Astro

I had dinner with the GM of Astro last Saturday at Fisherman's Wharf. It was the normal dinner-with-the-boss banter, with me explaining what I was doing with the company's money. I am now "Calvin the investment." He brought along his aunt and his uncle-in-law; and it turns out both he and his uncle-in-law were engineers by training. 'tis basically the norm, where people in Astro I come into contact with are concerned. The people always start off as engineers. Take for example, my official Astro mentor - he's got a CS degree from UPenn, but later got an MBA from Berkeley. When he came around to visit, we talked mostly about Thinkpads and Apple and the T3 connection in the dorms (and thus DC++, yay!). This time around, the foci of the conversation were more serious.

Of course, starting off by talking about education in Malaysia probably did start us off on that track. The uncle-in-law was rather vehemently opposed to the Malaysian status quo. Perhaps, I fanned the flames of his displeasure by updating him on the more recent happenings - and as most people would acknowledge, the quality of education has only deteriorated. His three sons went/are going to Harvard, MIT and Caltech so I guess his decision to move abroad is justified. They're all EECS majors by the way, he and his sons.

Leaving that, we started talking about tech companies and the art of making money. It was interesting, hearing about the dot com crash from the people who had been in the heart of the industry. They might have been decades older than I, but it was nice to observe that they had lost little of their dynamism. We saw in Apple's iPods the infectious innovative spirit they had in the 80's. We recognized that Microsoft wrangling their way to becoming the sole provider of advertisments on Facebook was a good indicator of the shifting paradigm in the means of earning. We were in awe of how Google could be worth so much - and of them adding MySpace and YouTube to their stable of acquisitions. We talked about how the PS3, a full fledge Bluray player would cost only $600 when commercial players would be in the range of $1000. And then, it was about my failure to purchase the PS3 pre-orders because my great pile of homework had prevented me from waiting 4 hours in line and of my desire to just camp out when the PS3's are released; not because I want to use them, but because the lucre awaits me on eBay. It was all about old money versus new money.

And the more and more we conversed, the more I realized how difficult it would be to stay to my self-avowed goal of being a researcher/R&D engineer all my life. I mean, sure research and finance are pretty much intertwined in today's market economy, but there always exists that point where you have to choose whether or not to cross over to the other side. My floormate Pedro remarked the other day that all of humanity is inherently selfish, and this selfishness motivates all our actions, whether from the subconscious. I pretty much stand by this view, but I am usually able pontificate my actions and move accordingly where there is a clear cut dichotomy of conscious and subconscious selfishness. When I envision my future, I could see myself perhaps being happier in management, where the fiscal benefits would improve the temporal quality of my life, and that of my family. In comparison, choosing to stay within research would deprive me of that increment in income and would be irresponsible/blatantly selfish of me, with respect to familial life. But hey, we always say that doing what we truly like will make us happy and that would make everything worth it. Realistically speaking, I'm not entirely certain that I would be content there, knowing that I always want more out of life. Incessant comparisons with the fictatious "man that I could have been" would probably ruin me then, even if those comparisons were bounded to the extents of my mind. Then again, I have somehow always seen business as the most unmeaningful thing in the world. i miss you. Would I be able to look back in my life, say, "Look, at all the money I have, yay!" and die happy? History would never remember me unless I became phenomenally rich, which is hardly a possibility. What kind of legacy would I leave behind? And even if I were phenomenally rich, I wouldn't want to have been remembered for being phenomenally rich. I want to leave something of value to the world, something more than a name - however important that may seem in today's society. I want to leave behind inventions and improvements that would mean something to the people that surround me. I want to play a bigger part in the advancement of humanity's plot line. In the history books of the future, I want to be a character that cannot be edited out without there being severe repercussions. Note however, that here I am differentiating happiness and content, for the latter can be found in any situation, in having a made the best of the opportunities along the path one has chosen. I speak nothing of regret.

Given my technological slant, my desire to end my life as a politician might appear odd. But to me its all about change. Politics offers that which is immediate, while in science and technology one is more likely to spend one's life chasing that elusive breakthrough. All things being equal, I would not mind slogging away as a researcher, my mind set on the eternal. But still I find myself drawn to the mutable facts of human life. There are things more important than science and the comforts we have, and one of them is the will that seeks change, change in a purely political sense. Change in a sense that is more central to our happiness - to a collective happiness - than all the things we distract ourselves with
. Because we choose not to see. Because you simply do not challenge the status quo. Because things have always been like that. You know what, I don't care. But I am not blind to the fact that my views are contradictory. How much change can you make as researcher with no managerial power? I really don't know. Push me, and I will say that I want to be the manager of a R&D division. But you probably know that that those are nothing more than empty words, crafted to avoid acknowledge the part of me that says "I don't know"

Will I make the crossover? Probably. Regretably so. We talked a bit more about venture capitalism and new money. And about me. It was interesting that, when all was said and done, when the GM's credit card came back, the waitress handed it to me. 'tis probably the norm in San Francisco that the young one pays. I am well aware of what is expected of me - just not of what I expect of myself.


p.s. I got a copy of my Astro TV advertisement. I look so crappy T_T and I can't act to save my life T_T. SO I'm not going to YouTube it. If you don't have Astro and you ABSOLUTELY have to see the ad, tell me and I'll email it to you.