mamafufu Q: how is life? A: mamafufu

wine and video game go surprisingly well together for me.  while i do play wii and ps2 (i opted out ps3 for wii) from time to time, my core playground these days is on-line pc gaming.  as for wine, there are so much to explore in red so i pretty much ignore all others - or at least for now.  both wine and video game are very personal.  in the end, it all comes down to individual preference and taste although some generalizations can be drawn.

pinot noir and MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) such as everquest and world of warcraft share many of the same characteristics and qualities that can be both fulfilling and addictive.  shiraz and RTS (real-time strategy game) make a good pairing too.  imagine sipping on a good glass of aussie shiraz while building your massive defensive terran base in starcraft?

if you continue with the wine and video game pairing path, at some point you will come across the combination of cabernet sauvignon and multiplayer team-based first-person shooter.  this is by far my favorite pairing at the moment.  since most games in this category are so intense that both of your hands will be busy, you will not have time to raise your glass while playing.  however, the time between spawns should provide you amber time to swirl and to take a long sip.  for the wine i suggest most 2004 california cabernet from napa while they are still easier to find in the US and more affordable.  as for the game, go with team fortress 2 (pictured) and ping me if you need an aggressive pyro.  hint: avoid the game servers that offer "instant respawn" :-).  

what is my most anticipated wine and video game pairing experience for 2008?  it has to be starcraft 2 and the bottle of 2000 shotfire shiraz that i have been saving.

what is your most favorite wine and video game pairing?

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i had an opportunity to speak at a conference in the beautiful city of chengdu, china.  the conference was very much academic centric.  it was also an honor to share the same podium with some of the great educators and minds in fields of mathematics and computer science all over the world.  being the only delegation from the business sector, the first challenge was to pick the right topic.  with help from jon, service science came to mind and it turned out to be a great choice.  it made the right "connection" with the academic audiences.

so what is service science?  since the term is evolving and the field is still emerging, there is no one universally accepted definition. or we are still at the blind men and an elephant phase which is perfectly fine.  in a nutshell service science is an emerging multi-discipline approach that accelerates development of innovative service offerings and delivery mechanisms with collaboration from industries, governments, academia and communities.

the service industry has grown significantly globally and it represents 57% of global GDP according to latest available data.  the number is a lot higher for some of the industrialized countries.  while we know how innovation works for products, there are little tools and methods that guide innovation in services.  in order to sustain such growth, industries, governments and academia need to put service innovation as a priority.

during Q&A a great question was asked by a student - sun is known as a "product" company with server, storage and software such as solaris and java, why service and why now?  beside the fact that service revenue at sun for Q1FY08 represents 38% of total revenue, customers are no longer just buying products from sun.  they are buying end-to-end solutions from us.   solutions that include support service, professional service, managed service, educational service and many others.

there are a lot more to talk about service science and it sure is an exciting frontier.  will service science make the same impact to the human kind similar to what computer science has been doing since the 60's?

act now and stay ahead ...

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sun village (太阳村) is a beijing based non-governmental charitable organization dedicated to providing foster care and education for the children of convicted parents.  i visited there twice this year - july and december of 2007.  i met the children, its staffs, and its founder zhang shuqin.  i was deeply touched by what ms. zhang, its staff and supporters around the world are doing to support these needed children.  they give them another opportunity to life.



we first met ping-ping in july during our first visit to sun village.  she was 13 years old.  she helped taking care the younger children in the village and many of them were as young as 3 years old.   her mother was in prison for more than five years.  ping-ping has been living in sun village during that entire time.  we didn't ask about her father.  may be because we didn't want to know or afraid to ask.   she became our first sponsored child there.

i visited her again in december.  i took her out for lunch in a restaurant close by.  she told me her mother will be released from prison in a few months.  she will be leaving sun village and will be staying with her mother.  i was so happy for her.  although the road will be tough ahead for her, i know she will be strong.  she was sick that day so she went back to her room after lunch and we said good bye.  it was a room where she shared with 4 other children.

i stayed for a while and was talking to the staff there.  when i was leaving the village, i happened to pass by her room without knowing.  she pounded the window and got my attention.  she waved at me and i was able to see her big smiley face through the dusty window.

i know this could be my last time seeing her but i will always remember her smile ...

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i am "particular" about the chinese tea i drink.  how "particular"?  it is bad enough that i bring my own tea when i eat out at chinese restaurants.  although there are art, science and culture in chinese tea drinking, enjoying a good cup of tea doesn't need to be complicated or expensive.

although a single-serving tea bag in foam cup with hot water will do, there are a lot more to experience.  i am not an expert in chinese tea drinking other than a happy consumer of chinese tea.   in the morning i drink long-jing which is, arguably, the most well-known kind of green tea from the hangzhou area.  for the rest of the day i switch to tie-guan-yin.  as for special occasion, i would brew myself a small pot of pu-erh.  this sounds a bit like drinking red wine doesn't it

tea is both seasonal and even time-of-day sensitive for serious tea drinkers.  some tea is meant to be drunk fresh (i.e. long-jing) and some tea improves with its age (i.e. pu-erh).  the pot and cup matter in many ways such as material, size or even shape.  good tea usually doesn't come in big pot and many tea brew better in cup or gaiwan (see picture above).  water temperature and mineral content do matter as well as something less tangible such as the environment that you are drinking tea in and your companionship.

this is my cup of tea.  what is yours?

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may be i am just slow.

while i understand what pigs and chickens are referred to in the scrum project management method for agile software development, it did take me a while to really understand the analogy behind the story.  the story goes something like this:

A chicken and a pig were brainstorming...

Chicken: Let's start a restaurant!
Pig: What would we call it?
Chicken: Ham n' Eggs!
Pig: No thanks. I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved!

in scrum term pigs are committed to the project and accountable for the deliverables.  they get to talk in scrum meetings.  chickens are involved but not accountable for the deliverables so they don't get to talk in scrum meetings.  In other words, pigs sacrifice their lives to give beacon for the project, whereas chickens only have to give up their eggs.

while i welcome scrum or many other structured approaches to software engineering, i can't help but thinking scrum was developed by engineers for engineers.   there is nothing wrong with it as long as the process helps delivering good values to the business.  this reminds me of an infamous quote from mr. deng xiao ping.  it goes something like "不管白貓黑貓, 抓住老鼠是好貓" which translates to "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice".

regardless, from the culture that i was born and raised, i don't really want to be called pig or chicken but it is a total different topic.

what took me almost three full years to start blogging at sun? there were no reasons other than excuses. once the hard decision is made, getting it to start is smooth sailing. there is a very good support structure at sun to encourage employees to blog. picking a theme took a few tries before i settled with this one (which, btw, may have changed a few times already by the time you read this). it took me no time to pick a screen name and to upload my favorite picture of the week to share. so the remaining question is what do i blog about? or more importantly, what don't i blog about?

well, let the fun begins and worry about that later ...