Ah, a nice text box which actually supports unicoded text and a [relatively] frills-free way of writing thoughts and other stuff. Yes, I miss the simpler days where writing meant picking up one's pen/pencil and writing away on paper, with each stroke a conscious effort made in order to present an idea to the reader.
This semester seems to promise a lot of writing, which can be both good and bad. It is great that there is a lot of writing envolved, as I realised that perhaps it is time for me to actually partake in a different kind of writing; the one that is more akin to the style that humanities scholars are used to, as opposed to the kind that I have been doing. With the writing comes the reading of course. There's just so many articles to read that I'm both happy and worried at the same time.
Also, for the Technical Consulting in the Community course, I actually get to participate in a consulting process and help create a technical consultant report on how to best aid a non-profit organisation in harnessing technology to better improve upon their business processes. That's right, all that skills and experience that I had learnt from my Army days are going to be very useful for this class, and I can't wait to learn even more on how to be a consultant. I mean, let's face it. Even though I keep telling everyone that the computer scientists are the ones who hold the infrastructural power, it is [sadly] still the business people who are the true wielders of power, by virtue of the fact that they are the one who obtain the necessary cash to fund the infrastructure to further their business needs.
What better way to get involved by being a consultant of sorts? I mean, looking at the long term, I can't possibly be doing research forever, leastways, not in Singapore, so there should be some other venue where my inquisitive nature and multi-disciplinary approach can be put to good use. Enhancing business processes can be seen as an optimisation-type problem, with the constraint that we need to pay particular attention to more than just what technology can or cannot do. The thing that I seem to be learning from the class is that there is a difference in being a consulatant and a hired worker; a consultant uses experiences and assists the organisation in setting up upgraded business processes on a strategic level, while the hired worker is just the one who implements the system that has been set forth by the management.
All these while, I've been thinking of myself as some kind of "trench-level" worker; literally fighting the front in the trenches of the war zone. Yet, sometimes deep inside me thare is this little voice that tells me that I could be something more, and that there is much more to me than just doing pure research and basically dealing with project after project without any other contribution to the world at large. Again, in some of those moments of self-doubt, I seem to think that I'm a weakling, and am unable to converse with people, as well as work with them, but the fact of the matter is indeed far from the truth—I am not of that sort. Everyone has their down points, and when I was thinking of things like that, it was most likely when I was at my down point; now I'm not there, and am riding high from waves of support and understanding from the people who care. I feel empowered, literally, to take on tasks which are of a different nature.
Let's face it. I'm not a genius, granted, but I am still rather smart. I'm not saying this in a "I-am-holier-than-thou-art" way, but rather in a matter-of-fact one. People look up to me or try to exploit me simply because there is something for them to look up to or exploit. Becky said something today that struck me in a way that I found rather empowering: "that's because you are good at what you do". So what is it that I am good at doing? Maybe I don't know the exact answer to that, but it is also very likely that I know a good enough approximation of that latent feeling and ability that I have.
Yes, it does make me warm and fuzzy inside. Maybe I have matured a little over the trials that I had for the last few years of my life, or maybe I didn't but circumstances seem to show that it is indeed this way. I am not gifted by any system devised by humankind, but I am blessed with some decent enough abilities. Less whining and more action should be the motto that I live by now.
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