Organized Chaos

Last week we went to Museum Negara and did house spring cleaning. Two unrelated events? May be, but suddenly I was reminded of a dialogue from an Indian movie, where the mother complains that the son makes the house messy AND the son retaliates that house is meant to be messy (to get a cosy feel) and only museums are meant to be organized!


In reality the museum was equally messy, because they were doing a large scale house keeping! Nothing very interesting except these few shots (ahem, time to seriously upgrade my knowledge on anthropology/archeology, so that I can appreciate the collections).

 

The antique artifacts and the organization was equally primitive. 

For some there were English and Malay descriptions but for many there were only Malay descriptions. May be there is a dearth of translators:p

Coming back to my house cleaning. Every time I think of spring cleaning I just cant see from where to begin and then finally give up for another day:( Typical dis-organization syndrome^^. I can't run away for ever, so started on emptying wardrobes and to my disbelief, we had clothes that was not worn for years. Like treasure hunt, I found my old favorite baggy T-shirt. I had an urge to stop the laborious task and wash that first, so that I can use it, but refrained myself. After two hours, I seized my operation and I started to rattle, to unwind. 

Well, am reminded of a different kind of "spring cleaning/house keeping" that was scheduled so often, but with no use. Yes, there were endless hours of "planning" to clean up codes/contents. During this phase, the pointless meetings and discussions used to irk me. To throw away any unwanted stuff, you need prove that it is not needed and on top of it "convince" your boss. Phew!, that needed more time than to plan for the constructive stuff. So, I've even noticed some of them taking easy way out...

In a recent post Tom Johnson explains why and how Technical Writers (TW) can overcome the defects that arise from "trust". Well, I would say he is polite by using the term trust. I would say that TWs are totally ignored during the major stages of the software development cycle. This leads to major usability issues and low quality documentation. Most often TW thinks from user point of view where as the business and engineering team concentrates only in satisfying the so called requirements. But, towards the end of the project, they say that help is not helpful. An easy way out, right?