Missed your “Simple Saturday” posting SSW :o. I love alliterations.
Looks like a really cold spell in NYC again. I must say that winter this year all over the world (i.e. California, Taiwan, Malaysia, NY/NJ) has just been bizarre. I wonder what that means by way of global warming.
Hmmmm…
=YC
So while a lot of my Malaysia trip was loads of fun, I didn’t speak of the “horrors” of doing business there. This one experience sort of typifies the infrastructure limitations of Malaysia and how sometimes I wonder how it would ever drag itself into the modern world. Right now, it’s just a step above Philippines and Indonesia and Thailand but only because those places are just so backwards. Vietnam don’t know much about but they can’t help where they are; they can blame the US for bombing them back to the stone age during the war.
So the situation is this. I needed to receive a faxed copy of my I-130 petition from my lawyer. What should’ve taken 30 minutes turned into a 4 hour morning and early afternoon ordeal. I use jfax so that I could download it anywhere in the world and print it out. Theory is great and works fine in the US… but then there’s the Malaysia experience. Because B- stays in the Cheras neighborhood of KL, we had to find a local i-cafe. We did but it was so slow and we couldn’t actually view it or print it out. Firstly, all the internet cafe’s have pretty much disabled any pict viewers, I guess to protect against porn surfing. So there was nothing on the i-cafe machines that could read a .TIFF file. Doh. Secondly, if if I could find a viewer that could read it, I couldn’t print because internet cafe’s usually don’t have printers. Their machines are just gaming stations, who needs to print? Ipoh was slightly better. B- lives near Coffeenet which is a nice i-cafe. Just they don’t have microphones but lots of sound.
So, we’re running around in downtown KL itself, talking with the lawyer. Now, this itself was a difficulty. My lawyer couldn’t call through to our cell phones which I know exists because when I use a calling card to call Bridget from the US, I sometimes can’t get through too. The solution, buy a Malaysia calling card and call the lawyer. Simple right? Nope, not really. We bought a Flexicard from Digi Malaysia. Well, we couldn’t use that card to dial either from the public phones or the one phone we found at an i-cafe in KL near the bus station, Puduraya. Finally, getting desperate because we needed to get this out, we called on B-‘s friend who happens to work in a big company. Being the Deputy General Manager, he would have the stuff for us to print out. So yup, we gave up, called him and ended up printing out everything in his office, after 3 hours of running around town.
=YC
I can not tell anymore …. A few weeks ago, there was a partial rant on the topic from an oblique angle. The whole Howard Dean and Dr. Steinberg touched it off I believe. Anyways, I think the Titanic and Dean’s campaign were remarkably similar in how fast they sunk.
But I digress…. A J kindly forwarded this website to me and fair warning to all, it’s highly irreverant, insulting, amusing, stereotypical, but definitely entertaining: The honest marriage and relationship advice for men. I had to share this site with B- and she found it shocking, amusing and scary all at once. She did ask me, “Is any of this true”? I flatly said, “Yes.”
My favorites links are:
American women are fucked, they priced themselves out of the market
Fucking decent mid-priced whores twice a week is less expensive than a wife
Marriage means you become a slave to your job
Hilarious quotes:
American women offer up a shit sandwich and then get pissed off when men go elsewhere to eat.
What is the relevance here? You wouldn’t get such an obvious Howard Dean and Dr. Steinberg situation in Asia. That’s nothing to say about what goes on behind the doors, but solidarity and long-term are just so much more the norm in other cultures than in the US when it comes to relationships and to marriage in general.
And this sort of thing goes on in Asia too as a lot more women begin to adopt more Westernized notions of relationships and attitudes. There’s a hierarchy nowadays I’m beginning to detect. Men avoiding the obvious choices like China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and looking toward Malaysians, Vietnamese, Thai women. The “headache” of dealing with women who’s sole aim is to marry well and be kept for the rest of their lives is a guy’s nightmare seconded probably by divorce and losing everything.
My education here of the sexes has been fascinating and not sure what to make of it. Need more time to digest it. I’m not suggesting that things are amiss with me and B-, things are really wonderful and still “honeymoonish” but going through counseling and having serious chats has helped. We’re still learning about each other, nothing is perfect, we have good and bad qualities. Looking forward to August 31st.
=YC
So I’m back in Taipei again…. just arrived this evening. SO that means more consistent blogging. Malaysia has infrastructure issues which make being on-line quite difficult. Even many of their internet cafe’s can be really iffy. Only going to the well-developed areas and areas where there are many foreigners can you be guaranteed reliable internet access.
It was sorta weird getting on that flight heading back — to SFO eventually. Mixed bag of feelings… unfinished business but also new opportunities await. Will be missing B- a whole lot but I think this time, our separation will be shorter. Having successfully gotten her I-130 approved Monday we relaxed at the Pan Pacific Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. Now, it’s getting some affidavits signed, submitted and waiting for an interview date. Hopefully all will be completed in 10 weeks time. I mixed in some networking and work too as it just so happened that PMI-Malaysia was having their conference on “Managing for Success” which I attended and met some good people. This was the first time since 1994 that I’ve been away from the US for such a long time and made me realize again that America is not the center of the universe and that we all need to expand our horizons and challenge our biases. At the same point, despite all the stuff happening in the world, American professionals are still viewed respectfully and even highly desired. All in all, the trip was really great for so many reasons.
It was also great because of all the good food I had there. Before I left for my trip I worked for 3 months go lose 15lbs. This was a landmark event considering that in some 12+ yrs I’d never lost weight. It was just in time too for photoshoot and the wedding pics turned out great. B- and I opted for more of the traditional scenes and costumes. The only chinese costume we did was the Shanghai style which turned out well despite their suit being 1-2 sizes too small for me. Let me tell you, that photo shoot was really hard to do, from 9am to 6pm with a one hour lunch break. And I had the easy part! We did 6 costumes and the time spent to make up B- probably took 1/3 of the time. We ended up choosing 22 pics + 2 family pics of B-‘s family and me. The big bonus was getting the negatives for us to develop more. Most of the wedding photo places nowadays have gone all digital, using the Nikon as the standard. For portraits and such, I think digital is still lacking having seen a few samples. Of course, having an excellent Photoshop expert to clean up the pics is a big part of it. We used France-Taipei, which is one of many wedding photo chains. We should be getting back the pics end of April if not sooner. Our wedding day is August 31st and will be publishing more about it to our friends and family soon.
Long day ahead tomorrow as I begin my first day at Adecco with AJ. Should be fun :-).
=YC
I am now husband and wife according to the laws of Malaysia. It’s pretty neato to be married by an uncle of mine :-).
It’s hot here boys and girls! We had a torrential downpour yesterday and it is still awfully hot and humid. Ipoh is hotter than Kuala Lumpur. Hanging out here in an internet cafe waiting to hook up with A J.
Hope you folks are doing well.
=YC
Well, only a couple more days left in Taiwan. It’s been a really great trip. Very busy all around. Met a lot of people, business associates of AJ’s as well as family members I didn’t know I had until about 2 weeks ago. More or less recovered from my stomach problems and back to eating well again.
Done shopping for Malaysia and soon to be getting ready for it.
=YC
Jobs Lost Abroad: Host of New Causes for an Old Problem
Mr. Neustrup a Silicon Valley worker is quoted: “It’s great for these developing countries to move up and adopt this technology,” he said. “The trouble for us in the U.S. is that we’re at the top of the ladder getting squeezed. And I’m not sure there is a good answer.”
That’s the crux of the matter. The people at the top are squeezed and there’s no way to go but down. The room at the top is too small and unachievable for most people at a certain age level. You think that after X many years of formal education, continuing education and other professional schooling, you can be relatively safe of your career and financial path but that’s not possible any longer. The US worker is left more and more to her own devices. No support by way of benefits or job training by companies and no retirement support by the federal government (i.e. Social Security being privatized). So Kristof’s view that education is the answer is belied by the types of professional’s losing their jobs, the highly educated ones who have little room for maneuver. So, with “creative destruction” occuring in the workplace, highly educated individuals need to find their place elsewhere to make their fortunes elsewhere (i.e. entrepreneurship)
In the short term, the economic power of these highly educated (and paid) professional workforce will be felt. It’s just so happens that the interest rate is low and it must be low because that’s what’s floating the country since people are so highly leveraged. But this debt must be financed by overseas money and that’s a fickle situation. We live in interesting times and I’m sure a study of history would shed a better light of what may happen.
=YC
Blog referenced: http://www.triscribe.com/wp/b2trackback.php/175
Cellphone story, …. reminds me of the day in high school where 2 cars dragged down the main stretch of road at 3am in the morning. Drivers were drunk and the cars bumped each other and went careening off into the big massive oak trees lining the road. Heads were decapitated, brains splattered on the road, and bodies impaled. It was an utter mess. Popular kids. My reaction was of true Darwinian fashion…. If you’re that stupid….
As for stereotypes, it’s a fine line to tread. I think it depends on whether the characteristics are used “positively” or “negatively” and on the writer’s agenda. When engaged in historical, social analysis, people’s characteristics is important to understand. You do so from analyzing a variety of data, ranging from political institutions, other social institutions and practices, cultural texts, books, philosophy, wars, land, weather etc to get a picture of “what kind of people” were X? To some that’s an exercise in stereotyping carried to its furthest. That’s typical social and anthropological analysis in which I was trained. People do this all the time, very naturally and it’s not taken as a negative in many parts of the world. Even in great China, the Chinese are very different people and each have differing opinions of what “type” they are. All interesting and useful information when used as one of many data points.
People like Kristof in my view are more like anthropological-journalists. His work is important but I’ve not always agreed with his conclusions. Kristof should have expanded more on his view and perhaps he will in an essay, where-as an op-ed piece must be short. The whole outsourcing business is traumatic upheaval for many people and I am living in it. What will happen next is not clear. Now many of my colleagues and myself would bristle at his suggestion that we, the white collar professional class are not educated enough. We are highly educated, highly credentialed and extremely experienced in business and our industry. Yet, despite this, we are losing out to lower cost providers in India, China, Eastern Europe etc.
My belief is that it’s not the problem of the American workers, but rather the business environment (less government assistance, more capitalistic) and business mismanagement that’s the root of the problem. US human resources are not used optimally. The US work force is mostly highly educated and flexible as compared to many nations. Educationally, the gap is narrowingly and has always been and that’s no surprise and not enough to explain away this trend. With the advent of the Internet, the world literally has no walls or barriers. The only wall is language and that is being assailed everyday in every way possible.
Is it a matter of the US education improving K-12 to compete with the rest of the world? That’s hard to say, depends on what you’re educating for? If it’s educating as a training to be a productive workforce, it’s something that I don’t think the US should be doing. You see, it’s the US competitive advantage with its current educational system that breeds creativity which no country can match. If you want to understand why the US in merely 250 yrs of history is the world’s only superpower, you need to understand it’s characteristic of creativity and renewal, where old is improved, altered, changed to be better than what it was before. This is both good and bad, but what it does is continuously propels the US forward, not looking backward. (See Arnold Toynbee’s view of historical progress). Other countries and nations are held back by their historical roots that act as anchors.
Kristof suggests the Asian method is one which the US should aim for and I’m not sure about that. The Asian educational system does not allow for creativity because there is no room for dissent, discussion or difference. What you do get are people who take orders very well, extremely suitable for assembly line work. And, no mistake that today’s assembly line worker is the software developer, analagous to the factory worker of the early 20th century, that built steel, cars, and other large manufactured goods used to build the infrastructure of the world. The software developer is creating the infrastructure of the 21st century where all his work is used to help run the machines that make our daily lives go. In this case, then yes, other workers are probably more adept at that sort of work than the US worker who’s primary strength is not brute force repetitive work type but knowledge work type, creativity-based.
What is needed to be competitive for the US worker is a combination of discipline (Asian) and creativity (US). Without a doubt, Asian education is more difficult from K-12 than in the US, but the US graduate education system is still far superior than the world’s. The US secondary education does not help prepare students for the rigors of college as well as other nations. On the other hand, many of the education in other nations tend to be from the elite class leaving behind many many disenfranchised. At least in the US, where there is parity, no one will be left behind if they don’t want to be left behind.
I go back to efficient use of human resources and I fall back to Peter Drucker who decades ago, predicted the rise of the knowledge worker. He has the answers and the US businesses have done very little to heed his words. The American worker is paying for those sins. Who knows what is going to happen. If a person with 2 degrees and multiple certifications and licenses can’t make a honest living, then what is really required to succeed, let alone survive?
=YC
I don’t know if anyone is catching this latest “reality” TV show but I think in terms of “reality” it has much more of it than the others. Before I left, I caught the one episode where they were dressed in airline stewardess uniforms and kicked the mens’ ass with it. Yeah, sure, sex sells.
The telling statement is this: “These guys have nothing—not power, not sex.” It’s even more true when you consider women make up more than half the work force and the mid-level managers are also probably staffed at that level. Anecdotally, of the people who are out of work, here in Silicon Valley, it’s the men who are out of work and falling back on their wive’s job.
On a side note, my Taiwan trip hit a glitch. I ate a really bad (super hot) chili at a Thai place in 101 Taipei Center and it knocked me out for a whole day. Slowly recovering….
=YC