Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Tale of Viral Fever

Right after my return from the ultra-hectic Singapore trip, I fell sick instantly. The first tell-tale sign was loss of thinking ability, with eye-lids keep on trying to close. I slept for the whole Tuesday and half of Wednesday. Instead of a sound slumber, my brain was revolting, as if I was sleeping on a high-way and thoughts just cruised by and ran over my brain.

First thing I realize is the difficulty to move from a protected, less competitive place to an open, competitive place. Malaysia and Singapore can examples of the former and latter, respectively. In Malaysia, most companies are operating nearly at the low end of value chain, therefore the engineering work is inherently of less complicated type. This translates to simpler jobs. On top of that, the Malaysian laws also make sacking of an employee quite hard, except if that person has committed something serious. Therefore working in Malaysia, the life is good and cozy. Looking at Singapore, first the companies are aggressive and cost sensitive.
Second the government is pro-business, and non-performing employees can be easily replaced.

I will say the situation in Malaysia won't last long, mainly there are other developing countries competing. Companies are money-making business, and they won't tolerate non-performing execution for long. Once globalization really knocks on the door, a lot of unprepared people will suffer, I don't wish to be one of those.

Second thing I kept on thinking when lying helpless on bed, is hoping someone can cook me some hot chicken broth. I was willing to lower my requirement for a wife at that instant of time to just that.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Malaysian Microchip?

Today the Star has featured a technology supposedly developed in Malaysia: Malaysia Microchip (MM). The news says:

The chip, which cost US$50mil (RM180mil) to develop, uses Japanese technology and is the first with multi-band frequencies. The microchip is so tiny that it can be embedded on paper. Each chip has its own serial number.


My first question is, how many percent does Malaysia contribute in the R&D of this chip? and second, why it costs US$50mil to just 'develop' a chip from some existing blue-print from Japan?

Embracing technologies blindly is very risky, especially if you have no clue what it is.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Daily Tidbits

7:44 p.m.
He did not show up.

7:00 p.m.
I am back from my hometown after Chinese New Year. Now planning to prepare for interview.

Just now when I was walking back from my car after dinner, an indian guy approached me and introduced himself as 'James'. He claimed his motorcycle had problem and needed 10 bucks to buy lubrication oil.

At first I thought this was a hoax and tended to ignore him, he kept on pleading and promised he would repay me once he went to pick up his wife and got money from her. Finally, I gave him the money with the following considerations: first, 10 bucks is not a huge sum to me, my loss is all 10 bucks. Second, if he were really in emergency and no one helped him, the society is sick. Third, if he really cheats me, this further affirms my determination to leave this country.

I chose to bet there are good guys, well, I tend to view glasses as half-full and life is good. :)

He promised he would return in 30 minutes after picking up his wife, and promised to meet me at the car wash center just round the corner down the street.

Well, we will see then. :)

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The Meaning of Festive Season

Today is the third day of Chinese New Year and is an official public holiday for Malaysia. The morning started with a mild shower, good time to procrastinate in the bed.

These few days I have been observing the rituals of Chinese New Year and rethinking the true meaning of this festival. The advent of communications devices and mass transport systems have changed the dynamics of how people interact.

I am into the thinking mode again.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

On Valentine's Day, Sparks Fly

This started in the morning, when I just woke up and still in a blurry state. I heard a big thud sound, but I couldn't discern the source, so I just ignored that, though I noticed the power was out.

It is more than that. First of all, the fuse in my external hard drive power supply was blown. In fact, it exploded and left the plastic cover ajar. The loud noise this morning came from this guy....


When I turned on my computer, I found the wireless router was reset to its factory default. Fine, from all these, I concluded there was a very huge power surge this morning that fried my power supply and reset the router.

The good news amid the bad news is at least I have something to do in the night of Valentine's Day.
Laptop is up to reconfigure the router (left)

Quickly I reconfigured the router and things are in order again. The power supply will be taken care of later when I go out. Will replace a 2A fuse.

At 8:40p.m., I have pretty nothing much to do except blogging. Should I dismantle the fridge and reassemble it to kill time? Wait, I need to pack for my trip home for Chinese New Year. Ok, I have things to do. :)

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

禮拜三 情人節^ˇ^ 要幸福喔= ˋˋˋ= 
    愛愛愛       愛愛愛
   愛愛愛愛愛    愛愛愛愛愛
 愛愛愛愛愛愛愛  愛愛愛愛愛愛愛
 愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛
  愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛
   愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛
     愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛
      愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛愛
       愛愛愛愛愛愛愛
        愛愛愛愛愛
         愛愛愛
          愛

The heart shape is 'built' by chinese character of 'love'

The translation is as follows:
"Wednesday Valentine's Day ^ˇ^ should be happy = ˋˋˋ="

Wish you a Happy Valentine's Day

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Air Ticket Tale

Today I went to Malaysia Airline (MAS) to purchase a one way ticket from Penang to Singapore, for the return trip I chose the low-price carrier: Air Asia, which will depart from Johor Bahru. Online the quoted price for MAS was RM433. The reason I picked MAS was it is a direct flight to Singapore while Air Asia will have to go through Johor Bahru, then take a bus to another bus station in Johor, and catch one more bus to enter Singapore. I want to make sure I can arrive Singapore on time by reducing these intermediate hops that I have to jump through.

Since my credit card cannot be used online, I went to buy the tickets physically. The place where both airlines exist is the airport. There, I was quoted the price of RM395 by MAS, but the time was much later than what I desire. Upon further inquiry, the MAS officer on duty just asked me to patron Singapore Airline. What amazes me was the price of SingAir was even cheaper: RM381! Since AirAsia was quoting me RM240, so adding hundred something more and get SingAir isn't too bad a deal, I got the ticket on the spot.

A sane company will price web purchases much cheaper because it is really cheaper to operate a website than staffing a counter. You may conjecture that the higher price is due to the need to cover credit card charges, well, I used credit card at the SingAir counter also, so this factor is out.

A thing to note is when I got my AirAsia ticket, it was priced RM50 more than the online price, well, this is fair and expect. All I can blame is the crappy bank that issued my credit card (Southern Bank, if you really want to know).

Here you go, the differences between a GLC (Government-Linked Company) of Malaysia Airline, and the lonely ranger, AirAsia. Now I have a much better picture of why our government is always losing money.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Time Management

I have been told 'time is precious' since young, but often I just neglect the advices. See after a work day, the whole body seems out of order. Although I still carry myself to cook myself the dinner sometimes, I can't do much after that except reading news.

Feel quite bad for wasting my time like that. I read an article on time management that teaches us to calculate my hourly income to serve as a guideline for what I should and shouldn't do: If the value of task on hand is less than my hourly income, I shouldn't do it. Well, it sounds all right, but there are a lot of factors to consider when making such decisions.

I know how to calculate the ROI (Return Of Investment) for my money, but I still can't figure out the ROI for my time....

Monday, February 05, 2007

隐形人

This is a Chinese song which touches me, the character set is Chinese Simplified (GB2312).

I am still not in position to translate this, but the meaning is close to Shakira's "Underneath Your Clothes"....


歌曲:隐形人 歌手:孙燕姿

无论你肯或不肯
我都选择等
等到你结束好久
探险的旅程
要是没有寂寞陪衬
没有途中的灰尘
你怎会向往家门
你越是想要诚恳
其实越残忍
伪装不了你对我
漠视的眼神
你不许我听信永恒
不许我迷信我们
不许我奋不顾身
多想化成隐形的人
掩饰我伤痕
给你我的体温
好帮你驱走寒冷
看不见也能感受心疼
我想化成隐形的人
隐藏我的泪在翻滚
我在你凌乱世界
留下的指纹
对你是没心跳的一个吻

朋友都于心不忍
责备我愚蠢
但他们都回避我
执着的眼神
可知我对爱的虔诚
可知我迷信我们
可知我难得放任

多想化成隐形的人
掩饰我伤痕
给你我的体温
好帮你驱走寒冷
看不见也能感受心疼
我想化成隐形的人
隐藏我的泪在翻滚
我在你凌乱世界
留下的指纹
对你是没心跳的一个吻

多想化成隐形的人
掩饰我伤痕
给你我的体温
好帮你驱走寒冷
看不见也能感受心疼
我想化成隐形的人
隐藏我的泪在翻滚
我在你凌乱世界
留下的指纹
对你是没心跳的一个吻

Sunday, February 04, 2007

The War on Low End



When I was strolling in a shoppping complex after dinner, I came across the new low-end handset by Motorola, the Motofone, as shown above. This phone has a retail value of RM199 (~ US$55) for the original set. I saw price that went as low as US$32 in some foreign websites.

Here we have Motofone, the latest phone from Motorola that aims to wage war on the low-end (aka cheapo) markets. However I can see a few problems with this approach:

  • This destroys the hard-earned cool-gadget brandname won by the Razr family. Consequently when people mention Motorola handsets, words like 'cheapo', 'tacky', and 'low-end' come into mind faster than I can say "Mary cooks the little lamb".
  • The low-end market has very little head room for profit margin.
Will this strategy work? Let's see what are the components of handphone sales:
  1. Existing handphone owners wanting to upgrade/replace/get one more phone
  2. New customers
For people in category 1, I assume the cash cows are those who like to 'lead the pack' and upgrade their phones frequently, while the contributions are assumed relatively small for the rest (e.g. those who replace their stolen/broken phones, or those who need a second phone, etc.)
Will Motofone and family appeal to the cash-cow group?

"Look guys, I just got a new cool Moto handphone, it has monochromatic six-segment-display-ish screen, and..., and..., well, nothing else. Hey, better still it comes with Walmart's everyday low-price guarantee."

Here Motorola is targetting the new customers in developing countries. Yes the markets are largely undeveloped, but in order to win, a company must have extremely strong cost-control for a profit, and hoping other handset makers will not jump in (especially companies with significant cost advantages). In other words, low-end market is a bone with abysmally thin of meat attached. Motorola is chewing this bone and trying to scrape every bit of meat in sight. It gotta chew tonnes of these to get a decent meal.


Disclaimer: Though I am quite sarcastic and cynical on the company strategy, personally I do think Motofone is a good start for handphones: it is just a plain, simple phone equipped with the necessary features: phone calls, sms, long battery hours. This is what I want from my handphone. Do I need more? No.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Are You Wow'ed?

I came across this picture at Seth Godin's blog, which he got from The New York Times. I find it so amusing that I can't resist to pull it off and stick here.


This is the launch of Windows Vista. From The NY Times caption:
From left, Kevin B. Rollins of Dell, Sean Maloney of Intel, Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft, Hisatsugu Nonaka of Toshiba, Hector Ruiz of Advanced Micro Devices and Todd Bradley of Hewlett-Packard helped kick off the Vista operating system Monday in New York.

What is so special about this picture? Click on it and see, does any of them smile, or show any excitement on this product? How wow is this then, you tell me.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Helping the Poor

We usually just contribute to charity without further thoughts. But have you ever considered various options you have and the consequences?

Suppose:
We have a sum of money allocated for philanthropic purpose. This money can help a finite number, N of poor people.

Q1: First we need to decide who we want to help: poor people in your own country, poor people in your country of residence (a country you are not a citizen, but nevertheless you plan to stay permanently or semi-permanently), or poor people in other country X, with assumption the poor people in all these countries are similarly 'poor' (say, with annual income less than some amount). To whom you will give the money to?

Q2: Now, suppose country X is a poor third world country: Kenya, Luwanda, Somalia. Will your decision change? If so, why?

Q3: Next, suppose country X is a first world country: Norway, Switzerland, or US. What is your answer? (There are needy people everywhere, let's suppose they deserve the help)


My answers:

A1: Poor people in my country of residence
A2: Poor people in my country of residence
A3: Poor people in my country of residence

My answers are pretty controversial, because A1 and A3 are totally againt patriotism, while A2 is against the spirit of humanitarianism.

But before we proceed further, first let's remind ourselves that these poor people are equally poor and similarly needy. No one group is better off than the others. We can only help N people, the remaining question is where.

I made these decisions in a totally rational way (also known as the economist way, or the cold, mean, and calculative way). My rationale is as follows:

By helping those in my country of residence, first I will help reducing the crime rate somehow because I am convinced crime is closely-linked with poverty. I am not implying poor people are bad guys, just that poverty tends to push otherwise honest and hardworking people into committing crimes. Reduced crime rate not only will make me feel safer, it will attract investments as well as foreign talents, thereby improves the economy.

Second, when we can get more families out of poverty and more poor kids to receive education, we have increased the size of talent pool and reduced the number of people who depend on national safety nets like social security. This will cause a positive multiplying effect and further propel the society ahead. With all these, the multiplying effect will ripple through and benefit most people in that country. This is an upward, constructive cycle and a win-win situation to both the myself and the country.

When the I am better off, I will be able to give more.

If I have done otherwise, I don't think the effect will be the same.

Note: For Q3 on donating to the poor in advanced country, I guess most people will choose not to donate, with thinking like "Hack, they got the social security in place.", well, if these mechanisms work, why there are still poor people in those countries in the first place? sigh...

I appreciate if you could share your answers, comments or thoughts