Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

Family Holiday Visits

The family and I are visiting in Israel for the Hanukkah/Christmas vacation.  It's absolutely amazing how family simply picks up where it left off.  After the hugs and kisses, and the "he's so big", and "she's so pretty", comes the "you gained some weight, didn't you?", and the "you should really do some sports" part.  But seriously, it's a lot of fun to get together with the parents, brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces.  Unfortunately, marriage is a reciprocal relationship.  Your wife behaves when you're around your family, and you behave around hers.  Reciprocal.  Not fun.  Reciprocal.

In about five minutes you gather all the missing parts.  It's like you have a picture in your mind, and when you see the new picture, your brain runs a "diff" program and finds the differences.  New hair colors and hair styles, jewelry, a new belly or a bigger one, the bold spot, everything.  In general, the differences are subtle, small enough that you can almost miss them.  But some are big, obvious, and sad.  Seeing your parents getting older is never fun.  Seeing them in six months perspective is difficult.  Seeing a parent struggling to find words was the one difference that really touched me.  My Dad, who turned seventy just about a year ago, and who always had the right words, is now struggling to find them.  It's a wake up call.  Make that two.  One is that you suddenly realize that your parent will not live forever, the other one is as simple: neither will you.

The juxtaposition to the growing next generation is reassuring and hopeful.  The kids' vocabulary is a lot larger, they can express complex ideas, ask interesting (sometimes difficult) questions.  What's most amazing to me is that they form their own relationships, coalitions.  My kids haven't seen their cousins in six months.  It took them five minutes to pick up where they left off.  They actually love the cousins, and the cousins love them.  They met, they hugged and kissed, and they went to play.  Like we never left.

So, I love being here.  But I realized something after a few days of being here.  I like Beijing, I like my home in Beijing, I miss my colleagues, I miss my friends.  I am wondering what does this make me?  I have two daughters in New Jersey, a home in Israel and a home in Beijing.  I am a resident of three continents.  Does this mean that I have three homes?  Or none?  And what is the definition of a home anyway?  For me, I realized, the answer is simple.  My home is where my immediate family is.  I also had another observation.  I miss people, and not objects or places.

Hanukkah is over, and Christmas is tomorrow.  Let me wish  you all  a Happy Holiday Season,  and a Happy New Year.  My personal feeling is that 2007 will be a very interesting year.  A year in which many will realize that Sun Microsystems can help them solve their computing problems, that Solaris is indeed the best operating system on the planet.

Posted at 02:19AM Dec 24, 2006 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[0]

Some Bragging - Please Forgive Me...

I wonder if I can get away with just a little bragging.  Well, maybe not a little.  Truthfully, I wanted to brag about Sun Microsystems' CEO.  But then my children received their first report card from their international school, so I figured that I will talk a little bit about that.  And then I remembered that I promised to talk about the school my children go to.  So here it is.

First thing's first.  I have four children.  Two of which live with their mother (my ex-wife) in New Jersey, USA.  The other two, ages 7.5 and 4 live here in Beijing with me.  They attend BIBS - Beanstalk International Bilingual School of Beijing.  Shiri, my 7.5 year old girl, received her first report cards this week.  Report cards, yes, no typo.  Shiri has one curriculum in English and one in Chinese.  She came home with one report card in English, and the other in Chinese.  Shiri came here with very superficial knowledge in English - basically the alphabet and some basic words and phrases, and no knowledge of Chinese.  In less than six months, she chats away in English, writes with no typos, reads a lot (takes after her father).  Her Chinese is not as good, yet she is able to construct sentences, and her vocabulary gets larger daily.  Let me state that this did not happen overnight, nor was it easy.  Her mother, my wife, spends a lot of time doing homework with her, and we hired a Chinese tutor to help her with her Chinese.  The first two months were really tough.  Shiri was under a lot of pressure.  Imagine going to school, unable to communicate with your peers or teachers, not having friends.  It's been six months.  Shiri is happy, she has a lot of friends, she communicates freely.  I have to admit that the thought of "what are you doing to the child" cross my mind.  I am happy that we stuck to it, I am happier that Shiri was able to overcome the obstacles.  Her report card was nothing short of absolutely fascinating.  The teacher's comment was that her accomplishments are outstanding, and the fact that she did not have the language skills only six months before is simply amazing.  Good job, Shiri, we are proud of you!

As for Guy, my 4 year old.  Just recently, the teacher had told us that he started to make up full sentences in both English and Chinese.  The interesting part is that when he says a word in Chinese, he says it with the right intonation, the right pronunciation, with a strong Beijing accent... Guy spent the first month in Beijing crying.  Seriously, every day, as soon as Guy woke up, he started crying that he didn't want to go to kindergarten.  When it was time to say goodbye to his mother, he would cry for hours.  Then it started to change.  Suddenly he started having longer stretches of playing time, peppered with crying spells.  But after a couple of months, he adapted and I can say now, with absolute certainty, that he loves going to kindergarten.  This would be a good place to say that BIBS has all grades starting from pre-kindergarten class, and all the way to eighth grade.  Which for us meant that Shiri, our older daughter, could occasionally go and check up on guy.  She has gotten so used to it, that even now, when everything seems to have quieted down, she still goes once in a while to see how he's doing...

Let me tell you this.  We owe a big, big, thank you to the teachers.  Miss Ruth, Shiri's teacher is the model teacher described in the books we loved to read, like "The Heart of a Boy" by Edmondo De Amicis.  She is smart, kind, strict, supportive.  She has this trait that truly touches me when I speak to her.  She understands children.  Shiri loves her, to the point that recently told her mother that when she grows up she wants to be a teacher.  This is significant, because she has never made any similar statements before.  Miss Ruth, thank you!  We love you!  Amanda is Guy's English teacher.  She must have the biggest heart.  I find it difficult to describe, but in the middle of all the crying spells, when Guy was really a real sad little kid, she would pick him up and comfort him until he calmed down.  And she did it dozens of times.  I guess I would say she simply was there for him.  Thank you Amanda, we love you!  Last but not least, Isabel, Guy's Chinese teacher.  Isabel was the comfort zone for Guy on the Chinese side.  I was told that some days, Guy spent more time being held by Maggie, the assistant, than playing or doing anything else.  Thank you Isabel and Maggie, we love you too!

The entire school supported our adjustment.  The office, the assistants, the principal, everyone.  We are very thankful to all of you.  You are one outstanding team!  If you live in Beijing, if you are moving to Beijing, and you have children, do what I did: find a school first, then find a place to live not too far from the school.  If you are considering, I fully recommend BIBS.  For more about the school: http://www.bibs.com.cn/

On a short comment: my memories from my schooling years carry no resemblance to these stories.  My memories from school were of a bunch of ruthless, mean, not very sharp, frustrated people, who found some kind of sick comfort in torturing little kids.  When I grew up I swore that I will never subject my children to the same.

Finally, I read last week's Business Week magazine's Best Leaders presentation and slide show (Business Week Best Leaders) and I had this "pride attack".  I am proud to be part of a company that has changed, is changing and will undoubtedly change the way people compute and the way people live their lives.  I know it sounds a little grandiose, yet, I truly believe that the contributions Sun is making to the Internet, are practically changing the world.  Sun contributed Solaris and Java to the world.  This is not to suggest that these contributions were philanthropic.  These were business decisions.  Yet, some business decisions are made with only one side in mind.  These business decisions were made with the future in mind, with mankind in mind.  I am proud to be part of it.

Posted at 08:25AM Dec 13, 2006 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[0]

California Observations 2...

I make it my business to listen to local news when traveling.  If I can understand the language that is.  One of the biggest current stories covered these days in California, is the story of the Kim family.  A couple with their two young children, getting lost in a snow storm in the wilderness of Oregon.  They were lost for nine days until the mother and the two children were found yesterday.  The father, who left them in search of help, was found dead this morning.  The mother and children were found in good condition.  The news media is describing the resourcefulness shown by this family.  The mother, still nursing, nursed the two children, they burned the car tires for heat, they used a reflector taped on a regular umbrella to get attention.  It is truly a moving story.  It is really sad that the father who left to get help, died in the process.  The saddest part is that when he died, he had no idea that his family was saved.
I have been thinking about it.  What would I have done if placed in the same situation.  I will not answer the question, but I think it's an interesting question: what will you do if you are in a situation in which your resourcefulness may save the lives of your loved ones?

Being in Southern California, I am green with envy of the weather here.  It is really unfair.  Clear deep blue sky, crisp cool air, sunny, beautiful.  It's really the perfect weather.  What can I say - I am jealous.

I really hate being away from my family.  I speak to them on the phone at least once a day, and it almost amazes me to hear the way they verbalize the fact that they miss me.  Obviously, my seven and a half year old daughter says it directly: "I miss you".  My son, the three and a half year old said the following: "I woke up in the morning, I went to your bed, and you weren't there, that's not fair..."

Posted at 06:21AM Dec 07, 2006 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]

California Observations 1

I am rather used to "time travel", but this, with all due respect is just weird.  Imagine that.  I had lunch and got on a plane in Beijing at 14:00, flew for about 10 hours, and arrived at San Francisco at 8:00 in time for breakfast of the same day.  Is that creepy or what?  Another angle would be: I discovered a way to increase my productivity hours by 66.6%...  Or try this: on December third I experienced a 40 hour work day...

Another aspect of it, is that I am embarrassed to say, despite of my dozens of trips cross the ocean (the Atlantic), I find it difficult to calculate what time it is in Beijing, were my family is.  So I keep calculating, and occasionally I calculate the wrong side.  Sometimes I even do worse.  I am so used to the fact that when I am away, my family is in Israel.  So when I try to figure out what time it is for them, I realize that sometimes I am looking at Tel Aviv time.  Embarrassing.

So, I landed at the San Francisco International airport.  And frankly, I never thought I would live to say the following: "I drove south on route 101 from San Francisco to Santa Clara it was a pleasure".  It is almost unthinkable.  I remember that not too long ago I thought that sitting in traffic on the 101 is a nightmare.  So what happened?  Obvious answer: Beijing happened.  I realized that driving on the 101 is in one word: predictable.  Indeed, the volume is there, a lot of it.  But, people are driving in order, one behind the other.  Nobody is honking, well, almost nobody.  People usually stay in their current lane for more than 10 seconds, and you don't have to look around for other vehicles / bicycles / pedestrians, coming at you with suicidal looks in their eyes.  There are some explanations.  Electric lanes is one of the least serious ones.  It claims that if you stay in one lane more than 5 seconds, you run the risk of being electrocuted....The other explanation is that like other places in the world (Israel happens to be one of them, but France and Italy are not far behind), there's a spontaneous competition among all the drivers in a particular road.  The last one is crowned "Sucker of the Day".  That's why everyone is trying their best to be win.  Apparently the most plausible explanation is experience.  Most Beijing drivers only have a few years of experience at best, and it is apparent that some of them are not realizing that cars are deadly weapons if misused.

But I also had this observation.  If the Chinese drivers suddenly decide to change the vehicles they drive to the kind of vehicles that are most commonly seen on the roads of California, then visibility in Beijing would go down to 10 ft. at best.  I rented a Chevrolet Malibu, not a very small car.  But compared to the tanks driving around me, it felt like a bug.  Not a Volkswagen Bug, a real bug.

In between meetings I went to have lunch.  My wife put me on a strict diet.  I must lose weight before we go to Israel to visit my parents, otherwise the theme of the visit will undoubtedly be - "look at yourself, you must lose weight".  And "it isn't healthy to be overweight", etc.  (Can you tell I have some unresolved issues?).  Anyway, I did not want a sandwich, or a hamburger, so I went to look for a salad.  I know that California is very health-food oriented.  But I really didn't have time, so I did this.  I saw a Chinese restaurant, and on an unexplained impulse I went in.  Yes, I know, it doesn't make much sense, maybe it was a Freudian Slip.  Anyway, I ordered a "chicken salad", which is (or a close approximation) cabbage, a very small amount of cilantro, and some fried chicken pieces.  I am not a Chinese food expert, but let me put it this way: I don't recall ever seeing a similar dish in Beijing.  This isn't to say that it wasn't good, it was.  It's to say that I am not sure how Chinese it was.  But the setting was not very Chinese either.  It was American all the way.  Most American of all was the price.  Enough to say that for the price of that chicken salad, you can take your entire family for a multi entree dinner in Beijing, with drinks...

Next.  iPod.  I finally got myself an iPod.  I had other MP3 players before, but let me tell you: this is IT!  It is simple to use, friendly, excellent sound.  Really wonderful.  Why am I making all these great statements about Apple iPod?  Simple.  This iPod states proudly on the back that it was "assembled in China".  Even the manual was "Printed in China".  But this iPod was no exception, as all the gifts I bought for my children, and various other things I bought to take back with me are made in China.  If only I knew where to get all this stuff in China....

Posted at 10:10AM Dec 05, 2006 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[1]