Yourself?

Week Review

I thought I'd better do a week review before I forget loads of things. Hmm, but it's disjointed as always, and terribly compressed, so it all goes through this filter of significant things, and you'll miss out on the transitional parts of this.

Well, I love improving musically. I thought last week was a really good week music wise. I'm better acquainted with my guitar and playing scales all over the fretboard. Fingers just instinctively know where to go now, and my ears can differentiate between semitone and tone differences in my scale. Listening to my old songs again and hearing all the parts with greater clarity and seperation, especially the basslines, so I'm rejuvenated and inspired to work harder now. Realized I prefer the sound of my old nylon guitar over the electric sound of my electric guitar. It's so much more resonant and sweet sounding. Played my acoustic guitar, and the bass notes just sound wrong, so I'm looking around for a new acoustic guitar again.

Medically, I've been redoing my biology. I printed out the index from Molecular Biology of the Cell, and reading it to get a better understanding of the processes occuring within the cell. The cell is really amazing. Each time I reread my basic biology, I find out so much more about the makeup of my own body. It is exciting to know my cell biology better, because it has so much to do with emergent behaviour of simple rules, and it's just so similar to structures produced in the game of life, or the ant program. Perhaps simple rules in the DNA are expressed in each cell at different times, and that's how we get our complex biological structures. The compressed information is expanded by mathematical evolution.

Really, now that you think about it, the basis of evolution depends on reproducibility and stability. Code has to be compressed into a form which can be expanded accurately. The expansion of the code itself has to depend on an environment that reacts predictably. Thus, mathematics is the ideal environment to build the machinery upon, as mathematics is constant. Mathematical expansion is more constant than chemical expansion.

What does this have to do with medicine? Nothing.

Well, I went with Jinsheng to get a new phone the other day, and he got a Nokia 6280. It was really interesting going to the M1 shop at Paragon, as it was very organized and specialized. I think the service wasn't bad, and every person there knew their job well, even though it may have been repetitive or stressful. It's very different from the Toyota showroom, which was similar to a marketplace. But both places had receptionists, and helpful sales staff. I thought the receptionist was the most important person in the shop, in order to set the right tone. The new face of business depends on a bunch of things. Business needs to have a system for customers. THey need to know how to behave and conform to your company's workflow. The receptionist helps by providing unambiguous directions to customers, and to set them in a pleasant mood while waiting to be served.

Put customers in queues with number tags, but not have them queue up in a visible line in order to reduce frustrations in waiting. Use the surroundings to your company's benefit. We waited an hour to see the officer, but it didn't feel as long as we spent the time shopping outside the store.

Once we see the officer, make sure the counter staff is knowledgable, and efficient. Train them to be polite, and minimize movements between officers. Make sure all documentation is prepared for the customer in advance, and they only have to sign or fill up relevant documents.

What the new face of business is, is about workflow and customer satisfaction. Software is also being increasingly seen as a service, and it should be structured the same way. Mac OS X gets it. It gives me the same feeling as an organized shop, where I just enter and do my thing, and leave the technical details to someone else. Windows still gives me the feeling that I have to do so many things to get my system working. I don't want to set up a business to serve myself. I want someone to set up things for me to use.

My view on life has changed. I used to want to build everything myself, in order to save money, but that was inefficient and unpleasant. The new future is a place where I focus on earning money, and people help me accomplish what I want to do. They are more efficient in doing certain tasks than me, thus, I save time in contracting their services, and they profit from their expertise in doing certain tasks.

This makes life so much easier for everyone involved, and business should focus on providing this value-added service to people.

posted by Downhere. @ 9:24 am