Posts from August 2007
August 28, 2007
Remind me not to start a business I can't pronounce
I passed by this place the other day and thought, "That's cute." Then I realized I couldn't pronounce it.
Is it "i + season" or is it "ice + ason" or is it "e + say + son" Frenchy like or is it "i + see + a + son" fast and Japanesey?
August 26, 2007
Aura of Congeniality
I just got off the phone with a Japanese friend who asked me "So what's it like doing business in China?"
For some reason I kept thinking about this funny phone message I got from Dr. Brettinski Maximus, who shares with us his Aura of Congeniality Theorem unraveling the intricate way in which business relationships are facilitated in China.
Yuck
I'm kind of bummed. While I was getting my hair cut yesterday, the store's cleaning lady knelt down and dug through the trashcan at my feet, picking out the thin disposable plastic cups they serve tea in to customers.
If you've haven't every used one of these cups, I'll explain. They are condom thin plastic cups that will melt if the water is too hot, are impossible to hold in your hand without crushing, and can't stand by themselves once filled, so they use a flowery plastic napkin ring type cup holder device to allow you to actually be able to hold it and drink from it. They cost like a $1 for a thousand. In other words, they are really really cheap, even by Chinese standards.
'I wonder why she's digging them out?' I thought to myself as I sipped my tea from the delicate wobbling napkin ring type device.
Then it occurred to me that she was recycling them for the customers. Yuck.
Then I start thinking about the tea bags. Yuck.
Then I start thinking about the water. Yuck.
Then it occurs to me I'm in China.
August 25, 2007
Everyone's a Winner at NP!
As a music producer I've been asked to do all sorts of musically non-cool things, many of which I've just had to say "No." Whoever produced this recently leaked corporate theme song for the law firm Nixon Peabody, apparently didn't know how to say "No."
From: Abovethelaw.com
August 23, 2007
Moan my IP baby
I just love it when a sexy girl moans my IP.
August 22, 2007
Why bother?
Sometimes I have to ask myself why bother to learn the language since speaking Chinese usually leads to more confusion than not.
For example...
Today I dropped off some dry cleaning, and on the way back passed a place called "Jack Hut", a HK style bubble tea milk shake joint. If you've been to HK, you'll know, if not, just suffice to say they sell a bunch of tea and shakes.
The colorful sign outside shows a juicy foamy looking strawberry shake with a strawberry on top. Sounds good. I enter and ask the guy, "So what kind of fruit you have today?"
"We don't have fruit."
Hmmm, I point up to the menu, taking a different tactic. "The fourth item there says Fruit Milk Shake (lit. guo nai xi). What 'guo' is that supposed to be then?"
"It's fruit."
"So I'll have a fruit milk shake."
"No fruit."
Ok, taking another tactic. "So do you have item four? The Fruit Milk Shake?"
"Yes."
"But it's not fruit?"
"No."
Now I know we're getting somewhere.
"If guo is not guo, then what is a guo nai xi?"
"It's guo nai" (nai = milk)
"So it's fruit milk, right? But not fruit?"
"Yes."
"Ah, I get it. So 'guo nai xi' is not 'guo nai xi', but 'guo nai' pause 'xi'.
"Yes."
He seems happy that I understand now. We are on the same planet finally.
Like an idiot it didn't occur to me that it was fruit flavored milk, rather than a fruit milkshake. Now I got it.
"Ok, if that's the case, I'll have a milk tea."
I will leave it to you to decide if it was milk tea or milk flavored tea that I ended up drinking.
August 18, 2007
The Breezer
I was at a friend's house the other day who builds bikes, snowboards, baseball bats, hockey sticks, etc, and he showed me his bike room, which is filled with about 10 fantastic rides. My eyes immediately fell on the Breezer, an old school steel hard tail frame with Ritchey forks.
"I knew you'd dig the old school. You wanna take it home for a spin?"
"Really?"
"Yeah sure, a bike's meant to be ridden. Can't be sitting here. Breaks my heart when a bike sits around."
If you know anything about mountain biking, you'll know the lore of Joe Breeze, and understand my thrill being back on a steel frame.
After a few days of sore ass, I got right back into it again, pumping hills, cutting a line down hill (this bike can go down in a big way), and enjoying being on a bike again after 20 years. The Breezer is what a perfect ride should feel like. Can't get much closer.
If you see an old school guy in the hills of Yangmingshan, with a big smile on his sweaty face, huffing and puffing, passing cars, and riding a beautiful black and white hand painted Breezer, you'll know that's me.
August 09, 2007
If you ever wanted to know what our troops eat while getting shot at...
I was scavaging around the house for something to eat tonight, and discovered this MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat) I took from my sister a few years ago before she went out on some Army training mission. Since I had never eaten rations before, I figured the day would come when I needed it. There was no food in the fridge, I didn't want to deal with takeout, so today was that day.
For those of you (like me) who are curious as to what's in a MRE, and will actually eat one, here you go:
Results:
1) using the hightech little stove-in-a-bag was pretty cool, but I would have been shot first before I figured out how to use it.
2) the milkshake, that you actually have to shake, spurts all over, potentially dirtying your nice clean fatigues (for those fastidious soldiers), but it's actually pretty good, and a bit foamy. Note: don't try to drink it out of the bag
3) The Tabasco sauce, moist towlette, and the mint chicklets are all nice touches which would make me happy if I were sitting in a hole getting shot at
4) the apple jelly I didn't quite figure out
5) Taster's Choice coffee and condiments, very nice. But I should have put it in the milkshake bag first to make a latte. Damn.
6) the beef stew was pretty much standard Dinty Moore style fare, not bad for a guy in a hole getting shot at. Well maybe not shot at and maybe not a hole. Maybe more like a guy sitting at home in front of the TV with an empty fridge.
August 08, 2007
Elmore Leonard's 10 tips for writers after the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
I got back after a long China trip, and was going through my 6-inch stack of bills, and found a letter addressed to me from HarperCollins Publishers.
This is interesting I thought. Could they possibly want to publish one of the two books I've released here? Do they need some business development in China? Do they have some magazine they want me to buy?
So I opened the letter (below) which referred to a post I made 3 years ago sharing an interview on Elmore Leonard where he outlines his 10 tips for writers.
Apparently, I am accused of publishing his Book (capital B) "in it's entirety". If that's a Book, then this the first 1048 word Book I've ever read.
Nonetheless, the offending 1048 words of text from 2/29/04 have been taken off of my site.
Please contact Beth Neelman Silfin, Associate General Counsel of HarperCollins Publishers, who now apparently own these 10 tips. (beth.silfin@harpercollins.com)
Here's a sample letter you can use if you're such a bad writer that you can't write the letter to request the 10 tips.
Dear Ms. Silfin,
I really really want to become a better writer, and I really really like the way Elmore Leonard writes, especially his three sentence sex scenes, and I know he would want me to be influenced by him in some way, as all authors are vain, but I've heard that you now own the ten tips for becoming a better writer, so this is why I am contacting you instead.
Can you tell me which tip will help get me published at HarperCollins?
Regards,
Your name here
August 03, 2007
Where are the new little guys?
I found this interesting snippet of information while reading up on the TechSearch vs Intel case, written by Ray Niro who defended TechSearch.
"Consider these names of individual inventors who ultimately formed companies to exploit their ideas but initially manufactured nothing: Westinghouse (air brake), Ford (car), Gillette (razor), Hewlett-Packard (oscillation generator), Otis (elevator), Harley (motorcycle shock absorber), Colt (revolving gun), Goodrich (tires), Goodyear (synthetic rubber), Carrier (air treatment), Noyce (Intel), Carlson (Xerox), Eastman (laser printer camera), Land (Polaroid), Shockley (semiconductor), Kellogg (grain harvester), DuPont (gun powder), Nobel (explosives), the Wright brothers (aircraft), Owens (glass), Steinway (pianos), Bessemer (steel), Jacuzzi (hot tub), Smith & Wesson (firearm), Burroughs (calculator), Carothers (nylon), Curtiss (aircraft), Houdry (catalytic cracker), Marconi (wireless communication), Goodard (rocket), Diesel (internal combustion engine), Fermi (neutronic reactor), Disney (animation), Sperry (Gyroscope), Williams (helicopter), even Abraham Lincoln who was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,469."
We often forget that the spark of innovation often started from the little guy. What I'm wondering now is where are the next generation of little guys? The last one I met was Dr. Tomihisa Kamada, who invented cHTML, which helped power the whole Docomo rage, which was the catalyst and business model for our whole current way of looking at the mobile phone.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
