Yesterday, we had dinner. A simple affair of chicken and fish tenderly prepared to juicy perfection by our host, chairman and chief executive of the company, Tommy Ooi, once more at his homily.
It was a great time for some vital catching up since our last meeting earlier in the year, especially with the inherent auspiciousness of the week from the double entendre of Jesus and Guan Ying.
Tommy graciously chauffeured me and Chong Yang to his home shortly before 6pm, which was the designated time to begin the feast. To keep us entertained while the chef of the day finalised the meal, we were treated with Bleach, not to be confused with the common household item used to murder scum.
First, a small tribute to the most valued and cherished employee of the company, our Chief Technology Officer, Chong Yang.
Many fail to understand how much work the average programmer has to put into a project to see it through to the end. The life of a programmer is world's apart from what we know. An esoteric universe filled with jargon featuring four consecutive consonants in a word (HTTP), truncated words rendered unintelligible (a href), and further flows of XML, ASP, HTM, and the like in the great river of cyberspace.
In this realm, the programmer is God, defining the rules, making sure the citizens don't burn the forests that give them nourishment, or cloud the sun with conflicts of code. If you are of religion and happen to be a Luddite, imagine how God made the world, trying to satisfy the craving of man for more than he needs while keeping the flora and fauna in adequate supply while defining the laws of physics, chemistry and biology and you have a glimpse at the frustration and love that goes into the thousands of lines of coding that becomes software, music, language, film, and knowledge.
That is Chong Yang's contribution to us, dedicating heart and soul to the crafting of a new world out of the DNA of computers, for us. The dedication to his craft was best exemplified during the recent Physics Olympiad, where a sudden demand for templates prompted him to attempt the unthinkable - create a template without his trusted software programs!
Not to mention spilling out cash for RM5.00 an hour for an Internet connection that barely functioned, using a computer that wasn't his, and missing a lecture on relativity.
Yes, dinner was excellent. But this post was never meant to highlight our fulfilling dine on solid marble in opulent dressing, but about a single human whom we could never do without.
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