mamafufu Q: how is life? A: mamafufu

it was a hot and humid friday evening.  the temperature of the classroom reached 35 celsius/95 fahrenheit with 100% humidity.  it was fully packed with about 300 students from the south china university of technology (SCUT) school of software.  they were mostly first or second year undergraduate students .  the campus is located in the messy guangzhou university city in guangzhou china which is also the home of ten higher education institutions and about 150,000 students.

the event was the commencement of the sun club in SCUT.  it was one of the first sun club in greater china with many more being planned.  the objective of the sun club is to foster, promote and organize various activities such as contests, workshops, seminars and other events revolving around sun technologies and its values.

tae kim and i were invited to speak in this event with the students about sun and a topic on IT career.  hmmm, a topic on IT career with first and second year undergraduate students in a hot and humid friday evening?!  it must be a group of enthusiastic students and sure they were.  the discussion was lively and was carried in english, mandarin and even some cantonese.  here are some of the selected slides:

when i first saw the reusable chopsticks here, i said to myself i have to get one. thanks for my colleague in beijing china, mine came yesterday in light blue for his and pink for hers. outside the box it says "sun-green-future 太阳-绿色-未来". can't wait to try it out in my favorite pho place later this afternoon.

greening and future proofing data centers continue to be a challenge and a priority for many enterprises big or small globally. as we all learned in management 201 - "we can't manage what we don't measure". ability to measure, analyze and forecast energy consumption, cooling requirements and load utilization is one of the first and important step on better data center resource management.

last week sun announced the early access release of the sun intelligent power monitoring service. with its innovative software-only solution, it can be immediately deployed and doesn't require any external sensors. take advantage of the free 60 days early access release offer that supports these five Sun Fire systems initally: 6800, X4600, T2000, T1000 and T5440.

still thinking about the reusable chopsticks? good luck .

it was a sunny saturday afternoon in the campus of school of software at dalian university of technology. over 400 graduate and undergraduate students gathered in a packed lecture hall for a 4-hour information exchange session known as the sun tech day. some of the students were bused from the main campus 50 kilometers away for this sun university touring event.

i was in beijing for other businesses and was invited to give a talk to kick off this event. i also took the opportunity and met with faculty members, school administrative leaders and students. the focus of the event was on opensolaris. michael cui discussed software system serviceability in solaris environment and touched on best practices and enabling technologies such as sunmc, fma, dtrace and jmx. william xue discussed the sun studio integrated development environment for solaris and linux. fiona duan talked about opensolaris installation and project indiana. the interactions and feedbacks on these sessions were overwhelmingly well and encouraging.

as for my session, i tried something different this time which i have never done before. after i walked up to the podium while waiting for my slides to be projected, i introduced myself in mandarin chinese to fill the time gap. and i decided to continue my session in mandarin instead of in english as i originally planned. speaking mandarin is a stretch for me specially when it comes to business or technical terms and conversations. english would be my language of choice for this type of setting and cantonese would be my second choice.

my one-hour session went by very quickly with good interactions and Q&A. although i may never know for sure whether my messages would come across better or worse for the audience if i delivered in english instead, there is one thing i know for sure - i felt a lot more closer with the audience and i glad i did.

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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