached, it's like I am not a part of this city anymore.
Most of my friends in Sendai were students at the university, both the Japanese students and the foreign exchange students. Most of which have graduated and moved on since the era I was here. Still, some of my friends remain but my connection to people of this city feel diminished.
I do wonder, what is it about a place that you could call a "home" so special. I know for sure that I wouldn't call the place I live right now in Tokyo, home. It's just sort of a place to me. But Sendai is different. Is it the people? Is it the place? Is it what happens? I still can't put my finger on the specific reason behind it. But I believe that it is the combination of all 3 of these. Without the right people in the right place, I don't believe that I would have fond memories of this city. There are still people here that I know, perhaps like embers of the community that I used to be a part of.
I know for sure that a new group of international students move into this city every year as part of either their university program or through the Japanese run scholarship program. Most of them will live here for a year, some others will stay for a few years longer.
History will repeat itself. Students from around the world coming together to live at the international dorms. International culture exchange between each other, experiencing life in Japan, making friends, Christmas parties and exploration. New experiences almost everyday. The first time is always special and unfortunately, first time experiences only come once. If I did come back here, I know for sure that I wouldn't be able to join and experience life with these students in the same capacity as I did before. I know for sure that I would be taking part as a different role, probably as a facilitator. I guess that the saying is true and people do have to move on. It just isn't the same experiencing the same things over again.
It is great to experience something wonderful, but I also realize that is it important to know how to gracefully move on. No matter how wonderful, you can't allow yourself to be stuck in the past.
Everything look familiar, every time I step out of the station. The stores, the bustling car and people walking through the city. I have many fond memories of this place. Manly because of all the people I know... or perhaps knew when they lived here.
Perhaps I wonder if it's nostalgia. Sort of like visiting your old high school or university years after graduating. It's like the place hasn't changed but the people are all different. The place feels familiar but yet somehow detached, it's like I am not a part of this city anymore.
Most of my friends in Sendai were students at the university, both the Japanese students and the foreign exchange students. Most of which have graduated and moved on since the era I was here. Still, some of my friends remain but my connection to people of this city feel diminished.
I do wonder, what is it about a place that you could call a "home" so special. I know for sure that I wouldn't call the place I live right now in Tokyo, home. It's just sort of a place to me. But Sendai is different. Is it the people? Is it the place? Is it what happens? I still can't put my finger on the specific reason behind it. But I believe that it is the combination of all 3 of these. Without the right people in the right place, I don't believe that I would have fond memories of this city. There are still people here that I know, perhaps like embers of the community that I used to be a part of.
I know for sure that a new group of international students move into this city every year as part of either their university program or through the Japanese run scholarship program. Most of them will live here for a year, some others will stay for a few years longer.
History will repeat itself. Students from around the world coming together to live at the international dorms. International culture exchange between each other, experiencing life in Japan, making friends, Christmas parties and exploration. New experiences almost everyday. The first time is always special and unfortunately, first time experiences only come once. If I did come back here, I know for sure that I wouldn't be able to join and experience life with these students in the same capacity as I did before. I know for sure that I would be taking part as a different role, probably as a facilitator. I guess that the saying is true and people do have to move on. It just isn't the same experiencing the same things over again.
It is great to experience something wonderful, but I also realize that is it important to know how to gracefully move on. No matter how wonderful, you can't allow yourself to be stuck in the past.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
65 hours of over time
Been hell of a month, it's coming down to crunch time and we are finally starting to get into reliability testing. The problem is that development time wasn't properly allocated into reliability testing and things are in a complete pinch.
Just making something and having it come out pretty is one thing, but it's going to have to last if people are going to buy it.
Then I get suddenly thrown into the reliability testing group and will have to do a lot of redesign and testing to get things working right. According to the schedule, I have one shot to make the device and then hand it off to another division for some post processing (which they have one shot to get right) and then perform a 1000 hour lifetime test, where the the sample must pass.
I'm basically playing for a hole-in-one game here and the schedule is tight... actually, we are already behind schedule and it looks like I'll be puling 150 hours of over time in the span of 3 months. I'll be hitting the limit for overtime over a 3 month period.
Despite this, I keep my weekends busy with visiting friends and attending events. Ironically, I don't get much rest on weekends either.
It's easy to see how one's life turns into a work-rest-work cycle when doing these kinds of hours. You'll be old and nearly dead before you realize it. There are plenty of other things that I want to do but have absolutely no time to do them.
I'll be glad when this is all over.
Fortunately, I just got clearance to procure man-power from another division and will be roping in 2 people to help me and possibly getting one more person for some sort term experiments....
My supervisor is somewhat incompetent and scatter brained (lacking in good logical and planning skills) and unfortunately I don't have his experience with working on this project. Fortunately, he's going to be busy on another project and I'll be moving myself into managing the other guys coming in (whom are much older than I, but this will be interesting).
I've got a shot at making a name for myself if I can pull of a stunt to succeed at the reliability testing and crazy state that it is in right now. If it works out, I'll be asking the boss for a bonus for the winter and it'll be something nice to add to the resume.
Just making something and having it come out pretty is one thing, but it's going to have to last if people are going to buy it.
Then I get suddenly thrown into the reliability testing group and will have to do a lot of redesign and testing to get things working right. According to the schedule, I have one shot to make the device and then hand it off to another division for some post processing (which they have one shot to get right) and then perform a 1000 hour lifetime test, where the the sample must pass.
I'm basically playing for a hole-in-one game here and the schedule is tight... actually, we are already behind schedule and it looks like I'll be puling 150 hours of over time in the span of 3 months. I'll be hitting the limit for overtime over a 3 month period.
Despite this, I keep my weekends busy with visiting friends and attending events. Ironically, I don't get much rest on weekends either.
It's easy to see how one's life turns into a work-rest-work cycle when doing these kinds of hours. You'll be old and nearly dead before you realize it. There are plenty of other things that I want to do but have absolutely no time to do them.
I'll be glad when this is all over.
Fortunately, I just got clearance to procure man-power from another division and will be roping in 2 people to help me and possibly getting one more person for some sort term experiments....
My supervisor is somewhat incompetent and scatter brained (lacking in good logical and planning skills) and unfortunately I don't have his experience with working on this project. Fortunately, he's going to be busy on another project and I'll be moving myself into managing the other guys coming in (whom are much older than I, but this will be interesting).
I've got a shot at making a name for myself if I can pull of a stunt to succeed at the reliability testing and crazy state that it is in right now. If it works out, I'll be asking the boss for a bonus for the winter and it'll be something nice to add to the resume.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Summarizing and organizing data is important
I'll be brief, because I am tired. Getting hauled into work on a Sunday and then working 3 subsequent 12 hour days is not my particular cup of tea. Especially while working under a supervisor that is scatter brained and with terrible decision making skills.
I've given up on trying to blend in by nodding my head and doing what I am told as I have had my ass handed to me by higher up managers for following someone else's bad train of thought. Allow me to summarize the situation:
I am pretty much working on a somewhat complicated process using semiconductor type fabrication technology to make micro-level devices. These devices are fabricated by depositing a variety of metals and semi-conductors in an arrangement of patterns. There are some complexities depending on the geometry of the patterns you deposit or etch out and there are inevitably design trade offs or risks that one might have to take when trying out a new process.
The problem is that the supervisor that I work under shows little sign of reasoning, nor does he do a good job of explaining his reasoning to me (which might be poor in the first place). The end result is that I have no clue on what this guy is basing his reasoning on and occasionally it seems that we are flailing a little bit when it comes to trying to be focused on getting a design challenged solved in a finite amount of time. The problem really kicks in when we have a upper level manager starts questioning our reasoning for the design and experimentation to which sometimes we cannot connect the dots to. This drives me utterly crazy because it feels like the work we do that can't be properly explained is time wasted.
Ugh.
I will admit that working on a somewhat complex device can be a little challenging, though I do not think the process is all that complicated. There are multiple ways of trying to fabricate a device and often a preliminary study is required to determine it's feasibility. The problem is that my supervisor is not particularly good at keeping track of what we don't know, what information is required and comparing them to our other options. The other problem is that I am still a little inexperienced and don't know how to work all the machines we use, meaning I just can't run off and do my own thing (yet).
Anyways, if you want to succeed at a project via making good decisions. Knowing the basics and summarizing the important details is vital and working with smart people is important. I think I am going to be pissed off working with this supervisor for the next few months.
Hot damn.
I've given up on trying to blend in by nodding my head and doing what I am told as I have had my ass handed to me by higher up managers for following someone else's bad train of thought. Allow me to summarize the situation:
I am pretty much working on a somewhat complicated process using semiconductor type fabrication technology to make micro-level devices. These devices are fabricated by depositing a variety of metals and semi-conductors in an arrangement of patterns. There are some complexities depending on the geometry of the patterns you deposit or etch out and there are inevitably design trade offs or risks that one might have to take when trying out a new process.
The problem is that the supervisor that I work under shows little sign of reasoning, nor does he do a good job of explaining his reasoning to me (which might be poor in the first place). The end result is that I have no clue on what this guy is basing his reasoning on and occasionally it seems that we are flailing a little bit when it comes to trying to be focused on getting a design challenged solved in a finite amount of time. The problem really kicks in when we have a upper level manager starts questioning our reasoning for the design and experimentation to which sometimes we cannot connect the dots to. This drives me utterly crazy because it feels like the work we do that can't be properly explained is time wasted.
Ugh.
I will admit that working on a somewhat complex device can be a little challenging, though I do not think the process is all that complicated. There are multiple ways of trying to fabricate a device and often a preliminary study is required to determine it's feasibility. The problem is that my supervisor is not particularly good at keeping track of what we don't know, what information is required and comparing them to our other options. The other problem is that I am still a little inexperienced and don't know how to work all the machines we use, meaning I just can't run off and do my own thing (yet).
Anyways, if you want to succeed at a project via making good decisions. Knowing the basics and summarizing the important details is vital and working with smart people is important. I think I am going to be pissed off working with this supervisor for the next few months.
Hot damn.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Farming out the work vs doing it yourself
I had a conversation with one of my coworkers yesterday with the difference between building equipment on your own or having an outside company do it for you or buying something ready made.
I am the kind of guy that likes to build things up on my own, especially if it's something likely to be expensive. For example, I'd much rather buy a few cheap chips and put together an electronic circuit to do some data logging or motor control instead of buying a full blown system that would run into a few hundred or thousands of dollars; especially for a personal project.
Working in a company, however, it isn't unusual to just go out and buy the equipment you need to get what you need done, freeing time up for yourself to stay focused on what you really need to do. But I find that there is a problem with this way of thinking however, especially when it comes to understanding the possibilities of what you can do with the right technologies or equipment put together.
Most people in my research group aren't technologically savvy. They know how to use the machines and the basic principles behind using them but that's about it. They don't know much about electronics or programming that might make their lives a whole lot easier. I have proposed in the past, cheap tunable circuits that could be used to drive some our devices while hooking up the outputs to a data logger to allow us to take detailed data. The circuits themselves would only cost about $10 each to make.
Unfortunately, some other person took over the project and elected to purchase a multi-channel driver circuit that costs about $100 to drive a single device. We are taking about an entire difference in magnitude in cost and massive parallelism is not possible because the driver circuit is the size of a brick where as mine is the size of a cell phone pad (and I can have several driving circuits on there too!). The system will also take a few months to procure too. I simply had to just shake my head at the whole ordeal.
The co-worker of mine has been needling me from time to time that it would be more expensive for the company, money wise to expend the cash for the development time of whatever I would be building instead of purchasing it.
For cheap devices, sure I can understand that of course, but when it comes to custom programs or equipment to help speed up the work I and others do, that kind of equipment just doesn't really exist as a prepackaged system and it's going to have to be assembled from the ground up. Having the work farmed out to an external company will at least costs in the $10,000 range if not in the $100,000 range and this is the kind of stuff that I would have a hell of a time getting approval from the higher ups for. I could do the whole thing for much cheaper, on my own without the excess bureaucracy. The problem is finding the time and the resources to pull it off, which sort of has me stuck.
The one other thing that I didn't like with my colleague's thinking is that I should let "pro's" handle work (ie circuits) that is outside one's expertise. I fully believe that that kind of thinking is wrong. This is coming from a guy that has ribbed me on making programs is "easy" and that if he wanted to, he could pick it up pretty fast. To put it honestly, I think he's full of shit.
I realize that having specialized skills is important, but having a lack of good understanding in different fields of knowledge is a fatal mistake. I've seen this plenty enough when researchers here screw up their spec sheets and they're not getting the expected response times from the custom made machines. I've had to step in a few times to devise work-arounds for whatever problems they were having.
Having a poor understanding of different fields is also a recipe for creative disaster and I believe it shows with the kinds of products I've seen from this company versus other companies. They've been off the ball when it comes to anticipating future teility to summarize my thoughts has gone to the crapper since my hiatus from writing. Ichnological trends and often plays catchup with other companies.
Anyways, it's been a while since the last time I did any sort of writing and my ab am going to have to rebuild these skills because I definitely feel that my cognitive skills have been in decline since stopping. Here is hopping that it gets better after I get back into the swing of things.
I am the kind of guy that likes to build things up on my own, especially if it's something likely to be expensive. For example, I'd much rather buy a few cheap chips and put together an electronic circuit to do some data logging or motor control instead of buying a full blown system that would run into a few hundred or thousands of dollars; especially for a personal project.
Working in a company, however, it isn't unusual to just go out and buy the equipment you need to get what you need done, freeing time up for yourself to stay focused on what you really need to do. But I find that there is a problem with this way of thinking however, especially when it comes to understanding the possibilities of what you can do with the right technologies or equipment put together.
Most people in my research group aren't technologically savvy. They know how to use the machines and the basic principles behind using them but that's about it. They don't know much about electronics or programming that might make their lives a whole lot easier. I have proposed in the past, cheap tunable circuits that could be used to drive some our devices while hooking up the outputs to a data logger to allow us to take detailed data. The circuits themselves would only cost about $10 each to make.
Unfortunately, some other person took over the project and elected to purchase a multi-channel driver circuit that costs about $100 to drive a single device. We are taking about an entire difference in magnitude in cost and massive parallelism is not possible because the driver circuit is the size of a brick where as mine is the size of a cell phone pad (and I can have several driving circuits on there too!). The system will also take a few months to procure too. I simply had to just shake my head at the whole ordeal.
The co-worker of mine has been needling me from time to time that it would be more expensive for the company, money wise to expend the cash for the development time of whatever I would be building instead of purchasing it.
For cheap devices, sure I can understand that of course, but when it comes to custom programs or equipment to help speed up the work I and others do, that kind of equipment just doesn't really exist as a prepackaged system and it's going to have to be assembled from the ground up. Having the work farmed out to an external company will at least costs in the $10,000 range if not in the $100,000 range and this is the kind of stuff that I would have a hell of a time getting approval from the higher ups for. I could do the whole thing for much cheaper, on my own without the excess bureaucracy. The problem is finding the time and the resources to pull it off, which sort of has me stuck.
The one other thing that I didn't like with my colleague's thinking is that I should let "pro's" handle work (ie circuits) that is outside one's expertise. I fully believe that that kind of thinking is wrong. This is coming from a guy that has ribbed me on making programs is "easy" and that if he wanted to, he could pick it up pretty fast. To put it honestly, I think he's full of shit.
I realize that having specialized skills is important, but having a lack of good understanding in different fields of knowledge is a fatal mistake. I've seen this plenty enough when researchers here screw up their spec sheets and they're not getting the expected response times from the custom made machines. I've had to step in a few times to devise work-arounds for whatever problems they were having.
Having a poor understanding of different fields is also a recipe for creative disaster and I believe it shows with the kinds of products I've seen from this company versus other companies. They've been off the ball when it comes to anticipating future teility to summarize my thoughts has gone to the crapper since my hiatus from writing. Ichnological trends and often plays catchup with other companies.
Anyways, it's been a while since the last time I did any sort of writing and my ab am going to have to rebuild these skills because I definitely feel that my cognitive skills have been in decline since stopping. Here is hopping that it gets better after I get back into the swing of things.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Knowing when to Quit
I already know that this job isn't what I love doing and spending too much time doing it is going to be a waste of time. There was an article where Steve Jobs had once said some thing to the effect of that if you don't love what you are doing then you are wasting your time. In a sense, it would be like going out with a girl that you kind of liked but never really loved.
I know that spending my time working on working on semiconductor based display systems is not for me. The whole process is slow, boring and repetitious. I don't like slaving over the same boring thing. It's time for me to start working on my exit strategy.
I already know that is it going to be tough for me, with the terrible financial winds blowing my way. I've already lost most of my life savings in the span of half a year. It hurts to see what I wanted to have done all been blown away. Like a beautiful dream being snuffed out of existence. It hurts.
My recovery will have to be on my own. I don't feel comfortable talking to my parent's about any sort of problem. It always feels like they are blaming me for whatever mistake I made. I know that already and that isn't going to help me feel better help fix things. I guess that is one of those things about my relationship with parents. As long as I gave them good results, I wouldn't be bothered by them and I was happy with that.
So here I am, on my own. I'm going to have to get things together.
I'm not going to stay in this company forever, I know that. The management team is inefficient and the communication is not really there. The people there don't feel revolutionary and it show in the products. I don't feel inspired. I have a general idea of what I like, I need to polish up on my skills. When I'm ready, I'm going to catch my break.
This is what I want, I'm not going to be a peon forever.
I know that spending my time working on working on semiconductor based display systems is not for me. The whole process is slow, boring and repetitious. I don't like slaving over the same boring thing. It's time for me to start working on my exit strategy.
I already know that is it going to be tough for me, with the terrible financial winds blowing my way. I've already lost most of my life savings in the span of half a year. It hurts to see what I wanted to have done all been blown away. Like a beautiful dream being snuffed out of existence. It hurts.
My recovery will have to be on my own. I don't feel comfortable talking to my parent's about any sort of problem. It always feels like they are blaming me for whatever mistake I made. I know that already and that isn't going to help me feel better help fix things. I guess that is one of those things about my relationship with parents. As long as I gave them good results, I wouldn't be bothered by them and I was happy with that.
So here I am, on my own. I'm going to have to get things together.
I'm not going to stay in this company forever, I know that. The management team is inefficient and the communication is not really there. The people there don't feel revolutionary and it show in the products. I don't feel inspired. I have a general idea of what I like, I need to polish up on my skills. When I'm ready, I'm going to catch my break.
This is what I want, I'm not going to be a peon forever.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Reclaiming lost territory
If there is a trend for me this year, it's that my life keeps on going from bad to worse. Atleast the stock market has a bottom, but for me, the bottom seems boundless.
I have managed to wipe out most of my life savings via the stock market and a variety of bad things happening causing me to have more cash wiped out. I am also sick of tired of work. I got a tongue lashing today because one of the bosses wanted a spec sheet for some experiments I was to run.
Some other managers stepped in and told me that since I'm still new around here that I probably wasn't qualified to write one of those so I left it as is. So they tell me that I didn't have to write one. The boss comes to me and bugs me to make one, I ask one of my superiors to help me out, but I just can't get the ball rolling. So today, I had to tell the boss that I didn't have a spec sheet for him.
My day really sucked. I also got to wake up to an e-mail from my brokerage that I hit some margin limit on some options and they automatically liquidated some of my positions for a loss.
My life's just been a shit hitting the fan fest and it's depressing... and there's a lot of things that I can't say because my parents read this blog. The only thing I hear from them are complaints about what I write and I'm sick of it. Bloody sick of it.
I am tired of trying to please people like parents or superiors so I'm not going to try anymore. I'm not looking for a fight but it's time to follow my own conscience, it's time to go my own way. I've lost too much of myself trying to please everybody.... and that's it.
I have managed to wipe out most of my life savings via the stock market and a variety of bad things happening causing me to have more cash wiped out. I am also sick of tired of work. I got a tongue lashing today because one of the bosses wanted a spec sheet for some experiments I was to run.
Some other managers stepped in and told me that since I'm still new around here that I probably wasn't qualified to write one of those so I left it as is. So they tell me that I didn't have to write one. The boss comes to me and bugs me to make one, I ask one of my superiors to help me out, but I just can't get the ball rolling. So today, I had to tell the boss that I didn't have a spec sheet for him.
My day really sucked. I also got to wake up to an e-mail from my brokerage that I hit some margin limit on some options and they automatically liquidated some of my positions for a loss.
My life's just been a shit hitting the fan fest and it's depressing... and there's a lot of things that I can't say because my parents read this blog. The only thing I hear from them are complaints about what I write and I'm sick of it. Bloody sick of it.
I am tired of trying to please people like parents or superiors so I'm not going to try anymore. I'm not looking for a fight but it's time to follow my own conscience, it's time to go my own way. I've lost too much of myself trying to please everybody.... and that's it.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
One of those years
It's been a rather rocky year. A lot of shit hitting the fan and things just simply not going right. Actually, things that are just going in the exact opposite direction. It seems that I'm in one of those stages where something can go wrong, it does... in the worse possible manner.
Anyways, I'll start posting again when things start getting a little better.
A break would be nice.
Anyways, I'll start posting again when things start getting a little better.
A break would be nice.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Off to Korea
It's a long weekend. Will be off to Korea to visit some friends. Pouring rain in Japan, hope the weather is better over there.
More about the trip after I get back.
More about the trip after I get back.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
It's noon, finished with work and with time to kill
Things are looking up. I Managed to snag some machine time last week when some people canceled their experiments and managed to push my work ahead of schedule. The thing is that the next processing step for me can't be done for another day meaning that I'm done with work... and it hasn't hit noon yet.
The software writing for the new test equipment we received still hasn't been completed. It still has bugs and run damn slow. The company we contracted to put the machine together is way behind schedule on the project. I've already been called in to start helping out with their programming.
The annoying thing is that I've managed to get the machine working 2~3x faster after spending about an hour reworking their code to make it faster... and these guys are charging $20,000 for the control software they are writing for us. I probably get the software done in a week and would exceptionally happy if my boss would pay me even just $10,000. But alas, that isn't how things work around here.
There are huge opportunities for big dollar contracts out here, I really have to figure out how to tap in to these things.
I guess that the nice thing about work is that I have no direct supervision and I have pretty much control over my work schedule-- I do what I want, when I want to. As long as I produce results, nobody complains. The trick is finding ways of getting the work done faster and you don't necessarily have to tell these guys that you've finished in advance.
I personally like reinvesting the time I gain by figuring out how I can get more work done, even faster to make more free time for myself to do what I want. Fully automated machines to do my bidding is a pipe dream. And of course, the only person that should have the skills to program and maintain them is me.
I need to figure out how to get into this business thing. There ought to be great opportunities to be tapped.
The software writing for the new test equipment we received still hasn't been completed. It still has bugs and run damn slow. The company we contracted to put the machine together is way behind schedule on the project. I've already been called in to start helping out with their programming.
The annoying thing is that I've managed to get the machine working 2~3x faster after spending about an hour reworking their code to make it faster... and these guys are charging $20,000 for the control software they are writing for us. I probably get the software done in a week and would exceptionally happy if my boss would pay me even just $10,000. But alas, that isn't how things work around here.
There are huge opportunities for big dollar contracts out here, I really have to figure out how to tap in to these things.
I guess that the nice thing about work is that I have no direct supervision and I have pretty much control over my work schedule-- I do what I want, when I want to. As long as I produce results, nobody complains. The trick is finding ways of getting the work done faster and you don't necessarily have to tell these guys that you've finished in advance.
I personally like reinvesting the time I gain by figuring out how I can get more work done, even faster to make more free time for myself to do what I want. Fully automated machines to do my bidding is a pipe dream. And of course, the only person that should have the skills to program and maintain them is me.
I need to figure out how to get into this business thing. There ought to be great opportunities to be tapped.
Monday, March 02, 2009
The Power of Results
There used to be a time in my life where I did enjoy debates, the concept of being able to stake out a position, think it though and argue that it is the most logical position.
If there is one thing that University teaches you, especially in the fields of engineering and science, it is that theory and practice are 2 entirely different things. In an ideal world, theory would be the same as practice and if someone were able to accomplish exactly everything that they say they would do, then they would be no less than a god.
The only things that I am most confident about are my limitations in intellect and knowledge. And hence forth, I have largely given up on getting into lively debates with people. Unless, of course, if it is to use what I know to at least show how someone with the greatest stubborn convictions, how much more they need to understand.
If there was such a thing of "a lot of hot air about nothing" then debates would be it. I've seen TV commentators and pundits having all sorts of debates, from what should the role of the government should be to who is the hottest swimsuit model. All of this, none the less theoretical. At one point, it just seems rather pointless to even bother putting an effort into it.
Myself, like other people, will obviously have things that we might not agree with. Whether be it the way a company is run or with what people do. There will most definitely times when you will be right and everyone will be wrong (and you have the uncanny ability to be consistently right then kudos to you), or perhaps, too little people that actually care (which is probably the more general case). From experience, there isn't much of a point of screaming at the top of your lungs trying to get people to listen to you. And perhaps this is a good thing as a virtue, because I know no ends to the number of exceptionally loud and annoying people I've come across in my lifetime.
A war of words
If it's going to be a challenge of words against words, you might as well be having a pillow fight... without the pillows because that's as much impact words do have by themselves.
If there is a measure of the worthiness of a person's idea, it's all in the results they produce. It gets nothing more concrete then that. If you have a thousand people with a thousand ideas and (if you're lucky) one of them is right, it matters not how well they can convince you with the eloquence of their speech but with the results they produce.
There is a cost to being wrong
For every action there is a risk and there will especially be a cost if you are wrong. I believe that this a fairly fundamental concept that most people are generally not aware of. With the cost of failure money, resources or time, there is always a cost associated with being wrong.
For the case of the individual going about and doing their own thing, it matters not to anyone else if they try something new and screw up badly, so long as their screw ups don't incur a cost on you or me. But now that we are talking about the failures of some 3rd party on us, it comes quite evident that as a society that we don't want to be bearing the costs or responsibility of some other person's mistake.
There is even a branch of law that deals with this, otherwise known as Tort Law, where person suffering the loss by someone's (intentional or unintentional) actions is compensated by the "offender." In other words, it's a branch of law that tries to force people to take responsibility, in the most general terms. We simply don't like bearing the costs of someone else's mistakes and I would have to say that it is natural.
You're going to have to be right and resourceful
If there are 2 things that are necessary for success, then being right and resourceful are it. Because, honestly, no one in general is going to think that you are right and if they don't think you can do it, they aren't going to give you the resources to try, especially at their expense (the financial markets made that mistake and look at the mess that we got for an example)
So what have you? Pretty much nothing, but your wits and what you can get your hands on. The best of every success story usually starts off with some kids in a garage working on something that turned into the next cool thing. Apple started out that way, with computers in a wooden box. Bill Gates started out by mooching computer time in the middle of the night at his university to produce the first OS for that Altair computer. Sony started off in the shambles of Tokyo after WW2, the founders made their first version of a magnetic tape which required ferric oxide, which they managed to get by roasting oxalic ferride powder in a frying pan because ferric oxide was too scarce and expensive to obtain. Or perhaps the beginnings of Dell computer, which started out with an internet connection and assembly of computers in one own's dorm room.
If there is anything in common with the most successful companies that started, it was the resourcefulness and the brightness of their ideas that got everything started. Some of the brightest ideas can come from the most inconcievable places, far from the reaches of where any debate might venture into considering.
If you want to be successful, don't bother arguing with people. Have some ideas (hopefully right ones) and be resourceful. If you end up being right, the world will start throwing money at you.
If there is one thing that University teaches you, especially in the fields of engineering and science, it is that theory and practice are 2 entirely different things. In an ideal world, theory would be the same as practice and if someone were able to accomplish exactly everything that they say they would do, then they would be no less than a god.
The only things that I am most confident about are my limitations in intellect and knowledge. And hence forth, I have largely given up on getting into lively debates with people. Unless, of course, if it is to use what I know to at least show how someone with the greatest stubborn convictions, how much more they need to understand.
If there was such a thing of "a lot of hot air about nothing" then debates would be it. I've seen TV commentators and pundits having all sorts of debates, from what should the role of the government should be to who is the hottest swimsuit model. All of this, none the less theoretical. At one point, it just seems rather pointless to even bother putting an effort into it.
Myself, like other people, will obviously have things that we might not agree with. Whether be it the way a company is run or with what people do. There will most definitely times when you will be right and everyone will be wrong (and you have the uncanny ability to be consistently right then kudos to you), or perhaps, too little people that actually care (which is probably the more general case). From experience, there isn't much of a point of screaming at the top of your lungs trying to get people to listen to you. And perhaps this is a good thing as a virtue, because I know no ends to the number of exceptionally loud and annoying people I've come across in my lifetime.
A war of words
If it's going to be a challenge of words against words, you might as well be having a pillow fight... without the pillows because that's as much impact words do have by themselves.
If there is a measure of the worthiness of a person's idea, it's all in the results they produce. It gets nothing more concrete then that. If you have a thousand people with a thousand ideas and (if you're lucky) one of them is right, it matters not how well they can convince you with the eloquence of their speech but with the results they produce.
There is a cost to being wrong
For every action there is a risk and there will especially be a cost if you are wrong. I believe that this a fairly fundamental concept that most people are generally not aware of. With the cost of failure money, resources or time, there is always a cost associated with being wrong.
For the case of the individual going about and doing their own thing, it matters not to anyone else if they try something new and screw up badly, so long as their screw ups don't incur a cost on you or me. But now that we are talking about the failures of some 3rd party on us, it comes quite evident that as a society that we don't want to be bearing the costs or responsibility of some other person's mistake.
There is even a branch of law that deals with this, otherwise known as Tort Law, where person suffering the loss by someone's (intentional or unintentional) actions is compensated by the "offender." In other words, it's a branch of law that tries to force people to take responsibility, in the most general terms. We simply don't like bearing the costs of someone else's mistakes and I would have to say that it is natural.
You're going to have to be right and resourceful
If there are 2 things that are necessary for success, then being right and resourceful are it. Because, honestly, no one in general is going to think that you are right and if they don't think you can do it, they aren't going to give you the resources to try, especially at their expense (the financial markets made that mistake and look at the mess that we got for an example)
So what have you? Pretty much nothing, but your wits and what you can get your hands on. The best of every success story usually starts off with some kids in a garage working on something that turned into the next cool thing. Apple started out that way, with computers in a wooden box. Bill Gates started out by mooching computer time in the middle of the night at his university to produce the first OS for that Altair computer. Sony started off in the shambles of Tokyo after WW2, the founders made their first version of a magnetic tape which required ferric oxide, which they managed to get by roasting oxalic ferride powder in a frying pan because ferric oxide was too scarce and expensive to obtain. Or perhaps the beginnings of Dell computer, which started out with an internet connection and assembly of computers in one own's dorm room.
If there is anything in common with the most successful companies that started, it was the resourcefulness and the brightness of their ideas that got everything started. Some of the brightest ideas can come from the most inconcievable places, far from the reaches of where any debate might venture into considering.
If you want to be successful, don't bother arguing with people. Have some ideas (hopefully right ones) and be resourceful. If you end up being right, the world will start throwing money at you.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
My Bet: GM to go Broke before June
GM has a negative equity of $60 billion. I've never seen a listed company with negative equity before but it basically means that company, if bought is worth less than $0, yet some how the market capitalization for GM is $1.13 billion at it's current share price of $1.85.
So if someone bought out GM for $1.13 billion, you'd get $60 billion in debt. Sounds like a terrible deal to me. So here's my question, what do you do with a company that is so terribly in debt? You shut it down. Sad, but true.
I highly doubt that GM will ever make it back to profitability, or even have positive equity in this lifetime. Given the current economic climate we have now, I highly doubt that car sales will return in time to even give GM a chance.
So here's my play. I've decided to buy a few put options with a strike at $3 for $2. If GM goes broke, share price goes to zero, the contracts become exercisable and the underwriter is forced to buy @ $3.
We'll see what happens.
So if someone bought out GM for $1.13 billion, you'd get $60 billion in debt. Sounds like a terrible deal to me. So here's my question, what do you do with a company that is so terribly in debt? You shut it down. Sad, but true.
I highly doubt that GM will ever make it back to profitability, or even have positive equity in this lifetime. Given the current economic climate we have now, I highly doubt that car sales will return in time to even give GM a chance.
So here's my play. I've decided to buy a few put options with a strike at $3 for $2. If GM goes broke, share price goes to zero, the contracts become exercisable and the underwriter is forced to buy @ $3.
We'll see what happens.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Terrible Analysis Should be a Crime
I've been following up on a lot of economic reports recently and I have to say that the quality of analysis being published on the internet is crap. Not just ordinary crap, but the kind of crap that might have come out of mutant cow that should've been shot in the first place.
Yeah, it's that bad and I am in a ranting mood.
Just having data doesn't make you intelligent
Sure, having data might make you *seem* intelligent, because it might imply that you did some "research" possibly leading to some interesting conclusion, but saying stupid things based on good data still doesn't change anything-- you'd still be an idiot.
I remember once I was listening to a commentator quote that once that the richest 10%, despite making about 90% of the wealth should be outraged because 10% of the population was paying 90% of the taxes. Hence progressive taxes are a bad thing-- we should have a flat tax instead.
For a second, he sounded intelligent. After I thought about it, he was a total idiot.
Suppose that we did have a flat tax. The people that made 90% of the wealth would pay 90% of the taxes by definition of a flat tax. Suppose that there were 11 people out there. 1 man that made $9 and 10 men that made $1 and everyone was taxed at 10%.
The total amount of money made was $10, so the government would get $1 out of it. Right? So let's figure out how much everyone paid!
The 1 rich guy paid $0.9, the 10 poor guys each paid $0.01 for a total of $0.1. The rich guy that made 90% of the money paid 90% of the taxes!
I am surprised that people with intellectual deficiencies this bad haven't been weeded out by natural selection because it takes talent to be this stupid!
Critical Analysis is Crucial
The ability to think critically is essential, because this directly relates a person's ability to put data into perspective. In other words, it's what gives meaning to data. Meaningless data is useless, the same goes for people that don't have critical thinking skills.
If you think I'm being harsh, well... the conversation would just have to end here... Heh.
Just being Critical doesn't Mean that you're Smart
Especially if you're wrong. We all know the loud mouthed critical dude that thinks he knows his stuff but is completely off the deep end. If you want an ounce of respect, you've gotta be right. Right in ways that are concrete and measurable.
Now that's the real test of intelligence.
It's tough being smart. Smart people know this and know when to shut up. The stupid ones don't.
Yeah, it's that bad and I am in a ranting mood.
Just having data doesn't make you intelligent
Sure, having data might make you *seem* intelligent, because it might imply that you did some "research" possibly leading to some interesting conclusion, but saying stupid things based on good data still doesn't change anything-- you'd still be an idiot.
I remember once I was listening to a commentator quote that once that the richest 10%, despite making about 90% of the wealth should be outraged because 10% of the population was paying 90% of the taxes. Hence progressive taxes are a bad thing-- we should have a flat tax instead.
For a second, he sounded intelligent. After I thought about it, he was a total idiot.
Suppose that we did have a flat tax. The people that made 90% of the wealth would pay 90% of the taxes by definition of a flat tax. Suppose that there were 11 people out there. 1 man that made $9 and 10 men that made $1 and everyone was taxed at 10%.
The total amount of money made was $10, so the government would get $1 out of it. Right? So let's figure out how much everyone paid!
The 1 rich guy paid $0.9, the 10 poor guys each paid $0.01 for a total of $0.1. The rich guy that made 90% of the money paid 90% of the taxes!
I am surprised that people with intellectual deficiencies this bad haven't been weeded out by natural selection because it takes talent to be this stupid!
Critical Analysis is Crucial
The ability to think critically is essential, because this directly relates a person's ability to put data into perspective. In other words, it's what gives meaning to data. Meaningless data is useless, the same goes for people that don't have critical thinking skills.
If you think I'm being harsh, well... the conversation would just have to end here... Heh.
Just being Critical doesn't Mean that you're Smart
Especially if you're wrong. We all know the loud mouthed critical dude that thinks he knows his stuff but is completely off the deep end. If you want an ounce of respect, you've gotta be right. Right in ways that are concrete and measurable.
Now that's the real test of intelligence.
It's tough being smart. Smart people know this and know when to shut up. The stupid ones don't.
Outsourcing done the wrong way
I mentioned earlier that my project group is having a $100,000 machine custom built and delivered for our research work. My research team has decided to put me as the guy that deals with the details of getting the machine working. The hardware setup had been finally completed the machine has been moved into our labs.
The stupid thing is that the people that built the machine haven't been on time with the software, not a single line of code written and the thing is even written labview for crying out loud. And some how, having the control software is costing us $20~$30k to write and they plan to do it in a week. I could do that kind of work in a heartbeat and I've done it before too on a different machine.
So here's the deal, one day at work, my supervisor was off on a business trip for several days and to kill time, I decided to write software to automate one of the experiments we do. Basically, what people used to do was take data every hour for some experiment. The experiment would generally run for as long as someone was at work. What I did is automate the process, I managed to figure out the code and write the entire software in 3 days and now we run data logging experiments for 72 hours instead of just 8 like we used to do.
The guys we've contracted to do the same job are sending in 2 guys and need a week to do it. Seriously, I can do what they do in half the time and half the man power.
I shake my head at this whole thing. The point of outsourcing is to *save* money! Well there you have it... if you want to get rich, be a contractor! Working for big corporations is like taking candy from a baby.
The stupid thing is that the people that built the machine haven't been on time with the software, not a single line of code written and the thing is even written labview for crying out loud. And some how, having the control software is costing us $20~$30k to write and they plan to do it in a week. I could do that kind of work in a heartbeat and I've done it before too on a different machine.
So here's the deal, one day at work, my supervisor was off on a business trip for several days and to kill time, I decided to write software to automate one of the experiments we do. Basically, what people used to do was take data every hour for some experiment. The experiment would generally run for as long as someone was at work. What I did is automate the process, I managed to figure out the code and write the entire software in 3 days and now we run data logging experiments for 72 hours instead of just 8 like we used to do.
The guys we've contracted to do the same job are sending in 2 guys and need a week to do it. Seriously, I can do what they do in half the time and half the man power.
I shake my head at this whole thing. The point of outsourcing is to *save* money! Well there you have it... if you want to get rich, be a contractor! Working for big corporations is like taking candy from a baby.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Almost One Year
It's almost one year since I started working in Japan doing R&D work. I'd have to say that time most certainly flies, that of course might imply that I've been having fun. To a degree, I'd have to say most definitely yes, but I'd have to say that most of my fun isn't work related, but I digress.
A few days ago, I form was sent out to me and to the other new recruits to prepare a form as a sort of a review of their work place, what the environment is like, what we do, personal satisfaction with the job and any other sort of comments that might help us do our job better.
The form needs to be submitted next week and the new recruits are going get together for some kind of meeting with the HR people. So I am going to take this time to write my own review of the year to help me put things into perspective.
The Environment
As far as it comes to working environments, my work place is pretty lax. I don't find myself super bogged down with work nor do I find myself working crazy hours or overtime which is stereotypical with Japanese work culture. I do, however put in about 1 hour of overtime everyday to try and get some extra pocket cash since base salary for new hires are pretty low as it would be nice to have a little extra spending cash for if/when I need it.
The People
The people are generally nice and I am fortunate to be in a fairly friendly team as we like to joke around from time to time while working. There are other small subteams in the group which aren't as lively so I am rather happy about that.
But having a little fun aside, I think there are some communication issues in the sense that there isn't a lot of it happening. I find the people in my team to be kind of in their own little world when it comes to work. I hardly hear from other people about what they really are doing aside from the things presented in the meetings (and simply attending meetings to learn is a terrible way to learn).
I also find that people tend to be quite unresponsive when it comes to new ideas. I've made some presentations on some ideas about what might be nice from time to time but usually it ends into either "we'll look into it" or "ok that seems interesting" and ends at that. For a company that is supposed to be about technological innovation, just passing up ideas or not acting on them is a sign of creative death. It also shows from the kinds of products they've been recently putting out... all of them are totally behind when it comes to the technological revolution curve.
On job satisfaction
Job satisfaction for me is directly related to the amount of inspiration I can derive from my work. Unfortunatly, I am not at all inspired by my work. After condisering what I do and what we are making, I don't see it as a leap forward in technology and at the same time, I am not finding a lot of interesting new ways of doing my job because I need to find a way to make time and get resources to do what I want to do (hence forth I am working on becoming very good with very cheap resources).
The other problem is sort of a lack of fresh and beautiful ideas. I've spoken with people from time to time and I don't feel a vibe of creative energy or vision. It kind of sucks when I have a lot of things that I want to try or do and have no one to talk with about it... or no good source of interesting ideas.
The company is a big place and there are probably lots of people that I haven't met yet that might be really interesting people. But from the people I've met so far, I don't know; something is missing.
A few days ago, I form was sent out to me and to the other new recruits to prepare a form as a sort of a review of their work place, what the environment is like, what we do, personal satisfaction with the job and any other sort of comments that might help us do our job better.
The form needs to be submitted next week and the new recruits are going get together for some kind of meeting with the HR people. So I am going to take this time to write my own review of the year to help me put things into perspective.
The Environment
As far as it comes to working environments, my work place is pretty lax. I don't find myself super bogged down with work nor do I find myself working crazy hours or overtime which is stereotypical with Japanese work culture. I do, however put in about 1 hour of overtime everyday to try and get some extra pocket cash since base salary for new hires are pretty low as it would be nice to have a little extra spending cash for if/when I need it.
The People
The people are generally nice and I am fortunate to be in a fairly friendly team as we like to joke around from time to time while working. There are other small subteams in the group which aren't as lively so I am rather happy about that.
But having a little fun aside, I think there are some communication issues in the sense that there isn't a lot of it happening. I find the people in my team to be kind of in their own little world when it comes to work. I hardly hear from other people about what they really are doing aside from the things presented in the meetings (and simply attending meetings to learn is a terrible way to learn).
I also find that people tend to be quite unresponsive when it comes to new ideas. I've made some presentations on some ideas about what might be nice from time to time but usually it ends into either "we'll look into it" or "ok that seems interesting" and ends at that. For a company that is supposed to be about technological innovation, just passing up ideas or not acting on them is a sign of creative death. It also shows from the kinds of products they've been recently putting out... all of them are totally behind when it comes to the technological revolution curve.
On job satisfaction
Job satisfaction for me is directly related to the amount of inspiration I can derive from my work. Unfortunatly, I am not at all inspired by my work. After condisering what I do and what we are making, I don't see it as a leap forward in technology and at the same time, I am not finding a lot of interesting new ways of doing my job because I need to find a way to make time and get resources to do what I want to do (hence forth I am working on becoming very good with very cheap resources).
The other problem is sort of a lack of fresh and beautiful ideas. I've spoken with people from time to time and I don't feel a vibe of creative energy or vision. It kind of sucks when I have a lot of things that I want to try or do and have no one to talk with about it... or no good source of interesting ideas.
The company is a big place and there are probably lots of people that I haven't met yet that might be really interesting people. But from the people I've met so far, I don't know; something is missing.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
And now the US Republicans care about inflation!?
Politics generally make me sick, because it's usually about chest thumping and making one's self look good and by pretending to care about constituents when it's really about caring for their own asses.
I saw a youtube clip today of republican Dan Burton complaining about the devaluation of the US dollar and how he managed to get contacted by some Chinese representative that they were worried about the devaluation of treasury bonds they held.
How else should I put it other than that this one terribly big bullshit act.
A Sense of Perspective
Let me be blunt. It was the Republican government that put the US into a huge debt into the first place by the Iraq war and then dishing out bailouts for the banks in when the financial crisis came out. And now that they have just lost the house to the Democrats that they want to complain about spending too much and the devaluation of the US dollar!?
Where were the calls for prudence when it came to deficit spending when the Republicans were in power? The only one Republican that cared dearly about excessive government spending was Ron Paul, who had little support from his colleagues when we was trying to reign in big deficit spending.
It makes me sick at how quickly some politicians change the tune of their song.
If politicians were paid in proportion to their level of approval, most of them would probably be broke.
I saw a youtube clip today of republican Dan Burton complaining about the devaluation of the US dollar and how he managed to get contacted by some Chinese representative that they were worried about the devaluation of treasury bonds they held.
How else should I put it other than that this one terribly big bullshit act.
A Sense of Perspective
Let me be blunt. It was the Republican government that put the US into a huge debt into the first place by the Iraq war and then dishing out bailouts for the banks in when the financial crisis came out. And now that they have just lost the house to the Democrats that they want to complain about spending too much and the devaluation of the US dollar!?
Where were the calls for prudence when it came to deficit spending when the Republicans were in power? The only one Republican that cared dearly about excessive government spending was Ron Paul, who had little support from his colleagues when we was trying to reign in big deficit spending.
It makes me sick at how quickly some politicians change the tune of their song.
If politicians were paid in proportion to their level of approval, most of them would probably be broke.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Scalable systems and businesses
If you want to make lots of money, learning about scalable systems and businesses are a must. Making a profitable business is one thing, but setting up a condition where your business can grow to an indefinite size is completely another problem, and often a very overlooked problem.
The biggest advancements in human productivity (and at the same time, wealth) has always involved the development of scalable systems. Starting from the development of the printing press, the industrial process and onwards to the information revoution, all of these are examples of the ability productivity and profits to an arbitrary large size. The only limiation preventing infinite scaling is demand.
The biggest businesses bringing in the biggest revenues are the ones that have scaled the most easily. The finance sector is perhaps the most easiest to scale as you don't really have to produce anything and profits come in from lending other people's money. Software is another good example with the birth of Microsoft as the technology to make copies of software is arbitrary small and disks and CDs being fairly easy to distribute. Finally, companies like Google and Amazon have been able to take advantage of the scalability of the internet to do business with arbitrary large numbers of people.
What can't be scaled, and revenues at the same time, are things that are directly limited to your capacity to produce or do something. In other words, it's highly unlikely that anyone living on the productivity of their own manual labor will become very rich.
Suppose that someone opened a small burger stall somewhere. The maximum amount of money a person making and selling burgers is generally limited by their individual capacity to produce burgers. Should they work in their position for their entire life, it is much less likely that they will be able to make large amounts of money.
Suppose now that the burger flipper is now able to hire people to flip burgers, and let's assume that the burgers this stall makes is exceptionally good that demand is very high. All he would have to do is hire sufficient numbers of people to make his trademark burgers thus scaling his output and revenues at the same time. None of this would be possible had he remained a cook his entire life.
The equation for the amount of money that you should be able to pull in should be:
total revenue = profitability*scalability
Now all you need to find is something that is both very profitable and scalable as a business.
The biggest advancements in human productivity (and at the same time, wealth) has always involved the development of scalable systems. Starting from the development of the printing press, the industrial process and onwards to the information revoution, all of these are examples of the ability productivity and profits to an arbitrary large size. The only limiation preventing infinite scaling is demand.
The biggest businesses bringing in the biggest revenues are the ones that have scaled the most easily. The finance sector is perhaps the most easiest to scale as you don't really have to produce anything and profits come in from lending other people's money. Software is another good example with the birth of Microsoft as the technology to make copies of software is arbitrary small and disks and CDs being fairly easy to distribute. Finally, companies like Google and Amazon have been able to take advantage of the scalability of the internet to do business with arbitrary large numbers of people.
What can't be scaled, and revenues at the same time, are things that are directly limited to your capacity to produce or do something. In other words, it's highly unlikely that anyone living on the productivity of their own manual labor will become very rich.
Suppose that someone opened a small burger stall somewhere. The maximum amount of money a person making and selling burgers is generally limited by their individual capacity to produce burgers. Should they work in their position for their entire life, it is much less likely that they will be able to make large amounts of money.
Suppose now that the burger flipper is now able to hire people to flip burgers, and let's assume that the burgers this stall makes is exceptionally good that demand is very high. All he would have to do is hire sufficient numbers of people to make his trademark burgers thus scaling his output and revenues at the same time. None of this would be possible had he remained a cook his entire life.
The equation for the amount of money that you should be able to pull in should be:
total revenue = profitability*scalability
Now all you need to find is something that is both very profitable and scalable as a business.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Unproductive
For the past 2 months, I've been rather unproductive. Unproductive in the sense that I haven't been doing anything worthy of having a positive or memorable impact upon myself. During the weekdays, I come home at about 7 pm (squeezing about 1.25 hours of overtime), whipping out some dinner while I surf the net or play computer games until about 10 pm. After that, I start scouring the net for economic data or reports (most of which are garbage) before it hits 11:30 pm here, which is perfectly the time when the NYSE opens and I watch what happens until about about 12:30 am before I goto bed.
On weekends, my days are usually filled with gatherings. Events that I mostly get invited out to and I oblige, usually heading out in the evenings to meet up with people whom I seem to meet only from time to time for dinner or drinks. Sometimes I meet some interesting people, but I only keep occasional contact with them. When it comes to meeting people, something seems markedly different from the experiences I've had in the past. Now that I look at it, the environment in which I meet people has changed rather drastically. But I'll talk about that in a different post.
Suffice to say, I haven't been doing anything of real significance lately and my time is being poorly spent.
Dealing with the Urge to do nothing
I have to say that I am fortunate that I live close to work. I can wake up at 8:20 and still check in by 8:59 after changing, eating breakfast, reading a little news and then brushing my teeth before a brisk paced walk from my room to the office. Compared to other people that have to commute by train and spend about 30-40 minutes a day on travel, I save at least a productive hour everyday. The only problem is that the only thing that I've found my self doing with it is goofing off and that is going to have to stop, and that is going to be thepoint of this post.
There are a variety of things that I would like to do but just end up having "no time for it". I'd have to say that having "no time" is a terrible excuse because I am quite sure that most people have time in general somewhere that can be allocated to doing something productive.
I do believe that people in general are programmed to operate on their urges. Whether be it determining when it's time to eat, sleep, watch TV and etc. The problem with I think is the programming of our urges, since being young-- most of us have not been trained or programmed while young to be self-productive, or perhaps have the urge to do things that have a positive impact on ourselves. Instead, I believe that most of us shun the work or effort required to be productive and squander it by finding ways of killing time, which seems to me to be a rather slow form of suicide-- killing time is like killing yourself; second by second.
I think that most of this poor mental programming comes from school, by some how learning that studying, work, exercising or activities that are supposed to be "good for you" is a chore. The problem with this is that it leaves a bitter taste of doing things that are "good for you" in one's mental mouth making people less inclined to be self-productive and find ways of avoiding such activities.
It is perhaps one of the reasons that entertainment has become such an important part of most people's lives; it becomes quite obvious from looking at my entertainment expenditures in my annual budget.
Hard work shouldn't be painful
I don't believe that hard work should be painful. But it seems to be the way people are taught to think about it; if you're working hard at something, then you're probably exerting a lot of will power doing something that you don't like. It is quite rare to find anyone hard at work at something they really like. Work has that kind of image, it's something that "pays the bills;" it's just something that helps keep you alive.
People generally should work hard on things that they enjoy. The other important thing that people should be able to do is work hard at things that have a direct positive impact on their lives. There is a reason people exercise, or study languages, build things and etc. And what causes people to do these things is motivation.
The unfortunate thing is that most motivation that encourages us to do these things are somehow related to pain. "Study or else you're not going to pass your test," or "Work your job or else you'll get fired" or something of that variety. It is something of a rather sad trait of our modern society.
I believe that a life is much better lived if motivations sounded like "I studied math because I thought it was interesting," or "I grow strawberries because I like their taste." It is far too rare for me to find people doing the things they want to do. And I think that is sad.
Wrong Obligations
I am starting to believe now that we've been taught to live by the wrong obligations; the idea that we have to be whipped into being educated to take up a job that we probably won't like so we take on the heavy burden buying a house and then raise children to do the same thing.
There is a better way of living and it's finding the things that you enjoy and having the freedom to pursue them. But the problem is that most people don't even have a chance to get there, because we've all been told that we've got to work hard at the things that we don't like to live a decent life.
Most people live this way because they know that they can survive doing this. The sad thing is that most people will likely never have the courage to take the risk to find a way to make a living doing something they enjoy. And I think that's the whole problem with it all, most people just can't find enough positive motivation to do something they really enjoy, because somehow we've setup too many mental barriers to do it.
I'm tired and I've flipped back through my post. I'm totally rambling. It's been too long since I've done a real post. I need to get back into it again.
On weekends, my days are usually filled with gatherings. Events that I mostly get invited out to and I oblige, usually heading out in the evenings to meet up with people whom I seem to meet only from time to time for dinner or drinks. Sometimes I meet some interesting people, but I only keep occasional contact with them. When it comes to meeting people, something seems markedly different from the experiences I've had in the past. Now that I look at it, the environment in which I meet people has changed rather drastically. But I'll talk about that in a different post.
Suffice to say, I haven't been doing anything of real significance lately and my time is being poorly spent.
Dealing with the Urge to do nothing
I have to say that I am fortunate that I live close to work. I can wake up at 8:20 and still check in by 8:59 after changing, eating breakfast, reading a little news and then brushing my teeth before a brisk paced walk from my room to the office. Compared to other people that have to commute by train and spend about 30-40 minutes a day on travel, I save at least a productive hour everyday. The only problem is that the only thing that I've found my self doing with it is goofing off and that is going to have to stop, and that is going to be thepoint of this post.
There are a variety of things that I would like to do but just end up having "no time for it". I'd have to say that having "no time" is a terrible excuse because I am quite sure that most people have time in general somewhere that can be allocated to doing something productive.
I do believe that people in general are programmed to operate on their urges. Whether be it determining when it's time to eat, sleep, watch TV and etc. The problem with I think is the programming of our urges, since being young-- most of us have not been trained or programmed while young to be self-productive, or perhaps have the urge to do things that have a positive impact on ourselves. Instead, I believe that most of us shun the work or effort required to be productive and squander it by finding ways of killing time, which seems to me to be a rather slow form of suicide-- killing time is like killing yourself; second by second.
I think that most of this poor mental programming comes from school, by some how learning that studying, work, exercising or activities that are supposed to be "good for you" is a chore. The problem with this is that it leaves a bitter taste of doing things that are "good for you" in one's mental mouth making people less inclined to be self-productive and find ways of avoiding such activities.
It is perhaps one of the reasons that entertainment has become such an important part of most people's lives; it becomes quite obvious from looking at my entertainment expenditures in my annual budget.
Hard work shouldn't be painful
I don't believe that hard work should be painful. But it seems to be the way people are taught to think about it; if you're working hard at something, then you're probably exerting a lot of will power doing something that you don't like. It is quite rare to find anyone hard at work at something they really like. Work has that kind of image, it's something that "pays the bills;" it's just something that helps keep you alive.
People generally should work hard on things that they enjoy. The other important thing that people should be able to do is work hard at things that have a direct positive impact on their lives. There is a reason people exercise, or study languages, build things and etc. And what causes people to do these things is motivation.
The unfortunate thing is that most motivation that encourages us to do these things are somehow related to pain. "Study or else you're not going to pass your test," or "Work your job or else you'll get fired" or something of that variety. It is something of a rather sad trait of our modern society.
I believe that a life is much better lived if motivations sounded like "I studied math because I thought it was interesting," or "I grow strawberries because I like their taste." It is far too rare for me to find people doing the things they want to do. And I think that is sad.
Wrong Obligations
I am starting to believe now that we've been taught to live by the wrong obligations; the idea that we have to be whipped into being educated to take up a job that we probably won't like so we take on the heavy burden buying a house and then raise children to do the same thing.
There is a better way of living and it's finding the things that you enjoy and having the freedom to pursue them. But the problem is that most people don't even have a chance to get there, because we've all been told that we've got to work hard at the things that we don't like to live a decent life.
Most people live this way because they know that they can survive doing this. The sad thing is that most people will likely never have the courage to take the risk to find a way to make a living doing something they enjoy. And I think that's the whole problem with it all, most people just can't find enough positive motivation to do something they really enjoy, because somehow we've setup too many mental barriers to do it.
I'm tired and I've flipped back through my post. I'm totally rambling. It's been too long since I've done a real post. I need to get back into it again.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Corporations: Where creative people go to die
I work in a large corporation. Those of you that know me know what that company is. It's been nearly a year since I've joined the company and so far the experience has been lukewarm.
Since joining the company, as sort of an "initiate" into this whole corporate world, most newly hired members have attended all sorts of little lectures from the HR group with huge dreams of us creating all sorts of new fangled technologies for the future. At the same time, I still remember the HR people, during our orientation that our relationship with the company was that they "pay us and we work for them." We might not like the job we do, or some of the people around us, but the contractual relationship is pretty much "do what we're told to." Sounded like a paid version of slavery to me.
And now, that I think about it all, the whole idea seems rather absurd. I know there are people within the company coming up with projects that will hopefully make large sums of cash, the reward structure is that you might get a promotion or a bonus.. somewhere in the ball park of $10,000 or more depending on the contribution. But seriously, why would you want to settle for $10,000 if you're coming up with a multi-million dollar idea? I don't see any really good incentives.
And with that happening. I also think working in an environment like this will cause creative people to eventually go brain dead. I for one firmly believe that believe that creativity cannot be fostered by forcing people to follow orders. Especially from older people that aren't as in touch with the latest technologies or where the direction of technology will be going. I don't believe that most higher ups have the youthful visions of the younger people when it comes to understanding the potentials of what we can do with technology.
It says a lot about why most of the hottest start ups and growing companies are or have been full of young people. Older people, especially normal managers usually just can't cut it with coming up a great idea. It seems to be that they latch on to whatever seems hot or a cool seeming idea of someone else and start whipping people to do their bidding. I think it is kind of rare to find a management level kind of person that truly understands the pulse technology and where might it go.
One must truly love what they do, understand what would be truly be great to have and understand the community of people that use these things to understand where things will go. I'd have to say that most management people don't understand... they're just being paid to have their underlings make somethings that'll turn a profit.
Usually for large corporations it means more of the same. Make things smaller or bigger, faster, cheaper whatever. It's all sort of a variation of the same thing. 30~40 years ago, I guess you could say that having corporations was a necessity, because it was pretty expensive to get things done. Things have changed and the up front capital to building something or even getting a startup up and running has gotten much cheaper and I think it is the small startups with the fresh ideas are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact on society.
Large corporations aren't places where people have new ideas. Atleast that it from what I've seen so far, no matter how the managers and HR people want people to be creative to come up with the new great hit. The working environment of a large corporation just doesn't encourage people to be creative or take chances.
You just can't be creative when you have a bunch of managers telling you what to do while at the same time having to do all sorts of stupid things to get an idea past a manager so that you can just try it. It just doesn't work that way.
Would you want to pay $100,000 or $1,000
You know the saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM," I now have an idea of what that really means.
To do some experimentation work, we're ordering a $100,000 machine, custom built from the ground up. We have some power supplies here, some data loggers there and a bunch of other high precision stuff that lets us connect some wires to samples and measure data. After going through 2~3 levels of management to get the funding that machine is getting built. The problem is that I believe that I can build something that can do the same thing and probably out spec the machine that is coming in for about $1,000.
Sure, I made a presentation and suggested the idea of my version of the machine to the leaders, but it gained no traction. One suggested that it might be too much trouble to build the thing on our own. I recognize that the circuits that I've built will need some fine tuning to get things into spec but I think it's something doable. It annoyed me considering that with the current economic situation that we are being told to slow down on what we spend our cash on. Hell I'd rather build the machine and sell it off to them and pocket the difference!
The thing is that out of the people in my work group, I am pretty much the only person that knows anything about designing circuits and making programs. This is totally up my ally. Instead, they make me take charge of farming out the work to an outside company which I have a feeling that I can outclass the engineers doing the electronics and programming. I can understand why people might think spending $100,000 on the machine that we are brining in is reasonable but it's people with the $1,000 idea that can blow this stuff out of the water is what revolutions are made out of.
I have no interest in trying to bash heads with management because sometimes I think they're off the deep end. I've tried once to change the culture of a laboratory but that plan was met with resistance and apathy.
It would be exactly like the engineers at Xerox first giving birth to the graphical user interface and the mouse and then having the management people have no clue what this all ment. Apple and Microsoft came swooping in and now this technology is everywhere. It's exactly like that. Xerox would most certainly be smacking themselves in the head now for letting something like this get away from them.
I've once read somewhere that even if you've got a great idea, you're going to have to ram it down the throats of management to get anything done... in that sense, people won't understand a good idea even if it smacks them in the face. Some people at first thought that Google was a stupid idea with Yahoo, Excite and all the other search engines out there. I'll let results speak for themselves.
So far what I've learned is that if you really want something done, you're going to have to rely on your self.
Since joining the company, as sort of an "initiate" into this whole corporate world, most newly hired members have attended all sorts of little lectures from the HR group with huge dreams of us creating all sorts of new fangled technologies for the future. At the same time, I still remember the HR people, during our orientation that our relationship with the company was that they "pay us and we work for them." We might not like the job we do, or some of the people around us, but the contractual relationship is pretty much "do what we're told to." Sounded like a paid version of slavery to me.
And now, that I think about it all, the whole idea seems rather absurd. I know there are people within the company coming up with projects that will hopefully make large sums of cash, the reward structure is that you might get a promotion or a bonus.. somewhere in the ball park of $10,000 or more depending on the contribution. But seriously, why would you want to settle for $10,000 if you're coming up with a multi-million dollar idea? I don't see any really good incentives.
And with that happening. I also think working in an environment like this will cause creative people to eventually go brain dead. I for one firmly believe that believe that creativity cannot be fostered by forcing people to follow orders. Especially from older people that aren't as in touch with the latest technologies or where the direction of technology will be going. I don't believe that most higher ups have the youthful visions of the younger people when it comes to understanding the potentials of what we can do with technology.
It says a lot about why most of the hottest start ups and growing companies are or have been full of young people. Older people, especially normal managers usually just can't cut it with coming up a great idea. It seems to be that they latch on to whatever seems hot or a cool seeming idea of someone else and start whipping people to do their bidding. I think it is kind of rare to find a management level kind of person that truly understands the pulse technology and where might it go.
One must truly love what they do, understand what would be truly be great to have and understand the community of people that use these things to understand where things will go. I'd have to say that most management people don't understand... they're just being paid to have their underlings make somethings that'll turn a profit.
Usually for large corporations it means more of the same. Make things smaller or bigger, faster, cheaper whatever. It's all sort of a variation of the same thing. 30~40 years ago, I guess you could say that having corporations was a necessity, because it was pretty expensive to get things done. Things have changed and the up front capital to building something or even getting a startup up and running has gotten much cheaper and I think it is the small startups with the fresh ideas are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact on society.
Large corporations aren't places where people have new ideas. Atleast that it from what I've seen so far, no matter how the managers and HR people want people to be creative to come up with the new great hit. The working environment of a large corporation just doesn't encourage people to be creative or take chances.
You just can't be creative when you have a bunch of managers telling you what to do while at the same time having to do all sorts of stupid things to get an idea past a manager so that you can just try it. It just doesn't work that way.
Would you want to pay $100,000 or $1,000
You know the saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM," I now have an idea of what that really means.
To do some experimentation work, we're ordering a $100,000 machine, custom built from the ground up. We have some power supplies here, some data loggers there and a bunch of other high precision stuff that lets us connect some wires to samples and measure data. After going through 2~3 levels of management to get the funding that machine is getting built. The problem is that I believe that I can build something that can do the same thing and probably out spec the machine that is coming in for about $1,000.
Sure, I made a presentation and suggested the idea of my version of the machine to the leaders, but it gained no traction. One suggested that it might be too much trouble to build the thing on our own. I recognize that the circuits that I've built will need some fine tuning to get things into spec but I think it's something doable. It annoyed me considering that with the current economic situation that we are being told to slow down on what we spend our cash on. Hell I'd rather build the machine and sell it off to them and pocket the difference!
The thing is that out of the people in my work group, I am pretty much the only person that knows anything about designing circuits and making programs. This is totally up my ally. Instead, they make me take charge of farming out the work to an outside company which I have a feeling that I can outclass the engineers doing the electronics and programming. I can understand why people might think spending $100,000 on the machine that we are brining in is reasonable but it's people with the $1,000 idea that can blow this stuff out of the water is what revolutions are made out of.
I have no interest in trying to bash heads with management because sometimes I think they're off the deep end. I've tried once to change the culture of a laboratory but that plan was met with resistance and apathy.
It would be exactly like the engineers at Xerox first giving birth to the graphical user interface and the mouse and then having the management people have no clue what this all ment. Apple and Microsoft came swooping in and now this technology is everywhere. It's exactly like that. Xerox would most certainly be smacking themselves in the head now for letting something like this get away from them.
I've once read somewhere that even if you've got a great idea, you're going to have to ram it down the throats of management to get anything done... in that sense, people won't understand a good idea even if it smacks them in the face. Some people at first thought that Google was a stupid idea with Yahoo, Excite and all the other search engines out there. I'll let results speak for themselves.
So far what I've learned is that if you really want something done, you're going to have to rely on your self.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
2007 and 2008 Yearly Expenditures
It's been a while since the last time I posted. Since the new year has started and I have some interesting data, I've decided to update with a post. And now, without further adieu I shall get on with it.
For those in the know, I keep track living expenses so I have an idea of where my money goes. The other benefit of tracking expenses is the ability to forecast future expenses which might be useful for setting cash flow objectives (ie. setting up income goals). The previous year is an interesting year, in that it was my first year (well, 9 months) as a salaried worker and with it, a move from Sendai to the outskirts of Tokyo.
Interestingly, I've realized that I've never posted my 2007 living expenses and I will be posting that data along with my 2008 data. The comparison beween 2007 and 2008 will be interesting as I will be able to compare my life as a student, living in Sendai versus living "in" Tokyo as a salaried worker. I will automatically note that living expenses in Sendai (especially for restaurants and entertainment) is much lower compared to Tokyo and we will see some of this information coming out of the graphs I will be presenting next.
2007 Expenditure Results
I shall start off with my year 2007 data. Firstly a bar graph of my categorized monthly data in the following figure (click to enlarge).
The currency for this and the following figures will be presented in Yen. The yen is quite strong at the moment with the exchange rate sitting at 100 yen : $1.4 CAD. The best way to interpret yen, however (especially when living in Japan), is to equate 100 yen to about $1, which is what 100 yen feels like when you spend it in Japan.
The graph is broken down to Food, Goods, Transport, Service, Room, Entertainment and Travel expenditures. My last report in 2006 did not include the "Travel" grouping but, I found that travel expenses are very significant irregular expenditures that should have a category of its own-- I've often found myself having a hard time classifying travel expenses between "Transportation" and "Entertainment" expenses as traveling is the intertwined combination of both.
Firstly I will summarize the 2007 cost totals by category:
Food: 267,465 Yen (think, $2,670)
Goods: 127,285 Yen (think, $1,270)
Transport: 61,416 Yen (think $610)
Service: 149,787 Yen (think $1,500)
Room: 391,232 Yen (think $3,900)
Entertainment: 234,254 Yen (think $2,340)
Travel: 1,083,542 Yen (think $10,800)
Firstly, monthly food expenses hover in the 40,000~28,000 (think $400~$280) range. The food expenditures tend to vary if I go traveling or not, where food expenditures tend to get lumped in with travel expenses and food expenses for the months of Nov and Dec are zero during my 3 month travel stint through SE Asia. Food expenses tend to be a rather stable recurring expense and on average sits about 35,000 yen/month.
The goods expenditure for 2007 was 127,000 (think $1,270) for the year. The only major expense I incurred was buying a suit for 31,000 yen. The rest of the incurred goods expenses ended up for esoteric things like floss, cell phone straps, post cards and etc.
Service fees totaled 149,787 yen (think $1,500) for the year. Half of the costs came from monthly cell phone usage (about 4,000 yen/month) and other small things like health insurance, snow board rentals and the like. I should also note that I was swindled out of 20,000 yen ish in Denmark by some Russians and I've lumed the damage as a "service fee" in my accounting books.
Transportation expenditures mainly consisted of me buying gas for my scooter (about 2000 yen/month) and the occasional car trips with friends into the country side, which might be a 4,000 yen/person (think $40) kind of thing. In general, my transportation costs have been quite lot.
Rent fees varied between 29,750 yen to 33,935 yen/month. The variation owing to varied usage of electricity, water and gas. Housing relating costs tend to be very constant.
Entertainment costs at it's maximum peaked at the 29,600 yen/month with the minimum sitting at 17,400 yen/month during a full month in Sendai. Compared to going out in Tokyo, going out for food and drinks or doing something is much cheaper compared to Tokyo, that data will be presented later.
Travel costs for the year came in at a whopping 1,083,542 yen, which would feel like something in the ball park of $10,800. The main expenditures here were a 10 day trip to France in February, a trip back to Canada in May, hitting Aomori in August for one of their summer festivals and the total costs of my first 2.5 months of traveling through SE Asia starting through mid-october with costs being tallied up to the end of December.
Living in SE Asia is very cheap. My traveling expenses for November, while I was in Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia accounted for a total of 227,684 yen (feels like $2,270) for an entire month of expenditures! This is like 1/2 the cost of a round trip ticket to Canada and I should note that these expenses also include plane tickets for me traveling around countries in SE as well!
The most financially painful parts of my travels were through Australia and New Zealand, where the high currency costs and the high living costs of those countries immediately doubled my traveling expenditures to 401,967 Yen (or like $4,020) for the month and this is after me trimming down my expenses like crazy in these countries (I lived relatively well in SE asia!). The combined costs of my SE asia costs for Oct, Nov and Dec with my France and trip to Canada quite quickly put the my traveling costs to about $10,000 CAD for the year, my largest (though irregular) expenditure.
My total living costs for the year of 2007 in Japan amounted to a total of 2,314,981 yen, half of the expenses coming from traveling. I know for sure that if I wanted to save money, I'd stop traveling.
The following pie chart illustrates the percentage breakdown of my living expenses (click for a larger image):
As shown here, travel expenses logged in at 47% of my expenses, nearly half of of all the money I spent in 2007. The next larges expenditure comes in the form of my rooming fees at 17%, then food at 12% then entertainment at 10%. The remaining service, transport and goods fees sum up to approximately 12%. If I wanted to trim down my expenditures, the most obvious things would be to trim down my travel and entertainment expenses and the remaining expenses would be considered "fixed expenditures."
2008 Expenditure Results and comparison with 2007
The end of my SE Asia trip occurred in mid January where I made my return to Japan for my placement interview prior to starting work. After the interview, I would remain in Japan until the end of March, where I would make my move from Sendai to the outskirts of Tokyo in a city called Atsugi. My expenditures for this year will generally include costs to settling down as I picked things up I needed over the entire year.
For my 2008 yearly data, I have made an additional category in addition to the usual Food, Goods, Transport, Service, Room, Entertainment and Travel break down to include salary deductions, as 2008 marks the year after I graduated from my masters program and me starting my work, and thus becoming required to pay government related expenses.
My 2008 expenses are summarized in the following chart (click for a larger image):
The summarized 2008 total expenses are summarized below:
Food: 400,223 Yen (think, $4,000)
Goods: 327,232 Yen (think, $3,270)
Transport: 141,896 Yen (think $1,410)
Service: 149,146 Yen (think $1,500)
Room: 281,159 Yen (think $2,800)
Entertainment: 474,034 Yen (think $4,740)
Travel: 436,524 Yen (think $4,370)
Deductions: 404,682 Yen (think $4,040)
Looking at the monthly data for food since moving to Atsugi, I find that in general, I am spending approximately 40,000 yen/month or 10,000 yen more/month to what I was spending in Sendai. In general, I am finding that I spend about 1,000 yen more every time I go to the grocery store when buying things. I have heard from friends that the grocery store near by where I live is somewhat expensive and that is showing up in my monthly expenes. There are some cheaper grocery stores in Atsugi, but it takes an additional 10 minute round trip via scooter. It would be an interesting experiment to see what savings I can generate by changing stores.
The costs for Goods for this year totaled 327,232 yen, with the most signigicant expenditure being the new desktop computer I bought over the summer. The computer is a Dual Core Athlon, 2x500 GB hard drives, 2x19" monitors, Geforce 9600 video card, 4 GB DDR2 ram system. This desktop has incredible power over a laptop and is still cheaper with a total price tag of about 120,000 yen (think $1,200 CAD). Most purchase of durable goods for this year included electronics parts in the 10,000 yen range / shopping spree and wedding presents for friends whom have rencelty gotten married.
Transportations costs for this year totaled 141,896 yen. Compared to my 2007 transportation costs, this is a drastic increase owing to weekend trips to Tokyo via train. A one way ticket to Tokyo from where I live costs in the range of 500 yen and traveling around to the different parts of Tokyo will cost an additional 300 yen extra, easily bringing my weekend transportation expenses to 1,300 yen. Having friends in the Tokyo area results in having everyone quite spread out, as opposed to having most of your friends concentrated in a smaller region while living in Sendai. While in Sendai, I rarely had to use any public transport to get out anywhere to meet up with friends. This is not the case when it comes to living in Tokyo. Monthly train costs easily rack up to about 6,000 yen/month which is easily 3 times the 2,000/month I used to spend just on gas for my scooter while in Sendai.
Service expenses for 2008 totalled 149,146 yen, which is almost spot on with the 149,787 worth of expenses for 2007. Apparently, moving to Tokyo did not result in a chance in my cell phone habits. Other notable service charges for this year included moving costs to get my stuff out of Sendai to Atsugi. My moving costs were subsidized up to 50,000 yen and I took an additional 28,000 yen additional charge to move extra things and my scooter here.
Room related expenditures totaled at 281,159 yen for 2008 compared to 391,232 Yen compared to 2007. This is mostly due to living in the company dorm where the rent is cheaper compared to living on one's own. I was previously living in an apparement share arrangement in Sendai with monthly base rent at 28,000 yen/month (a pretty good deal!) and I am now currently living in the company dorm at 16,000 yen/month, yielding the a 12,000 yen difference in savings. Over a 9 month period, this easily equates to the 100,000 yen savings recieved over the 9 months I've lived here. Though, if it would mean that I pay 100,000 more, it would be nice to be freely able to invite friends over. Unfortunately due to security reasons, friends are not generally allowed to stay over in the company dorms.
Entertainment costs for 2008 totaled 474,034 yen compared to 234,254 yen in 2007; a 240,000 yen increase (about 2 times). Going out and doing the same things I did in Sendai compared to doing things in Tokyo is doubly expensive. If I were to go till past midnight on food and drinks in Sendai, I'd spend about 5,000~6,000 yen. If I were to do the same thing in Tokyo, I'd spend 5,000 yen on the first dinner and drinks and then +3,000 yen on the next place for drinks (I also have to say that the food in Sendai also tastes better!) Often parties and events occur far from where I live and I generally would incur transportation costs to get to the event. Needless to say, going out and having fun in Tokyo is easly 2x more expensive compared to Sendai. Include going out for dinners and the occasional drink on weekday with colleagues, the costs here easily add up.
Travel costs for 2008 totaled 436,524 yen. The bulk of my travel expenses for this year was from my trip back to Vancouver + Toronto and the return leg of my New Zealand trip in January. Smaller traveling costs were incurred in Oct, Nov and Dec from trips back to Sendai for the Jazz festival, a wedding and an alumni reunion for my research lab.
Salary deductions for this year totaled 404,682 yen. Deductions represent any direct deduction from salary and government related taxes. These deductions include income tax, pension payments, unemployment insurance and medical insurance. The spike seen in December is a result from receiving a "winter bonus" which is payed to most salaried workers and paying taxes on it. In Japan, bonuses are given out in summer and winter totaling about 2.5 times your monthly salary (as a result, monthly salaries here are a bit lower).
My total expenditures for 2008 totaled 2,614,900 yen (think $26,150). Living expenses (total expenditures - salary deductions) were 2,210,218 (think $22,100) compared to 2,314,981 yen in living expenses in 2007. The numbers are comparable because of the expensive SE Asia trip represented in the costs.
There will be an additional tax (municipal) deduction on my income starting next year as municipal taxes take a year to kick in and will result in a doubling in the amount of taxes I pay (yuck). Those numbers will be seen after my 2009 expenditure summary is compiled.
Finally, attached below is the pie chart of 2008's expenditures:
Compared to the 2007 pie chart we see that the cost of food (12% vs 15%), entertainment (10% vs 18%) and transportation (3% vs 5%) have increased since moving from Sendai. We see a decrease in rooming costs (11% vs 17%) resulting from living in the cheaper company dorm. Service fees remain relatively the same. Travel costs are lower due to the lack of any "long big" trips for this year and in it's place, I get to pay taxes in the form of deductions instead.
I have to say that comparing 2007 and 2008 pie charts is rather misleading because percentages tend to be viewed as linear. For example one might just think that transportation costs from 3% to 5% as something insignificant since it might only look like a 2% increase (it pretty much doubled in my case!) and it also does not do a good job of illustrating the total amount of cash spent. I will limit pie chart graphical interpretations to the year only and avoid pie chart to pie chart comparisons in the future.
Final Comments
By the looks of the data, it does seem that living in Sendai and maintaining a social life is much cheaper (at about 2x) compared to the Tokyo region. Transportation costs are also cheaper for Sendai since traveling around by train is not really required (especially if you live in the down town area).
Most of my disposable income seems to go into the traveling and entertainment category. If I wanted to increase the amount of money I saved, it would be an no brainer to cut back on traveling and going out. Traveling and entertainment costs for 2008 hit in the 900,000 yen range (think $9,000). Obviously cutting down to zero would be quite painful, but cutting down to 450,000 yen (think $4,500) would be rather reasonable (if most of the cutting occured with the traveling part). I spent about 300,000 yen on goods and it might be reasonable to cut that down to 150,000 to get a total 600,000 (think $6,000) in savings over an entire year.
Interestingly $6,000 over an entire year somehow doesn't sound like a huge amount, but it does makes quite a difference when it comes to traveling and having fun. However, if saved and invested properly over several years, it can make quite a difference. I would be interested to run some calculations later on, but that would be for a different post.
For those in the know, I keep track living expenses so I have an idea of where my money goes. The other benefit of tracking expenses is the ability to forecast future expenses which might be useful for setting cash flow objectives (ie. setting up income goals). The previous year is an interesting year, in that it was my first year (well, 9 months) as a salaried worker and with it, a move from Sendai to the outskirts of Tokyo.
Interestingly, I've realized that I've never posted my 2007 living expenses and I will be posting that data along with my 2008 data. The comparison beween 2007 and 2008 will be interesting as I will be able to compare my life as a student, living in Sendai versus living "in" Tokyo as a salaried worker. I will automatically note that living expenses in Sendai (especially for restaurants and entertainment) is much lower compared to Tokyo and we will see some of this information coming out of the graphs I will be presenting next.
2007 Expenditure Results
I shall start off with my year 2007 data. Firstly a bar graph of my categorized monthly data in the following figure (click to enlarge).
The currency for this and the following figures will be presented in Yen. The yen is quite strong at the moment with the exchange rate sitting at 100 yen : $1.4 CAD. The best way to interpret yen, however (especially when living in Japan), is to equate 100 yen to about $1, which is what 100 yen feels like when you spend it in Japan.
The graph is broken down to Food, Goods, Transport, Service, Room, Entertainment and Travel expenditures. My last report in 2006 did not include the "Travel" grouping but, I found that travel expenses are very significant irregular expenditures that should have a category of its own-- I've often found myself having a hard time classifying travel expenses between "Transportation" and "Entertainment" expenses as traveling is the intertwined combination of both.
Firstly I will summarize the 2007 cost totals by category:
Food: 267,465 Yen (think, $2,670)
Goods: 127,285 Yen (think, $1,270)
Transport: 61,416 Yen (think $610)
Service: 149,787 Yen (think $1,500)
Room: 391,232 Yen (think $3,900)
Entertainment: 234,254 Yen (think $2,340)
Travel: 1,083,542 Yen (think $10,800)
Firstly, monthly food expenses hover in the 40,000~28,000 (think $400~$280) range. The food expenditures tend to vary if I go traveling or not, where food expenditures tend to get lumped in with travel expenses and food expenses for the months of Nov and Dec are zero during my 3 month travel stint through SE Asia. Food expenses tend to be a rather stable recurring expense and on average sits about 35,000 yen/month.
The goods expenditure for 2007 was 127,000 (think $1,270) for the year. The only major expense I incurred was buying a suit for 31,000 yen. The rest of the incurred goods expenses ended up for esoteric things like floss, cell phone straps, post cards and etc.
Service fees totaled 149,787 yen (think $1,500) for the year. Half of the costs came from monthly cell phone usage (about 4,000 yen/month) and other small things like health insurance, snow board rentals and the like. I should also note that I was swindled out of 20,000 yen ish in Denmark by some Russians and I've lumed the damage as a "service fee" in my accounting books.
Transportation expenditures mainly consisted of me buying gas for my scooter (about 2000 yen/month) and the occasional car trips with friends into the country side, which might be a 4,000 yen/person (think $40) kind of thing. In general, my transportation costs have been quite lot.
Rent fees varied between 29,750 yen to 33,935 yen/month. The variation owing to varied usage of electricity, water and gas. Housing relating costs tend to be very constant.
Entertainment costs at it's maximum peaked at the 29,600 yen/month with the minimum sitting at 17,400 yen/month during a full month in Sendai. Compared to going out in Tokyo, going out for food and drinks or doing something is much cheaper compared to Tokyo, that data will be presented later.
Travel costs for the year came in at a whopping 1,083,542 yen, which would feel like something in the ball park of $10,800. The main expenditures here were a 10 day trip to France in February, a trip back to Canada in May, hitting Aomori in August for one of their summer festivals and the total costs of my first 2.5 months of traveling through SE Asia starting through mid-october with costs being tallied up to the end of December.
Living in SE Asia is very cheap. My traveling expenses for November, while I was in Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia accounted for a total of 227,684 yen (feels like $2,270) for an entire month of expenditures! This is like 1/2 the cost of a round trip ticket to Canada and I should note that these expenses also include plane tickets for me traveling around countries in SE as well!
The most financially painful parts of my travels were through Australia and New Zealand, where the high currency costs and the high living costs of those countries immediately doubled my traveling expenditures to 401,967 Yen (or like $4,020) for the month and this is after me trimming down my expenses like crazy in these countries (I lived relatively well in SE asia!). The combined costs of my SE asia costs for Oct, Nov and Dec with my France and trip to Canada quite quickly put the my traveling costs to about $10,000 CAD for the year, my largest (though irregular) expenditure.
My total living costs for the year of 2007 in Japan amounted to a total of 2,314,981 yen, half of the expenses coming from traveling. I know for sure that if I wanted to save money, I'd stop traveling.
The following pie chart illustrates the percentage breakdown of my living expenses (click for a larger image):
As shown here, travel expenses logged in at 47% of my expenses, nearly half of of all the money I spent in 2007. The next larges expenditure comes in the form of my rooming fees at 17%, then food at 12% then entertainment at 10%. The remaining service, transport and goods fees sum up to approximately 12%. If I wanted to trim down my expenditures, the most obvious things would be to trim down my travel and entertainment expenses and the remaining expenses would be considered "fixed expenditures."
2008 Expenditure Results and comparison with 2007
The end of my SE Asia trip occurred in mid January where I made my return to Japan for my placement interview prior to starting work. After the interview, I would remain in Japan until the end of March, where I would make my move from Sendai to the outskirts of Tokyo in a city called Atsugi. My expenditures for this year will generally include costs to settling down as I picked things up I needed over the entire year.
For my 2008 yearly data, I have made an additional category in addition to the usual Food, Goods, Transport, Service, Room, Entertainment and Travel break down to include salary deductions, as 2008 marks the year after I graduated from my masters program and me starting my work, and thus becoming required to pay government related expenses.
My 2008 expenses are summarized in the following chart (click for a larger image):
The summarized 2008 total expenses are summarized below:
Food: 400,223 Yen (think, $4,000)
Goods: 327,232 Yen (think, $3,270)
Transport: 141,896 Yen (think $1,410)
Service: 149,146 Yen (think $1,500)
Room: 281,159 Yen (think $2,800)
Entertainment: 474,034 Yen (think $4,740)
Travel: 436,524 Yen (think $4,370)
Deductions: 404,682 Yen (think $4,040)
Looking at the monthly data for food since moving to Atsugi, I find that in general, I am spending approximately 40,000 yen/month or 10,000 yen more/month to what I was spending in Sendai. In general, I am finding that I spend about 1,000 yen more every time I go to the grocery store when buying things. I have heard from friends that the grocery store near by where I live is somewhat expensive and that is showing up in my monthly expenes. There are some cheaper grocery stores in Atsugi, but it takes an additional 10 minute round trip via scooter. It would be an interesting experiment to see what savings I can generate by changing stores.
The costs for Goods for this year totaled 327,232 yen, with the most signigicant expenditure being the new desktop computer I bought over the summer. The computer is a Dual Core Athlon, 2x500 GB hard drives, 2x19" monitors, Geforce 9600 video card, 4 GB DDR2 ram system. This desktop has incredible power over a laptop and is still cheaper with a total price tag of about 120,000 yen (think $1,200 CAD). Most purchase of durable goods for this year included electronics parts in the 10,000 yen range / shopping spree and wedding presents for friends whom have rencelty gotten married.
Transportations costs for this year totaled 141,896 yen. Compared to my 2007 transportation costs, this is a drastic increase owing to weekend trips to Tokyo via train. A one way ticket to Tokyo from where I live costs in the range of 500 yen and traveling around to the different parts of Tokyo will cost an additional 300 yen extra, easily bringing my weekend transportation expenses to 1,300 yen. Having friends in the Tokyo area results in having everyone quite spread out, as opposed to having most of your friends concentrated in a smaller region while living in Sendai. While in Sendai, I rarely had to use any public transport to get out anywhere to meet up with friends. This is not the case when it comes to living in Tokyo. Monthly train costs easily rack up to about 6,000 yen/month which is easily 3 times the 2,000/month I used to spend just on gas for my scooter while in Sendai.
Service expenses for 2008 totalled 149,146 yen, which is almost spot on with the 149,787 worth of expenses for 2007. Apparently, moving to Tokyo did not result in a chance in my cell phone habits. Other notable service charges for this year included moving costs to get my stuff out of Sendai to Atsugi. My moving costs were subsidized up to 50,000 yen and I took an additional 28,000 yen additional charge to move extra things and my scooter here.
Room related expenditures totaled at 281,159 yen for 2008 compared to 391,232 Yen compared to 2007. This is mostly due to living in the company dorm where the rent is cheaper compared to living on one's own. I was previously living in an apparement share arrangement in Sendai with monthly base rent at 28,000 yen/month (a pretty good deal!) and I am now currently living in the company dorm at 16,000 yen/month, yielding the a 12,000 yen difference in savings. Over a 9 month period, this easily equates to the 100,000 yen savings recieved over the 9 months I've lived here. Though, if it would mean that I pay 100,000 more, it would be nice to be freely able to invite friends over. Unfortunately due to security reasons, friends are not generally allowed to stay over in the company dorms.
Entertainment costs for 2008 totaled 474,034 yen compared to 234,254 yen in 2007; a 240,000 yen increase (about 2 times). Going out and doing the same things I did in Sendai compared to doing things in Tokyo is doubly expensive. If I were to go till past midnight on food and drinks in Sendai, I'd spend about 5,000~6,000 yen. If I were to do the same thing in Tokyo, I'd spend 5,000 yen on the first dinner and drinks and then +3,000 yen on the next place for drinks (I also have to say that the food in Sendai also tastes better!) Often parties and events occur far from where I live and I generally would incur transportation costs to get to the event. Needless to say, going out and having fun in Tokyo is easly 2x more expensive compared to Sendai. Include going out for dinners and the occasional drink on weekday with colleagues, the costs here easily add up.
Travel costs for 2008 totaled 436,524 yen. The bulk of my travel expenses for this year was from my trip back to Vancouver + Toronto and the return leg of my New Zealand trip in January. Smaller traveling costs were incurred in Oct, Nov and Dec from trips back to Sendai for the Jazz festival, a wedding and an alumni reunion for my research lab.
Salary deductions for this year totaled 404,682 yen. Deductions represent any direct deduction from salary and government related taxes. These deductions include income tax, pension payments, unemployment insurance and medical insurance. The spike seen in December is a result from receiving a "winter bonus" which is payed to most salaried workers and paying taxes on it. In Japan, bonuses are given out in summer and winter totaling about 2.5 times your monthly salary (as a result, monthly salaries here are a bit lower).
My total expenditures for 2008 totaled 2,614,900 yen (think $26,150). Living expenses (total expenditures - salary deductions) were 2,210,218 (think $22,100) compared to 2,314,981 yen in living expenses in 2007. The numbers are comparable because of the expensive SE Asia trip represented in the costs.
There will be an additional tax (municipal) deduction on my income starting next year as municipal taxes take a year to kick in and will result in a doubling in the amount of taxes I pay (yuck). Those numbers will be seen after my 2009 expenditure summary is compiled.
Finally, attached below is the pie chart of 2008's expenditures:
Compared to the 2007 pie chart we see that the cost of food (12% vs 15%), entertainment (10% vs 18%) and transportation (3% vs 5%) have increased since moving from Sendai. We see a decrease in rooming costs (11% vs 17%) resulting from living in the cheaper company dorm. Service fees remain relatively the same. Travel costs are lower due to the lack of any "long big" trips for this year and in it's place, I get to pay taxes in the form of deductions instead.
I have to say that comparing 2007 and 2008 pie charts is rather misleading because percentages tend to be viewed as linear. For example one might just think that transportation costs from 3% to 5% as something insignificant since it might only look like a 2% increase (it pretty much doubled in my case!) and it also does not do a good job of illustrating the total amount of cash spent. I will limit pie chart graphical interpretations to the year only and avoid pie chart to pie chart comparisons in the future.
Final Comments
By the looks of the data, it does seem that living in Sendai and maintaining a social life is much cheaper (at about 2x) compared to the Tokyo region. Transportation costs are also cheaper for Sendai since traveling around by train is not really required (especially if you live in the down town area).
Most of my disposable income seems to go into the traveling and entertainment category. If I wanted to increase the amount of money I saved, it would be an no brainer to cut back on traveling and going out. Traveling and entertainment costs for 2008 hit in the 900,000 yen range (think $9,000). Obviously cutting down to zero would be quite painful, but cutting down to 450,000 yen (think $4,500) would be rather reasonable (if most of the cutting occured with the traveling part). I spent about 300,000 yen on goods and it might be reasonable to cut that down to 150,000 to get a total 600,000 (think $6,000) in savings over an entire year.
Interestingly $6,000 over an entire year somehow doesn't sound like a huge amount, but it does makes quite a difference when it comes to traveling and having fun. However, if saved and invested properly over several years, it can make quite a difference. I would be interested to run some calculations later on, but that would be for a different post.
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