Singapore Livin

I am darn tired. I couldn't sleep the night before the trip, and I flew for 24 hours. During the flight I slept a little bit off and on, but not too much. Last night, I slept perhaps 5 hours. I think now my body is ready to adjust, but I am not certain I am coherent.

Singapore is crazy. A friend called it Asia minor, since they speak English. This morning for breakfast I had rice, a weird red sauce, entire small fried fish along with an entire larger fried fish. It is weird to eat fried fish when its head is still attached and its eyes are looking at you. Especially in an odd country that smells different anyway.

I then met the crew. I have been working with them for a long time now (6 months or so), so I was pretty nervous. They were nice, and I think both sides were pretty shy. I felt odd because I had absolutely no idea how they perceived me; but it as the cool kind of odd. Not really uncomfortable, just a little awkward.

We had pretty good sushi for lunch, and then I had American food for dinner. My stomach was a little upset (probably from just being tired) so this was kind of nice.

Overall I am impressed with the professionalism of the Singapore team. The two leads and I had a meeting, and they were very direct and straight forward about what they need from me. We decided the most important thing I could do was spread information about some of the deeper architectural aspects of the system design.

I spoke some at length about the role of the current project in the larger view of the organization, and I ran a lot of ideas past the leads. They were receptive to most, and I feel I have a good path I can follow for the next few days.

It is interesting to finally meet the people I have been working with for such a long time and who are tasked with taking over the code-base. The team seems very intent on doing good work and they seem pretty inspired or driven. Dealing with people who don't care is a waste of time; this was my greatest fear. This crew seems workable; we will see.

Tomorrow I will start the professional development plan (give people copies of "The Pragmatic Programmer"). I really hope they are receptive to this because at the end of the day nothing would make my job easier than people who are actively studying computer science and coming up with good alternative perspectives.