Family on Nick Wang

2007 New Year Resolution

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:13:31 +0000

How creative! I can’t think of a better title. A lot of things are happening, there are a lot of things I want to do, a lot I need to write down. My brain is a complete mess, so I’m jumping right in and start writing! Start small, and keep the ball rolling. Things I need to touch upon are:

Wedding
Work at Yahoo
Personal Development - blog, web dev, Japanese
Personal Business - My ideas, How to Start

Wedding Yup, I proposed to Queenie on 12/21/2006, right before our 2 weeks visit to Hong Kong. While in HK, I met with Queenie’s parents, bought a ring, we arranged our parents to meet, found a few “lucky dates”, we already had our sights settled on The Peninsula Hotel for the Wedding Ceremony and Banquet… The date should be 11/29/2007. There are so much to do for a wedding, I can’t talk about everything here. The one thing I need to say is… it’s expensive! I am trying to set a goal for myself to earn an extra $30K US dollars this year to cover the expenses! :P Work at Yahoo! Coming Feburary, I will have completed 5 years of service at Yahoo! Hotjobs. I’ve been involved in many projects, giving me exposure to almost all layers of the business, from billing to user experience. It has been good times, especially the early years, when everything was in turmoil and I could see what needed to be done, and just jump in and do it. Nowadays, there are a lot more red tapes and things go a lot slower. Regarding my career path, I’ve stated that I wanted to become a Business Intelligence Engineer. Currently, we’re migrating our CRM and front end to a new platform and work are being done in Sunnyvale’s main campus on developing a Data Warehouse. I’m trying to move there to become part of that team. I’ve spoken with my managers here in New York, and I’ve met the manager from Sunnyvale and spoke to him about my interest in joining his team. There weren’t any open racks as it was the end of 2006, but I’m confident that once they’ve gotten the racks in 2007, I will be able to transfer over there. I’ll save the details on this for another post. Personal Development I haven’t really touched web development since I left Microsoft’s MSN in 2001. Professionally, I’ve had my sights set on database technologies and Business Intelligence. However, social networking and Web 2.0 sites like flickr, del.icio.us, digg, WordPress and many personal blogs, have reignited my interest in creating web sites. I’ve installed WordPress on my FreeBSD box at home, trying to learn CSS and PHP through it. One problem I realized is that I tend to mind too much about the technical details. Cal Henderson of the Flickr fame had given his advice based on his experience, and that is to start small, get your first readers, and then grow along while your site is live. I’m trying to start a couple of blogs this way - one is about Japanese living in New York City, and another is about Traditional Chinese culture in modern Chinese societies. Finally, I’ve been learning Japanese through a podcast called JapanesePod101. I’ll try to take the JPLT Lv. 2 this year, and I’ll try to use JPod101 alone to accomplish this. It’s going to be a good experiment. Personal Business Finally, my business. I’ve registered and closed a S-Corp in 2005, wasted thousands of dollars and contributing to the IRA and the statistic of 99% failure rate of businesses in the US. I’m not going to repeat that! I hope that with the experience I gained through the blogs, I will create a couple of communities sites - one related to gaming and one related to food and travel. My goal is not to make a lot of money, I’m interested in these topics and I hope that I can create something that can support me enough to move around and live in different countries. If there’s one thing that I need help on here, that would be VC. How and where do I get venture capitals? Where are my angels?!! :P Alright, that’s enough for one post. Until next time.

The View from Taiwan: Taro Aso: Japan's Answer to Pasuya Yao?

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 15:20:49 +0000

The View from Taiwan: Taro Aso: Japan’s Answer to Pasuya Yao? Japan’s Foreign Minister, Taro Aso’s offensive remarks on Taiwan Actually read this on Japundit first and got linked here. Interesting read on both sites. I think what needs to be said are already said in all the comments in those 2 sites. I am just going to write down a little of my own family history. (This is an online record of my memory afterall.) My mom’s father is Cantonese, but was born in Shanghai and for some reason, studied in American school. Hence he doesn’t read/write Chinese! During the 2nd world war, he worked for the US Navy as a airplane mechanic on board of US’s carriers! Pretty cool huh?! After the 2nd WW, there was the civil war (I think… Hey, I suck at Chinese history) and the fucking communist party won. My grandpa was offered 2 relocation choices by the US government. 1) Japan 2) Taiwan. He chose Taiwan obviously, because he was fighting the Japanese and he hated them. I guess this can particially explain why when the KWT(?) invaded Taiwan, they uprooted many Japanese establishments… (did they?) They fought agianst the Japanese for 8 yrs in China, and then lost their home to the fucking communists. Of course they’re pissed! XD LOL (So, my mom grew up in Taiwan during the 1950’s & 60’s, and doesn’t hold any grudge toward Japan.) I hold great respect for my grandpa. :)

My father is Shanghai-an (? No such word as Shanghai-nese?) His father and mother were both from wealthy Shanghai families. Grandpa even went to study abroad in Germany when he was young, and so did my father’s eldest brother. Their entire family had to flee from Shanghai when the fucking communists started taking away everyone’s money & possessions and beating / killing the wealthy and educated. They moved to Hong Kong, where my grandpa opened an unsuccessful stationary shop business and slowly depleted all of his family’s fortune. :( Naturally, my grandpa hated the fucking communists… but he also hated the Japanese. His reasoning was that, if it wasn’t for the Japanese, the communists party wouldn’t have been born. My father doesn’t admit that he “dislikes” the Japanese, I don’t really know what his reasons are… but he likes to buy China made electronics. He often say that “Nowadays, China made electronics are pretty well made, they can compete with Japanese made electronics.” (My Dad is also a mechanic and an electrician, so whenever things broke, he goes and fix it himself!) :P Isn’t my family sweet? :P I think on everyone’s personal level, there’s no point to hold grudges against a certain race or country for what their ancestors did in the past. These things are only used on a political level to manipulate people. There are too much beauty and love all over the world to stop one from travelling and meeting new people. Enlightened, ain’t I? I still fucking hate communists Chinese though! :D LOL

Queenie loves We love Katamari Damacy

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 16:15:00 +0000

0726_QQ_PS2_cotton_pads Originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.

We don’t have the first Katamari Damacy but I heard it’s a great game, so I got part 2. I wasn’t too impressed with it but Queenie absolutely loves it. She got so into the game she was swearing and throwing the controller and shit. This is the same lovely girlfriend of mine that yelled at ME when I was pissed off playing Zelda or whatever… She got pissed off at me and said “Why do you get so upset, it’s just video games, if you can’t control your temper then stop playing!” HA! Hypocrite!! So guess what I said to her… ;-)

Anyway, I thought it was pretty funny, and it kind of remind me of Old Grandma Hardcore, except grandma is on my level of “talking trash to the game characters”… hilarious! http://oghc.blogspot.com This photo in hosted on Flickr! The coolest and best photo sharing site on the net. Check out my photos.