Back in US to recover from pneumonia

So I got pneumonia after I spent a week in a rural school in China doing a user study. I had to go see many doctors and every time after the doctors would prescribe me some medicine I would come back home and research the drugs to make sure they were the correct medicine for me and their dosage was right. Interesting enough is that they only information that I could find out about one sinus decongestant was the article below about fake medicine being spotted in Beijing hospitals. Very scary. When you are sick the last thing you want to worry about is whether the medicine you are taking is fake.


I have been impressed with many things in China and what Chinese government has done over the years but the state of the health care in China is a mess. Because doctor fees are artificially kept very low the hospitals rely on the pharmacy sales to make up their budget shortage. As a result every time I went to a Chinese hospital I came back with a shopping bag full of drugs.



After doing my own research I took probably only 1/3 of the medicine that they gave me and throughout the rest. But still after 2 months and 7 antibiotics later and visits to many western and Chinese hospitals I was still not getting better. So I came back to US to go to doctors here and rest and breath some clean air and see what happens.


A few years a go some entrepreneur got executed in China for setting up a company to collect, wash and then resell used syringes from hospitals. Another example is the head of Chinese food and drug administration as just recently executed for accepting bribes and approving drugs. Some scary examples.





Counterfeit medicines taken off the shelves

Urgent warnings have been issued after three fake medicines were found in suburban areas of the capital.
Beijing's municipal medication watchdog issued an urgent notice at the weekend to the city's pharmacies about household brands the cold medication Contac NT, the painkiller Fenbid and the antibiotic cefalexin.
The counterfeit drugs were discovered in an investigation by the Beijing Municipal Drug Administration that was carried out at two township-level hospitals and two village clinics in the districts of Changping and Fangshan.
Tests showed the medicines, which appear to be the same as the authentic ones, do not contain valid ingredients and do not meet the relevant national standards.
There are no reports that the fake ones did harm to people's health so far.
The batch numbers of the fake drugs are 04100672 for Contac NT, 04110509 for Fenbid, both of which are marked with the producer Tianjin Smith Kline&French Laboratories Ltd, and 0408091 for cefalexin allegedly made by the Beijing Taiyang Pharmaceutical Industry Co Ltd.

Book review: Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage of Wall Street

Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage of Wall Street
by Michael Lewis

David's Review:4/5

As part of my research into investment banking I just finished reading this book. It is an insider view of Solomon Brothers investment banking firm during 1980s in the midst of dramatic a evolution of ibanking industry. Michael Lewis gets hired into the firm as a junior analyst and describes his life from the 7 months training program up to the day that he quits the firm. Although the book does not go into too much technical details of the investment banking work itself it describes clearly the mindset and the lifestyle of ibanker. It is great story full of conflicts between interesting characters that epitomize arrogance, smartness, opportunists with killer instinct.


Here is an interesting quote from the book:

“Andy Stone from Prudential explains the managerial problems at Salomon and the rest of Wall Street: “Wall Street makes its best producers into managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often neurotic and paranoid. You turn these people into managers, and they go after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that producing gave them. They usually aren’t well-suited to be managers.Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get muscled out because of politics. The guys left are just the most ruthless of the bunch. That’s why there are cycles on the Wall Street, because the ruthless people are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure.”

How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community

This is a great article about online communities and stupid trolls who anonymously post messages to irritate people.

How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community


a great quote: "Don't let assholes rent space in your head."

a great technique:

Troll whisperers aren't necessarily very good at hacking tools, so there's
always an opportunity for geek synergy in helping them to automate their
hand-crafted techniques, giving them a software force-multiplier for their good
sense. For example, Teresa invented a technique called disemvowelling -- removing
the vowels from some or all of a fiery message-board post. The advantage of this
is that it leaves the words intact, but requires that you read them very slowly
-- so slowly that it takes the sting out of them. And, as Teresa recently
explained to me, disemvowelling part of a post lets the rest of the community
know what kind of sentiment is and is not socially acceptable.

Historical polls about Bush's approval rating

This is pretty cool. It is amazing how all the polls are consistent for something as difficult to measure as approval rating. I had never seen this kind of aggregation of all the polls on one chart.

MBA Class of 2007: My brother's graduation

I came back from Beijing to go to Ben's graduation in Michigan. Our family is pretty proud of him and we are very happy to see him graduate.
After just one night of hanging out with him and his classmates I am very envious. I wish I had applied to business school last year. Ben has had a great experience in the past 2 years. His classmates are very smart and have very interesting background. The sense of community and camaraderie is very visible and people are very friendly.

Because Ann Arbor is a very small city and has very few interesting attractions, everyone goes out to the same 1 or 2 popular bars every night. So you don't need to plan anything. You just walk in and inevitably you run into people you know. Oh man, I miss being a student and go to bars and dance and jump up and down all night.

I am very motivated to study GMAT an do the Biz school applications. I. I will start as soon as I go back to Beijing.

On Saturday we are going to Ben's commencement ceremony. The guest speaker is President Clinton! :-) And the ceremony is in the sadium below.

May I please have some F*ck Fish

Cao = Grass

Cao = F*ck

The difference between the pronunciations of these is imperceptibly small. So once I tried to order grass fish at a restaurant and everyone at the table laughed at me. It gets worse; one of my colleague's last names is Cao. He was too polite to tell me that I keep miss pronouncing his name. Now I am just too afraid of ever saying his name. Cao=F*ck is a very strong word. Chinese people don't use it often.

Another one,

Didi = brother

Da = big

My logical conclusion: da did = big brother.

Well, as it turns out logic does not apply here. So "wo shi da didi" means "I am a big penis" and not "I am the oldest brother". There is a different word for big brother. It is "gege".

Once I learn Chinese I may have to move out of Beijing because I will have totally ruined my reputation by then.

Oh well, I tried to make more fun at myself by repeating "wo shi da didi" to my friends. They all thought it was hilarious.Publish

Catching up with friends

Today is a great sunny Saturday in Beijing. But I am just too tired to go out. I have been pretty exhausted at work. Too many things to keep track off and everything has to move forward at the speed of light for us to have a product in the market in a reasonable timeframe. Our team had a review with Steve Ballmer yesterday and got positive feedback to move forward. That certainly adds more wood to the fire.

I talked to my friend Peter. He moved from Redmond to Shenzhen. His knowledge of Chinese language was great to begin with and he is studying more than I do and his day to day interactions at work are pretty much all in Chinese. I am very envious. I feel like I am in big glass bowl. I can see that I am in China but only at distance and can't touch it or feel it. My work is all in English and because we have so much work to do I have to be very efficient at communicating. It is just not a place that I can practice the little Chinese that I have learnt. And I am only taking 3hrs a week of lessons which is not enough. And the lessons are at the end of the day when I am already exhausted and not efficient at learning and remembering.

I also read my friend Jeanette's blog. She just left MS to move to Madrid. She has written in detail about her packing and moving adventures. She took her dog with her which makes her move even more complicated. I don't think she has accepted a new job yet but I think she is going to try to do something different than before. I am very happy for her. She is one of my favorite people at MS. Another one is Heather. They are both carbon copy of each other. They are so incredibly driven that is scary. I have learnt a lot about myself by just observing them.

I tried to hook up with my friend Neema last night. But his cell phone was off. I want to spend more time with him before he returns to US after being in China for 2 year.

I am not used to planning my weekends. I just want to get up think of something and do it. But that leads to big disappointments. Several times I have tried to find people to go out and do things with but they were not available or they had their phones turned off. Then I end up not doing anything and being alone. That sucks.

I am going to go ride my bicycle around. It is too nice to be inside.

I met who builds mine and your phones, VCRs, TVs, Computers

I spend all day today talking to a few 17, 18 year old kids that work in factories in Xiamen building products that we all use every day. They invited me and my coworker to their home; we went out for a walk and had lunch and dinner together. It was a great day and I learned a lot.
Xiamen if one of the manufacturing centers in China. Just across the water from Taiwan, it is an ideal place for Taiwanese companies to setup their manufacturing center on the mainland. Your phones, TVs, and other household appliances are very likely have been produced here in Xiamen or in Shenzen which is to the west of Xiamen and is the closest mainland city from Hong Kong.

I am here in Xiamen for the 3rd time; I am working closely with an OEM a product. On my first visit to Xiamen I noticed a lot of people walking in the city in groups wearing the same uniforms and I discovered that they were factory workers and had just finished their shift. That reminded me of Bangalore in India were at 6 PM the city springs up to life as thousands of people start their daily work in the call centers. They work the night shift which corresponds to the day time in US.

I could not contain my curiosity I wanted to meet these factory workers and talk to them. My first few attempts were not very successful but eventually on my 3rd trip I made a few friends and they invited me to their house and answered all the questions I had.

I met the kids that I went out today with on my 2nd visit to Xiamen. One day at lunch break my coworker Stanley and I went to a little village center beside the factory we were visiting. There were several grocery stores and a lot of restaurants and other shops in that neighborhood. The little village center is a few minutes walking distance away from several large OEM factories and it is the place the factory workers buy food and other necessities. The best way that I can describe the atmosphere of this place is "university campus". The place is full of 18-24 year old kids laughing, walking in groups of 3 to 4. They are all the same age, wear basically the same kind of clouds and work at the same factories. Most girls walk in small groups and they tightly hold each other's hand and laugh and giggle constantly.

The second time I was in Xiamen I really wanted to talk to people but most of kids are very shy and would only look at me though the corner of their eyes. Occasionally someone would say "Hello" as they walked by me and Stanley. Before I had a chance to say anything they would turn away and giggle with their friends and pass by. Finally at one of these occasions I managed to corner them and with the help of Stanley talk to them for a few minutes asking their age and where they were from, and eventually their phone numbers.

This time, on my 3rd visit, we called the kids up and arranged to meet them for dinner. That led to an invitation to a party in our honor in their house the next day.

In course of several meetings we all learned a lot about each other and became friends. I hope in the future I could find a chance to go with them to back to their home town and see where they came from.

I will write more about the life of the kids here in Xiamen. Here is a short summary:

An assembly line worker here in Xiamen makes about 800-1000RMB ($100-$125) per month. After food and housing and cell phone and internet café charges they are left with about 200RMB ($25) which they save or send home. On average they will work here for about 2 years before returning to their hometown. They are very mobile both mentally and physically and can change their job easily so the factories can't take too much advantage of them. In general I would say that they have a happy life. The factory assembly job is monotonous and boring for their them but they are independent, relatively free and will return home a bit richer than before. Their standard of living is probably is at the high end of the scale for factory workers because they work in high tech companies and they are considered specialized workers.
One of the girls today said talking to a foreigner and having dinner with him is the most exciting thing she has done so far in her life. I had a great experience as well. :-)

My Chinese name is 邓伟 （Deng Wei）

Most foreigners here in China have a Chinese name. It makes sense because it is very difficult for people to remember your English name. I spent a lot of time and consulted with several friends to pick a good Chinese name for myself. I didn't want to be stuck with a stupid name that some clerk assigned to me during the visa application process. What is in my visa application is probably my official Chinese name. But I don’t like that one so I will have to change it the next time I apply for visa.

A natural choice was Da Wei because it sounds like David. But there were a couple of problems with that name. When you add a last name to it and put the last name first then it does not sound like David anymore. In China last name is always put first. In Mao Ze Dong case, for example, Mao is last name and Ze Dong is his first name.

If your name is just 2 syllabus or easy to pronounce then everyone will always call you by your full name: last name plus first name. If your name is too long then your parents will abbreviate it somehow and call something different than your full name.

I also need a last name. Du, Deng are good because they start with D and loosely sound like Dehghan. Du does not have a particularly good meaning. It means stomach. Deng as far as I know does not have any meaning but it is the same name as 邓小平 (Deng Xiao Ping). Deng Xiao Ping is probably the most important person in modern Chinese history. He was the premiere that set China on the course of change from Communism to Communism with Chinese Characteristics (ie market economy).

After some thought I just dropped the Da from Deng Da Wei and was left with just Deng Wei. Da Wei is not really a Chinese name, so if I am making a lot of compromises to get a Chinese name I might as well go full out and get an authentic Chinese name.

So here I am, Deng Wei.

Now let’s practice:
I am Deng Wei. Wo shi deng wei. 我是邓伟。
My name is Deng Wei. Wo de ming zi shi Deng Wei. 我的名字是邓伟。

My apartment was flooded

Time to write some more. I am on a plane going to visit the OEM that is manufacturing my product to finalize some of the design issues. So I have a few hours to write.

2 weeks ago I got up one morning and heard dripping sound coming from our kitchen. I tuned on the light and saw the water was dripping from the ceiling in several places and there was a large puddle of water on the floor. "Adventure time!" I told myself, while having a big grin on my face.

My roommate was not home so I called her and told her the story and then went to work. After an hour she called me back and said that we had to go home and wait for the repair person to show up. So I try to wrap up my conversations at work and go but it takes about 15 min. By the time we get home about 20 min later the apartment management guys are gone. So Sungmee has big argument with them for 10 min over the phone. Then she translates for me what they had said: Basically they were mad at her for not being there when they showed up even though she had told them that we were not home. But the absurd thing is that they said we should wait at home and sometime in the afternoon they would come back most likely after lunch. And no matter how much she insisted that the problem was not in our apartment and was probably caused by the apartment above us they insisted that they have to come and visit our apartment to confirm that there is a problem first before they would go investigate the cause of it.

Well, that was pretty stupid. So I said that we should go investigate ourselves. We went up one floor and we see that water is coming out of the apartment above us into the hallway. J That solved the mystery. So we called the apartment management but they still said that we should go back home and wait until they come and investigate the problem. And because we had reported the problem they have to first come to our apartment to verify things. Man, what a comedy! I knock on the door and after a few min a 17 year Korean boy that was half asleep opens the door. He was standing in 4 centimeters of water and has no clue on what to do. He didn't speak any Chinese or English. Eventually we find out that they are 2 students of the Chinese language school close to us and that they had been asleep and did not know what happened. Fortunately Sungmee is Korean so she could talk to them in Korean. I go in and find the main water valve and shut it off and that stops the leak. Then I teach them how to scoop the water and clean up. They were clueless. So I asked Sungmee to clearly explain to them that they had to clean up the water immediately or all of it would come down in our apartment and then we had to clean it up.

I tried to convince Sugmee, to no avail, that we should go to the apartment management office and tell them the story and have them send someone to help the kids. I don't know what they had told her on the phone but she did not want to do it and wanted us to just wait at our house for them to show up. So we wait for an hour and no one comes. Eventually we give up go back to work and hope for the best.

I live in a cheap house apartment building in the university district. My roommate and I pay about $400 a month for the 2 bedroom apartment and we split that evenly. There are many foreigners living in the Wudaoko area. Most of them are students that go to one of the universities around us. I wanted to live in the cheapest apartment that I could reasonably live in order not to be isolated from common Chinese people and problems. I love the fact that there is a taxi cab driver that lives in our apartment and he parks his car in the courtyard. And there are a lots of old people that hang out outside of my building and play cards. I have not seed if they do Tai Ci in the morning. There is no point to come all the way here to china and then live in an expat building in the expat district that just looks like Milan or Chicago. I am here to learn things; it would be a big wait of opportunity if I isolate myself from reality.

What I pay for rent is still twice as much as salary of a teacher. But any lower that this it would be just too painful to live in. Cheaper apartments don't have elevators or hot water 24hrs a day. Also there is only 2 of us in a place where 10 Chinese students could easily live in.

Let there be light! Adventures in paying for electricity

Here in Beijing Electricity and gas for heating your house works on a prepaid model. You buy credit points in advance and load them into a smartcard then you come home and you charge your meter in your house with the card. If you don't do this in time your electricity and gas will get shut off as soon as you run out of credit. On the left is the picture of the meter.

Well, learning that little bit of information cost me a few trips to bank, post office, McDonalds and some mental anguish. My next door neighbors had it worse. On a Saturday afternoon their power went off and that is when they started learning about all of this.

Before my roommate went on vacation she showed me the gas and electricity cards and kind of explained what I had to do. But since she also had not done it herself, her instructions, I found out later, were very incomplete. I kept checking the electricity (in the hallway by the elevators) and gas meters (in our kitchen) and delaying the eventual facing of the challenge to recharge them.

One Saturday night I met my neighbors, two Italian university students, in hallway as they were struggling to figure out which electricity meter belonged to them. Then they explained how their power went out and they had to go find out how to recharge the card. But after they put the recharged card into the meter they still did not get power. If your meter goes to zero you have to press another little black button somewhere else to reset it. But none of us know that then. So the poor kids had no power all weekend long. That scared me so that very same night at 1:00AM I went to McDonalds to use a special ATM machine to charge my card. But unfortunately all the writings on the machine were in Chinese. I was able to navigate around by just guessing what the icons meant but that didn't get me very far. Eventually I had to ask someone to help me read. But out of all people I picked a student that also had not done this before and was not as helpful as I hoped. Eventually he said that the machine cannot do it and that I have to do a bank. At this point my electricity was down to 8 points. So I shut off everything and tried to stretch the remaining credits until Monday when I could get help form people at work. It was a very cold night and I shivered all night long.

On Monday I asked my team what was the process. But most of them didn't know. People that live in their parents' house are too spoiled and have never done this. And people that have maids also never do it. Eventually I found one coworker that knew and he took me to a back machine at the bottom of our building to recharge the card. The bank machines have both English and Chinese menu. But the English one has only the basic options and does not give you the full menu of how to pay for gas and electricity. So I learned and memorized the sequence of the buttons that I have to press to recharge the card. Once the card was charged I came back home and put it inside the meter and no one beholds it worked. I had never appreciated having electricity until I was 1 hour away from not having it. One disaster averted, next problem was gas. I shifted all house heating to electricity to conserve gas.

To pay for gas you have to go to the post office. I found that out after going to 2 banks. Apparently a post office was supposed to be close to my house so I tried walking in that direction several times but I never saw it because I did not go far enough. When I really got desperate, I was down to 0.2 units of gas, I got better direction and this time walked far enough to find the place. I got a ticket and went to the counter and buy 500RMB (65$) of gas. They teller said that he could not accept bank card and I had to pay cash. Fortunately I was prepared for it so I gave him the money. And he charged my card with 260 cubic meter of gas.

Here is a picture of me feeling very accomplished and showing off the receipt.

Then I came back home and put the smart card in the gas meter and recharged it. Now we had gas. What a great luxury.

Some reflections:

In the prior 3 weeks I used 70 cubic meters of gas. That was about 100RMB for just one person. That is actually very expensive because average monthly salary of a lot of people is about 1000-1500RMB. So paying 10% of their monthly income on just this one utility is not trivial. My personal consumption is probably too high. But still, gas is expensive. Now I better understand why people still burn coal in the city for heating. In the huton area, the courtyard ghettoes, you commonly see coal sellers that carry coal bricks on the back of their bicycle and go from house to house and refill the stock piles of round coal bricks.

Another reason for prepaid model is that there is good credit system here. So it is hard for banks and utility companies to trust you that you will pay your bills. I think the next logical step for them is to enable recharging your card over internet. The smartcard system is already sophisticated enough that they can easily do this.

The reason I got some wrong directions is that there are 4 gas companies in Beijing. Some have a relationship with a bank and some with post office. So you have to know which one you are using and that determines where you have to go to pay. This lack of centralized backend system is very common. Large companies like China Mobile are really made up of many smaller companies with different systems and processes all operating under a common brand. Also the central power and decision making ability in these large companies is distributed geographically. There is no such thing as having a deal with China Mobile. You have to have a deal with each of the provincial branch offices separately.

My first month in China

Finally I managed to find an open wireless access point and I can get on internet at home. Broadband cost about 150rbm ($12) per month but I have not yet figured out on how to get it.

After about 1.5 months in Redmond doing various presentations and meeting relevant groups I came back to Beijing one week before the start of the Chinese New Year. I had to go to Xiamen where we have an OEM manufacture the thing that I am working on. Once we make an announcement about my product I can talk about what it is but for now I can't say.

I spent 2 days in Xiamen and went to the OEMs factory. I was really impressed by everything and I will write more about that in the next post. As soon as I came back to Beijing everyone left for the Chinese new year vacation so I was left alone in Beijing. I made good use of the time to write a bunch of specification documents for the product I am working on. The city was absolutely deserted as everyone went back home to visit their family during the one week new year holiday. There was very little to do and since the few people that I know had also left I didn't have anyone to go out with or anything to so. I went out one night to the major bar district but it was very quiet. That week sucked big time.

I was very glad when the new year holiday was over and people started to come back. I headed back to Xiamen to finalize the design of the product and then sent it to manufacturing. My major at school was electrical engineering but ever since I came to MS about 7 years ago I was removed from designing and manufacturing real physical products. The process of designing this new product has been very interesting. I was very proud of myself for being able to have intense discussion (in Chinese and English) with the lead hardware designer at the OEM and being able to actually contribute to the design. At Microsoft good program managers are technical enough that can argue with the dev managers and architects about architecture and code design and they understand technical issues well enough that can make significant contribution in hard core design meetings. So I discovered that I am pretty as good at driving hardware designs as well. I worked with electrical, mechanical and industrial design people of the OEM and I could understand the tradeoffs and make decisions quickly. That was the highlight of my first month. I learned something new about myself.

A new PM joined my team this week. I am glad to have more help and excited to help him learn how to be a great PM at Microsoft. I have always loved helping people further their career and that was one the thing I enjoyed the most in my 2 years of working with Microsoft India sub.

When I came back from Redmond I moved into my own apartment which I share with my roommate, Sungmee. She works at Microsoft and she has been in Beijing for 6 years. She is an alumnus of Xinhua University. She is Korean so she went back to Korea for the new year holiday and is not back yet.

This is all the news about me so far. I have learned a lot of interesting things about china ever since I came here. I will write more soon.

Book Review: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond

David's Review:5/5

The book is a series of stories and analysis of past human societies that collapsed. It has great examples showing how some societies used the natural resources around them at an unsustainable rate and eventually faced starvation because the land they lived off of became infertile.

I found the story of Easter Islands very interesting. For hundreds of years people lived on the Easter Islands in the pacific ocean and used the islands trees for shelter, firewood and for transporting huge stone statues. But eventually they ran out of trees. Without trees providing shade and protecting the top soil, land eroded rapidly and Easter islanders food supply decreased significantly. This put a lot of stress on their community and caused them to start wars with their neighboring villages and further destroy the remaining trees in a race to use the last remaining tree. Once they had cut and burnt all the trees they could not even build any more boats to move to neighboring islands. So they eventually died of starvation. Similar stories happened to communities living in Greenland, to Vikings and to many other societies form the past.

Jared Diamond also writes about contemporary societies like the state of Montana and Rwanda. He has a great explanation for the genocide in Rwanda. He concludes that the genocide was was basically caused by over population and tension between land owners and poor peasants. The division of land between the heirs of a family caused plots to be continually subdivided into unsustainable smaller plots. Eventually people were forced to sell their small plots to landlords and migrated to already overcrowded cities. The genocide was a response to stress and built up tensions of overcrowding.

All the stories in the book end with starvation or other unhappy endings except in the last chapter where Jared Diamond describes how sound and sustainable use of natural resources can be done at reasonable costs.

Overall it is a great book. Great narrative, lots of scientific facts and sound reasoning.

Jared Diamond's other book "Guns, Germs and Steel" has an original analysis of why some human societies prospered while others didn't. It should be a mandatory school reading.

Book Review: Leaving Microsoft to Change the Word

Leaving Microsoft to Change the Word
By John Wood

John Wood tells his inspiring story of how he left Microsoft to start a non profit foundation and build schools and libraries in developing countries. By all accounts he was a successful sales and marketing director based in Australia and China. But at the age of 30 something he realized that he can have a larger impact in the work by leaving the big mother ship and start a small non governmental organization.

My Favorite Books

Leaving Microsoft to Change the Word
Author: John Wood

David's rating: 5/5 Complete review

An amazing story of a Microsoft sales and marketing director that leaves MS to create a NGO organization and build schools in developing countries.

---

Collaps
Author: Jared Diamond

David's rating: 5/5 Complete review

Viva Las Vegas

Here are some pictures from the Vegas trip.

Las Vegas 2007

On my way to Las Vegas

At the last minutes my technical expertise was needed at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) conference. So I had to cancel some of my meeting and go straight to the airport. I am exited to go CES, it will be a geek fest. I’d like to go to grand canyon if I can find some free time.

Apple just announced their new iPhone. It looks amazing. They have a lot of expertise in making a thin device. It looks like they just added a large screen and a radio to their existing platform to make a great phone. I wonder where they put the radio in that phone. Without an antenna and with such thin design radio interference would be very challenging. I am also skeptical about their usability. The iPod navigation model is cool looking but annoying. I don’t have an iPod but every time I play with one I get annoyed at how many mistake I make with their navigation model. Having had a Pocket PC as a my primary phone I how difficult LCDs can be as a keyboard. You can never push the right key consistently. Tactile feedback is pretty important. I would love to play with iPhone to see if they got these issues sorted out or not.

A hectic week back in Redmond

My team came here to Redmond to present our progress to out senior executives. The demos and presentations went very well and we came out with a lot of action items and go ahead to push harder and faster with our product ideas.

I have kept my car here so it was very nice to be able to drive myself and know the streets and not be confused. I was tired of sleeping in the hotels so I stayed at friend’s house. I have not been gone for long enough to truly appreciate being back.

Vaughn is applying for B-schools and writing his essays. He had sent them to me to review a few weeks a go but in the frenzy of activities before coming to Redmond I had not been able to read them. Now giving him feedback at the late minute in the game was very hard for him to accept and incorporate. I felt very bad for not being there when he needed me. This for sure will happen to me as well: Out of sight out of mind. It is pretty inevitable. I am going to sign up for a Vonage account so that I can get a US phone number and forward that to my phone in China. This will hopefully make it easier for people to call me and forces me to call people 500 minutes a month. ;-)

Mental gymnastics – My first Chinese class

I was evaluated by a Chinese instructor at Microsoft and put in the B class. Instead of the toddler class which is A. That is because the past 10 months in Redmond I studied some Chinese by myself. So last night I went to the B class for the first time. I was mentally exhausted after 1.5 hours. I could only understand 30% of the things being said. The classes are from 6:30PM-8PM. After a full day of work I am not sure how much my brain will absorb that material. But I have to stick to it and see what happens.

Work is going well. We are making good progress. But after so many years of managing projects it comes pretty naturally to manage risk, resources, schedules, etc. My biggest challenge at the moment is a pretty mundane one. I have a big load of laundry which I am not sure what to do with. The hotel wants to charge me US prices and almost wash each sock separately. So I need to find another reasonable alternative. I am very glad I brought everything from Redmond with me because buying little things are very inconvenient and time consuming. It took a few hours to buy a deodorant. I was looking for something without antiperspirant but since I could not read any of the labels I had to choose one almost randomly.

This reminds me of interesting conversation. As I was scratching my brain looking at the deodorant a Chinese girl started to talk to me to ask me for advice on which one she should buy for her boyfriend. I was pretty impressed. Generally people try to avoid having conversation in English if they can. It was her first time buying a deodorant and she was not sure which one to choose. I tried to explain the concept of antiperspirant but I am not sure she fully got it. Eventually she just picked the one that I chose at random. J

For the next class I need to memorize these. Both the Pingying (Romanized characters) and the Chinese characters. It is pretty hopeless at this point. Hopefully it will get better soon.

Morning	Zaoshang3	早上
First	Xian1	先
Brush teeth	Shua1 ya2	刷牙
Then, afterward	Ran2hou4	然后
Take a shower	Xi3 zao3	洗澡
Wear, put on	Chuan1	穿
Clothing	Yi1	衣服
Slice	Pian4	片
bread	mian4bao2	面包
Drink	He1	喝
Cup, glass	Bei1	杯
Coffee	Ka1fei1	咖啡
Classroom	Jiao4shi4	教室
Sometimes	You3 shi2hou	有时候
Noon	Zhong1wu3	中午
Dining hall, canteen	Can1ting1	餐厅
Lunch	Wu3fan4	午饭
Participate	Can2jia1	参加
About	Zuo3you4	左右
Write	Xie3	写
Homework	Huo4zhe3	或者
Surf internet	Shang4 wang3	上网
go to bed	Shang4 chuang2	上床
Sleep	Shui4jiao4	睡觉

Great examples of designs and usability in Hong Kong subway system

I am incredibly impressed by some of the usability designs in Hong Kong subway. It inspires you to think and design well thought out systems and software.

Changing train is super fast:
The usual experience of changing line in other cities are: You get out of your current train then you line up behind a huge crowd and slowly go up the stair case or escalators to a different level to take a different train. However most people stay close to the end of the escalator and therefore you get overcrowding in the middle of the train and under utilization at each end of the train.

In Hong Kong instead the interchange between 2 subway lines are done on the same level where the 2 trains line up side by side. You get out of one train and walk straight for about 10m and into the next train. Instead of 1 subway stop overlap between 2 lines there are 2 stops. See the image below. Each stop is optimized for transfer in one direction. I did not notice the trains going up and down to come to the same level so all the trains must be traveling on the same level. The experience is incredibly convenient. The entire train can empty out and load in the other train in just about 30 seconds. No pushing and shoving or running is necessary!

The Subway map inside the train:
1) You can see the direction you are going instantly which is incredibly convenient.
2) You can see which stop you are at right a way. As the train moves in one direction the lights turn off. In the example below you can see that I am going on the red line from the Central station and I have traveled 2 stops.

From Hong Kong 2006

The trains are one long hollow tube:
Therefore you can move inside of them and balance the load between the carts while the train is moving.

From Hong Kong 2006

Pictures from Hong Kong Trip

Anyone up for Crab Pizza!

From Hong Kong 2006

Keeping up with the local news

In the past 2 years I have read significantly more that I used to do. I have read several books on China; a book about India’s economy and magazines like Business Week and the Economist. Every time I travel somewhere I devour the local English newspapers. I find it very fascinating to see what they talk about. Economic news, politics, featured stories, they tell a lot about what local people are preoccupied with.

So in Hong Kong I read Wall Street Journal Asia, South China morning Post, and another Honk Kong news paper. The hot news of the day is about PCCW, the Hong Kong telecom unsuccessful attempt to sell 24% of its share to foreign investors. A lot of other stories about Mobile phone explosion in China and ITU conference.

10km race to get Chinese visa

December 6th: I had a mini nightmare today. I got up early, checked out of hotel and proceeded to the Chinese visa office. I had to take a ferry across the bay to Hong Kong island and then walked a bit to get to the Chinese embassy. I had a chill go down my spine when I saw a line of luggage outside of the door to the embassy. I instantly knew that it meant they did not let you take your luggage inside. Desperate travelers had left their bags out in the street under the sign saying “The embassy is not responsible for lost luggage”. There was no way I was going to leave my laptop and camera on the street. I could not believe this! It would have been nice if MS relocation specialists had warn me of this, but this asking too much. If they had given me correct instruction to which visa to get I would not be here in the first place.

I had to find a solution quickly before the embassy would stop processing urgent visa application. Usually if you want to have your visa on the same day you have to give them your application very early in the morning. I raced around the block dragging my carry behind me. Nothing, no locker, no secret place to hid. I increased the radius and circled the embassy one more time! Oh man, nothing thing again. I went to a restaurant and asked if I could sore my bag for an hour and then come back to eat but they would not let me. At this point I was thinking of just getting a cab and telling it to keep my bags until I came back. Fortunately some passer by suggested that I go to hotel and fake that to check in and tell them to keep my bag for a while. It seemed like a workable solution so I raced to find a hotel. 10 minutes later I ran into Grand Hyatt hotel. Because of ITU conference they were fully booked and very busy. I gave my bags to doorman and got a receipt and told him that I would come back to tell him the room number later. Then I ran back to the embassy. By the time I fill out the application form and get to the counter I am completely drenched with sweat in the 20 degree Celsius heat of Hong Kong in winter. I gave a big smile to the girl at the counter and asked for the most expedient service they had. So she said it would be ready in 2hrs!Nice, Mission accomplished. :-)

I spent the rest of the day at the peer in Honk Kong bay wring down my assumptions and question about Chinese telecom industry. I will need to validate what I know and fill in the gaps by talking to Eric and Weihun.

Aggravated by dishonest Hong Kong taxi cab drivers

I have taken taxi in Hong Kong about 3 times and out of that I have been scammed twice. That is 66%. The first time was in my last trip when I gave the taxi driver some money and he proceeded to drive off and not give me my change. It was not much money but it aggravated me. Tonight I took a cap back to my hotel and it should have been a 3-4 USD charge and the stupid driver drove in circles and charged me twice that amount. I have taken cabs in mainland china many many times and this has never happened to me. Generally they are very honest and give me the change back up to the last Yuan and they take the shortest path to the destination.

I saw a news segment on the Hong Kong TV about cabs that give passengers a discount on top of the metered rate in order to get the deal. Apparently there is an oversupply of taxies in Hong Kong and they are desperate to make money. I am going to buy a GPS soon and will refuse to pay next time I detect a circular loops!

Adventures in Hong Kong

As I got off the plane and walked out of the airport I noticed that I was the happiest that I have been in months. Finally all the stress and uncertainties of the move was over and I was going to have a vacation for the weekend. I walked with a big grin on my face.

This is my second time in Hong Kong so I already know how to navigate around the city. At the airport I was greeted by incredibly nice tourist information desk and loaded up on maps, trails info, upcoming attractions schedule etc. I had not seen the big Buda statue on top of a mountain so I decided to do that for Saturday.

From Hong Kong 2006

From Hong Kong 2006

From Hong Kong 2006

I took a bus to Tung Chung and then bought a ticket ($8USD) for cable car ride to the peak of the mountain. The cable car ride (Ngong Ping 360) was very nice. The whole time I could see a paved trail path below that zig-zaged up the mountain. It took about 20 min to get to the top of the mountain.

I tried to store my bags in a locker but the machine would not accept my money for some reason. So I had to carry my heavy carryon bag with me the whole day. People gave me funny looks as I hauled up a suitcase up to the Buda statue.

I met some Austrian tourists and talked with them on the way down. They told me about the YMCA that they were staying at so I went back with them to see if they had room for me to say. I was shocked when I found out that not only that hotel was booked by also all the other cheap hotels and hostels on my list. There is a big telecom conference in Hong Kong this week so hotel rooms are at a premium.

Finally I managed to find a room in a small hotel run by a church.

The first bump on the road

Day 2 in Beijing: HR and relocation people had sent me several documents about getting work visa. Unfortunately one of the documents was not correct and it said that I need an L type visa. But another doc said that I needed Z type visa. I did not notice this incontinency and since I had a multiple entry L visa to enter China I just used that to get in. When I gave all my documents to HR to process my on boarding they noticed the visa and said that I need to go back out and apply for Z visa and come back in again. Crap!

The closest place that has a Chinese consulate is Hong Kong. So I will have to go there over the weekend and be at the consulate at 9:00 AM on Monday and apply for Z type visa.

Interesting things about Honk Kong and Taiwan: Even though Hong Kong has rejoined China since 1997 it still has its own currency and passport and visa etc. Taiwan’s status is at dispute and it also has its own currency and passport. Canadians don’t need visa to get into Honk Kong or Taiwan. There is no restriction for main land Chinese people to travel to Hong Kong but Taiwan allows only 200 Chinese people from mainland to enter per day since they are fearful of Chinese army infiltrating the island. There no direct flights between Taiwan and mainland China.

Wow, I am moving to China!

It still has not fully sunk in that I am moving. I have the tendency of psyching myself by telling everyone all the logical reasons why I am going to China and how this makes sense; yet inside, I have plenty of doubts and fear. But it is too late to contemplate now. The plane is already in the air.

I am not worried about personal life. I am easy going and adventurous. Living with roommates, finding new friends will be exciting. However being away form family and friends will be hard. The time difference will make it hard to keep up with people. They will forget about me being alone there. And I will not be there at the times that they need me or when I need them.

I landed in Beijing around 10PM and with the help of Sin Lew, ATC Director that was on the same flight as me, I got a taxi and with my 2 big card board boxes that contained all my belongings I went to the hotel.

Finally the move is done and I am in Beijing.

Finally I managed to find a kid to teach to

I am very excited about meeting a little kid tomorrow and tech her how to draw.

A few hours earlier today I met a 10 years old girl at her parent’s restaurant. She brought our food to the table and was desperately looking for something to do at 7:00 PM. We were the only people in the restaurant and she kept running around our table and bounce a pink ping pong ball on the floor. I asked my friend Stephanie to ask her if she liked drawing and if she wanted me to teach her drawing. She gave us an enthusiastic response and I agreed to meet her the next day at 2 PM.

I have been meaning to find some kids to practice the drawing lesson plans of Planet Child foundation but the language gap has been intimidating for both me and the kids that I have met so far.

Lets see how I mange tomorrow without an interpreter.

Book: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children

Today my friend and mentor Suze gave me this book to read. She doesn't recommend that I leave Microsoft but just pointing out the skills that I have learnt at Microsoft are very helpful in running a nonprofit foundation. I just read the first 3 chapters; I need to have my own copy of this book. So I am ordering it right away. I will write a review for it soon. So far it had been a pretty incredible story. The author had been at Microsoft 7 years before leaving to change the work. I can relate to that. :-)

Launching www.PlanetChild.org

During the past 1.5 years that I have been working for Microsoft India Development Center I have had the opportunity to visit India and China a number of times. Each time I go there on a business trip I try to visit some schools over the weekends and interacted with students.

In January of 2006 on a flight from Singapore to India I came up with the idea for PlanetChild and I couldn't wait long enough for the plane to land so I could start implementing it. Since then I have spent a lot of time talking to people and refining the idea. Now it is finally at a stage that I can start to talk about it broadly.

What is PlanetChild? It is an international non profit organization aimed at improving teaching methods and practices in developing countries and at making them more effective. It is very much influenced by http://path.org/. PATH develops programs that have huge return on investment in the heath care sector. For example they have invented a new syringe that once used it can not be reused and therefore it effectively stops spread of diseases cased by multiple usage of vaccine syringes.

I put this organization together to find like minded people and collaborate with them to develop and implement targeted programs to help kids learn better and faster. If you are interested in helping in any way send me an email.

The first program of Planet Child is Development Through Drawing. I will write more about it soon.

If you want to write a blog about Planet Child please use the link below to include a random child drawing with your post:

<A href="http://www.planetchild.org"><IMG src="http://www.planetchild.org/RandomImage.ashx?Size=M" align=left></A>

My notes from the night I was homeless

This is a 3 part story on how I spent a night on the street in Seattle as an experiment to better understand the life of homeless people that I pass by every day:

• Part 1: What it means to be homeless, a personal experience
• Part 2: My notes from the night I was homeless
• Part 3: What I learned from being homeless

Part 2: My notes from the night I was homeless
These are the notes that I wrote down on paper while I was sleeping on the park bench. I knew even before I started that the kind of problems that I would run into would be completely different than the ones that I originally thought of. In fact, that was the case; the issues that I was mostly worried about never materialized.

But fist my notes from that night:

[About 2:00AM]I can't not find a cardboard box in the recycling bin outside of my house. The bin is usually full of boxes every single day that I pass by it, but not tonight of course. Well, I can live without it for now. I should just go the park and se what happens.

[About 2:10AM]I am sitting on a bench in a small park by Seattle Pike Place market. (Here is a picture of it from above). There is no one around except the occasional taxi cabs that drive by. It was freezing cold a few hours a go but now that a misty fog has covered the air it is not very cold anymore. Still, I can see my breath in the air. I am sleeping under a rain shelter in the park. This is the only covered place in the park.

[About 3:00 AM]A homeless guy came by circled around and is now sitting on the bench about 20 meters away from me. Maybe I should go talk to him...but I am just getting comfortable and I am too lazy to get out of the sleeping bag. OK, if he comes any closer I will just talk to him without having to get out of my sleeping bag.

[About 4:00AM]No one else is around. So far it has been pretty uneventful.
I was thinking that I would be socializing with people. I had already made up my story: "I am a student from Canada traveling around in the US. I have just arrived in Seattle a couple of hours a go. I am going to find a job to finance the rest of my trip."
This should convince anyone that I have no cash on me. But I guess being homeless can be pretty lonely. No one really talks to you.

[About 5:00AM]The constant sound of cars going by is very loud. I can't sleep with this much noise. The tiers make noise as they go over the steel joints of the elevated road, which is Highway 99, on the other side of the park. I can also hear the cargo trains going by. The rail road tracks are about 1 mile away. But I can still hear the screeching noise as the steel wheels grind over the steel rails. I can even hear this in my bedroom but because of the double sided window the sound is very much dampened.

[About 5:30AM]The bench under my sleeping bed is very hard. I keep shifting around but every position is uncomfortable. I am actually not cold yet. I am wearing too many layers of clouding.
One homeless person just passed by me. He was talking to someone else. But my head was completely inside the sleeping bag so I could not really see them.

[About 6:00AM]The vendors at the public market have started to show up. They are making more noise as they unload their boxes and drag them on the ground to their designated stall in the market. More noise. Man I can't sleep at all with all this noise.
I am actually cold now. It is getting windy and because I don't put any cardboard boxes around and on top of me the wind is getting into my sleeping bag. It was a rookie mistake to not look harder for card board boxes. It would have made a big difference.

[About 6:15]Ok. I am just too cold and can't sleep with all this noise. Experiment is over. I am going home.
The sun has not come up yet. On the way back home I didn’t see anyone on the street

[About 6:30]It is nice to be home. I never appriciate my warm bed this much.

What it means to be homeless, a personal experience

This is a 3 part story on how I spent a night on the street in Seattle as an experiment to better understand the life of homeless people that I pass by every day:

• Part 1: What it means to be homeless, a personal experience
• Part 2: My notes from the night I was homeless
• Part 3: What I learned from being homeless

 

Part 1: What it means to be homeless, a personal experience:

As I walking to our Microsoft Christmas party I passed by a homeless shelter that is in between my house and the Seattle Center where the Christmas party was being held at. I thought to myself I should come at stay at this shelter for one night to experience what it would mean to be homeless. Then I read the notices on the door saying that in order to stay there at night you have to register in them morning before 7:00AM. So sleeping on the street was my only option if I wanted to do this tonight.

It is a pretty cold night tonight, there is a light frost on the street which makes it a bit slippery but I am still determined to do this.

The contrast between a posh Christmas party and sleeping on the street will be memorable. I have seen absolute poverty in India and China before and I have been somewhat hardened by it. When I look at homeless people in Seattle I feel much less sympathetic because I compare them to homeless people in India and China who beside a rag around them have nothing. No shoes, no pants, no backpack, no sleeping bag, no jacket. They simply have nothing. They are very malnourished and skinny to the bones. It is very hard for me to see that level of poverty.
Poverty and suffering from it is very relative. I don’t doubt that homeless people in Seattle in Toronto are suffering. When they compare themselves to people that see everyday driving by in their car or going into their apartments they see the contrast with their life and it makes them feel poor. But what if you could take the same person to India where they would see that they are very rich indeed compared to the other homeless people around them. They would see that they are relatively well off. They would appreciate their shoes, pants, and not suffering from chronic hunger and malnutrition. Now, would that person feel less pain for being homeless after coming back to Seattle or Toronto? Would they feel blessed to have as much as they do?
Every winter in Toronto a few dozen homeless people freeze to death. I tend to believe that there are shelter beds that left empty every night meanwhile some homeless people refuse to use those beds because they can’t put up with the rules and regulations that they have to abide by. They rather be sleeping on the street and being free but cold instead of sleeping the shelter and being warm but having to put up with curfew time, light out time, no drinking and not doing drugs. So they end up sleeping on the street in winter nights when it gets to -30 degrees Celsius and they freeze to death by the sunrise.

At least homeless people in Seattle don’t have to worry about freezing to death at night. I wonder if they think about that problem.

I don’t think sleeping one night on the street with sweat pants and sleeping bags will give me the same experience as being homeless. But it is one step in the direction of me to putting myself in someone else’s shoes and viewing the world from their point of view.
As I was walking back from Christmas party to my house at around 1:30 AM I consciously thought about what I was wearing.

• My suite and tie, which I wear probably only once a year, = $200
• Shoes = 80$
• Camera that I took with me to Christmas party = $2000
• Money in my wallet (I almost never carry cash with me) = $0
• Multiple credit cards = priceless (well, that is a luxury that only a couple of percent of people in the world can afford)

As I am mentally preparing myself for the long night on the street this is what I am thinking of wearing and taking with me.

• Jeans and long johns and sweater = $100
• Cash = $20
• Driver License, in case I get hassled by the police
• Pen and paper, to write down blogs
• Sleeping bag
• Cardboard boxes out of the recycling bin, to put me sleeping bag over

As I was walking to my house I kept looking and thinking about where I could sleep. I can’t sleep in someone’s door step. I would probably get kicked out immediately or in the morning. I also don’t want to risk getting arrested for trespassing. There is a small park by my house where some homeless people and Mexican immigrants hang out. I probably can stay there without being bothered by police or homeowners.

My next problem is getting robbed. I discussed with Jana on where I should put my shoes as we were walking home. I don’t want to take them off and put them beside me because it might get stolen. But I also don’t want to put them in my sleeping bag and get it dirty. So I am going to take them off and put my feet and the sleeping bag over them. Cool, the first problem of being homeless, solved!

I really hope that I don’t robbed or arrested. Beside that I can’t think of any other problem that I would run into.

It is already 2:00AM and I am sure all the homeless people are already sleeping so all I need to do is to find an empty park bench and camp out. I am pretty determined to stay out until sunrise. I will write more after I come back.

Golden rules of building Wiki community trust

Here are some of my key leanings from the past few years of working with wiki communities. I will write more about each of these points in the future posts.

• Use a license that maximizes content use. Give copyrights of the content back to the user.
• Promote your active users to roles of greater and greater responsibility. Make them administrators, content police, editors, spellcheckers etc.
• Create a space where all users can add value. Extract value form everyone: your readers, technical experts and language experts and the silent majority.
• Design for participation. Simple interface, easy to use.
• Don't enforce social norms with software. You need to explain those in writing and communicate them through forums and blogs. Trying to enforce behavior through software just invites people to game your system.
• Help the community define and evolve rules of cooperation.