oN mY wAy

I'm making albums these days. Took lots photos in the past months. I had lots of photos when i was still a kid around 4 years old. Still have some albums at home somewhere for that time. But after I went to school, I didn't take that many photos any more. i think there must be some years I didn't have even one photo. Since I got a digital camera, I started to take photos again. But never printed them out, just kept them in my PC somewhere. Sometimes, I though I had a copy somewhere so deleted a folder, then noticed there's no copy in expected place. Some photos just disappeared in that way.

Weeks earlier saw Tina printed some photos. The feeling was so different with real photos from seeing on laptop's screen. Then thought maybe I should make my own album as well.

The day I got all those over 400 photos was exciting. 400 photos are much heavier than I thought it could be. Now I have four albums with different topics. Looking at those photos, the past comes out into mind again. It tells me the stories again, makes me laugh again, make what happened happen in front of me again. Some years earlier, i like photos of great view only without any one in the view. But this time when I chose photos for my albums, I more like those with people inside which makes the view more lively, less picky one the view itself.

I don't write dairy that much, only occasionally. I hope those photos could help me to remember the past for longer time.

I'm busy recently. Worked for more than 10 hours in more than 6 days in this sprint while each sprint only has 13 efficient working days. This busy makes me feel like time back to CT6 for Motorola project. For several months last year I worked like from 9am till 2am next day everyday.

Maybe I don't have to work till that late in this sprint since no many people really work as long time as me. Maybe it's not a big deal if we couldn't finish all the test cases in time. I don't know what will be the final result in this kind of "non-stop developing, less care of sufficient testing" mode.

Every time when I mention that we should slow down a little bit, all I can hear was question like "then what should we do while we have so big scope?" or "this is the first project we should finish as many user stories as we can (to impress our customer)". That made me feel bad actually. Their words sound like a complain saying I'm lazy who just wanna enjoy the comfort of slower developing speed. Although I don't think they meant that.

I'm not lazy. I just couldn't stop worrying about the quality: when developers didn't have enough time to think about the design or even didn't carefully read standards before they started to write code; when it's us, testers, told developers what they should implement; when to catch up with schedule, developers worked on single instead of pairs then without any review process; when issues of implementation from previous sprint keep popping up in next sprint. We are kind of lucky that I&V team now has no time to test our features which gave us time to find those bugs in next sprint by ourselves. But how could this be enough? How could they stand on this but feel nothing?

For god's sake there's no green build on trunk for over 2 months. Now except our testers still have a look at the cruise control result, who else really care of that? No one! Even myself, don't know if we can get the green build back on trunk again. If no one cares the result from auto tests, why should we still run these tests or create more?

While we were in Linkoping, Leon asked me to think about why we need testers in our team. From his view, all members in the ideal scrum team are able to both write code and test cases. And it's easier for developer to do tester's work than a tester to learn how to write c code. But now I'm thinking maybe we'll be short of testers or developers who is able to write test cases in scrum team.

Now I don't know what i intended to say in this blog. Ah.. I started with "busy".. I hate being busy like this. I can tell my temper was coming out sometimes. I need a rest to find my peace and comfort back.

I wonder how things will go on.. we'll see...

It's a shame to take care of parents for Swedes. This is the most shocking news for me, as it's opposite in China that it's a shame not to take care of their parents.

At the last time I met Chuck and Shuo at Nanluoguxiang before I went to Sweden, we talked about the difference on relationship between parents and kids in China and USA.

In China, the relationship between parents and kids are very tight. And more controls from parents to their kids. Chinese parents usually involve in most decisions of their kids even after they are 18 years old. The kids live with parents for longer time especially before they get married. Kids need to and should take care of their parents. It's common that parents live with their only kid or son (or in turn live with all kids) when they are getting old. And it's also very common that the parents help on taking care of grandchildren for their kids.

In Sweden as I know, the children have the right to decide everything after they are 18 years old. When people get old or become sick that couldn't really live alone, they seek for help from society. The old go to hospital or nursehouse, or move to the building where many old people live together. But in China, as long as we can, we won't let our parents move to nursehouse or those old people's building. We take care of our parents by ourselves.

Chuck ever gave an example. One of his relative had a very bad boyfriend. Everyone in the family knew that there wouldn't be a good end of that relationship. But none of them really say something to stop or break that relationship. They let it go. Finally his relative had a horrible marriage and had to end this bad experience by devoice. If this happened in China, parents would try their best to break this relationship in early phase and wouldn't let their daughter marry to that bastard. But still we can't say the control from parents for an adult kid is good. And in most cases, we, i mean being Chinese, we don't like that control. People grow up in most cases by making mistakes then learning from those.

There's a song from Jay Zhou named "grandma" (mormor). I like that song very much and its lyric. It tells that love and caring are much much more important than money for people old and living alone. She might prefer one day's company than 600RMB/Kronor/Dollar.

Differences are huge. I'm not saying which one is absolutely better or correct. It's different cultures formed in different histories and geographies.

Along with China's reform and opening, changes also happen on the relationship between parents and kids in Chinese family. Chinese parents learnt to respect to privacy, let kids make their decisions and take care of themselves even when they get old. And social systems give more support and care to old people and their lifes. These changes are good.

However, as I've seen how my mom took care of her dad when grandpa (morfar) was really sick, and as I've seen how my parents are taking care of their parents (farmor and farfar), as I've seen how my friend took care of her dad, as how I have learnt from all these true stories and from what I've been taught in school, I still believe kids should take care of their parents in both financial needs (if they need) and spirital needs. And I'll be proud of taking care of my parents.

Back to Beijing last Saturday. Before we came back, we heard it's already very very hot nearly 40 degree in Beijing. But the day we arrived here in the morning it was raining. Kind of cool.

Back to work on Monday. Tight schedule for Ericsson manager team visit and from this week, there're three Ericsson engineers working with us for 3weeks/5weeks/2months. Environment setup and feasibility study. From regular 3 weeks sprint suddenly changes to new work environment and tasks, well, which should be original work environment, kind of feeling uncomfortable.

Many friends asked me how I feel after came back home. Well I guess my true answer would surprise them. Tina told me she was very very happy to see her husband again. Many colleagues they think this trip took too long time. They have husband/wife/girlfriend/kids at home waiting for them. Only me may give totally different answer. It's a very complicate feeling for me as my feeling is different from what usually people think I should have.

Instead of answer their questions, I always tell them I did enjoy my life in Sweden. Although living there is expensive, although Linkoping is a quite small town for me, although I think Swedish is very hard to learn, although the weather can change many times from raining to windy to sunny in one day, although it's still very bright outside at 9pm in May, although the Chinese food there is quite bad, although it's weird to see people wear very less clothes on the lawn to enjoy the sunshine like how french looks on the beach. But I love there so many lakes/rivers/sea, I love the dark blue sky and "reachable" cotton-candy-like clouds, I love some Swedish food I had tried, and I love that I made some friends there in the past months and we start to care each other, I love our Tuesday tradition for having same specific dish at "Chili and Lime", I love the way people there enjoy their luxury life, I love that it's easy to arrive office before 8:30 even get up at 7:15.

Before I left Sweden, I were asked by some friends if I will go back to Sweden sometime later again. The first time my answer in April was "I need a good reason to come back". Then in May it's "Maybe, who knows". Finally in June before I left, it's "I wish I could go back there someday again."

I have been back Beijing for 5 days. Time doesn't go fast as my last 3 weeks in Sweden. It's so slow now and 5 days seems 5 weeks long.

Yesterday, when we had dinner with Ericsson people, I just noticed this trip is the longest trip for me leaving home. I didn't leave home for longer than 2 weeks before. And this first time I left China. We joked that Sweden could be considered as my second home as where I spent longest time beside Beijing.

My second home and my friends there, let see when I can visit you again. I expect that.

Years ago, when I was younger,
I kinda liked a girl I knew.
She was mine, and we were sweethearts
That was then, but then it’s true

I’m in love with a fairytale,
even though it hurts
‘Cause I don’t care if I lose my mind
I’m already cursed.

Every day we started fighting,
every night we fell in love
No one else could make me sadder,
but no one else could lift me high above

I don’t know what I was doing,
when suddenly, we fell apart
Nowadays, I cannot find her
But when I do, we’ll get a brand new start

I’m in love with a fairytale,
even though it hurts
‘Cause I don’t care if I lose my mind
I’m already cursed

She’s a fairytale
Yeah…
Even though it hurts
‘Cause I don’t care if I lose my mind
I’m already cursed