July 31st, 2016

”为什么来拉萨?”

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”为什么来拉萨?”

哥们多次邀请我去拉萨,因为工作原因次次推迟。所以周日我到拉萨,完成多年前给哥们的承诺。同时也希望能为西藏祈祷和平。

然而,上飞机前的痛风,下飞机后的高原反应,缺氧、呼气困难、胃口不好、痛疼、感冒、肺水肿。导游说所有可能有的高原反应我都中了。

拖拉行李,一半都是药。

”为什么来拉萨?”

”西藏是个神秘的地方,有着灿烂的阳光,洁白的云朵,纯净的天空,稀薄的空气,连绵的雪山,安静的湖泊。“

这里风景太漂亮了。这5天走过拉萨(罗布林卡和大昭寺)、纳木错、桑耶寺、 雍布拉康、羊湖。如果自己开车自驾游,路上的风景美如画。

然而,缺氧的感觉就是困。路途上大部分时间都在睡觉。而且缺氧严重感觉好像要死掉了。高原走起路来感觉老了20岁,上一层楼梯都会喘不过气。在蓝天白云绿水的纳木错,一步一步慢慢走着,一手拿着手机拍照,另外一只手拿着氧气筒。

风景再美,也无福消受。

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October 4th, 2008

Billionaire who wasn’t

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Billionaire who wasn’t by Conor O’Clery

A book about Chunk Feeney, the co-founder of Duty Free Shopping, ranked 23rd richest man who gave away all his money, mostly anonymously until people discover he don’t even own a house or a car. (Incidentally, I realized I was an indirect benefactor of Chunk after reading his book :-)


Didn’t blog much lately due to the heavy traveling between China, Hong Kong, United States. Between my travels, I spend less than a total of 10 days in Singapore with my family the last two months.

Oh yea, I finally did my Segway Tour of San Francisco last weekend, thanks to Dewayne Hendrick who spend an afternoon going on the tour with me. Gosh, I got to get one of those Segway soon!

On an unrelated topic, I have accidentally deleted all the comments on the blog over the years as I was trying to get rid of 20,000 spam comments :-(

Instead of trying to recover from backup, I decided it is perhaps time for me to disable the comment totally. Afterall, i am getting more spams than legitimate comments – and for those who wish to, you can also contact me directly.

September 5th, 2008

Updates and P2P in China

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I had a crazy month traveling across Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Palo Alto, Los Angeles and finally back in Singapore. It was great trip, mostly business but in between some personal stuff, catching up with ex-boss, old friends and making new ones. A great evening with Marc Canter and his family (love the Canter’s song! :-)

It was also a great time traveling in US as a Chinese. Taxi drivers rave non-stop about the amazing Chinese Olympic openings and for the first time, see China differently. (Well, I wasn’t born in China but still I am a Chinese :-)

On my way back to Singapore, AIMS published the recommendation on the changes to media policy in Singapore. I was one of the stakeholder they consulted early in the process so I got swamp by reporters who got an early preview of the document. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to read the final version before them so I couldn’t really answer most of their questions. Anyway, suffice to say, I was happy with the progress. It is a much bigger step in media liberalization that I expected.

So I was back in Singapore and I met a fund manager yesterday. She asked an interesting question:

“Why are there so many P2P companies in China and not in US?”

It is worthy to reflect on that question because in some ways it is true. In US, we have bittorrent.com but other than that, most P2P applications have pretty much gone. Napster, Kazaa, etc, gone.

Wait, what about Skype? Firstly, Skype is not US company. Secondly, Skype P2P is actually very simple – connect A to B, both behind NAT, via a supernode C. In fact, their Kazaa background has more complexity than Skype architecture.

Now compared it to China, the land of P2P Streaming with PPLive, PPStream and UUSee. There are numerous P2P downloads the most famous being Xunlei (backed by Google). And all of them are very successful : PPLive has over 100M installation based, 34M active users monthly.

So what happened?

I think it has to go back to the early 2000 when music industry decided to clamp down Napster. The defining moment was when Napster was shutdown by the court after years of lawsuit. Since then, anyone with a bizplan that even has the word “P2P” is unlikely to get funded. Innovation in P2P basically stop dead, with the exception of bittorrent and Skype, but both become relatively successful without VC backings.

On the other hand, P2P has no such stigma in China. Investments in P2P continues to flourish and today China can claim to have one of the most advance P2P technology in the world. To the extend that when people are finally trying to do video these days, people are looking towards China and see how video are being delivered in the number 1 broadband country in the world by number of subscribers but probably one of the worst by quality.

Look at the Olympics numbers. PPLive alone has more peak concurrent viewers (1.6M) than NBC (600k) and BBC (200k) add together.

There is a lesson to be learned: The unintended consequences of slapping a “evil” label on a technology where in reality, technology is neither good or evil, but rather the use of it.

Disclosure: I am associated with PPLive.

May 28th, 2008

Sailing to Tioman

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We set off on 24th early morning. We did our immigration clearance on the west side of Sentosa. We set off immediately to the east. Wind condition was bad so we were on our engine assisted sailing. Along the way, we saw a Malaysia police marine heading towards Pedra Branca, for the first time in 30 years allowed to be near there since the Malaysia now owns two (strategic) rocks. We also saw the Singapore stealth ship (I think) near there.

I done my fair bit of sailing but this is my first extended trip. The difference is like playing golf at the range and at the green – similar yet dramatically different. When you are out in the sea, no land nor ship in sight, you suddenly realised you are so insignificant. Your life is really in the hand of God, regardless of how much planning you do.

When the sunset, it sea sparkled and shimmered across the horizon, quietly, only the sound of the wind and the splashing of the waves.

Nightfall is the time to find a place to anchor, flipping through maps, wind and tide forecast and using GPS as a guide, you wonder how the heck sailors in the past did it without all the modern technologies.



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May 3rd, 2008

Next Stop

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Goodbye lands of the Vikings.

Waiting for the plane to go back to Singapore for a short transit (a warm bath and change of cloths) before flying to Shanghai. See you on the other side of the globe.

May 2nd, 2008

Copenhagen

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I think this is my first trip to Copenhagen but I am not sure. Small city (about 1M people) but lovely town. And gosh, they love their hotdogs!

April 30th, 2008

Short Vacation

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Wrapping up my vacation in, erm, I can’t remember how long but must have being several years. Vacation for me means staying in my bed and playing World of Warcraft for 3 days. As my sis-in-law getting married in France, my wife insist we take a short vacation through Swiss Alps, thru Geneva and end in Paris.

Anyway, time to go back to work. Boarding now. See you in Copenhagen.

April 16th, 2008

Back to Shanghai

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I come back from China with a soar throat and cough 2+ weeks ago. The cough has persist till now and I am going back Shanghai with it. Hopefully I will recover there :P

Boarding now. No more blogging. See you later.

April 15th, 2008

Blogger Friendly

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Was at the National Press Club in Malaysia to meet up with various bloggers.

Quote Rockybru “Malaysia is the most blogger friendly country in the world now.”

Strange world. 6 months ago, bloggers are jobless liars. Today, all politicians must have a blog “or else you are not a leader” :-)

Note to self: Don’t play scrabbles at National Press Club. ^_^

March 31st, 2008

Back in Singapore

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Arrived back in Singapore late last night, with a soar throat and no voice. First thing back is a crying toddler at the Airport followed to a visit to the GP :-P

I went over to Shanghai for a couple of days but was so busy that I didn’t even have time to blog. But here are some quick notes about Shanghai.

1. Finding Starbuck in Shanghai is tough. On the first day, I spent 1 hour walking at the central park looking for Starbuck. When I found it, I realized they dont have wireless unlike Beijing :-P

2. There is a “rumor” that there would be tightening the rules of foreign investments into Chinese company by the end of year. But it is not a sign that China is rejected foreign investments; rather they still very much welcome it but they are concerned about overheat in property, stock market and a few other verticals.

3. Met with one of my former staff, Jiang Ming Liang. He is now a pretty big shot Shanghai and very well-connected. His latest startup is doing very well; featured in Forbes (China edition) in 2007 and would be likely to go IPO in 2009. Good luck!

4. Met with Isaac Mao finally :-) Very cool guy and need to hang out with him more. He would definitely be one of the reasons I want to go Shanghai soon.

5. Met one of the founder of Tudou.com, the market leader youtube clone in China. He is onto his next startup on casual games.

6. Met with PPLive founders. Spent an afternoon-dinner with the CEO, a young, smart, energetic engineer-cum-business guy. They would be the other reason I would want to go back Shanghai.

7. Attended 5G on Sat. 5G is an entrepreneur-VC group started by Ming-Liang :-) Small gathering but reminded me of those events I used to attend in Bay Area; or like E27/TDM events last year, except they have really quality people, startups and VC. It would definitely a place to hang out if you are looking for tech deals.

8. Learn a new phrase: “太子党”.

Despite losing my voice at the end of the trip, this has being an extremely productive trip for me. I come back with one box of namecards. And yes, I want to go back Shanghai again fairly soon (perhaps in a week or two).