Sunday, May 24, 2009

The Power of Luck

As I talked about in my last blog post, I am now working in Edmonton. With no real base of support for me to rely on (a huge number of family and friends were back in Vancouver), I got quite homesick and even a bit lethargic. After 3 weeks on the job, I was on msn at night and my mom asked if I wanted to go home for the May long weekend.

I gave it very little thought and almost immediately said yes. Yes, I did want to go back home. I remember likening my return to home to a cellphone. You can take the cellphone everywhere but eventually, the cellphone needs to get recharged. And that's exactly what I needed, to recharge, to reconnect to my base of support. It wasn't that work was burning me out - on the contrary, it was not really that bad lately. It was mostly the fact that while other coworkers all had family or established lives to come home to, I had no-one. I'm usually a fairly independent person but even so, it was hard not to let that fact affect me.

In any case, I booked the flight and had planned to leave my apartment around 7ish for the shuttle to take me to the airport. My flight was at 9 and I figured it would take about an hour to get there from downtown so I thought that leaving at 7 would be a safe bet.

Once I got home from work, I wasted a lot of time doing lots of random things on my computer: reading rss feeds, posting on twitter and redux and even playing the random online game on the internet. As it started to near 7, I packed and made sure I had everything I needed for the weekend at home. Finally, I packed up everything and started to make my way to the front of a nearby hotel where the shuttle would pick me up to take me to the airport. As I left my building, I immediately realized I did not bring the power cable for my laptop and had to make a quick decision - did I absolutely need the power cable for the weekend?

Yes, I did. And that's when I frantically ran back up to grab the power cable. By this time, a few precious minutes had passed and when I reached the front of the hotel, a bus boy greeted me. I asked him whether the shuttle had passed by already and he said that it had just passed by a few minutes ago. I then asked when the next shuttle would be (the shuttle comes around every 20 minutes so it wasn't too big of a deal if I got there at 8:20) and that's when he said a quarter past 8.

8:15!?!?!? At this point, I checked my cellphone and realized that my laptop time had been on Vancouver time all this time. When I saw it reach 7 pm, it was actually 8 pm Edmonton time. With my flight leaving at 9, I had to take a taxi and bust it over there. I passed by a taxi on the way to the hotel so I ran back to the taxi I passed, got in and told the driver to book it to the airport.

We sped through downtown then sped through one major road that links to the highway to the airport. Along this major road, we were extremely lucky -- at one point, the taxi driver slows down to the point where I'm almost thrown to the front. We had been speeding through this 4 lane freeway in the 4th lane and my taxi driver spotted a police cop gunning people down for speeding. Of course, we were lucky because he had only been looking at the lanes closest to him and we were in the lane farthest away from him but it would have been a serious setback if we had been stopped at that point.

Unbelievably, we reached the airport in 25 minutes which my coworkers later tell me is amazingly fast. I check in, get through the security gates and then as I am boarding the plane, I finally breathe a sigh of relief.

That whole experience really got me thinking about the power of luck. I know it was lucky that the taxi didn't get caught by the police for speeding but was it lucky that I forgot my power cable and thus was late for the sky shuttle? If I had got on that sky shuttle thinking it was 7, I am pretty sure I would have missed my flight. And it got me thinking about a movie I had watched in the past -- Matchpoint. If you haven't watched it, I would suggest giving it a shot. It explores that very notion of luck and its effect on life. What is the effect of luck in your life? What does it mean to be in the right place at the right time? How often can we attribute luck to finding that special someone? Or finding the right job?

I have heard many people claim that they themselves are unlucky and while there is some merit of truth, luck balances out at some point. Being lucky isn't just about sitting around and waiting for something to happen. It's about putting yourself into situations where luck can come your way.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

When you're somewhere new, find comfort in the familiar


It's certainly been a while since I last blogged - let me explain why right now.

Back in the middle of April, I had talked about receiving a phone interview with the Government of Alberta for an Emerging Technologies Specialist position. They liked me enough to fly me down for a second interview and I guess the second interview was also really good so they offered me a job working in Edmonton. 

To say that the decision was difficult would be an understatement.

On the one hand, I had been looking for work for 4 months and had not any successful job offers during that time though I did have several phone interviews which did not seem to lead anywhere. The job experience that I would get from this position was very good and may even enable me to gain an incredible job afterwards depending on the opportunities available.

On the other hand, to leave Vancouver to work in Edmonton would force me to uproot my whole established life and routine and plant it down in Edmonton where I had few friends, no family and almost no network of people I could rely on for support. 

I believe that the biggest factor for me for accepting this position was the fact that we were still in the recession and job offers did not come easily during this time. That's not to say that the job was bad, it is actually quite a flexible position with lots of ties into technology; I'm saying that given a job offer in Edmonton and a similar position in Vancouver, I would probably have chosen Vancouver. 

In any case, once I accepted the position, I had a few weeks to tearfully say goodbye to my friends, either through surprise dinners, planned dinners, coffees or lunches. The biggest worry that I had before my move to Edmonton was finding a place to live. Although there were many resources online that I used, it was hard to choose a place until I saw it in person. 

Fast forward a week or two and I have a bachelor apartment about 2 blocks away from where I work downtown. Though not as close to all the amenities as I would like, it certainly wasn't a big downside since the transit system in Edmonton was decent. 


Once I found housing, my concerns transitioned from housing to my daily and weekly routine, after all, I had full-time work now. I was terribly homesick, but I knew that once I got into a routine, my life would finally settle down and I would stop thinking about my home in Vancouver.  

It was during the time that I was trying to figure out my routine, I realized that I reverted back to some of my old routines that I went through before. Like cooking extra food for dinner and packing the extra food for lunch the next day on weekdays. Or watching streams of my favorite shows aired the day before while eating dinner. Or even cooking complete meals in my trustworthy and reliable rice cooker so that I did not have to wait around for food to finish cooking. 

Why did I revert back to these old routines I had gone through before? Why didn't I just create new routines given my new environment and lifestyle? 

I guess it was because I found comfort in the familiarity of the routines.

Not only is it the reason I do those things, it's also probably the reason I order the same items (chirashi, sashimi) at all the Japanese restaurants I go to; it's probably the reason I really just shop for clothing at relatively cheap stores like Esprit and Old Navy; and it's probably the reason I cook the same things every week or so. It's easy. It doesn't require a lot of thought. And it reminds me of how comforting life was in the past.

And because of the routine, things are easy now; things dont require a lot of thought now; and things are fairly comfortable now. 

I also think it may be the reason people order the same things at restaurants or go to the same type of restaurants all the time (or even go to the same restaurant and order the same thing every single time). It's safe. It's (probably) good. And any time they become adventurous and order something else that isn't good, it seems to reinforces the idea of sticking with what is good and familar, rather than trying to be adventurous.

As a final note, I had to purchase some laundry detergent yesterday. I went to Shopper's
 Drug Mart, looked around and finally came to some different laundry detergents. As I always do, I compared the prices (locally on the shelves, and not at different stores) and finally landed on the Gain laundry brand which seemed to be cheap compared to the other detergents. There were 2 brands of Gain laundry detergent and I think if you saw the same thing I did, the choice would have been as obvious for you as it was for me. 

How do you feel? Are there routines that you go through just because you're familiar with them? Are there restaurants that you always go to or food that you always order?