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.

A Day Spent in Edmonton

Today, I just flew back from Edmonton for an interview with the Government of Alberta. I am pretty dead tired, mostly from waking up at around 3:30 in the morning from the heat in my hotel room. Here are some of my random thoughts in somewhat chronological order from the time I boarded my flight to now.

• Headed to YVR about 2.5 hours early and went to the bookstores to find new books to read. After some time spent browsing the books, I went to Tim Hortons for a hot chocolate and to review my book on interview questions. With about 1.5 hours left, I decided to head over to my gate and plug in my laptop to talk to a few people about my interview.
• When I booked my flight online and looked at the seating chart, it showed that seat D out of the consecutive seats D, E and F (I was in F) was taken. Once I was on the plane and they shut the doors, seat D was empty - I wondered whether someone missed their flight, or perhaps the person in Seat D went to sit with others.
• I arrive in Edmonton after trying to lip read about half of the movie "How to lose friends and alienate people"
• As I wait for my luggage on the conveyor belt, here are some of the strange items I see: various pieces of luggage, large crate with marker all over, red tool box and then finally my bag!
• I arrive at the hotel pretty hungry so I drop off my stuff in my room and then head down to Madison's Grill (the restaurant in the Union Bank Inn) for a candy almond crusted salmon. I liked the mix of sweet and salty and want to try making it myself one day.
• Everybody else in the restaurant is dressed quite nicely. I, on the other hand, am dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and try my best to look as inconspicuous as possible.
• After eating the delicious salmon (love seafood!), I head back to my room to try to get some sleep. I totally forget about the jet lag and so I end up falling asleep about an hour after I try to sleep.
• 4 hours later, I wake up from the heat of the room. I had turned the fan off earlier (there was only one fan for the room and no separate fan for the bathroom) so that I could fall asleep but it had gotten so hot that I woke up anyway. I try to fall back asleep with various combinations of fans on / off, blankets on / off and with the window not opening, I get up and decide to prep for my interview by reviewing my questions and answers again.
• Around 7 AM, I get a wake-up call. Before I went to bed, I looked around for the fitness room and see that there is a treadmill and a step machine as well as a few dumbbells. I head down to the fitness room for a 20 min run and then come back up to shower.
• I head down to breakfast and order the West Coast Eggs (smoked salmon, poached eggs and a lemon dill hollandaise sauce with a fresh fruit salad and some taters). After exchanging some kind words with the waitress, I head back up to change.
• As I walk to the Law Courts Building, I realize that I did not bring enough clothing. It is -3 and significantly colder than I thought it would be. (Later on, I heard from my taxi driver that it was -42 a few weeks ago, I secretly feel glad that I wasn't here to interview then)
• I thought the interview went well - I got a tour of the 3 libraries and meet many of the staff working there. I also get a very cool story of the heritage room (built by the grandson of Nelly McClung). It reminds me of the heritage core in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
• At around 11, the manager of the interviewed position, a coworker and I head to the foodcourts through the underground passages. The underground passages are very cool and remind me of the very cool +15's in Calgary
• I get to the YEG and try to find books to read that have nothing to do with interviewing or programming. I mull over buying the Watchmen comic book but finally decide to leave without it (though I feel that if given another chance, I would buy it)
• Once I claimed my luggage, I went to the bookstores in YVR looking for the Watchmen comic but cannot find it (oh well). I head home and now I'm going to crash

All in all, it was a great experience in Edmonton despite the cold and the lack of sleep.

The Ambivalence of the Airport

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Terminal by Steven Spielberg. When I first watched it, I really did not think anything of it other than it being a really funny and entertaining movie. But after i watched the movie, I looked around for reviews and summaries of the movie to make more sense of the movie (something that I would do for most of the good movies I watch). I read in a review / interview with Steven Spielberg the reason why the airport was such an interesting location in general.

It has to do with the fact that at airports, you are either really happy that someone is coming back from somewhere and / or you haven't seen them in a while. At the same time, you can also be really sad because someone is leaving you and / or you won't be able to see them in a while. I've been to the airport several times and I feel that for me, it's very true. I have felt happiness from people coming back from far away places that I haven't seen in a while; I have also felt sadness from people leaving to far away places, sometimes for a temporary period of time and other times for good.

On June 22, I experienced both emotions at the same time. A good friend of mine who got into Pharmacy at U of T was flying in from Taipei and stopping over on a flight towards Toronto. Some of us had thought that she would be gone for good after the summer she did a work term at a Pharmacy here in BC. I had certainly thought this as well though somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that we would see her - whether we flew over to Toronto, she flew to BC or perhaps meeting somewhere randomly. To feel simultaneously ecstatic and sad in the short 20 - 30 minutes that I saw her, well, it was definitely weird. Certainly I wasn't sad for long as I realized that she had a wonderful opportunity at the U of T; I'm sure I'll see her many more times.