The Often-quoted Quote

today was teh win. but not good for a first blogpost. because too many things collide at the same time. so sorting it out is a good idea.

but now, yay 080808 xD a celebration of the abstract. rare sight, this.
and beijing olympics opening ceremony was teh pwnzorz. pro effects. for a ceremony it was teh pwnzorz. good job.

but still, some may argue that the money could be well spent elsewhere (eg, steo) and i do agree.

first event today was the boss' criticism of zc's reply. that itself is good enough for a month of posts.
second event today was the db xco interviews. which is related to something else that happened earlier this week.
and third is the fact that everywhere i blogsurf i find moving posts that make me laugh cry or think, but writing one is just so hard.

why so liddat. I’ll just talk about the first one and see if I can carry on to the second.

firstly, what happened between the boss and zc. this issue spread everywhere within 24hours of it first happening, but i never could actually work it out into written words. now i can. somehow.
the story so far:
1. junior posts up a message about a revision of a long-standing policy.
2. message is pages long.
3. boss sees message. Asks for someone to summarise it, as it is long.
4. zc posts comment on how it is ironic that someone as educated as the boss needs our help to summarise a well-written piece of work, and frankly, finds it “disappointing”.
5. boss fires back, stating that his reply is “offensive”.
6. this sparks off a series of comments on whether zc was right or not.
7. behind the scenes, zc and the boss converse, and the boss agrees to forgive zc after zc replies with a well-crafted apology letter.
8. today (ie thursday) the war is brought out into the open. Clear victory for boss, with implied punishment for the next challenger.

details are naturally sketchy here, due to (attempted) protection of identities. Suffice to say that although zc’s letter was pretty scathing to such a learned person such as the boss, the points stated were indeed relevant. the boss’ overwhelming counterattack actually did him more harm than good, by glossing over the points risen and simply arguing on the tone and presentation of zc’s reply.

in standard dilbert-like style, the boss reminds zc repeatedly that he skipped punishment because of the detailed and well-crafted apology (see 7) and that he won’t be so forgiving the next time.

hooray.

while zc’s statements were understandably fierce, the points carried across still were valid. the point where the boss, being so learned, could possibly require our help to trim down the long (admittedly longwinded) essay, was especially scathing but true. I have to admit that I too shared similar views, but decided to just skip the whole thing and dao.

nonetheless, i was very surprised to see the boss’ public reply of an “offensive” message posted up by zc. i expected to see something along the lines of swear words or other random stuff but in fact finding a short message like that was kind of anticlimactic. and overreacting.

sorry boss, the effect could have been better if you had just asked him to rephrase his reply. no doubt you might have perceived it as “disrespectful”, even if “[he] didn’t mean it to be”, as you yourself said. by going all out, not only have you managed to strengthen support on his side, but also discredited yourself by adding such dilbert-like comments.

What comments? read my mind, intelligent ones.

on a side note, anything can be disrespectful if you will just think about it. as a dilbert cartoon once put it: the statue of venus de milo, one of the greatest representations of art, has no arms, therefore meaning that women can’t carry heavy weights. see? crazy logic. The reason why i quote dilbert so much here is because i find some truth in what steo said in his post as well.
with appropriate changes to attempt to conceal identities:

“[Steo]: I don’t think the security barrier (the yellow-and-black striped barrier which goes up and down to allow vehicles through) at the entrance [place] is effective.

[Boss]: It serves as security, for example to stop terrorist attacks like car bombs.

[Steo]: [Boss], but if the terrorists wanted to bomb [place], they wouldn’t stop for the barrier. The barrier is kind of flimsy - they’d charge right through, suffering only a minute loss in speed.

[Boss]: No, they have to stop.

[Steo]: But they won’t stop! Why on earth would they stop?

[Boss]: You don’t understand, they have to stop.” - taken from steo’s blog

it’s kinda laughable on hindsight, and we’ll probably laugh about these things 20 years from now. but at present, it’s just plain amusing at best, infuriating at worst.

don’t get me wrong, although I’m definitely pro-zc, I’m not (totally) anti-boss. yet. I could be. anyway. boss could have made his stance clearer but no… chose to barge straight through and even use a meeting to lecture us on this. and scolded zc in front of everybody. I guess there’s enough satires going around already. his popularity, as if not low enough, is dropping faster than a brick on steroids.

still, quite a lot this says for a transparent system. even the council isn’t as bad as this, they actually tell us what’s going on. and take constructive comments to the face, phrased as blatant as this one.

if the mark of an learned person is unwilling to take constructive comments without a can of sugar, i don’t want to be learned. even God recognizes that we are fallible and can handle our nonsense when we ask Him why this happens.

so, zc, well done. support.