Birthday of π

I almost forgot -- today's the birthday of π -- 3.14.

Maybe I should consider eating a pie (π) to celebrate? Haha!

Politics in moving places

Our department is finally going to move from the present, old, listed building on Southpark Avenue to the Main Building of the university. I haven't been to the new office to take a look yet. But I'm sure that the new office would not be as nice as my current one.

All the department staff have been busy packing their belongings. Though we were advised by Veda, the deparmental secretary, that staff from the moving company will help us pack our stuff (in case we overpack the cartons and make them too heavy to move at all), most of us would like to pack things up ourselves. The other day I went to Greg's room and found him in a T-shirt, already half-way finished in packing his books, files, journals, and mountains of sheets of papers into cartons. I have never seen his room so tidy before! He told me that he had been in the same room for 22 years. Blimey! "It's time to have a change now," I said to him.

Moving offices could have revealed a lot of politics. Who's going to sit with whom, and how big the room is, or even on which floor... etc., all of them can tell a lot about one's standing within an organisation. Greg told me that he wasn't too happy about his new room. By the location and the size of his new room, he felt being 'marginalized' and he knew it. Oh, tell me about it!

It's this kind of office politics that I dislike most. Sometimes, I wonder why people are so obsessed with power rather than brains, or with authority rather than knowledge. What kind of pleasure does it offer to an individual when he exercises some authority over others, when that kind of authority derives only from his rank/position in the workplace instead of his true self? If that individual holds his office no more, would others still take him seriously then? Would others still respect him anymore?

People come to workplace to work for a common goal. To achieve that goal effectively, members of the same workplace need to be organised. So some may become leaders, others followers. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the followers would have to remain followers all over their lives. In many situations, the group leaders can be, and are proven to be, inferior to their own members in many aspects other than the sole function in the workplace. So why the need to lord others over?

As AM wrote in her blog (it's a pity that she writes no more -- hope it's not due to illness or other mishaps?), why not let go of oneself?

Haven't they learned anything after all these years?