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September 17, 2018

September 2018

75% of the year is nearly over. Whoa. What a year it has been. I have made new friends and found myself a new fitness leisure - Pokemon Go app. This month players have to open gifts and walk the egg from the gift in order to get a special pokemon.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the month, I have been on vacation with my sister in Western Australia. Over there we got the chance to see natural wonders from whales to giant gum trees. More details to come.

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August 02, 2018

August 2018

It is a wonderful feeling to make new friends in person through a game. You can talk about the game passionately and be besiege with frowning faces, as you would normally receive at work, at home, and among friends who do play games at all.

At present, I adore Pokemon Go (game). I am amazed how hard core fans are still playing the game, despite the masses has loss interest in it by 2017, and with the release of new Pokemon games by Nintendo. many of the players have shifted to offline style of play. But I guess, I am a hard core player. I reached level 40 in February (20), which is the highest player level for now. 

The game still has bugs and quirks. But I enjoy the challenges it bring and I don not mind having to deal with its shortcoming. I do that all the time at work. I am amazed how much of my feedback has been seriously added into the game, from gym features to campaigns. It makes me smile when my feedback bears fruit.

Each time the company Niantic runs a campaign, organise a festival somewhere in the world, and release a new feature it makes millions of dollars. Just WOW! awe, surprise.

There is one aspect that many people have overlooked - communities. There are actually global communities for this game, where players exchange thoughts, screens recordings, and milestones. They even plan non-sponsored events, first there were lure parties in 2016, second there were "wafu" raids in 2017, and 2018 trading pokemon meetups and dinners. The game has built-in social element even though it does not have messaging facilities. Players use other communication platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Discord, and so on. The community globally is sitting in the millions and holding strong. Players now travel to catch exclusive regional pokemon which are spread across the different continents.

How can you frown on this game when it:

  • gets seniors in Hong Kong walking more (pokemon eggs);
  • give players a chance to find their new spouse (raid parties);
  • encourage people to celebrate their 60th birthday with young players (lure parties);
  • stop people from spending money at the pokies machine and hang out with real people (raid parties);
  • help shy people in their 30s find new friends (raid parties and lure parties).


I am having blast.

Oddly, the social growth around this game has been amazing for me. I have made a dozen new friends to date. We had dinners, trivia night, and walk-fetch-quests after work. Winter does not seem all that dreary when you have great company.

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July 2018

I totally forgotten about July 2018. There is so much things happening and needing to be done, that I neglected to blog in July.

Here is a few quick things that I have learnt in July:

My sister cannot stand crowds, it freaks her out, so bad, that she calls people names to comfort herself. Especially at Pokemon GO app's community day, of all days. I feel she has become socially awkward over the years and I probably, never noticed it. Anyhow, when you get older, you should be more comfortable with yourself and the world around you. No need to call people names. When in doubt ask questions instead.

When you work in the public sector, expect to be stuck in a rut. There are staff who cannot see beyond your existing role. Face it, no matter how much you up sell or explain yourself to people, they will always assume you have no skills, no experience, and no knowledge to work in their division. Quite territorial really. I wonder, where do people learn these skills? Through god? Did they expect YouTube videos to train their staff? Most of the skill sets required is learnt on the job type. Do I need to work in small library in order to get these "learned on the job skills"? Um. I'm beginning to think so.

Staff ignore work when it is not in front of their face or on their personal desk. Why? It all comes down to mobility, or less of it, staff begin to disregard work spaces that are far away and "all too time consuming" to reach. Resulting in pile up of work.

Why do emails go unanswered is due to poor UI design and staff not being attentive. When you have multiple inboxes, it is easy to miss emails, even if Microsoft Outlook UI offer "All Mail" for unread emails. Staff need prompts and unread email digits to appear next to inboxes in the one area. I wonder if Zendesk is any better?

Online learning is not a new horizon, it has been around for many years now, but I am just beginning to scratch the surface of what it takes to organise a workshop online through PiCS. Fascinating stuff. Who would have thought to use reverse engineering within education itself. Food for thought. I hope that I get a chance to run workshop before the year ends.

The bandages on mys hand finally came off. I am free once more. Yay!


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June 25, 2018

June 2018

It has been a month since 26th May 2018 when I had my first major accident. I fell off my kick scooter while going down a steep hill. I cannot recall whether it was a tumble or down right smack into the asphalt. All I recall was me, putting left left out to perform a manual break and waking up on the ground. Feeling a dizzy and my vision was blurry. A stranger asked if I was okay. I replied weakly, "I guess so", and we moved my kick scooter away from the bike bath. It was suggested that I ring my family and I am like, okay, I will. My sister was the nearest person I can depend on, as I remember seeing her tweet saying she is close by and eating something. I rang her and told her I have no recollection which street I am on. She used a tracking software and found me in 15 minutes. The air was getting icy cold. I cracked open a heat pack and placed in my pocket. I started ripping band-aids and sticking them onto the wounds on my hands. I only place I noticed a great deal of blood. I can feel my face swollen and sides hurt.

Upon reaching home I and having had dinner. Mom treated my bruises above the hip bone, knees, face, and shoulders. My hands would curly up and shaking. They were in great pain. I felt dizzy and soon tired, and I slept instantly.

The very next day I went to RMH trauma unit to perform a CT scan. The doctor was shocked that I didn't call the ambulance. I said I was not thinking straight. I was in a daze and feeling cold. Apparently, I had no broken bones, the spine was intact, just soft tissue damages at various spots. I have inflamed blood vessels. I was discharged with mild concussion and advised to stay off my feet for 24 hours, to avoid the chance of another fall.

My acupuncturist said he would perform any treatment on me until the inflamed blood vessels have resolved itself. To avoid infection and causing problem for injured area. While my chiropractor found my spine to be off alignment. She stated the injuries were profound for such a fall. I am thankful I alive. But who would ever think, we can die from sports activity.

The first two weeks was painful whenever I change the bandages on my hand. Salt water, saline, alcohol, and spray bandage all burn my open wounds. I decided to buy various band aids to help my wound heal but not stick to the bandaid, and for extra coverage, I used sport tape bandage cover the brown bandaids. It worked a treat and I can put my hands in my jacket pockets once more. Also, I could not hold my chopsticks and wrap my hands around forks or spoons. I felt lost. I need to re-train myself. I still cannot properly open bottle lids with my right hand. I drink from flip lid water bottles. When people try to hand me their photocopy cards, I would somehow drop them.

A challenged indeed.

On top of that I have a root canal treatment done at the same time. Trying not to depend on pain killers. Instead I turn to Pokemon Go app. The ability to have friends and trade pokemon was upon us.

A new challenge indeed.

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May 03, 2018

May 2018

Life goes on. It felt like yesterday I was working like a crazy octopus. I have managed to fall ill and develop dark circles from all those late nights preparing material for meetings after meetings. Now I am working on developing a pilot online training module for librarians with a small company. Taking one step at a time. I am getting trained up first.

After attending a few events, write up more instructional wiki pages, hand in assignment each week, on the very last week as I am about hand in my assignment, the platform was blocked due to site owner had not agreed to the new European Union privacy act. I emailed the trainer and the site owner.

While I waited, I rode my kick scooter around my suburb, and then at 7:30pm, I fell off my kick scooter while going down a steep hill. I blacked for 5 minutes according to a stranger. Blood all over both hands. Stiff shoulder, right hip, and both knees. Swollen face on the right. The hospital said I had a mild concussion and I was to stay off my feet 24 hours to avoid another fall. I have bruises, scrapes, and cuts, which I feel needs more than a few days to heal.

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April 09, 2018

April 2018

Swamped with ideas for the restructure. Sadly, only a few staff are willing to provide details about their frustration with the current organisation chart. Many of the staff feared that they maybe fired for speaking up, especially to me, a library technician. I am not even in management position. However, I wish to create a new organisation chart that is an inclusive one, but how can I? when people refuse to give input. Sigh.

My unemployed sister feels that she has the right to berate me, when I am the individual who actually has a job to pay bills and pay for house repairs. She accused me of wasting electricity by coming home EARLY!!! All the while she is constantly home, hoping on two mobile devices, in front of a television, and has the heater turned ON. This is by the far the most ridiculous half day off I have ever experienced.

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