 in Singapore. So my direct boss (a VP) used to be all on his own for about a year and a half when he was transferred from our HQ in Australia till I came along. Since then, our team had grown to 4 and at the moment we are down to 2, again.
This means I’ve been the only constant person spending time at work with him and as a result, we sort of know each other’s habit and behaviour.
One of the tradition that he brought over from the HQ was Ramen Wednesday. There was this small Japanese restaurant / bar called Chaco Bar,down the road from the old office building,that serves ramen on Wednesdays and Fridays (I’ve just checked their website and it says Wed – Sat now, so maybe it has changed?). Since Fridays are reserved for team lunch, so they usually go on Wednesdays (though not everyone went for ramen).
My VP loves ramen, so it’s a given that he would want to bring the weekly tradition over when he was transferred to Singapore. So Ramen Wednesday was born.
At our first office space, we used to go to 2 different ramen restaurants, alternating on a weekly basis. When we moved to our current space, we usually went to the one in a shopping mall across the road, until we found our current favourite, Ramen Matsuri in North Canal Road. We practically go there every week (once in awhile we do go to the other one) to the point that the cashier (a lovely Japanese girl) has known us really well and has even memorised our order! Hahahahaha
She literally remembered what we would be ordering every week (the same variant for my boss every single time, while I would be changing my order once in awhile). We both love the mazesoba (dry ramen). When our previous colleague was still with us, he would be ordering the soup version. Both are really, really good.
So anyway, we couldn’t go for ramen today cos I was working from home and he was in an all-day event.
The first thing he said to me on Slack this morning:
#Priorities
Here’s a couple more conversations with my boss that I originally posted on Twitter:
1. On a Friday
Manager: Guess what?
A: … what?
M: It’s your turn today
A: Huh? Isn’t it your turn?
M: Tell me what you wanna say. I know what to get back at you with
A: Where did we go 2 weeks ago?
M: (without missing a beat) The Mexican place. I picked that
A: Ahhh dang you’re right
(We take turns picking a lunch place on Fridays – team lunch day – and we would usually argue on who would be the one. This was happening when we were a team of 3 and 4 too. Truly #FirstWorldProblem)
2. One afternoon:
Manager: I wanna get coffee. Do u want anything?
A: Hmm… I’ll go with you
M: Ha! The dark side! (Cos I rarely grab a drink outside). (after a few seconds) Actually… I wanna take advantage of this. Let’s sit down and have coffee there.
(We ended up sitting down and chatted for a good 20 mins; and I had soy matcha latte)
3. I’ve been packing lunches from home quite regularly recently and on one day that I didn’t:
Manager: Do you bring lunch today?
Me: Nope
Manager: Oh, congratulations! Was there any specific reason why or was it just guilt (of turning down his invite for lunch lately)?
Me: We just didn’t cook last night 💁🏻
4. He was on a call with someone one fine Friday morning and was pretty distressed about it:
Me: So, since you are feeling rather stressed about it, you can pick lunch today.
Manager: No, it’s your turn today. Don’t you run away and sugarcoat it. What, are you in sales now?
5. On one regular morning:
Manager: How could I resize image and keep its ratio in Google Slides?
Me: Hold the Shift key and resize
Manager: You’re a genius. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
6. After coming back from lunch (him, not me)
Manager: I’ve had a deep thought during lunch, and I don’t wanna surprise you, but…. you’ll pick lunch (place) tomorrow.
Me: You had really deep thoughts while eating
#ConvoWithMyBossThe first one I would like to address is a quote from BEA's Marge Breya. Marge Breya is BEA's Chief Marketing Officer, so we can forgive her a little for her ignorance. So here is the quote:
"JBoss is closed from a contribution standpoint–it's open source with a closed community…a bit like calling Cuba a democracy," said Breya.
Here is the link that contains the quote:
This has got to be one of the most twisted statements I have every read. First, she claims that JBoss is closed from a contribution standpoint. This is the furthest thing from the truth. Open source contribution is based on a meritocracy. The best contributions are committed, and contributors earn committer status in the projects. JBoss is no different, and I can assure you that JBoss has many contributors outside of JBoss, Inc.'s paid developers. If BEA wanted to contribute, their developers would have to earn that right through valuable and good code contributions. There have been over one thousand contributors to JBoss projects, and that number will continue to grow. If you look at the forums on the jboss web site () you will see a vibrant community of users and contributors (actually users are contributors too). There are thousands and thousands of posts on all the various JBoss projects. If this isn't community, then what is she talking about?
Second she tries to say that we really aren't open source because we don't have a community, and says it is like calling Cuba a democracy! What a ridiculous statement. So let's really look at this statement. We all know Cuba is not a democracy but a communist state. You would be off your rocker to make that statement. Is Marge Breya, off her rocker by saying that JBoss is not open source? Well, let's ask ourselves some questions. What license is the software licensed under? JBoss is licensed under the LGPL. Is this an approved open source license by the Open Source Initiative? Yes, it is. In fact, the LGPL specifically prohibits the code from ever being closed. We have already gone over the community question and contribution, so what is her beef? I think that it has to do with the license. More on that in a minute.
Next, we have some IBM comments from Steve Mills. Steve Mills is the head of IBM's software group, and he was quoted saying the following:
JBoss' Java application server contains a significant proprietary component even while it adheres to the Java 2 Enterprise Edition standards.
"JBoss has a lot of proprietary JBoss. It's sort of a hybrid model of open source," Mills said.
Here is the link that contains the quote:
Steve Mills claims that JBoss is a hybrid model of open source. What does that mean? Is some of the JBoss code closed source, and some not? Absolutely not! Are some of the JBoss projects not based on an open standard? Yes! Is JBoss not open source just because they have code that is not based on some standard? No! Having said that, are there standards for covering the things that are not based on an open standard? No! There are no open standards for object/relational mapping, with the exception of the new EJB 3.0 specifications, of which JBoss was the main contributor, and has an implementation already. There are not open standards for Aspect Oriented programming. This doesn't stop IBM from using AspectJ does it? Is AspectJ not open source because it doesn't adhere to some standard? Of course, not! This is just a bunch of hooey! Why would IBM be complaining about JBoss being proprietary? Have they open sourced their WebSphere product line? Do they have any proprietary technology in WebSphere? Of course they do. Just like JBoss, you have to solve real-world customer problems, and that means you have to have technology that is outside of any standards. Standards only cover part of the problem space for developing real-world solutions to real business problems. How many WebSphere and BEA shops use Hibernate for their persistence? Lot's of them do, because it is simply works better. I believe there are two fundamental reasons for IBM and BEA to cast disparaging remarks at JBoss.
The first reason, is the license that JBoss uses. It does not let them fork the code and make it proprietary. BSD and ASF style licenses allow, and to some extent, encourage forking the code, and taking it proprietary. This allows traditional software vendors like IBM and BEA to mine the best of open source and take it proprietary. So the open source community does the work, and IBM and BEA get the money. This sounds like exploitation to me. The second reason, is that much of the JBoss technology can run inside BEA's Weblogic and IBM's WebSphere. This must be very scary for them. After awhile