I was one of the fortunate ones in my SDM cohort to be pre-selected for an open-discussion session with a director from the National University of Singapore who is working on establishing a program similar to SDM in Singapore. As the meeting proceeded, the students and the director started exchanging business cards. When communicating with business people from Asia, it is respectful and polite to conduct the exchange of business cards in the proper manner. Unfortunately, I didn't handle the business card ceremony quite the right way.

To my credit, I did manage to hand my business card with two hands and to receive his card with two hands. Nonetheless, I still got it wrong at the end. Here's what I should have done:

1. The younger or more junior person should always present his/her business card to the other party with 2 HANDS.
2. The other person receive it with 2 hands. He/she then present his/her business card to you, in which you must now receive it with, again, 2 HANDS.
3. Now take a look at the business card to, at least, catch the person's name.
4. If it is a sit-down meeting, leave the all the cards that you have received on the table so that you can look at their names and titles. Do not put them away until the meeting is over.

Well, that's the Asian way of handing/receiving business card. Thanks to Kevin for reminding. Of course, there are times when you shouldn't present your business cards with 2 hands, especially in a more causal corporate environment like America. I am interested in hearing other people's thoughts on exchanging business cards in a different cultural environment.

4/7/2005 5:13:22 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [15]

Business

I have just started a new half-semester class called Technology Strategy recently. As I submitted my analyses of the first 2 cases that were due yesterday, I pondered the following. Faculty members and students at management school observe, analyze, and synthesize the processes and strategies of successful or failed enterprises. Grand models were formalized to explain how the processes were observed in the business world while ground-breaking techniques were devised for achieving corporate goals. But the real managers whom we are studying may not had attended business school at all. Take for instance Bill Gates of Microsoft, he seem to have a good grasp of business. His company, Microsoft, seems to be ran in ways that support the precepts of good strategy, as it is defined in our Strategy class. Yet Gates didn't even complete college, let alone attended business school. Was he a genius or are some of the class material just plain or some derivative of common sense? In either case, I strongly believe that while we can write grandiose analyses of our cases, ultimately it is practice and our actual implementation that will get the corporation to where it wants to go.

4/7/2005 11:04:20 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [12]

Thoughts

Why haven't I been blogging lately? Because I am so friggin' busy, that's why. I got school, work part-time, participate actively in school activities, engage in social events, and training for the triathlon (which BTW is not going well at all). I feel so burned out these days and getting 4 hours of sleep a night doesn't help to alleviate the situation. Worse, I still have my tax return that I need to do. If I am going to complete my tax return by this weekend, I really need to get a head start on next week's assignments. So I am going to try to finish one of the assignments that due next week by tomorrow night. I guess my first break from all this madness won't be till Friday night.

Enough of ranting... I was quite relieved, at the same time sad that ESD.762 - System Optimization has come to end yesterday. But seriously, I really like System Optimization. First of all, the material that I learned from the class actually has real-life applications in a broad range of disciplines ranging finance to system engineering. Second, professor Simchi-Levi is just a great lecturer. Every now and then, he would pause and engage the students to express their thoughts on the subject. This is perhaps deliberate as it actively stimulates students' interests and their abilities to derive their own conclusions to the subject. Ultimately, the experience truly enhances the learning, which is why so many students love his class. I definitely recommend this class or any class by professor Simchi-Levi to anyone.

4/6/2005 1:48:27 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [15]

School

I use UNIX quite a lot but my retention rate of UNIX commands is less than desirable so I have created a new category called "UNIX Shell" on my blog to help me remember some of the *NIX (UNIX, Linux, etc) scripts and commands that I have found useful.

First tip on this category is the xargs command that used in UNIX shell to break a data stream into small enough for commands to process. Let's suppose you want to search for MP3 files that you have added to your music library folder in the past week and copy them to another foler, you can issue this command:

find . -name '*.mp3' -mtime -7 -print | xargs -i -t cp {} /tmp

4/4/2005 4:36:38 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [22]

Computers

The past week was unbelievably hectic. I was practically buried (6 feet underground) with school work and activities. The bad news is that it looks like it is going to be like this for another week. :-( The good news is that I am finally done with the financial projections that I am responsible for in my 50k team. I never knew how time consuming forecasting financials for a start-up can be. Practically spent Friday night, and all day on Saturday and Sunday on the financials.

4/4/2005 10:44:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [17]

School

The MIT team, despite having a budget of $10,000 and graduate students from Mechanical Engineering, Ocean Engineering, and Computer Science, lost out to a bunch of students from Carl Hayden High School in an Underwater Robotics competition. There are times when thinking outside the box still rules.

3/30/2005 11:10:06 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [14]

School

More rant from a former patient guy. This time, it's Product Design & Development or PDD. It is difficult to stay attentive to today's team presentation in PDD when 4 out of 5 presenters were rambling on and on about their product development process in a monotonous voice.

When you are making a presentation, what are you trying to achieve? You are presenting your ideas to the audience and so that they will stay interested. This means that the presenter is selling to the audience. If so, why are people still speaking in monotonous tone and reading from the slides? Also, the presentation slide is not a written documentation, so keep the content on the slide terse. If you need to explain the context, do it verbally. No slide should contain more than 50 words!!! Last but not least, always present the presentation within the allocated time slot.

3/29/2005 11:17:34 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [16]

Rants

I am usually a very patient person but I was about to pull all my hairs off at Professor Katz's class this afternoon when certain individual relentlessly kept interrupting the professor. I simply find it rude, disruptive, and counter-productive when someone starts babbling away without even raising one's hand. I know you have a lot of experience to share with the class but other people, especially the professor, have their opinions as well.

3/28/2005 6:26:29 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [12]

Rants

Wow!!! What a busy weekend it had been. I have a ton of problem sets and papers due next week at school. I still haven't started working on the marketing paper and the financial projection for my 50k competition.

But all work no play, makes Sam a dull boy. I took a break from study and went to Yoav's bachelor party at Boston Billiard Club on Saturday. It was a tamer than I had previously thought, but it was still fun to hang out. The poker game at Yoav's house was actually more fun than the billiards games. I caught a glimpse of the Illinois vs Arizona NCAA basketball at the Billiard club and I was disappointed that Arizona lost because sloppy ball handling, which consequently turned the ball over to Illinois twice in the last crucial minute.

It was a gorgeous day today. Yes, for the first time, it is finally starting to feel like spring in Boston. So I celebrated the coming of spring by running and swimming to prepare my triathlon this summer. My swimming strokes are in better form now than they were 2 weeks ago. I still find my breathing a little out of sync, which prevented me from swimming long distance efficiently.

Eimear organized an Easter dinner on Sunday night, which turned out to be a successful event. The usual suspects, Camille, Milt, Hanri, Fanny, Angela, and Alan (new guy) were there for dinner.I pretty tired after the Easter meal, but there's no rest for me yet. There's still a lot of school work that I need to do. I will probably stay up till 3am, which is typical.

3/27/2005 11:59:06 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [14]

Personal

I had dinner with Camille after swimming at the Z-center. Camille mentioned something interesting during our conversation. Being a product manager, he said the following: When you are a product manager, be sure to be involved with either the marketing side of things or the product design and development side of things. Either way, the work is appealing and interesting. However, if you are not involved in marketing or product development, chances are you are dealing with the mundane day-to-day operations, which can make the job of a product manager boring.

Speaking of product design & development, I found this article on 15.980/ESD.936 - Product Design & Development (a class I am currently taking at MIT) while surfing the Internet.

3/25/2005 11:49:16 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [14]

School

On other news, it looks like the management students in my 50k team will be taking control of the team while other team members take time off to complete their PhD thesis so that they can graduate in May. But seriously, both Peter and I have plenty to do before the business plan and financial projection are due in a month from now. While it is a lot of work, I really enjoying the experience with this 50k business plan competition. I often compare the 50k experience to the taking of a 12 unit (or 4 credits) MIT class. The difference is that you actually have to "get down and dirty" in building a real business plan in 50k.

3/24/2005 11:42:54 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [10]

Entrepreneurship

I spent this week meeting with former colleagues whom I worked with at Analog Devices. I caught up with Siobhan, Steve, Joanna, and Courtney this week. It seems like they are all enjoying what they are doing now, I am really happy for them.

3/24/2005 11:40:14 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [11]

Personal

You Know it’s spring break at MIT when:

I met up with Joanna, Zach, Stephanie, and Lewis in the Stata Center at MIT on the first day of spring break. Joanna who is an alumna of MIT hasn't been on campus since 2000. Since a lot have changed since 2000, I volunteered to give them a tour of the Stata Center, the Zesiger Center (Z-center), E40 (ESD faculty/office where my office is), and the Tang Center. Joanna was impressed how modern and well-equipped the Z-center is. Our tour of the campus ended with Joanna showing us Barker Library, a place she loved hanging out when she was grad student. Have you ever wonder what is inside the Great Dome, a distinctive architectural feature of MIT? Go to the Barker Library on the 5th floor of building 10 to find out.

3/22/2005 12:29:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [21]

School