Believe me or not, I had a great experience at the RMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles) today. One of my Spring ritual is to get the Miata ready for the nice weather. At the local garage to renew the inspection sticker, and I realized that I threw out the actual registration but kept the renewal card. So I went to the main Boston RMV at lunch time, thinking it will be a pain, but I was in and out in 5 minutes with a duplicate registration. Had to pay $15, but it was fast and pleasant.
SARS and Hong Kong
I just watched a live broadcast from Hong Kong on CNNfn. The Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chi Hwa gave a press conference on SARS. He came acrossed as a very skilled communicator and politician. He was smooth, personable, communicate in both Cantonese and English seamlessly. Yet he politely ignored questions that he did not want to answer. I think very few places in the world you will see a bilingual press conference happening so seamlessly and naturally. That, is one thing very special about a trading port and international business center like Hong Kong. Are there anything positive about this SARS outbreak? This is a first in the dealing of a global deadly virus outbreak. It should prepare the world for others, as it surely will happen. It puts the focus on China and Hong Kong. While the spotlight shines negatively, I think any global awareness is a good thing. It should also force China to be more aware of its responsibility in the world. Death, specifically death by a virus, not by war, or people, is such a fundemantally understood and inexcusable tragedy.
While we are on the topic, BBC has some good updated news on SARS research.
I have always wanted to be an Admiral
Are you a member of the Amtrak Guest Rewards program? Sign up here, and you can pick your title. I do not recall seeing such a detail selection for titles before. While you are there, check out the suffix options as well.
People doing their job well
It is always nice to experience people doing a good job. Today I have two such encounters. I feel much better about service in this country -- I am closing my equity loan at my bank. Arrived at the appointed time and a very young looking staff took me to his desk. He looked at most 22. I thought this is going to be trouble. He was having some small problems and questions, and started checking with his co-workers on various things. There were some language with my insurance binder. So I called my wonderful insurance agent Megan and handed him the phone. For a second he switched into "well, do what I say or else" -- but then he switched back to "be nice, let's get this done" mode. I was secretly relieved and just kept smiling to put him at ease. That part got resolved.
So where is the "doing a good job" part? He started reviewing the documentation, and asked probably a standard sales question -- are you an existing customer (yes)? Do you want to sign up for auto deduction of loan payment? You will get a further 1/4 point reduction on the loan (of course) !. So he went to the screen, setup the auto deduction, reduced the interest rate, and printed out the application.
It did not work. The rate remains the old rate. He asked another more senior staff. They called. They said they could changed it at HQ. So we waited. He did his training, trying to engage in casual conversation every minute or so to keep my occupied. He was doing a good job.
Two small diversions -- His PC's screen saver came on. To log back into the system, he subtling lifted up a stack of business cards on his keyboard and peeked. There is where he keep his password. Not smart ! To have even more fun with this kid, I scanned his desk and saw a small speed dial list taped to his phone. Besides all the usual people's names, there is an entry that says "Kitchen". So, I casually asked him, "so you have a kitchen here"? He was shocked. He looked around, perhaps to see if I saw someone walking out with a TV dinner or something. "How did you know"? He asked all nervously. I wonder what he does in the kitchen when no one is looking. It was funny. I told him how I knew at the end.
Back to doing his job well. We waited a long time. He kept checking the system. I for sure thought he was going to give up. Of course I am no way going to walk away from another 1/4 point reduction on the rate. I would have insisted. But he called HQ again, and found that they couldn't do it right away because it required HQ supervisor approval. That makes sense. So he offer to get it down asap, setup another appointment for me to go back in the evening to finish signing the forms. He even called me near end of day to let me know that the paperwork was ready and so and so will be handling it since he is leaving for the day. Nice kid. And I got my good rate at the end.
The second incident is with my insurance agent Megan. I knew (or hoped) that she would just fax over the adjusted binder immediately and not hold up the application. That was exactly what she did. She however also left me a voice mail immediately and ask me to call her to actually confirm the changes, since she has to get more data to update the actual insurance policy. Since she was clearly nervous about it, I called her right away in my car after I left the bank.
She asked several detail questions on the house. Luckily I had a copy of my listing sheet and package with me and it has a full floor plan. So I was reading off and calculating various things for her. Somewhere I told her I was reading the floor plan. She said "You are in your car"? (yes). Without missing a beat, she asked "Do I insure your car"? I thought that was just great !
So, two nice people. Paying attention to their jobs. Doing it well. It is a good day.
Service
I watched Gosford Park last night. It got me thinking about service. First, to quote from the movie: Mrs. Wilson: I'm the perfect servant. When they're hungry, the food's on the table; when they're tired, the beds are turned down - I know it before they know it themselves. This movie is about a hunting party take place in a English country manor. In this multi day event, there are the upstairs English aristocrates, and the downstairs servants -- butlers and valets and lady's maids. The level of service the downstairs provide is simply to die for.
Now fast forward 70 years to 2003, or fast forward 30 more to 2033. With the physical world (distance) getting smaller, and the virtual world getting larger, what is the general population's expectation on service? And is it the same around the globe?
From my own experience, one end of the spectrum is Germany. A German co-worker once commented: Germany is a service dessert. Germans simply do not expects service. Any service. The other end is Japan. Service is so good and perfected. Buy a small gift that is worth a few dollars, ask for wrapping,and you get 20 sheets of tissue paper plus fancy wrapping, all for free. Buy a book and they fold a book cover for you. Then there is the restaurents. I could go on.
Hong Kong is another interesting place for good service. In expensive hotels and restaurent the service is first rate. No surprise there. But at a street side cafe, buying a $5 lunch, and you get the full service treatment. polite, fast service is expected and given.
How about the United States? They are somewhere in the middle? I dare to say that the in general, people do not expect good service, nor they give it. Small town America would be the exception. But if you look at major cities and urban area, the level of expectation and supply is in the middle.
So, as the world is getting smaller. People will start experience the different level of service, and the servers will experience the different types of expectation from customer. Where will it all go? Will good service be expected and win out? I truly hope so.
Happy Chinese New Year of the Ram/Sheep
Three things happened today. 2003 is the Year of the Ram (or Sheep) in the Chinese calendar. Today, Feb 1st, is the new year day. This morning, however, I was half sleeping and completely woken up by my radio alarm clock with the message that NASA lost contact with the space shuttle. I did not even know there was an active shuttle mission. Turned on the TV and they are already showing the video of the seemingly broken up trails of the shuttle in the sky. 9:40'ish am. This is a traggic event in many levels. All I can do is to quote Winston Churchill: Never, never, never, never give up. -- Science, must go on.
Finally, I signed my contract to day to sell my house. It will go on the market next week.
Web Connection
Something interesting happened today. From one website's newsletter, I surfed to a site, followed a link, followed another link, read throught some materials on this site, and run across a casual reference to a person that I "know" from another website. Maybe the internet is not so big anymore... or I have reached the ends
Happy Moin Moin New Year, 2003!
New Years Day. Cold and wet outside. What's better than staying at home and, setup a Linux machine ? This is a new box, a Shuttle SS51G. Great form factor, sitting pretty on my desk at the moment. I am up to the point of setting up MoinMoin on it. I love, in fact I live on, wiki now. However MoinMoin does have its problems. First, it does not support FastCGI. (Probably not too hard to modify the moin.cgi to do it, project for later). It also have very bad installation instructions. To be more specific, it has reasonable step by step, type this and that, installation instruction, but does not explain the why of it. If you want to do things a little different, like preparing to setup multiple MoinMoin wiki on the same box, you need to do some planning and understanding, or read my notes, once I have finished. This is the forth time I install MoinMoin, each time a little different. So I think I finally got this whole process down. Next two MoinMoin related project would be fastCGI, and hacking the code to change the page header output to make it more compact.
Year 2002 In Review
Year 2002. This is the year of the 20G iPod, the 20th anniversary for James Bond films, the ten year anniversary for Mini discs. This is the year where everyone is buying digital cameras, and we finally have more than one GSM phone network provider in the U.S. On my annual travel report, according to my American Airline account, I flew 118,785 miles -- which is a good thing, for me anyway since I actually like airports and airplanes. For the first time after all these years I got to see Cherry Bloosoms in Tokyo, first time to Kyoto, Kular lumper, and shen zhen. I also went back to Paris and LA after many years. The more I travel around the globe, the more I believe that the action, meaning growth and opportunities, are in Asia. Having spend some summer time in Frankfurt and paris, I do appreciate the European's quality of life society more and more, but that is just too comfy...
On the negative side, this year is the year of aftershock and wasted energy, both from 9/11 and the Internet bubble. Workwise a lot of time and effort is wasted on reorganization and layoffs. I am oh so surprise by how people on either side of this process are ignorant about people's jobs and lives. From the company side, often the process is reduced to numbers and a list of names. On the employee side, people do not understand what or how to chart their career paths, how to develop skills and remain marketable.
With all the things happening in 2002, I find myself going back to the basics. Re-centering and re-balancing. Not necessarily taking less time from work, but more time for other things.Travelling to new places is good. Health is the most important thing. I started going back to two times a week of Tai Chi sword and wushu basic training. I also started to play table tennis (not ping pong!) almost weekly with really good players. Wang-san, if you are reading this, I think it's time for some rematch !
I started my loft project late summer. I want to move to a smaller place, a loft in the city. This will make travelling easier, and cheaper to maintain. Kill the mortgage. Save some money. However that project, which is detailed on this website else where, is still going and not ending.
What about 2003, the year of the Sheep? I should stretch more, read more, program more, travel more, do more important things. Almost a New Years resolution !
Happy New Year!
Audi Problem
My check Engine light came on a week ago. Turned out the temperature sensor needs replacing, but since it is in or near the engine, it takes 6 hours of billable time to get it replace. Funny thing is that another gentleman in the waiting lounge has exactly the same problem. Mine is a 96 A4, his 97. One has 60K, the other has 80+ K on it. Not sure if statistically there is a significant, but sure sounds like the car has known issue They gave me a rental for the day. It is a Ford ZX2. Pretty fun little car. However today we have snow, and it is amazing how much harder to drive with this zippy FWD car compare to the Quattro. Now lets wait for the A4 Cabrio with Quattro coming out next year.
xbox form factor
Did you notice that out of all the game consoles, the XBox is the biggest, heaviest, and also has a bulging top? The top being non flat makes it hard to put things on top of. I bet someone at Microsoft had this great idea -- if we make the top non-flat, people cannot stack things on top of it, and they have to put the box on the top of everything else, with our logo displayed all the time !! talk about MSArrogant.
Subway system in HK
In the Hong Kong subway (MTR), when two lines intersect, they intersect in two consecutive stations. Each station is for one connection direction. So you always can walk from Line 1 Platform A1 to Line 2 Platform A2 at Station A to go in one direction, and walk form Line 1 Platform B1 to Line 2 Platform B2 at Station B to go in the other direction when connecting. Confused? Make sense? THis is a very clever idea and it has been done a long time ago. For example, looking at the map above, going on green line south connecting south on red line, change at Yau Ma Tei. To go from Red line north connecting north on red line, change at Mongkok instead. Got i?
Dial User Interface on Navigation System
I was playing with (or watch someone else playing with) a onboard navigation system in a Mercedes in Germany. I think it is a after market unit, may not be made by Mercedes. Anyway it uses a dial to input addresses, i.e. typing. It would seems tedious at first, "dialing" through the alphabet. However the system is smart enough to only show the valid set of inputs at each point. i.e if you are spelling a street address, it knows at any point what are the valid names, and only display the letters that are valid. (This is similar to the search input in the Palm Desktop), and will even prefill with letters when those are the only choice.
VeriSign and Domain names
I registered my first domain orac.com in 1995 !! Only until now VeriSign has managed to merge all their account databases so that I can have all the domains that belong to me (All your bases are belong to us ?) in one single place. Now I can do bulk renewals, address changes, etc. without having to fill in different forms, log in and out serveral times. Of course, it took me 30 minutes on their website, and 20 minutes on the phone with Verisign to get all of them together.
Hero -- not a preview
Hero the movie will be out soon, although no one in the States seems to know when. They released it for just one week in China just to get it qualified for something (but not Oscar?), but it is still not in general release even in Asia. One thing that I heard is that Miramax is trying to delay the U.S. launch so that it won't compete with other films during the Christmas seasons, but China may be giving them some pressure to show it at least once so that it can be qualified for 2002 Oscars. The trailer looks beautiful. I think it is going to be a great movie.... BUT, Isn't hard to be the movie that follows Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ? Of course Zhang Yi Mou is a world class director. In fact I loved most of his movies. However I cannot help but think of Crouching Tiger, Ang Lee, Zhang ziyi. The fact that Actress Zhang ziyi is in both films, Music is both by Tan Dun, CTHD has Yo Yo Ma, Hero has Itzhak Perlman, Christopher Doyle is doing the camera for both, etc. This is like a sequel for the genre by a different director.
Still, I am sure this is going to be a great all round product. The Martial Arts will be better since we have Donnie Yen (son my of sifu) and Jet Li. The title song will be by Faye Wong, one of my favorite singer, only if they will release it soon, or I have to go find it in Asia. Very much like that year when I went to Singapore to catch CTHD on its last day there, but months before the released it in the States.
Martin Creed / Tate / and ...
The Turner Prize exhibits will be at Tate British until Jan 5 2002. Wonder if I will make it. What caught my attention to the Turner Prize was Martin Creed, who won it last year. The prize was presented by, Madonna ! What led me to Martin Creed, particular his work #88, is the website: Origamiboulder. Warning : you may find that site's content offensive. Make sure you read the questions and answers... The above little bit of net finds are a result of cross media browsing, reading the Sunday paper, my email inbox, searching for topics mentioned in either, and more linking, and...
How to Save Money
How do you save money? I used to count every cent. Or, rather, I think hard before spending any money. Especially when spending on the little things. Do I really want a Starbucks Coffee for $1.68? Or wait until I get home and make a cup from their beans for 1/10th the cost? I want to buy all the supplies when they are on sale. It is part saving money. Part principles. Part don't want to be cheated with a higher price. This whole process is a trade off between actually money spent/save, the time spent thinking about it, and the time spend saving the money. For example, the 10 seconds spent thinking of driving another 2 miles, spending another 5 minutes driving, to the supermarket to save $75 on a 1/2 gallon of milk. On one hand, it seems absurd to spend that much time thinking and driving and waiting to save so little. On the other hand the more organized you are with those thoughts, the easier it becomes. Being frugal is a state of mind? With a lot of practice like that, one will also tend to be more careful when coming to the most expensive items. Most people who knows that I am doing this think I am silly in doing it. Waste of efforts. As my income increases, and perhaps my time seems more valuable, I tend to be less absolute on trying to save that way. But, very truly, about 50% of the time when I am thinking about s Starbucks coffee I still go through the thinking process in my head. It is not the actual amount of money save or spent. But it is the relative worth of the amount. What does a $3 latte really gets me?
American Express Reward Points
I just read the latest American Express (Credit card) rewards point catalog. For 890,000 points, you get the Pioneer 43 inch plasma TV. Now I have something to shoot for ! Now, how can I spend $800,000 quickly on my AE card?
Techno travel
Flying back from Frankfurt via London, a few interesting observations: four 30 and 50 somethings were teaching each other the fine points of T9 data entry on their Nokia phones at the Frankfurt airport lounge. One indication that SMS is bigger over there then in the States. Then at the gate a mother and a todler walks by, the mother was holding a Fujitsu Lifebook, the smallest subnotbook that has a built in CD/DVD drive. She was using it to play a kids movie for the todler. Finally on the plane, I manage to fired up my thinkpad in, yes, Linux and did some programming. Linux on a laptop on a plane, at least a first for me.
Birthday
Another birthday entry. This year I broke my "rule" about celebrating Birthday out of the United States. As we recall, 2000 was celebrated at the boardroom at Alliance Bank in Germany, 2001 was celebrated in a restaurent in Tokyo. I almost arranged 2002 to be in London, but all the flight connections was getting a little crazy due to the late planning. So I just took a "me" day. Indulge myself in doing pointless fun things for the day. Local weather turned out to be beautiful 80+ degrees and sunny. I aways wonder whether one should take these special days that seriously. I think they mean more to one's friends and family then to one self. Maybe I just feel guilty to take advantage of these special days. Susan B. Anthony has a more profound way of saying this:
Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these --Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) American reformer