My Journey

"A year at the longest should you seek technical achievement. After that, you should focus more on the business side".

"Right now my books are all soft skills books, I have never buy any technical books anymore lately".

The first one was an advice that was given to me by my Chief who was just resigned. The later was a sharing by my first boss in Astra to me around five years ago.

They were both Germany’s graduate, very brilliant and have bright careers in Astra in such a young age. And they were both technical persons; had deep knowledge in technical IT and strong logics. Yet, they were giving me those advices about change the focus to be more on business side, the non-technical or soft-skills. And they were also living those advices, gave me example the success achieved by them on living them.

I was and I am a technical person. The ‘technical’ term refers to have quite deep technical knowledge on IT perspective, as in can do programming, prefer on reading technical white papers than pre-sales materials, do technical discussions, etc.

I started my career in Astra as a programmer and I maintained my programmer skills until now.

Anyway, for some years, I knew that their advices were true. If I want to be a leader, a real winner, then I have to develop my soft-skills.

Because, in a simple words, it is no use to have a very-very good product if I can not convince others that it is good.

So, I’ve been trying to develop my soft skills, but still I eager to maintain my technical skills. I’ve been doing presentation, sales, negotiation with customer and principles, and also programming :).

I keep saying to myself, that I have two operation modes: the technical Herry and the non-technical Herry.

Hehehe. It worked.

At least until now and perhaps some period in the future.

Anyway, deep down, I knew that some times in the near future I will face the intersection where I have to choose. Since the challenge will be bigger and harsher than my ability to overcome the technical and business at the same time by my own hands.

Yeah, yeah, you were right, Boss. I will have to choose, and I knew what to choose.

As in X-Men, there was Wolverine with the unlimited-regeneration ability which kept him young and immortal; there were the Incredible Hulk who could lift an island by his own bare hands; but yet, the greatest mutant ever was Professor Xavier, a crippled one but with the ability to control others’ mind.

Hehe. No matter how good product you have, it is useless if you can not convince others that it is good.

When I was a child in junior high school I read the comic version of Hindu epic Mahabharata.

It was then when I started to understand that there is neither pure good, nor pure evil in this world.

In the epic, the good guys, Pandavas were sometimes told to have done some wrong-doings. Yudhisthira, the purest one of them, does have passion for gambling which bring misfortune for all his brothers and families. The bad guys, Kouravas did a good deeds such as return an honor to a humiliated kshatriya, Karna which later give them his loyalty to the death as a sign of gratitude.

The epic was so touching that even I was reading it as a comic in a my very young age, there were some episodes which I can remember until now.

One of them was the episode of Ekalavya. Below is a short version of it that I got from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drona):

Ekalavya is a young prince of the Nishadha tribes, who comes to Drona (note: which was a great guru and the teacher of Pandavas and Kouravas) for instruction. Drona rejects him on account of him not belonging to the Vedic religion, nor being an Indo-Aryan. Ekalavya is undeterred, and entering a forest, begins study and practice by himself, having fashioned a clay image of Drona and worshipping him. Solely by his determination, Ekalavya becomes a warrior of exceptional prowess, at par with the young Arjuna (note: the so-called best warrior of Pandavas and even the world). One day, a dog barks while he is focused upon practice, and without looking, the prince fires arrows that seal up the dog’s mouth. The Pandava princes see this dog running, and wonder who could have done such a feat. They see Ekalavya, who announces himself as a pupil of Drona.

Arjuna is worried that his position as the best warrior in the world might by usurped. Drona sees his worry, and visits Ekalavya with the princes. Ekalavya promptly worships Drona. Drona is angered by Ekalavya’s unscrupulous behavior, claiming to be Drona’s student despite his rejection. He is also worried that if Ekalavya maintained this level of skill, he would one day lead the Nishadas in battle against Indo-Aryan kings and threaten the Vedic religion. The more important and personal reason seems to have been his partiality towards Arjuna and his jealousy in finding out that a person from the lower caste could equal a Kshatriya. Drona asks Ekalavya for a dakshina, or a deed of thanks a student must give to his teacher upon the completion of his training. Drona asks for Ekalavya’s right thumb, which Ekalavya unhesitatingly cuts off and hands to Drona, despite knowing that this would irreparably hamper his archery skills.

Hmmh … sucks.

The story hurt me so and since then, I always discount my respect to Arjuna’s accomplishness.

Also then I realized that there is neither poor good, nor pure evil. There are always two sides of the coin.

As a friend of mine shouted in her Friendster: "Baik dan Buruk memiliki wajah yang sama; semuanya bergantung dari kapan keduanya melintas di dalam kehidupan seorang manusia" (Good and Evil have the same face; it will depend on when both of them came across somebody’s life) A good deed now can have a bad consequences later, a seemingly cruel act can result in a good things later. (Drona’s cruel act and Arjuna’s jealousy, however, have some good consequences later :().

There will always be a choice for us. It will depend on us whether to see it as a micro-situation or more on the helicopter (or satellite) view. And we will always have our consciousness helping us to decide.

There is neither pure good, nor pure evil in this world.

I used to hate being in a crowded place.

The reason was that I used to get dizzy in the middle of the crowd because I was tired on seeing and paying attention on the people walking around.

I’ve managed though :).
One of the tricks was to focus my attention only for important things that attracted me and ignore all the others.
To conserve my energy.
It was as my presentation instructor said to focus, "eye-to-eye" on certain people when doing presentation.
Because to look around for every attendance will be useless and wasting too much energy.

Then, after I knew how to manage the situation, I started to like being in a crowded places.

Especially after a long working week when all the time and energy was consumed by the works.
Perhaps it was because the emptiness that showed up after reaching the peak of the journey.
There was the need to slope slightly instead of sudden, radical changes.

So, usually after a long working week, I would go to crowded places.
There was usually no clear intentions of what to do or only low level "to-do" that will easily be dropped in normal situations.
It was just so that I can feel the ambience which somehow recharging my spirit.

One of such places was the pirated DVD market at Glodok, where it was so crowded that it was hard to stand still without being pushed or hit by other people.
The ambience was so strong that it was never failed to give me a stepping stone to get back to my "ready-to-fight" state.

Hehehe, from hate to like, contradictive in every points, but I believe that is human.
Be there no conflicts and contradictions, there will be human no more, because all of them will become robots.
And as it was said by a Wiseman who I can not remember the name, the only constant in the world, is the change.