I plan my holiday to reconnect with my family in Paris taking advantage of several public holidays in the month of May, starting with May 1st which is labor day in many countries, followed by May 7th in Buddhist countries and May 8th in France. Unfortunately, I have to cancel this trip due to Covid-19. I’m wondering how fast I can get a refund for the ticket.
No other choice for me then staying home, my other home, in Singapore. I have been calling Singapore home for more than 20 years.
We all work from home for more than a month. And we continue to work from home until June 1st. I believe that working from home will become something not uncommon in the next 12 to 18 months at least.
Honestly, how much do you know about your home?
We spend almost 10 hours in the office every day. We see our colleagues every day more than we talk to our spouse and our kids.
Confined at home, I start to cook more, have my own food and somehow admire my cooking skill. I’m not kidding, I can cook.
I don’t venture out far away from my place. I shop at the nearby supermarket. I walk to the neighborhood to get my mangoes and watermelon. I drive to a nearby butcher shop to get my meat. I go back to my memories, searching for the taste of food that my mum and my grandmother used to prepare for us on Sunday. I try to replicate my wife’s recipe. I alternate between french and vietnamese cuisine.
I spend a lot of time in the morning for breakfast. With the door leading to the balcony wide open, I listen to bird chirping, to cicadas singing instead of noise pollution from cars and trains. I don’t hear many airplanes landing and taking off despite the fact that I’m only 5 minutes away from Changi airport. I live with nature in my home. When you think that Singapore has an urbanization rate at 100%. Confinement brings to you not only inconvenience but gives you back many aspects of life that you have forgotten.
I have online calls with my colleagues and partners every day in my tiny study room. When I turn on my camera, then I realize how messy my home is. I start rearranging my study room and within a minute, I become another version of Marie Kondo.
This is the moment that I bring out the old photos, Or should I say, rediscovering the memories. I scan them and share with my children and my wife, through Facebook with friends and relatives. I save the scanned photos on Flickr, it keeps the original quality better than Facebook. From an engineer perspective, I’m using a modern subscription photo editing tool with cloud technology to preserve and share my past memories.
All right, after the cleaning, my so-called home office has a nice white background which I can use for video calls and also for video shooting.
On the other hand, not being in office doesn't stop me from talking with colleagues and partners. Professionally, I keep engaging with them on 3DEXPERIENCE.
Just like my study room (and my house as well), I started cleaning up my Dashboard on 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. I want people to see my clean and neat dashboard when I share my screen during the video calls. Dashboard with only minimum but necessary information.
I want my table to get updated easily. So I spent an hour deep diving into the latest version of DataGrip. By the way, we just upgraded our 3DEXPERIENCE platform. We are now running R2021x. The beauty of cloud software (or SaaS), is that you as a user, don’t need to spend too much on re-installing, downloading and installing new versions every 6 weeks to 2 months. The entire upgrading operation runs on Saturday when I was cycling from home to Marina Bay downtown and back to home again.
My mind is going back to my memory lanes while I’m using the latest technology offered, to revive, share and preserve these unforgettable moments.
In the meantime, with social distancing in real life, I keep connecting digitally with my family and friends via FaceTime or WhatsApp and getting in touch (also collaborating) with colleagues and partners through various tools like Skype, GotoMeeting and essentially 3DEXPERIENCE platform with popular roles like Collaborative Business Innovator and apps like 3DSwym, 3DDrive and MyShares. We share the same Dashboard but I have my own Dashboard for daily tasks.
Rediscovering home makes you feel alive and you would realize that confinement has the good side.
And then, don’t be afraid of technology, it helps you to preserve legacy while letting you embrace innovation.
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