After moving to Hong Kong and hearing all the management horror stories, I had an epiphany in regards to the failure of general Chinese / Asian style education. When I hear about poor management, I realized I cannot possibly work under such a manager or in a company that is governed by “command and control”… and then it hit me… when I went to primary school in Hong Kong, I was also quite rebellious! I was only a few years old, but I already acted out against meaningless rules and unreasonable authorities! My mom would scold me and beat me up, some adults would say I was a bad kid for not obeying the rules… but had anyone really thought about why?! I finally understand… even when I was a kid, even when I was still very inexperienced in life, I could tell what’s efficient, what’s effective, what makes sense… When I encountered “bull shit” rules, like when the adults or teachers told us to just follow the rules and do some stupid shit. I was always like… “Why?! Why do I have to do this?! This is stupid!! Why can’t we do it some other way!!” Last week, I talked to my friend who’s a psychiatric therapist and child psychologist. I told her about this, and she said: “Yes, kids nowadays are still the same way… but eventually, they learn to shut up and comply.” And I said: “That is exactly the problem!!” You see, children are born with creativity and curiosity, but as they grow up, the adults beat them into following their sad footsteps… “Shut up and comply!!” That’s exactly what most working adults do these days!
Management that view their people as replaceable “gears” within a machine seems to be the norm these days, but that only applies to low level, mundane jobs that can be handled by robots. Obviously, this shouldn’t be applied to software developers. I would even argue that within any level of a company, it is crucial to recognize and keep your “Grade A” workers! I think I read about this in one of those Harvard Business books, a “Grade A” worker is not only more productive himself, but he also increases the productivity of those that work around him! In the case of a developer, various studies have shown that good developers can be between 10 to 20 times more productive than poor developers! But before we get to the part on how to keep them, the question should be… how to identify them during interviews and hire them?! That’s the question that bothered me the most. A few years back, when Yahoo!’s stock was doubling every few months and we were hiring like crazy, I read a book that gave me some interesting tips on how to do that. It’s really common-sense stuff actually… First, as the person hiring, you need to identify the characteristics you expect in the person you want for the job, and develop an interview technique that will test for these characteristics. Design some questions that can highlight the desired qualities of the candidate and have HR use those questions instead of their stock ones.
One stereotypical image of a Chinese manager / business owner is that they tend to be stingy and would work their employees into the ground. I’ve never worked for a Chinese or Asian company (unless you count Yahoo as Asian :P ), but I have heard enough horror stories and now, my wife works for a local handbag design company in Hong Kong. I get to experience the legendary Chinese management style… second hand. (Phew…) How’s this for a job change? You are a mid-level designer that makes more than $60K a year in New York, working 5 (or 4.5) days a week. You don’t have a boss to look over your shoulder and the decisions you make in your designs are final, albeit there may be some final, minor changes to suit the buyers’ taste. Now, you moved to Hong Kong! Guess what? You have to work 5.5 days a week! (Yes, working on Saturdays are still the norm here in HK!) You make 1/3 of what you used to make in NY, you have to risk your life and travel to lawless China to visit the factories in order to monitor the making of the samples. You have a time card to punch, when you are late, your vacation time are deducted! Your boss or your boss’s wife literally sit behind you to “look over your shoulders”! You have a 1 hr lunch and it’s restricted to 1 - 2 pm! Your boss has the final say on your design, your opinions are not respected. Sales people in the US tell their customers that they can make changes or ask for new designs anytime, because the Chinese here work 24 hrs! Your boss basically expects you to have no life and work your ass off!
My first post in Chinese!! (Well… the title anyways…) This is basically a test of how good my site is optimized for search engines (SEO), or rather, how poorly are Chinese sites out there optimized. :P It’s not just a test for SEO though, I do want to tutor (English and Computer / Technology) and get a little income on the side… Education is part of my interest too… besides working on my “environmentally conscious restaurant menus” site, I am also looking into working something out with online learning. One of my favorite online learning site is JapanesePod101.com, I discovered it when I got my first iPod (5.5G Video… Yes, I didn’t think iPod was “ready” until it hit this generation!), and I had listened to it everyday for over a year when I was commuting to and from the Yahoo! office in New York. I absolutely loved (still do) their podcasts and it had definitely improved my Japanese skills by multiple folds! Because of it, I was able to engage in interviews in Japanese over the phone with one of the managers from Yahoo! Japan!! Even after I stopped listening to it (due to lifestyle changes), I still retained so much of what I had learned that I was able to score very close to a passing score on a mock JLPT Level 2 exam. (which from what I was told, is harder than the actual exam!) Once I’ve launched my current project, I will try to see if I can work something out with Jpod101 and may be create an EnglishPod101 for Hong Kong. Phew… long story… anyways… if you are interested in hiring me for tutoring, then please contact me at 6603-6127, or email clone {dot} of {dot} snake {at} gmail {dot} com, or simply leave a comment below. My name is Nick. A brief summary of myself if you haven’t read any of my other posts on this blog, I was born in Hong Kong, spent my high school / college years in the US, worked for internet giants like Microsoft MSN.com and Yahoo.com after I graduated. I just moved back to Hong Kong in beginning of this year after 16 years of absence, currently working on my own web project, hoping to create something meaningful with my life / time, (because life isn’t just about work and making money)… I hope to create something that Hong Kong people can be proud of to called their own.
As mentioned before, I am creating a product that Hong Kong people can be proud of - a community to help people make environmentally friendly choices on food. I have spoken with some business partners and friends and we are all very excited about the idea. I’ve had this idea for more than a year now, and after leaving Yahoo, I’ve spent time researching into web technologies that would help me achieve this goal. I’ve networked with businesses and industry experts that will help me on different stages of the project… Crowdsourcing, Web marketing, development, Environmental and Social Responsibility professionals, WWF HK, CSR Asia… etc. Finally, it has come down to one of the last, but very important issue - the domain name. I’m thinking about using this one - currystar.com. I registered this name with the intention of opening this food / menu site. I only put my own personal blog on it because the site wasn’t ready yet and I was learning different web blog / CMS systems. So, should I use currystar.com? And move my blog back onto the free cloneofsnake.wordpress.com site? Or perhaps one of my other domains - iswack.com or streetwalker2.com I like currystar.com because I think the name sticks easily, but if I can find a better name that stands out just as good, and is related to food + environment + travel… then I may choose that instead.
Since the planned move to Japan has been delayed to possibly the end of the year, I have started to send my resume out to local recruiters since early May. Almost immediately, I was contacted for a possible new role at App?e Asia. Hint: App?e is a fruit. The company is a major consumer electronics company which I have recently become quite fond of. So I was happy to learn from my recruiter that they were planning to add a new role in marketing + data analysis, and they are interested in my skills. The phone interview from Singapore went very well, we actually started by chatting about current events, how we each felt about the recent Olympic torch relay, the worldwide demonstrations and the Chinese nationals’ reactions. I told him that I found it sad that during the relay in Hong Kong, the crowds booed and yelled at and forcibly tried to stop a small group of protesters trying to raise concern for human rights in Tibet. Also, I found it ironic that Chinese nationals who grew up watching and reading state owned media / propaganda, are now protesting that Western media are “twisting the truth about Tibet to slander China”. (I should stop here, else I’ll go on for hours!) So anyway, this company is hugely popular all over the world, but it doesn’t have any official stores in the Asia region, hence the need to web marketing as they are selling through their online stores. We spoke briefly about the company’s need for marketing data and my past experience, and things seemed to match up quite well. So well that we could move on and talk about other things again. I told him about my interests in conservation and the environment, and how I’m trying to create a web community that will help steer customers to environmentally friendly restaurants. He asked me if I think App?e is a company that is environmentally friendly! Honestly, I think the company has a great image, but I don’t know how serious they are about being “good” to the environment. I also said that at this point in time, this whole “green” thing has turned into somewhat like a political tool. It is now bad for your company if you are not “green”! Next, I told him about my research into Crowdsourcing, I explained to him what it is and I told him about my friend Nishiyama-san’s company in Japan. I was really excited because I think App?e customers are known to be quite passionate about the company, and I thought we could really utilize crowdsourcing here to harness the power of their fan base to help the company! This is where it got interesting for me! He told me that although their company’s image seem to be quite open and innovative and user friendly… the fact is, (and we all know it), it is actually quite tyrannical. They like to keep things proprietary, controlled. Part of the reason is because it is run by the founder of the company, and whenever you have a company founder, it is hard to wrestle the control away from him. So, he basically told me, although it would be nice to have their fans help design their future products, it will most likely not happen any time soon. When I thought about the possibility of working at App?e, I was really excited about how I could get an inside scoop and make more connections for a possible partnership with Cuusoo.com in the future. His response just showed me that it may not be so easy for Cuusoo.com to break into some of these “old style” corporations. Still, I told him that although App?e may not officially embrace customer participation… as part of marketing, it is still good to utilize your fan base to help evangelizing. Besides, crowdsourcing isn’t restricted to just official products, at the minimum, we can still provide “official feedback” to crowdsourced designed after market products! We ended our ran overtime conversation with my view of an ideal role, their “not so sure if this position will materialize” (budget?), and more save the planet, use less plastic bag talks. (He mentioned that Ikea started charging for plastic bags and its usage dropped by 80%! That sure was impressive, and I would highly suggest supermarkets do the same, however, I think the typical Ikea customer only has to roll their shopping cart to their cars, so shopping bags are really quite useless! I doubt supermarkets can achieve the same results. Still, even a drop of 30% is better than nothing yeah?) Seems like all the jobs that can get me excited are not based in Hong Kong… sigh… Hong Kong… don’t you have anything exciting to offer?
(Rant!) Generally speaking, that is. I’m sure there are some innovators in Hong Kong too, but from what I can see, Hong Kong people and businesses can be summarized in the following few points:
In the recent months after I’ve moved to Hong Kong, I’ve been working with my former school mates from College to revamp their existing e-commerce pet apparel store and to launch a new business. For that purpose and in preparation for my new role in Tokyo, I’ve been devoting my time to 3 things, 1) learning to develop web sites with Drupal, 2) catching up with the latest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) topics and 3) brushing up on project management skills I learned and used at Yahoo. This post will be about part 1 - Drupal. I had learned of Drupal a few years ago, I was looking for an open source CMS to be used at work internally as an information sharing portal, and Drupal caught my attention because it received support from Google! I didn’t pick it at that time because it didn’t fulfill our functional requirements. However, I did tested it out and honestly, I found it “not very user-friendly”. It was obviously aimed more toward web developers than the regular Joe. What I realized was this: if you just want an easy to use web site to put up contents for yourself and your friends and family, then Drupal is not for you! (Use wordpress instead.) If you’re a business however, and you’re looking for quickly building a highly customizable, highly scalable web site, then use Drupal!
January 23, 1999, I was at your birth place minutes after you were born. I took my eyes off you and you fell from the sofa down to the carpeted floor when you were only days old. I washed you in the bathroom sink when you pooped all over your bed. Weeks later, I took you home… I don’t remember how many weeks old you were… and I keep thinking if I had took you away from your mom too early. I also wonder if I should have fed you can food rather than science Diet puppy dry food. You were a bundle of joy at my house! It was only me and you, you followed me all around, looked up at me following me and hit the wall and yelped! When I practiced my piano, you played with my old sock which I made into a ball for you, and one time you got the strings to tie all around you and then you freaked out and yell! You hid behind me and backed into a corner when some strangers visited us and scared you. You were brave and learned to climb the stairs when you were still so tiny! When I thought you were ready to sleep with me, I let you sleep on top of my blanket and later that night, you pee’d a big one right on top of me! When you were around 5 or 6 months old, my mom came home and I had to give you back to live with your parents and your aunt Miki. That’s where you learned all your bad habits. I brought you back home after a few months and you were all grown up already! You raised your leg to pee, you liked to pee at clothes and plastic hanging down to your height level, you pushed over the garbage bins and dig all the trash out for human food while I was sleeping or when I had gone to work. I would slap you on your bottoms hard, but you never changed your ways. I finally got you neutered… but all your bad habits are already here to stay. You really liked visiting SiuBak, even when you were a baby, you dominated over SiuBak… you were the alpha dog back then! Then, in January of 2002, I brought you to New York, that’s where we stayed with Jojo, the tea cup Yorkie. It was there in the basement where you dug out and ate all the raw pork that was thrown away! Another time, you dug out a Cadbury chocolate bar from my cousin’s suitcase and ate a whole quarter of it!!! These 2 incidents had to be pretty harmful to your health. In June of the same year, SiuBak came to join us and we moved in with Queenie in August. You 2 kept each other company while Queenie and I goes to work. For 5 years, we strolled the streets of our neighborhood in Astoria, walked around Union Square where you 2 goes to the dog playground. We flew back to Seattle a few times for fresh air and visited old friends. We drove to Montreal and Quebec during their Jazz festival and we had to sneak you 2 into motels! We can tell that you 2 are getting old… We bought you nice sweater from Gap so you’re less cold in the winter. We paid more attention to your diet and moved through different brands until we settled on mixed Innova dry food plus can food. I even tried raw meat specifically made for dogs one time, and you 2 really liked it! In late 2006 though, we started to notice that your belly had suddenly grown fat. We brought you to the vet but they all said it was normal. In mid-2007, we brought you 2 back to Seattle where we said goodbye to our old homes and moved to a new house. You 2 stayed behind while Queenie and I went back to pack things up in New York and flew to Hong Kong for our wedding. I flew back to pick you guys up from the dog hotel the week after our wedding. You were a mess! I brought you to the groomer and they had to shave your hair real short again. It sucks coz it’s so cold in Seattle this year! We stayed together at the new house, not doing much… saw another white Christmas… you were too cold to go out! We bought you a new sweater, but it doesn’t look good and you don’t like it. 1 month and 2 days since I came back and picked you up at the hotel, January 9th, 2008, you woke up as usual, real hyper and you seemed hungry coz you haven’t been eating the dry food. I gave you and SiuBak some plain yogurt and you ate it up real fast! Even had some of SiuBak’s share!! We went out to run some errands and came back at around 2pm… you had puked everything out and you looked real guilty. You had also pee’d at a plastic box and I slapped your bottoms for that. For the rest of the day, you just laid there on the couch… you didn’t eat any dinner even when I mixed in some rice for you! You went upstairs after me, laid there in midway, poop coming out of your bottom, I saw you were moving your belly in and out… I thought you were just having trouble defecating… but then, you went downhill real fast! You couldn’t stand up, I picked you up, and you had no strength in you… I searched for the closest veterinarian hospital that still opens, while you gasped for air. At 10:30, we head out toward the hospital, but you probably had already passed away. I kept doing CPR on you, holding you in my arms… but when we arrived, the vet took a look and told me, you’re already gone. Small dogs have very little blood, so most likely, a tumor in your tummy had ruptured and you had internal bleeding… which drained you of your life very fast. By the time you were gasping for air, it was already close to your final moment. I’m sorry… You were only 8 years old, but I guess you had it your way your whole life! Just like your master, you always choose the thrill and rewards of being naughty, even if it means taking punishment afterwards. Oh you had gotten me so angry so many times!… But, holding your body in my arms, I thought to myself… Oh how I’d rather have you be your naughty self now… I’m so sorry… I don’t believe in heaven or even a spiritual world… I know that when a brain goes out, that’s the end of everything… but right now… how I wish there is a dog heaven, so I can see you again when I die… You’ll always live on in my mind… Yoyo 1999-01-23 ~ 2008-01-09 R.I.P.
I’ve written about applying to the University of Tokyo in a previous post. The submission period for that “Foreign Research Student” program at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies was back in October, and I had my application FedEx’ed over in mid-October. The University of Tokyo didn’t send me any acknowledgment notice of having received my application, all I know is from my FedEx tracking number, someone had signed for my package. I knew that they would release the results in December, but it’s now December 29th and I still haven’t received any news yet. :( A couple of weeks back, I went back to look at the info page for the “Foreign Research Student” program, to my horror, the English page has been taken off their website!! The Japanese version is still there, and from it I verified that the results will be sent out in late December. I know the English version was a little out of date, but why had they taken it offline completely rather than updating it? Are they not welcoming “foreigners” in their “Foreign Research Students” program? (Why call it “Foreign Research Students” then??) This week though, I missed a delivery from the Post Office. They left me a slip in the mailbox, I’m not sure what it is but this may be a certified letter from the University of Tokyo… Oh God, I’m so nervous. I’ve done my best in gathering all the requirements and written a pretty damn good research proposal (as seen here in Japanese). I keep telling myself to prepare for the worst, but I know that if I get a rejection letter, I’m still going to be devastated! Meanwhile, it’s more waiting until I go to the Post Office to pick up the mysterious letter / parcel on Monday. If there is a God, I need your blessing now!
After spending more than 2 months in Hong Kong (and way too much money) for my wedding, I’m now back in the US. Just arrived in Seattle yesterday, I gotta say, I had left Seattle 6 years ago and I’ve forgotten what Seattle winters feel like! Boy am I glad I moved away! All this gray clouds and drizzle… I’m feeling suicidal already! Anyway, just wanted to write a quick post because I am watching my favorite show ~ Man vs. Wild on Discovery channel. Part of the reason why I really enjoy this show is that this guy, Bear Grylls, eats a lot of animals / insects / plants RAW! I find it very manly and wasn’t disgusted by it… until just now… This episode, he is in the Sahara desert, and he ate a freaking goat testicle, RAW!!! It took me a split second to connect raw testicle and the stuff it holds inside… and immediate I want to puke! XD LOL
Here’s my research proposal for the Graduate School Application for International Research Students at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. It’s translated into Japanese by my friend Satoko. After spending more than 3 months writing and revising my proposal in English, I had to look for a translator to put it into Japanese. Since I was in Hong Kong at the time, I thought I’d find a local translator to help me. Unfortunately, the only thing I could find was a company that doesn’t have anyone who has a good command of English. I spent HKD $1300 but after receiving the end product, I had to schedule a meeting with the owner of the company and sat down with her for an entire afternoon to redo the whole thing. Still, that wasn’t good enough and my friend Satoko took time out of her busy school schedule to help me polish the paper to this final version. So, here it is!
I’ve meant to come back and post about all the things that I’ve been doing, but I’m not too good with multi-tasking… Whenever I’m too concentrated on one thing, I don’t want to spread myself out to do other things. Anyway, after my last post and my last day at Yahoo!, I flew back to Seattle and stayed for a couple of months. Our family house was still there with no one living in it, so my mom and I went back to pack everything up and put it on the market. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to move from a home of more than 15 years, but I can tell you it’s no fun at all! How I wished DragonBall’s Capsule Corp. was real… LOL. While I was in Seattle, I continued to communicate with my friends at cuusoo.com and refine my research plan. (I’ll post it on here later.) I also emailed the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo to clarify about the research plan and the “Supervising Faculty of Choice”. You have to fill out that field on your research plan, but it seems that you don’t have to contact the professor beforehand. I sent 3 emails to 3 different faculty members, only the 1st one returned my email, the rests simply ignored me. (I sent the email in Japanese too! I’ll also post that here later.) Another requirement was the “Japanese Language Proficiency Level” form, which I needed to find a teacher to administer some sort of test to me. This turned out to be a lot harder than I originally thought! No one at the University of Washington’s Japanese department could do that for me. In the end, I went back and contacted Yamada Keiko in New York, whom I had gotten a last minute crash course from back then for the interview of the position at Yahoo Japan. She gave me the sample JLPT Level 2 test, which was pretty tough!
I’ve just saw a news from Slashdot that someone had taken pictures of every single page of the US version of Harry Potter book 7 and released it on torrents. In fear of what happened to me when book 6 was released, I think I’m going to stop using the internet from now until I this Saturday.
If you’ve read my previous post, you know I said it’s best to first apply as a “foreign trainee / research student” (外国人研究生) to the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo (東京大学大学院 情報学環・学際情報学府). The truth is, unless you got the monbukagakusho scholarship, or you’re willing to fly to Japan in July and August for the entrance exam and interviews, it’s almost impossible for a foreigner to be admitted into Todai (東大 - short for Tokyo Daigaku 東京大学). Once I knew I didn’t get the Monbusho, I started looking into how to go study in Japan as a privately financed student. Apparently, there is a standardized test that you can take to gain admission as an undergraduate. It’s called the Examination for Japanese University Admission for International Students (EJU), it is a test carried out by the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) since 2002. It serves to evaluate whether foreign students who wish to enroll at the undergraduate level at a Japanese university possess the necessary Japanese language skills and basic academic abilities to study at such institutions.
0609 03 Kohei Nishiyama - Future of Lifestyle with Design, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.
First of all, who thought it was a good idea to host an event at 10am on a Saturday morning? Seriously! Who wakes up earlier than 10 on the weekends? I had to set my alarm to wake up early on June 9th. Managed to leave the house way early, but when you need to go somewhere on time, leave it to MTA to fuck it up for you!! There were constructions near Queensboro Plaza on my N,W line, I had to ride the train backwards to Astoria Blvd, and then the outbound train was stuck right before we got to Queensboro Plaza because they were using one platform for both directions! So I ended up being late! Mr. Nishiyama was the first one to present, so I missed some of his speech.
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…
Support JapanesePod101 - visit their website, subscribe their podcast, join their community, spread the word!
2006-07-01 News #23 - Nagasaki Connection Reunited! 何時の日が天皇陛下と皇后陛下に会って、お話をするためです － To meet with the Emperor and Empress someday and speak with them. 怠け者 － なまけもの －slacker
0608 02 Karim Lakhani at Japan Society Tech Epoch, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.
“It’s not about what you know, but who you know.” Networking is important in almost all aspects of life, not just when you’re job hunting.
Support JapanesePod101 - visit their website, subscribe their podcast, join their community, spread the word!
2006-07-04 Beginner Lesson #91 - Going to Meet Someone New Structure - “Going somewhere with a purpose” 明日友達に会いに東京へ行きます －Tomorrow, I’ll got to Tokyo to meet a friend （あす、ともだち・・・） どう言う友達ですか？ －What kind of friend （どう言う友達なんの？） ネット友達です、明日初めて会います －An Internet friend, tomorrow’s the first time we’ll meet どこで知り合ったんですか？ －Where did you meet? （どこで知り合ったんの？） Mixiです、彼女が大好きです －On Mixi! I love her! （・・・ 結婚します！） 相変わらず、直ぐに恋に落ちますね －Same as always, you fall in love fast! （・・・ すぐ、恋に落ちるね） 明日一緒に行きませんか？ －Tomorrow, won’t you go with me? （明日、結婚式に出ってくれませんか？ ・・・・・お願いします。） ごめん、明日面接があります。横浜へ受けに行きます －Sorry, I have an interview tomorrow. I’ll go to Yokohama to take it. （ごめん、明日面接があるから。横浜へ受けに行くんだ） 頑張ってください －Do your best （・・・ 応援してます） お互い頑張りましょう －Let’s both do our best （・・・ おたがい、がんばろうね） メールとも － a friend you only get in touch by email 知り合う － (v) to get to know － もっとお互い良く知り合いましょう － Let’s get to know each other better 知り合い － (n) aquantance － お二人は知り合いですか？ －Are you 2 aquantances? － 知り合いにいい弁護士がいます －I know a good lawyer 恋に落ちる －fall in love ミクシィ － Mixi - the Japanese MySpace ごめん － short for 御免なさい, more formal than すみません どう言う － what kind… (up till now we’ve been using どんな） (literally how to say, what to say {how to describe the “noun”}) 受ける － Grammer Point - to go to do something － ます stem and add に行く － 今日、どこに食べに行きましょう。 ・ 是非、行きましょう。 － 図書館へ本を借りに行きます － ー 東京へジャイアンツの試合を見に行きます － － 九州へ友達と家族に会いに行きます － ー 仕事が終わったので、これから遊びに行きます －
I actually only learned of the Monbusho scholarship on May 2nd, that’s the day my sister and I flew to Taiwan to visit our grandpa. We came back to the States on May 8th, and the application deadline for “Research Student” was May 18th. (Note that I linked to the Japan Information Center at the Consulate General of Japan in Chicago rather than New York. This is because I found that the Chicago site provides more info than the New York site. You may also want to look at other Japan Consulate location to get more information.) I did a little digging on the web, read through the application guidelines. The “must be less than 35 years old” requirement hit me hard and made me seriously think about my career and my future. I decided to go for it! I only had a little more than 2 weeks to prepare and 10 days to get my documents together. Real briefly, the documents that are required are:
Besides writing about my failures and personal experiences, I will also document the process of admission here. The first step is to gather information and to inquire about department specific admission procedures. Here, I’m writing to University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. I will post more information about this graduate school in a later post. When I receive more info from the staff over there, I’ll also post them here, so look forward to it. Academic Affairs Division (学務係 Gakumu Kakari) gakumu@iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp Tel: 03-5841-8769 Fax: 03-3811-5970 —– Forwarded Message —- From: Nicholas Wang To: gakumu@iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 7:08:51 AM Subject: 外国人研究生 Foreign Trainee To the Academic Affairs Division, 初めまして、ニコラス ウォンと申します。 ワシントン大学の卒業生で、Microsoft MSN.comとYahoo.comなどのネット会社で八年間働く経験をもっています。今は修士課程を探しています、来年の四月入学希望です。
After moving to Hong Kong and hearing all the management horror stories, I had an epiphany in regards to the failure of general Chinese / Asian style education. When I hear about poor management, I realized I cannot possibly work under such a manager or in a company that is governed by “command and control”… and then it hit me… when I went to primary school in Hong Kong, I was also quite rebellious! I was only a few years old, but I already acted out against meaningless rules and unreasonable authorities! My mom would scold me and beat me up, some adults would say I was a bad kid for not obeying the rules… but had anyone really thought about why?! I finally understand… even when I was a kid, even when I was still very inexperienced in life, I could tell what’s efficient, what’s effective, what makes sense… When I encountered “bull shit” rules, like when the adults or teachers told us to just follow the rules and do some stupid shit. I was always like… “Why?! Why do I have to do this?! This is stupid!! Why can’t we do it some other way!!” Last week, I talked to my friend who’s a psychiatric therapist and child psychologist. I told her about this, and she said: “Yes, kids nowadays are still the same way… but eventually, they learn to shut up and comply.” And I said: “That is exactly the problem!!” You see, children are born with creativity and curiosity, but as they grow up, the adults beat them into following their sad footsteps… “Shut up and comply!!” That’s exactly what most working adults do these days!
Management that view their people as replaceable “gears” within a machine seems to be the norm these days, but that only applies to low level, mundane jobs that can be handled by robots. Obviously, this shouldn’t be applied to software developers. I would even argue that within any level of a company, it is crucial to recognize and keep your “Grade A” workers! I think I read about this in one of those Harvard Business books, a “Grade A” worker is not only more productive himself, but he also increases the productivity of those that work around him! In the case of a developer, various studies have shown that good developers can be between 10 to 20 times more productive than poor developers! But before we get to the part on how to keep them, the question should be… how to identify them during interviews and hire them?! That’s the question that bothered me the most. A few years back, when Yahoo!’s stock was doubling every few months and we were hiring like crazy, I read a book that gave me some interesting tips on how to do that. It’s really common-sense stuff actually… First, as the person hiring, you need to identify the characteristics you expect in the person you want for the job, and develop an interview technique that will test for these characteristics. Design some questions that can highlight the desired qualities of the candidate and have HR use those questions instead of their stock ones.
One stereotypical image of a Chinese manager / business owner is that they tend to be stingy and would work their employees into the ground. I’ve never worked for a Chinese or Asian company (unless you count Yahoo as Asian :P ), but I have heard enough horror stories and now, my wife works for a local handbag design company in Hong Kong. I get to experience the legendary Chinese management style… second hand. (Phew…) How’s this for a job change? You are a mid-level designer that makes more than $60K a year in New York, working 5 (or 4.5) days a week. You don’t have a boss to look over your shoulder and the decisions you make in your designs are final, albeit there may be some final, minor changes to suit the buyers’ taste. Now, you moved to Hong Kong! Guess what? You have to work 5.5 days a week! (Yes, working on Saturdays are still the norm here in HK!) You make 1/3 of what you used to make in NY, you have to risk your life and travel to lawless China to visit the factories in order to monitor the making of the samples. You have a time card to punch, when you are late, your vacation time are deducted! Your boss or your boss’s wife literally sit behind you to “look over your shoulders”! You have a 1 hr lunch and it’s restricted to 1 - 2 pm! Your boss has the final say on your design, your opinions are not respected. Sales people in the US tell their customers that they can make changes or ask for new designs anytime, because the Chinese here work 24 hrs! Your boss basically expects you to have no life and work your ass off!
My first post in Chinese!! (Well… the title anyways…) This is basically a test of how good my site is optimized for search engines (SEO), or rather, how poorly are Chinese sites out there optimized. :P It’s not just a test for SEO though, I do want to tutor (English and Computer / Technology) and get a little income on the side… Education is part of my interest too… besides working on my “environmentally conscious restaurant menus” site, I am also looking into working something out with online learning. One of my favorite online learning site is JapanesePod101.com, I discovered it when I got my first iPod (5.5G Video… Yes, I didn’t think iPod was “ready” until it hit this generation!), and I had listened to it everyday for over a year when I was commuting to and from the Yahoo! office in New York. I absolutely loved (still do) their podcasts and it had definitely improved my Japanese skills by multiple folds! Because of it, I was able to engage in interviews in Japanese over the phone with one of the managers from Yahoo! Japan!! Even after I stopped listening to it (due to lifestyle changes), I still retained so much of what I had learned that I was able to score very close to a passing score on a mock JLPT Level 2 exam. (which from what I was told, is harder than the actual exam!) Once I’ve launched my current project, I will try to see if I can work something out with Jpod101 and may be create an EnglishPod101 for Hong Kong. Phew… long story… anyways… if you are interested in hiring me for tutoring, then please contact me at 6603-6127, or email clone {dot} of {dot} snake {at} gmail {dot} com, or simply leave a comment below. My name is Nick. A brief summary of myself if you haven’t read any of my other posts on this blog, I was born in Hong Kong, spent my high school / college years in the US, worked for internet giants like Microsoft MSN.com and Yahoo.com after I graduated. I just moved back to Hong Kong in beginning of this year after 16 years of absence, currently working on my own web project, hoping to create something meaningful with my life / time, (because life isn’t just about work and making money)… I hope to create something that Hong Kong people can be proud of to called their own.
As mentioned before, I am creating a product that Hong Kong people can be proud of - a community to help people make environmentally friendly choices on food. I have spoken with some business partners and friends and we are all very excited about the idea. I’ve had this idea for more than a year now, and after leaving Yahoo, I’ve spent time researching into web technologies that would help me achieve this goal. I’ve networked with businesses and industry experts that will help me on different stages of the project… Crowdsourcing, Web marketing, development, Environmental and Social Responsibility professionals, WWF HK, CSR Asia… etc. Finally, it has come down to one of the last, but very important issue - the domain name. I’m thinking about using this one - currystar.com. I registered this name with the intention of opening this food / menu site. I only put my own personal blog on it because the site wasn’t ready yet and I was learning different web blog / CMS systems. So, should I use currystar.com? And move my blog back onto the free cloneofsnake.wordpress.com site? Or perhaps one of my other domains - iswack.com or streetwalker2.com I like currystar.com because I think the name sticks easily, but if I can find a better name that stands out just as good, and is related to food + environment + travel… then I may choose that instead.
Since the planned move to Japan has been delayed to possibly the end of the year, I have started to send my resume out to local recruiters since early May. Almost immediately, I was contacted for a possible new role at App?e Asia. Hint: App?e is a fruit. The company is a major consumer electronics company which I have recently become quite fond of. So I was happy to learn from my recruiter that they were planning to add a new role in marketing + data analysis, and they are interested in my skills. The phone interview from Singapore went very well, we actually started by chatting about current events, how we each felt about the recent Olympic torch relay, the worldwide demonstrations and the Chinese nationals’ reactions. I told him that I found it sad that during the relay in Hong Kong, the crowds booed and yelled at and forcibly tried to stop a small group of protesters trying to raise concern for human rights in Tibet. Also, I found it ironic that Chinese nationals who grew up watching and reading state owned media / propaganda, are now protesting that Western media are “twisting the truth about Tibet to slander China”. (I should stop here, else I’ll go on for hours!) So anyway, this company is hugely popular all over the world, but it doesn’t have any official stores in the Asia region, hence the need to web marketing as they are selling through their online stores. We spoke briefly about the company’s need for marketing data and my past experience, and things seemed to match up quite well. So well that we could move on and talk about other things again. I told him about my interests in conservation and the environment, and how I’m trying to create a web community that will help steer customers to environmentally friendly restaurants. He asked me if I think App?e is a company that is environmentally friendly! Honestly, I think the company has a great image, but I don’t know how serious they are about being “good” to the environment. I also said that at this point in time, this whole “green” thing has turned into somewhat like a political tool. It is now bad for your company if you are not “green”! Next, I told him about my research into Crowdsourcing, I explained to him what it is and I told him about my friend Nishiyama-san’s company in Japan. I was really excited because I think App?e customers are known to be quite passionate about the company, and I thought we could really utilize crowdsourcing here to harness the power of their fan base to help the company! This is where it got interesting for me! He told me that although their company’s image seem to be quite open and innovative and user friendly… the fact is, (and we all know it), it is actually quite tyrannical. They like to keep things proprietary, controlled. Part of the reason is because it is run by the founder of the company, and whenever you have a company founder, it is hard to wrestle the control away from him. So, he basically told me, although it would be nice to have their fans help design their future products, it will most likely not happen any time soon. When I thought about the possibility of working at App?e, I was really excited about how I could get an inside scoop and make more connections for a possible partnership with Cuusoo.com in the future. His response just showed me that it may not be so easy for Cuusoo.com to break into some of these “old style” corporations. Still, I told him that although App?e may not officially embrace customer participation… as part of marketing, it is still good to utilize your fan base to help evangelizing. Besides, crowdsourcing isn’t restricted to just official products, at the minimum, we can still provide “official feedback” to crowdsourced designed after market products! We ended our ran overtime conversation with my view of an ideal role, their “not so sure if this position will materialize” (budget?), and more save the planet, use less plastic bag talks. (He mentioned that Ikea started charging for plastic bags and its usage dropped by 80%! That sure was impressive, and I would highly suggest supermarkets do the same, however, I think the typical Ikea customer only has to roll their shopping cart to their cars, so shopping bags are really quite useless! I doubt supermarkets can achieve the same results. Still, even a drop of 30% is better than nothing yeah?) Seems like all the jobs that can get me excited are not based in Hong Kong… sigh… Hong Kong… don’t you have anything exciting to offer?
(Rant!) Generally speaking, that is. I’m sure there are some innovators in Hong Kong too, but from what I can see, Hong Kong people and businesses can be summarized in the following few points:
In the recent months after I’ve moved to Hong Kong, I’ve been working with my former school mates from College to revamp their existing e-commerce pet apparel store and to launch a new business. For that purpose and in preparation for my new role in Tokyo, I’ve been devoting my time to 3 things, 1) learning to develop web sites with Drupal, 2) catching up with the latest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) topics and 3) brushing up on project management skills I learned and used at Yahoo. This post will be about part 1 - Drupal. I had learned of Drupal a few years ago, I was looking for an open source CMS to be used at work internally as an information sharing portal, and Drupal caught my attention because it received support from Google! I didn’t pick it at that time because it didn’t fulfill our functional requirements. However, I did tested it out and honestly, I found it “not very user-friendly”. It was obviously aimed more toward web developers than the regular Joe. What I realized was this: if you just want an easy to use web site to put up contents for yourself and your friends and family, then Drupal is not for you! (Use wordpress instead.) If you’re a business however, and you’re looking for quickly building a highly customizable, highly scalable web site, then use Drupal!
January 23, 1999, I was at your birth place minutes after you were born. I took my eyes off you and you fell from the sofa down to the carpeted floor when you were only days old. I washed you in the bathroom sink when you pooped all over your bed. Weeks later, I took you home… I don’t remember how many weeks old you were… and I keep thinking if I had took you away from your mom too early. I also wonder if I should have fed you can food rather than science Diet puppy dry food. You were a bundle of joy at my house! It was only me and you, you followed me all around, looked up at me following me and hit the wall and yelped! When I practiced my piano, you played with my old sock which I made into a ball for you, and one time you got the strings to tie all around you and then you freaked out and yell! You hid behind me and backed into a corner when some strangers visited us and scared you. You were brave and learned to climb the stairs when you were still so tiny! When I thought you were ready to sleep with me, I let you sleep on top of my blanket and later that night, you pee’d a big one right on top of me! When you were around 5 or 6 months old, my mom came home and I had to give you back to live with your parents and your aunt Miki. That’s where you learned all your bad habits. I brought you back home after a few months and you were all grown up already! You raised your leg to pee, you liked to pee at clothes and plastic hanging down to your height level, you pushed over the garbage bins and dig all the trash out for human food while I was sleeping or when I had gone to work. I would slap you on your bottoms hard, but you never changed your ways. I finally got you neutered… but all your bad habits are already here to stay. You really liked visiting SiuBak, even when you were a baby, you dominated over SiuBak… you were the alpha dog back then! Then, in January of 2002, I brought you to New York, that’s where we stayed with Jojo, the tea cup Yorkie. It was there in the basement where you dug out and ate all the raw pork that was thrown away! Another time, you dug out a Cadbury chocolate bar from my cousin’s suitcase and ate a whole quarter of it!!! These 2 incidents had to be pretty harmful to your health. In June of the same year, SiuBak came to join us and we moved in with Queenie in August. You 2 kept each other company while Queenie and I goes to work. For 5 years, we strolled the streets of our neighborhood in Astoria, walked around Union Square where you 2 goes to the dog playground. We flew back to Seattle a few times for fresh air and visited old friends. We drove to Montreal and Quebec during their Jazz festival and we had to sneak you 2 into motels! We can tell that you 2 are getting old… We bought you nice sweater from Gap so you’re less cold in the winter. We paid more attention to your diet and moved through different brands until we settled on mixed Innova dry food plus can food. I even tried raw meat specifically made for dogs one time, and you 2 really liked it! In late 2006 though, we started to notice that your belly had suddenly grown fat. We brought you to the vet but they all said it was normal. In mid-2007, we brought you 2 back to Seattle where we said goodbye to our old homes and moved to a new house. You 2 stayed behind while Queenie and I went back to pack things up in New York and flew to Hong Kong for our wedding. I flew back to pick you guys up from the dog hotel the week after our wedding. You were a mess! I brought you to the groomer and they had to shave your hair real short again. It sucks coz it’s so cold in Seattle this year! We stayed together at the new house, not doing much… saw another white Christmas… you were too cold to go out! We bought you a new sweater, but it doesn’t look good and you don’t like it. 1 month and 2 days since I came back and picked you up at the hotel, January 9th, 2008, you woke up as usual, real hyper and you seemed hungry coz you haven’t been eating the dry food. I gave you and SiuBak some plain yogurt and you ate it up real fast! Even had some of SiuBak’s share!! We went out to run some errands and came back at around 2pm… you had puked everything out and you looked real guilty. You had also pee’d at a plastic box and I slapped your bottoms for that. For the rest of the day, you just laid there on the couch… you didn’t eat any dinner even when I mixed in some rice for you! You went upstairs after me, laid there in midway, poop coming out of your bottom, I saw you were moving your belly in and out… I thought you were just having trouble defecating… but then, you went downhill real fast! You couldn’t stand up, I picked you up, and you had no strength in you… I searched for the closest veterinarian hospital that still opens, while you gasped for air. At 10:30, we head out toward the hospital, but you probably had already passed away. I kept doing CPR on you, holding you in my arms… but when we arrived, the vet took a look and told me, you’re already gone. Small dogs have very little blood, so most likely, a tumor in your tummy had ruptured and you had internal bleeding… which drained you of your life very fast. By the time you were gasping for air, it was already close to your final moment. I’m sorry… You were only 8 years old, but I guess you had it your way your whole life! Just like your master, you always choose the thrill and rewards of being naughty, even if it means taking punishment afterwards. Oh you had gotten me so angry so many times!… But, holding your body in my arms, I thought to myself… Oh how I’d rather have you be your naughty self now… I’m so sorry… I don’t believe in heaven or even a spiritual world… I know that when a brain goes out, that’s the end of everything… but right now… how I wish there is a dog heaven, so I can see you again when I die… You’ll always live on in my mind… Yoyo 1999-01-23 ~ 2008-01-09 R.I.P.
I’ve written about applying to the University of Tokyo in a previous post. The submission period for that “Foreign Research Student” program at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies was back in October, and I had my application FedEx’ed over in mid-October. The University of Tokyo didn’t send me any acknowledgment notice of having received my application, all I know is from my FedEx tracking number, someone had signed for my package. I knew that they would release the results in December, but it’s now December 29th and I still haven’t received any news yet. :( A couple of weeks back, I went back to look at the info page for the “Foreign Research Student” program, to my horror, the English page has been taken off their website!! The Japanese version is still there, and from it I verified that the results will be sent out in late December. I know the English version was a little out of date, but why had they taken it offline completely rather than updating it? Are they not welcoming “foreigners” in their “Foreign Research Students” program? (Why call it “Foreign Research Students” then??) This week though, I missed a delivery from the Post Office. They left me a slip in the mailbox, I’m not sure what it is but this may be a certified letter from the University of Tokyo… Oh God, I’m so nervous. I’ve done my best in gathering all the requirements and written a pretty damn good research proposal (as seen here in Japanese). I keep telling myself to prepare for the worst, but I know that if I get a rejection letter, I’m still going to be devastated! Meanwhile, it’s more waiting until I go to the Post Office to pick up the mysterious letter / parcel on Monday. If there is a God, I need your blessing now!
After spending more than 2 months in Hong Kong (and way too much money) for my wedding, I’m now back in the US. Just arrived in Seattle yesterday, I gotta say, I had left Seattle 6 years ago and I’ve forgotten what Seattle winters feel like! Boy am I glad I moved away! All this gray clouds and drizzle… I’m feeling suicidal already! Anyway, just wanted to write a quick post because I am watching my favorite show ~ Man vs. Wild on Discovery channel. Part of the reason why I really enjoy this show is that this guy, Bear Grylls, eats a lot of animals / insects / plants RAW! I find it very manly and wasn’t disgusted by it… until just now… This episode, he is in the Sahara desert, and he ate a freaking goat testicle, RAW!!! It took me a split second to connect raw testicle and the stuff it holds inside… and immediate I want to puke! XD LOL
Here’s my research proposal for the Graduate School Application for International Research Students at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. It’s translated into Japanese by my friend Satoko. After spending more than 3 months writing and revising my proposal in English, I had to look for a translator to put it into Japanese. Since I was in Hong Kong at the time, I thought I’d find a local translator to help me. Unfortunately, the only thing I could find was a company that doesn’t have anyone who has a good command of English. I spent HKD $1300 but after receiving the end product, I had to schedule a meeting with the owner of the company and sat down with her for an entire afternoon to redo the whole thing. Still, that wasn’t good enough and my friend Satoko took time out of her busy school schedule to help me polish the paper to this final version. So, here it is!
I’ve meant to come back and post about all the things that I’ve been doing, but I’m not too good with multi-tasking… Whenever I’m too concentrated on one thing, I don’t want to spread myself out to do other things. Anyway, after my last post and my last day at Yahoo!, I flew back to Seattle and stayed for a couple of months. Our family house was still there with no one living in it, so my mom and I went back to pack everything up and put it on the market. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to move from a home of more than 15 years, but I can tell you it’s no fun at all! How I wished DragonBall’s Capsule Corp. was real… LOL. While I was in Seattle, I continued to communicate with my friends at cuusoo.com and refine my research plan. (I’ll post it on here later.) I also emailed the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo to clarify about the research plan and the “Supervising Faculty of Choice”. You have to fill out that field on your research plan, but it seems that you don’t have to contact the professor beforehand. I sent 3 emails to 3 different faculty members, only the 1st one returned my email, the rests simply ignored me. (I sent the email in Japanese too! I’ll also post that here later.) Another requirement was the “Japanese Language Proficiency Level” form, which I needed to find a teacher to administer some sort of test to me. This turned out to be a lot harder than I originally thought! No one at the University of Washington’s Japanese department could do that for me. In the end, I went back and contacted Yamada Keiko in New York, whom I had gotten a last minute crash course from back then for the interview of the position at Yahoo Japan. She gave me the sample JLPT Level 2 test, which was pretty tough!
I’ve just saw a news from Slashdot that someone had taken pictures of every single page of the US version of Harry Potter book 7 and released it on torrents. In fear of what happened to me when book 6 was released, I think I’m going to stop using the internet from now until I this Saturday.
If you’ve read my previous post, you know I said it’s best to first apply as a “foreign trainee / research student” (外国人研究生) to the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo (東京大学大学院 情報学環・学際情報学府). The truth is, unless you got the monbukagakusho scholarship, or you’re willing to fly to Japan in July and August for the entrance exam and interviews, it’s almost impossible for a foreigner to be admitted into Todai (東大 - short for Tokyo Daigaku 東京大学). Once I knew I didn’t get the Monbusho, I started looking into how to go study in Japan as a privately financed student. Apparently, there is a standardized test that you can take to gain admission as an undergraduate. It’s called the Examination for Japanese University Admission for International Students (EJU), it is a test carried out by the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) since 2002. It serves to evaluate whether foreign students who wish to enroll at the undergraduate level at a Japanese university possess the necessary Japanese language skills and basic academic abilities to study at such institutions.
0609 03 Kohei Nishiyama - Future of Lifestyle with Design, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.
First of all, who thought it was a good idea to host an event at 10am on a Saturday morning? Seriously! Who wakes up earlier than 10 on the weekends? I had to set my alarm to wake up early on June 9th. Managed to leave the house way early, but when you need to go somewhere on time, leave it to MTA to fuck it up for you!! There were constructions near Queensboro Plaza on my N,W line, I had to ride the train backwards to Astoria Blvd, and then the outbound train was stuck right before we got to Queensboro Plaza because they were using one platform for both directions! So I ended up being late! Mr. Nishiyama was the first one to present, so I missed some of his speech.
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…
Support JapanesePod101 - visit their website, subscribe their podcast, join their community, spread the word!
2006-07-01 News #23 - Nagasaki Connection Reunited! 何時の日が天皇陛下と皇后陛下に会って、お話をするためです － To meet with the Emperor and Empress someday and speak with them. 怠け者 － なまけもの －slacker
0608 02 Karim Lakhani at Japan Society Tech Epoch, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.
“It’s not about what you know, but who you know.” Networking is important in almost all aspects of life, not just when you’re job hunting.
Support JapanesePod101 - visit their website, subscribe their podcast, join their community, spread the word!
2006-07-04 Beginner Lesson #91 - Going to Meet Someone New Structure - “Going somewhere with a purpose” 明日友達に会いに東京へ行きます －Tomorrow, I’ll got to Tokyo to meet a friend （あす、ともだち・・・） どう言う友達ですか？ －What kind of friend （どう言う友達なんの？） ネット友達です、明日初めて会います －An Internet friend, tomorrow’s the first time we’ll meet どこで知り合ったんですか？ －Where did you meet? （どこで知り合ったんの？） Mixiです、彼女が大好きです －On Mixi! I love her! （・・・ 結婚します！） 相変わらず、直ぐに恋に落ちますね －Same as always, you fall in love fast! （・・・ すぐ、恋に落ちるね） 明日一緒に行きませんか？ －Tomorrow, won’t you go with me? （明日、結婚式に出ってくれませんか？ ・・・・・お願いします。） ごめん、明日面接があります。横浜へ受けに行きます －Sorry, I have an interview tomorrow. I’ll go to Yokohama to take it. （ごめん、明日面接があるから。横浜へ受けに行くんだ） 頑張ってください －Do your best （・・・ 応援してます） お互い頑張りましょう －Let’s both do our best （・・・ おたがい、がんばろうね） メールとも － a friend you only get in touch by email 知り合う － (v) to get to know － もっとお互い良く知り合いましょう － Let’s get to know each other better 知り合い － (n) aquantance － お二人は知り合いですか？ －Are you 2 aquantances? － 知り合いにいい弁護士がいます －I know a good lawyer 恋に落ちる －fall in love ミクシィ － Mixi - the Japanese MySpace ごめん － short for 御免なさい, more formal than すみません どう言う － what kind… (up till now we’ve been using どんな） (literally how to say, what to say {how to describe the “noun”}) 受ける － Grammer Point - to go to do something － ます stem and add に行く － 今日、どこに食べに行きましょう。 ・ 是非、行きましょう。 － 図書館へ本を借りに行きます － ー 東京へジャイアンツの試合を見に行きます － － 九州へ友達と家族に会いに行きます － ー 仕事が終わったので、これから遊びに行きます －
I actually only learned of the Monbusho scholarship on May 2nd, that’s the day my sister and I flew to Taiwan to visit our grandpa. We came back to the States on May 8th, and the application deadline for “Research Student” was May 18th. (Note that I linked to the Japan Information Center at the Consulate General of Japan in Chicago rather than New York. This is because I found that the Chicago site provides more info than the New York site. You may also want to look at other Japan Consulate location to get more information.) I did a little digging on the web, read through the application guidelines. The “must be less than 35 years old” requirement hit me hard and made me seriously think about my career and my future. I decided to go for it! I only had a little more than 2 weeks to prepare and 10 days to get my documents together. Real briefly, the documents that are required are:
Besides writing about my failures and personal experiences, I will also document the process of admission here. The first step is to gather information and to inquire about department specific admission procedures. Here, I’m writing to University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. I will post more information about this graduate school in a later post. When I receive more info from the staff over there, I’ll also post them here, so look forward to it. Academic Affairs Division (学務係 Gakumu Kakari) gakumu@iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp Tel: 03-5841-8769 Fax: 03-3811-5970 —– Forwarded Message —- From: Nicholas Wang To: gakumu@iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 7:08:51 AM Subject: 外国人研究生 Foreign Trainee To the Academic Affairs Division, 初めまして、ニコラス ウォンと申します。 ワシントン大学の卒業生で、Microsoft MSN.comとYahoo.comなどのネット会社で八年間働く経験をもっています。今は修士課程を探しています、来年の四月入学希望です。