NonStick World: Pam Kong's Weblog

My husband and I just finished watching this week's Tivo'd episode of Scrubs. I love it. The episode was about this woman who heard everything in song. Whenever any of the doctors were within ear shot of this patient, they were singing their lines. It became Scrubs, The Musical. Who knew these docs could sing? I was pleasantly surprise with Cox's performance.

I told my husband not to delete the episode, because I want to watch it again and again and again.

I just finished You: The Owner's Manual. It's by a couple of medical doctors who decided to state how your body works in laymen's terms.

I loved it. It talks about how your body functions, what it needs to function and why. For instance, did you you know that cholesterol is the band-aid for scratches on your artery walls? But that LDLs are preferred because they are "smoother" and do not accumulate build-up like HDLs do?

Did you know that every one has cancerous cells? They are errors in cell replication and the chance of errors increase with the speed and quantity of replication. (There must be a sigma project here.) So if you take care of yourself and cells need to be replaced less often, you are less likely to have rouge cells. Did you know that most rouge cells are killed by your immune system and it's those that slip through this safety net that become cancerous? So we should take care of our immune system as well.

Did you know that healthy poop is unbroken and S-shaped, like our colon? Another thing to praise my daughter for. "Such a good girl. Not only did you poop in the potty, it's a nice healthy poop!" It's a great book. I feel like I could be a character on House.

I finally ordered and received my Chinese-English electronic dictionary yesterday. I have been researching them for quite a while. I finally settled on the Besta 618. $389.99 + shipping. I asked for it for Christmas and my inlaws contributed money to it. I get all my electronics around Christmas time. It's the only way I can get stuff I really want. Otherwise I get sweaters with snowmen and reindeer on them. They look really nice in a box under my bed, before I donate them to the MS organization. But I digress.

I ripped into the box like a kid and immediately started playing with it. It was a little difficult understanding the english in the owner's manual and I can't read the Chinese, so I just fiddled with it until I figured out most of the controls.

Once I found the Chinese to English dictionary, I pulled out the book I got for my daughter on our trip to China last year. It's a book on the stories behind various Chinese holidays and festivals. I can read enough Chinese to know something was going on, but not the details. When I was "reading" it to my kid last, I was making stuff based on the pictures. She was not impressed. But I digress again.

I pulled out the stylus and wrote in the Chinese characters and the dictionary would suggest what it was and list a number of words it could be, so I could select the correct one if it interpreted my 1st grade handwriting wrong. I wrote in an entire sentence, then pressed enter. It would translate the entire sentence and when I press the "speech" button, it speaks the sentence in Chinese (you can choose Mandarin or Cantonese).

It's awesome! I can understand Chinese, well not complex concepts, but I can't read that well. When I hear the words spoken, Eureka! I can understand! I have to turn the speed of the speech way slow or I can't hear all the inflections, but I am getting the hang of the handwriting recognition. You have to write very clearly and follow the correct stroke sequence. 3 years of Chinese school was good for something after all.

I am proud to say that I have completed the first story in the book. Apparently, the reason Chinese people put red on or above their doors and set off firecrackers for the New Year has to do with the Year Monster. If you want to know the rest of the story, you will have to the get the book and dictionary.

We watched Clerks II last night. I was disappointed. It included elements that I both liked and disliked from all the Kevin Smith movies.

One of the things I love about Kevin Smith movies is the dialogue. It's smart, but irreverant at the same time. And no one talks like that. It's a shame that the female with that role was Dante's fiance. Yech. The actress just doesn't fit. I felt Dante was settling.

Then there was the donkey show. Very potty humour. Was not into it. References are ok, but they stretched it out way too long. I was yelling, "I get it! It's funny. Now let's move on before it's not funny anymore." Well, it got to be not funny anymore.

My husband and I agree that, on the whole, it was ok. Probably not something we would watch again. I know that it was Smith's way of closing the chapter on the 10 years since Clerks. But it was a jumble of elements from all his movies, the mush from Amy does not mix well with the potty humor from Jay and Silent Bob and the religious questions from Dogma. It was a Smith movie chop suey.

I am reading a new book, "The First 90 Days." It's about what a new leader must do in the first 90 days to ensure an effective transition and succeed.

It's pretty good so far. There are some good pointers. I can tell I will need to read it again. I have been reading it before bed and I think I have read the same passage 5 times without absorbing anything.

The part I find most useful is the situation assessment. Is it a start-up, turnaround, realignment, or sustaining situation? Each calls for different approaches. You can't go into a realignment or sustaining situation and start flipping things on its head. Whereas you are expected to in a start-up or turnaround situation. I have seen some leaders make that mistake. Take too long to assess the situation when action was needed or acting on little to no information when they should have assessed the issue more fully.

I know I am completely behind the times. This book came out in 2002 and I have been meaning to read it since then. I just finished Chapter 3 last night and am really impressed already. The writing is not academic. I always run from business books that are too academic, because the author/publisher clearly does not understand their customer, so how well can they understand business? I love the stories and examples. It brings the points to life and gives them context. This book is not a panacea. Read this and your company will live long and prosper. But it does make you think. If outcomes are not as you expected. Why? Perhaps the concepts in this book can help. Perhaps it's something else. At least it's something other than saying, "Woe is me. It's the customer's fault for not buying what I have to sell. So, all I can do is lie here and wait for the inevitable."

This book exposes the underbelly of why companies do not succeed. Many have great strategy. In fact, every strategy they come up with every 12 months are great strategies. So why are they changing their strategy so often? Is it because the market forces them to? In some cases, yes, but most cases, no. The strategy should take into account minor market fluctuations. It's not everyday that something as devastating and pivotal as 9/11 occurs. So why are strategies always changing? I think it's because they don't work. The results aren't there. So the strategy is to blaim.

Chapter 1 introduces the gap nobody knows, or rather no one can articulate. It starts out with a story of a CEO who gets a great group of folks together. They "did the benchmarking, got the metrics...agreed with the plan." The plan and market were good, but a year later they missed the goal. What happened? Or rather didn't? Apparently, the discipline of execution.