Pressing Toward the Goal (Phil 3:14)

Blog Shifted

2009-01-31T18:25:00.000-08:00

Hi all, my blog has shifted over to http://blog.wonghongting.com. Do go check it out!

Yellowstone Pictures

2008-06-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

Think the Opposite

2008-05-31T19:48:00.000-07:00

Something I really liked on Slideshare (Click on the Play button to go to the next slide):

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Branding Practices Defined - Lessons from 1185 Design

2008-05-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

An excellent brand is more than just a good logo. Use the following terms and definitions when evaluating the brands you find tonight.

Delivery on Promise
A good brand has a well-defined (either implicit or explicit) promise to its customers, and consistently delivers on that promise. For each brand you visit tonight, try and define what their promise is, and how they deliver.

Memorability/Ownability
The brand uses color, typography, logo and other design elements such as layout and dress of retail locations in a consistent manner. Creating distinctive elements and using them consistently not only makes a brand memorable, but keeps other companies from using the same elements.

Superior Offering or Service
The brand’s product or service works more consistently, tastes better, or provides a more satisfying experience than the competition.

Fulfills a Need/Innovates
The brand takes an existing product or service and elevates it to a new level by re-imaging, redesigning, or combining it with a new approach.

John Wood, Room to Read

2008-05-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

Do we dare to dream big?
Core belief: World CHange Starts With Educated Children
To reach Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal: 10 million children by 2010
70% of Nepal is illiterate, suffering from poverty of opportunity.
John rented Zag the yak to carry the library of books from one village to village.
GDP is linked with education.
Purchasing Power Parity (economy) is linked with education.
Infant mortality is linked with female literacy.
110 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school.
880 million people around the world cannot read or write. 2/3 of these groups are girls and women.

SOLUTIONS:
To work with government to supply teachers
To enlist parents to build the school rooms
To build reading rooms - learn their own language and english
To publish local language books
Long-Term Girls Scholarship - funded by Don Valentine
"Educating girls yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world" The World Bank
Room to Read fund raise.

BUSINESS MODEL:
1) Hire strong and entrepreneurial local teams - not to send volunteers or expat
2) Engage the Community - We call them "Challenge Grant" - catalyze creation of schools, give them ownership.
"You can only help ppl who wants to help themselves"
3) Be nimble and act quickly, no excuses - Team opened 39 schools in post-tsunami area in one year even though no present operations there.
4) Invest heavily in human capital - training teachers and librarians
5) Invest heavily in monitoring and evaluation - 84% Laos librarian is confident to train new librarian.
They published books in Hindi, Sinhala, Nepalese - 10,000copies per books. Authors include 10, 15-year-olds.
6) Have an Intense Focus on Results
"What gets measured, gets done"
7) Makes efficient use of donor's money - instituted no Land Rover policy - can't open 25 libraries, can't open 4 new schools in Nepal.

Run a social business:
Low overhead ensures the money goes where it's needed most
87% Program services
Rated 4 Star by Charity Navigator.

8) Create a World-wide movement of "Super Empowered Individuals"

"Go Big or Go Home!" on philantropy. Scale up
"If Starbucks can do it"

Low prices alllow everyone to "Be the change"

What is the most image can you imagine? - potential or kinetic - take action.

TIEcon 2008 Panel: Future Trends for Social Platforms: Killer Apps, Niche Social Networks, What Next?

2008-05-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

TiE Host: Ro Choy - Vice President of Business Development, RockYou
Moderator: Gus Tai - General Partner, Trinity Ventures
Panelists:
Anil Dharni - Director of Products, Hi5 Networks Inc.
Seth Goldstein - CEO and Co-Founder, SocialMedia Networks
Sab Kanaujia - VP Digital Product Strategy & Development, NBC Universal
Keith Rabois - Head of Strategy and Business development, Slide, Inc.
Anthony Soohoo - SVP & GM, Entertainment Communities & Social Media, CBS Interactive

Lessons/Facts
Online shows and watching TV is similar in activity - Case: NCAA Tournament on CBS
Take fan base to enhance interaction -> higher ad & impressions
Apps that enhance communication works, not info apps
Realty based shows get more people to talk
maximize exposure by building communities based on the show
Widget (hard to monetize)
Platform strategy to monetize
Monetize mobilized social activities (games)
A decreased value proposition will cause product failure - if you don't need to spend much and the product can still spread, you're addressing an important need
Most social platforms don't know how to monetize. The main platform needs to be able to monetize to have the application useful for monetization
Data Portability the trend of the future
Vertical Market Platform: Context will drive CPM, even if a smaller market size (Flixster). BUT look at the size of the vertical. If its too niche also no good
Using network effect to prevent privacy. Release the premium content to everyone that doesn't have pirated content.

TIEcon 2008: Day 2 Morning Keynotes

2008-05-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

Starting Keynote: Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla Motors, Solar City & Space-X w Mike Malone
(Refer to the earlier post on Space-X and X-Foundation)
Forecasts: By 2030,
- Solar Powered
- Pure electric vehicles the dominant one
- Man on Mars

Lessons:
For large item purchases (e.g. Tesla Roadster), have a "lockout" period to maintain branding and make sure people don't start selling your item on eBay
Innovators' Dilemma again - Tesla took the market space that Toyota and Detroit manufacturers won't be moved to jump into the area

2nd Keynote: Sustaining Entrepreneurship in Biotech and Its Global Impact - John C. Martin, PhD, President and CEO, Gilead Sciences
- Biotech lies at the intersection of life sciences and technology: Health focused companies that capitalize on the increase in scientific understanding of biology and genetics
HL: "Don't be boring. Make Biotech as sexy as Tesla motors"
Healthcare Challenges and Opportunities:
- Globalization makes disease travel faster
- IP in developing world to attract investors

AIDS Developing World Challenges:
- More than 30 million infected
- 4.1 million new infections per year
- Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa: 47
- Without AIDS, life expectancy would be 62

TiECON 2008 Keynote - You like me, You REALLY like me.. Now what?: Challenges After Hypergrowth

2008-05-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

Keynote Panel - 4-5pm
Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal
Jia Shen, CTO & co-Founder, RockYou
Kent Lindstrom, President, Friendster
Derek Liu, CTO & co-Founder, Gaia

Lessons Learnt
Mathematic growth of huge market will allow for huge growth
Self-expression a need for human interaction
Dorm rooms still not producing quality apps. Slide and RockYou still key players.
Youtube app?
Huge applications might not be the key. Niche but high interaction would be more monetizable
Building applications onto platforms instead of building social network platform
Friendster facing "Innovators' Dilemma" that's why mySpace and Facebook got to take over despite Friendster's initial success
Agility to keep success of website over long period of time
CTR rates????

Monetization Models
Long tail model (Google) vs. Site target model (Yahoo) of advertising
Data Profile that each advert publisher "must buy" - e.g. if you want to meet college student you must buy Facebook ad, if you're launching movie must buy MySpace ad. This is actually still similar to buying ad during the relevant TV show
Fake cars, fake houses to impress real people =)
Microsoft Passport Model - Friends Connect, Facebook Connect; Expanding of Social Graph beyond the own website
Mobile - will grow from there
Micropayment systems in Asia
Ads as brand advertizers instead of cost per click model for people who want to drive traffice to their website

NVC - Arijit Sengupta, Founder of Beyondcore on Pico-Coding

2008-05-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

OperatorEvaluator.com cost $300+

Learning Points
Outsource – break up into small pieces so that nobody get the whole picture of what you are looking at
Definition:
Algomist – like Alchemist reversed, so build up the entire architecture
Pico-coding – break up into small pieces and code
“McDonaldize” the processes and in addition, try to let no one step affect the other step
Chunk it up until the context is gone. People don’t know what it actually iss
Be global from day 1

Positives of Pico-coding
Globalization – Global resources on your hand when you need it
Time to market
Lower cost of development
Make most use of the thinkers instead of spending time coding

Problems & Solutions of Pico-coding
What to do when you need upgrade? Throw away and buy a new one!!
Security of Code: How to ensure that its integrity?
1. Look at ratings – will go south with one entry
2. Code inspection – get someone you trust to do it
Can’t use this model when you are doing a pure innovation
Learning reduced
Core algorithm still has to do in-house
Enterprise software might have a problem because it can’t be fixed immediately
Information security requirements
IP – the coder is supposed to use unique code for everyone

Project Management vs. Global Outsourcing
Project Management starts with resource constrain, global outsourcing is planned with no constrain

Mentorship Session with Sudha Jamthe - Startup to Launch in the Social Media World

2008-05-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

Growing an Entrepreneur
Lessons:
1. Try, Fail, and Learn, Grow – Try Fry Cry
   a. Find Your Passion (What are you good at?)
   b. Hang on the edge of your comfort zone
   c. Failure Teaches Fast
2. Social Media use to network, build your identity and try out projects
   a. Facebook - Launch Tool, Events, Fan Pages, Podclass.com
   b. Twitter - Follow people in your field of learning
   c. Blogs - i) Start your own blog ii) RSS Feeds of people in your field iii) Find advisors
   d. Organize Local events - i) Meetup.com, barcamp.org, mobilemondays, wikiwednesdays, startupdinners ii) Volunteer for events to surround by smarter people where you can learn
3. People, People Technology
   a. Find your team
   b. Find your team style
   c. Find your team, Style your team likes
   d. Find your team, Style your team, Likes that breeds success

Info about Sudha
Ignorance to breed success. The first woman to raise venture capital in the New England states. 120 people and met in 40 days to get first million. She didn’t know about it, might have been scared off if she did.

Advices
When you think about what you don’t know, get to know it.
A milestone to live and die by – measurement of success.
Its about the people. An important milestone – find people.
The more you try, the luckier you get
When you know how to do something, get someone else to do it. Go find something else to do
Practice scaling and “doing business for others” as an exercise
Marketing to Students – Facebook Marketing
Hand around and find or create a group to network with people
Find local meetups to evangelize to people, these people have the local knowledge on the market
If you don’t ask busy people exactly what help you need, they can’t help you.
One Lesson: “Find Great People. Not just people who mean well, but GREAT people who can help”
Always be looking at the people, give a chance to people

Marketing, Decision Making and Learning – the Munger/Buffett Way

2008-05-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

Anand
Current: Advising 3 companies in Valley, 1 in India
A love for Ben Franklin: The original ‘renaissance man’. Inventor, Philosopher, Businessman, Diplomat, Politician, Librarian, Scientist, Engineer
Special Meetings: Mohnish Pabrai, MD of Pabrai Funds leading to a new way of thinking driven by values and sound principles, not buzzwords
Ideas are big, but DON’T BE OVERWHELMED. You have a lifetime to learn and apply these principles!!

Munger/Buffett Track Record
Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway: Coca-Cola, Gillette, ABC, Wells Fargo, See’s Candies, Saloman Smith Barney, GEICO, NetJets, Costco, AmEx, Washington Post. WITHOUT scandals, greeds or creative accountings
Early students of Ben Graham,
‘Moat’ Philosophy – Moat for sustainable competitive advantage
‘Cigarette Butt’ Investing and approach to evaluating ideas/business – Just do it and make a bit of $???
Munger
Modern day Ben Frankin
Fair business at a great price vs. great business at a fair price
Buy own, work for and invest in a great business with a fair price than the other way round!!!!
Notion of worldly wisdom to build latticework of mental models and lollapalooza results

Key Themes
- Meet the eminent dead
- Meet the one-legged guy in an ass-kicking contest
- Worldly Wisdom: “man with the hammer” tendency
- Invert, always invert
- Lattice
- Multi-disciplinary approach
- Web of derserved trust
- 6 themes of influence
- Self-serving bias
- Ability to kill your best ideas
- Inventing vs. method of invention
- Bad bridge vs. bad business
- How do you build a 2 trillion $ brand from scratch?

Meet the eminent dead
Instead of explaining concepts in the abstract, it’s a lot more fun to make friends with the eminent dead!!
- Ben Franklin
- Carl Jacobi
- Charles Darwin
- Adam Smith
- Linus Pauling

Worldly Wisdom
The man with the hammer… would want to make everything look like a nail so that he could use the hammer. So go back and add other tools to the hammer so that not all problems look like a nail. If I can’t solve the problem with these skill sets, add more skill sets!
The one-legged guy in an ass-kicking contest. You can never win. Build other tools so that the problem is varied and not with that one tool that you have.
Evolutionary Biologist would come out with hypothesis then change. Darwin proposed it.
Don’t make the decision then justify. Go and observe and come out of comfort zone.
How to acquire Worldly Wisdom??
- Making friends with eminent dead across fields
- 6 themes of influence (tbi)
- Self-serving bias: Appealing to bias, not to rationality
- Causality vs consequence

How do acquire and retain WW?
Always invert. Ask the opposite question. “If I know where I’m gonna die, I will never go there.” If you know one thing you’re not going to do, that eliminates a lot of possibilities.
Pavlovian Models (See ‘Building a $1 trillion brand’)
Borrow from one subject to improve another like Linus Pauling
Look at reading list from SFI http://www.santafe.edu/

Multi-Disciplinary Approach
Arrive at a checklist of tools that you have. Ways to think of a problem. What not to do. Etc.
Tools to evaluate marketing and business problems
Avoid man with hammer tendency
Costco: Optimize on a single variable (to the extreme) à What is really interest is that they are doing everything Walmart is doing, but they can negotiate with all suppliers, hence get HUGE discounts, and provide for a fee (membership). Paying for value
Gillette: commitment and consistency
Nebraska Furniture Mart: Customer service, low prices
Knowing when to apply the “extraordinary routine” like when you need to fly a plane

Case Study: The 6 themes of INFLUENCE
From “Psychology of human misjudgement”, Charlie Munger speech at Harvard Law School, 1995
Look for reinforcing effects in marketing situations (for Lollapalooza results)
RECIPROCITY
- LinkedIn recommendations: Help people to help yourself
- Chain Letters: cascading effect of reciprocity to reach a million people
COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY
- Only one sperm can get in then it shuts off. One idea is in, your head shuts off.
- Physics: people resist change when they like the old idea and they won’t look like an idiot
- Phil Zimbardo: Stanford prison experiment
o People who play prison guard played the role as humans will commit and be consistent
o The power of thought, commitment and being consistent with it
SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE
- Tupperware Parties. If everyone has it, I have to have it too. And when your friend is at your place, you’re more likely to make the purchase
LIKING, AUTHORITY AND SCARCITY
- Work for somebody because you like him
- Nobody cares who created it. I like the iPod I’ll buy it
- #1 brand always has the highest market share
- Brand loyalty
- Scarcity by Steve Jobs. Show it once, and everyone wants it. Then make people give Apple discounts to sell it.
Real Estate and Car Dealers: Scarcity and Authority to sell you something
Coke & New Coke: Commitment and Consistency. Something you are familiar with.
Darwin vs. the rest: That’s why people don’t like his theory
“Limited Edition” items: Scarcity

Case Study: Incentive caused bias
Apple employees can’t be convinced that Apple sucks
TRUE MEANING OF AGENCY COSTS – never try to work against what people are paid to believe
Fedex shift/hour compensation example: Each employee was paid by shift. So instead of that, they would be paid by the hour and track performance each hour. Incentive caused bias
Commission driven with CRM updating system to drive Salespeople to work

A return to values…
Are you comfortable with this appearing in the front pay of the NY Times tomorrow morning? Use this as a guide to make decisions.
WWJD?
If you build a bad bridge it will collapse. There is no consequence of building bad business. Everyone has to put in their part.
Web of deserved trust: best way to succeed is to deserve what you get
The ability to kill your best ideas – do it before others can do it so that anything that you allow to get out of your lab is going to cater to the highest standard
Makes financial sense to gain others trust

Can you build a $2 trillion brand from first principles?
“Practical thought about practical thought” – Charlie Munger

Lessons:
1. Trademark your name, protect it strongly to build scarcity
2. Have a product with UNIVERSAL appeal
3. Leverage on classical conditioning and operant conditioning (conditioned reflexes)
4. Liking, Scarcity, Social proof
5. Always invert and turn it around – what should we NOT do?
6. Exclusive product that people can’t get ANYWHERE
7. Don’t get bad effect of successes (like Microsoft, etc.) Use principles to build company up

ETL - Sue Decker

2008-05-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

Sue Decker, President, Yahoo Inc.

Yahoo Strategies
Integrated Search and Display strategies
Yahoo as a Open Platform?
Acquisition of Right Media and Blue Lithium
Display (Page View advertising)
SearchMonkey… mmm…
Yahoo! Buzz: Ecosystem of Users, Publishers, and Advertisers à Digg style voting
Yahoo Monetizing that?? Finally making profits??

Of everything that could be asked, first question is about customer care… and interface of the yahoo email… haha =)

Discussions and Stories about Yahoo the past 2 weeks
Weren’t planning to sell
Board felt that Yahoo! Is in the midst of transformation since December due to development costs, so Microsoft came at the exact right time
Sue was at Berkshire Hathaway on Board meeting, shook Bill Gates’s hand

Pace of Acquisition of Yahoo!
Yahoo! Will continue to acquire things that can integrate into their systems
Not integrating Overture faster causing Google to move faster in Search

Open Social
Yahoo! Will support open social, with a broader approach, with $$ for developers to develop on Yahoo! Instead of on Google

Macroeconomic Environment on Yahoo!’s movements
Ad is 500billion size
Ad is cyclical with economy, especially in traditional
Online ads can figure cost of customer acquisition, so less reduced compared to traditional ads

Alienating User Groups with Voting
Homepage is not automatic, so Buzz doesn’t change the main site immediately. The main editors will make sure quality is there.
Dynamic content serving

Google outsourcing question
Panama and Google only about 20% difference in earnings
Is it worth it to use Google to close it, and use Google, or continue to build

Video Ad Monetization
Video Ads on static content page

Yahoo’s acquisition of Zimbra à EmailInsights from content will provide relevance and allow others to want the experience

ETL – Peter Diamandis peter@xprize.org

2008-04-23T17:32:00.000-07:00

What were you excited about as a kid?
That’s what you’re passionate about, VCs will fund you, etc. Life’s do short to do something for somebody else

Government can’t take risk for space frontier as there’re too many issues involved that would cause them to lose out politically
Have to go with the private industry

Long Term Mission – Asteroid Miner, lots of $$ in there

How X Prize Foundation is financed

Spirit of St Louis – Flight across the Atlantic for a prize

If he can do it, everyone can do it – the flying fool, Lindberg

Hence X Prize is the prize to simulate the prize for Lindbergh

Line of Super Credibility - Things you do that no matter what you do it will succeed. Line of credibility only brings you to being acknowledged

Insurance Company took the bet with X Prize that for each trench of advancement, the company will pay out

Founded Zero G airplanes to have fun

Space Adventures – Rocket Racing League

True breakthroughs require taking risk. The day before something takes off, it is a crazy idea. Got to be willing to take these risks.

How can we incentivize really crazy stuff? Originally was by government.

Average age of Apollo program engineers was 26 as nobody was there to tell them what they could or could not do. Same as dot com revolution.

Go do the crazy idea. Have to take risk.

X Prize is to change behavior

http://www.xprize.org/, http://www.gozerog.com/, http://www.rocketracingleague.com/

Leverage on people’s capabilities for sponsorship instead of $$ all the time
When you ask for great advice you get great money
It’s a people process, not a $ process

Make other people heroes

ETL - David Rothkopf

2008-04-16T16:41:00.000-07:00

Market Marketism
Banks - Great 14 people
Global financial non-regulation as sovereignty can't control the situation
Risks were "unknow-able", Board doesn't understand the risk, incapable of doing it, opaque systems of modern securities structures - we need to enforce old regulations of board controlling risks
Vilfredo Pareto - the 80/20 rule, a billion people affected by 200m people
More than half of people live on $2 a day - poverty struggles
Cross ownership causes concentration of power
Military power concentrated - less war = good or bad?
Religion concentration
"As scale play a bigger role, and technology allowing for democratizing (though not always - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace)"
Consequence:
1. Astonishing rapid growth in inequality - absolute poverty going down, real improvements at the base, BUT middle class shrunk especially in India and China
Top 11000 people (billionaires) assets are almost double of the bottom 2.5billion people put together - same as with other examples
3billion salary for the Hedge Fund managers
Growth no longer to be tracked by economic growth? causing political tension?
Backlash - globalization causing backlash

Therefore look at Superclass:
People who have influence over millions, international, on-going
60% from atlantic, 60% from business
Under-represented demographic - Women 94% of super is male, 6% is female
20% of these superclass went to top 20 universities - networking for multipliers
Ethics of leadership not trained in this class of people
More Transcient, but not necessarily more of a meritocracy - instead Geography, Luck is a huge part of of this
People less worthy might be more successful - other factors play a part
Etc parabos but all things are not equal, hence the reason for leadership and government to put rules into place

Other things:
Geographic location of these people (superclass) - fastest growing is Asians (Russia, India and China): 100 billionaires in China over the past few years (but bubble?)
Interest of these superclass align will drive how things are done
DAVOS - Have business leaders come together and talk things through so that through influence, things will be run the way people want it to
Power is skewed, disproportionate, and tools like government don't exist on the global stage anymore - much harder problem than cancer or global warming
Community - now global as we can communicate and do business
however difference in cultures still cause problems
Inequality is unsustainable - hence all the whacky ideas like terrorism, etc.

1 philosophy and won't have another until crazy people come out with new ones that may tip the balance and cause world to change in revolution style

DAVOS problem is that the fastest growing component is not represented (China and rest of Asia)
Scandinavian better wealth distribution than US

Europe is a museum, not much
Sweden wants to get off fossil fuels and be green
Traditional markets are not really market if supply and demand are done by the same people
European model maybe blended with the Singaporean or Chinese model with more government control to resurgent

Green tech
Government policies play a big role in Germany being better in green, US likely to follow once the next President takes over
Last energy bill are ridiculous as its done by random, causes wind and solar subsidies to reduce
Interest tug of war, so not really best policy comes through

Power dynamics
Constantly changing and different in each situation and influence level
Manifests in different ways
Roman Abromavich is a governer of a province in Siberia while he lives mostly in Chelsea
Agenda setting will change with the introduction of Asians
Disagreements with americans mainly due to fact that most countries do not agree with how things are run in US after Guantanomo
Lots of countries in asia have different values of states, how they interact, and what kind of things these states do (e.g. Sudan)

Structural Change within the year - incremental change
Global Financial Markets
Climate change going to motivate the change of the world in green tech emphasis
People rising to the challenge - big challenge is big opportunity

Burden sharing with US and China whether it can be resolved
Survival over climate change issues

Political division tension and not so much social unrest may be a result of how US is run now
CEO salaries and regulatory legislation

Compounded Advantages

Kinda Easy... Dodge Ridge

2008-02-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

I'm busy rushing a business case for submission tonight... but the thought of not posting this up was lingering in my head for too long... so I did this up real quick and am posting this... Btw all these were done in 1 day. I think I managed to cover so much ground this time coz:
1) It's kinda easier
2) More courage to take on the black diamonds (sometimes misplaced though... they listed too many as black diamonds when their difficulty levels are totally different... e.g. hole shot and straight shot.... or maybe I just don't know how to navigate through too powdery surfaces)
3) of course I'm getting better... haha....

ok... now back to work....

Mt Hood... Since I'm at it

2008-01-28T11:20:00.001-08:00

Since I'm at it, here's the trip that started it all (the snowboarding bug).. While at Portland, Oregon, we went to snowboard at Skibowl resort on Mt Hood. Similarly, the routes in purple are the ones that I completed while on Mt Hood. Will write more about this when I do an entry on snowboarding... =)

Heavenly... Simply Heavenly

2008-01-28T11:02:00.000-08:00

Sincere apologies to everyone and anyone that has been checking out on my blog. Been really caught up with stuff... Anyway, I will start re-documenting everything that I've missed out over the past 3 mths (in summary of course)... but as a start... and sharing this made me wanna blog all over again, this is a map of Heavenly Ski Resort in Lake Tahoe, and on it, the routes marked purple are the ones that I've managed to clear over the Saturday and Sunday that just passed by.

I honestly think that I've been severely bitten by the snowboarding bug, and I will most definitely be going a couple of times more before the end of winter... Its lucky that I've shifted to staying in the living room and saving almost $200 a month on rent, which leaves me with a little excess cash to spend on this new hobby of mine...

Until I put up the photos later... I'm gonna stretch my millions of broken bones and aching muscles before I turn into stone... =)

Partying...

2007-11-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

Cheesecake Factory

2007-11-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

Ok I haven't written in ages, and its 1:17a.m. in the morning, but this one I must write. Once again, the Cheesecake Factory food has managed to astound me, tingling all the tastebuds and sense.. amazing stuff.. will write more about this again soon... =)

Birthday Party at Langkawi Restaurant, San Mateo

2007-10-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

Having a really busy week... So I'm just gonna leave the photos here first and perhaps come back to write some more about it over the weekend...

Evolving Company Culture....

2007-10-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

"Company Culture"
Definition: Company Culture is the term given to the shared values and practices of the employees. Note that the actual culture may not match the published culture.
Examples: Many start up companies have a company culture that promotes working very long hours and then crashing under your desk.

Well at where I work at, I've kinda created a new company culture by the simple introduction of a new item that we got for a cheap price when a company that a classmate works at closed down. This item, though simple, and not all that interesting, has began to create a culture where the employees (though not many) at my company can come together after lunch, during breaks, etc. to have a platform to discuss issues or simply just talk while engaging in cohesion activities.

This miraculous item is none other than..... *drum roll*.....

Yes, the Foosballl table. It is amazing how something as simple as a Foosball table put right at the centre of the office has started to have the company talking more to each other and having a place to relax....

*entry uncompleted... gonna finish this after a mentorship session*

Breakfast Today

2007-09-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help it be be inspired to post what I had for breakfast on the blog today. Smells too nice for me not to put it online... anyway the menu is:
1) Fried Portobello Mushroom
2) Omelette with Ham and Cheese
3) Very Fresh Milk

Simple... but it smell super nice... ok can't resist this anymore... gonna gobble it up....

Ye He Hua Zhu Fu Man Man…

2007-09-28T11:20:00.001-07:00

Posted an entry on http://bkccy.blogspot.com. Do go and read it!

Photos Long Overdue... From Arrival to San Pablo Housewarming

2007-09-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

2000 Chrysler Sebring JXi Limited Edition

2007-09-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

After looking at my past blogs, I just realised that I have written anything on my beloved car. So, this is it... a photo of me in my car pretty much the day I bought it (7 August 2007). Historical day since its the first day that I am a car owner. It has definitely served me very well over the past month of so, having gone up to San Francisco numerous times, down to Cupertino and Santa Clara a billion times.. Before buying the car, I was thinking that I would never drive a convertible in Singapore, but after driving this for a month plus... I AM a convert!!! The feeling of wind blowing against your hair, racing down the sunny streets of California is simply amazing...

95 W. 5th Avenue #343, San Mateo, CA94402, USA

2007-09-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

iPhone Official Opening

2007-09-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

The Official "Opening" of the iPhone... its not just a phone, it is a beautiful piece of art =)

Will put in more photos and review of the phone soon. Even my parents know of the 1million set in 74 days thing, so the marketing for the product has been done pretty well huh.

Soccer in the Bay

2007-09-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Well... it is pretty much the only form of exercise that I take part in (ok other than the mountain climbing part.. and the occasional jogs around the area)... I really enjoy my weekly Thursday sessions (at least until before school starts) of soccer with my colleagues and people from bball.

Last Saturday, soccer was even more exciting as ed and myself joined up with some locals (well local enough) to play soccer. It was really a good exercise as it was full field soccer, so there was a lot of running, requiring tons of stamina - something which I sorely lack. The experience has inspired me to go play soccer again coming saturday. =)

Anyway this post seems to be very random, so I shall end off on a random note. My new soccer boots bought last Wednesday:

Posted from my iPhone

2007-09-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

Testing to see how easy it may be to post an entry on the blog from my iPhone... I am in love with my new iPhone!!! Will write more about it in a short while...

Char Kuey Teow

2007-09-07T14:36:00.003-07:00

Who says there isn't Char Kuey Teow in California... and its authentic Penang Char Kuey Teow... nice... =)

Yosemite - Half Dome Intro

2007-09-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

Short Video that was taken on top of Half Dome

Yosemite - Half Dome

2007-09-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

I shall skip all the previous entries that I am supposed to have written in order to bring this entry to everyone reading Live!... well... it is definitely better than if I were to do this a few weeks later at least.

For people who don't already know Yosemite (pronounced as Yo-SEM-it-ee... not YOse-MIte) is a national park in California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite, and a designated world heritage site. Really beautiful place, with fond memories of it from the days when I was a kiddo, when the squirrels came to visit us in our log cabin to get food. Hence, it is only natural that when we saw the long weekend (due to Labour Day by the way), I joined in the bunch of people (from San Pablo household) that wanted to go Yosemite... In exact, I joined in the bunch that wanted to scale half dome, 6 of us guys..

Saturday - 1st Sep 07
Saturday was kind of an uneventful day in general (very eventful in another aspect... but that's left for another blog.. =P). As one of the 6 of us went to fix his car, even though I managed to reach San Pablo on time at 9:30am, we didn't leave Sunnyvale until after lunch, which was around 1pm.
Tip 1 - Never leave in the afternoon: The sun was glaring straight into the car while we drove over. Although we're all in California, it really didn't help that our left and right felt more like Mid-West USA, with farmland after farmland and no shelter to help shade us from the sun.
Tip 2 - Leave early to avoid jam: As expected, with everyone going for roadtrips over the weekend (and by everyone I mean whole of america), it was only natural that a long stretch of road was jammed, causing us to melt in the sun for an additional hour to the predicted 3hrs of travel. A bonus, however, was that the scenary was fantastic, but when we tried to fit a movie to go with the scenary, we could only come up with "Brokeback Mountain"... doesn't help that all 6 of us are guys huh... =)

Anyway, after finally reaching our lodging place at 5pm or so, we unloaded our stuff and decided to try to catch the sunset in Yosemite itself. Tip 3 - Stay in Yosemite (even if it means stay in the car): Although our lodging claimed to be just an hour's drive from Yosemite, it was entirely misrepresented as we took about 30mins to get to the gate of Yosemite, and another hour to reach Glacier Point to watch the sunset. Yosemite itself is just too damn big to stay near, and the drive up and down was similar to an easier version of the La Honda Rd (Initial D & FF:Tokyo Drift type mountain).

On Glacier Point itself, the scenary was FANTASTIC!! (Photos below... more photos soon) However, one big question mark that hovered over my head was... we're gonna climb that beautiful mountain across that is like... a million ft tall?!?!?! ... and the answer is .. yes...

Half Doom... I meant Dome - 2nd Sept 07
Tip 3 - Stay in Yosemite this is SO important... we had to wake up at 5am in order to start our journey so that we can reach the base by 6:30am to begin our ascend. Tip 4 - Stay with people that can wake up. We had to drag 2 of them who couldn't wake up out of their beds else we would have lost much time. Tip 5 - Coffee Coffee Coffee... I didn't drive, but if I were to have driven, I would need like 10 cups of caffeine to keep me awake... Nice scenary, Nice weather... Sleepy...

Tip 6 - Do research before going: While I had an idea that we were going to climb a mountain and that a lot of people said it was very difficult, I was thinking, "It can't be as difficult as Mt Biang can it?" Well, let's just say I was both right and wrong. No it is not as difficult as Mt Biang because we don't have to carry like 40kg of things with us, but yes it requires more stamina as it is way way higher... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_dome

Tip 7 - Sleep and Eat: Basically, due to insufficient sleep (we slept at about 11pm the night before) and insufficient salt (we ate fruit bars for all meals), all of us had cramps during the climb after a while. Worst of all, Patrick cramped up on the cable climb up as well, so he was stuck there for a while.

Tip 8 - Bring extra Memory Card: I found out on my way there that I didn't bring the spare... brilliant right... hence the photos here are the ones that I managed to take with my own. Will get the rest from my friends soon and upload accordingly...

Again, Half Dome was a fantastic place, and you feel a great sense of achievement having accomplished the climb, but it is really hard for me to describe it... so more photos some time soon yeah? =)

San Francisco - 19Aug07

2007-08-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Decided to first upload some photos from the trip to San Francisco... will have some commentary or captions to the photos in time...

Everything so far.... The journey over plus plus

2007-08-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

Well the trip over was pretty straightforward and really nothing much to talk about. I mean, how interesting can almost 20hrs on board a Northwest Airlines plane be? Granted that NWA had VOD instead of Channels for view, which meant that I had the luxury of watching movie after movie after movie for the whole journey (including Cars, Prince of Thieves, Wild Wild West, etc.), but how interesting can that be?

What was interesting though, was the Narita airport, Tokyo. While the usual amenities and services were available (read McDonalds, Starbucks, Bvlgari, Chanel, etc.), it was kinda interesting that they had a public shower and bed place for which you can sleep, charged by minutes. Imagine if Osim Vivo were in the airport... I'd like stay there forever. =)

Some photos from the airport:

After arrival, the arrangement was kind of screwed up because nobody knew who was coming (supposedly my buddy but apparently his car was spoilt, etc.) and of course it didn't help that nobody picked up their mobile. However, it didn't really matter, as the moment I stepped out of indoors to breathe California air, i *KNEW* at that instance, that I'm back in America. The beautiful smell of clean american air... and the nice 22degrees temperature... appreciating this a lot more than when I was frozen the moment I landed in Indiana exactly 10 years ago.

Anyways, finally, Vid came to pick us up. Really nice guy working at L2. Didn't know that there was an entire consortium of people working at L2 (I only knew Ahmed came back... there're like 5 NOC alums who came back). Rest of the day was rather uneventful, other than the beautiful 5 hour sleep at Americana... and of course, the irritating matters dealing with the bank. *urgh* that's left for another post...

Everything so far.... Pre-departure

2007-08-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

Well I had meant to do this much earlier, but since of the many things going around, this is finally the first entry in my blog recording lessons learnt and places that I've gone to in the Land of the Free. For simplicity of reading... and for simplicity of me doing up this whole entry broken into small bits to write, here goes part one...

Pre-Trip
Well... Let's start from before the trip I guess. Felt kinda bad that I had to feel sick just hours before I left Singapore, with WS over to spend time with me but me having to spend time on the bed just so that I could rest. Oh well, luckily there was Ugly Betty for her to watch. In the end it was a nice family affair, dinner and all, but it still didn't hit me that I was leaving. Oh well. Then we printed a lot of photos for both of us to put together... unfortunately we didn't have time to decorate the board, but I'm sure WS will do an excellent job with it. =)

Some photos at the airport...

ilu ilu

Last Wong to go overseas for studies