Teej's Secret Box

The Tipping Point : How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell

Very rarely would a book actually cause you to think beyond the context of the book. No matter how epic the Lord of the Rings may be, you wouldn’t wonder if forest fires in Greece have anything to do with the world within that epic tome… other than thinking of the poor Ents. No matter how inspiring The Foundation would be, it wouldn’t inspire you to ponder about your job… other than those lucky Astronauts.

The Tipping Point is a book that takes a stab at explaining the mysterious world of interconnection between people and things. Why is a fad, such as Pokemon a wildly popular thing a decade later? What make the Wii so hot? Why did the crime rate fall so quickly in New York City? These are general behavior trends that got influenced by a few small yet critical points. Certain people somehow were able to kick-start the growth of popularity for a certain products. Some companies are able to keep their employees happy. The list goes on.

Without spoiling too much about the book — I have a few personal anecdotes to share that are inspired by the book: Why I used to love the job I have, and why I am starting to not enjoy it. You see, I was hired by a 450 people-strong company, but into a department, 120-strong. We have this mailing list that involves a good chunk of those consultants and several of the engineers and others. We had annual get-together where everyone within the field gets to pow-wow about subjects in general. We get together again at least once more every year within our own group to get a better understanding of what we are doing. I knew almost everyone within the US. I was able to find exactly where to go to get the answer I need. I knew who to ask the right questions. I knew who would know someone else that would get the right answer.

Then we got bought out by a mega corporation with a staff in the hundred of thousands, and a philosophy that pride itself of buying tons of small companies for insane prices, and somehow cobbling them all together into weird suite of products that only increase the headaches of our peers as we try to make it work, and our customers as they try to figure it out in a way that’s useful to them. In the meantime, this company has skillful marketers that make it all sound so delicious and sweet.

Suddenly, I don’t know who my human resource representative is. I do not know how to get my laptop repaired. I do not know who the sales group leader is – after all, instead of maybe 50, there are now 25,000 of them. I do not know how to even download new versions of our products we are using. I do not know how to even get paid properly for the travels I take. Suddenly, there are too many rules and regulations requiring us to follow. We have to take online courses to ensure that we’re nice to each other, and that we keep our stuff secret and how our honor is affecting our corporation’s honor.

Instead of the natural peer pressure to better ourselves, improve our efforts, and be pushed by each other to go further, we find ourselves mandated by the invisible human resource team to do the same thing. But there are so many of us, that the strength of the group – the power of 150 in other words – became impossible to keep strong. Information became zealously guarded by certain sects, instead of freely shared within the group. It became a mouse race between each other.

When I was first hired upon, the person interviewing me both had a mutual knowledge of another person. He went on to discuss on how much the departure of that person deeply affected him, especially since it was not a happy departure. I strongly doubt that this person I interviewed with would care as much about my departure, simply because he have too many people to worry about now, instead of the 120 people he used to work with.

Reading this book really crystallize the issues that were affecting me, and gave me a several directions to go to. It also opened a new world of ideas and possibilities. The fires in Greece are a perfect example. Could it have been inspired by a single charismatic developer with a huge problem with bureaucracy in that country, and a simple solution to get around this problem? The sub-prime mortgage industry rise and crash. Could it have been triggered and encouraged by certain folks who found a way to make more money?

It is pretty clear what tipped its rapid end – Fannie Mae decided to not buy jumbo loans without certain requirements. Once that occurred, the entire industry turned upside down overnight just a month ago, and the credit crunch began to rear its ugly head enough that the Federal rates were reduced by a half percentage point yesterday. Suddenly, mortgage companies are firing a huge chunk of their employees as a proactive effort to respond to the crash. The symptoms were there – months of people deciding not to buy houses at unacceptable prices due to the rising mortgage rates. But it was not enough to tip the situation until Fannie Mae did their action. Bam, overnight, it was over.

The recovery will take a while, but for the folks in the forefront, they see it as taking years. I see it taking less – after all, the environment will become ripe sooner, and once the tipping effect occurs, the market will get going.

This is a fabulous book that I strongly recommend anyone to read.

Hmm, to become an astronaut, you have two options:

1. Raise 20 million dollars, go to Russia, and undergo intensive training, and get yourself launched to space.

2. Apply here, undergo intensive training, and get yourself launched to space.

Observing my wallet, option one is not looking all that good, so I decided to try option two. Now to convince them that Information Technology is a science-like major.

EDIT:  Wow, that was fast, and harsh.  *sniff sniff*  After an inquiry, it was made clear that my deafness and vision limitation would disqualify me, and NASA is very specific in their degree requirements and field experiences.  Guess I do not have the “Right Stuf”.

Now, back to raising 20 million dollars…

[Note: This was written to the customer support line for Marriott Hotel]

This is referring to the Marriott Hotel in Long Beach, California. This hotel is located quite perfectly next to a building where I am currently assigned to. After the splendid stay I had in Portland’s Marriott City Center, the different is striking, and extremely disappointing.

The first error occurred when I made a personal request to a hotel employee to make a reservation for me, they failed to do so, causing me to run a risk of not having a hotel room. Fortunately, a kind lady whose name I did not acquire, were able to fix it the day of arrival. She then informed me that I was placed in a renovated room, and warned me of the construction work on the floor above. It does not bother me considering that I am deaf.

However, if you would call this a renovated room, i would have to express some disappointment. Room 306 has several defects in the bathroom, including a clearly incomplete spackle work. The locations of the lights are not done properly, and require two switches to brighten the bathroom sufficiently.

The cleaning staff seem to prefers outright cold rooms, as they continue to defeat my carefully adjusted room temperature (despite a lack of real thermostats in exchange for some dials with arbitrary settings) by turning it to outright frigid temperature (the coldest setting possible.) This was done, despite the very moderate temperature outside and the fact that I hails from Phoenix, a place that have tuned me to accept a much warmer room than normal.

There has been no turnover service at all, leaving me to arrive to the room in pitched blackness after a long day at work, along with quite frigid temperature — not a warm welcome that I have received from other Marriott around the country.

The staff, despite my statue, failed to program my card to have access to the concierge floor. The lack of healthy options for snacks outside overtly-dried carrots is a common issue with all Marriott, and needs to be addressed. However, the disappointing options of beverages, with the lack of those that are not caffeinated, is troubling at this location.

The straw that broke my back about this hotel is the meal I had this evening at the steakhouse – Mr. R. Grill. The New York strip steak was cut by an incredibly poor butcher to the point where I had to spit out several hardened fat, an experience that belittle the $35 dish. It was clearly previously frozen, and overcooked by an inexperienced chef. This was a steak the completely relied on the peppercorn sauce to make the save, but I saw through the facade. The service was average, a disappointment for a place that strives for an upscale reputation.

I have been well experienced with poor quality for a high price with hotel restaurants, but this took the cake. Despite repeat inquires to the concierge on duty, she barely hinted of the average quality of the fare, but emphasized the top-notched service. Not only was she wrong, she also recommended a sushi place that she have clearly never visited, and relied on me to report back to her of the place’s quality. I refuse to be a guinea pig. I had a ditzy person barely capable of being a hostess, and failing to supply me with the wine menu despite being requested. The wine options were poor, and the vodka selections are limited to grain options, leaving us with a Northern-European preference of potato vodka without an option.

It is quite disappointing when a sports bar in the same Marriott location have far better drink options than a “top-notched” steakhouse.

I am forced by convenience to stay with this hotel, but I would absolutely not recommend this hotel to my co-workers, many who travels from afar and optioning to stay at hotels at greater distance. This hotel should be downgraded to Courtyard. I am completely baffled by the AAA’s overtly generous rating of 3 for this hotel — maybe they were hypnotized by the beautiful manicured grass and maintained pool, and conveniently ignored the heavily rusted exercise machines, too many debris’s in several of the waterfall ponds, and the abysmal room conditions especially after being renovated. The sheer fact that there is an absolute lack of outlets for those of us with alarm clocks that require vibrators and the requirement to pull the bed aside to hunt for one is not acceptable.

This Marriott is not a Marriott.

200 Pine Ave
Long Beach, CA 90812

Tucked in the middle of a bustling Long Beach’s downtown, this sushi/hibachi eatery contained a spirited sports bar attitude toward sushi. The fishes were fresh, and tasty. Unfortunately, its namestake, the wasabi, was pretty much average fare. The sushi chef’s interaction was excellent, while waitress service was downright horrid.

It is a decent place to go, but not quite a cheap place to eat. At least they have TVs with Monday Night Football on. It’s a shame it was a lousy game between Eagles and Redskins.

I was contacted by a Brendan who did a great job ensuring that my problem was indeed real and offered to overnight it from me to them, and back to get it fixed as quickly as possible.

I countered to ship it to them, since I have it here with me in Portland, in exchange for free coupons.  They countered with a free game.  Mmm, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption coming right up!

It just arrived there, and I’m hoping it’ll actually get fixed and sent off to me by tomorrow to arrive on Friday (which would bring me some Metroid goodness, Mmmm.)

Nintendo support have been excellent so far, although I do wish they could view e-mail attachments (pictures).  But it makes sense, protecting their own internal networks from poorly trained workers clicking on trojans.