The lack of momentum to migrate this blog has pushed me to take action.  So while I'm still fixing the new site, I'm announcing it now to give myself a sense of urgency.  Please point your bookmarks and RSS feeds to the new site at jlscribbles.com.  The URL speaks for itself.  Thanks!

Whaddya know, the latest incarnation of Firefox version 3 has just been released.

Go grab it with its new features and improved performance.  Beware some of your favorite add-ons might not work yet on it, but its best add-on, Adblock Plus works like a charm.

Napa Valley is horrible for allergies.  Arriving in perfect timing for the pollen in full bloom, I sneezed at least as much I drank.

That's all I have to complain about my 2-day sojourn in amazing California wine country.  After a rather productive week in the Bay Area, the brief time off relaxing in Napa was the perfect conclusion to my trip.  Sure there was a lot of wine to taste and food to eat, but the theme of relaxing was well maintained.  Think leisurely walks, naps, and massages.  I didn't bother too much to visit many wineries.  We took some suggestions from the inn-keeper and trekked between highway 29 and Silverado Trail for a bit of tasting and sight seeing.  Clos Pegase stood out for its eccentric art-loving owner, who graciously outfitted the winery with his vast art collection.  While I didn't get much into the paintings hung on the office walls, I fully appreciated the statues scattered throughout the grounds and the caves.  We picnic'ed on the patio, enjoying the breeze and surroundings.  While generous with art, they were somewhat stingy with their wines for the tasting, proffering less spectacular samples while hoarding the good stuff. 

The name-brand slut in me couldn't resist stopping at Opus One, the Louis Vuitton of wines.  For once I could relate to the hoards of women who dig LVMH.  I even paid the premium price of $30 for the tasting - a single glass of the 2004 blend.  Served in a Riedel glass by a French hostess, of course.  I knew I was probably out of place the moment I walked in; some Japanese tourist had laid out several thousands of dollars worth of travelers cheques on the counter.  He must have a lot of friends back home that need souvenirs.  Quality wine, premium price.

Having my fill of nature and architecture, I wanted a good swig of grape.  The final stop did just that.  Jessup Cellers put up a tasting room in one of the Napa towns for the sheer joy of tasting, cutting out all the winery related sideshows.  No tours, no vines.  Simply a store front with bottles of oenoholic goodness.  The host poured me at least 6 delicious reds, and offered to open up anything more I wanted to try, all complementary.  I enjoyed their wine the most, preferring their flagship brand over Opus One.

Ending on a string of high notes, we stopped for a late lunch at a classy Vietnamese-fusion restaurant on Main St.  The chef, Anna Lien, played host while we gobbled down the yummy food.  Not taking away anything from Ubuntu's unique and delicious veggie fare, Anna's presence makes her cozy place stand out in the superb dining environment of Napa. 

French Laundry will have to wait until next time.

Posts have been sparse lately due to my recent efforts to migrate this blog.  It's taking a lot longer than expecting, having to manually edit a lot of old postings and links to move the content to the new location.  The work involved in setting up the new site is also dragging my time from writing coherent postings about my life.

Why am I moving?  Well, the blogware software I'm using on this site hasn't been updated in ages.  Being a technophile, I hate being restrained from using some of the newer features in the current world of blogging simply because I bet on the wrong horse 3 years ago.  So rather than stick around, I'm willing to do the work of moving to a different system... Wordpress for you curious.

Had the pleasure of volunteering at Tony Robbin's UPW event in LA a few weekends back.  Lots of stories to tell, but for now, leaving you with a snapshot of me in front of the pyre - where we shoveled the hot coals for over 3000 people to walk on.

My beef with an MBA / Consulting experience is having to see the world through the prism of business practicality.  Every commercial establishment, most commonly restaurants, gets scrutinized under this new view, and it takes away from the experience.  Granted, many people who walk into an extremely crowded restaurant will wonder about the how lucrative it may be, making comments about how much money is made.  Plenty of times I hear my grandmother harp about the excessive profitability of a restaurant in relation to its prices and underwhelming service, all with a tinge of jealously.  This perfectly normal human behavior has unfortunately been warped for me, for the worse.  I feel compelled take it to the next level, to perform quick arithmetic on number of customers, average costs, hours of operations, and whatever to find out the total amount of dough being raked in.  Then I think about the margins, costs, competition, efficiencies, and the next thing you know, I have in my mind a half-baked business case worked out.  Of course that would all be incomplete without a recommendation, such as how to streamline processes or it being too late to enter this market.  (Tip of the day: The luxury frozen yogurt market will soon be saturated, so please don't venture out there expecting Pinkberry-esque profits)  The damnest thing about this compulsive behavior is that I care very little about money, especially other people's money.  I just want to have a good time and enjoy the experience, not try to solve business problems.  I think the solution is to put on some different hats: the social conscientor that thinks about the happiness and enjoyment people are getting; the health fanatic figuring out the averse health costs from fast food joints; the art snob judging decor and ambience.  That should be fine, as long as I don't summarize my results in powerpoint.

Bustling week occupying myself with all sorts of activities.  Aside from work, I spent some time in speculative day trading in the crazy financial markets.  Don't ask me how I fared...  Now entertaining guests in the city, following my tournament bracket, and preparing to fly out to LA on Saturday.  But what has been particularly gratifying is catching up and reconnecting with friends.  PGuy has been settling in and it's been good to be around to bounce ideas off each other, be it talking about Wholefoods or furniture arrangement.  Anyhoot, before I take off from NY, want to wish you all a good weekend, be it religious, a break from the stock market, following college hoops, or just relaxing.  I suppose for me it'll be all of the above.

My boy from Halifax has been burning us Cali boys for complaining about the cold, but yesterday I got seriously chilled.  Trekked out last night to Flushing, aka NY Chinatown, to visit the cousin and family.  I had been out of NY for so long over the past few months that I didn't have any time to see them recently.  It was really good.  It's always wonderful to interact with young people and feel like you've been able to connect, perhaps even dispense some advice.

Continuing my old-man-ness, the cold weather last night (and this morning) utterly destroyed me.  It was fine during the day, but at night, the massive winds just took everything out of me.  My cheeks started to hurt from the cold burn, and then became numb.  My fingers went from indoors toasty to frozen popsickles in 3 seconds.   Not fun.  Almost made me wish I were in Cali.

Ah, Cali, where I was just a while back to spend CNY, look into some ventures, and celebrate the birthday of a good buddy.  We had our usual tom-foolery of gambling, and of course mahjong with the family.  But also had the chance to do a bit of touring downtown LA.  I enjoyed MoCA a lot.  It's smaller than the usual NY museums, but quality work no less.  (And yes, it's spread across three locations so it's unfair to compare).  Such a great time and most definitely warm.  Going to make another trip back at the end of March so mark your calendars if you feel like meeting up in sunny SoCal.

Enough of the imperfect failures known as the New England Patriots.  Wow, what a night in NYC.  Just got back from the wild celebrations off of Times Square.  It was a peaceful crowd, but the cops still regulated with their horses and metal fences.  Most of the cars drove by honking while the crowd cheered them and traded high-fives.  I was lucky enough to be in NYC during this amazing night, sure beats being in Paris after the World Cup...

I tend to avoid talking about politics on my blog due to its contentious nature.  But in observance of Martin Luther King Jr day, I'd like to share some brief thoughts on race and gender in the US.  Given my immigrant background and fondness for diversity and all things international, this has always been a topic near to my heart, and has certainly contributed to my huge appetite for following politics.  But lately, this topic has gathered a lot of attention from people, beyond the usual cliques of political junkies, power interest groups, and self-serving corporations.  The upcoming presidential election, and the race for winning the party nominations has stirred up a level of excitement and involvement in politics that I have never witnessed.  And I'm loving it.  To have discourse over this, no matter where one stands, will benefit the country and the world.  Whether justified or not, the American people have been perceived as ignorant and culturally retarded.  The headlines and stories are contributing to people becoming more aware of the struggles of minority groups and to put value in the strength of diversity.

Without injecting any grandiose ideas of my own (they're all taken or spoken for), I'd just like to say that I'm happy to see the country making progress towards racial and gender equality.  But don't mistake gratitude for complacency.  We're lagging far behind many other societies, and that's just unacceptable for a nation that has so much influence over the entire world.  And for the young people out there, get out and vote.  You may miss the upcoming primaries, but it's never too early to sign up in time for the November presidential election.  Make a statement for your generation, otherwise risk letting older folks determine your future in all areas of life, from the environment to education.  Do your part in making your society and world better reflect your values.

Happy New Year!

It's been an interesting year, with a lot of ups and downs.  While the intensity hasn't matched 2006 at INSEAD, the changes and happenings have been much more pronounced.  It's my personal philosophy to reflect with an attitude of having positive growth and gratitude.  I have grown (mentally) a lot, and I couldn't have done with without all the support and love from everyone in my life.  Thank you all for that.  And more importantly, looking forward, I do so with great aspirations and cheer, demanding myself to give back to you in my own little ways.  What this means for this forum is more updates and sharing of the humble insights to my life, and hopefully entertain you along the way with the interesting tidbits of my days.

Wish you all a spectacular year to come, where you take life into your own hands and make it bring about fulfillment and joy. 

Want to wish everyone a wonderful holiday before I brave the crazy traveling to La-La land.  Hope you all get to see family and loved ones.  And don't forget not to eat too much :)

Whoaaaaa, my poor blog has been woefully neglected.  The good news is that I'm still here, just running around.  After wrapping up my last project in Berlin, I took some time off in LA, and now find myself traveling between NY state and Latin America.  I had the pleasure of working in Sao Paulo and Mexico City for a few days over the past 2 weeks.  I will apologize for not sharing some nice photos of these amazing cities due to my lack of adventuring there.  But that will be remedied since my Brazilian visa will allow multiple entries and I imagine to be called into duty for another trip in Latin America soon.

After weeks of marshy summer, I landed yesterday in Munich to rain and cold.  Not freezing cold, but chilly enough to lament not packing anything suitable for say, the typical San Franciscan evening.  And though my sole jacket is feather thin, I'm grateful that it's rainproof.  It offered me the luxury of taking the subway to the office this morning midst dreary passengers and bleak clouds.  I don't mean to be glib when I call my commute a luxury.  After five months of neck-breaking pace, there's something comfortable about waking up to gray skies, hopping on public transport, and making one's way to the office like the usual 9-to-5-ers; a sense of normalcy that's been sorely lacking.  I couldn't suppress a smile seeing my colleagues wrapped in their sweaters instead of Florida's humid embrace.  Part of my glee was sharing their comfort in waking up in their own sheets, perhaps tangled in the limbs of a loved one, or at a minimum, having access to their full wardrobes.  I'm loving this change of season, perfectly marking the transition from the current endeavor to the next.

Not the bedroom type, I wish.  The ones on top of the consultancy pyramid that yell to express their displeasure.

The Steering Committee meeting is occurring right now as I type this.  The first one of our project, it's like the first midterm, except with larger consequences.  The outcome will decide many things for many people: political jousting among committee members of the operating company, the direction for the remaining 3.5 months of the project, the promotion considerations of consultants and project leader, bonuses and raises, career development of everyone on the team (client and consultants), serious business.  So serious that one can't smile.

Last night as we finalized the backup slides of the presentation, I got yelled at for smiling.  Technically speaking, the scolding was directed at me "laughing."  Some background before the climatic vocal spanking: two Sunday's ago, I left my comfortable apartment in NYC to Munich to work on said critical presentation with the team.  As we labored all week, the partners on the project would give us very direct and insightful input, often interspersed with yelling.  One of the comments involved the representation of the logic flow on one particular slide, with me and partner disagreeing on whether it should be a square or an arrow, purely cosmetic.  We went back and forth but didn't really come to a conclusion.  Quite frankly, I didn't care that much, because the content was agreed upon.  On Friday evening, our project leader sent out the entire presentation to the Steering Committee members, for their review before today's meeting.  Come Monday, I realized that we didn't incorporate the change and mentioned this.  Both PL and I decided not to change it because we didn't want to explain during the meeting that no content was changed, merely the shape of the figure surrounding the text.

Fast forward to last night, as I finalized the backup slides (the detailed explanations of the presentation to respond to anticipated questioning), the partner stormed in, pointing emphatically at a printout of the wrong shaped figure.  I explained what happened and reiterated the PL's reluctance to make changes in the presentation after sending it out.  I made the mistake of not looking contrite enough.  Instead, I represented my argument with a pleasant, semi-smiling (definitely not my "how you doin'" smile) demeanor, nothing rude or improper.  Simply my way of lightening the already high-strung mood.  Oops, big mistake.  "Stop laughing!  This is not a funny manner.  This is very serious business and I am extremely angry!"

Instead of arguing that I wasn't laughing, I got bailed out by a phone call from the PL, where I promptly requested (and received approval) for the change.  Case closed, whew.  In all fairness, I do like this particular partner a lot.  He's emotional and passionate and he lets you know how he feels, so there's no second guessing in if he thinks you're a performer, or simply an idiot.  And since I know this, I don't take his screaming too personal.  But I do need to work on my contrite look.