I hate to think that the 2000’s decade has flown by so fast, but already there are the decade in review stuff. Newsweek has this odd “What If Gore Won” feature – one where a President Al Gore made a disastrous presidency, without preventing 9/11/01 and still going into two not-very-good wars (by Michael Isikoff) and another where President Al Gore didn’t do too bad a job (with a ridiculously recalcitrant VP Joe Lieberman; he also nominates Obama to the US Supreme Court, as J. O’Connor’s successor – what an alternate universe!) (by David Rakoff).
Personally, my favorite Parallel Universe President Al Gore is this Saturday Night Live skit that I had embedded a long time ago (and re-post again).
….in Hong Kong at least it’s not so sudden like say Beijing. The change in weather is nice and also making things somewhat more mellow for me. On the other hand, things have been very busy with the year end and should be full-on until December. Looking forward then to some R&R and spending time with family.
But, the fast approachng year end isn’t giving me a lot of chance to catch up. I have some training courses to take in Tokyo after X-mas from Insights Learning & Development. It’s continuing my journey toward HR and people focus in my professional life. At the end of the day, it’s about the people. It’ll be fun for this and looking forward to it. I’m also going to try winging the CGEIT exam in December.
Hope you folks are doing good there. One of these days I’m going to be able to make it back for a visit. Meanwhile, life goes on here in Asia and the future seems good.
This Slate article by Daniel Gross raises a good point: it’s kind of hard to criticize government health insurance if you’re a recipient of government health insurance. Well, no one said that hypocrisy isn’t funny.
Saw “Julie & Julia ” (FC had also seen it; he said the movie makes one hungry; I’ll second that). Good movie!
This was a great story about how Roxanne Shante, one of the first female rappers of the 1980’s, went on to earn a Phd. in psychology from Cornell, all paid by the recording company, per her recording contract (which otherwise gave her paltry royalties, sadly). Apparently, those clauses in an entertainment contract (I think these clauses are in some professional athletes’ contracts) that the employer pays for the education of the employee – or the service provider, if you will …- are worth it. You can get your dream, or pursue new ones.
Speaking of the 1980’s, interesting ideas on what ye olde ’80 tv stars should do. But, really – I count Arsenio Hall as a 1990’s tv star, not an ’80’s star (contrary to what Television Without Pity says in the foregoing link). Oh well.
Thought this was an interesting article in Time magazine about John Kerry‘s post 2004 election life and how his current situation – as Senator from Massachusetts dealing with the future and a leading foreign affairs leader – has been. I thought it was poignant that the article mentions how Kerry has on his wall his invitation to the Obama inauguration and a handwritten note from Obama thanking him: “‘I’m here because of you’” – a reminder that it was because of Kerry that Obama made that amazing speech at the 2004 convention and received an early endorsement.
Of all the various pieces about the presidential summer reading, I thought John Dickerson’s analysis was most pragmatic yet insightful (yeah, really, is he really going to read all that? Bill Clinton was a voracious reader, apparently, and it was a bit much when it turned out he read the same mainstream mysteries that I was at the time). But, really, couldn’t President Obama read something nice and light? It kind of makes me feel bad that I still haven’t finished reading the McCullough’s bio on Adams or Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” for some years now, and Obama apparently will have already gotten through both books by the end of the summer (well, granted he read Goodwin last year, and took the Adams one with him to the Vineyard this summer)…
I’m not ready for the fall, but Television Without Pity is already doing the fall tv previews – complete with recommendations on what to watch, dvr, or online. While I am looking forward to news episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” and “Fringe,” and even the new shows “Glee” and “Community,” (and maybe even more “Law & Order” so we can watch more of the alternate universe DA election of Jack McCoy and the continued hijinks of ADA Michael Cutter), the shows I really want to watch aren’t going to be on until… 2010… (I’m talking about you, “Lost,” among other things).
I think series like “Smallville” outlasted its lifespan. (technically, so has “Heroes,” in my opinion, but apparently there are still fans out there). “House” has tired me out too, so perhaps I am in need of a boost of good new stuff.
Because we’re lawyers and Asians here at triscribe, consider the following:
Puer tea (or Pu-erh or other spellings) is about to be better regulated, in hopes that it’d be the next big thing, like Champagne from Champagne or something. Hmmm…
I’ll concede that I ought to read more Asian/Asian Americans. I should read more, period. Can someone fund my lottery fund to help me pursue this lovely idea?… hmmm….
I had no idea: Scottish actor Gerard Butler was almost a lawyer, but bailed on qualifying (or failed or was asked to leave his apprenticeship or however it works in Scotland) and ended up acting instead.
What is with lawyers/lawyers-to-be and the arts? Hmm….
Trailer for a C-SPAN thing – apparently, they might have actually gotten the Nine to be talking heads; minus Alito and Sotomayor, so a tad dated – but still – they’re actually all talking? About the court building itself, of course – not about anything substantive… Still, an interesting trailer. Very spiffy looking.
With the new Star Trek movie the amount of hits daily to my blog went up 4-5 times. Apparently people were clicking on one of my pictures where I was comparing Star Trek with successful IT people. Funny really, I’d never have thought that before.
Anyways, it’s nice to be back blogging there although I know that my blog stats are artificially inflated. On the other hand, an out-of-work CIO from NYC put me on his blogroll after finding me (not sure where). I feel bad for him somehow. It’s about “branding” now I guess. Don’t know but will try it out too.
New cool toy I found on The Pogue’s column: MIFI — Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed. Looks great to try out in my field force. Luckily they’ve got in HK, TW, CN markets. I’ll have to get someone to look into it and what we can do to increase connectivity and information sharing with our back-end systems.
It’s been a very long while since I last visited/posted here. I’m sorry to have missed out on the musings here. Life certainly has been extremely hectic and too many little things compete for my spare time. Anyways, it’s the Labor Day holiday here in HK and much of Asia. So it’s been good downtime and the weather is good too.
3 days of my team in HK and we had a lot of productive discussions/meetings on what the rest of 2009 is going to look like. Also started getting back into my personal blog again and enjoying it. I do need to resist falling off the wagon and try at least once a week to post something. Once a day is probably too much. I recently mentioned how interesting my blog stats were and even more so that a lot of people searching star trek find my blog. Not exactly what I had intended but cool. And the readership is really spread all over the place.
Anyways, enjoy all and Monday is an anniversary for me and B-, our first date which was @ Yankee stadium. Time does fly. Take care of it and enjoy it while it lasts!
2008 is winding down and man, it’s been a heckuva year. Am still working through and busy and not a lot of down time.
Still, got a chance to go out and hook up with some fellow walkers/hikers in HK through a Meetup Group. I really like it. So looking forward to more hikes and a bit of photography on the side too. Treated myself a nifty new Nikon D40 and I’m very happy with it. I also really liked Ken Rockwell’s site and donated as well.
Today I had my first alumni interview with a prospective student. This young precocious man was amazing. I felt stupid compared to him but was so energized by his youthful enthusiasm and outlook toward life. A very enjoyable 2 hour chat with him and his parents. I do hope he gets accepted.
Going into 2009, the operative word is to survive, build on for the future, try to improve on my health hopefully through regular hikes/walks, hobbies and forget about the work more. Continue going back to my blog and get a couple of IT certs here and there. And let’s see what happens!
I dropped by on my Saturday day off and found so much change on this site! I think it’s good… but nowadays I don’t know what change is good or bad. Change is… just change.
B- is out today in her cooking class and she’s come up with some great recipes and stuff. She also has been doing flower arrangements as well and I liked the Yellow Chrysantheneums next to the TV in the living room. Very nice stuff.
Meanwhile, next week, I’m back on the CX shuttle again to KL Malaysia for an IT conference. After about a couple of months of no travel, I’ve been to Malaysia during Merdeka week and Kunming China for company department team building the previous two weeks. The Kunming trip was important because I got 3 new managers on board plus some helpdesk people. Getting the right people have been quite difficult this past year but i can say that at least for the Business IT group of the team, we’re complete. Still need some more work on the Technical IT group side of things…
More change coming at the work front – reorgs coming down the pike and 2009 will be quite the interesting place to be. I’ve shattered my record for staying in a company – 2.5 years this past week. I might just make it into my 3rd year, early 2009. That would be quite a milestone in many ways.
Looking forward to next month and seeing you all 🙂
Stephen C. Ellis is the managing partner at the law firm of Tucker, Ellis & West.
What follows is the commencement address he gave at Case Western reserve School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio on May 19, 2008.
The title of his remarks is “On Being a Happy(and Successful) Lawyer”
Do enjoy it.
On a side note, I’ve been having a blast since setting up my WordPress blog last month. I was fortunate also that I decided to have wordpress.com host it as opposed to setting it up on other hosting sites (e.g. bravenet, doteasy, godaddy) because of the tag surfer feature. This allows us on the wordpress.com blogosphere to know who else is blogging. And using tag searches, you can find other like-minded bloggers posting about the same things you’re thinking about. Awesome. There are a whole lot of extremely knowledgeable people sharing wonderful experiences. The downside with using wordpress.com is that it doesn’t allow much customization – quite vanilla. Hosting on wordpress.com is all about the sharing and blogging, not about the other (commercial) stuff.
Blogging has been “therapeutic” but a great way for me to learn as well. I’ve been a bit on a tear with what originally was meant to be a part time deal but has turned out to be a daily item for me. Let’s see how it works out. My blogroll has grown exponentially and I can’t help but expand my RSS feeds because there’s just too many good stuff out there.
Finally, B- and I went to a food conference today at the HK Convention Center and it was amazing. The crush of bodies was like rush hour traffic. Food lover’s heaven. We’ll probably go back again. In any event, she needs to go for research.
And before signing off – last weekend, B- and I went to the Macau Venetian for the 2 days 1 night package. Great stuff. As a said in my FB – it’s a lot of fun and a lot of dangerous. We’ll be back there I’m sure.
How could I resist? Well, combination of (l)user error and less than optimal tools, I didn’t have my own blog. Now, thanks to F C and a HK blogger/consultant named Dan, I got off my fat butt and got one going.
The credit of my blog’s name completely goes to F C. His genius came up with it in less than 60 seconds no less. Definitely fast and the furious :). I’m indebted.
So I’m soft launching my blog now through some of my online professional networks, but of course, need to share here as well :).
2 days, 2 nights so far in Hong Kong and it’s been a nice relaxing time. Visited a couple of new friends of Bridget’s and ate dimsum at famous Maxim’s City Hall. Great view into Kowloon side. Then walked around IFC did some shopping – found that Ecco shoes much cheaper than Taipei. Couple of walking shoes and off and running (hah hah).
We were given the OSIM Executive Suite, apparently a cool branding thing. We got all the OSIM toys they have in the suite. The saddle, the chiropractor, the full massage chair and the iSqueeze along with some others which we had no idea how to use. The full massage chair just rocks. We have to take turns…. It’s got like 7 different types of massages and the chair can recline up to 180 degrees. Facing the wall mounted flat screen is pretty awesome.
It’s quite the treat we figure and so we might do this hotel getaway thinggy more often be it in HK or TPE in the future. Having our time together and away from the hassle of work is the best gift to each other 🙂
Today we went up to The Peak via blue line bus 15 and it was nice. We lucked out the weather was sunny/mostly clear and we got walk around the trail. Cold and windy but still good stuff. Ate at the Simpatico Italian eatery and was high quality stuff, not as touristy as one might imagine given it’s The Peak.
We’ll probably forego the Christmas Eve dinner crunch at the hotels/restaurants for some room service with our OSIM massage chair and flat screen TV! 🙂
For a plug, I’d highly recommend HotelTravel.com for your HK booking. Each time I’ve done it, the hotel gave me great rooms.