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Jul 3

Career Freedom?

by ccue

Much has been said FIRE (Financial Independence and Retire Early).  There is a difference between retiring early from the corporate workplace and retiring early from life when you become financially independent. I hope most are interested in the former, and no-one is interested in retiring early from life. 

Corporate workplace may be where we spend more time than anything else, in our career years. The corporate career is not the totality of life. The dream of retiring early comes across as more the desire to retire from the corporate workplace. 

In a way, corporate workspace is a new and luxurious form of modern slavery, quite full of shackles. The  modern workplace shackles take on familiar forms. 

  • We need to live with the bi-annual or annual performance evaluation system. It is the game to play along for survival, for good compensation and promotion. 
  • When the job market is bad, no one would risk their careers to counter their boss’ ideas.  The one-liner asks of the company executives become the gospel and you cannot apply critical thinking about the asks. You cannot doubt the organizational strategy, product directions and OKRs.
  • When your coworkers kiss up, it is still better to play along. If your ideas become the boss’ idea, it is the great idea of the boss. If your boss has bad ideas, it is an effort to shut up.

Career freedom means at least

  • You can speak what you have in mind without worrying about the subtle but legitimate implications.
  • You can apply critical thinking to what your job is about, what your boss is asking, where the company is going.
  • You can leave your job the next day and not be stressed about it.

Earning career freedom in corporate workplace requires hard work.  What can you do to earn it?

  • Start early to save and invest, work hard towards financial independence.
  • Learn new skills that the world needs all the time. 
  • Stay open to new opportunities. Even if you are happy with your company, you need to know what the markets are for you.

With career freedom, you choose to work in a corporate workplace, you choose to stay or retire from it. The choice brings more job satisfaction and you can bring more meaningful impact. And if corporate workplace is not your cup of tea, you can create a career your way.

May all the salaried workers find their path to career freedom.

Career Management Dear Diary Misc.

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Aug 16

The different shades in the US melting pot

by ccue

Things often are not as they seem. I am often quite wary about people forming judgement or taking immutable positions based on what is visible on the surface. The US melting pot is one of the many examples where the surface may hide what is underneath.

America is famous for its “melting pot” narrative. The global population largely believes or chooses to believe in the possibilities where everyone is free to express and chase dreams.

Google search shows the population mix in the US that supports the melting pot narrative.

  • 58% as non-Hispanic White (Caucasian),
  • 18% Hispanic or Latino, 
  • 12% Black or African, 
  • 4% Asian  (including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders)

A look at the past tells that the population mix changes over time.  It is anybody’s guess how the population mix will become in another few decades or centuries.

The current population mix,  in the American melting pot, can be seen as a bold social experiment on how people of different heritages and origins come together. If the wealth, influence and power of the country are indicators, the melting pot experiment in the US has been a success. The poverty experienced in the US is not the same as the poverty experienced in some war-torn countries. (It does not mean that it is better to be poor in the US than other places.  Being poor among the rich can cause more suffering. There are just no places in the world where it feels great to be poor.) 

Is the overall country population a good proxy of your own social mix? 

I have lived in the US for a few decades. I work in large US corporations and diverse teams.  Including my “international” connections at work, I take a quick assessment about my social connections and it comes across I have far more connections with people who have similar origin and heritage as me. My social circle and US population mix would look similar to the following charts. If I include other attributes like age, I believe there will be more connections with people of similar ages too.

The current state of the US melting pot gets many believing that people are integrated well into the American way of living. Yet, if we dwell into the individual social circle, the melting pot is more likely made up of social circles that are way more homogeneous. In simple terms, black Americans likely have more connections with other blacks, American Chinese likely have more connections with other American Chinese, American Indians likely have more connections with other American Indians. The intersections across different groups happen, but way less than what the overall population mix implies.

To add to the diversity, there are different shades within the same heritage. Almost anything that talks about heritage is a simplification of the myriad of complexity about how our ancestors end up where we are, and how I end up where I am. 

For the sake of discussion, we would take some simplification. Let’s take people with Asian heritage who are living in the US.  (You can replace Asian and US with the heritage and place of your choice). There are different shades of their identities and their sense of belongings. Are they American who happen to have Asian heritage (for convenience I call them Asian American)? Or are they Asians who happen to have an American passport? (American Asian). The answer makes a difference in terms of what identities they hold.  

In one of the recent talks about Asian Americans, it was mentioned about sentences that the Asians, in America, feel absolutely offended by.  Such as, when the Asian American gets praise for speaking good English; such as, when they are asked to go back to Asia; such as when they are asked where are they from.  The first generations of Asians in America feel less offended, while their American born children would feel more offended. The spectrum of the reactions is an indicator of what they identify with and where they belong to. When others ask questions that imply that “you do not belong to the place you identify with”, you feel offended.  I have friends who moved from Hong Kong to California years for decades. They could settle back to live in Hong Kong. Their identity still ties with Hong Kong where they were born and raised. Often, the first generation immigrants, away from their originating countries, are American Asians where their identities are more tied to their Asian heritage, especially for those who chose to immigrate. Their children tend to think of themselves as Asian Americans with the identity more tied to the melting pot America.  The sense of identity, with America, increases with every subsequent generation of Asian Americans.

Why does it matter?

  • As much as the US seems successful in the melting pot, people are not as integrated, and their social connections often do not reflect the population mix. Social connections include more people similar to each other in their origins, cultures and the list goes on to include age, look, and many more.
  • The US melting pot concept is a relatively modern concept. With more advancements in technology and transportation, more people will move to other countries in their lifetime.  Would there be more melting pots, where people of different heritages live in close proximities with each other?
  • Even within similar heritage, there are different shades of their identity and belonging to the place they live in.

Things, like the melting pots, often are not as they seem. I am often quite wary about people forming judgement or taking immutable positions based on what is visible on the surface. Before your opinions and positions, I just hope more will look beneath the surface. Technology has made it so much easier to research about things.

Career Management Dear Diary

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Jul 20

Echoes of wisdom: three commencement speeches

by ccue

My Toastmaster Club President asked if I would like to be a speaker in the upcoming club meeting. It is not any special request. Such a request serves as a trigger about what meaningful speech I would like to share with the fellow club members, many of whom will have many ventures and career years ahead of them. The Club president did not have much of a suggestion of the topics. June is the month of college graduation. I decided to use a speech to echo the wisdom of three commencement speeches. The first of the three speeches was dated in 2007. I read the speech transcript from “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”, a book with so much wisdom.  The other two speeches were more freshly delivered in June this year. 

My speech transcript re: “Echoes of wisdom: three commencement speeches”. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

How many remember the commencement speeches from your college graduations? Because I don’t remember anything, I could not put into practice the wisdom from the speech of my college graduation.  As you have many ventures and years ahead, I have three commencement speeches from three great persons to share with you today. 

Charlie Munger at USC Law, 2007 
Munger is known for his 60 years of partnership with Warren Buffet, and the unusual successes of the company Berkshire Hathaway. His wisdom and humor have lived on in his speech and his book. He said “acquisition of wisdom is a moral duty”.  

The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want.  You want to deliver to the world what you want to buy if you were on the other side.  It is a golden rule. 
Be a learning machine.  Develop a multi-disciplinary knowledge in important domains:  business, psychology, math and history. 
Hard work and strong work ethics are essential.  As obvious as it is, we often forget it when things are not going well.

His speech is full of gold and offers values for anyone. 

Roger Federer at Dartmouth, 2024
Roger is arguably the most beloved tennis player of all time. He retired in 2022. I was there in London watching him to play the last match at the London O2 arena, and his emotional farewell. He did not finish high school. Yet his tennis accomplishment earned him the honor of a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Dartmouth. 

Effortless is a myth: For many who have watched him play, his play looks easy and effortless. This is misleading. He explains that he had to work very hard to make his game look easy. Next time, when  you see some successful people get an easy promotion, think again.
It’s only a point: A tennis match has many points, just like our life has many points. Federer shares that during the point, you see the point as the most most important point in your life that you put 100% in. When the point is over, win or lose, you need to learn and move on, so you have your 100% for the next point. 
Life is bigger than the court: Federer has his foundation that helps children in Africa get an education. It’s important to have a purpose in life beyond your career.

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia at CalTech, 2024
Jensen famously said the following : “To me, no task is beneath me, because I used to be a dishwasher, I used to clean toilets and I’ve cleaned more toilets than all of you combined”. In his commencement speech, he shared with the graduates a detailed history of Nvidia, and the journey. 

Develop an informed and reasoned belief  in something unconventional and unexplored.
Find a craft to dedicate the lifetime to perfect. He famously said that he has nothing to do other than being the CEO of Nvidia. 
Prioritize. Jensen has a prioritized list, and first thing in the  morning, he takes care of the most important priority, leaving him plenty of time to take care of people and other priorities

With technology, many commencement speeches are available on YouTube, waiting for you to discover. Consider checking out a commencement speech. That may turn out to be the best use of the time and you would go to bed wiser than in the morning. As Mr. Munger once said, acquisition of wisdom is a moral duty. 

About Learning Career Management Dear Diary Public Speaking / Toastmaster public-speaking

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Feb 2

AI Challenges

by ccue

Toastmasters, a global organization about communication excellence, is celebrating 100 years. Toastmasters has global presence, with over 200,000 members and counting. I served as president of one toastmaster club for two terms. I remain active in two Toastmaster clubs including the AI club, the first toastmaster club with an AI themes. It is fitting to combine communication excellence and the latest AI technology as Generative AI storms into our lives, like no other technology before. Below is the speech script of my 7-minutes speech about AI challenges and how everyone can become an AI ambassador to have more people participating in the AI future.

I have been an active Toastmaster member and served as president of a Toasterster club for two-terms

We wake up with water, electricity and the internet. What if I decide not to use any of them? From where I live, the nearest body of water is over 5 miles. I would walk without Google Maps, no electric car, in the dark, to fill up buckets of water I need for the day. It would take over 4 hours for the round-trip. Technology has made our lives better. We have taken for granted people use helpful technology all the time. 

To my AI club fellows, I would like to share the obstacles facing AI adoption. By being aware of it, we can concretely set plans to address these obstacles.

I’m leading an initiative focused on upskilling and enabling AI, particularly GenAI, at all levels, to as many as possible for the company .  Every single day, I am humbled “people are not rethinking how their work and life can be improved with AI technology”. The reality is, technology adoption requires intentional effort to bring people along. Why is that? There are technical obstacles and psychological resistances.

Starting with the technical challenges,

  • We live in places with cutting edge technology. Do you know just about 65% of the global population are online (w/i internet). AI depends both on electricity and the internet. That means around 3 billion who do not have reliable internet, likely cannot benefit from AI. 
  • AI is intimidatingly complex. Some techies unconsciously throw out jargon. Terms like LLM, gpu, tpu, langchain, multimodal, neural network, encoder, decoder, transformer, hallucinations…just scared people away. 
  • Concerns about data privacy, biased input and security are real. Can you trust technology? When to trust , when not to trust AI? 

We develop strong opinions and emotions about things too. Every new technology challenges our comfort zone and injects the fear of the unknown, fear of mistakes and fear of losses.

Many people fear errors or lack of control when using AI for tasks traditionally done by humans. It is natural we are uncomfortable with machines generating creative content or making decisions in their personal lives.

  • Elon Musk said “We will have for the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human. There will come a point where no job is needed.“. He may have spoken his mind. How would you react about AI replacing human jobs and YOUR jobs?
  • When Singapore Prime Minister Lee was recently interviewed by Bloomberg, he said “There are a lot of things in AI that we don’t know.  We don’t know where it is going. The researchers do not know where it is going.”.  How could you manage the unknown?

You belong to this ai club toastmasters. I think you can do something. You can start with one thing.  Here are some suggestions.

  1. Listen to others’ concerns in adopting the technology. 
  2. Share how AI has benefited you
  3. Invite their curiosity to learn more.

Thomas Edison brought electric light to part of Manhattan in 1882. Even 4 decades later, only half of all homes in the US had electric power. Many Americans still lit their homes with gas lights and candles.

I invite you to stay aware of these Ai technical and psychological  obstacles, it is as easy as starting with one thing. Take the time to listen to concerns, share how AI works well for you and invite curiosity from others.  If you all do at least one thing, AI can be in more hands. We don’t need to wait 50 years.

Are you willing?

Thank you.

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Feb 22

Silicon Valley latest buzz – ChatGPT / Bard

by ccue

The ups and downs are a pattern in Silicon Valley. In the downs, the layoff shakes people to the core. In the downs, many middle managers face both mid-life crisis and financial crisis at the same time. In the downs, the genZ realizes, a corporation is a corporation no matter the vision, the mission or the propaganda on the company web page. We are in the downs.

Ups and downs, Silicon Valley continues to be the center of many technology innovations. Some change the world, many do not; it’s just hard to differentiate between the two.

During the internet boom in the 90s, many folks resigned from big corporations and dreamed of their startup making it to IPO.  They worked super long hours because of the hope that they would not need to work anymore after the IPO. It was those glory days that we asked each other whether we made it yet, and who has become millionaires overnight. Restaurants were full, highways were busy.  Everyone was upbeat. It was like living in the Great Gatsy era. It has been a golden era. 

Year 2K has been another buzz where the whole world was watching and maybe worrying how the 20th century transitioned to the 21 century. It is not so much of a Ponzi scheme. In hindsight, its crisis assessment has definitely been overblown. Yet it created so many IT job opportunities. The COBOL programmers, long considered as dinosaurs, came back alive and became hotly sought after. It was a mini-miracle there. Y2K came and went without much drama. It was a win-win.  

After the Y2K, there was the Cloud Buzz. It was advertised as if Cloud would solve all the problems of all corporations.  Every CIO put it as a priority and talked about getting on the wagon.  It was so overblown for a few years, then went quiet.  The same pitch deck can be used for so long before people ask for actual deliverables and results. After some more years of working out the kinks, it started to deliver.  Cloud is just a thing that once you are on its platform, it is pretty hard to get out.  This Cloud business would keep many busy for many future years.  

Then came the voice assistant. No one seems to figure out how to make money with these hardware devices or voice assistants. The most popular use cases for these devices remain to be “set a timer”, “play me a song”, “tell me a joke”, “tell me the news”. It is ahead of its time and technology. It needs a few more years before natural language technology is ready.

Machine Learning has been quite a breakthrough, benefiting from the data explosion and the abundance of computing power. It would probably be another few more years to discover the full commercial value. 

Generative AI is taking the world by storm.  

Having AI to write news articles is not something new. A few websites have been using AI to write poems or write news, only that they were not professional and some had pretty poor quality overall. With the ChatGPT (Generative pre-trained transformer) or BARD, their trained language model provides the professional touch and is impressive so far. Chatting with these generative AIs, I can stop admiring how fast it learns and how much it improves each day, not unlike the first year of a baby.

Silicon Valley techies can test these generative AI with the real problems to solve. The generative AI, ChatGPT or BARD alike, has such a powerful language model that it summarizes better than some high-income professionals.

  • Ask it “how to manage changes in a big corporation”, its advice is as good as,  if not better, than someone in my company who has worked as a change advisor for years.
  • Ask it to summarize lengthy articles, it gives a clean summary which is surprisingly logical and easy to follow.
  • Ask it to explain “technical jargon”, it explains in English terms and helps you learn more than talking to a pro.
  • Ask it to plan a trip itinerary, it gives a great start, and open to refine it along the way.

What impressed me the most is the language model, I feel that suddenly I have a “communication” person for anything I write to create more punchy and readable content. Disclaimer: I have not asked for the service of generative AI in this blog, and the blog continues to have the flaw of a human being.

Their limitations are quite obvious too. It is a language model. It cannot be extended, without a high price tag, to support images, urls, and other object types.  It has no shame to make up urls or information as it sees fit. That quality of making things up is among the most humane parts of generative AI.

If you worry about generative AI can replace humans in many jobs. Worry not. It is going to take away some jobs, and will create more jobs. If you worry about generative AI means that you cannot stay relevant with the same skills, it may be time to keep learning new skills. I am ready to attend the Generative AI conference this weekend.

About Learning ai Career Management Computer Misc.

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Feb 2

Toastmaster speech to practice storytelling

by ccue

Storytelling is a great skill to have for relationships and for career progression. Everyday, we come across many story lines. Like many other skills, regardless of the natural talent, practice made perfect. Recently, I had a chance to practice writing a story and deliver a Toastmaster speech in my story to practice this skill.

History is among the best place to find stories. Recently, some major newspaper reports about the possibility of China invasion of Taiwan. The mindset of a reporter is unlikely in the same league as the China leadership who has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. How many newspaper audience know the history enough to not fall into the pernicious influence of the press? This seems to be a good story line.

The transcript of my recent Toastmaster speech : the fable of US, China and Taiwan.

_____________________________________________________

The situation of China and Taiwan has been misunderstood by many.  I don’t have time to share thousands of pages of history.  In my  own words,  I want to tell the story of the 50 years between China, Taiwan and the United States.   

Once upon a time, Taiwan has been part of China for many hundred years.  

Fast forward to the early 20th century,  a civil war broke out in China between the communist and non-communist parties.  They fought and fought over 20 years, before world war II, and continued after. At the end, the communist party won and became the ruling party.  The non-communist party did not surrender, they fled to Taiwan and “took control of” the island.  

In the first thirty years under the communist party,  China was poor, isolated and had few friends.  On the other hand, Taiwan flourished.  It had money, it had powerful friends including the United States.

By late 1960s, some visionary American politicians started thinking: it could be in the national interest to make friends with China, it would  help us to fight the Soviets, and the huge China’s market of nearly one billion consumers would be so attractive to our business.  Here is the problem?  We are more enemies than friends with China, and they have different ideologies.   It needs a special day. 

That day came in 1971, top ping pong (table tennis) players gathered in Japan for the world championship.   One day, after a practice, the American ping pong player Cowan, mistakenly got on the shuttle bus of the Chinese teams.  In that era, the US and China were more enemies than friends.   The Chinese grew up with the slogan “down with American imperialism”, while the US propaganda was anti-communism red scare .  Cowan felt like an alien showed up on earth.  First 5 minutes, the bus drove on, nothing happened, everyone was suspicious; another 5 minutes, the bus drove on, no-one came forward.  Just before the bus arrived, a top Chinese player Zhuang came forward, extended his arm, shook hands with Cowan and gave him a gift.   Cowan had nothing in his bag, other than a comb, and he did not want to give the comb.    Cowan owed Zhuang a return gift.  After the incident, the media asked Cowan: “Do you want to visit China?”  Cowan and the US ping pong athletes became the first Americans to officially visit China since the communist takeover.  So coined the “ping-pong diplomacy” .   Three months later, Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state, was visiting Pakistan, he feigned illness for a day and took on a top-secret detour to China to meet the Chinese premier Mr. Zhou.  Another few months later,  President Nixon became the first US president to visit China. 

By 1979, the United States formally transferred diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China.  The US acknowledged that there is one China and Taiwan is a part of China; and supported China in joining the United Nations, literally grabbing the UN representation of Taiwan and passing it to China.  

The reverse of fortune took place in the years to follow.  China has friends and money.   It has full diplomatic relations with over 170 countries.  Taiwan loses many “friends”, with only 13 small countries keeping their ties with Taiwan.  

What is the moral of the story?  In politics, there are no forever friends or foes, but the benefits of a relationship.  And don’t judge based on just the current events in the news.

The story is going to continue with more twists and turns. 

_____________________________________________________

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Dec 29

2019 in review

by ccue

2019 is a year of many events and a few  life moments. I hope everyone has a chance to take a moment to review the year from a personal perspective.  Here is my list of top events. 

I am saddened to watch the months of unrest in Hong Kong from afar.  If 2019 is the ultimate outburst of deep-rooted resentment for HongKongers, let’s hope 2020 will be a year of resolution and reconciliation.

My body has been noisy this year. My  gastroenterologist considered me as a challenging patient after year-long stomach issue and multiple antibiotics. A procedure, followed by a surgery to remove gallbladder stones, may have addressed the root cause, or at least I hope.  Unfortunately, a number of friends have run into various kinds of health issues, confirming “when it rains, it pours”.

I took a different job within the company for a change, working on ambient/voice computing.  It is a mixed feeling of excitement, anxiety, uncertainty, challenges and of course, tons of learning.  On the other hand, my spouse took a break from employment after all these years. It is a year of changes for us in our career.

We travelled to five countries Netherland (Amsterdam), Belgium (Ghent, Brussels, Bruges), UK (Wimbledon, London), Portugal (Lisbon, Madeira) plus a few places in the US (Indian Wells, LA, NYC).  We had scores of wonderful moments including the fairy tale like city of Bruges, the best snack @Pastei De Belem (Portuguese Egg Tart), the mind-clearing  hike @Madeira PR11.

Home improvements have been on a  fast track. Within the year, our home had a new furnace, a new air conditioner, a new set of recessed lights, a new 300 sq. ft plus sunroom, and soon a new Tesla.  This is how much extra time empty-nesters can have.

As tennis fans, my husband and I attended the Indian Well TennisIMG_20190705_125726.  I vividly remembered seeing the ultimate champion Dominique Thiem outside of the hotel before the final, and he beat Federer in the final :(.   For a tennis fan, attending Wimbledon is the pinnacle experience.  We checked off this bucket list item and experienced the unforgettable 2-day Queue, and the surreal experience of watching Federer/Serena from the second row in the Center Court. IMG_20190504_084639

As a parent, we had the proud moments of seeing our daughter graduating from college.  She decided to move to NYC, and she got a job in Manhattan!  We visited her in NYC and took the opportunity to watch US open.

We feel blessed that our family of four are all home during Christmas and New Year.  We went to gym, and we have some relaxing moments together.   Children are cooking dishes like Risotto, Katsu, Okonomiyaki for us. We had some meet up with family and friends. 

As the year approaches its conclusion, I am immensely thankful for these moments in 2019.     

It is almost time to check how many 2019 goals have been achieved, and set goals for 2020.  

Career Management Dear Diary Misc. Tennis Travel

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Oct 6

Toastmaster speech on financial tips

by ccue

ToastmasterPublic speaking is hard.  Motivating others is powerful but few has this natural gift.  Speaking on a topic that you are interested in, but not as a recognised expert, is scary.  I challenged myself a bit, it has been a good experience in preparing for it, and presenting it last month. 

The transcript of my recent Toastmaster speech on financial tips.
_____________________________________________________

I have yet to hear someone say “ I want to be poor in my life”.   More people seem to be saying “I want to be rich and richer”.   

I grew up in a poor family in Hong Kong, my parents worked hard  At that era, Hong Kong still had a lot of factories, and they subcontracted simple chores that we could complete at home.   I started helping out when I was like 3 years old, we barely made enough and we could not afford toys, snacks or ice creams.   

I want to be richer.   Shortly after I arrived in the US,  I enrolled in a 2-year personal financial planning program.    

To my dear Toastmasters,  I am excited to share a few ideas that could go a long way to your financial well being.

Well, life is not just about how much money you have, but your financial position could help or hinder you towards your life goals.  Only you know your life goal, you may want to “see the world”, “spend more time with your loved ones”, “make the world better”, “maximize happiness”, “relax or have fun”.   Your life goal influences your standard of living which then influences how much money you need.   

When is the right time to start?  It is N-O-W, now. Very simple. The younger you start, the more you have at the end.   Can you save an extra $50 each pay check? If you do this for the next 30 years, you would earn $58,000 with a meager 3% return, and a $100,000 with a 6% return.   And if you save $500 each pay check, you would be a millionaire with the same 6% return. Anyone knows about the rule of 72? If you divide 72 by your annual rate of return, what you get is the number of years that your money will double.   Over the long run, the stock market has had an annualized return rate of between six and seven percent, with this rate,  your money doubles every 12 years.     

How much are you going to save?  The tip would be set aside saving prior to spending; and not the other way round.  It is a mindset change. If I enjoy buying things, I would mostly likely spend more, if I don’t set aside savings.

How to make it happen?  It is far better to automate the saving so you never even have the money in your pocket.   Set up an investment account, set up the payroll so your savings would automatically be transferred to this account from each paycheck.   

If you are already doing everything I have said and more,  congratulations. You may still be able to do more! Investing the money is a topic by itself,   I would share my thoughts on investment that is not often mentioned. 

Be aware of your risk tolerance, but also remember the biggest risk is probably not invest your money, just like if you don’t invest yourself in learning.   What many financial books do not say is that your risk tolerance can change and sometimes, you may be able to push yourself a bit especially when you are young.    

Very few of us can claim discipline is their strength.   As such, automate the schedule of your investment, such as investing on the 1st Monday of every month or after every 2 pay checks.

When I started in California years ago, I have worked eight years already in Hong Kong, yet I had a very old car, I did not have a house, I did not have a 401k , I didn’t have much savings.  Over the years, I have earned my house, my car, my investment portfolio and my retirement account.

In summary, now is the time to start, automate savings to an investment account, automate the investment schedule, and you can do more.  If you take action now, at some stage, the return of your investment account would exceed your pay check. And you have more financial freedom towards your life goals.

Thank you .

Financial Freedom Road Sign

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Apr 26

Chinese School Board Anecdotes

by ccue

Chinese school has been among the very short list of things that my children did not have a choice.  Both children had spent over a decade of Friday evenings in Chinese classes. My older child is in her third year in college, and my younger child will start college this fall.  I am no longer part of their Chinese learning, and I wish they will continue in their own ways.

I attended the School’s Annual General Meeting every year in the past decade.  When my daughter was in the elementary grades, I stayed in the classroom often.  Naturally, I volunteered as room parent. By the time I joined the Board, my children were already in mid grades and I no longer “attend” classes with my child.

For the subsequent five years,  I have been the Curriculum director, the PTA director and the Registrar.   These roles link me to the many perennial events on the school calendar.

The Annual General Meeting marks the beginning of the year.  The attendance is a barometer of parent engagement in their children’s education, and it has been improving.  It is still an aspiration to get close to 100% parents’ attendance.

Chinese New Year (CNY) is always my favorite. Together with Student Council, we always try to make the CNY festive, make it traditional and make it memorable.  We are a Chinese School and Chinese New Year is our way to welcome a New Year. If there is only one event to keep, CNY will be it.

To those who participate in the inter-school ANCCS contests, I deeply admire the hard work of the students and, even more so, their parents and our school teachers in the two months before the April event and on the event day.  

The promotion ceremony marks the end of the year, I get goosebumps to listen to our graduating students making speeches. To graduate, it requires more than a decade of Friday’s evenings in a classroom learning Chinese. I believe many students will look back to see such persistence has shaped their life in some ways.  

Board members are in position to create lasting changes that affect current and future students too.  I remember a few of these changes.

Few know our school used to have a school library with hundreds of books.  We closed our library in 2013. That year, we took out all the books from the school library, and for a few weeks, we displayed the books and let the teachers/parents claim them for free.   Those books deserved to be in better hands than being left alone in our cabinets. I remember the happy faces of the teachers/parents when they picked up their favorite books or books that can help them teach.  

2014 was our school’s 50th anniversary.  We all got pretty busy in the celebration planning.  Our board members, our ex-board members, our ex-principals, and our alumni  joined forces to prepare the yearbook and the anniversary events. It was concluded with a very memorable 50th anniversary dinner.  My daughter, now an art-and-design college student, created 3 short videos to chronicle the school history. Looking at the photos over the years, listening to the interviews of the founder and the many principals, l feel we all owe to those who have built the school platform and have contributed selflessly to Chinese education.  I wish that the 55th anniversary would be equally memorable.

In 2015, we established a new AP class offering to meet the demand of students who want to focus on Mandarinand College Level Chinese.  A few of us on the board spent many extra hours to discuss and debate about it. It was a fun and rewarding time. I would like to thank our AP teacher and our ex-principal for being passionate and selfless to push forward the idea.  In the past two years, a few students graduated from the AP classes with visible improvement in their Mandarin ability, not to mention, they earned good scores in the AP Chinese exam. I wish for more success for the AP class.

We thought hard to strengthen the board members with parents of younger children. We were fortunate that there were some strong additions to the board in the past few years including our current secretary, our current PTA director, and our current Marketing director. 

In 2016, we had fun in learning how to improve the page ranking of our school website.   It was eye-opening in figuring out how to make that happen, and it was lots of learning to use AdWords.   As we strengthen our online presence, more parents find us online, more parents contact us, and more families join our school. It has been very rewarding

In 2017, we revamped our school website to bring it up to the era. I am so impressed with the work done on our new school website.  At the same time,  we took an ambitious effort to transition to online registration and online payment.

Many think of volunteering as activities that take away their time and underestimate the rewards of it.  As Chinese parents, we want to place the children in the best school. Chinese school is among the most reachable way to do something to make their education better.   

Most board members, that I started with, have retired; I am thankful for the foundations that they have built and have lots of fun with the current board members along the journey.   Time has come for my retirement from the board.  It has been good fun and I wish more people can experience what I have been through.

Career Management Chinese

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Dec 20

Getting better

by ccue

Current top tennis players, at age 35 or less, say very similar things – they want to get better and practice make them better.   It does not matter the ranking, these top guys have such motivation to simply get better, and the belief that hard work will play off.   I love that attitude.

Do you carry the same attitude, regardless of the ranking?  Do you keep inventory of areas that you want to improve and block time to horn skills?  Do you have the right “rivalry” or friends to motivate or push you?

This past week, I took a one-day course on “presenting da4-books-stackedta and information”, taught by Mr. Edward Tufte.  Mr. Tufte is a professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University.  He is a pioneer in data visualization.  With hundreds of “adult students” in attendance, he brought his unique perspective on data and gave us highlights of the rich content of his four books on data visualization.  It was back to classroom lecture and had reading material that took more of the brain bandwidth and really needed focus.   Over the years, we build the habit of the right “messaging” in our presentation with data filtering; we worry about complexity to our audience, and cherry pick “easy” and relevant information to our target audience; our challenge becomes less of a mental and content but more of a political and presentation.  It is a day of reminder that rich content is superior to beautiful slides; a reminder to not distort data; and the expectation that communication could be clear, precise and efficient at the same time.

At age 73, Mr. Tufte is energetic, passionate to teach and “fearless” to disagree (with PowerPoint or with IT).

Over the hill at age 40, qualify for AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) membership at 50, become a senior citizen with senior discounts at 60 (sexagenarian), then a septuagenarian, an octogenarian to hit the average life span. There are almost always that unknown number of years between now and the end.

What can we make the most of these in-between years, to best the chance of being so admirable at age 73?

That is a lesson by itself.screenshot-www.google.com 2015-12-20 11-32-06

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