PakG1's Realm

Respect for Thatcher

2013-04-09T00:31:00.001+08:00

I remember the euro was a really hot topic when I was in high school. A lot of very smart people supported it. I remember a lot of smart people calling the UK idiotic for not going along with the idea. When we look at the economic situation in Europe today that can be all tied to the euro's existence, it is amazing to see that the UK was right on this and that so many people were wrong. Hindsight is 20/20 and not so special. Having good foresight is incredible. Respect for Thatcher.

Mission: The Dark Knight Rises

2012-08-12T02:19:00.000+08:00

Well, given how EVERYONE I know back home is raving about The Dark Knight Rises, I wanted to see it. I loved the first two movies in the trilogy, so I of course had high expectations for the third, even with the sad passing of Heath Ledger. But China allows only 20 foreign movies to be shown in theatres per year, although there's been talk of it expanding to a higher number (no idea if this has already happened). As well, due to the movie's content, my Mandarin teacher (a big movie buff) said she thinks The Dark Knight Rises may not even make it into China this year for censorship reasons. I heard there's this big riot scene, maybe that's why. Heck, apparently even The Dark Knight (2nd in the trilogy) did not get released in China. Although my Mandarin teacher said that it was, except they cut out some scenes? I don't know. Anyway, seemed my only chance to see it in theatres lay in Hong Kong.

So off to Hong Kong I went. Weekends are the only option, just because of the amount of time it takes to cross the border. Except this weekend, I'm busy with church stuff, so I decided to go on Friday night, with a plan to come back either late Friday night or Saturday morning. Future weekends were out of the question, and by the time my weekends freed up again, I was worried that the movie would already be out of theatres.

The trip could not have started off worse. Finishing stuff at work is always a logjam, and Friday was no exception.

6:17pm: Finally leave work. Run to the subway station where all the electric mopeds are.
6:22pm: Arrive at the mopeds. Ask one to take me to Keyuan Station, as it's faster to go there directly by moped, and then by subway to the ferry terminal, where my ferry is scheduled to leave at 7:15pm. Tight, but I can make it, if the moped shufu (general term for service guys, such as drivers) knows where Keyuan Station is. And really, why wouldn't he? I've done this lots of times.
6:30pm: Finally find a moped willing to take me to Keyuan Station.
6:32pm:
Me: Shufu, why are we going this way?
Shufu: Don't worry, sir, this way is faster!
Me: OK....
6:35pm:
Me: Shufu, this is not Keyuan Station. This is Shenda Station. Keyuan Station is on the Shekou Line. We were just at Exit A2 of Shenda Station. You brought me to another Shenda Station exit. I need to get to Keyuan Station.
Shufu: Oh, sorry, I thought you meant this station.
Me: No, this is Shenda Station still... We're wasting time, just go, go!
6:40pm:
Me: Shufu, we're totally not going in the right direction. We're way west now. Keyuan Station is way east of us. Forget it, just take me to Shekou. I need to get to Seaworld, somewhere around there (I can't remember how to say Ferry terminal, so I say Seaworld, since it's close by).
Shufu: I can't go to Seaworld, it's too far.
Me: Yes you can, I can tell you how to get there, I'll pay extra too.
6:50pm:
Shufu: Hey, Shufu 2, you know how to get to Seaworld?
Me: Shufu, I said just go down this road!
Shufu: He's trying to get to Seaworld
Shufu 2: Yeah, I know.
Me: Hey, Shufu, mind if I just switch bikes? I'm going to be late.
Shufu: OK.
Me: OK, how much do I owe you?
Shufu: 10RMB.
Me: OK, here, thanks (for nothing @@).
Shufu: OK, sorry, I really don't know where it is.
Me: Yeah (obviously!!!), it's OK, thanks.
Shufu 2: OK, Seaworld, right?
Me: Gah, not really, honestly, I need to get to Hong Kong.
Shufu 2: Ah, the Bay Port then?
Me: Well, I actually wanted to go another way, but given I'm late, that's fine. (Bay Port is not the Ferry Port. From the Bay Port, you can take buses and cars across the border to HK, crossing this massive bridge). How much?
Shufu 2: 15RMB
Me: (what? so cheap?) OK, fine.
7:05pm: Arrive at Bay Port, give the guy 20RMB (he admits he underestimated the distance)
7:10pm: Buy a bus ticket to Causeway Bay. Bus leaves at 7:15pm!
7:15pm: Realize that I forgot I need to get through immigration. Will need to target the 7:45pm bus. Lucky, the ticket is transferable to later buses.
8:02pm: Bus actually leaves Bay Port.
9:00pm: Bus arrives at Times Square. OK! Plenty of time to catch the 9pm movie, assuming trailers, or 9:15, or 9:30, or whatever is there!
9:10pm: I swore there was a movie theatre at Times Square before!! What happened to it??? (Oh, I guess that happened. Crap.) No biggie, ask around, people say there's a movie theatre at Sogo, only a few minutes away!
9:15pm: Need... liquid... orange... with sago?? :D
9:20pm: Arrive at Sogo's movie theatre. What??? Only one showing of The Dark Knight Rises per day, and it's at 5:15pm??? No, I do not want to watch The Bourne Legacy, I want to watch The Dark Knight Rises!! Some people tell me there's a movie theatre by Tai Koo Station, Exit D. Cool, OK, it's only 9:15, I can do this. I'm sure there's a 9:30pm showing or a 10pm showing.
10:00pm: Ticket purchased for The Dark Night Rises!! 10:10pm showing! Bathroom! Bathroom!
10:11pm: Finish pouring condiments on my hot dog in time for the trailers!
12:56am: Movie over. Spend the rest of the night fighting crime in Hong Kong, stopping bank robberies, terrorist plots, and saving kittens. Rain comes with the morning.

Two comments on the movie:
1. Wow! Amazing movie! Wish there was a part 4, but if there was, I guess I'd have to make a second trip!
2. Wow, I can understand now why my Mandarin teacher thinks this movie isn't going to be shown in China. Heck, I'm 99% sure it'll never make it past the censors. There's just no way. You have to understand the political and economic situation in China to know why. I've written a lot about China stuff, from my amateur limited perspective. I guess my next post will again be on that type of topic, discussing why The Dark Knight Rises is the type of movie that freaks the government out.

A cool book to read on China

2012-08-12T00:24:00.000+08:00

I read a book by Leslie T. Chang, titled Factory Girls - Voices from the Heart of Modern China. Leslie Chang was a former Beijing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and this is the fruit of a lot of her personal primary research, directly interacting with the young girls who left their villages to become factory workers in Dongguan. Dongguan is actually very close to Shenzhen, where I live now.

I have to say that this book is probably the most amazing work on China I've read to date. Many things about people in China suddenly make sense to me now.

As well, the diary entry from one of the subjects in the book makes me understand women a lot better than I ever have. At least, I think the actions of women make more sense to me now. I think. Hey, I'm still clueless.

April 1, 1994
Yes, I am a person so ordinary that I cannot be more ordinary, so plain that I cannot be plainer, a girl like all the other girls. I like to eat snacks, I like to have fun, and I like to look pretty.

Don't imagine that I can be superhuman.

You are just a most ordinary, most plain girl, attracted to anything that is pretty or tasty or fun.
So from being ordinary and plain I will make my start.
From page 55, chapter 3 of Factory Girls, by Leslie T. Chang.

Honestly, I wanted to write a huge article about this book, in the context of the Foxconn controversy. But I've never had the time. Look, if you want to understand something about modern China, go read this book. That's all I'll say for now, and maybe one day I'll finally get around to writing that article about what I got from this book.

On Food in China

2012-04-17T17:12:00.002+08:00

Saw this article regarding an operation for manufacturing poisonous disposable chopsticks that got busted. The comments combed from QQ are hilarious. Translated from the original Chinese.

腾讯龙岩市网友 djx
What’s left that is without poison, that can be safely used?

辰讯策划传播：
Boss, one fast-food meal, no disposable chopsticks…

★★★★★★: (responding to above)
Dishes cooked with drainage oil, haha, just rice, no dishes.

随疯: (responding to above)
Moldy rice polished with paraffin wax, haha, better just bring me a cup of boiled water.

Seven宋磊: (responding to above)
Water with too much mercury levels, you dare drink? Better just drink a northwest wind, who cares about the sandstorms.

谁牵动了我的: (responding to above)
Lots of air polluted by various poisonous gases, you might as well just go die!

–: (responding to above)
With cemeteries/burial plots so expensive, can you afford to die?

肇庆市 tuoni–（1）: (responding to above)
Cemeteries/burial plots expensive, can only go jump into the ocean.

独孤求醉: (responding to above)
Jumping into the ocean pollutes the environment, must first pay a fine before jumping, and if help is needed for dredging/fishing up the body afterward, that’s another fee.

じ☆熊熊: (responding to above)
A body fished up will have its organs cut out, are you willing to let them fish you up? Better just use gasoline and burn it up!

〖��〗: (responding to above)
But gasoline is so expensive these days! Can you afford to burn it? Better just buy a shovel and find some mud to bury yourself.

老男孩: (responding to above)
All the land has been sold to property developers to build buildings.

苏州市欧亚菲软床: (responding to above)
Can’t afford to live, can’t afford to die, my motherland, what are your people supposed to do?!!!

腾讯网友草民一个:
The previous generation of people worried about whether or not they could get enough to eat. The current generation of people worry about whether or not they’ll die from eating. A sad + wretched place!

腾讯金华市网友健家营:
This country is dangerous, must be cautious when reincarnating!

Is it bad that I think this is hilarious? :)

Understanding Chinese culture (or not)

2012-04-15T02:01:00.001+08:00

Something a lot of foreigners complain about in China is the crappy customer service. It's true. In general, China has crappy customer service. The reasons are probably myriad, but it is a fact.

The interesting thing is that I don't see a lot of people saying the flip side: in China, I see a lot of customers treat service people like crap. They easily and quickly lose their patience, scream, threaten, etc. Usually, I've seen it in restaurants, but I've seen it in other places of business as well.

I just saw this happen today. One of my sandals was broken, so I took it to this guy who sits behind a fence and repairs people's shoes. When I arrived, there were three people already there waiting for their shoes to be repaired. Expecting to wait, I sat down and took out Ender in Exile (which, by the way, is an excellent book; it almost brought me to tears twice within the first few chapters, which is not something you expect from a science fiction novel). While I was reading my book, a woman came and asked for her shoes to be done. No lining up? No worries, I'm OK with that these days. Heck, sometimes even I can budge in line now (though not very skillfully yet). Then another woman. Then a guy. Soon, a whole crowd. No worries, it's why I brought the book. I can wait all day. Ender in Exile is keeping me totally captivated.

Finally, this woman shows up with her daughter. She asks where her shoes are. The guy says he hasn't done them. She starts complaining and yelling, asking why not? She left them there for him earlier a long time ago. I LOVE this guy. He went yelling right back at her. "I'm too busy here! Too many people want their shoes done! There's no time to do yours! You didn't even let me say yes or no, you just dumped your shoes there! If I didn't even accept the job from you, why should I do it? I have too many shoes to repair already!" Bam, bam, bam. He hit all points. I didn't like him because he was yelling, I would never advise yelling if you're looking for a solution to a problem (yes, Mom, I'm working on that for myself too). I liked him because he was willing to stand up for himself and not take the crap that a lot of service people take from customers in China. Heck, it was already approaching 6pm.

Finally, after a lot of the people got their shoes repaired and there seemed to be very few people left, I asked the guy if he could repair my sandal. He said yeah, just wait, so I put the sandal in between the bars in the fence and went back to my book. Later, he tossed my sandal back out to me. Perfectly mended. Just like new. :) And way cheaper than buying a new pair of sandals, which can be 100 to 300 RMB for a high quality pair. I asked him how much it cost, and he said 2 RMB. I gave him 5 RMB, told him to keep the change as a tip. He refused and told a sitting customer to give me change. I insisted, so he said thank you. Seriously. 2 RMB to make my sandals just like new again? It's amazing.

Back on topic. Customer service in China. Well, not customer service in particular. Chinese culture in general. It's traditional wisdom that asian cultures tend to be collectivist, while western cultures tend to be individualist. But that is not what I've been observing in China. There appears to be a distinct lack of collectivist thinking in China. When people come together, it's due to a mob mentality to power the human flesh search engine and cry out online against some Chinese matter usually involving corruption. When I see day-to-day interactions, it's actually very much a free-for-all, it's very individualist; sometimes even within groups where everyone is together, it's still individualist. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps the one-child policy has created an entire generation of people that find it difficult to work together. Who knows?

Just this week, I was supposed to attend a work event to hang out and get to know others, but the event was cancelled when only 6 people planned to show up out of the original 12 or so committed attendees. 6 wasn't enough to go see Titanic together? Others couldn't sacrifice whatever they had for the sake of the greater good, especially after they had already committed? The only time when collectivism seems to have a chance is when the parties have a very good guanxi connection, but you could say that's probably true in the west also.

The whole individualist thing was perhaps taken to the extreme by the example of Yue Yue, the 2-year-old girl who was run over twice last year and subsequently died of her injuries. It raised a huge furor in China, with one side crying out about the moral decay in Chinese society, and another side saying not to blame people, but to blame a court verdict that would have made helping Yue Yue risky (emphasis mine):

On Nov 20, 2006, an old woman fell to the ground and broke her leg after jostling at a bus stop in Nanjing, an eastern China city. A young man, Peng Yu, helped her up and escorted her to hospital. Later the woman and her family dragged the man to court, which ruled that the young man should pay 40 percent of the medical costs. The court said the decision was reached by reasoning. The verdict said that "according to common sense", it was highly possible that the defendant had bumped into the old woman, given that he was the first person to get off the bus when the old woman was pushed down in front of the bus door and, "according to what one would normally do in this case", Peng would have left soon after sending the woman to the hospital instead of staying there for the surgical check. "His behavior obviously went against common sense."

What the heck?? Wanting to be charitable, helpful, altruistic, and caring obviously went against common sense? And while it took the death of little Yue Yue to get China to do some serious soul-searching and do a collective nation-wide scream that this type of ruling is not right, the fact is that I see this type of attitude in people every day. People don't hold doors open for you. They act like you don't exist if you're waiting your turn and budge in front of you. They don't listen to the bus driver's request to move to the back of the bus in order to allow new passengers to board. They think it's their right to treat people like trash if the food is a little bit late.

I honestly have come to believe they don't do any of this maliciously. I've come to think that it just doesn't enter their minds because they tune other people out and are focused on only themselves. I see it in some kids from a very young age. You can go right up to a kid and say hi, and depending on their personality, they might act like you don't exist. But do something they don't like, and they'll scream bloody murder. Then throw some money into the equation, and you easily have a segment of self-absorbed rich folks after they grow up, depending on parenting skills; these people don't think of others as human. Lower life forms are really just rocks. Rocks don't fight back. Rocks get bulldozed if they're in the way. And sometimes, they don't even realize that the rocks are there.

The weird thing is that today's Chinese culture totally clashes with the Chinese culture I grew up seeing. Many of my friends were from Hong Kong or Taiwan, not mainland China. I thought they were all Chinese, but ask many Taiwanese people, and the political argument for independence can often be seen simmering below the surface. And as much as these people were originally from China, China has changed. Small anecdotes are all over the place. When I first said I was moving to Shenzhen, the parents of my friends thought they heard Suzhou. This is apparently how the conversation went (I wasn't there):

Parents: Suzhou? Wow, that's great! Suzhou is where all the Chinese supermodels come from, very pretty girls there!
Friend: Actually, I think he said Shenzhen.
Parents: Shenzhen? Oh... Oh... that's a really bad place.

Two things here. Number one, Chinese people don't consider Suzhou girls to be the prettiest girls anymore. The prettiest girls are all found in Sichuan. I asked my co-worker about this, and he said, "Ah, Suzhou was a long time ago. Now all the pretty girls are in Sichuan." Number two, Shenzhen is not the worst city compared to other cities where I've been. Other cities have the exact same problems, and some are much worse. In fact, China's first Good Samaritan law, which would allow for passers-by to assist injured people, was drafted in Shenzhen. Shenzhen recently hosted the 2011 Universiade Games for the world's university athletes. A lot of stuff was cracked down in the lead-up to the games, and many things still are. The knowledge of my friend's parents was based on very outdated knowledge of China.

Leslie T. Chang, author of the amazing book Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China, had similar experiences. She is an American journalist of Taiwanese descent. She writes:

My parents' China was fifty years out of date; the Chinese have always respected scholars and disparaged merchants, they had taught me as a child, but the people I was meeting now contradicted all of that. I didn't try to find relatives who were still living here. I wanted to learn about this country on my own terms. And family history seemed like a trap - a ready-made way to see China in tragic terms, a view that had little to do with how things were now.
Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China, chapter 6, page 121

What I now realize is that whether the parents of my Taiwanese and Hong Kong parents realize it or not, Chinese culture has forked. Forking is a software engineering term referring to the act of taking a software's source code and modifying it to become an independent system. When you do this, in order to continue development on both systems, you cannot update just one system and expect the updates to appear in the other system. You must continue to develop the two systems independently, until there comes a time when you try to re-integrate the two for whatever reason (if it ever happens). For example, the Android smartphone operating system is a fork of Linux, and the two of them are now essentially completely different products.

When the revolution led by Mao happened, Chinese culture forked. Many of those with means fled to Hong Kong (under British control at the time), Taiwan, southeast Asia, and more. The ones who stayed behind were peasants (it was a peasant revolution after all), and so many of the scholars and history-makers were lost, making way for a new generation of history-makers. So even mainland China forked its own culture. And to ensure that it was permanent, they sent everyone who disagreed to re-education camps. And then a bunch of crazy stuff happened during the Cultural Revolution to consolidate power and further emphasize what was OK and what was not. Then you had the one-child policy implemented that turned Chinese family structure inside-out and upside-down, further forking the culture.

Then we had yet more forks when all these Chinese people from all over Asia started going out west for education, work, etc. The stories of Chinese people flooding North America to build the railways, open up Chinese restaurants everywhere, attend university, etc, are many. Future generations born in those nations would fork Chinese culture yet again (same for any other Asian ethnicity that went through similar transitions), such that Asian American (or other country) culture failed to reflect mainland Chinese culture at all.

I first realized this on a volunteer trip to rural China in 2005. Our team leader was Caucasian, but had grown up in Taiwan and only recently moved to the US, so you could say that she knew Taiwanese and Chinese culture better than many. She said it was really shocking to see our teammates, who were of Chinese descent, but for all intents and purposes, "did not act Asian at all." It was the first time that she had seen people like this. She was used to Chinese people who acted like Chinese people.

A big-media example showed itself recently via the Linsanity sensation that was caused by the savvy basketball play of Jeremy Lin in the NBA. A Ben & Jerry's branch decided to make a Jeremy Lin-inspired flavour using fortune cookies. The act was immediately decried as racist by many Asian American groups. I totally didn't realize this at all, but nobody knows what a fortune cookie is in China. No restaurants hand these things out after meals. It only hit me after reading the post linked above. The only people who could get offended were Asian Americans (or Asians in western nations), because fortune cookies are not Chinese; they only exist in specific forks of Chinese culture, primarily the Chinese American fork (although it boggles my mind why they would be considered racist anyway, even in those forks).

I think I'm just trying to say this. Chinese culture is complicated and has been shaped by a roller coaster 60 years. It is not what many of my friends think it is, and it is definitely not what many of my friends' parents think it is. If you haven't been to the real China and actually lived here for a while, you get a very filtered view of what China is. And me, having lived here for a year and a half now, I'm still trying to figure it out. While I work on my skills to budge in line, of course.

NHL Playoffs 2012

2012-04-08T23:12:00.001+08:00

It is playoff time! And the Vancouver Canucks win the Presidents Trophy again! :D Of course, this means nothing if we don't win the Stanley Cup. Only good thing is that the police should be ready for riots this time. They can't be so stupid to let it happen a third time to the city, right?

Here are my picks for the first round:

Western Conference
Vancouver vs Los Angeles - Vancouver in 7; Quick is possibly the best goalie in the playoffs and will stand on his head the entire series.

St. Louis vs San Jose - St. Louis in 5; This is the coming out party for St. Louis, while San Jose keeps getting weaker each year and will eventually need to rebuild. And don't you love having the option of BOTH Elliott and Halak in goal?

Phoenix vs Chicago - Toews is the wildcard. If Toews doesn't come back, Phoenix wins it in 7. If Toews does come back, Chicago wins it in 6 or earlier.

Nashville vs Detroit - Nashville in 7. As much as I love Detroit's experience, Nashville is younger and dare I say possibly hungrier. If they didn't add Radulov, I would say Detroit wins in 7. Expect Rinne to outplay Howard by the slimmest of margins. This will be a tight series.

Eastern Conference
New York vs Ottawa - New York in 6. As much heart as Ottawa might have to give, New York outshines Ottawa in all categories.

Boston vs Washington - Washington in 7. Ovechkin is tired of being labeled an underachiever. He wants to get it done this time.

Florida vs New Jersey - New Jersey in 4. Kovalchuk will show everyone why he's the 100 million dollar man.

Pittsburgh vs Philadelphia - Pittsburgh in 7. Come on, you guys, seriously. Crosby is back, Malkin's in MVP form, and Philly is missing Pronger. What else do you need me to say? But this will be a brutal series, if the regular season is any indication.

The Cup Finals
Vancouver over Washington in 7. I can dream, right?

On Customer Service in China

2012-04-03T00:36:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, they do or say the most unexpected things. :) A friend went shopping for clothing today. From the sales rep:

"Even the fatter girl can fit in the dress, why can't you?"

:D

On Pattern Recognition

2012-03-29T00:15:00.002+08:00

Today, I had McDonald's for lunch. Healthy, I know. After finishing lunch, I started walking to the bus stop to head to the office for the afternoon; I had spent the morning working at home. This McDonald's is located in Garden City (a shopping mall), right across from Walmart and a KFC where I also bought an ice cream cone. By the way, isn't this supposed to be China? Anyway, the bus stop is located just outside the Walmart.

On the way to the bus stop, I bought my ice cream cone. I curiously watched a little girl sitting by a pillar under a covered path from the Walmart to Garden City. She had dirty clothes and dirty skin, looked like she hadn't taken a bath for days. Looked about eight years old. It's not unusual to see little kids walking around by themselves in China, sometimes with unfortunate results. This girl sat alone and calmly. As I watched her, something looked wrong.

I'm not sure I can say exactly what I felt was wrong. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes the research of psychological thinslicing, which enables experts to instantaneously figure out the right answer for a situation just by looking at it. A tennis coach who can tell right away whether a player will fault on serve. Secret Service agents who can tell right away which people in a crowd are major risks. Psychologists who can identify couples with high probability of relationship failure just by examining facial expressions and body language.

I'm not saying I'm such an expert at being able to identify situations correctly. But I have learned over the years that it's an invaluable skill to be able to look at a situation and zero in on the problem. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, but if you proceed with caution and the right questions, you will be right more often than not, and subsequently be able to resolve the problem efficiently and quickly. This is true for resolving high-pressure crisis situations in the workplace, relationship conflicts with family and friends, and random confrontations on the street. It's a skill that requires practice, poise, and a constantly questioning mind that does not make any assumptions. I find not enough people understand this. Develop this skill, and your pattern recognition ability shoots through the roof, enabling you to solve difficult problems with ease. I am always trying to improve it, as my friend always needles me about a Vancouver Skytrain incident where I was jumping to wrong conclusions.

So what was weird about this girl? Again, she wasn't crying, and you see lots of kids walking about alone all the time. Well, I think the thing that really made my radar go on red alert was the fact that she was so dirty. Some girl waiting for her parents in such a crowded cosmopolitan area would not be so dirty. I think? But with this thought in mind, I worried and actually came to the wrong conclusion that maybe she was a street kid with no home. This is when you need to proceed with caution and ask questions. People often assess a situation and come to the wrong conclusion; they know that something is not right, but they're incorrect about what is not right. Then they take the wrong actions accordingly because they fail to verify their conclusions.

So I asked the girl, "Hey kiddo, where are your parents?" The girl said something about her parents not being there and started crying. At this stage, one might get information that leads them in a certain direction, without waiting for complete information. Then they create a situation even worse than before. For me, my mind automatically switched to thinking that the parents had abandoned the kid, probably due to not having enough money to raise the kid (or maybe something even worse happened). But I wanted to be sure I understood what the kid was saying, and my Mandarin still needs to improve.

So I called up my friend and told the kid to tell my friend her problem, then my friend would explain it to me. For what seemed like forever, the kid explained what had happened, crying the whole time. She gave my friend her mom's phone number, and I told my friend where the two of us were waiting. My friend called her mom, who then called her brother; these kids were darker-skinned, definitely not Han Chinese people, so they don't have the one-child restriction. Or maybe he was only a cousin, but kids still say brother and sister instead of cousin. Anyway, the brother came on his bike to pick her up; he looked only eleven. I asked if this was her brother, she nodded, got on the back of the bike, smiled at me, and waved while they rode away.

While we were waiting for her brother, she explained to me how she had gotten lost. She had been playing on the second floor of the Walmart and lost sight of her brother. We played a game while waiting called 3-6-9 (a game I learned as a kid from other Korean kids). She even started smiling a bit, which was good. What's most interesting is that she said she had been waiting there for about two hours. Two hours, and nobody thought to ask her what's going on? Well, this kid had probably been calm and well-behaved the entire time. She didn't start crying until she tried to explain to me her problem. Since kids are often seen alone, why should have anyone thought something was wrong here?

Pattern recognition for being able to recognize when something feels strange is a good thing. With this skill, you can resolve problems before they happen, or before they grow too big, whether those problems be in personal relationships, work, or anything else. It's a really important skill to have. Some autistic people have the unfortunate condition of not being able to read body language or facial expressions very well, but for anyone who can develop this skill, they should. Besides, not all problems are identified through body language anyway. Again, while I'm not sure what compelled me to talk with her (well, thanks, God!), I think the key clue was that the kid's dirty clothes and face didn't fit her surrounding environment with so many well-dressed people bustling around. But good pattern recognition needs to be balanced with a cautious approach so that we don't jump to wrong conclusions. That goes double for poor pattern recognition. Again, my original conclusion was that she was a street kid.

Well, the story had a happy ending. Coming just out of a McDonald's, maybe it could have been a McDonald's commercial. Except I was holding a KFC ice cream cone the whole time. I offered to buy her lunch too, but she said she wasn't hungry. Maybe she was just being wise because her parents told her not to accept candy from strangers. The smile on her face as she rode away on the bike was great. I'm going to wear a superhero costume next time. With a cape.

Yes, I know, I still haven't written about that kid that was run over. It's a sad but complicated issue. Most difficult things are. I have seven different blog posts in draft mode right now.

We're not in Shenzhen anymore, Toto

2012-03-20T22:08:00.002+08:00

Five signals that demonstrate you're not in a major Chinese city anymore.

5. The taxis are a lot cheaper.

4. The taxi drivers are a lot crazier.

3. There are direct competitors to McDonald's and KFC that you prefer over McDonald's and KFC.

2. You can find pasta noodles in only specialty foreign food shops, rather than the supermarkets.

1. A lot of people don't understand your Mandarin and you don't understand their local dialect.

Welcome to Chengdu. The land of Sichuanhua and Dico's. :)

The Reality of Pareto

2012-02-21T04:02:00.002+08:00

I was in a training session at work for a new quality program that was being implemented. They flew this guy over from the states who was the global training lead for this new program. He asked the class if anyone knew who Pareto was. I said he was an economist. He asked me to provide details. I provided a quick summary of Pareto's work (after all, we did spend an entire class one school day in Economic Analysis of the Law discussing Pareto efficiency).

Trainer: Um... well, that's not the same guy as who I'm thinking. Basically, Pareto was this guy who had discovered a very important statistical trend that is today known as the Pareto Principle. Blah, blah, blah...

Me: Ugh... /wanted to desperately explain to the guy how they're exactly the same person.

OK, quick note on teaching. When you are teaching or training people, there will always be someone who plays "stump the prof". I do this now and then. I see lots of people do it. When we do this, we're not trying to make the "prof" look bad. We're genuinely curious about something and want it figured out through dialogue. Or we're bored with the discussion and want to turn it into something more enlightening. Or we're annoyed that something incorrect is being taught. Or maybe sometimes we're just mean, but I don't think there are many who really care to do that. They have other motives, being students. If you're teaching and you encounter a "stump the prof" situation, don't feel embarrassed. Don't back off. Don't get combative. Engage with your students.

OK, back on topic. The Pareto principle basically describes how the majority of stuff is associated with the minority of people, causes, etc. Normally, the numbers are 80-20: 80% of the wealth in a nation can be owned by 20% of the population; 80% of the problems are caused by 20% of the causes. Etcetera. We were being trained on how to identify the 20%. Basic stuff that you learn in any business school.

When you look at movements like Occupy Wall Street, they've altered the framework a bit. Now it's the 99% vs the 1%. It's not like the 1% hold 99% of the wealth, but they hold a significant amount (about 40%). Unfortunately, due to various factors, the 1% is probably a systemic, natural result. Even if the 1% are broken down through revolution, a new 1% will just arise. This seems to be a natural power law.

Case in point? Look at China. There was a lot of strife because of, among other things, the big divide between the rich and poor. So Mao rose up and started the revolution, with the peasants landing on top. Well, over time, we have arrived at the exact same situation again. The wealth gap between the 1% and 99% is way bigger than what exists in the USA and is much more visible. This is probably a simple side effect of the fact that China's population is much bigger, so percentage calculations result in amplified gross numbers. It is very odd to hear people in the west constantly talking about how rich China is now, how China is the benefactor of the US due to being owed so much US debt, etc. The fact is that these statements may be true at a macro level, but at a micro level inside the country, it's not such a simple picture.

There is a HUGE wealth gap between the rich and poor in China. You have millionaires who have no problem buying tons of fancy cars, expensive brand name bags, bubble-level real estate, etc. Then you have the girl in the bakery who's making only $150 per month, while the most basic apartment also costs $150 per month. Lucky for most employees, the employer is usually willing to provide living quarters at a cheap price. Of course, it usually comes out of the $150 per month, unless it's in the factory where it might be free. Well, in the factory, you make more money, but it's a dog fight to get in, and the conditions are horrible by western standards. Even further, there are still many who live in villages without basic plumbing. Since the wealth gap is many times blamed on corruption, the general populace is very upset to the point where any rich girl flaunting pictures of her wealth on the web causes a national media circus (and tough questions for parents that might work for the government). The complaints are very similar to the ones that Occupy Wall Street make about Wall Streeters and the bailouts in the US.

So we have this strange dichotomy where the west views China as very rich, with growing power, while inside China, the poor are plentiful. This dichotomy is not made any easier from the fact that it was the peasants who took over and then sent any remaining rich/powerful/freethinking people to re-education camps. Basically, the whole country became poor, and all the rich/powerful/freethinking people who had the means left for locales like Taiwan, HK, etc, before things got really bad. And if you're a believer of what Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Outliers, it's hard for a people group to shake attitudes and lifestyles that have been in place for hundreds of years, meaning that it's difficult for many of these people to stop thinking like peasants. And yet, a new 1% still arose.

Think about it. We have a real-world experiment that turned an entire large country upside down in the quest to eliminate wealth gaps, but failed in that quest. The corresponding interesting question is whether any other ideas would really solve the issue. It's easy to say that China failed to solve wealth gaps because Communism doesn't work as an economic system (which is an entirely different subject altogether and will not be discussed here). The thing is, capitalism hasn't really solved the problem yet either, if it will ever. Very few countries in the world actually have solved it. The exceptions are a small number of European nations, but the difficulty scale of their problems is much smaller due to the smaller population sizes. Never mind that they have their own economic issues right now.

If anything, I think the symptoms of the Pareto principle will be more entrenched over time. There are a number of factors that I believe will feed into this, but I think the primary ones to consider are globalization and technology. I think these two factors do more to destroy jobs than anything else. But don't label me as a left-wing free market hater. I also think they do more to create jobs than anything else. The problem lies in how to cross the chaotic chasm in between point A (jobs destroyed) and point B (jobs created).

Globalization is the easy one to analyze. If you open up international trade so that anything can be manufactured and sold anywhere, simple product manufacturing (eg. clothing, accessories, trinkets, etc) will always be manufactured wherever the labour is the cheapest because not a lot of capital investment is required (relatively speaking). So the jobs for manufacturing simple things will disappear in the wealthier nations and become abundant in the poorer nations. We saw this happen with simple manufacturing moving from western nations to Asian nations like Korea and China. Now it is happening again, moving from China to Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. Imagine that. China is losing jobs because of globalization.

Once again, the important question? In the wealthier nations, who are losing those jobs? Well, those jobs are usually filled with unskilled labour, so therefore cheap labour. It's the uneducated, unskilled, and poorly paid people who are losing the jobs. And because they're uneducated, unskilled, and poorly paid, it's obviously difficult for them to find new jobs, once the jobs they were capable of doing get moved overseas. The effect is exacerbated when even office jobs like tech support, legal support work, etc, get shipped overseas due to outsourcing. So the rich will stay rich, and the poor will stay poor.

It is interesting to note that for high-tech manufacturing, many people in the industry agree that cost of labour does not factor primarily into the decision. Read interesting articles on that here. And here. And here. And finally here. I remember hearing a talk from the CEO of a new solar panel company based in Vancouver, BC. He was asked by an audience member why the company chose to build a manufacturing plant in the BC interior instead of in China. He said it was because he was proud to be making a Canadian company and the cost really isn't that different. The main cost is in the capital investment, plant equipment, etc. That cost is similar whether in Canada or in China. The labour as a percentage of cost is tiny and therefore doesn't factor into the decision.

Technology is a bit more out of left field. Technology is supposed to free our minds and give us new abilities, or at least that's what the advocates say. And to a certain extent, that's true. It is the case that people in the middle east were actually naming their newborn babies Facebook to celebrate how social media and the web had played a part in coordinating the Arab Spring Uprisings. It is the case that there was no way you could make money as an SEO expert 20 years ago (the concept didn't even exist because the web didn't really exist). But it is also the case that the primary purpose of technology in a company is to increase productivity. And the most natural way for it to increase productivity (perhaps the only way) is to automate tasks.

This hit home for me only recently, as I reflected upon my career. I started out as a software developer for a telecom company in Canada. We were a special swat team that went throughout the organization to automate solutions for difficult or stupid business problems. All of us were recent grads from university. So you had a bunch of bright-eyed kids automating systems and processes being handled by people who had worked at a job for 20 years. All of a sudden, no job. Said people were either given a package for early retirement or reassigned to new work. Except within a few years, maybe that new work would get automated too.

Technology has a huge ability to create new opportunities. But in the process, it destroys the old ways. It is a natural economic phenomenon labeled by Joseph Schumpeter as creative destruction (well, according to Wikipedia, maybe he adapted the idea from the Marxists). The problem exists when the people who were depending on the old ways for work cannot easily retrain themselves for the new economic paradigm. And when you have a ton of people who are unable to easily reinvent themselves, you have a lot of unemployment. I remember discussing things in a PMP prep class with some fellow classmates. One lady had commented on how her company implemented SAP and then was able to lay off the entire accounting department. This technology stuff is scarily powerful. P&G is laying off thousands from its marketing departments after discovering how much cheaper it is to just market stuff on the web with some web marketing specialists (greater economies of scale for one thing).

The important question this time: why can't these people reinvent themselves easily? First off, reinventing oneself is not an overnight thing. People go to school for years to attain the skills they have for a job. Or they're an apprentice for some time for some trade. Either way, you're looking at a significant time investment and income drop just to get your foot in the door. And employers don't want rookies in various fields where they have need. No, employers want qualified people that can hit the ground running. It costs too much to take inexperienced people and train them up. Especially when those inexperienced people are demanding high wages because they still have a mortgage and kids to feed. It's only after reading about the stories of the long-term unemployed that I realize there's a huge disconnect here between what technology hopes to do and how newly unnecessary employees are supposed to become employable again. There are jobs out there right now. High-quality software engineers simply cannot be found in a very big tech boom. Again, SEO experts didn't even exist 20 years ago.

What's the answer? I don't know. There are much smarter people than I working on these issues. That being said, I think we can conclude that the most important skills people need these days and well into the future are not in specific technical skills or domain knowledge. That comes and goes and may get totally automated tomorrow. Traders? Probably. Doctors? Possibly. Software developers? Heck, I saw prototypes of stuff that automated simple application development back in 2005. The list goes on. Yeah, some small niche of jobs in whatever category has always remained after getting totally automated. But that doesn't comfort the vast majority of people in those job categories who had to reinvent themselves.

Rather, the most important skills are probably the ability to learn and adapt to new environments quickly, think on one's feet, be creative and innovative, and take calculated risks to do new things. These are skills that people already need to learn today. But they'll probably be even more important in the future for that time when your job is suddenly outsourced to another country or automated out from under your feet. Technology's capability to change the world seems to be only accelerating, so it'll be harder and harder to adapt in a timely manner. Good luck, huh?

The last thing I'll say is that I think it's unfortunate when people think they can solve the negative effects of globalization and technology through policy. If the two things are unstoppable forces, no policy is going to prevent them from doing their damage. The policies that need to be created need to focus on containing the damage and prepping for the new reality so that the pain endured during the transition is minimal and everyone is ready to party rock when the transition is complete. That would probably involve a lot of education and training programs, but hopefully not for skills that will become obsolete quickly.

Notes on The Karate Kid Remake

2012-01-13T18:32:00.002+08:00

1. This movie was a lot better than I thought it would be. It almost makes me forgive them for not calling it The Kung Fu Kid. Almost.

2. The athleticism shown in this movie is way better than the original. But are children's kung fu tournaments in Beijing really that violent? Seriously, some of them look like preteens. Not one looks a day over 13.

3. I understand why Daniel looks so small in the original Karate Kid compared to the bullies. But this remake seems to overdo it a tad. Dude, she looks WAY older than him.

4. This movie did not provide a good representation of DDR. But girl can move.

5. I remember watching the Mighty Ducks movies and thinking that I've never seen midget hockey get so much media in real life. I wonder if these children's kung fu tournaments actually get that kind of rock star treatment in real life.

6. I think any normal kid would have gotten tired of the jacket thing after two days, max.

7. Pretty faithful to the original story, but nice twist at the end on switching masters. You can tell there won't be a Karate Kid 3 remake anyway. :)

8. Do people really do that with their chopsticks in China and continue eating? I know some people think they're uncivilized and all, but I've never seen it happen. For that matter, I haven't see anyone drink water straight out of the tap without boiling it either.... betcha Jackie Chan's water was filtered and boiled for that scene.

9. Was the mom hitting on Jackie Chan?

10. When did he have time to practice the cobra hypnosis?

Best description I've ever seen on why many big corporations have difficulty improving operations

2011-12-11T00:04:00.001+08:00

Yup. This is exactly what it's like, folks. Don't work for one if you don't want the pain.

Let me tell you why you don't see this happening more often.

I did this on a project a few years back. I replaced a paper workflow process that was taking up two people each in three departments with a web-based workflow that increased visibility, dropped turn-around time from days to minutes, increased accountability and accuracy and trimmed those 16 person hours of processing down to 1-2 per department.

Everyone who directly interacted with the new system loved it. Numerous edge cases that would have been lost in high-level review were caught and integrated from day 1 due to my actually watching people do the job for a day or two per department. The solution has been rock solid (minor maintenance only) for five years.

And I almost lost the job.

The people who sign the checks were furious. The balance of political power between departments were thrown for a loop. One head in particular treated the thing as a near-existential threat. His entire concept of his job revolved around being the authoritative interface for retrieving and maintaining pieces of data that were no longer exclusively under his control. Another flipped out because middle management saw the results as cause to reduce his headcount and budget, and thus importance.

These two departments fought for months, refusing to contribute their shares of budget that were pledged toward modernizing this system.

On a technical and practical level, it was the single best experience I've ever had as a consultant. On a personal and economic level, is was one of the worst. It was some of the hardest money I've ever tried to collect. It was some of the most time and energy I've put into the political and 'sales' side of a job (the part I treat as a necessary evil, but very much evil). The corporation has made out like a bandit in the long run. But I paid the price.

It's simply too easy and financially rewarding to allow a client's political nonsense to screw up every stage of a project. I have less stress, the people who pay me are happier and I bill far more hours.

As with most software, internally developed software included, you don't see better projects more often because the incentives are horribly perverted and stacked against it.

Who owns the data?

2011-12-02T17:16:00.002+08:00

I haven't blogged in a long time. Various items I want to blog about are in various forms of draft. But they're all long posts. So here's a quick one.

It seems that the widow of someone recently deceased would like her late husband's profile removed from Facebook. Wow, that's complicated. Me, not being a lawyer, can already see huge problems here if Facebook were to comply with her request.

Facebook is no stranger to privacy kerfuffles. Note that what I say here is neither for or against how Facebook handles privacy, it is simply stating what is reality. With that in mind, let's look at something that Zuckerberg posted back in February 2009:

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they've asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn't help people share that information.

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.

Facebook followed through with this philosophy by implementing various privacy features and levels. More interestingly, they allowed you to download and export all of your data to your harddrive. If you're able to take all of your data from out of Facebook and download it to your own repository, I think that's a clear statement on their view of who owns the data. You own it. Of course, another question arises as to whether it's actually useful or relevant outside of Facebook, but for this discussion that's irrelevant (well, if you're a young legal genius, you might grab some press).

The key point is that if you own the data, then you decide what happens to it. Other people can't. So what happens to other property owned by you when you die? Well, if you have a well-written will, it's clear. If you don't have a well-written will... well, I'm not an expert on this at all, but some initial reading makes this subject sound pretty complicated and potentially the area of many ugly lawsuits, depending on what property's at stake. For the sake deciding who gets to own a deceased person's Facebook data, would such ugly lawsuits come into play? Who knows, some people are strange.

The point is that you own your data, and if you own your data, it's not so obvious to pass own ownership to a specific person. If that specific person does not have ownership of the data, then how can that person demand that Facebook delete it? Any holes in my logic here?

Now, let's look at the potential pitfalls of Facebook setting a precedent of complying with this lady's request.

1. They open up a huge gateway for fraudulent/malicious activity. Imagine a jealous sibling who always hated the deceased. This person wants to erase any memory of the deceased. Would be easy enough to even get all the valid documentation and submit it to Facebook to get someone deleted. Now imagine it happening by people who aren't even related in any way. There's lots of documentation these days about social engineering on Facebook to get fake friends for nefarious purposes. Opening the door would allow all of that malevolent force to do some really nasty stuff. Ever seen what high school bullies can do to fellow classmates? To kids who committed suicide because of bullying? Etc.

2. You can't delete 100% of the stuff anyway without going against Facebook's own policy (see above). Facebook made the decision to model their policy based on how the broader Internet works. So the question is now then is the concern only about Facebook? If so, why only Facebook? Why not other channels where information is shared? Other social networks like Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter? E-mail? Online filesharing services? If you single out Facebook without attacking the others, I think Facebook would have very good legal ground to fend off your attacks. If you want to include everyone and change up the entire Internet... well, that's not going to happen easily. It would require rearchitecting decades of Internet technology and policy worldwide for one thing.

3. What if Facebook ends up becoming legally responsible to retain data for evidence purposes in the future? E-mail has become such a ubiquitous utility for communication that many companies and e-mail providers are required to submit data to authorities when requested. Of course, depending on individual corporate policies, they'll also decide whether such information requests are legal and valid. But the point is, a process exists for this to happen. In telecommunications too. Facebook aims to become a global communication utility, that's been Zuckerberg's aim from the beginning. If they truly achieve that goal (some argue they already have), is it a stretch that Facebook would also have to comply with these types of information requests on a legal basis? Actually, aren't they already? And if so, wouldn't allowing 3rd parties to delete someone's data instead of only the owner of that data cause some difficulty in this matter? What if the deceased were an assassinated mob boss who the police are now investigating? Would investigations be hampered by Facebook complying with 3rd party requests to delete the data?

4. What if the guy never wanted his stuff deleted? He never made it clear. This is like a digital version of the euthanasia debate. If he never wanted his stuff deleted, but we can't ask him anymore whether or not he wants his stuff deleted (or if he even cares), then how can we easily decide whether or not we should delete his stuff. It's obviously not as controversial as euthanasia, but the logical/ethical conundrum is similar. It's a tricky road to walk, and like any tricky road, decisions shouldn't be made without heavy analysis and debate first; otherwise, you end up with drastically negative unintended consequences.

I understand that this lady may feel anguish whenever she sees this guy's photos, etc. I'm sorry if this sounds callous, but that also seems a bit immature. We have photos of loved ones so that we can remember and celebrate their lives. If this were the 80s, would this woman take all her photo albums and throw them in the trash? Maybe. OK, her decision. But those photos would probably be owned by her clearly, and there would probably be no large ramifications if she threw them out.

Here, we have someone who is unable to deal with her anguish and wishes the pain to disappear by getting Facebook to do something that may not be very good for anybody. My thoughts are that she should realize that it's precisely because they loved each other that she should keep those photos on Facebook. That's also a better resolution for everyone else who's on Facebook. Facebook is constantly pushing the boundaries on what entails privacy, for better or worse. Remember, I'm not commenting on whether or not I think Facebook's policies are good. I think there's some good and some bad. But I hope that nobody thinks poorly of Facebook for turning this lady down. It would not be a good precedent.

The biggest lesson from here? Looks like we all need to specify in our wills now who owns our Facebook data. Then what about my gmail? Chee, complicated. @@

Another day in the life

2011-11-01T11:47:00.002+08:00

So I went back to the gym yesterday. Hadn't gone since the Body Pump class. Wanted to try something different, so I joined the Body Combat class. No idea what to expect. It was aerobics. Somewhere near the end, there were some push-ups involved. The instructure was not a TCG (tiny chinese girl), but even so, I've never seen a girl out-push-up a guy easily. I'm not saying I'm a marine, but I can do a few.

But when these push-ups came, I was so exhausted, I couldn't even do push-ups with my knees on the ground. These classes are freaking embarrassing. And all the time, the girl's yelling and grinning. "Jia you! Come on! OK, look at me, follow me! Knee! Knee! Hands up!" Gah.

Later, I was bending down to wash my ankles in the shower. My forehead hit a shelf. It didn't hit the shelf hard, but I felt the shock all the way along my neck, right shoulder, right arm, and fingertips. Oh, pain. That'll hurt. Normally, when you bump your body, your body is able to absorb the shock easily, right? Not this body. It was so worn out that even the tiniest shock caused horrible damage. I decided to go for a massage after because I just knew it would be too painful the next day. It's traditional Chinese treatment, where they even do this cupping thing. They put these glass cups on your back, and use a dash of fire to suck out all the oxygen. It creates a vacuum that sucks up your tissue and blood and is supposed to make things better. I have no idea if it works. I now have all these dark spots all over my back and shoulders. But I am glad I got the massage. I am able to move around today, unlike last week after Body Pump, when I could barely move.

Seriously, why?

A day in the life

2011-10-20T23:33:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I went to the gym for the first time in a long time. It's a different gym than before. I got one of those passes that have a limited number of uses. The front desk girl told me that the Body Pump class would be starting at 7:40pm. She said check it out. OK.

I went and did some treadmill for 10 minutes, and then went to the room where they were going to do Body Pump. Everyone was laying out equipment on the floor. Low platforms and barbells? OK, I can do this. The class trainer is this TCG (Tiny Chinese Girl). Yeah, she looks really fit, but she's only a TCG, right?

I never thought a TCG could outlift me. I am in so much pain today. For the entire hour, I could barely keep up with her. My legs felt like collapsing. And she just kept on going with this big grin on her face. "Jia you! Come on! YES! One more! OK, go! Houmian de nansheng, ni keyi ma?? Jia you!!" Nod yes, I'm OK, with gritted teeth. And now today, can barely move.

Went to Mandarin class today after work. My teacher signed me up for this foreigner speech competition. She's been bugging me about it for 2 or 3 weeks now. I keep telling her to find someone else, because my Mandarin is still pretty bad. But she says no, my Mandarin is by far better than all her other students. And there's an 8000 RMB prize. OK, OK, fine.

What do I find out today? It's a multi-round event and somehow I'm already in the semi-finals, even though I never participated yet. Furthermore, I have to not only give a speech, but also sing a Chinese song (or do some other kind of Chinese cultural performance). Maybe I can come down with a big case of diarrhea Friday night. The semi-finals are on Saturday. I have to learn a Chinese song in 2 days? :(

A day in the life.

Wow, this lady nails it

2011-10-04T04:59:00.000+08:00

The whole question about whether or not China has what it takes to become the world's next superpower... this lady nails it. The only thing she doesn't really address is the matter of corruption. But that's such a complicated subject in China that it would have probably doubled the article's word count.

Can China overcome all of its issues? If it can... big wow. If it can't... big ouch.

And here's my other hockey team :D

2011-10-03T05:25:00.001+08:00

And here's my hockey team for the HardCOREware.net pool. Again, not unhappy. :) Seems nobody likes Elias this year! This pool's a bit more difficult to draft because it has a faceoff category. I got a bunch of wingers who can do faceoffs though, to make up for my lack of good faceoff centremen. :)

Brad Richards

Paul Stastny

Patrick Sharp

Patrik Elias

Alexander Semin

Teemu Selanne

Duncan Keith

Dion Phaneuf

Alex Pietrangelo

Cam Fowler

Alex Tanguay

Ryan Callahan

Travis Hamonic

Tomas Vokoun

Jonathan Quick

I got Dion Phaneuf twice too? Hmm. :)

My hockey team :D

2011-10-03T03:17:00.002+08:00

Here's my hockey team for TheRushIsBack pool. I'm not unhappy. Drafted #7 AGAIN this year. :)

Ryan Getzlaf

Danny Briere

Thomas Vanek

Patrik Elias

Joe Pavelski

Brian Gionta

Mark Streit

Dion Phaneuf

Jack Johnson

Kimmo Timonen

Mikhail Grabovski

Dan Hamhuis

Jussi Jokinen

Henrik Lundqvist

Carey Price

Rick DiPietro

MUJI got both Ovechkin AND Crosby. Nobody was willing to touch Crosby because of the concussion stuff. If Crosby returns healthy early, Sat said it best. We're all doomed. :)

My hockey pool draft strategy

2011-09-29T00:56:00.001+08:00

Get the #1 pick, grab Ovechkin.

Sorry, I really have no clue how to rank players this year. There is just so much parity in the NHL now and unlike previous years, I feel very few players are separating themselves out from the pack. Last year, my #1 ranked pick was Daniel Sedin (and fortunately, nobody picked him until I did at spot #7), and I was almost right on the money. Only Corey Perry got more fantasy points than Danny, and who seriously saw that coming?

This year, Alexander Ovechkin is my #1 ranked player, followed by Daniel Sedin, and then Steven Stamkos. I know, I know, Ovechkin had a horrible year last year by Ovechkin standards. But he admits his fitness strategy was horrible last year, so he totally revamped his fitness strategy during the off-season for this year. He looks great. He's back to Ovechkin levels. Fact of the matter is, nobody in the NHL takes more shots than Ovechkin, even last year. He'll be on his game again and is a great candidate to take both the Hart and Art Ross trophies again (especially with Crosby still recovering from his concussion).

Seriously, I have no idea what I'm doing this year. My success will probably heavily depend on watching the waiver wire and free agent pool like I did last year (even more so this year), with a couple of savvy trades. Here I am to defend my crown though. Bring it on, guys. Yeah, I'm talking with you, Nicky, let's get our perennial trade out of the way fast. :D

On China, Bigotry, and Loving the Unlovable - A Lesson from a Chinese Brother

2011-09-24T00:00:00.001+08:00

When I was volunteering in ZJ, there was an amazing Chinese guy who told us his life story. Two parts of his story really stuck out to me. The one I'll quickly cite here is how he was cheated when purchasing a lunch on a train in India, so he got angry. But he was reminded to love the unlovable. How can he love the person who cheated him? It was a hard lesson for him and caused me to reflect much.

In China, there are a ton of problems. Whether it's cell phone safety issues due to poor product design, infrastructure or construction disasters due to mismanagement, tainted pork scandals, a huge real estate bubble (ok, honestly, anyone who purchases something but doesn't use it is only acting as a speculator that feeds bubble prices), or what have you, China has problems. Want a summary? Read the letter from the angry Chinese girl to the Norway bomber. Heck, just today, I was buying some milk, and I couldn't figure out whether to trust the cheap milk or the expensive milk. Is the cheap milk too cheap because it's bad? Or is the expensive milk a big scam like the allegedly high-end pork that was tainted? And how come all of it is stored on shelves with no refrigeration? Should I buy the refrigerated milk instead?

A lot of people here ask me why I came here to China from Canada. Why leave such a great country for such a poor one? Isn't that ironic. I struggle to tell them the media stories and general fear the western world seems to have these days about how China will take over the world and become the next global superpower. But most Chinese citizens I meet don't believe that sentiment at all. And ironically, on the other side of the ocean, my parents and others talk excitedly about how the rich Chinese immigrants are driving up all the real estate prices in Vancouver and elsewhere. There's a huge disconnect here. The rich (and many corrupt) are leaving, the poor are staying with fewer and fewer jobs, and there's little foundation for a stable society. How the outside world views China and how China views itself are not the same.

So my friends continue to ask me. Why did I come here? I came here to learn Mandarin in the effort to dream that maybe, just maybe, one day I can do something like volunteer in ZJ long-term, among other things. However, for my friends and colleagues, they worry that China will go bust within a decade, and then things will get really bad. My one colleague's words echo in my ears: "If things get bad, you can always go home. But we have to stay here."

I've never quite understood certain types of expats who work here, but would never be able to relate to normal Chinese folks. They don't have normal Chinese friends (i.e. those who aren't rich), dislike normal Chinese food, avoid trying to learn the language, and live in conditions really out of touch with local conditions. Are they really even living here, or did they somehow manage to transport a bubble of home over here with them? I didn't want to be like them. I wanted to mingle and do a deep dive into real Chinese culture. And yet, over the past month, I've had various experiences that made me question my commitment and love for people so different myself.

It was a hot day. I just wanted an ice cream cone. I walked into the KFC and got in line. There was only one guy in front of me. Later, a lady walked up and stood beside me. Together, we walked to the counter. Does the guy serve me, standing right in front of him? No, he asks the lady to the side what she wants. Excuse me? OK, it's OK, it's China. I can wait. On my right, another lady walks up. So a girl comes and serves her. Excuse me? OK, it's OK. Then a boy walks up on my right and goes to the counter as soon as the Lady #2 is done. The girl serves him too. Meanwhile, Lady #1 on my left is still not done. Whatever, I can wait. Then Lady #3 walks up and stands behind the boy. The girl starts to serve her as well. I finally get fed up.

Me: "Hey, is there no meaning if I line up?"

Girl: /looks at me confused.

Me: "I've been waiting a long time here!"

Lady #3: "Oh, he's been waiting in line."

Girl: "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought he was helping you" /points at co-worker, who is still helping Lady #1; what is Lady #1 ordering??

Me: "No, he's not helping me, he's helping her, and he's been taking a heck of a long time. And I don't even know why he's helping her, I was lined up!"

Girl: "Oh, sorry."

Me: "Argh, just give me an ice cream."

So later, I went to get a milk tea at the shop near my apartment and complained to the girl behind the counter.

Milk Tea Girl: "Oh, well, if you don't speak up, then it's difficult to know that you're ready to order. There are lots of times when there are people here, and they're still deciding, so I serve someone else."

Me: "No, that can't be it. Because me and Lady #1 walked up to the counter at the same time, and I was right in front of the guy, and neither of us spoke. He just asked her right away what she wanted."

Milk Tea Girl: "Oh, well, maybe they didn't see you."

Me (thinking): What?????

So I'm a pretty big guy by China standards, it's hard not to notice me if I'm standing right in front of you. 187cm.

Me: How could they not see me? I was right in front of them!

Milk Tea Girl: Well, if I'm busy serving someone, sometimes I won't notice if someone is waiting.

Now that's a significant cultural difference. It's getting better in China, but it's still hard to get really good customer service. In Canada, I'm used to people coming around and asking me if things are fine, looking around to see if anyone is waiting, etc. You don't experience that a lot in China. You have to go out of your way to get service, and it's often a matter of yelling for help first or barging your way into a conversation.

Just the other day, I was at China Telecom, getting my set top box changed. This lady comes and demands something from the service rep. Excuse me? Did you not see me chatting with this person here?

As well, there are a lot of shortsighted small-minded people. I'd say this has to do more with economic status than it does culture. They're just trying to make ends meet, and Mr. Foreign Moneybags shouldn't condemn them. Sometimes the small-mindedness extends to beyond economic matters to matters of stature (admittedly closely entwined subjects). That gets irksome, but it comes with the territory.

Unfortunately, as much as I like diving into real Chinese culture, one thing I dearly miss about Vancouver is the diversity of food options. Here in China, I am limited to eating cheap Chinese stuff often, simply because I don't know anyone who can afford to eat at expensive restaurants. I'd be eating alone. OK, sometimes I do this anyway. As much as I love Chinese food, I loved Vancouver's diversity more, where you could go from pho to Japadogs to pasta to sushi to a great steak. It's like one of those stupid first-world problems.

Similarly, the friends I have made here are difficult to compare to the friends I have in Vancouver. We have little about which to communicate. On an intellectual level, interest level, life goal level, and spiritual level, I have not found anyone here in Shenzhen with whom I can really communicate. OK, I know some good friends in Chengdu (hi guys! :D), but they're not in Shenzhen.

So why am I here? Should I just leave? I don't think that's right. I wanted to do this for real and not be half-hearted about it. I just finished reading Through Gates of Splendor, the story of the five brave men who died to bring the gospel to the Waodani tribe in Ecuador. These guys loved the Waodani so much, despite how remote they were, despite how primitive they were, and most importantly, despite knowing that the Waodani probably would despise them and even kill them (which they did). But so much good happened because of that incident, thanks to the undying love that God implanted in the hearts of these men and their wives. When their wives went to finish the mission work, they were able to reconcile with the Waodani, have peace with them, and change the world. This story inspired a lot of people.

And thus I recalled the lesson of my dear friend from ZJ, how he had to learn how to love the unlovable. Here is a Chinese guy only recently a believer, who understands the love of God far better than I do myself. Before God, we are all the same, how can I be so irked by these people when I myself have irked God countless times? Jesus had many parables on this theme. It was humbling and made me realize I still have a long way to go, but motivated me to double down and sign a new 1-year contract for a new apartment. Some things here in China may still irk me, but I'm here for a while yet. Especially since my Mandarin still sucks. And I promised a crying primary school kid that I'd try to go back to ZJ again.

On bathroom design and bigotry

2011-08-24T16:04:00.000+08:00

A lot of people laugh at so-called uncultured Chinese people who don't know how to use western toilets. They're used to squat toilets, so they get on top of the western toilets, squat, and do their business. Apparently, when mainland Chinese started visiting Hong Kong in volume, they were breaking western toilets all over the place due to their incessant squatting.

I wonder what these so-called uncultured Chinese people think about western folks trying to use Chinese-style squat toilets. Believe me, it sucks, and I try to avoid it whenever possible. You need huge amount of muscle and flexibility in the right areas to be able to maintain your balance and still do your business. Otherwise, you end up with horrible mishaps.

I had an emergency the other day. I needed a toilet fast. Of course, there were only squat toilets in the supermarket where I was shopping. I was able to prove to myself that I've developed the right muscle and flexibility in the right areas to do the deed. But it still did not end well.

You know what? I wanted to talk about this somehow, as a form of therapy for all the trauma. But now... I realize I don't want to talk about it. Besides being very embarrassing, continuing to remember it is only further traumatizing. And besides that, it would probably be traumatizing for you too.

One note. I wonder how much money companies make from those tissue vending machines in all those public washrooms. I'm guessing not much. I think it's only the stupid foreigners who can't remember to carry tissue in public.

On unemployment

2011-08-23T13:13:00.002+08:00

There is a much larger theme about which I wish to write, having to do with how so-called experts are out of touch with the common people, and how that often ends up making the expert opinion unhelpful and unwanted, no matter how correct it may be. The Atlantic has an excellent collection of feedback from readers in that vein on the theme of unemployment. And here's an amazing quote I found on HN:

One more, from Philip Harvey:

There once was an island with a population of 100 dogs. Every day a plane flew overhead and dropped 95 bones onto the island. It was a dog paradise, except for the fact that every day 5 dogs went hungry. Hearing about the problem, a group of social scientists was sent to assess the situation and recommend remedies.

The social scientists ran a series of regressions and determined that bonelessness in the dog population was associated with lower levels of bone- seeking effort and that boneless dogs also lacked important skills in fighting for bones. As a remedy for the problem, some of the social scientists proposed that boneless dogs needed a good kick in the side, while others proposed that boneless dogs be provided special training in bone-fighting skills.

A bitter controversy ensued over which of these two strategies ought to be pursued. Over time, both strategies were tried, and both reported limited success in helping individual dogs overcome their bonelessness -- but despite this success, the bonelessness problem on the island never lessened in the aggregate. Every day, there were still five dogs who went hungry.

Humbling.

Great Artists Steal

2011-08-12T22:19:00.004+08:00

Watching some videos of Korea's Got Talent on Youtube, I came across this dancer named Joo Min-Jung.

Wow. In Min-Jung's original audition performance, she was asked if she knew Monster MG, a dance group that had auditioned previously for Korea's Got Talent in another city. They wore similar costumes and danced similar styles. Min-Jung said she had been contacted by Monster MG one time, and it appears there was a bit of tension because she had a similar costume and style; the insinuation could be that she copied Monster MG. She told the KGT judges that she had already been wearing the costume for a year without inspiration from them, and she was confident in her own dance abilities. If she can outdance them, then there's no reason to change her outfit.

Girl's got spunk. :) And guess who's in the finals now? The funny thing is, guess who turned out for certain to be copying someone else? That's right, Monster MG. People all over the web cried foul, saying that Monster MG's performance ripped off Poreotics, the season 5 champions of America's Best Dance Crew.

Monster MG apparently finally admitted this and apologized for it. And apparently Poreotics accepted; the Poreotics group doesn't strike me as the type of people to get into mudslinging bouts anyway. But Picasso is noted to have said that "Great artists steal", a quote that has been used by modern venerated visionaries like Steve Jobs. So why is it such a crime if Monster MG copied Poreotics?

The full Picasso quote is in fact: "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." Or, depending on your source on the web, it might be: "Bad artists copy. Good artists steal." I couldn't verify. But it is clear that Picasso thought there was a difference between so-called "copying art" and "stealing art".

Perhaps it's as simple as this. Break down the attributes of stealing.

Take without permission.
New owner has it.
Old owner doesn't have it.

Think about this. If the old owner still has it, can it be considered stolen? Or is it simply copied? When the concept of stealing is applied to conceptual/aesthetic creations like art (rather than functional creations like socket wrenches), the more important aspect regarding ownership is really who does the world give credit for the creation. If I painted the Mona Lisa, nobody would claim I stole Leonardo da Vinci's work. If someone gets the credit for something, they're probably getting it because they did the best job to make that thing as beautiful as it could be and made it their own. Is Monster MG's performance better than Poreotics' performance? Did Monster MG do anything to significantly improve on the routine? Or was it simply a blatant ripoff that wasn't even as good as the original?

And maybe that's the best watermark for a great artist's act of stealing: when an artist can make a separate work his/her own. Inspiration has to come from somewhere. It's what you do with the inspiration that counts. Another famous artist accused of stealing much is Shakespeare. Some people accuse him of having no original ideas and simply copying both contemporary and ancient playwrights. Others simply say he was retelling stories in his own manner. Whatever the case, some of the most iconic stories of our time are attributed to this man, and it is a point that all of those plays bear his classic mark and imprint.

I wonder if there would have been less of an uproar if Monster MG made significant improvements to the Poreotics routine. Would they have been lauded instead of lambasted? But they didn't do anything to improve the work. And I think that's why it's so easy to be upset with Monster MG. They could be easily viewed as a no-talent group trying to pretend to have the talent and creativity of Poreotics by performing a dance as their own creation, instead of giving credit to Poreotics. On America's Best Dance Crew, the groups have to choreograph their own stuff, so you know the groups have creative talent.

What would happen if stealing inspiration was actually encouraged and coached? How to take inspiration for something that's amazing and make it your own. The concept is interesting, and we see a ton of YouTube videos these days for fantastic music covers and mashups. I don't claim to understand all of the legal things that might be happening behind the scenes (for example, look at what happened to Love Story Meets Viva La Vida by John Schmidt, and how it became Love Story Meets Love Story due to legal issues).

As stated in the presentation, some have tried to replicate this philosophy for functional type of stuff (eg. open source software) with varying levels of success. But I suppose that it's important to note that most art, especially in popular culture, is trendy. That is also the case for technology. Microsoft stole and owned the basic concepts of today's personal computer graphical user interface. Here's a scene from Pirates of Silicon Valley, one of my favourite movies. The scene captures the seed of the personal computer's graphical revolution most excellently.

It's unfortunate for Microsoft that personal computers are becoming more and more irrelevant. Apple saw the trend and opportunity, and moved heavily into iPods, iPhones, and now iPads. Personal computers are still significant, but less significant each day. Microsoft did not see that trend coming. Some art, like the Mona Lisa, is timeless. Some art, like that of popular culture, is only trendy.

The next time you see an uproar about someone stealing something, ask yourself one question. Did the stealer do anything to improve upon whatever was stolen? Because if improvements were made, the world is probably better off, and the previous owner was probably incapable of making those improvements. Otherwise, would we not have those improvements already? In the marketplace, to the victor go the spoils, including credit.

And to Joo Min-Jung: you go, girl! :)

Just Keep Getting Up

2011-06-16T23:55:00.001+08:00

Work can get difficult. This is what it feels like right now. This is what's in my head. :(

And this is what the Canucks need to know for next year. Darn hooligans in Vancouver. A lot of them weren't even Canuck fans, just looking for an excuse? :(

The Start Line

2011-06-07T02:29:00.012+08:00

Looking at my personal history of startup attempts, if you can call them attempts, I feel sad that they never got anywhere. But the fact is that if I take a good hard look at myself, I know I am the only one to blame. I just couldn't execute. The fact is, I couldn't even get to the start line to join the race.

I love Derek Sivers' thought that ideas are a multiplier of execution. I've had a nice history of great ideas, validated by the market, most of which my friends and I actually tried to do. However, looking back at those times, many of my friends will say, "It was an awesome idea! We could have made millions!" As I work more and more trying to do startups, the more I realize the proper thought should be, "It doesn't matter. We didn't execute." Here's the list of all the startup visions I failed to deliver.

Now I'm working with some friends on SocialCheck.me. Well, here I go again. After going back to the normal work world due to having eaten up all my savings doing the other stuff, I am once again trying to do a startup project with friends. After all my efforts, I only conclude that I probably still don't know what I'm doing. Here's my pitch for SocialCheck.me.

So what am I doing differently this time, especially since I've eaten up all my savings and still need to work a day job to pay the bills? What makes this web startup different?

Sometimes Rational Dedication Means Letting Go

You need your coding people to be dedicated. These are the people making the product, after all. My friends and I have actually been at this for a year now. I was so focused on being the do-it-all guy that I refused to look at my options. Part of it was driven by me reading The Accidental Billionaires. I know a lot of people say this book paints Mark Zuckerberg as a bad guy, and Saverin and the Winklevoss twins as the good guys. But honestly, I didn't feel that way after reading this book. I was blown away by how hard Zuckerberg worked. I was also annoyed at how little Saverin and the Winklevoss twins brought to the table. I decided after reading that book that I needed to do my own coding, even though my own coding ability was nothing special. I didn't want to be a Saverin. I certainly didn't want to be a Winklevoss.

I had completed a full design document, describing everything from use case scenarios and vision to data architecture. My code was based on that design document. My friend worked as the UI designer. But we accomplished zilch. Nada. Part of it was my day job, which relegated me to coding only during evenings and weekends. That was hard because sometimes my brain felt overworked. Finally, my friend looked me hard in the eye and asked if we should reconsider outsourcing the code. She's one of those people who runs multiple businesses at once and collapses every now and then on the weekend. I wanted to pull my weight and be like her. I wanted to say no, but fact was, I wasn't getting it done.

Outsourcing our code was the best decision we ever made because we got stuff done. We ran into some trouble with the first contractor (a revolution in the middle east changed up his life priorities), and so switched gears to another development shop. These Proudcloud guys are amazing. We've accomplished in 2 months everything I could have hoped for. We have a working prototype going through alpha-testing, with a Ruby and MongoDB backend (tech platform choice was a monstrous debate, but that's another story). We'll be set to launch early access within a matter of weeks, if not days (depending on how current debugging efforts and last-minute feature implementations go).

Outsourcing the development work was an order of magnitude better than me and my crappy coding skills. For our dev team, it may be a day job, but that also hopefully means they're dedicated rock stars. My friend literally traveled across the ocean to find the right guys, since she had to be across the ocean for other business work anyway. For me, now I can just focus on product vision and feature development, managing our timeline and budget, QA, and long-term strategy. We're getting a lot more done. In economics, the concept is comparative advantage.

It doesn't work if you don't find the right development team. I know all the arguments why you want your tech expertise to be in-house. I'm just saying that I wasn't up to par, so outsourcing worked for us. It did significantly help that I had already documented a detailed product vision and design, and also had already made some prototypes with a PHP CodeIgniter and MySQL backend. But I realize now I'm more of a business founder. Can multiple business founders make a web startup with no tech founders? We're about to find out. So far, this is working for us. But remember that we at least still know what code is. I'm still convinced that all business founders for web ventures need to understand how to code, even if they won't be the ones doing it day to day. And obviously, you need to pay cash. But you get what you pay for, so don't go too cheap.

Sales Is Hard

I learned it the first few times around. Sales is hard. SocialCheck.me has a little bit of a viral thing going for it, but not enough for us to depend on viral marketing as our main strategy for customer acquisition. We're pitching to both enterprise and small businesses, specifically to hiring managers and HR departments. As such, we're tapping our networks like crazy to get customer leads, and already have some good ones; in fact, a couple of them are currently taking part in our alpha-stage testing. Hopefully, we'll be able to close all of them to become real paying customers, including the real big hitters, the companies with national presence.

When you work in the real corporate world, you develop a network throughout your career. Don't neglect it and don't forget it. It could provide you with amazing opportunities when you're running your startup. We're miles ahead of where I was in my other experiences, just because we have some solid leads. Now the real work starts in trying to close them.

The Start Line

As a naive youngster, I used to think that just working on a startup was amazing. While I haven't lost that sentiment, I now also realize that all the pre-launch work you put in is really just to get to the start line. The hellish hours, for those who can afford the risk, throwing away your savings and career (been there done that, little older and more cautious now), the fights about features, all these things are only the work required to get you to the start line. It's like the trials they have at the Olympics. Participating in the qualification round doesn't guarantee you a spot in the competition round.

It's as if the Tour de France forced every competitor to assemble their own bikes. When you launch, your bike is finally done. Then you can go to the start line. Some people may have finished assembling their bikes weeks ahead of you, and they're now miles ahead. Others may still yet be assembling their bikes. But the fact is you can't race until your bike is ready. Now similarly, I don't think you can say you're an entrepreneur until you have a product (or service) that's ready to launch. Until then, you're working on something, who knows what, but nothing real to show for it except for sweat, blood, and tears. It'll make for a nice story at your next job interview, but it won't earn you respect from other entrepreneurs, investors, and perhaps most importantly, all those friends and family who never understood what you were doing every day. People can only see and discuss what gets shipped.

And even after you finally get to the start line and enter the race, the race is a long one. I look at examples like Groupon who's about to IPO. Even at that stage, they have serious questions, where some people are even thinking they're at best a very risky play, or at worst, a scam. There's an opportunity to do something really cool there, but it'll be up to Groupon's leadership to steer the company down the path of Amazon (which lost money for years while it built up scale to be profitable), instead of webvan (which is the poster child for losing money in the Dotcom 1.0 days).

Passion and Drive

The more I learn from other people's experiences, the more I realize that entrepreneurship is a long hard fight. That's perhaps the biggest change in me. Before, I didn't have the endurance for this fight and would have given up by now. So what fuels the tank to keep fighting? I had no such thing to keep me motivated in previous entrepreneurial attempts. I was never personally tuned into the pain I was trying to solve.

This time around, the idea was sparked by incredulity I had about some hires with whom I needed to work. That lit a fire in me to help organizations get more insight into the people they were recruiting. Hiring is a process notorious for having one-sided information. You can never get the full picture of somebody. Someone who's a superstar may come across as a dud, and vice versa. We really believe we can make the world better, that what we're doing is important. Now in the final sprint to the start line, doubts are starting to creep in that maybe this won't work, maybe we won't launch, etc. It seems there's always something new to learn. But my original incredulity is fueling my passion to keep moving. There's something that we can and should fix in this world.

It's up to us to finally launch. And it's only then that the real competition will start. Wish us luck and please check it out! :)