My 2 cents

I have been spending quite some time now to learn French (3 months in France) and Japanese (6 weeks in Japan). I want to keep practicing the two languages and to learn more new words. However, with a busy city life, I find it very difficult to keep up and have yet to find the right method. So here is a new way that I am trying. Write a short passage everyday in English, use an online translator to convert it into French and Japanese, hand copy the two translated passage for practicing the written form and use a text to speech reader to read them out in French and Japanese. You are reading my very first article for this purpose.

J'ai été passer un certain temps maintenant d'apprendre le français (3 mois en France) et le japonais (6 semaines au Japon). Je veux continuer à pratiquer les deux langues et d'apprendre de nouveaux mots. Toutefois, une ville avec la vie, je trouve qu'il est très difficile de suivre et n'ont pas encore trouvé la bonne méthode. Voici donc une nouvelle voie que je cherche. Ecrire un court passage en anglais de tous les jours, utiliser un logiciel de traduction en ligne pour le convertir en français et en japonais, part copier les deux traduit le passage à la pratique de la forme écrite et d'utiliser un lecteur de synthèse vocale pour les lire en français et en japonais. Vous êtes en train de lire mon tout premier article à cet effet.

私は）フランスでフランス語（ 3ヶ月）を学習し、かつ日本語（ 6週間、日本ではかなりの時間を費やすことになった。私は2つの言語の練習を続けるより、新しい言葉を学びたいです。しかし、忙しい都会の生活で、私を維持するのは非常に困難を感じると、まだ右の方法を見つけなければならない。そこでここでは新しい方法ですが試みている。短い通路で、日常英語、フランス語、日本語、手のコピーに書かれたフォームの練習のための2つの翻訳の通路に変換すると音声の読者に、フランス語と日本語で声を出して読むにテキストを使用して、オンライン翻訳の使用を作成します。この目的のために私の非常に最初の記事を読んでいる。

We had a book club session, there were 8 of us and we shared the following books:

Business Cycles: History, Theory and Investment Reality - Lars Tvede
The four-hour workweek - Timothy Ferriss
A pale view of Hill - Kazuo Ishiguro
中國大歷史 - 黃仁宇
Screen play - Syd Field
0-1 - 澤田尚美
香港社會企業妙點子 - 謝家駒
關於跑步，我說的其實是? - 村上春樹

Wonderful event, always fun to hear about what other people are reading and why they like the book.

I was invited by Xian Jiao Tong University to attend the kick off meeting of China's first International English Contest (IEC). The meeting was held in Beijing and organizers from different cities and provinces were present, there were also representatives from the British Embassy and American Embassy. The purpose of IEC is to select the best candidates from primary school, secondary school and universities to enter the contest and train them to become student ambassadors of China, and they will be showing people from other countries about China, its people, its culture and also some local speciality of regions where the student comes from. The contest is supported by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The final contest will be held in Beijing at the end of 2009 and the winners will be going to UK visiting London and Cambridge to promote Chinese culture. I think this is a very meaningful event and is highly supported by the government. Official link

Today we went to a seminar at the Science Museum on the topic of the third Chinese research station in Antarctica - Kunlun. The talk was organized by Dr. Rebecca Lee, and the guest speak was Dr. Yuansheng Li, the leader who led the team to build the station.

China has already built two research stations in Antarctica. The Changcheng (Great-Wall) Station, founded in February 1985, is located south of King George Island. The Zhongshan Station, built in February 1989, is located south of Prydz Bay on the Mirror Peninsula, eastern of Larsemann Hills.

Six countries, including the United States, Russia, Japan, France, Italy and Germany, have already built inland research stations in the Antarctica.

Sadly the answer is NO, as I was told by a senior official of our government during a lunch event together with industry representatives.

I was describing a business model of an UK company which sponsors promising technology ideas generated from universities, by providing a proof-of-concept seed money to the researchers and if the idea reaching prototype stage and continue to be proven promising, the company has a first right of refusal in invest and form a a venture together with the university and the researchers. This company takes a long term view that the investment doesn't get an exit event for at least 6-7 years, and this is exactly the difficulty for Hong Kong, because it is hard to get Hong Kong investors to take such long term view with no near term return. Therefore, I suggested that our government can take such long term view, but the answer I got was a big "NO" because, the legco that approves the funding for research and ventures support will demand to see near term success/return and they will never agree on "long term investment" type of funding (just like most Hong Kong investors...)

I wonder if I should take a long term view on Hong Kong if our government is seemingly short-sighted...

If all these "financial actors" are so good at predicting the trend of the stock market or explaining the ups and downs of the stock, after the facts of course. I propose the following challenge:

Confine yourself in a room with no means of contact to the outside world whatsoever, and I'll feed you all the financial news like the indexes from the previous day, bank rate setting meeting result, oil production, acquisition news, etc and you tell me at the end of the day what the new indexes are. If you are really good at "predicting" things then such information should be sufficient. Let's face it, we all know, "financial actors" merely pick the seemingly appropriate facts to explain something that already happened.

Of course, I'm not naive and I already know no-one can take on such challenge.

Which reminds me of another quote, Economists are people who will tell you tomorrow why the things that they predicted yesterday did not happen today.

Well analysts are people who will tell you tomorrow exactly how the things happened yesterday have affected the outcome today.

This must be the 3rd typhoon hitting Hong Kong this year and each time it strikes during weekend! While the last 2 typhoon posted no threat, I think this time, there is no escape and we are going to embrace the full force of the mighty storm. Sit tight! We are going to watch "Harry Potter 6", safely inside the cinema...

I often visit Cyberport to work out, have meals and sometimes sit around one of the cafes to do some work. Using my netbook to connect to the supposedly fully covered Cyperport Wi-Fi facilities, however, it is not so straight forward, it is usually with limited bandwidth, the connection often drops, the authentication page sometimes say "405 method not allowed" when accepting the general terms on the connection! Hardly satisfactory! I get better connection in many other cafe in Central, Wan Chai and Causeway Bay, sigh....

Just came back from a talk organized by iProA titled "Managing through uncertainties", the guest speaker is Mr. KO Chia who I have met earlier this morning. Thoroughly enjoyed his speech sharing his experience through the ups and downs of the various market cycle and how to equip oneself to be prepare for all situation.

Had a breakfast meeting with Mr. KO Chia, an experienced senior executive, venture builder, investor and advisor. We happen to be helping the same company called ChineseAN, an online affiliated marketing company that is very promising though not without significant challenge. It was good hearing KO's stories on various ventures that he had been involved in, he is also going to speak at another iProA event on "managing through uncertainties" which I am attending.