Time, Part III

I’ve been going on walks.

Mostly in the evening or late at night, when it’s not 30 degrees outside, and walking outside isn’t liable to result in death from heat stroke, but I’ve been going on walks. Crazy, I know.

Why? I’m not entirely sure, but I think the answer is complicated.

It all started when I was arriving home late at night. I might have been coming back from trivia, or maybe I had stayed back at work for some reason. I stepped into the lift, joining a guy who lives on the same floor as me. Just as the doors were about to close, another guy I had seen walking along the street 30 seconds earlier also jumped in. From the way his hair was dishevelled and how he was drenched in sweat, I suspected he had been running — a suspicion that was soon confirmed after he told the other guy that he had just run seven kilometres.

I thought to myself: if this otherwise normal-looking guy can do it, why can’t I? Not that there was anything wrong with the guy, but for some reason, that’s where my mind went. It said that if this guy can do it, I’m probably capable of doing the same. Not running – every time I pass a runner on a bike path on my electric skateboard, I remind myself that running isn’t my thing, at least not while walks exist as the next-most attractive alternative — but walks? I can do walks.

So, spurred on by a piece I read recently that said walking is a superpower that leads to better health, more happiness, and might even make me smarter, I’ve been going on walks.

I’m sure it has something to do with my Apple Watch, too. I’ve seen so many other people post their activity streaks, and here I am, having only achieved a perfect week of all activity goals just the other week. I’ve owned an Apple Watch for over four years, and yet I’ve only managed to have a perfect week of hitting all my activity goals just once, and it happened just last month. That’s terrible, by any definition of the word.

I’m not naive enough to think that somehow closing my Apple Watch rings every day will suddenly make me incredibly buff, but what’s the downside here? It can’t hurt, right? It’s the ol’ climate change argument, only instead of asking what happens if we change the world for the better for no reason, I’m asking myself why I can’t get a little more exercise every day, especially if it only costs me a little time that I was probably just going to waste sitting in front of a computer on the internet anyway.

My parents have been telling me to exercise for years, so all of this should be a plus, as far as they’re concerned. They tell me all the time that because I have a desk job, I need to be getting some sort of exercise, so going for a walk is really the easiest, least-effort thing I can do. It’s the lowest-hanging fruit, in terms of fitting some regular exercise into every day goes.

While all of those are great, excellent reasons to go walking, I think the real reason is even more selfish. If that’s possible.

It’s time. Or a time thing, anyway.

When I lived in Hobart, work was a 90 minute round trip away. That meant I had 90 minutes, every day I worked, all to myself. A lot of the time I’d put my in-ear headphones in, cue up whatever playlist I felt like listening to at the time, and tune out the world. I’d stare out the window of the bus and let my mind wander. Other times, I’d read something from my Instapaper queue, or go over whatever blog post draft I was working on at the time, re-reading it, and maybe even adding a sentence here or there.

But now? Now I don’t get that kind of alone time any more, at least not in the same way that I did before.

Now, work is an all-too-short 10 minute commute away. That’s hardly enough time to catch up on Twitter in the morning, much less think about anything deep and meaningful. And now that I ride an electric skateboard to work, I’m usually thinking about how not to get run over, more than I am about how I should have said something different than what I did (or said something at all, as is often the case).

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Trivia, Part II

Ever since that one work trivia night a few months ago, I’ve been doing pub trivia with a guy from work and some of his friends.

It’s been really good. We’ve been going to a different venue every time, and so far, we’ve won twice out of the seven times we’ve been.

The first time we won was at The Boundary, in West End. My teammates said it had been recently-renovated, but for whatever reason, there wasn’t a huge turnout. Team Two looked to be one of three teams participating in trivia on that very quiet Wednesday night, although a team of two guys joined late, bringing the total count to four. It was by far the least-populated venue we’ve been to. The Boundary’s trivia differentiated itself by featuring per-round prizes comprised of various brewery company merchandise and vouchers for discount drinks, and seeing as we managed to win three out of the four or so rounds, it was probably no surprise we ended up winning the whole thing. That earned us a nice $50 voucher, which we promptly spent on drinks to end the night.

The Boundary is also notable for being the only place I’ve drunk alcohol at. Partly because it was free, partly because I felt like I had to celebrate our first trivia win somehow. But, like most of the times I’ve drunk alcohol, I regretted it not too long afterwards. I had two drinks (a rum and coke, and a vodka cranberry) and that was it — after that, I just wanted to sleep. I had planned to walk back to the train station, but I ended up ordering an Uber, and might have even shut my eyes for a few minutes during the ride home.

One of the reasons we’ve been going to a different place every time is that we haven’t found a place that ticks all of our collective boxes. Either we’ve gone somewhere with great trivia, but a terrible atmosphere, or we go somewhere with a great atmosphere, and awful trivia. Or some of us like the trivia, but others dislike the atmosphere. Although we place pretty highly most of the time, there are just some places that we know we’ll never win at, only because there’s so many other teams that are doing just as well as we are (or better). The very first pub trivia that I went to with the current squad was at Stones Corner. There were 24 teams in attendance that night, which was crazy and made for some very tough competition. So, week after week, our search for the ideal pub trivia location continues.

As someone who doesn’t drink, and therefore has no real reason to frequent pubs or bars in the traditional, Australian-drinking-culture sense, it’s been really interesting seeing the variety of different venues. By going to a different place every time, I’ve now seen the inside of quite a few places, some better than others. Some quieter, some cosier. Every place has been unique in some way, but I’d say my favourite places have been the ones where the patrons skew towards my demographic. That is, young adults enjoying a drink with a few friends after work, answering a few questions here and there. Not that I have something against the older generation, but they’re usually far too good at trivia. And besides, aren’t they supposed to have their own families or something? Kids to look after at home? What are they doing muscling on my territory that I only claimed a few short months ago?

No, the thing that makes any pub trivia attractive to me, are ones where young adults gather to socialise within their own circles of friends, and compete against others doing the same thing. But good trivia helps with that as much as location does, I’ve found.

It turns out, there are a few companies that do organised trivia in Brisbane.

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Twenty Eight

We’re having a small departure from the usual Fallout-related images for birthday posts, because this shot of being killed by a well-known Escape from Tarkov streamer (and fellow Aussie), 28 seconds into the raid, while I was level 28, was too good not to use.

I’m not getting any younger.

Those were the exact words I said to a colleague — a whole seven years my junior — the other day. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but it must have been related to our age difference, and/or differing accumulated life experience.

I often think that I’ve had a pretty sheltered life so far. It happens, especially when you grow up in a Christian family, go to a Christian school, and have somewhat-conservative Asian parents. And because I’m a bit of an introvert, it’s not as if I was going out and getting blind drunk every other weekend, like plenty of other people around my age. I don’t drive, lived at home until I was 24, and have only really been independent these past couple of years, all of which has really limited the shenanigans that I’ve been able to get up to.

Whilst I could argue that circumstances have meant that I’ve had less life experience than others, I have a sneaking suspicion that the reality is that my sheltered life has been much of my own choosing. By choosing to spend a lot of time alone in front of a computer, it’s possible, even likely, that I’ve had less exposure to “real life” than others.

Which is fine. Not all experiences are nice, after all. There’s definitely evidence to say that experiences that fall into the category of being “life experiences” often aren’t, more often than they are. At the very least, they often have some distinct reason to be memorable and can therefore be called an experience, and that experience isn’t always positive.

A few years back, the work Christmas party had a few gambling tables set up. The theme was Casino Royale, so gambling fit the bill. Everyone was given a set of chips on arrival, and it was up to you how you used them. Given that my exposure to real gambling at that point was more theoretical than practical, consisting of whatever I had seen on TV or in movies, I followed the lead of a few colleagues and played whatever they did.

I had just put it all on black at roulette, and was making small talk with one of my managers, when they asked me if I went to the casino often.
“No, I’ve never been”, I replied.
“Never?!” they responded incredulously.
I nodded yes. I might have then mumbled something about living a pretty sheltered life, but they didn’t press the issue.

It’s not as if I have some issue with gambling that has meant I’ve never done it, it’s more that I can count the number of times I’ve stepped foot onto a gambling floor at a casino using both my hands. I’ve never pulled the lever on a pokie machine, never gone all-in at poker, and never rolled the dice at craps. The only reason I know about any of these things is by sheer coincidence, either from reading about them online, or watching them being played in a movie or TV show. Sure, I’ve played video game equivalents — never with any real money on the line, mum — but it’s not really the same thing, you know?

Like I said, less life experience.

Which brings up an interesting point: do you think you can distill life experiences down to their essence so you can say you’ve been there, done that, even if you really haven’t? Or do the details matter enough that playing video game poker isn’t the same as the real thing?

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Tweeting TI9 as @WeAreBrisbane

I spent the last week shouting into the void as the @WeAreBrisbane rotation curation Twitter account, telling the good people of Brisbane (and everyone else that follows the account) all about Dota 2 and The International Dota 2 Championships, which also happened to be taking place that week. I thought it would be nice if I had some kind of record of what I said that was a little less ephemeral than a rotation curation Twitter account. Of course, rocur accounts being what they are, in terms of having a different host every week, and not wanting to embed the tweets directly with a different profile picture, what follows is a near-direct transcript of those tweets, with only light editing for layout and clarity.

Hello, Brisbane! It’s your new tweeter for the week, @bdyling. Long time follower of the account, but I’ve never thought of actually being Brisbane… until this week (more on this in a sec).

About me: I’m a late 20-something guy that works and lives on the north side. We’ll get to all of that over the course of the week, I’m sure. But strap yourselves in, because this week we’re going to talk about V I D E O G A M E S. Well, one video game in particular. Everyone has their passions, and one of mine is Dota 2, because I hate myself. Which brings us to…

As for why I’m curating this account this week instead of any of the hundreds that I’ve followed the account for, it’s because this week is special: it’s the week of The International Dota 2 Championships. And I promise you, it’s a real thing. Look, we get our own Twitter emoji and everything, which is how you know that It’s A Big Deal™: #TI9

Unfortunately, Twitter’s tweet embeds don’t show these custom emojis. Don’t ask me why, just click here to see it.

But what is The International? It’s one of the world’s biggest esports tournaments. For Dota 2 fans, TI is a true celebration of Dota 2. That it happens to feature some of the best Dota you’ll ever see is a fringe benefit, as far as I’m concerned.

To people who don’t follow the Dota 2 scene, the one thing that blows their mind, every time, is the prize pool. That a video game can have a a $33.4 million (and counting) prize pool is crazy enough, but that’s not even the craziest part. No, the truly crazy part is that of that $33.4m, players like me (and maybe even some of you?) have contributed $31.8m. And that’s only 25% of the total amount of in-game cosmetic sales that have happened since May, which means we’ve given Valve ~$127m in 3 months.

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Trivia

You know that feeling when the name of something is on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t remember it? Or when you know you read an article about something that happened in the last few months, but can’t remember the exact detail that was just asked? Or how about when you know the exact lyrics to a song, but not the name of a song itself? Or can describe the plot of a book or movie in its entirety, but can’t remember the name of the author, or the name of the movie? Of course you do. Everyone does, and trivia nights are great for it.

It’s the 1st of June, 2018. For the life of me, I can’t remember what question was asked, but I remember it had something to do with Moana. I think it might have even been one of those “name this picture”-type rounds, and the picture was the character The Rock voices in the movie. You know, the big muscled guy? The one with all the tattoos, and the long curly hair? Wait, what was his name again? Maui! That’s the guy.

Anyway, I didn’t remember his name at the time, even though I had obviously watched Moana before. No one else in my team did either, so I knew it was up to me to rack my brain, remember the name, and write it down. In-between rounds, I quickly looked up the Moana page on IMDB, knowing that it would be the fastest way to tell me the name of the character. I did so, and it maybe took me 10 seconds. 15, tops. I whispered the name to someone else my team, as a kind of lament I couldn’t remember it when it needed to be remembered.

They immediately admonished me for cheating. Somewhat taken aback, I offered up the explanation that I just needed to know, and that I wasn’t going to write it down or submit it as an answer. In my mind, I was in the clear: sure, I had “cheated” and looked up the answer. But was it really cheating if I didn’t use my newfound knowledge to my advantage? Was it really cheating if I didn’t confirm or deny whatever answer my team submitted as the answer to that trivia question? I didn’t think so at the time, and still don’t. Sure, it might have been wrong to look up the answer then and there, instead of later that night after trivia had ended, but how wrong that is could be debated, too.

Benny and the Jets ended up winning that particular trivia night by one point, and I’m proud to say we didn’t do it by cheating.

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Assertive Confidence

There was this one time, at band camp, when a customer brought in a working Macintosh Classic. We just had to display it next to the mid-2010 (?) iMacs for a few days. Wouldn’t be able to do that an an Apple Store.

At its peak, the Australian Apple Premium Reseller called Next Byte had more than 20 stores nationally, and I spent the tail end of my high school and all of my uni-going years at just one: Next Byte Hobart.

Today, the Apple landscape in Australia is a lot different to what it was a decade ago. Borne off the back of the smartphone era and being one of the biggest companies in the world, we now have more Apple retail stores than we ever had Next Byte stores. In a world of slim profits on Apple hardware and an unparalleled customer experience from the Apple owned-and-operated retail locations that’s extremely difficult if not outright impossible for any reseller to match while maintaining some semblance of profitability, any third-party Apple presence is either small enough to fly under the radar, or niche enough to carve out a market of their own. For the rest of us, Apple retail stores in every capital city CBD besides Melbourne, Darwin, and Hobart means our in-person sales and service needs are fulfilled, with any gaps covered by Apple’s online presence and general electronics resellers. The latter of which are all too eager to carry products from one of the most popular brands in the world; even if that’s not where they’re making the majority money, it’s yet another drawcard in their fiercely competitive deck.

I have plenty of stories from my time at Next Byte. Maybe one day I’ll even write about a few of them, once I’m a little more comfortable the statute of limitations has passed. The one I want to tell today is about some of the stuff I learned while working there, and the confidence that came from some of those experiences.

In every sales role, there’s always some sales-specific training. Whether you’re a sales consultant1, associate, specialist, or whatever title your corporate overlords have decided to bestow upon you, chances are, at some point, you’ll get some training on sales technique. If you’ve been in the role long enough, you might even see significant changes in your organisation’s sales strategy, which usually goes something along the lines of attempting to move as much product as possible regardless of cost, focusing on metrics like conversions, to something that’s a little more nuanced, while still prioritising metrics like average invoice amount that prove you’ve really listened to the customer while selling them as much as possible. Then you’ll definitely have some sales training.

It’s a normal day in 2014. Probably. I mean, I could have made that up, but I think it sounds about right, if I think about the rough timeframe that I think these events occurred in. It was during one of these aforementioned sales training sessions that I learned about closing the sale and handling objections. You know, the business end of the sales conversation that you usually have. The part where you get to find out what, exactly, the customer has a problem with what you’ve sold them on, or perhaps that they’re just not interested in buying today.

This particular training session was big on roleplay, so we were paired off and practiced closing sales and handling objections. For the life of me, I can’t remember what the recommended approach to handling objections was2, but I can tell you that it didn’t match up with my own. If I had spent the last 15-20 minutes talking to a customer about a new MacBook Pro, for example, and they had been extremely non-committal about taking it today, then apparently you’re not supposed to straight-up ask the customer exactly what they’re hesitant about.

I know, right? News to me too.

But as it turns out, asking the customer about their hesitation is frowned upon. At the time, I didn’t really get it, and the people delivering the sales training were incredulous, mixed with curiosity: why would you directly ask a customer about their trepidations, instead of backing down, accepting their uncertainty, handing them a business card, and letting them go about their business?

As I explained, I thought that if you had determined that they were in the market for whatever they wanted to buy, answered all of their questions, assuaged their fears and concerns, and otherwise completely performed the full sales process, you had some right to know why they weren’t willing to take it then and there. I said that if you had done your job as a sales consultant, listening to their needs and wants, then pairing each of those up with a solution, then why couldn’t you know why they didn’t want to take it home today? It’s not as if that simple question removed their right to give you a perfectly valid reason in return, in which case yes, I would absolutely give them a piece of paper with my name on it, and then let them get on with the rest of their day.

And sure, I get that people have their own reasons for not wanting to drop a few thousand on a new Mac, especially at the drop of a hat. But if, during our sales interaction in the time they were in the store, I had correctly worked out that they were in the market, and was confident enough that I had done everything in my power, and given them all them all the information they needed to be more sure about their own decision, then I would have thought I have some ground to stand on when asking them about their reasons for not whipping out the plastic.

I think I remember the trainers agreeing with me. Perhaps somewhat begrudgingly, but agreeing nonetheless.

I like to think it was this same assertive confidence that let me approach every customer with aplomb. Safe in the knowledge that I would be able to handle every interaction, even if it were slightly technical or needed me to quickly demo some great new feature that was the best thing since sliced bread. I knew that as a fresh teenager and/or awkward unit student, even if I didn’t have the interpersonal skills needed to to quickly secure some kind of rapport within the first five seconds of our interaction, I would be able to nail any kind of product-question they threw my way.

I knew that sometimes, all it took was a enthusiastic attitude and a slight grin to connect with the customer in those first crucial seconds. But knowing when to ask about a customer’s objections? Knowing when to push and how? Now that’s assertive confidence.

  1. Bonus round: given that a lot of my employment at Next Byte was on a casual basis, I took great pride in putting Casual Sales Consultant in my email signature. Not only did it serve as a useful indicator to customers that I wasn’t a full-time employee, on the rare occasions I would email them, but a part of me liked the play on words. Was I a sales consultant employed on a casual basis, like many would think, or a consultant of casual sales? I liked to think the latter, even though the former was probably closer to the truth. ↩
  2. Ugh, this is going to bug me now. I know it. ↩