C'est La Vie - It's life...

Friday Oct. 30th, 2009.

Normally, I often ride the 6:05 AM bus to work, but today - I deliberately took the last bus-250 at 7:51 AM, because I have a feeling that it could mark as the last time for a long time I would ride the same bus route to downtown Seattle again to work for another company. As the bus dropped me off at the usual corner of 5th & Pike street, I took this image of the bus leaving me behind, as I walking down to the 2nd Avenue, where Chase Tower is located and where I has been since early this year.

I considered that another chapter of my life has official end today, October 30th, 2009 as I packed everything personal item at the office, send last goodbye note to my co-workers and clients, shutdown my laptop and give it to a young worker, who busy collecting many others' laptops - which also today is their last day, and finally I took a elevator down to the Security desk in the lobby to turn in my badge, then walk out the front door, where the sky is still cloudy, dark gray with a hint of a shower storm ready to dump more rain on the Emerald city.

The new company does has several positions open in other states, all in the cold weather area, opposite to my preference to a much more warmer place than the Washington state. Since I wouldn't want to move, I accepted the offer to stay around for extra 12 months, which they'll pay me double, a nice sum of money when I concluded my assignment with them. Now, it is just like a chapter about the years I spent to work for WaMu, and then may be another short/sub chapter before I decided to call it quit for good.

This is not a first time that I am being a layoff or unemployed. It happened before - once in 2001, when a dotcom company that I worked for, laid me off along with all of the IT personnel, which was 12 of us, including the VP and managers. I got another job couple months later, then quit after just worked for more than 6-months, due to the working environment that not fit with my philosophy. I accepted another position, thinking it would be my last job before I retired.

However, only 5 month later, I realized that the "pressure cooking" environment was not healthy for my sanity and my family (back then, I also own and run a family restaurant, which people often commented that "Man! it must be a long day for you every day?" and I just jokingly answer: "No! I don't have a long day, just a short life!".

I told the management that they needed to hire more, at least one more for my group. Otherwise, it was not worth to hang around for long. Sure enough, few months after I left and joined WaMu, the manager was let go, and two of my co-workers , one quit and get another position within the same company, the other end up with divorce and then quit the company.  The same scenario happened to couple companies that I worked for them before, either the team members I worked with decided to leave after I already left or the company went out of business soon later.

Was I that smart or I am just lucky?

It was Lucius Annaeus Seneca ( a Roman philosopher under Nero's era) who said " Luck is when preparation meets opportunity". I was and I am always trying to prepare, since I am aware of what I wanted plus my own limitation, thus whenever I know I can't persuade others to change the outcome, I rather walk away, or ready to jump when I know the opportunity presented to me.

Anyhow, as soon as I knew my end date with the current company is finally confirmed, I booked 2 trips: one for a week in California to meet relatives and friends, then another 2-months trip to Vietnam. Perhaps, in 2010 I will start looking for another job if I decided to come back or just go to Australia where I could "work" as a beggar who making $50K a year - easily -HAH!HAH!HAH!!!!

A co-worker bring donuts for me, as she tried to kill me softly :)

All my bags were packed...

The finally week started out with a typical normal Monday at the office, then as time goes by, I saw people started packing their stuff or put thing in the boxes ready to ship out to a specific warehouse location. I already packed and took home most of my personal item when they moved us from 25th down to 13th floor just few weeks ago, so by Friday, all I have to do just send out my last farewell email, shutdown and turn in the laptop, my badge and walk out to the sunshine…oops! to the cloudy sky. by 1 PM, the office already seem to be emptied.

Just before noon, as I went out for lunch, I noticed that time is getting worse for some people on the street. There are more homeless, panhandlers in the city more than any years before, and perhaps more to come as the economy might take another dip later next year if the government continue to tax and spend against a convention wisdom that if we don't save money for a rainy day, then when it happened we'll get soak with misery - and worse, with angry, jealousy feeling and blame on others, who were much better prepared.

I can't really count how many thousand times that I've seen the images of the homeless and the hopelessness before in my life, either here in a major US city or anywhere on this earth. However, when I was young and the images of those destitute people in India that on the National Geography or Times magazine imprinted deep into my heart. I often asked a question that has been raised throughout generations and centuries: "If God is love, then why there still suffering all over the world?".

It was not until during the 90s, after I started studying the Hindu religion and Buddhism, particularly on the karma and reincarnation principle - then I realized that it's truly that God is Love, everything else is the result from our own desire, lust, hate, and love - nothing else.

 How can the homeless and drunk person like the man above can blame God, you or me for his own misery life? Certainly, nobody else wanted to be like this on the street, but if I didn't know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be and with a determination, then the very first wrong step or plan could eventually lead me to the same situation as the man in the picture. 

It is still one of many reasons for my existence that I just wanted to help someone- either with my knowledge, resources or at least put a smile on their face. Of course, I can't do it all for everybody since I am not God (hey, even God is not involved or force me to accept his gift when I was not asking for or nor wanted it, which in theology is call "free will"). The danger nowadays that I saw that some people un-intentionally doing or playing "God", which many have compassion for those unfortunate, but individually they can't do much - so they wanted the government to do it for them, and since they're not god nor have the resources, they think the rob-Peter-and-give-to-Paul action is justified, and feeling they're "god -like" , a group of elite people who loves others more than the rest.

Oh well! little that they know Jesus already said the "the poor will be with you until the end time" , or even without what He said, just using a simple deduct logic and the common sense, we should forget about the slogan "wipe off the poverty from the earth". Have you ever seen a movie or play where everybody is a king or queen? kind of boring isn't it?

Now, wait a minute! you thought I am writing about my "bad" day, as starting out with the last day on the job and perhaps, tell you more about negative thing to come with me or my fear as an unemployment person, right? As I said above, this is not my first nor my last time being layoff , plus looking at the homeless images above - I still think I have more "luck" than them, and someday when I was under 6 ft of dirt, nothing happen from now until then is matter anyway, so why should I feel sad or depress about it. C'est la vie, as the French often shrug their shoulder, as their way to say: "Hey, it's life", and if I don't want to see anything bad happened then I should go back to heaven. For now, I still have more things to do - heaven can wait.

SVT 2009