Over a Friday coffee break on a Microsoft Teams chat ( now that’s one of the ways how coffee break works these days, online!), I got asked by a guy who had recently joined my team at work, how does it feel being in IT for so long, twenty three years! Well it feels great, the experience you have sells, you have built a trail of systems you can be proud of, humming away making money for big corporations, banks, governments, charities and some not so great people..you know the ones that kept you awake at night for all the wrong reasons, giving you fears that you might have a stroke or a heart attack, then some nice people, some achievements and so forth. We hung up and I locked my screen, so I won’t be ‘Available’ anymore and hopefully people won’t bother me that much, and hopped out to my backyard to soak myself in a a bleak fleeting ray of sunshine that I know won’t last too long before the cold blast will take over, the one coming from the South, the Antarctic, over Tassie over Melbourne and breezing past the edges of Pacific Australian coasts. Which would mean in addition to the cold winds, it will also carry moisture and bring some breeze, adding to the experience of the cold, like the toppings on your ice cream.

As I strolled over the backyard with a cup of warm coffee in my hand, I started to ponder what is it really like to be an IT guy for so long. What have I made, what lost, where have I been, the journey, the highs, the lows, the corporate jungle, some sanity breaks along the career, though very brief. Giving it few thoughts a thought finally stuck.

It feels like you are a magician, who has done the tricks million times. You know every single move, the preparations, the plannings, the risk assessments, the contingencies, the communications with your support, the fall backs, the roll back plans and every aspect of IT processes seem to come into play, in magic. So does IT feels like magic? Sometimes it does, with decent frequency. It can also feel like labor, like giving birth. The pain the baby gives you, the openings of the passage, the horror, the satisfaction..finally. The magic is there too in the baby analogy nevertheless. But at a point of where I am, after two decades, the magic starts to be too familiar, it stops being so magical, it starts to feel like a ritual. So when you see someone doing it, you immediately know the tricks, the deceptions. Even when you can’t see the actual movements you know what’s going on in the background, you don’t feel thrilled, in other words fooled. Never thought that being fooled would be thrilling! It does, in magic. So when sometimes you are really ‘fooled’, your eyes pop out brightly, you get excited, you get thrilled. Is that something people look for after being in an industry or a job for too long, a so call new ‘challenge’? Even though the job itself is not too bad. A thrill, to be fooled, by magic, a fulfilment?. A moment of not knowing what happened, and wanting to find out, curiosity kicking in, wanting to be able do do this new trick, that childish smile in you that you lost long ago.

Learning a foreign language is not just about being able to speak it, but to understand and immerse in their culture and world.

It feels surreal to go back to memory alley of the day when I joined my first lesson in Chinese in Beijing back in the Nineties together with some friends. Barely into our teenage, we were free and taking on the first steps towards adulthood, impression of the city was immense, and beautiful. Although we could not understand a word initially, the unspoilt version of the city back then was the China people can hardly see these days. I mean not just in terms of buildings, infrastructure, developments and so forth, but the people, their smiles, friendliness, curiosity felt genuine, uncorrupted and humane. Through gestures and noddings we hardly got by, but were enjoying the hospitality and looking at the local life from up close without any filter or pre conception. So every day was adventure unknown.

As I started to pick up the language and be able to make simple conversations, the world started to slowly open up, and started to reveal China that the world talks about, the culture, people, music, ancient palaces, alleys, food markets, Tian An Men, all the monuments and objects suddenly started to resonate with their true identity, flavour and history. You basically are no longer just observing from touristy eyes, but from inside, with connections starting to form as you understand the characters, history and meanings in their names. Its like being in the Pyramids in Egypt and suddenly starting to understand those cryptic letters and characters of the Pharaohs. Its suddenly a dawn slowly opening to lights and wow moments. It all paid off when we went to the White Pagoda built by a Nepalese architect and could read the characters telling the story of the artist, Araniko, or A-ni-ke, as the Chinese call him. We were so proud of the fellow Nepalese enshrined in the Middle Kingdom(中国). It was no more just a visit to a popular site, it was witnessing and tracing back the routes of your ancestors, someone from your own land and culture making a mark in a faraway land.

As I look back, as my language started to grow more fluent and confident, as the interaction grew with the local people so did my appreciation of the local culture, people, history, architecture and traditions. The more you interact, the more you realize their world, their point of view. You also start to see the similarities with your own culture, language, folklore and even the connection between their legends and travellers back to your own. You will start to see the mutual influence of cultures, the perception of the worlds other than your own and how the locals internalize it all, from their eyes and senses. It opens up and unlocks the understanding you never imagined. As you start to understand their poems, songs, stories, artists, writers, legends, Gods, you start to realize how vast, deep and rich their past is.

While travel is an entry to the new worlds, language is an insight that lets you slowly grasp the other side, the true nature and beauty of where you are and what you are observing. Language opens up the worlds for you that you never could realize existed and see for yourself that all human cultures are essentially built with similar core ingredients, needs and evolutions. You will slowly start to see a lot of your own world in theirs, the subtle differences, and a lot of their world in yours.