Thoughts on Nick Wang

I love animals, I gotta start eating bugs!

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 02:40:56 +0000

Bugs are more than 60% protein, environmentalists body builder should eat bugs. I saw an episode of Independant Lens on PBS about wild parrots in San Francisco. Very touching story. When the city government were gathering suggestions on what to do with these parrots, some environmentlists wrote in and said “These parrots are not native to the bay area, they should be captured and exterminated.” Excellent idea! By the same logic… we should capture all black people outside of Africa, and exterminate them, right? ROFL. What kind of fucked up logic is that?! Hey! At least both the parrots and the black people were taken away from their native homeland by force. If you wanna exterminate non-native species, at least kill the ones that willingly invade other areas… so… that means… we should capture all white people outside of Europe… ROFL. I love animals…

Comments

Kathy WAng — 2007-08-14 15:08:38

how disgusting!

U.S.-Japan Innovators Project Symposium

Fri, 25 May 2007 01:19:10 +0000

Last night, my sister got us free tickets to Japan Society’s “U.S.-Japan Innovators Project Symposium: Improvisation, Creativity, Collaboration: Fueling Innovation in the 21st Century”. The first speaker, Daniel Pink, is actually on a fellowship from Japan Society, and he talked to us via high-speed video link from Keio University in Tokyo. I was really impressed with the quality of both the video and audio quality. (And the quality of the actual speech itself too.) The video was projected onto a huge screen and the resolution is very high, there was no lag in neither the video nor audio feed. Anyway, his speech was about his new book - A Whole New Mind. Basically, it’s about how our left brain, which does logical things, is becoming less important than our creative right brain. I couldn’t agree with him more… especially on the issue of current education systems and standardized testing. Those stuff absolutely kills the children’s creativities. Then, we get to hear jazz musicain Marty Ashby play. Good stuff. One thing he mentioned was that children are born innovative and we adults keep taking it away. Finally, Hiroshi Tasaka, Professor at Tama University, talked about … Adult Joy… LOL! Sounds dirty. But actually, it was pretty meaningful. The things that I took away from his speech was 1) it’s hardship that makes a person grow. 2) Life is happening while you make your plans. 3) once again, it’s hardship that shapes your path in life. 4) The person who gives you a lot of pain and sadness is your Buddha. 5) The Japanese verb “to work” 働く can be interpreted as はた + らく ~ neighbour + happy. So, to work is to make your neighbours happy.(?) 6) and finally, never put your speech notes onto powerpoint and show them your audience while reading off of them. Seriously though, I enjoyed it very much, especially given my current state of “hardship”. LOL… So, my bitch-ass boss is actually my Buddha and she’s shaping my path. LOL. Enlightening!

Comments

Designing the Future: Japan’s Tech Revolution - A Customer-Driven Corporate Perspective at My Journey to Japan — 2007-06-12 11:13:20

[…] couple of weeks ago, my sister told me about a U.S.-Japan Innovators Project Symposium event at the Japan Society in New York. You can read about my thoughts on the event from the link […]

Designing the Future: Japan’s Tech Revolution - A Customer-Driven Corporate Perspective « Before I Die — 2008-12-14 09:37:30

[…] couple of weeks ago, my sister told me about a U.S.-Japan Innovators Project Symposium event at the Japan Society in New York. You can read about my thoughts on the event from the link […]

Virginia Tech shooting - suddenly Asians ain't so funny anymore

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 09:30:15 +0000

Shooter Identified: Cho Seung-Hui That was what I saw on TV just now, my first reaction was… I laughed. It totally reminded me of skits from Mad TV or Saturday Night Live. :P But this isn’t comedy, this is reality, suddenly these jokes on Asians ain’t so funny anymore. People go nuts, even us stereotypically “nice” Asians do. The difference is, when these kind of things happen in other places, they don’t have access to guns. Here, a stereotypically “smart and hard working” Asian can walk into Walmart, buy a gun and some ammo, come to school, lock all the exits, and start shooting until he gets an “A”. Here are e-mails sent to Virginia Tech students with timestamps!

So much to do... so little time...

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:06:05 +0000

It has been 2 months since I last interviewed for that Yahoo JP Business Intelligence Engineer position, and they still haven’t found the right person. Proves me right… it’s hard to find someone with that kind of technical skills while being fluent in Japanese. Meanwhile, my other option was to migrate to our own Data Warehouse team…

I called up the manager over in Sunnyvale after my former manager Phil told me that they’re are short on staff and the manager was thinking about bringing in some temps. That’s the problem with our big corporations these days, it happened in my Microsoft days and it’s happening again now. They just can’t hire any full timers. The manager acknowledged that he needed people, and he realized that it would be beneficial for his team to have someone “old school” like me. Yet, in the end, he had to bring in contractors. So… I’m still stuck here in the New York office. I’ve been keeping myself extremely busy though. I haven’t given up on Japanese yet… studying Japanese vocabularies and grammar at night. At work, when I have time outside of the data migration project, I study my new Oracle Architecture book. I’m also going to work with Phil on testing the data integrity of the Data Warehouse, just pending my current manager’s approval. I wish I have more time though, as I still haven’t gotten around to ripping Wordpress apart and learning to turn it into my web businesses. I’ve gotten through its “theme” and learned to manipulate it using CSS, but I’m not interested in it, I wish someone else can handle that shit for me. I will just focus on the backend. I want to finish all 3 tasks ASAP… how do I juggle all 3 tasks at once? I think my top priority is Oracle, as it is needed immediately for the Data Warehouse, and it’s the easiest out of the 3. Japanese will take the longest, in fact, I have the same feeling as one of my language partner… that I’ll never be able to become fluent in it. (Doesn’t mean I won’t try though.) Finally, the website. I’m really slacking off here… this is the one thing that can potentially bring in the most cash for me, but I’m putting it on the back burner… I guess I just need someone to work together … may be I should search for a wordpress user group in New York…

Oracle, DataStage, Japanese - What I'll do so I can get the job next time!

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:56:00 +0000

Since yesterday’s disastrous interview, I seriously thought about what happened, and came up with a plan to address the problems.

Oracle- I need to put Oracle way up there on my resume! Right now, I have SQL Server and MySQL listed. With Oracle, it’s not like I don’t know it, I just don’t work with it everyday. I did create a whole bunch of queries to export data from Oracle, but I do all of the data manipulation in SQL Server after the data are imported there. This situation is only going to get worse, as Hotjobs is in the middle of moving both the CRM and web apps onto new platforms, which will be moved to Yahoo!’s main campus in California. The old databases are being phased out after the migration.

I had just lost my access to the Oracle reporting database last month!! So, I need to do something to regain, no, UPGRADE my Oracle skills! My solution? I’m going to install an instance of 10g on my personal Linux box. I’ll go through this book (Expert Oracle Database Architecture: 9i and 10g Programming Techniques and Solutions) cover to cover. Much like the way I learned SQL Server 7 back in the days at Microsoft. DataStage- I was asked about it, I’ve never used it, I know that it is being used in our new platform to import data into the data warehouse. I understand the ETL process and like I said, I do it manually by looking at database diagrams, query the data and spool the results into text files, FTP them into a central location, import into a staging database and manipulate the data, then finally, myself and others query against the final results for reports. Today, I did a little research on DataStage, found a tutorial on IBM’s website, read through the PDF. As I’ve suspected, it provides an easy to use UI to do basically what I do manually. Just like First Logic and Business Objects, a couple of training sessions should get me going on this no problem! Japanese- Finally, the biggest problem! In the interview, I was told that they need a “native speaker”… well, I’m not a native speaker… but, what’s the definition of a “native speaker” aside from being Japanese? My reading comprehension is fine, I’ve read user comments and booked ryokans and hotels on Japanese travel sites, communicate in Japanese with people in Japan and with my Japanese friends here in New York. So, is “being able to communicate” good enough? While other people might have lied and just say they’re “native speaker”, I’m just not the kind of guy that can lie like that. So, I’ll let others be the judge. I’ve hired an experience tutor here who’ll test me in a mock interview tomorrow. Let’s see what the result will be! Anyways, whatever the result might be, I’ve decided that I’ll get serious and pass the JLPT Level 2 exam this year. I’ll take that as a “certificate of native speaking level”.

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.