Due to some regrettable issues in India last year, i didn’t attend the conference at the very last minute. In fact, i was already in Japan, on my way to India via Singapore, when i was told it’s not advisable to do so.

An aborted first attempt at going to Japan this year gave me some worries. On the way from Seattle, as the plane went near midway, it turned back due to, according to the pilot, hydraulics problem. That was the third conference trip in a row with travel issues. I scared the heck out of Sharon when i came home knocking on the door, and made Kim laughed so much as she cannot believe my luck!

The next day, same ground crew, same flight crew, same co-travelers and lots of humor on the flight as we all joked about the aborted trip.

Travelling separately on different airlines was always something that i recommend when my team travel, and Ian luckily went through on the first attempt, though me being missing-in-action at the Narita airport gave him some first-visit challenges that he addressed admirably.

After reaching Kyoto, Ian and i did some touring around the city and i thought that it was a beautiful city indeed. Some of the food we tried was so exquisite and tasty, and I'm sure my second trip there together with Sharon will be full of such visits to restaurants that make variations of tofu, one of Sharon’s favorite food.

The conference report by the last year’s hosts indicated that they did the best efforts and the board appreciated that. 

For this year’s conference, i was honored to be assigned a few activities to assist the AVAR organization with. A session chair, a informal panel discussion with ISVs as one of the directors for AVAR, and a joint paper presentation about the service that I'm handling.

Papers-wise, there was an abundance of top quality papers and it was the first time ever we had two tracks in this conference. It resulted in some tight time management challenges, and made Randy missed Ian and my presentation on the service. We had to do a separate 10-minute version just for him, which Nick Fitzgerald came by and commented something like “you reminiscing a bit about this”.

The presentation on reverse engineering on paper (really!) was one of the most unique presentation on the subject, while the various cloud presentations gave me a lot of things to think about. The translation services were top-notch too and even the humor came through.

The gala dinner showcased Kyoto’s culture. Some geizhas sang and danced, while i think the highlight of the dinner was the traditional drumming performed by a guy with his back towards us. His back went from a healthy tan to a back flushed with redness! Later on, his second act highlighted his left biceps, and fellow gala attendees indicated that they were too focused on his muscles.

As part of the tradition, there was a series of award presentations for the sponsors and three individual awards. Another colleague won his second award and i was honored to get an award for best AVAR member for the year. Ian and Kim forced me to bring the awards into office. A photo of the trophy and award is on flickr too.

At the end of the conference, it was also decided that the 2010 conference will be hosted in Bali, Indonesia. Looks like it’s already going to be one of the most anticipated conferences for most of this year’s attendees already! I wonder if i’ll be attending that!

Edit: added some links to a fellow delegate’s photos.

Today was the release of the new version of our flagship product.

I remembered the last two flagship product launches in my tenure in the company. Started with a huge amount of manual work, and multiple OSes to handle the first launch, while automation work helped to reduce the manual work, though a first attempt at an end-to-end automated service proved to need lots of supervision than expected.

With lots of lessons learnt from the past, a lot of preemptive work was made by folks on my team, and i am happy that the team effort was recognized. There’s a twinge of regret that some of the team members no longer work with the company, though at no choice nor fault from them.

I’ve been using it on my two netbooks and i’ve been loving it. On my work laptop with a SSD, it is literally flying!

And on the topic of food again, a recently discovered good place to have hot Szechuan food was shut down; two days after i’ve brought my team there for a team lunch!

We even joked about the fact that their food was all filled with enough heat and spices that all sources of contamination were totally killed!

To our horror, we found recently another Chinese restaurant was shut down for another issue, just as we were planning to visit there to get some dim sum.

Coupled with the fact that another long-timer closed due to tax reasons, at the rate that restaurants are closed, food sources stopped, we might have to start eating potatoes!

It’s been a trend that i’ve been noticing at the Asian supermarket chains. It’s troubling me somewhat that it is a repro-able process.

1. One discovers an Asian seasoning, mix, canned food, or whatever
2. One enjoys the authentic taste that it brings
3. One starts to buy it on a regular basis
4. One starts to buy MORE on a regular basis
5. One starts to notice the stock is getting lesser
6. One starts to buy the remaining stock
7. One finds that it is no longer being sold

Going through some of the archives on this blog, i can easily find at least four instances. The Thai dried cuttlefish was the first.

Then after the food scare from China went the black bean fish, which looks like this small little picture that i was able to find:

 

Then it was Brahim’s Beef rendang paste. Luckily, it came back… and i bought a full dozen of it!

Then it was an Indonesian Sambal Belachan chilly.

Most recently, and in the prior post, the Prima Taste range of mixes, from Singapore curry to Laksa… the only one that was usually left on the shelves is the Satay mix. Probably the “local” Singaporeans all know it’s impossible to do satay right with the meat we can find here.

Turns out that at the most recent attempt to get the curry paste, i found about 8 cans of the belachan chilly, and i swept all into our shopping cart. It’ll probably be gone and no longer replenished the next time we go there.

Interestingly, Sharon’s fave Nescafe 3-in-1 coffee mix, the one particular SKU she likes, isn’t available here. Guess what i have to fill in my luggage whenever i fly back to Singapore? 8)

At the rate it’s going, pretty soon we’ll run out of any close resemblance of the food we used to have in the island country. Then we’ll really start to live like a local!

It had been a while since we gotten our hands on the Singapore curry chicken premixed paste, and repeated visits to two of the local Asian supermarket chains did not result in us getting them. It just seems like they are not longer available here!

So i went online and did some Binging, and some Googling, and so on… and found some California-based sites having some of the range of the Prima Taste products, but not the curry chicken paste.

After a few more days of longing and constant searching for it, i found their online site and made an order of a bunch of the curry paste, and some of the char kway teows. Turned out that after including shipping and handling, the price per box was only about 50 cents to a dollar more than what i paid for here.

A quick email from Prima notified us of the shipment and two days later, i already received a “missed delivery” from the courier service. Somehow or rather, they again decided not to leave the package at the door, even after my signature was placed on the first delivery slip.

Sharon and I decided to rush to the courier company to pick them up, and with the help of the GPS on my phone, away we did.

Rushed there right near their closing time, and we finally got our hands on the two boxes. Sharon was so anxious about it that we opened the boxes up to make sure we got the right items, and we did!

We went straight to the supermarket, and purchased the chicken drumsticks, the potatoes, the bean curd skins, and some nice French loaves and made a big bowl of curry the next evening.

Needless to say, we were happy.

Cross-ocean flights twice in a month that is. I’m not a frequent flyer by any definition, but it just seems that in the last three years, i’ve been doing flights like SEA-NRT-SIN twice in a very short period of time.

At least this time, it’s somewhat of a minor variant, in that my first trip will be to Tokyo & Kyoto to attend and co-present in a conference. I am happy to be chosen to do some additional duties for the conference as well.

Somehow, this trip is going to become a beta testing ground for the second trip, with Sharon joining along to Tokyo,  Kyoto & Osaka, and then back to Singapore for a short stay.

I’ve even bought a HK-made tourist book on Kyoto and its surround areas. I typically find the tour guidebooks made in Hong Kong or Taiwan to be much targeted towards pragmatic Asian travelers than the Lonely Planets or the Frommers.

It should be fun to be back again as well.Just heard the country now has almost 5 million people.. wow! Sharon has been away from Singapore for a long while, and should be quite a surprise for her. I know i did when i was last back there in December… walking along Orchard Road… @ @~ !!

I must be one of the folks that have the “luxury” of owning a PS3 Slim for the shortest amount of time.

Without thinking too much about using my Amazon gift vouchers, i pre-ordered a PS3 Slim and acquired a HDTV and tried out a few games.

If folks were complaining that the Nintendo Wii has no games,…. god knows what they’d say about this console then?

The funniest thing about my short experience with it is the fact that it copies so much from the PC/desktop concept. Download files… install files… run files… patch files…

I guess it is too much like a PC for me. Back to the Wii + DS for me… selling the PS3 Slim on Craiglist after a few failed internal offers.

Where would you go if you want to buy high end designer clothes and be seen in a trendy place. Where else? The most talk about shopping experience at Braven located at downtown Belleveue Square.

Last Sunday, Jon and I paid USD6.00 parking fee to visit this 'unique' shopping mall. With less than 30 boutiques to shop, I was disappointed. I am definitely not one of their target customers. A good shopping experience means I see alot of boutiques/stores selling expensive or affordable items.

I may not visit Braven in the near future. If I do, I will not spend USD6.00 to park our car in the garage.

Number 23.

Air Jordan he was.

During a workout session at the pro club, i noticed a bunch of guys all stopped their workouts and started gawking at the big projected screen in the weights area. Who else but Jordan and his highlight reels can captivate the audience like that?

Thinking back, regardless which basketball team you support, fans all celebrate the awesomeness of Jordan. Little did they know that height is not going to be attained anymore in the near future.

I quickly finished up my weights workout, and rushed to the cardio area where they have FM channels of the TV audio, and i started to listen to his speech. A few points caught my attention, and i like to share them.

First and foremost though, as typical of any issues in this country, there’s three major groups of opinion of his speech.

a) He’s a bitter and petty old man

b) He’s open and transparent about what motivates him to reach that level

c) He’s still the best player ever, and i don’t care about the speech

My take of him is (b). He shares his insights to what drove him day to day to beat his perceived enemies, with a twinge of (a).

One of the quotes he made was “The organization didn’t play with the flu in Utah”, which the subject of the quote made a clarification the next day. I bet the folks that “ignited” his drive felt bad that night too. That sentiment reflects some of the challenges that i see, and is something that though no longer disturb me, is creating some churn with the newer members of the teams, where they see others getting awarded and rewarded for the sweat and tears they put in.

The other quote i remembered was that some coach of his told him that there’s no I in team, but he rebuked with a “there’s an I in WIN!”. Oftentimes, though not applicable in Jordan’s games, people have to lower down to the lowest common denominator level in order to prevent being perceived as not a “team player”.

Another subject that he targetted also made a response. I let my team tell me who the counterpart for this is. 8)

Regardless of what you think of the speech, or not, at the end, just enjoy his highlights… they sure don’t make them like this anymore…

As part of my effort to reduce clutter, i’ve been removing DVDs from their individual cases and putting them into a larger folder.

In an indirect link to one of my previous roles, it surprised me to see such a filmsy and light DVD case around:

The recycling logo i guess implies that this is a “green” dvd case. I don’t have a weighting scale to measure, but it’s at least 40% lighter than a standard case like this:

It probably also saves the film publisher a lot of money too in terms of reduced shipping costs around the world.

After a last minute aborted trip to Vegas a few years ago due to a system issue that my manager at that time decided to make me stay to handle, it has been a place that Sharon has been yearning to visit.

Finally this year, amidst the release of the new operating system, the system was stable enough to allow me to finally be gone for Vegas. And so we did…

We stayed at New York, New York, a pretty busy place that er… resembled New York… the room itself was fine, though the hotel did place us into a room that need a long and winding road before we reach it.

The weather was almost kind to us, except the Friday where it was over 110/43 degrees, and we felt that we were walking around in a open-air sauna.

We watched two Cirque du Soleil shows, namely O at the Bellagio, and The Beatles – Love at the Mirage. O was simply breathtaking and it was amazement after amazement from the beginning till the end, where the performers were greeted with a standing ovation. I don’t want to point to any spoilers, except to say that it’s worth a trip to Vegas just to watch it!

Having been so impressed with O, and with decades of admiration on The Beatles’ work, i was tempted to watch Love too. Sharon was kind enough to arrange for a summer promotional ticket price, and there we went!

The Love show was pretty entertaining, and tears of joy came down my cheek when i get to experience the Beatles’ music in such an arena. The show wasn’t as amazing as O, but i see it as a celebration of the love that fans all over the world have for this great band.

At the Mirage, prior to the show, we went to our first pub together in USA, the Revolution, based off the Beatles’ song. It was constantly playing songs from the band, and video clips of past media shows… a great little place.

There were some really nice touches, of audio clips of the band and some nice interpretation of their music. I totally enjoyed it, though i also feel that it could have been much better.

The son of George Martin remixed the music, but it wasn’t as good as DJ Dangermouse’s seminal work on The White Album+Jay Z’s Black Album (The Grey Album), nor a bootleg megamix that i’ve enjoyed in the past. Perhaps they already have plans for a sequel later..

I also bought a bag, and a notebook, both based on the Abbey Road album. They were the only ones that i can afford after these two shows!

Since Sharon has been away from Singapore for so long, it was actually a good way for me to explain the increase in people that i’ve experienced in Singapore along the Strip. It was that crowded at all times.

Other than the Strip’s craziness, we did a small detour to the Red Rock canyon. That was a good breather! Phew…

Now..it’s time to plan for Tokyo and Singapore near the end of the year!

The current POTUS was acknowledged to have won the election, among other factors, by his messaging. His speeches were at a different level from the rest of the candidates, and that captivated the audience. After his victory, and a series of good action that complied to his intents that he vocalized during the campaign, things are starting to falter a bit now.

His current push for health insurance reform has been one hurdle after another. Messaging, and even the phrasing of the reform has to be changed constantly. It was only till the point that he took to the roads again that the first “good news”, or '”local support”, was reported. It also appears that folks were pushing back on something that they do not really understand, or that the original messaging was so flawed that educated folks do not really understand it enough to explain to the non-educated folks.

That’s a (un)pleasant corollary to some of the confusion that’s arising about the intent messaging, and actions with the new change.

Prior to the change, there were some efforts by a non-biased panel to gather feedback about what worked, what didn’t worked in the prior regime. One very vocal point was raised, and was even agreed upon by one of the panelist. How ironic it is to find out that the first action by the panelist after the change was to perform the same exact action that was a known irritant to the org. I wonder if the intent or the action could have been messaged to the org?

With the change come some new channels of communication with the management. There’s always pros and cons to it. A major pro would be the fact that I get to provide direct feedback that used to be a skip-skip-skip level discussion, which in the past meant all “skipped” levels folks actually joined in the discussion. Kind of defeats the purpose of a skip-level then, but that’s in the past. With the new structure, and the initial confusion about who should be doing what in terms of the management team, i gave some frank feedback. Clearly (pun intended), i didn’t do a good job myself. My feedback was taken seriously and remediate action was taken pretty promptly to explain the new structure to us, but with the explanation came a few more points of confusion and dissatisfaction.

Today, my immediate org team met for an official team meeting. The new manager tends to speak too much, which he acknowledges as well. 8). Hopefully, he’ll know to tone that down, and let the team talk more. Otherwise, i wouldn’t be surprised if people start to tune him out.

The interesting discussions came when we met up for an informal lunch with most of the org team members. Issues, opinions, and thoughts were shared and i think it was generally a good exchange, and time well spent. The topics discussed ranged from the current confusion of the new org structure, to long ongoing cross-org issues, to career development etc. Wouldn’t the management team be willing to be a “fly in the wall” during the discussions to hear what we really think of.

Another common issue that i am observing is that due to the feedback on the prior regime, the current team is trying to do drastic changes. Some of the purported changes seems to be “designed” for certain teams. The lack of clarity around the messaging rooted some ideas that might be a distraction for some.

A recent meeting brought up the topic of soft-skill training, such as vendor account management skills. I can see the good intent behind it, though the broad brush to apply it to the immediate org team seems to ignore the different experience that each team member might have. That, reluctantly, puzzled me as well. Given the constant issues with the lack of clarity in terms of the messaging, the intent, or the action made, perhaps the management team also need to look at the possibility of doing some training themselves on messaging, or team communication?

Again, it’ll be interesting to see how the changes develop. Unlike some of the team members whom are very excited and boldly claiming a whole new world, I’ve seen enough through the years to be (very) mildly optimistic, but realistically cautious.

Change.

Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history. ~Joan Wallach Scott

Or in my worklife, reorgs. That’s the one thing that’s always constant through my years in the company.

Probably as a result of feedback given last year, we had what some might label as a major reorg. Managers were moved around; groups were switched, and amidst all that, my team got a new people manager.

With changes, there’s bound to be some form of acclimatization that needs to be done, or kinks that need to be ironed out. A few initial but surprising bumps have brought up some doubts and wonderment, but folks are being perceived as doing things with good intentions, and teams are probably giving them some burn-in time too.

I wonder how this new structure will work out…

I know that i mentioned that the one at the seattle outlet mall has closed down a while ago. Last week, Sharon and i went down to Issaquah for lunch, and i thought.. why not just go visit North Bend outlet center which we haven’t visited in years.

Usually in such trips, i get to be the one with all the purchases. Wonder why…

Anyway.. there was a big banner of yet another closing down sale, and i got myself these:

 

Happy and sad at the same time… These 6 cost me about 40 dollars only. The “Talk Slower….” tee should generate a chuckle or two for my team 8).

It’s been a really hot week! Temperatures were constantly around the 100s and it had been a really “fun” experience. I think it was Wednesday that as i was chatting with one of my buddies, that the temperature at that time at night here was actually warmer than Singapore!

The warm and humid air reminded me of Singapore; the sheltered walk-up towards the cafeteria in our block actually created a wrapped tunnel of hot air that was similar to having a hot exhaust air pipe blowing… what else but hot air! Folks actually ran through it in order to avoid being in it for too long (>5 secs).

On one of the nights, Sharon and I decided to take refuge in the nearby neighborhood mall. The mall had never been that busy for a long while! Families and teens were all hanging around, with bottles of soda or iced Starbucks coffee. It took us a while before we even found ourselves a table to have our dinner.

After dinner, we walked around within the mall, and discovered that all fans and portable air conditioners were sold out at the Bed Bath & Beyond shop! That was quite a ridiculous thing….

This morning’s weather is actually pretty comfortable… phew..

When Jon and I left Singapore, we thought we left the weather too.

Apparently, the hot weather misses us and follow us to Seattle.

This week will be a hot week for people living in Seattle. It is almost 32 to 33 degree celsius. The bad news is the dry air is giving me headache. But the good news is we have minimal humidity.

Screenshot taken from Seattle Times.com at 4.2opm PST.

I have been going to the gym for more than 5 years and felt that I gain more muscles. From my parents' view point, I am simply F A T. I learn not to argue or contradict with them and simply acknowledge that I am F A T. Yes, I eat too much USDA meat, french fries, deep fried food and desserts. Who can resist the sinful food? I know - SUPER MODELS.

Anyway, last night I was at the gym working out my abs and this muscle man came over to talk to me. Don't get the wrong idea, he is not trying to get to know me - this ugly ah sao. He told me that I was doing the wrong abs exercise. He sensed that I was skeptical and quickly said "I am not trying to be a jerk but I can show you the proper way to do abs exercise using the exercise ball." Sure, I am open to new ideas to get rid of fats even though I thought I have been doing the right abs exercise.

Step 1
Lie down on the mat/floor and let your legs rest on the exercise ball.

Step 2
You can either put your hands behind your head or let them rest on your chest.

Step 3
Lift up your upper body to reach your legs slowly and hold it at a 15 degree angle for a few seconds. You will feel contractions in your abs and repeat this exercise 10 times.

Thank you muscle man for your tips.

Jon mentioned earlier that we have moved to a new rental place and time passes really fast. That is so true. Whenever, I work from home (the new home) time passes so fast. Jon and I like the new landlord and family. They are friendly and respect your privacy.

On our first weekend living in this new place, I set off the smoke alarm system! What an achievement! I bet not everyone can do this. The landlord's father looked at me and smiled. Geeze, I am be the dumbest Chinese or Asian he has ever known. He patiently told me to turn on the air vent whenever I am using the oven and/or cooktop (we called it stove in Singapore) so as to lower the heat temperature in the kitchen. Got it! I will make sure this will not happen again.

When the alarm went off Jon was sleeping very soundly and could not care less what had happened! According to him, "I am too tired, let me sleep." I always imagine my husband to be the knight in shining armour coming to my rescue - the damsel in distress! But I was wrong. Sleep is more important than me.

Anyway, I am not really a damsel. Too B I G S I Z E to be associated with a damsel. The good news is we are SAFE.

In my new role I am assisting my manager in driving People Projects more effectively. People Projects aim to attract, retain, motivate and develop employees so that they can advance their careers. Another aspect of my new role is assisting the communications director in global curriculum communications. I am excited about the new role and cannot wait to start working on challenging projects. And yes, I am still a vendor in this company.

Ok that is my report for the new home and new role.

The last few months of the work year have been a ride, on top of the typical end of year work that needs to be done to close out the year.

A few things that i’ve observed that i think would be interesting to share, and i, in a nod to my new people manager, will try to use video games as a way to describe my observations.

- history repeats itself

Just like a “game over” screen in any video games, it just seems like the same things will repeat across time

- there’s always a main guy that does most of the work…

Remember the game Halo? Master Chief does most of the work… the rest are just “NPCs”, or non-playing characters

- Talk to anyone/everyone. Ask questions

Other than obvious action games, most RPG games start off by making the gamer go ask questions with every NPC in the game to find out about questions. In some games, you’d even find the NPCs coming back to review your knowledge

- Work together & have a fallback

In Pro Evolution Soccer (ala Winning Eleven), you can work towards a goal (score goals and win matches), but always have an alternative co-player to pass the ball to

- Know each other’s strength & weaknesses

Linking to the above point, each person have their difference. Passing the ball to me and expect me to run 100 yards in 10 seconds is going to be unrealistic. Let me do a “Jan Molby” pass in the middle of the field and i’ll send the speedsters down the right way…

- No standard documentation

In my PC gaming days, Quake is my weapon of choice. Primary goal: survive and kill the other players’ characters.

Step 1: get weapon

Step 2: seek others

Step 3: kill others

Step 4: repeat until you win

How to actually go about doing it comes with experience, knowledge, speed, and any other shortcuts that you might think of.

Since a rushed decision to move out from our former rental location, we have been having a bit of a rush through several major events.

The first was obviously the actual move to our new place. In a quick two-block hop, we moved to a new “mother-in-law” apartment in a Bonsian household.

Sharon primarily drove the search and decision on the new place, though she needed a “it’s ok” from me before we moved on to get the new place.

Started our packing pretty quickly, and with the help of Ian and his dad, and Kim, we moved over within 4 hours! We also quickly cleaned up the old place, and unpacked at a ridiculous pace and we pretty much “settled” down by the second night at the new place.

The new place is slightly bigger, with two rooms instead of one in the old place. The second room is now used as the office for me primarily. Ian gave us a two-seater sofa and we’re pretty much furbished now.

The last few weeks have been minor tweaks like getting a new mobile shelf to be placed in the kitchen (Ikea again!), internet connectivity (back to Comcast), and a few more rounds of decluttering and gifting such items to Salvation Army.

In the midst of the move, i had my former manager, and founder of AsiaSoft, visiting me! I enjoyed working with him in the past, and he specifically requested me to bring him to the campus for a visit and to do a lifestyle drive around the areas.

We also had a series of end-of-financial year activities ranging from bug fixes to reports to presentations to awards ceremonies. Along the way, Andrew, Ian and myself got some recognition, and some additional team celebrations as well. A reorg occurred too, and some colleagues moved on (some to a road trip across Europe).

Just a day ago, we had the pre-conference reception at Randy’s again. It was good to see the renown researchers and experts again, but a clear indication to the economic condition: attendance has gone down drastically.

One funny thing about staying in the new premise is that time seems to pass a lot quicker than the old place. With a quick glance, it’s almost end of the night and time to rest… and both Sharon and I gotten into a routine where we totally forgotten about the blog.

So much so that other than Facebook, i’ve been slacking off Twitter, this blog, and some of the usual forums i hang around in…

Woan reminded us in Facebook m(__O__)m. Another way of saying it was a kick in the butt. hehe.