On March 5th, 1979..............

I turned 4. Our family spent a year in Vienna with an Austrian family.
Today, I went to visit that family. They were kind enough to dig up some pictures of me. I must admit that I really don't remember that much of that year - I was only 4.
I will let the pictures speak for themselves, and you be the judge whether I was a cute kid or not.

St. Moritz

Highly recommended! Go in off season, stay in one of the villages 5km away from it and you too can experience what Prince Charles does every winter. I experienced one of the nicest surroundings in Switzerland. The lakes, the mountains were simply mesmerizing. It was truly incredible.

They have maps you can take for free at the tourist information right in the villages. For hiking, they will also provide you with a list of all the trails available in the area, and how long it takes to hike them. I would recommend a trail map, simply because it provides some comfort in knowing where the heck you are going and better detail than what the tourist maps would.

state side for a few days

Went back to the states for three days. It was an interesting experience. I was able to test my idea of moving back to the states. There are certainly plus and minuses. The up side is certainly obvious - I speak the language, know how things work, have friends that make up a fantastic social network, the job opportunities available, the convenience, the amount of entertainment available, the restaurants, and it is the place I want to settle down in the long run. Best of them all is the powerful capitalist machine - the shopping, the amount of merchandise available, choices. Consumer is KING! (Those of you who know me are probably shocked to hear me say that, but wait until you move to Europe)

There are some obvious downsides too: with the commercialism, things are more about money than anything else, there are people everywhere, no easy access to nature or places where you can take a nice long walk. (I noticed that the three days I was there, I walked less than I would in one day in Switzerland)

It certainly put things in perspectives for me.

do you call?

so, here is the situation.
I traveled across the pond to the west coast for an interview. The time on land between flights was three days. I met up with two friends for dinner the first two days. The girl friend of a good buddy lives in that town; she is also a classmate from last year. Even though I might not have the best relationship with her, do I call and maybe hang out the last night there? Or, do I go to an alum event, and make some contacts? Or, after a full day of interviews, sit and relax?

What's your take?

Nice, Cannes, Eze, and Monaco

Eze, the destination YiChun had talked about for the last six months finally made our travel itinerary. The first trip YiChun and I took after her move here was to the French Riviera (as if the Swiss Riviera wasn't good enough).

We stayed in this little hotel at the center of Nice, in the Messena street. It was well located. The seafood in Nice was pretty good. Although I do have to say they definitely charge a fair tourist premium. But hey, what are you going to do, it's the french!

The beaches in Nice and Cannes were really not that impressive. The Nice beach is stone, and while the Cannes beach is a bit nicer and sandy, both of them cater to tourists en mass. Not my thing. The back streets of Nice are quit quaint and filled with little shops and restaurants that are worth an afternoon's exploration.

Eze was WAY cool. It's this little village built on a cliff in the 15th century. The town was full of little alleys and had a spectacular view of the bay. I have to admit that I was not expecting anything that nice and unique. I was really surprised. If you ever make it out to Nice, and have little time, make Eze your destination. The bus from Nice drops you off right in the center of town. Take a walk up to the town, and be sure to make a stop for a drink at Le Château de la Chèvre.

Monaco is cool for its romantic image, F1, the casino, and of course, the playground of the rich and famous. It's an interesting place to visit.

Macintel part 2

just a couple more things.

1. My clock was running a lot faster than my wrist watch. Weird, I thought. System Profiler reported that the processor speed was at 1.4GHz while it's a 1.86GHz Core2 Duo E6300. So I thought my bios setting was wrong. Sure. But fixing that didn't do the trick either. I know that I applied the jAs 10.4.9 and have the 8.9.1 kernel so I shouldn't have the issues with the older 8.8.1 kernel as described here under Time is wrong. But I tried the fsb=266 trick, and everything worked! Now I wonder if the same thing was causing Skype to have funky audio and drop calls. Huh.

MacIntel

Ah, the beauty of OS Y on two heads without having to pay over $2k for just the system.

Last year, I put OS Y on my Thinkpad. But it never ran quite smoothly because of the lack of SSE 3 support.

Having a MacBook Pro really helped in convincing me of the switch. Long ago, I made a commitment that if a UNIX variant ever had a nice GUI, I would switch. While I am fairly UNIX savvy, it's just a little painful to run as your main box and without the mainstream apps.

This year, I put a new PC together. Up until now, my main desktop was a P3 with rambus ram. I was pretty careful in picking the hardware, especially the video card. I choose the ATI 1900GT. Figuring that Apple supported the 1900XT officially, and it shouldn't be a problem. Well, WRONG!

So here is my documentation on how to put Aqua on. It doesn't take that long, about 8 hours of work. I got everything I wanted to work: dual head, full QT and IC support so VLC plays DVDs and OpenGL stuff works as well.

Couple of things to remember.
1. You might want to get a second drive that you can experiment with. Just in case you blow stuff away by accident. Didn't happen to me, but if your end product is a fully working system (I fully intent on replacing Windows), why not put it on a separate drive?

2. This worked for my system and I have little clue if it would work on anything else.
Core2 Duo
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 motherboard
Marvell Yukon ethernet
AC97 Azalia
ATI 1900GT 256MB from Sapphire

What you will need:
10.4.8 jAs distro
10.4.9 Jas update
AzaliaAudio.pkg.zip
Natit_edited.kext.zip

Installation Steps
1. Install the OS from DVD without selecting the ATI fixes. If you pick the ATI fixes, you will get a blck screen after reboot. A post from jAs suggested that the fix might be incompatible with the video card. You should get 1024x768 after you have gone thru all the installation steps here.
2. Next take care of the network card and audio. Follow this step-by-step guide. (I printed out the directions ahead of time.) I followed steps 9 thru 17. Skipping Step 13.
3. Use this approach. Since it's not as easy to read, understand and has a mistake, I modified it a bit. Here is what I used.
-Get natit_edited
-You will need to copy your Device and manufacture id of ur card (About this mac -> More info -> Graphics / Displays). Mine was 0x724B1002 where 0x denotes it's a hex value and 724B is the device id and 1002 is the manufacture id.
-Open natit.kext and edit plist file, find your model, and change the device id with the correct one.
-Copy natit.kext to /System/Library/Extensions
- Edit Info.plist in /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000.kext/Contents.
- find IOPCIMatch
- add 0x724b1002 in the string section. (this is where I got tripped up. The original guide fouled up here)

-Go into the terminal, browse to /System/Library/Extensions and type:
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
sudo chown -R root:wheel Natit.kext
sudo chmod -R 0755 /System/Library/Extensions
diskutil repairPermissions /

-Reboot and enjoy!

istanbul

Was at Istanbul two weekends ago. I was really surprised at how modern Istanbul was. It was clean, orderly, and best of all, the people were friendly! Very few people hassled us, and even fewer people tried to cheat (of course, you have cabbies who would take money from you whenever possible).

My friend said: "well, there is no sense of adventure here at all."

Pretty cool place to go visit though. You can definitely see how history marked Constantinople as the place where Christianity met Islam. Some pretty cool sites though. I have never been inside of a mosque before. When I went to Saudi Arabia, I wasn't allowed in since I am not a Muslim. There are some pretty grand stuff over there. Best of all, you could go it. I do enjoy how liberal Islam is there.

That brings up another topic. Neither my friend nor I could figure out what the rule is on the female dress code is among Islamic women. Of course, there were the few classic all-black dresses. However, most Muslim women there dressed somewhere between colored skirts covered by a khaki trench coat and fashionable jeans with nice blouse and matching shoes (plus headscarf, of course). You might think it's not big deal to wear something that covers your entire body and then wrapping yourself in a tight trench coast. Just keep in mind that it was 38 degrees (around 110 in fehrenheit)!

Anyhow, it was a nice weekend and I have the pictures to prove it!

some reflection on El Chemista

Reading El Chemista. The section after the boy meets the al chemist in the desert and was given a speech on life.

I agree, and wish that things in my life would also work out to be the same. Things and people help you get to where you are supposed to go. Any maybe everything that happens is a part of a larger plan to get me to where I am supposedly going. But I wonder how the boy started, and if he was simply told what his destiny is versus figuring it out himself. Yes, there was a dream and that it was the gypsy and the king who told him where to go and what to do. But what did he want? It just seems like he was also making up his mind as he went. Is that how it’s supposed to be? Are we supposed to have a bigger goal and understanding where we are going then go toward it, and make smaller decision to get us there everyday? Or, do we just make it up as we go?

Certainly, reminders are needed every so often once you figure out where you want to go, but I think figuring out where you want to go is more important, and certainly challenging.

I still haven’t figured out what my goal is.

been a while, life hasn't been great

but you still have to find time to have a little fun.

Freak!

Started taking french lessons this week. The lady is very nice and she seems to be very good at what she does.

To supplement my french lessons, I decided to listen to those french lesson tapes when I walk to and from work. To get the most out of the tape, you should always try to "repeat after me." So there I was, walking with ear buds, mumbling to myself. I started to notice strange stares: what the hell is that freak doing, talking to himself, walking?

strategy time

Got a board meeting to prepare for. I need to come up with a strategy, a staffing plan, and a budget. :) I guess this is the kinda stuff b school is supposed to prepare you for, and all MBA students hope to do when they graduate. Yet, I just feel nervous. I know, I have done this many times in school, but yet, I still find myself flipping through the ICP ("International Consulting Project" for those of you who are not familiar with IMD speak) manual trying to find a strategy "cookbook".

Nah, it's not a cookbook, only if it were that easy. The ICP manual does show you the steps to follow though. Cool. I also need to dig up Boschek's notes on industry analysis to make sure I am doing stuff right.

Huh, I guess B school does teach you something. I just wish I have all this stuff in my head so I don't have to keep referring to my notes. Guess I just wasn't built that way, but I know Maria is (good reason to why she is a Bainny).

Anyway, enough bullshit, I better starting digging through Bolschek's notes.

deal time

I have something GOOD to announce!

Cidway just signed a signature deal with the largest bank in a country straddling Europe and Asia. Even though it's just a pilot, when a bank has millions of Internet banking users does a pilot, they do it for x00,000 customers! (Sorry, I can't really tell you what "x" is)

Not only that, we beat out the European market leader! It's pretty exciting!

I hope this is only the beginning of many more deals to come. Stay tuned!

long distance

It's hard. My last relationship endured through two years of long distance. The current one has pretty much been long distance from the get go. We are really happy together, but the distance requires a different kind of romance, and a different kind of passion. Lots of Skype (although I didn't feel it as much last year since I had less say over my schedule, and at least 50 others also kept their relationship going that way), lots of emails. Personally, it's just that much harder to conjure up the kind of passion when someone is right next to you.

Sigh..........

wow, she can write

Banjot, a friend of mine married a writer. I had never read her stuff until recently, and wow, she can write. Meeta was recently published. Here is Banjot's entry about it on his blog.

startups are .......

It is exciting to work for a startup. There is always a lot to do, and there is always that anxiety about getting your first BIG deal. Then there is the nervous wreck about the details of the deal: the engineer turned sales dude (aka me) sold the world to the customer; the application you are delivering on the platform the client wants has never been installed anywhere, your engineers are not familiar with the app since they are not familiar with the platform; your partner is struggling to deliver their end of the deal; your reseller has never sold a product in your industry; the customer is physically on another continent; you still don't have a contract with your reseller.

What a mess! But that is the life in a startup. It's exciting but yet you feel like every deal is dangling by a thread.

P.S. So, ethically, do you still push the deal?

Leaving again

Well, it's been a nice week and half back in Lausanne. I realized that I need to stop traveling. It's difficult to build a company when you are on the road all the time.

Off to NYC to a few days, then down to Orlando for a trade show (actually participating this time). Then comes the part that I am really looking forward to: 3 days on the beach!!!

en route from Singapore to Geneva

Wrote this on the plane, I am a couple days late posting it.

While I travel around the world this month, I have noticed how much my fellow classmates, or ex-classmates from IMD, travel as well.

In San Francisco, I met Ihab, who was traveling from Boston. During my stopover in Singapore, I tried to meet three of my classmates but apparently no one was around: Aaron was in Bangkok (I am transiting thru Bangkok to get to Switzerland), KK was in London or Amsterdam, and Nanang was in Jakarta.

Is this the typical life of an IMD MBA grad? Anyone?

finally back in Lausanne

At last. I am back in Lausanne. Going home to Taiwan was nice; as much as it was home, I still couldn't feel like it was my own space. I was surprised how good it felt to be back in my apartment in Lausanne.

Didn't really suffer from much jetleg. I pushed myself to stay up the first day (yesterday) until 10pm. Still waking up at 6:30, but that isn't so bad.

Feel much more energetic now, and have put a bit of effort cleaning up my apartment. It really wasn't that much work. It's hard to imagine how I really didn't feel like cleaning up the place in January. I must have been exhausted psychologically. Vacation does wonders.

back in Taiwan

Finally made it back in Taiwan, sick as hell, especially after 20 hours in the plane. Had to go see a doctor after I got off the plane. As an honorary participant of the 2007 Swiss flu season who prolonged his doctors visit, I had developed bronchitis. Great, it's exactly what I needed when I am on vacation. Gave up alcohol for the past two weeks because I have been sick, now I am on antibiotic and three other pills for a week. Aih-yah, as a Chinese would say.

And I have to go to Korea for business next week, what a bonus for your vaca.

On the plus side, I am back in Taiwan. Spending time with YiChun, and my family. That has been nothing but great. More on that later.

sound relationship advice

Got off the plane, and am in San Francisco.
Staying with a very good friend in Berkley to hang out, outdate ourselves and save the company money.

At brunch, the topic turned to my love life (wel, his is simple, married, new born, you know the drill). He gave some very sound advice when I brought up some of my concerns, especially on timing. "If you know the fondamental things line up, the daily life stuff will figure itself out in time. It's not going to be easy, but you will work it out." So, the advice is to move forward if I am sure that our values match up. I think they do.

That's what I miss most about the States, I guess: friends to bounce ideas off of.

enroute to San Francisco via New York

The last three weeks in the new job has been stressful, not as much from a workload stand point, but from a psychological perspective. I suppose ever new jobs brings a level of stress. I thought about it, two things really pilled on top of each other, or maybe even more.
1. It’s a new job, a new function, new colleagues;
2. I haven’t worked in a year; furthermore, I am used to work with only MBAs. Working with non-MBAs, not from IMD, brings additional challenges
3. Working in Switzerland, for an Argentine who makes business decisions emotionally is pretty taxing.

The coming four weeks away from the office will hopefully help me make some adjustments.

I am sick, tired, and just want to get to SFO. I guess I will be sleeping on the plane.

they don't have chocolate chips in Switzerland

So what? You might ask.
That means no chocolate chip cookies either.

If you read one of the entries in early 2006, you would know that I finally admitted that I had become quite American, so life sans chocolate chip cookies is somewhat of a disaster. They do sell PepperRidge Farm chocolate chip cookies at the Coop in town, but they are SOOOO expensive, and there are only 8 in a pack.

So, as a part of my "get my life back" project, I broke out some of the stuff I brought from the states: my 6 quart KitchenAid, cookbooks, spatula and cookie rack and got to work.

First challenge, find baking soda. Three grocery stores and 3 Swiss francs later, I was in possession of a little thing of baking soda, or whatever is in the little container that read "bicarbonate of soda" on the label.

Next, vanilla extract. I called YiChun, she said that they have them in Vienna, so I should be able to find it in Lausanne. No. Lausanne is no Vienna, so I used "Vanillazucker" - Vanilla sugar as the substitute. I had no idea what the coresponding quantity was, so I threw in the entire little pouch.

Then, chocolate chips! How the hell do I make chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips? Well, three grocery stores late, I still couldn't find chocolate chip. So much for Switzerland's reputation as chocolate heaven. So, I bought some baking chocolate, and chopped away.

Emeril would have been proud of me. You can find the recipe here.

Life.... Getting it together again

bit by bit....................
Thursday morning, the buzz from my doorbell woke me up. Well, it didn't really, I was awake, just not out of bed. THE MOVERS ARE HERE!

They were there to deliver my stuff from the States. It was great. They put together my bed, my office desk, and brought me all my stuff! My stuff! I could finally piece my life together again.

I spent Saturday afternoon looking for a DVD player (only brought my pre-amp and amp), fiber optic cable, speaker cables, etc just to put my audio system together. It took me another two hours to strip the cables, unpack the 50 pound amp, and hooking all this stuff up. Bam! (as Emerald would say) The moment the sound system put out that little bitty of Vivaldi's 4 Seasons, I almost broke out in tears. So, I took a moment to analyze this Jack Wood style. Why would I miss the audio system? It is the sound, that soft, full range of sound that just would never come out of my Thinkpad or MacBook Pro? No, it's the symbol of it - that I miss my lifestyle back in the States, my kitchen, my house, my friends, my brother, all of it.

working for a startup

two things happened today.
1. I re-learned startups are like giant vortex, they just suck you in. I went into work today to run a conference call. I planned to be there for no more than two hours, and ended up spending the whole day there.

2. Leadership. I think sometimes I am too afraid to exercise my power, and take responsibility for decisions I take. I tried to run a decision process the IMD way by making it a group effort, then taking the decision democratically. It didn't work. No one was happy with then end result, and everyone ended up talking to me at 9pm, asking me to withdraw the group decision and take the decision I wanted in the first place. I need to start making decision and taking responsibility
for them.

Work...... I wonder what working again will be like, and pray that I will remember everything I learned at IMD even after 10 years working.

Search for the perfect Sauvignon Blac

Well, since really enjoying the Ave Maria 2000 and 2001 production of Sauvignon Blanc, I have been looking for something that is somewhat similar. I have been looking for a long time. And, what do you know, before new year's, I went to Globus to pick up some wine, and I am not sure what got into me, but I picked up the house Sauvignon Blanc. Good stuff. What do you know, sometimes house wine is just good. It does say it is made in Seresin Estate. I am not a wine snub, so I have no idea where that it is, but this stuff is good. If you want to know, I had with with basil flavored salmon, carrots, and fennel bulbs.

setting up the new place

In less than one week's time in early December, I found an apartment. I must admit that when I first saw it, I wasn't all that impressed. It's in this old building from the 1920s. The double pane windows are actually not double, it's just two windows one behind another. When you close the windows, you have to make sure that the left one and the right one line up so they close! That shows you how old they are.

Regardless, the place actually turned out to be quite nice. It's right across this park where the Swiss federal court is. It's a 10-minute walk from the center of the city, and less than 10 minute walk from work, and yet quiet since it's right across a park.

I spent the last few days in the apartment doing a little tidying up and unpacking. The place is coming together quite nicely. Now I am just waiting for my stuff from the U.S. to arrive. Finally, I will get to piece together my life again. Well, it's really not quite accurate, my life was never in pieces, I guess I meant my lifestyle. I am getting my hi-fi system, and most important of all, my kitchen toys: Kitchenaid, hand blender, plates, pots and pans, even my pizza stone!

Now that I will be staying in Switzerland for a while, I can actually buy some stuff. Taking advantage of the after Xmas sale, I went to Globus (a upscale local department store with an AMAZING gourmet market) and got me a bunch of kitchen gadgets! Uh, I also picked up a set of silverware from Vilory & Boch :)

Ahhhhhh! LIFE!