I Should Be Shooting a Mall Right Now

I should be shooting a mall right now but someone beat me to it. I was planning to practice using my SLR by going to Glorietta and/or Trinoma this weekend but doing so right now, with the recent G2 bombing would most likely make this activity impossible. I am sure all malls are at the tip of their toes tightening their security and with my large camera, I'm sure a guard will eventually tell me to stop shooting. They will probably think that someone shooting sections of a mall is planning for another bombing attack and I don't want to take that risk.

Anyway since I'm already at the subject, I would like to express my sincerest condolences to the people who lost their lives in that tragic G2 bombing. I also feel sorry for whoever has brought down this terror for they do not know what they are doing.

People on the Go

It's already late. In fact in just about 2 hours from now, I should be waking up. Unless this is a dream, I haven't been able to force my self to sleep. In any case, being awake so early in the morning while the whole town is asleep made me think of some stuffs that I would not normally think about.

Anyway, yesterday I felt unmotivated to work inside my room that I decided to take my laptop with me at the nearby mall. My goal was to find a decent place to settle my butt, boot up my laptop, and hopefully have an electrical socket somewhere to plug my laptop as the battery will not last too long. So I thought I go to a coffee shop.

My first stop was at Gloria Jeans at Sta. Lucia East. Remembering that Gloria Jeans in Megamall lets their customers access the Internet through a wi-fi and even more let them plug their laptops everything for free, I head on. But I guess not every GJ shop has those amenities as this one surely doesn't have wi-fi nor electrical sockets for customers.

Next stop was at Mocha Blends at Robinson's Metro East. Robinson's offers free wi-fi access so the only problem would be electricity. So I went inside and approached a waiter and asked if I may plug in my laptop. The waiter said that I can but for a fee. So asked how much and he said P120 per hour. What?! I will be using my own laptop and top of that I will be buying food and coffee, is this a freaking high-end Internet cafe? Internet cafes nowadays charge only P40 an hour plus you get fast Internet, a web cam, a headset, and most important a gaming machine!

So I ended up at Gloria Jeans and worked for about three hours before I went back home since my laptop's juice is running out.

This made me think. What if, not only is communication and devices are wireless, but also electricity! Imagine the mobility it will give without any limitation for "people on the go"! No more battery constraint or at least you can extend battery by charging in "hotspots"!

Anyway, that was the Electrical Engineer and Computer Engineer in me calling to my soul (naks!). I used to take those courses in college. My first proposal for my thesis was actually "sending data over electricity" which I found out was already been researched and done in the US.

Am I dreaming? I'm still awake!!! This is going to be one long and agonizing day...

By the way, for the record, I still have a slight fever. I had the fever since Thursday. And to add to the agony, a pimple inside my ear! Still I want to go to work. So if I am awake by then, I will go to work. Hopefully the fever is gone by then.

Project Risks

Many projects fail because they failed to identify the risks involve in their projects. Often times, these project do not even know what hit them and why their project failed. Identifying these probable problems is one of the many tasks of a project manager.

Project risks are events, entities, or any force that might cause your project to have delays or lose capability to function normally. Some of the most obvious risks are on the human resources like team members getting sick and could not work for several days or as simple as employee resignations. Another common risk is the delayed delivery of equipments that your project will need to be able to progress properly. Simply put, risks are "problems" for your project that are likely to occur.

There are typically 4 types of "problems": the known known, the known unknown, unknown known, and the unknown unknown. Pretty confusing terminologies, huh?

To expound further, the first type of problem which I coined inconveniently as known known, are the problems that we know and expect to happen. One example for this is say, we know that Matthew, one of the star players of the project, will be moved out of the project by the end of December which is also at the middle of development phase of the project.

Known unknown on the other hand, is a type of problem that we are aware of but for some reason could not identify it. Have you ever had a feeling that something's going wrong but could not think of anything that might prove it exists? Well that's it.

Unknown known are problems that we know can occur but there is uncertainty that it will happen. One example would be natural calamities. Team members getting sick also fall under this.

The last, unknown unknown, is the nastiest among the bunch. These are problems that you don't have a clue about. It just happens right in your face.

Known known problems are not risks, but the rest are. So to further strengthen the definition of risk: risks are problems that has a likelihood to happen and can make your project lose its capability to function normally. Problems that we are sure will happen and the exact time it will occur are not risks since it does not have any likelihood of occurring. Problems like these are usually integrated in the schedule already and would not need any risk management.