Wednesday 23 December 2009

39 Again

The temperature hit 39 degrees Celsius again today. I noticed I’m quite attracted to go jogging at those high temperature days. Simply want to see how the body acts when exposed to physical activities in such circumstances. Well, I had a bit of a headache and using the oxygen was a bit more difficult than usual. Breathing could probably simply be caused by metabolism as opposed to heat but I’m sure the headache wasn’t. It wasn’t so much physically hard to run as much it was psychologically. I just had no motivation to run and I simply walked part of the way. Also felt a bit sleepy. However, I enjoyed the run. And, once again, noticed that 39 in Melbourne is not as bad as it sounds. When there’s some breeze or shade, it feels quite nice. I even like the waves of hot air at times. Body does not sweat as much as there’s almost no humidity. When I think of Indonesia, it is a very significant contrast. There, even at 25 degrees, the body sweats almost immediately as soon as you leave air-conditioned space. Humidity is mostly above 70%, sometimes close to 100%, and you can really feel it. The air, actually moisture particles in the air, are burningly hot. Whereas here, any air flow will cool you down, even if you jog or walk.

Solutions Architect

On Monday I accepted a position of Solutions Architect. Now I’m getting into a position whose description ideally describes the items I always wanted to do. Most of those things I actually did ever since I started to write programs. It’s just somehow that the architecture part, organization, project management, analysis and design, and similar things were always pushed aside when working in real-life projects. Most people I know did not pay too much attention to these things. So I’m glad that, at this age, software architecture is getting more and more popular and accepted as a discipline.

This is still a relatively new role, with yet not-fully-defined scope and tasks. In that regard, there is an open, unexplored, space in front of me and I feel excited. This is probably where I always wanted to be – no direct management of many people, yet close coordination with lots of parties at different levels (from managerial to very technical); no specific technology limitations, everything is open for consideration and I’m actually encouraged to do research and development with any possible technology out there, keep pace with the technology developments, research and adopt best industry practices, and so on. I could go on and on. But, enough said. Let’s see how it actually goes in practice, starting mid-January.

Wednesday 16 December 2009

39 Degrees Today

Well, after a morning in which I had to take my warm cover at 5 o’clock because it was getting too cold in bed, the temperature jumped 20 degrees higher during the day. It hit the forecast 39 degrees at 4PM and is slowly going down. Now is time to go out from work and see how it feels at 37 or so. Today, during the lunch break it was not that bad as the air was quite dry so it was pleasant to find some shade or when there was some breeze it was actually cool (a subjective feeling).
Cool change is expected during the night.

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