Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

One of the great tragedies of the smartphone era is just how attached the average user is to the device. Anywhere, anytime, people are glued to their little screens, seeking stimulations in the most mundane of situations. The propensity for people paying attention to smartphones rather than anything else around them has required local authorities to put up posters and warning signs to discourage their use under certain circumstances, lest aloof smartphone users unwittingly bump into others or worse, hurt themselves by absent-mindedly wandering into busy roads and railroads.

I recently had an opportunity to speak to a group of new university graduates just joining a particular Japanese firm, as part of the company's initial training for new hires. As an icebreaker to get to know the group a bit better, I asked each member of the group about why s/he decided to join this company. The answers, to my sheer disappointment, was extremely underwhelming. One mentioned that the company is big and stable, another said that the firm's older employees all seemed to be very friendly, and scariest of all, one person bluntly mentioned that there is no particular reason that she chose the firm over others.

Back when I was living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia between 2012 and 2015, one thing that I noticed was the sheer prevalence of people doing things on rooftops. The city was home to dozens of high-rise condominiums and office towers, and almost every single one of the high-rise's rooftop was being used, either as a bar, a restaurant, or in the case of many condominiums, pools and just a simple open activity space for the building's residents. The prevalence of open rooftops was so commonly accepted that people would assume that, whenever there is a high-rise, the rooftop would be accessible.

Back when I was still an employee at the logistics division of the major Southeast Asian e-commerce operator Lazada Group, I undertook an initiative at the warehouse to improve the speed at which orders are processed. The idea was to rearrange the physical layout of the area designated for processing and packaging products bound for delivery to customers so that workers can get the work done without moving as much. By pushing tables together and laying down rudimentary slides for packages to travel between different processing stations, the exercise shaved off about two seconds from the time it takes to process one order.