Shanghai Tan

Mary and I went to Osaka [大阪] and Kyoto [京都] during the Chinese Spring Festival, trying to escape the customary overdose of food and alcohol, the all-day-long and all-week-long continuous firecrackers and fireworks, trying to have a peaceful time at the Japanese Kansai region. We’ve been looking forward to Osaka and Kyoto since long time but never made up our mind…

The trip was actually consistent with our expectation, we knew that there’s nothing spectacular at Osaka, just an easy-going city, cheaper and less fashionable than Tokyo. It did turn out that way, eating is significantly cheaper at Osaka for the average restaurant. Shopping is sometime cheaper too. Thanks to a friend’s reference, we stayed at the very central and convenient Shinsaibashi [心斎橋] area. We could basically walk around the 3km radius and have access to everything that Osaka has to offer, between Namba and Umeda subway stations. We stayed at the Hearton hotel which is a short block away from the underground city.

We visited two touristic attractions of Osaka: the Osaka Castle Museum [大阪城] and the world-famous Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan. The Osaka Castle is a typical Japanese castle style similar to the more authentic and famous Himeji Castle [姫路城]. I feel that the park surrounding it is equally interesting. We’ve been to other big aquariums before, at San Francisco and Shanghai, what is special with the Kaiyukan is its gigantic tank which is the central attraction, with two big Whale Sharks in there, and a whole lot of deep sea species that I can’t remember their names, sharks, hammerhead, stingray, etc.

Actually what we enjoyed most at Osaka is the friendly Shinsaibashi-suji shopping street. We basically live there during our entire trip duration, passing by and eating by every day and night. It strikes me to see how the young japanese girls dress despite a not-so-warm Winter time: ultra-short skirts/pants, fancy hairs, impeccable make-ups and mostly very high heel shoes. Not as sexy and fancy as Tokyo girls, but still quite a show for a tourist like me… Mary has had her own time in the numerous drug stores and female accessories stores, she could literally spend a day in each one of them! That was it for Osaka.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the grayish-ness of Kyoto. We took JR train to Kyoto and only spent half a day there, visiting 3 temples: the iconic golden pavilion Kinkaku-ji Temple [金閣寺], the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine [北野天満宮], and the impressive Kiyomizu Temple [清水寺]. Other than that we also had an okonomi yaki for lunch, which is a kind of DIY japanese pizza… it is just funny to try but doesn’t really taste anything special.

Moving around in Kyoto is just inconvenient, I heard people walking around Kyoto but I feel that it’s too far away between each interesting temple/shrine to make that attempt. We took the daily bus fare (very limited subway coverage there), visited North and East of Kyoto. There’s nothing in between, not even young people to see… We were lucky  not having to stay there at night and to endure boredom. I’m sure that my half day trip is not making justice to such a famous and glorious city, I’m giving myself a goal to return to Kyoto again during the sakura blossom season, with more time to visit it, and maybe have a more comprehensive plan…

That’s it for this trip, we didn’t plan so much, just went spontaneously and sniffed around. It wasn’t bad, we’ll return again in the future.

Click here to see the entire Osaka and Kyoto albums, and the portrait album.

The thing that I like about The Hurt Locker is realism; the way it shows fear, hatred, racism, egoism, hope, justice and determination to accomplish a mission. It’s refreshing to see a war movie from Hollywood where there is no Superman, no James Bond, no Rambo, no super sergent that can do everything including bending between bullets’ trajectory. While the movie is trying to show that war is a drug, war is addictive (it is to some), war could give a meaning to life, and so on, what I saw is totally different…

Overreaching is a deadly sin for any empire in human history, starting with the Roman empire, the Byzantine empire, the Mongol empire, the Ottoman empire, the Spanish empire, the British empire, the Napolean empire, the Russian empire, and now the American empire with its 800 military bases around the world. In most cases the empire’s military and financial strength was not challenged by any external entity, but it ended up collapsing on its own weight.

A half-million army strong, all highly educated of various technical qualifications, healthy and energetic, disciplined and patriotic, creative and determined; sent to a far away desert to fight for the empire’s desire to dominate a region where it is admittedly unpopular and unwelcomed. Behind this half-million army there is a colossal crew of highly skilled (and well paid) support personels and private contractors of all sort, working at home and abroad, to handle the logistic of a remote war. It is estimated that for every soldier sent to the war zone there are two support personels behind him, so we’re talking of effectively one million additional head counts of highly skilled and well paid workers just for this war!

Just imagine for a moment, rather than being the most efficient killing machine of all time, if we could deploy this 1.5 million active people (roughly the size of a nordic country) to create value for America, such as building infrastructure, schools, hospitals and industries, how that would have been better? Imagine if deploying them to research on curing diseases instead of deadly explosive chemistry, research on green technology instead of blowing up the world, create high-tech gadget instead of high-tech weapon, give a hand to civilians instead of pointing guns at them? Not only America could greatly benefit from them to remain the world superpower for another century, the world could also benefit from a prosperous America!

Instead of spending over $3 trillions on the war on terror, if that could be spent on creating value to humanity, these people could stay in their country, with their families, and build a much stronger country. Wasn’t that the purpose of fighting terrorism anyway? Why is every empire so eager to “make” an enemy of its own and fighting that so relentlessly to a point of self-destruction?

Unfortunately, the empire is sticking on its own agenda………………………………………………………….

I saw Xiapu the 1st time in a photography magazine back at 2008, it was very special graphically and seems so remote a place that I don’t envision going there one day. Then during 2009, I keep seeing photos of Xiapu in almost every issue of any photography magazine. Apparently many professional photographers went there and posted their works in various magazines and art galleries. At that point it became clear to me that I’ve got to go see that place. Not just me, many of my colleagues were also stunt and attracted by the unusual, painting-like look and feel of that paradise of the fishers.

After some missed shots for Xinjiang and Xi’an, the team finally decided to go to Xiapu during November. We were lucky, the fast train from Shanghai to Xiapu (2 stops before Fuzhou) was opened at then end of September, it is just a convenient 5-hours train to get there directly. Xiapu is located at the North East of Fujian province, somewhere in between Wenzhou and Fuzhou. It has a long coastal line of 400km, with a large portion of sea shore protected by mountains and rocks (calm and safe), making it perfect for fishers to establish since the past thousand years.

For the last couple of years, an emerging touristic activity is photography, which attracts large number of photo enthousiasts from all around China, and still growing. Large scale of floating village, infinite seaweed field, thousands of rows of bamboo planted in sea shore, endless number of fisher boats going to high sea, crew of fishers carrying their catches to the land, colorful sand, breath-taking sunrise and sunshine, those are unique and abundant things that Xiapu has to offer to every photographer. In addition, the cost of lodging and eating at Xiapu is a fraction of what is costs in Shanghai, beside having much fresher and better selection of seafood!

The 6 of us have hired a local guide, Mr. Zhang, who is member of the association of photographers of Xiapu. He was born there and have lived all his life there, so he knows the place, the people, the weather, the view, and the timing. We wouldn’t be able to shoot any great pictures if any of the 5 elements was missing! Under his guide, we were able to witness amazing tidal effect at the sea shore, within 30 minutes, a seemingly boring place “suddenly” becomes a spectacular zebra-like oyster field; a muddy place suddenly becomes clear white as water fill up. For all of us coming from city, this was such a great show given by Mother Earth!

One last thing worth mentioning is, 2 of crew members are new to our team, Perry and Momo, because Max and Roger were not able to join us this time. It turned out we had a great time together, eating and drinking every night, playing cards and singing too. It was a memorable trip, and probably one of the cheapest I ever had. It costed us only 2000 yuan per person, for 5 days in total, all inclusive!

Click here to see the entire album.

This is the 2nd year that Mary and I went to see the HSBC Golf Championship tournament at Sheshan International Golf Club, thanks to the free tickets (1000rmb each!) donated to us by Mary’s awesomely well connected and pretty friend. Two things are different this year: the HSBC championship is now part of the official PGA tournament, and Tiger Woods is returning to this tournament after 2 years of absence.

I woke up the morning with full of excitment that I’m going to see Tiger in real person, really close, seeing him doing thing that he does best: winning a game of golf. After 3 days of competition Tiger’s cumulative score is at -12, second only to Phil Mickelson’s -14. Unfortunately Sergio Garcia is a distance -2, not sure what went wrong with him this year coz he won the cup last year at this place!

So, after a long metro transit from line 2 to line 4 to line 9, we arrived at the Sheshan metro station after 10am. We then took a taxi because we were too lazy to walk for ten minutes, which turned out to be a mistake because the golf club entrance wouldn’t allow taxi to go in, apparently traffic was a big mess around there.  So we wasted almost an hour of effort and time trying to figure out how to get to the entrance to see our friends and obtain the tickets. Finaly, we arrived on the field around 11am, completely exhausted!

Then, as every new visitor getting in, the first question is to ask around: which hole is Tiger at now? At that time he was only at the 3rd hole, there’s a huge crowd following him, along with media and bodyguards and employees of the country club. There is nothing like a normal golf course should be: ordinary grass, lousy people, people running & walking while there was clear sign to stop down, kids playing, and worst of all, the big bad bodyguards looking at spectators as if we’re trying to steal something from Tiger. It’s amazing how Tiger is the center of all attention, while leaving Phil and Sergio with just a small crowd. I’m sure they don’t mind at all…

Clearly Tiger was not in good mood, within the first 9 holes his score dropped from -12 to -9. Not only did he not make any birdies, but he was falling into bunkers repeatedly, and you can see his unhappy face from very far away.

I managed to take a few photos from far away, because the bodyguards were giving me a shit face when seeing my big lens camera. The big guy insisted that I should put my camera inside the bag, I ignored his request, but I was thinking to myself that this is not worth fighting for. I admire Tiger’s skill and reputation but he is not a role model in any way to me, I won’t sleep with his photos! So, few minutes later I packed up my camera and just watch with naked eyes.

An hour later we left the golf course to return to the city, joining our friends for a small gathering at her showroom, much more comfortable place, familiar friends, red wine, cheese, chips, etc.

Next year we won’t ask for tickets, it’s not worth all the trouble to get there and then be treated like dirt by the very people who came to collect the money that Chinese spectators and Chinese corporate sponsors were paying them. Those people don’t think that without our strong enthousiasm, they won’t be given such a generous prize! They just take for granted, because Tiger is a celebrity. Frankly, I’m very disappointed by the way this tournament is organized and run. It’s going to lose its prestige very quickly if thing doesn’t improve.

The past week has been an intensive leadership discussion week for me. There was the visit of a Distinguish Engineer (DE) from Austin Texas during the first half of the week, and I had a classroom training at the second half of the week. Therefore, I had discussion on leadership all week long, what characterise a leader, how to grow someone to be a leader, how a leader can lead effectively, how important leadership is for this company, and so on.

The first remarkable event happenned during the Tuesday diner at Shu Zhe Hui restaurant. We were 15 people sitting around a huge round table in a private room. The atmosphere was good, we all know each other pretty well, especially the respected DE who has been with us for a week now. At one point, she launched a challenge to all of us. Each person would say one thing (a word or short expression) that characterises leadership, then the next person had to repeat the previous words before providing his/her word, and so on.

At first I worried that we would not find enough words by the time we finish half the table, but then it just went on and on. Eventually everybody had found at least one thing to say about leadership, and there were still words that we hadn’t use. So, here’s what we said about what a leader should have or should be:

• Influence
• Do the right thing
• Change agent
• Visionary
• Special
• Passionate
• Inspire
• Take ownership
• Lead by example
• Optimistic
• Confidence
• Mentor/coach
• Trust
• Risk taking
• Empathy
• Forgiving
• Honesty
• Perseverance

To our surprise, it takes quite a lot to be a good leader, to be a leader that is respected and sought after. And I’m sure that are obvious things that we’ve not thought of.

At Thursday and Friday, I had a classroom training on Technical Leadership Today (TLTP), given by a mature (mentally) and passionate instructor. He skipped most of the official content to focus on the most important material, which I found truely impressive because he mastered the content very well, and tailored it based on the duration of the class and the level of the students. Beside the important lessons that we learned from his experience sharing and the interesting stories shared by classmates, I was really enlightened by two statements from the instructor:

• Excellence is not an act but a habit.
  This is a quote from Aristotle that I’ve not heard before.
• Draw a horizontal line for your IQ level and a vertical line for your passion, your life achievement is the triangle surface covered by joining the horizontal and vertical line!
  In other words, your achievement depends as much on your IQ as on how much passion you have. If you only have great IQ without passion for anything, you won’t go very far in life. If you have average IQ but lots of passion for what you do, you can probably achieve much more than the high IQ guy!

The first statement is logical to me, but hearing it in such a short straightforward sentence make it really strong. The second statement is new to me, I always felt that my IQ is just average so I can’t achieve anything great, but with this enlightening concept inspires and encourages me a great deal, now I know that passion can overcome some of my IQ limite. Yeah! 

The last time I went to Beijing was 5 years ago, during my first trip to China at Summer 2004. Though I can’t say that I was deceived during that trip, it wasn’t so fun in general. We were a big group of +20 people and we were stuck together from 6am to 9pm everyday, that was extremely exhaustive! So, this trip is my 2nd attempt, mostly to show my mother what the capital looks like (she was here from 9/1 to 10/1), but also my 1st visit since the grandiose Olympic contruction all over the capital.

Once again, we booked our trip on ctrip.com, upgraded to a better located hotel right on Xi Dan street [西单街] where all the major shopping malls are found, and just 1 subway station from the Imperial Palace [故宫]. It was really worth the minor cost addition for all the comfort and time saving everyday after the guide tour is over. We had guided tour up to 5pm everyday, sometime earlier, so we had plenty of time to walk around the busy street, actually my mom has done quite some shopping there on her own, while I was skimming through my email inbox. To my surprise, I prefer to walk among the local “cheap shop” rather than the western-look modern malls, because those are all alike everywhere you go, they have the same recognized brands and same products everywhere, nothing special.

What I was mostly pleased with during this trip is the gorgeous clear blue sky, with a bit of pure white cloud hanging around, everyday. Sometime I felt like, staring at the blue sky is already worth the trip, or maybe I left Canada too long time to badly miss a clear sky. Also the weather was dry, around 28C, it was simply the perfect time to travel. I couldn’t ask anything more on this.

I was very pleased to see the great renovation being done on the major touristic attractions, such as the Imperial Palace, the Tian Tan Park [天坛公园], the National Theater [国家大剧院], etc. Photographying those sites was a pure pleasure, plus the good weather in the background, all the sites were at their best appeal in front of my camera! We were in small group, mostly just 4 people (including us) plus the guide. So we had plenty of time to talk and ask questions on the historical relics. Our time was flexible when I need to stop down a minute to take a shot, or waiting for people to clear out.

That was for the old Beijing attractions. The new Olympic attractions are the Bird Nest [鸟巢国家体育场] and Water Cube [水立方国家游泳馆]. I went there to shoot night scene on my own, and was really lucky to have found an excellent spot to shoot the Birt Nest. That photo alone was worth all the troubles and sweat. Unfortunately the Water Cube was not so nice to look at close, nor photographying, because it’s too flat with a messy surrounding, there’s no way to get a clear shot of that building.

To summarize, this trip has totally changed my perception of the capital. The warm reception of my special colleague (Cool) during Saturday night also helped this cause. Enough is to say, last time when I came, I almost swear that I’d never come to live in the capital. But after this time, I feel like I can take this very well, not only that, I’m considering maybe give it a try soon, whenever an opportunity shows up. Just to remind myself again, never say never…

Click here to see the entire album.

When Desmond asked if I would be interested in going golfing at St-Andrews, Scotland, together with Henry and Graham. I didn’t hesistate long before agreeing to participate, and I never looked back. That was around the end of May. Then at the beginning of June, Sandra (from Scotland) helped us draft a vacation plan with golf courses suggestion, places to visit, itinerary and B&B (bed & breakfast, or “good motel” in other words).

With that, I thought I would simply pack up and follow the crew and just take photos on the road. Then the next day Desmond asked me to review the plan and give feedbacks to Sandra, coz no one else is gonna do it… I said to myself, ooops, have to do homework after all. So I took a good look at various websites, including Wikipedia, Google map, visitscotland.com, etc. Three days later I had a rough idea of what I’d like to cover in this 7 days trip. So I responded with a proposition to cover a larger area of Scotland, from Edinburgh to St-Andrews to Pitlochry to Banffshire to isle of Skye to Inverness. The good thing about doing the homework is that I didn’t feel lost on the road coz I had some idea about the Scotland geography.

After about a dozen of plan adjustments over 3 weeks, we basically settled down on all aspects of the trip, including itinerary, golf courses, restaurants (for Desmond’s birthday) and B&B, with reservation and everything. In parallel, Henry did much of his part in updating GPS, register the destination addresses and reserve the car for the crew. Graham promised to bring us some unbreakable rain gear as weather forecast was pretty dim.

As we approached the 2^nd July we were all feeling more and more excited to go, while I was just returned from another trip to Shan Xi 4 days ago with colleagues. At the time we had to leave for the airport, Desmond had a business diner that last until the very last moment, then there was unexpected road construction on our way to the airport, traffic was stuck at 9:30pm after the bridge, for a moment we thought seriously that we might miss our flight and call the trip off… Luckily we arrived at the Pudong airport exactly one hour earlier (instead of 2.5hrs as demand) at the check-in counter, no problem, we were in, for sure! Luggages checked in, golf bags checked in, calm was restored among us.

A dozen hours later, fully packed in the KLM budget flight with kids in front and behind our row, we arrived at the Edinburgh airport in relatively good shape despite our inability to get a cup of coffee at the Shiphol airport at Amsterdam because of the very early hour of our flight transfer. Few minutes later we were able to meet Henry in the aiport as it is a quite small place. We had a quick breakfast and a pint of ale while waiting for Graham to arrive two hours later. Beside Graham’s delayed golf bag, everything seems to be aligned for a great trip to get start.

Summer at Scotland could easily be summarized as one word: green! There is greenery everywhere we were, the mountain, the pasture, the highland and the golf course. For this tiny country there are over 500 golf courses, which is more than what the entire China has today! Obviously there is a deeply rooted culture of golfing at Scotland tracing back to 500 years ago, which was first played somewhere around the Old Course that we visited immediately at our arrival at St-Andrews.

Click here to see the entire album.

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We went to Shan Xi between the 25th to 28th of June, with CK, Rebecca, Kathy, Roger, Max and Estelle. For 4 days of trip we did really lots of things, made a lot of mileage on a “bread car” [面包车] including driver. We basically went from middle of Shanxi to south, then all the way to north and back to middle again. We were lucky to have nice weather mostly, only rained (and hailed) once while we were on the road.

To be honest I didn’t expect a lot from Shanxi, not hearing anything nice from there ever. The only thing people keep saying about Shanxi is the mines, the miners and the boss of the miners [煤老板] who are insanely rich and dumb. In fact I didn’t even know the capital of Shanxi until I have the flight ticket in hands.

What I read in magazine is that Shanxi is a living museum of the Tang [唐朝] and Song [宋朝] dynasties, which are two of the most prosperous dynasties in China history. Unfortunately at the end of Song dynasty is hundred years of long lasting war with the various northern tribes, until it was entirely taken over by the Yuan dynasty [元朝]. That pretty much ended Shanxi’s famed period.

What is left of Shanxi today is a poor province with only one type of natural resource as revenu, coal mine. Not much else as economy, not much agriculture, no trade, no port, no hub. They might be able to count on touristic industry but transportation isn’t fully developped yet based on my observation.

Anyway, pessimistic as I am, we did have a great trip with all those guys. We took lots of photos, had fun in hotel room (that was memorable), and saw amazing historical heritage of ancian time. For 4 days short trip I feel that we’ve gotten much more than what’s worth. On the bus returning to airport at last day, we even had a karaoke and sung for 3 hours, for free!

You can see the entire album here.

As a regular reader of the InformationWeek magazine since 1995, as well as several other publications such as InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, Network Computing, Resellers News, etc, I’ve read hundreds of issues of world CIO ranking, CTO ranking, Top 100 CIO, CIO of the Year, you name it.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the CIO/CTO in the list are working for american companies (these are american magazines after all), the usual recipients are from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Fedex, UPS, JPMorgan, Prudential, NASDAQ, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Shell, 3M, Xerox, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Nike, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc, etc, etc. Those are the world wide recognized innovative companies where their CIO excel in transforming business practices and processes by leveraging cutting edge information technologies. That is what I’m used to read for the past decade and a half, until now…

In the latest Global CIO 50 survey of InformationWeek, I was extremely surprised and delighted to see that there are 7 Chinese CIO in the list, I don’t remember seeing that many in any previous list. Seven mainland Chineses companies have made it into the list of Global CIO 50, that is something worth celebrating, let me explain…

The 7 CIO are:

First of all, the fact Chinese companies show up in the list of an american mainstream IT publication is quite significant to me. Many Chinese companies have been listed on NASDAQ for years without showing up on the radar of the average american investors. Now with globalisation a fact of life in every major industry, some well managed and innovative Chinese companies are having exposure on the international arena, not as a “3rd-world-country-companies picking up on modern technologies” headline, but as an equal peer with the very best of the world like Boeing and Rolls-Royce and IBM! This is one giant step toward the day where people don’t just think of the lead paint in toys and milk scandal when they think about Chinese companies.

Secondly, the fact that some Chinese companies can stand on this list will bring more attention to other companies that might have similar spectacular achievement to be recognized and learned from. Just imagine the gargantuan size of the Bank of China, ICBC, China Telecom, Chinese health care system, social security system, etc. Running those organizations’ IT department certainly have many challenges of their own that no other peer companies in the world could imagine and handle.

More over, these Chinese CIO not only use IT to support the business operation, but they manage to squeeze much competitive advantages out of it. I’m sure many other CIO are doing that too, this is just the beginning of a phase where Chinese companies are forced to become competitive globally to survive, forced to evolve and innovate continuously, just as their counterparts in the West.

I think that, by treating Chinese innovative companies as equal of organizations in the developed world, we can encourage them to try harder to bring their IT usage and infrastructure inline with the developed world, and that means that IBM will have a huge opportunity to capitalize on such movement, and so do I!

You can download the report in PDF here.