Malaysia and Chinese New Year
Tuesday February 27, 2024
Just over three weeks ago, I had departed Barcelona for Kuala Lumpur via Doha. The first leg of the journey was uneventful, though my entertainment system had some very bad lag issues and I couldn’t watch any movies. The second leg from Doha to Kuala Lumpur was handled by Malaysian Airlines, and I took advantage of the free wifi on board by chatting with some friends in Toronto and my workmate Pete in New Zealand. Suddenly Pete’s tone changed to that of panic, saying we’d been sent an email halting production immediately and that we’d been furloughed - that is, suspended from our jobs temporarily without pay. I spent the next 90 minutes of the flight hyperventilating.
A few days later, the company found out that it is illegal to furlough Canadians, so they laid us off instead. We’ve engaged an employment lawyer to help us through the proceedings and we’ll have to wait and see what happens next. For the Americans, it’s even worse because this is an underhanded tactic to lay them off without severance, which is contradictory to all the messaging about care and respect that the CEOs have been spouting on social media.
We’re finding it difficult to reconcile what’s been happening. No one saw this coming, no one expected it to be done this way, and no one could believe the lengths that Jeff and Annie have gone through to escape responsibility for their critical failures. Soon after we were furloughed/terminated, Prytania general staff and Game Science were let go as well. We set up a couple of Discord servers for everyone to discuss their options and provide support, and the way that we’ve come together in this month of dire need is testament to how amazing our team was.
I think that’s what hurts the most. That we had such a cool project and talented team but we’ll never be able to bring everyone together again to finish what we started. The Strains have gone completely silent and haven’t fronted media at all, let alone had the decency to talk to us directly, and instead have deleted their LinkedIn profiles as well as the Prytania one. And why? To hide all the posts they made about layoffs being the fault of leadership?
What that has meant in the short term is that suddenly my time in Malaysia freed up. In spite of the stress and lack of sleep, I’ve been able to enjoy the delicious food and catch up with family. The festivities of Chinese New Year were awesome to see as well, with lion dances and dragon dances, dragon displays, and of course, all the different kinds of food and goodies available during this time - yee sang, pineapple tarts, peanut cookies, almond cookies and more. And yet, on an occasion where I should have been celebrating success and prosperity, I could only fight to hold back tears, disappointed that all this had to happen during Chinese New Year.
In amongst all the eating, I’ve been doing interviews and practicing code tests. Live coding - where you solve a coding problem while your interviewers watch everything you type - is an incredibly stressful method of interviewing that is absolutely not indicative of the kind of conditions that programmers normally work in, so why do we continue to subject each other to such torture?
The last few days have been a flurry of fooding as I’ve tried to tick off the last remaining items on my list. On chap goh mei, the final day of Chinese New Year, we were treated to an exquisite meal at Copper Mansion, with suckling pig, abalone and prawns. I’ve been spoiled silly by family, as usual. I’m on my way back to Spain now, and things are looking up. I’ve got some time to travel and take a breather, and I’ll definitely be making the most of my time in Europe.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:03pm on Tuesday February 27, 2024 :: 0 comments :: 
Hasta Luego
Sunday February 4, 2024
It’s time for me to leave the sunny shores of the Mediterranean and swap my idyllic Catalan lifestyle with the bustle of South East Asia. My time here has picked up since I moved to a different place, a little further away from downtown but more spacious, more natural light, warmer, more spices for cooking (there were five at the last place) and best of all, Odin, an adorable ginger cat who used to have feline leukaemia. He’s been keeping me company while his parents go to work, and he’s become comfortable enough to curl up on my bed and protect me from anything that might suddenly enter my room while I’m working.
Last weekend, Owen took me to a Michelin star restaurant for lunch, which I found to be of incredibly high quality, but lacking something particularly unique about the dishes. On Sunday, we took the train to Vallvidrera, which sits on the ridge west of Tibidabo. We wandered around for a bit along the Carretera de les Aigues, a popular road for running and biking, and then we followed a trail down the hill towards Les Planes, where Bea joined us for a calçotada - a Catalan barbeque where they grill spring onions over the fire and serve with romesco sauce. It’s nice to be able to share food with friends, especially at these very local restaurants where knowing the language and customs are a huge advantage. While we were there, there were two birthday parties for a 53 year old and an 80 year old, and the atmosphere was wholesome AF.
The remainder of my days have been spent wandering around the neighbourhood. It’s a 30 min walk to the beach, and there’s definitely been a few shorts days to enjoy. But the constant sun has caused the existing drought to worsen, and stricter rules have been imposed on Barcelona in an attempt to curb water expenditure. The region desperately needs rain and it’s another wake up call that climate change is really messing things up.
Work has been busy. European time means the morning are quiet and I can focus on my work without interruption, but evenings are when the North Americans come online and there’s a bit more conversation happening. I’m not sure how this is going to work in Malaysian time though, but work has thankfully given me permission to work “regular” Malaysian hours so I can still join my family for dinners. There’s a few holidays while I’m there though, so it doesn’t actually add up to that many days on awkward working hours.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:31pm on Sunday February 4, 2024 :: 0 comments ::