Finally - Wedding Pictures!

It's being 3 months after the wedding, and finally we picked up the wedding pictures from the photographer. I am really excited to see the pictures because they remind me of the sweet moments. And I am surprised to know there are a total of 800+ of them:
http://glorialo.smugmug.com/Weddings/266925

I'll try to choose a smaller selection and upload them to the wedding website later. At the meantime, you are welcomed to go through all 800+ of them :)

What is Fair?

Read an article in this week's Next Magazine, on illegal immigrant mothers from Mainland China giving birth in Hong Kong's hospital, hoping to give the child the Hong Kong citizenship, as well as the privileges and the resources granted to citizens. The article criticized this and thought it's unfair for the Hong Kong tax payers to pay for the hospital services and fees, as well as the future education, public housing, and everything else that comes with the citizenship granted to the child. Personally I am also very much against the illegal immigrants, and I definitely oppose the idea of giving any kind of privilege to the illegal immigrants. A while ago there were discussions in the US regarding giving citizenships to certain illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, and I think that's unfair to those of us who tried to get the citizenship through legal means.

But what is fair? We are born unequally. Those mothers in Mexico and China want to give their children the best they can afford, and in some case when the new born is known to be handicapped, being born in a more developed region like US and HK is probably the only chance for the survival of the child. I think if someone is to make a movie, which illustrates the living conditions at the poor regions, the mother dreaming of a brighter future for the children, what she has gone through to get across the border into the country in order to finally give birth to the child, most of the audience will be moved and support the mother. It's also very hard to stop this issue altogether. The developed countries are obliged to provide medical care for anyone, whether or not they get into the country legally.

Probably the ultimate solution to this is when the living condition and welfare is the same everywhere in the world, thus there are no incentive to be the citizen of any particular country. Though ideal, I believe this is achievable given that the world is flattening.

My Baby!

Finally launched the Hong Kong Maps on Google Maps. Although I have worked on a couple other 20% projects before, this is nevertheless one which I am most interested in. Having spent most of my school years there, I consider myself a Hong Kong native, and I have always wanted to dedicate some of my efforts to Hong Kong related projects at Google. This is the first step.

There is still a long way to go to improve the quality and features of the map, but the first step is always the hardest. And I am glad that it is finally out of the door. This is probably only possible at Google where everyone can work on something not directly related to his/her main project.

Dream Job

Goldman posted record quarterly earnings, and it is reported that its employee will receive an annual bonus of $620K this year.

This is once of the times when the thought of whether I have picked the right job would flash across my mind, for a split of a second. Afterall, it is a pretty large amount of money. Although people usually question whether Goldman's employee actually the time to enjoy this money, it may not be a bad idea to retire at your early 30s, and travel around the world or go back to school, do anything but working for the paycheck.

OK, I know, life or job should not all be based on money. But this somehow prompts me to think what career I would possibly choose if given a second chance. Here are some alternatives:
1. Management trainee in the airline industry - The best part is I can travel for free, almost. And I can get to live in and explore different cities in the world.
2. Professional composer and pianist - Get to play and enjoy music everyday, and probably get to know some pretty singers :)
3. Travel agent - Get to spend half of the time traveling and explore new tourism spots, get invited by the most exotic hotels and restaurants for reviews.
4. Pilot - It should be fun to fly a plane. Always something I would like to try, but unlikely I can afford to own a plane.
5. Own a bookstore?
6. Wine taster?
...

Back to reality, I know deep down in my heart that I am stuck with a programmer for life. Afterall, there is absolutely no way I can wake up before 10 everyday.

Death Valley Trip Pictures

It has been more than 2 weeks since I went to Death Valley during Thanksgiving. Finally got some pictures uploaded (well, actually not uploaded by me). The place is really prettier than expected, with a lot of gorgeous sceneries, though we spent more than 2/3 of the time in the car...


Mono Lake. Look at how clear the water is. Amazing.


Me lying on the freeway. Finally knows what "in the middle of nowhere" means.


Snow? No, the white stuff is salt. Trust me, I tasted it.

More picture can be found here.

Why HK can't be another Silicon Valley?

Paul Graham has an article on How To Be Silicon Valley. In the article he summarized what he thinks contributed to the success of the Valley, and what's not.

I have always wondered why Hong Kong cannot build a high tech industry of its own. After all, it is in no shortage of money (the government poured in billions of dollars to invest in local high tech industry) and people (it has talented students and famous universities, in fact, students from HKU were among the top in the ACM worldwide programming competition in 2005). However, most of my friends who went back to Hong Kong after a successful career in US either felt dismay about their job in the high tech industry, or switched field and became a financial analyst. I used to think pay is a reason, but no longer believe so after getting insider information that a local government sponsored company Astri would match the salary.

I am starting to believe one of the major reasons Hong Kong doesn't have success building a high tech industry is that it is not an attractive place for nerds. Hong Kong's culture is closer to NYC's, more money oriented and materialistic. Hong Kong people don't like to be nerdy, or be perceived to be nerdy. As described in the article, nerdy people tend to go to places where other nerds are, and Hong Kong can probably never get the critical mass.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

My recent readings are all surrounding 三國 (in English: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms). During my previous business trip to China, I bought 易中天's 品三國, which is currently a very popular book in China, and finished it on the flight home. This book focuses on the characters, why they succeeded or failed based on their character. Recently a friend of mine lends me a set of comic books 火鳳燎原, by an author in Hong Kong. It tries to interpret the story from a brand new angle, and the drawings are also world class.

I have always been a fan of 三國 since I was a kid. I still remember reading the 三國演義 comics when I was in kindergarten, and reading 三國演義 repeatedly during the summers of elementary schools. When I first started playing computer games, the first game I played was a 三國 based game 吞食天地. I also spent numerous hours on the different versions of 三國志, building up my own kingdom and dreaming of becoming the characters in the story.

The stories of 三國 never change, but as I grow older, the stories have different meanings to me and gradually I can get more out of the same stories and characters, and view them from totally different perspectives.

Thanksgiving

I had probably my happiest Thanksgiving since I came to US and started celebrating it. Nothing fancy - baked a Turkey, opened a wine, decorated a Christmas tree, played some Christmas songs on piano, my in-laws all gathered at my place. I think it is the first time I truly feel like celebrating with a family. The past Thanksgivings it was fun having dinner and party with friends, but never the homely feeling.

For once I think it would be perfect if my parents were there.

Less is More

Read an article today by one of my favorite technical blogger titled Choices == Headaches. A very nice written piece, which talks about the numerous options on screen to shut down Windows in Vista, why it is more confusing and frustrating than useful to the users, and how he think it should be simplified to a few choices. Quoted by the author from another article, "We normally assume in America that more options ('easy fit' or 'relaxed fit'?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as to erode our psychological well-being.”

I found it very true, especially when this applies to our daily life, when we are looking for jobs, buying clothes or home decorative items, thinking of where to go for the vacation, choosing what to read from news, etc. The modern world has provided so many choices for our material needs, and so much information to absorb everyday, that sometimes we feel overwhelmed. This is truly a paradox. Not once have friends complained to me the various career paths he or she is choosing from, and don't know how to decide. This is rarely a problem at our parents' time, when they have limited choices, even assigned to jobs when they graduated. Also consider the hundred of TV channels we can choose from, and the numerous blogs in my Google Reader which I would like to go over everyday.

This is really a paradox, and it can only get worse. I wonder when a day would come when we spend more time choosing then consuming. i.e. spending more time flipping between channels than really watching TV.

Weather in Seattle

I was in Seattle for business trip the past week. The weather there was depressing, raining the moment my flight arrived till the day before I left. But on the last day, it was sunny, and the lake looked prettier than ever. I almost wanted to take the day off to do some sight-seeing. Almost. I guess if the weather had been nice for a couple more days, my week up there won't be so productive.

Comparing to Bay Area where we take the sun shine for granted, I definitely was more excited with the rare sun shine in Seattle. I often wonder why we gain more utility not from the absolute value of something (constant sunny weather), but the delta (from rainy to sunny). Would I be happier to live at a place that rains frequently but has sunshine once in a while, or a place that constantly has sunshine?

I guess that's why happiness isn't always proportional to material richness.

Our Shower Door...

...shattered on its own. Yes, no kidding, I repeat, it shattered into pieces on its own. Last Saturday we were watching TV downstairs, and suddenly heard a loud noise, which was like lots of objects falling. At first we thought it's something else on the street and didn't pay much attention. But after a while when I went upstairs to get changed, I found that the inner shower door has shattered into thousands of pieces and the entire tub was covered with glasses. The glasses were also all over the washroom floor. The first thing that came across my mind was someone has broken in, but then I found all the other windows were tight. Apparently the door just shattered with no apparent reason.

We called up KB Home and they had it cleaned up and replaced the following week. I tried to research for the cause of this mystery, but cannot find anything on the web. When a guy finally came to replace the door, I asked him if it's normal that the door will shattered on it's own. And he said "Yeah, this happens. Maybe it's because of some glitches in the tempering process, usually in a stock of a couple hundred doors, we notice one or two shatters on it own."

So at least I know our house is not a Monster House. I guess this rarely happens, and we should thank God that this doesn't happen when we were taking a shower.

Working Women. Sick Women.

Recently heard a couple incidents about women who worked too hard and became sick.

A coworker of mine in the Beijing office was in hospital last week, suffering from lungs inflammation. Potential culprit may be she worked too hard a while back. I heard that she even slept in the office one night.

I was told by my parents on the phone of the stories they heard from their friends in Shanghai. The daughter of my dad's friend, who is around my age, got kidney problem and had to visit the hospital 3 times a week for cleaning. It was pretty sad because she was smart and pretty, but she pretty much would have to live like that for the rest of her lives. She was pessimistic and didn't expect to get into any relationship.

So my wife is working crazy hours these days. Today she went to work around 8 and didn't get off till 10. And what's worse is she doesn't like her job, so the work is really depressing to her (and depressing to me, as a result). Not once have I asked her to quit, but we both know that there may be more serious issues if she do quit and stay at home and do nothing. We had big problems back in Beijing before she found an internship and classes to take. Some women just can't stay at home.

To work or not to work, this is the problem.

Politics

Well, I am not referring to those in the office, which engineers rarely need to deal with. I am referring to the election in the States this week and the corruption incident in Taiwan.

On US: I found that I am paying more and more attention to the politics here.
- Back in year 2000 I only started to pay attention to the election when the news were all taking about the recounts, and I had little idea about the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
- I had no impression of the 2002 election. I actually never realized it happened.
- In year 2004, I was all for Kerry, and I remember refreshing CNN.com once every 10 minutes during the day to see the latest results. I even listened to one of the debates before the election.
- This year, I was reading news about the projections before the election, and also checking the news closely during the day. I even both to look up what GOP means. I got excited when I heard that the Democrats took over the House, and I refreshed CNN.com once every 5 minutes at night to see the latest counts in Virginia and Montana Senate race.

Nevertheless, I don't really consider myself American. Not yet.

On Taiwan: The latest incident in Taiwan really created a mess. And it was a mess even before this, when the "Red" organized the 天下围攻. When I talked to people in Mainland China about this, their first reaction was Taiwan's government was "too" democratic and it was not good, that this could be chaotic - just look at how they physically fight each other in the meetings.
But in my view I really appreciate the true democracy in Taiwan, and I am truly glad that there is democracy in a Chinese region (not country, to be politically correct). Guess what would happen if someone suspects President Hu of spending money inappropriately?

It only happens in China...

[I wanted to blog this a couple days back when I was still in China, but the stupid GFW blocked beta.blogger.com. I don't know why www.blogger.com was still allowed though.]

So there is this China-Africa Cooperation Summit in Beijing these days. I don't need to be told to know about it, since the signs are everywhere.

- It is in the news on newspaper and on TV all the time. Interestingly I was at the airport and the news shows the Chinese president shaking hands with each of the leader from the African nations, and there are 30+ of them.

- On the freeway from the airport, there are poster flags on the lamp posts on the both sides of the road. I counted it, there is one flag every 20m. Given that the freeway is about 40km, there are 50 * 2 * 40 = 4000 flags. Guess how many labor it takes to put them on in one day.

- There are huge banner boards on the side of the main freeways, 二环 and 三环, which shows pictures of Africa, with elephants and lions. I almost thought I am in a zoo.

- I was told that at 王府井, there is an exhibition titled "The Mysterious Africa".

So here is the other side of the story:

- There were more than 150 traffic restrictions (交通管制) within Beijing in a single day. This means, certain sections of roads can be closed for 30 minutes anytime during the day. What can you do when you are in the car? Wait. You can imagine the reaction of commuters and taxi drivers.

- The taxi driver told me at one time there are 1400+ cars lined up on a certain section of the freeway.

- Because a sister of the wife of an African president wanted to go shopping at the Silk Market (秀水街), the entire shopping center was closed down for 2 hours.

- I went dining at the Grand Hyatt hotel, and I had to pass through the metal detector, and my bag the X-Ray machine. While I was having a drink at the lobby with my friend, I was constantly annoyed by the "Beep" sound.

- A friend at another 5-star hotel told me the security guard goes so far as following him upstairs, to make sure he is a guest staying at the hotel.

And of course these are never mentioned in the news.

Fun Economics

Freakonomics blog today has an interesting article about a research which suggests Internet pornography may lead to lower rape rates. Hopefully this is not as controversial as the statement in the book which claims the passing of abortion laws in the 70s leads to lower crime rates in the 90s.

I think I become more sensitive to the rules of economics around me after reading the book. Today I had dinner at a local Beijing restaurant. Afterwards, we were given some cash coupons which can be used towards any meals in the future. Someone then suggested implementing a website to allow for exchange or selling of coupons. I immediately pointed out that if such a site becomes popular, the end result can only be that the restaurants stop giving away coupons, since the intended goal of retaining the customer would fail and the coupons will go to customers who already plan to go to the restaurant. This is equivalent to giving discounts for no reason. As a result, the popularity of such a site will eventually lead to the death of the site.

Feeling of Betrayal

Today I learned about an incident happened inside the company. The way it has been handled really shocked me. It totally contradicted my belief.

It was like I loved and trusted this person for so long, and one day found out that person did something which I cannot imagine him/her doing, and it was conflicting with what that person always claims. This person betrayed my trust, and I felt being cheated.

I'll try to use some means to figure out what exactly happened, since I have only heard words from one side so far. If this indeed turns out to be true, I know there is one thing I would do when I leave the company.

The most expensive song I have played

[Ben and a couple friends eating in a restaurant on the tallest building in Nanjing, Ben found there was a piano nearby and offered to play a song.]

V: (to the waitress) Hi, can we use the piano over there?

Waitress: Yes, you can, 50 RMB.

Ben: You pay me?

Waitress: No, you pay it.

Ben: For as long as I can?

Waitress: For one song only, you have to pay another 50 for a second song.

[Ultimately the group decided to pay the 50 RMB anyways, and Ben played a song on the piano for 2 minutes.]

[Q suggested paying another 50 RMB for him to play the piano (which is basically making some noise), and let the waitress beg him to stop by paying him 100 RMB. Somehow this idea wasn't implemented. ]

Someone more geekier

An other engineer from the Beijing office who is also in this recruiting trip with me is definitely more geekier than I am. Here is how:

- He can answer this question in 15 minutes while it takes me 30 minutes to come up with the solution.

- He can talk about technical questions all day long, while I am already bored after discussing them during every single meal.

- He can say something like "The complexity of my relationship is O(...) ..." , and he associates complexity with everything.

- He is more simple minded, pays no attention to human relationship, and we have a nickname for him - "Single cell animal".

And certainly his wife (well, future wife) must be more tolerating than mine.

Interview Thoughts

After interviewing for 4 consecutive days, here are some thoughts I would like to share.

Fact - A lot of companies start to give paper exams as the first filter in recruiting. Probably the companies found it more efficient than screening through the piles of resume and doing phone screens. But a pitfall is that students often need to go to more than one exams in a day, which adds to their already very busy daily life. And the questions on the tests? more or less the same. The same coding and algorithm questions. And I think since it is China sooner or later there will be tutoring classes targeting these kind of exams, and there will be "mock" exams, past papers...

Bad - Chinese students have very bad breath, and I wonder why. I suppose in this modern world everyone should have a tooth brush? Students shouldn't be smoking that much either. It's the worst when they sit right next to you and start talking...

Fun - I was told by one of the students Google is like 超女 selection. A student in Shanghai who failed the interviews came to Nanjing on train, hoping to take the paper exam again and get another slot for interview. This is like going to 南京赛区 after failing somewhere else. I don't think we will let that happen though, and this is probably something we never expect to happen at the first place.

Ridiculous - We had to keep the doors open when interviewing. I was told it is because an employee at another company got sue by a female student, accusing him of sexual harassment.

Bad - While the students are very good at fundamentals, they lack creativity and often cannot think outside of the model answer or what's given in book.

Learned - Some of the students are very nervous when they first come into the room. A small gesture such as a smile, handshake, and brief introduction is enough to help them loosen up and feel more comfortable.

Rewarding - One student gave me "feedbacks" towards the end of the interview. He told me that he learned a lot from the interviews we gave, how to approach a problem and solve it in steps, and the thinking process of keep on improving it, and he thanked us for giving him this opportunity. This made me feel that the entire week here is worth it, regardless of the hiring outcome.

The Sad Truth

Some highly confidential information within Google is exposed on a public blog today. It definitely would raise concerns within the company, and it may be a matter of time before some of the openly shared information become unaccessible to most employee. Google has long known for its open culture in sharing highly confidential information with its employee, and seemingly this culture may not scale with the company.

It takes a thousand people to protect a secret, and only one to leak it. Similarly, it takes a thousand conversations to build up a relationship, and only one to destroy it. This kind of inequality is really disturbing.

Price is ...

...pretty arbitrary in China. I mean, it really may not be proportional to the quality of the goods or level of services at all. Today I went to 夫子廟 with a friend, we had dinner there in a restaurant who apparently targets tourists. We paid RMB 80 each for some Dim Sum which tasted like shit. The night before I went to a local restaurant which had a special theme of ancient China. The food and services there are great, and we only paid RMB 25 each.

After dinner we took a stroll nearby and found a 2-RMB-shop that sells almost anything from knifes, hair accessories, to toys. And everything there is 2 RMB, which is equivalent to a quarter. I bought a lot of things there, and it felt like costing me nothing. While a comb there cost 2 RMB, another store right next to it sells combs for 80 RMB and above.

While this kinds of price differences can be found anywhere in the world, only in China it's to a certain degree that I almost lost the sense of price expectations.

Engineers' Fun

Recruiting trip can be pretty boring, especially most of the candidate you interviewed are not good. The only rewarding parts are the great food here (may not be the best in China, but definitely much better than Bay Area), and the various conversation with other fellow engineers discussing technical questions.

It all started from the questions on the paper exam we monitored last night. Since we had nothing to do while standing at the front of the classroom, we went over the questions and started to come up with variations of the questions. So most of the conversations last night and this morning surrounded 2 technical questions:
1. Prove that the lowest bound of the algorithm to find the top Nth element within 2 sorted arrays of size N is O(log(N)).
2. Try to prove that the algorithm for finding the kth sum of 2 numbers, each from an array of size N, is/is not O(Nlog(N)). We came up with a close enough proof, although it still has a little pitfall when the distribution of the numbers in the array is exponential.

And surely we had a lot of fun.

Last night I got an email from a friend, who talked about how he played politics in a group to achieve what he needed. The way he planned and executed it was totally a piece of art, and to me, much more complicated than the technical questions we solved. I am sure I would never
be able to come up with that kind of solution in the same situation.

And that's probably why engineers can never be CEOs.

Sim Card and Recharge Cards

I was struggling to find recharge cards for my cellphone at the Beijing Airport. There are a lot of China Mobile counters, but they only sell SIM cards but not recharge cards. I already have a SIM card so there is no point for me to get a new one. To be more correct, they HAVE recharge cards but just do NOT sell them, and I think they only sell them with a new SIM card purchase. When I asked them if they have recharge cards, they will give me lame excuses such as they sell out of it.

I couldn't quite understand this. I know selling SIM cards are much more lucrative than recharge cards, since you can set the price for SIM cards arbitrarily based on the number (i.e. a good number worths "more"), but the recharge cards are all priced the same. But why not stock more recharge cards so you can sell both of them? I am sure plenty of people would like to recharge their phones at the airport.

But now that I think of it more, the profit from SIM cards is so much more than the recharge cards that the stores want to bet on business people who want to make urgent phone calls to buy SIM cards instead of recharge cards, and they don't care about the business of selling recharge cards (is that really zero profit?). If that's the case it makes sense economically.

Maybe there is another explanation to this. If you can think of one, please let me know.

Cars and The Devil Wears Prada

I didn't sleep at all on the flight from the States to Beijing, watched all 4 movies. Cars is definitely better than I expected. Even though I am a big time Pixar fans, somehow I didn't expect Cars to meet the bars of the previous releases, which can probably more or less be attributed to my lack of interest in cars in general. This movie has a storyline more complicated and appealing to adult audiences compared to its predecessors. In short, it portraits one of the small towns in the States which is half deserted. I visited one of those towns, Virginia City near Reno 2 years back. In a museum, we chatted with the owner, and he used to work in one of the Fortune 100 companies as senior management earning big bucks. He left the company after the company laid off a bunch of workers because jobs got outsourced. He felt the company is too "cold", and enjoyed living in a small town where people are much closer and more human.

The Devil Wears Prada is more than a movie about fashion. It brings up the dilemma of a typical working women who don't have work-life balance. One of the points emphasized in the film: If a woman give more priority to work than her family, she is more likely to experience a failed marriage than a man who does the same. Also, another point bring brought up many times: Often we complain that we don't have choice when it comes to work, when we need to pick up urgent cellphones when hanging out with family, when working late to miss other appointments with friends, but do we really have no choice or we have already chosen?

Blog Started

So I finally decided to start a blog. There are a couple reasons to this:
1. Given I will be in China for the coming two weeks, this blog will serve as a communication channel to my beloved wife at home so that she would get a glimpse of what's happening around me.
2. I feel that my English writing skill is deteriorating fast, and I hope I can save it before I can only write C++ or Java. Afterall writing skill is important to a programmer too.
3. I am inspired by blogs of my friends, namely Eric and Niniane, whose blogs I found inspiring, informational, and entertaining.

So this will be a place to blog about my thoughts based on some observations, my views on a piece of news, technologies, etc. Hope this will not be one of the "three minute passion" things I have done.