My favorite place to go for a Sunday brunch has always been S & S Deli in Inman Square, Cambridge. But today, I found another place in South End call Metropolis Cafe that is worthy of excellent Sunday Brunch. Like the ever evolving South-End, Metropolis Cafe is hip and eclectic. The place also looks clean and well decorated. The only setback is the confined space in the restaurant, about 30 seats in a room a size of 2 ordinary living rooms (about 500 sq ft, I think). Eimear and I both tried the Monte Cristo, a meal consisted french toast, ham, pear, and cranberry chutney. It was awesome. The chutney was well prepared and go went well with the rest of the food. Overall, it wasn't too sweet as I would expect but we were disappointed that we couldn't taste the pear in the dish. Nevertheless, I am definitely coming back to this restaurant to explore its dinner menu in a not-so-distant future. For today's experience, I give this restaurant a 8.5 out of 10.

7/31/2005 9:24:02 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [3]

Food

I received an email from Sonny, a fellow classmate, on Friday about a class call Innovation Teams (or better known as i-Teams in Sloan). Sonny praised that it is one of the best classes that he have taken. According to the course website, i-Teams is described as follows:

I-Teams (2.937, 10.807, and 15.371) is looking for entrepreneurial graduate students to bring innovation to the marketplace. Apply now to participate in this course this Fall! When you join an i-Team, you and other highly qualified graduate students spend a semester collaborating with MIT research labs and mentors from the business community. You work as part of a team with winners of Deshpande Center grants on a specific project to assess the commercial prospects of scientific and engineering breakthroughs emerging from MIT's preeminent labs. You're guided by the labs' Principal Investigators, faculty from the MIT entrepreneurship Center, and leaders of local businesses. Together we determine technological directions and identify product markets. Together we deliver on the promise of bringing MIT-born innovation to fruition.

I was involved with a $50k team, which specializes in nanotechnology, last spring semester. It was truly an exciting and humbling experience; I realized simultaneously that how I know and don't know about commercializing a technology from the experience. The i-Teams course definitely sounds like a cool class and I am interested in taking it to learn more about commercializing a new technology. But interested student can only join the class by applying for it. Let's see how much motivation I get in the next few days to write and submit the application.

7/31/2005 8:33:14 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [1]

School

I have not rested for the last 6 weeks. I am jumping from one task to another without resting or relaxing. The 2 time suckers, besides work, at the moment are school and selling my condo. But I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel now. The summer semester is coming to a close in less than 2 weeks and I am finally putting my old apartment on the market next week. I can't wait when I can actually sit down and just goof off doing absolutely nothing and not feeling guilty about being unproductive.

To prepare my old apartment for sale next week, I cleaned and fixed my old apartment the entire day. Unfortunately, the installation of fence panels at the side of the house took up substantial chunk of my afternoon time. Other than the fence, I have been productive in fixing a bunch of things around the house. However, my first pass on the grouting in the bathroom didn't turn out the way I wanted it to be. The problem was that I didn't use the sponge to gives that nice finishing touch. Anyhoo, I regrouted the tiles, this time with the sponge, and bathroom tiles never look better.

7/30/2005 11:37:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

Personal

I went to a schmoozing event for LFM, SDM, and SF students at the Enormous Room earlier this evening. It was a causal social event organized by one of the Sloan Fellows for the purpose of meeting people from three academic programs at MIT Sloan. Other than being affiliated with the MIT Sloan brand name and being at MIT for the summer semester, we really don't interact much together other than perhaps meeting one another at the hallway. Thanks to the organizer. This was a good idea of meeting other cool students at Sloan.

Starving for food, Ilana, John Haj., and I went down to Green Street Grill - another fine establishment - where John treated us for a sumptuous meal. Thanks John. We then went to another MIT party where we met more cool people from Aero/Astrospace graduate students. The highlight of the party was the exchange of anecdotes between SDMers and Aerospace students on Prof. Crawley. Overall, a fun night. We should do this more often to meet more people in other parts of MIT.

7/29/2005 11:33:14 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [2]

Social

Awesome, my spanking new Adobe Creative Suite Premium software package has finally arrived. I purchased the product last week to take advantage of Adobe's incredible student offer on their 4 most popular creative software. The first order of business is to spice up my website, which is looking a little dull now. I plan on using the software to create a new mind-blowing design for this website during the short school break in 2 weeks.

7/28/2005 11:10:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [1]

Personal

Unlike System Engineering assignment 3, which I was enthusiastic for, I am unmotivated on the final project for our System Engineering class. We were presented with 2 options for our final project for System Engineer. We can work on improving the efficiency of a jet engine or we can present processes and methodologies for the development of military system call Theater Battle Management Core System (TBMCS). Either topic isn't very appealing to me. The TBMCS case study is the worst between the two. The TBMCS case study is the longest I have ever read, all 70 page long. Wow!!! I am leaning towards to the Jet Engine case study. It is more quantitative (less reading and writing) and I might even be able to combine materials that were covered from my Fabrication Technology class. If someone knows how to get me motivated for this assignment, please let me know.

7/28/2005 1:07:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [4]

School

Today, I have just found a new incentive for blogging - getting the opportunity to review films. An independent film director, whose name and film I am going to withhold, emailed me yesterday about getting me to review his film. He said that he has been reading my blog and would like my critical inputs on his film before its release in the fall. Also, I have just discovered that my blog is now featured on Milkplus - a blog dedicated to the review and discussion of films. Wow, both discoveries are big surprises for me as I never consider myself a film buff let alone a film critic. All I did in the past 6 months was writing a few short commentaries on the films that saw. Nonetheless, this is exciting news as it represents an opportunity for me to critique films and practice critical writing.

7/27/2005 12:42:42 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

Movies

Just to follow up on Yoav's comment on System Engineering (the class) for being too focused on process and repeatable results. So far, the lessons that we learned from SysEng are about quality and productivity. While Six Sigma, Robust Design, and TQM are yesterday's ideas, they are by no means obsolete. I think that both SysEng (the practice) and innovation can coexist together. With a growing number of companies striving to build more innovation in their organization. However, I think that SysEng should include more materials on innovation and creativity thinking. In other words, we need to develop leaders for growth and if innovation is one area where the economy is going. So from an SDM perspective, I think it is a great idea to include an extended or more advanced version of Prof. Eric von Hippel's excellent class in Innovations in the Marketplace to the SDM core curriculum.

Going back to the special report titled "Get Creative! How to Build Innovative Companies" that appears on the latest issue of Business Week, there's a section in the special report that talks about how some business schools are already redesigning their curriculum to meet the growing demand for creative, innovative managers. Traditionally, business schools have introduced electives in product design into their curriculum, with mixed results. And now, a few schools are starting to experiment with integrative programs that foster design thinking that can be applied to product and business design. For example, the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto will soon offer such program that will lead to a Master of Business Design (or MBD).

7/26/2005 1:26:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [1]

Business

I have just finished reading special report titled "Get Creative! How to Build Innovative Companies" that appears on the latest issue of Business Week (or BW). This report is well articulated and provokes thoughts that supplemented well to System Engineering, a class I am currently taking at MIT. I only wish that our readings for that class would have included something like the highlight Business Week article.

There are several key points to take from this special report. Basically, BW argues that as technology and information become commoditized and globalized, a new corporate model that focuses on creativity and innovation is beginning to emerge from the industry and could provide new growth avenues. It is the creativity economy, stupid. The knowledge economy has now been replaced the creativity economy. As manufacturing outsourcing to China, India, and Eastern Europe becomes more prevalent, the key management principle is no longer Six Sigma or even Total Quality Management but Design Strategy. Companies with rich culture of innovation and creativity stands to win.

As I look in the featured poll: The Top 20 Innovative Companies in the World, it is no surprise why Apple and Microsoft are in the top 3 positions. But if you think that innovation is only about creating insanely products, you are wrong. Innovation and creativity can be applied to wide spectrum of corporate competences, from supply-chain to brand marketing to manufacturing. So is creativity and innovation the next big thinking in management science? I'll continue to think critically about this.

7/25/2005 1:21:55 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [1]

Business

After reading an old article from Harvard Business Review and a special report on Creativity from Business Week the past weekend, I maybe wrong about HP cutting down on R&D in my last blog entry where I alluded to R&D as the main source of a company's innovations. In the grand scheme of things, innovative ideas can be created or sought from other sources both inside and outside the company. Drawing from what I have learned from school, academic business papers, and my own observations and reflections innovations transcend R&D, its no longer just designing products based on new technologies and sell them to customers. There's a new emphasis on creativity and how it can create competitive advantage for companies. I am going to elaborate more on this on my subsequent blog entry...

7/25/2005 1:18:11 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

Business

Partly inspired by Lance's Tour de France win and partly motivated by the awesome weather, I went for a run with Camille in the afternoon. We ran the same route that I did yesterday. Running in the company of another runner sure made the run easier. After today's run, I am going to start running regularly like I did before summer school. So here's an idea, perhaps I should start looking for a running companion - preferably female .

7/24/2005 10:22:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [3]

Sports

Lance Armstrong did again. Today, Lance rode into retirement with a 7th consecutive win in the Tour de France. His run of success will go down in the sports annals as arguably one of the greatest sport achievement. Diagnosed with a terminal cancer and given less than a 50-50 chance of survival, he miraculously recovered and came back to win his first Tour de France title in 1999 and he was been winning the Tour every year since then. Very few athletes have attained the dominance and consistency as those of Lance Armstrong.

As I recall from a recent ESPN feature on Lance, he was genetically gifted with a 10% bigger than average heart and through training he enlarged his heart to 30%. According to a conversation with Yoav last Friday, Lance has a 35 heartbeats per minute (bpm) resting and 200 bpm at his peak. Wow!!! He is a freak of nature. Nonetheless, congratulations to Lance on your win today and may your achievements inspire people, including me, in years to come.

7/24/2005 1:17:11 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [3]

Sports

Lately, I have been feeling really stressed from school, moving, selling my condo, and everything else. Worse, my sedentary lifestyle has left me feeling unfit, somewhat lethargic, and easily vexed. That is why I felt really good when I finally went for my first run in a month and a half earlier today. I also discovered that Kristall beverage is amazingly refreshing after a run. Unlike American beverages, which are overloaded with sugar, I prefer the lighter and intriguing taste of the European beverages. Why doesn't Coke or Pepsi realize that their drinks will taste so much better by reducing their sugar level by at least half!!!

7/23/2005 8:09:34 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

Sports

I had dinner at Penang with Camille last night and as usual our conversation included a good dose of office politics and high-tech business trends. We speculated that in the light of the massive layoffs at HP, other companies (including the company that we work for) are likely to follow suit in order to save operating cost. There was absolutely no basis in our statements, just pure speculation.

Earlier today, I read from Good Morning Silicon Valley that HP has announced the disbandment of not 1 but 4 of the company's advanced development group in the wake of retrenching 14,500 employees off its workforce. Quoting an excerpt from John Paczkowski's blog:

"In disbanding the last group, HP is bidding adieu to legendary Silicon Valley technologist Alan Kay. A founder of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, Kay - who once said, 'The best way to predict the future is to invent it' - was instrumental in the development of the windowing GUI and modern object-oriented programming. He envisioned a laptop computer long before the first ones rolled out and won a Turing Award in 2003 for his work on Smalltalk, the dynamic object-oriented programming language on which Sun Microsystems' Java is modeled. Hard to believe HP's cutting him loose. But it is. According to the company, his research doesn't jibe with HP's new focus.

Let's analyze this announcement from several perspectives. From a public relations point of view, the disbandment of several research facilities and departure of a legendary technologist will likely send a wrong message to its customers and investors that research is no longer an important activity valued at HP. From an accounting perspective, HP maybe in deeper financial trouble than we knew when CEO Hurd took over the company. The shakeup may be inevitably and justified. In strategic terms, how would this move affects HP's competitive advantage? HP has always prided itself as an innovator and inventor of many technologies, the word "Invent" is even written distinctively below the company logo. Visit their website and see for yourself. The knowledge lost from the closure of research facilities and departure of experienced engineers is likely going to impact HP's ability to create and deliver innovative products in the long run. On the other hand, if those R&D facilities aren't aligned well with HP new corporate strategy or producing results that add value to the company, then reduction in R&D activities in HP makes sense. In conclusion, I think that the financial state of HP may require the managers to act quickly to realign its resources and imperatives. But, regardless of HP's new focus, R&D is still and should continue to be HP's core competence for a while. I feel that the magnitude and extent of the recent cut in R&D may actually undermine HP's long-term growth.

7/22/2005 2:06:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [1]

Business

Not much happened today. For people who missed today's class, the first half of the class was about the principle that was advocated by Prof. Clausing of always asking "Why" in the design process. The second half of the class belongs to our guest speaker, Madhav Phadke who spoke about the application of orthogonal array in software testing. Overall, System Engineering class was okay but nothing groundbreaking.

Later today, I managed to procure a book on Statistical Process Control. With this book, I hope to complete my System Engineering homework, which has so far been a time-sucker, by this weekend.

7/21/2005 11:22:13 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

School

Eating one of my favorite dish, Chinese Pork Chop, is like flipping coin; there is a 50% chance of getting gastric pain the following day. But to satisfy my craving, I had the dish for dinner last night. Unfortunately, this eventually became my downfall as I suffer from severe stomachache the whole morning and most of the afternoon today. The moral of the story is: gluttony is not worth the gastric punishment.

7/20/2005 5:09:40 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

Food

Today, we had Professor Olivier de Weck as guest lecturer speaking our System Engineering class. He is engaging and his lecture on Isoperformance was interesting. In short, Isoperformance is a concept conceived by Prof. de Weck, in which he argues that the goal of any system (or product) development project is not seek for a solution that produces the optimal performance. Because of resource constraints, solution leading to optimal performance will usually end up being over-designed and often costing too much and being too narrowly focused. A better approach is to define a set of desired performance targets and work backwards to discover a set of acceptable solutions.

Two interesting questions were raised in the lecture. First, Uday asked the question: "If safety is a critical requirement of a product, shouldn't engineers strive to optimize safety in their design." This question wasn't adequately answered in today's session but it was argued that Isoperformance still has its place in the design process as long as we can define the desired level of safety performance. I am not too sure if this is true, after all this argument works only if we assume that such desired level is known at design time. So here's my question, how safe is safe? Can there be too much safety available in a product?

In the next question, Joe asked the question that alluded to how Isoperformance may stifle innovation in the design and development process. I respectfully disagree with Joe on this one. I believe that innovation and Isoperformance can co-exist harmoniously in engineering environments. Drawing, once again, from my professional experience, I remember that the lofty goals of a particular project at my company have undermined the company's ability to release the product on time to the market. The designers were simply fixated in delivering the highest performing products and neglected other aspects of the process, such as lead time, manufacturing cost, etc. Innovation isn't about optimal design but rather the introduction of new concepts that have positive impact on the product, and its users and producers. I believe that Isoperformance can help to achieve a balanced system by using a set of pre-defined expected performance while still allowing innovations to flourish under these conditions.

7/19/2005 11:35:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [2]

Business

Prof. de Albeniz lectured about Kaizen or the English term: "continuous improvement" and how it has greatly benefited Toyota and other Japanese automakers in today's lecture. While I don't question the merits of Kaizen, I am cynical about the way Kaizen is implemented at my company where I still work on a part-time basis. In my humble opinion, there has been a divergence of perception and expectation on the execution of the Kaizen program between management and the employees. It has become apparent that the goal of the program has become nothing more than posting fancy powerpoint slides on bulletin boards than to really use the concepts of the program to solve problems or improve processes. To most employees, the program has become just another fad and despite enormous amount of resources that have been invested in the program. To management, it serves no more than a public relations tool by window dressing the program as the panacea of solving any of the company woes. Sadly, the program that was designed to reduce Muda (Japanese for waste) has itself become muda.

7/18/2005 2:11:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [3]

Business

Today, we have Professor de Albeniz from IESE and a former student of Professor Simchi-Levi as guest lecturer in our Supply Chain and Operations Management class. We finally started talking about Operations Management, the second half of the course and something that I am very familiar with. Phrases like Kanban and Conwip were immediately recognizable as I have been involved with several Operations Research (OR) and Optimization projects with several LFM graduates and an Operations Research alumnus at work in the past. Apart from the basics, I never really delved further into topic of Operations Research as I was more involved in implementing the information systems part of the project. I hope to learn a little more on OR while I am at MIT to compliment my past professional experience and make a more solid credential in OR on my resume.

7/18/2005 2:10:32 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

School

Since moving 2 weeks ago, it amazes me how much computer and electronic junk I have accumulated at my old apartment. To reduce inventory at my new place, I gathered all those junk and went to the MIT Swapfest (flea market of computer/electronic goods) to dispose of my excessive junk. I set up shop at 8am and already I have people asking about my acoustic guitar and that ancient Apple Newton 100 that I have on sale.

Business was brisk until I was left with less popular items. Concerned with the inability to liquidate my remaining inventory by the end of the session, I then decided to sell most of items way below my original asking place and even gave many of them away for free. My motivation wasn't to make a profit from this endeavor but rather to get rid of my junk. Thankfully, by 1pm I was left with only a handful of items (about 10% of what I had brought into the flea market). I am happy; I got rid of my inventory and even got decent money from it.

7/17/2005 11:36:11 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [2]

Personal

I am devoted to the pursuit of the enjoyment of good food ranging from gourmet cooking of various types to simple confectionary delights. I am also downright critical when it comes to food. Yes, I have even angered people by my candid yet unflinching remarks on their culinary skills. Since I have been talking about food on my blog, I thought it would be great to actually grade the restaurants that I have eaten at. So I retroactively updated all food related blog entries with new ratings yesterday.

7/17/2005 10:42:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

Food

Last night, my sister and I went to Sugar & Spice to celebrate Fanny's birthday. There were the usual suspects: Hanri, Denise, Milt, Bruce, and Eimear. There were also additional surprises like Bruce new love interest and Simon and his guest.

The good thing about dinning in a group setting in an Asian restaurant is that everyone gets to sample someone else's dish. While the food at Sugar & Spice is fresh, I was a little disappointed with a few dishes. Stay away from Chili Lime Salmon and Deep Fried Ice-cream. For the best Thai sweet and sour fish, try Three Flavor Fish from Thai Rice. Avocado Chicken Curry, on the other hand, is acceptably delicious. Overall, the food there was so-so but on the upside, the staff are friendly and attentive. I don't want to recommend this Thai restaurant considering that there is a much better Thai restaurant call Tamarind House, down the street from Sugar & Spice. In closing, Sugar & Spice gets a 6.5/10 from me. It is interesting that my ratings for all the restaurants mentioned are inversely proportional to those of Citysearch. Hmmm... In any case, happy birthday again, Fanny.

7/16/2005 12:36:48 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [9]

Food

This blog site just expanded slightly with 3 new categories: Radio, Mac, and Travels.

7/15/2005 6:12:10 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [9]

Blog

I can't believe this... Citing financial shortfall and poor program ratings, WBUR is ending their flagship radio program, the Connection, in 3 weeks. I am still not buying to the officials' argument of poor program ratings. The show airs from 10am to noon and from 9pm to 11pm; while these hours aren't prime-time, they still fall within good listening hours. I am a big fan of this program and it would be sad to see it go.

7/15/2005 5:29:10 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [5]

Radio

These days, computers have an average of 3 years lifespan. Believe it or not, computers and most electronic devices contain harmful toxics (or e-Waste) that shouldn't just be disposed in landfill. As more and more people and corporations are getting rid of their computers and electronics devices, businesses specializing in e-waste recycling/reuse have proliferated. One of the e-waste recycling/reuse companies that was mentioned on an earlier NPR program is RetroBox. If are on a budget or nostalgic for a particular computer, you can get a cheapo computer from them.

7/15/2005 5:28:13 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [8]

Computers

I have advocated the benefits and importance of networking a few times in my blog in the past. In fact, business schools and professional business seminars have been promoting the adage of "It’s not what you do but who you know." But there is also an ugly side of networking, specifically the superficiality and spuriousness of networking. Has business cards and v-cards become trophies, and the mere possession of them is simply to satisfy an ego and bestow some recognition of how big one’s network has become? Anyway this article explores more on this issue in more detail. Thanks to Siobhan for the article.

7/14/2005 11:42:32 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [11]

Business

So News @ MIT Sloan, the weekly newsletter for students, staff, and faculty at MIT Sloan, has once again decided to make me a star. The last time they interviewed me was for my survival story in the Thailand tsunami. This time, apparently my blog along with Yoav's, Ilana's, and a few other Sloanies' were noticed by Diana, one of the newsletter writers. She is currently researching a story about MIT Sloan student bloggers and would like to know why we blog despite our very busy schedule. If I decide to participate in the story, it means that my identity and the url of my blog will be published on the newsletter. My blog will certainly see an increase in hits from students and even faculty members, and I am not sure if I am ready for that yet. I am also concerned that my blog may be a little dry on content and that my writing may not be eloquent enough for massive viewing by my peers. On the positive side, since I started blogging seriously 6 months ago, my rhetoric along with self-articulation and self-expression have improved dramatically. Broad exposure of my blog will challenge me further in blogging more eloquently.

So to those of you who have been reading my blog regularly, what do you think? Should I get my blog mentioned on News @ MIT Sloan?

7/13/2005 7:18:31 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [17]

Blog

I had my mid-term examination for my accounting class today and I really don't know how well I have done. This accounting course on steroid is taught by Prof. Plesko who puts students on a trial-by-fire basis by using real financial statements (or 10-k) in all lectures, homework assignments, and even tests. This is a testimony of why I like this class: it keeps it real. I concur with Prof. Plesko that it is important to learn the fundamentals of accounting and apply them to the analysis and synthesis of real financial statements.

Nontheless, there's one word to describe today's test: OVERWHELMING. We were given 15 pages of material that resembles a typical homework assignment in today's examination. Instead of working in team of 4 and taking days to complete the work, we were given 1 1/2 hours to work on the problem set individually. The "cheat sheet" that I have meticulously compiled was hardly any use in a context where time is the essence. It's not exactly a setback for me because I felt that I really understand the material and had used the right approach in tackling the questions in the test; but I know that I have committed a few stupid mistakes like extracted the wrong information from a different fiscal time. It's probably not A grade stuff but I should do fairly well (I hope).

7/13/2005 6:41:18 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [10]

School

I used to shop at Whole Foods, located down the street where I used to live, for grocery almost everyday. It was in effect my personal pantry (like I used to call it). Unfortunately, I have not shopped at the place since moving to my new apartment. Today, I finally stopped by at the supermarket after class to pick up my favorite bagels - Iggy's Bagels. While shopping at Whole Foods did relive my withdrawal syndrome somewhat, I also felt weird due in part to my recent disengagement to the store. It seemed like eons since I last stepped my foot onto the store.

7/12/2005 12:30:11 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [12]

Personal

While having lunch with Noah at Hi-Rise Bread Company (or Hi-Price as I like to call it) in West Cambridge on the weekend, I have discovered what is perhaps the best sandwich that I have ever eaten. It is call Fern's Problem Solver. I have never been disappointed by Bread Company albeit expensive, so this place gets a 8.5/10 rating from me.

7/12/2005 12:02:03 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [13]

Food

On Friday, I attended the "Networking & Interview Workshop" organized by Helen Trimble - the SDM career placement officer. The person who presented the workshop was Dan King, a career development consultant with Career Planning & Management. It is no surprise that the theme of the workshop is networking, in particular Dan urged everyone that the key of finding in one's ideal job and consequently getting hired is networking. In all, I walked away from the workshop with some new ideas and inspirations. The most interesting data that I found in the workshop is that today, 70% of the professionals found their jobs through networking and only 5% of the pool found their jobs through job postings. I am still not buying King's questionable figure, but I do agree that networking is significant in landing someone his/her dream job. In any case, John, a fellow classmate has effectively summarized King's prominent ideas in his earlier email:

1. Always prefer networking methods to getting a job over “open, public knowledge” methods: you’re in more control when networking.
2. Always be on the lookout for networking contacts, even at the barber, hairdresser, or donut shop. But never ask your networking contacts directly for a job, that's a NO-NO.
3. Never, in an interview, climb up on the table with your elbows and get too "in-your-face," or conversely, slouch way down and adopt an "I don’t care" posture.
4. Never let your leg get to rockin’, or shuck and jive, bip and bop, keep your limbs relaxed instead of communicating nervousness. Fold hands in lap if necessary.
5. Never lick your palm and shake hands like a wuss. Conversely, do not “bone crush” your interviewer in an annoying display of male dominance.
6. Always have an answer to the most common interview question: “Tell me about yourself.”
7. Always have an answer to the most common “gotchya” question and its variants: "What is your weakness?"

Well John, thanks for the summary. Of course, these are some of the highlights of Dan's workshop.

7/11/2005 11:27:45 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [16]

Business

Sorry folks, I have been missing in action in blogspace because I was up the wall busy the last couple of days. Interestingly, I seem to have more thoughts in my mind whenever I am busy. Thankfully, I was able to jot some of these thoughts on paper and update my blog with them retrospectively.

7/11/2005 11:16:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [12]

Blog

Last night was the second time this semester that the SDM staff has treated us to a sumptuous meal at Summer Shack. Good food and I have say that I can really get use to such treats.

I arrived late at Summer Shack last night as I had to spend 1 1/2 hour prior to sort out the mess with the cable installation fiasco at my new apartment. To be frank, I'm not the biggest fan of Comcast. But what can I do? They're the only cable provider in the city of Cambridge and I am addicted to Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi channel, and broadband Internet. I simply can't live without my cable connection. Before I digress further... The crowd at Summer Shack has dwindled down substantially when I arrived. I hung out for another hour before a group of us decided to head down to Harvard Square for more boozing. Disappointingly, not every one who said that were going to the bar ended up at the bar. Robbie, Jeff, Paul, and Jason... Where the hell were you guys? I didn't stay for long at the bar as I had wanted to retire early. We were all lame.

7/8/2005 11:30:49 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [14]

School

I just added another fellow SDM student's blog, which is written in Spanish, to my blog roll. I found it while surfing on Matti's blog site.

7/8/2005 1:14:58 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [8]

Blog

When I turned on my IBM Thinkpad last Monday night (right after the firework to do my homework), what I saw was that dreaded Blue Screen of Death. It said something to the effect of "Interrupt 5 Error, Windows kernel panic." The next thing I knew, the Wi-Fi stopped working and for some reason, the ethernet and power management were affected as well. This isn't very good considering that (1) I don't have time to mess with this shit, (2) this is the second lemon that I had with PC laptops this year. The good news is that it is an IBM and their service is good. The bad news is, based on my experience, it takes at least a week to get the computer fixed and I really need a computer for school. I tried fixing the laptop for the next 12 hours but it was both futile and frustrating. As a last resort, I decided to abandon the evil empire of PC and move onto the greener pasture of Mac. Yes, I have decided to embrace the Mac by acquiring a powerbook 12" on a special education promotion by Apple.

The PC applications that we need to use in the SDM program are: Excel, Word, Matlab, AIM (Trillian), and Web browser (Firefox or IE). Well... These applications are also available on the Mac as well!!! In the last 6 months, I have witnessed Matti and Dave used their Mac at MIT without any problems. Now that I no longer doing any software development on the PC, I am free of any allegiance to the PC/Windows platform. So goodbye spyware, plug-n-pray, Windoze, and virus, and hello Mac.

7/6/2005 10:46:36 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [11]

Mac

Sometimes I don't even understand me. As if the stress wasn't enough for me after moving my apartment and that I still have 3/4 of my stuff still unpacked, I decided to host a BBQ at my old place for over 35 people yesterday!!! I am friggin' nuts. I got ZERO study done over the long weekend. But you know what, it is well worth it. Like they say, it builds character. In any case, the BBQ at my old place was a huge success. Over 35 people, mostly from the SDM cohort and their better halves, showed up. It's good to finally hang out with Rajeev, Srini, Binoy, and Alex socially.

Perhaps a diplomatic death trap, I was behaving like a dictator ordering people what to bring before the BBQ event. To make matter worse, I overestimated the amount of food to bring. Ooops(GRIN) ... Needless to say, we had a good variety of food ranging from Kebobs (compliments of Jeanne) to Spare Ribs (my creation) and as always, it was still gluttony at the Chow's.

After the BBQ, the crowd strolled down, in their own separate groups, to the Charles River to watch the fireworks. The people whom I was with were able to find a good spot in the middle of Harvard Bridge (Mass Ave) to catch a good view of the spectacular firework.

7/5/2005 10:40:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [9]

Social

I have been busy moving my apartment the last couple days. This is perhaps the most spontaneous move I have ever done. With the exception of the two ton TV, the whole moving endeavor went pretty well. I had planned to do the move next weekend; but I decided against the idea and moved this weekend instead since it is a long weekend. Thankfully, I was able to enlist my sister, Dave, and Matti to help me move. I have only asked them the day before the move but they have unwaveringly decided to lend me a hand. To Dave Owens, Matti Kinnunen, and my sister Alisa, thanks for those strong arms.

I am missing the brightness that I experienced in my old apartment, which has 9 skylights. There is also no deck at my new place and hence grilling is now considered a luxury of the past. Last night, I have already passed up on the pork chops, sirloin steaks, and bratwursts while doing my grocery shopping; this is very sad. On the bright side, it was time to move on. The rent on the new apartment is a steal and living across from one of my favorite bars in Cambridge is bonus. The best of all, I don't have to deal with condo politics at my old place anymore. What a relief.

Here are some important lessons that I learned from my moving yesterday:

1. If you own Ikea furniture, you can easily disassemble them and carry the individual pieces. I almost ruined my bookshelf for not taking the shelves out and carrying it as one big bulky unit.
2. It is amazing how much junk we accumulate throughout the years. I made a new rule during my packing: "If I haven't use an item for the last 2 years, I am not going to miss it anytime soon." This way, I got rid of a lot of junk.
3. Don't be like me, plan ahead of a move. I was lucky this time to be able to pack and move in 2 days.

7/4/2005 1:05:04 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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