Happy New Year !!

Yes, I have been off-line for a while in terms of blogging ... Time to get back in shape and be connected again

All the indications show global economy will be even more challenging in 2009.  We need to weather through it and find opportunties during the crisis together.  Wish you and your family the best in year 2009.

Sun Tech Days 2008 was a SUCCESS last week in Seoul with over 1,800 developers and students participating.  The theme for this year's event was "Next Generation Developers Drive Innovation" covering Java EE/SE/ME, JavaFX, OpenSolaris, Zembly, Ajax, MySQL, Netbeans, JRuby/Ruby/Rails, Glassfish, virtualbox, etc...

Rich Green, our Excutive VP - Sun software, in his key note speech emphasize the importance of opensource and the role developers play - where Sun is committed to supporting developers and driving opensource communities .

We announced today Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 - it will run 4X faster than IBM/HP at half the power and one-fifth the cost.  Please come and take a look.

A snapshot from Sun Korea's Partner Summit 2008 last week.

The 2008-2009 Sun Tech Days World Tour will be in Seoul, Korea during Oct. 15-17th, 2008.  The Tech Days Tour is bringing educational opportunities to you in 12 cities in the world.  It's your opportunity to develop you.  Whether you develop in Java, Scripting, MySQL, on OpenSolaris, with NetBeans or spend your time developing RIA's, next generation applications among others, this conference is for you.  With expert speakers it's your chance to learn, to network, to find peers in your community, it's your chance to Empower You.

This was taken from the Swissotel Stamford Hotel balcony (23rd floor) in Singapore during last week's business trip.  I wish I had my SLR and tripod with me.  Unfortunately this was taken with ordinary compact easy to carry digital camera

Yes, this is 5 shots stitched together.

APAC GSE extended staff meeting was held in Sun Korea office during past two days.  This was our first face-to-face meeting to start the fiscal year discussing about our priorities and directions for FY09.

We have some changes in our extended staff.  We have new members - Zena Cheng(FSI Industry), Matt Ingenthron(Web 2.0 Industry), Hok-Siong Wong(Professional Services), and Youn Lee(Korea SE Manager).  Welcome everyone!!  We also had a special invited guest from Customer Engineering Program group - thanks for your participation Hansjoerg Klimetzki.

We managed to squeeze in a team building event - everyone thoroughly enjoy Nanta performance.  When you visit Seoul, make sure you go see this non-verbal performance.  You will not be disappointed.

APAC GSE Extended Staff

I am pleased to announce the winners of "FY08 APAC GSE SE of the Year". The contributions they have made to the success of APAC have been tremendous, and I would like to take this opportunity to recognize their efforts in FY08. Please join me in congratulating the APAC GSE winners for their contributions to the APAC organization.

Gold Medal Winner
Takafumi Sasaki (Japan)

Silver Medal Winner
Shailesh Bhadoria (India)
Jongjun Son (Korea)

Bronze Medal Winner
William Lo (Greater China)
Andrew Foote (Australasia)
Tepparit Ritthongpitak (Asia South)

Congratulation again to the winners and thanks you for your great contribution in FY08!


Our Gold Medal winner "Takafumi Sasaki" from Japan



In spirit of the Olympics...

This team photo was taken during last week's APAC GSS FY09 Q1 extended staff meeting.  We now have a new boss in town who is a Sun veteran - Lionel Lim, Senior VP.  Our new motto - "APAC Rocks".

I was in Sydney last week to attend ANZ's sales and services FY09 kickoff event.  It was very well organized 1.5 days event - congratulations for having such a great fiscal FY08 and expect the same in FY09

I also had a chance to meet with all the SEs in person and had informal in-depth discussions with some of them over lunch.

Sun's fiscal year starts on July 1st.  July becomes one of the business months in the year closing the previous fiscal year, setting the direction and tone for the new year, and each GEM(Geographically Established Markets) having it's fiscal year sales kick-off event - all 16 of them.  If it's anything like last year, it will be a blast.

Our(systems engineering) priorities and efforts in the new fiscal year will be focused around customers, competencies, & communities.

APAC GSE - thank you for great contribution to overall APAC success in FY08 and look forward to another GREAT year in FY09.  Please make sure you take some time off to recharge your batteries for the new year !!

While attending a meeting in Singapore last week, I took some time off to drop-in on Asia South's GSE(Global Systems Engineering) Newhire Bootcamp Training.  I meet with new SEs from Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore.  It was a week long useful training for them which is a part of APAC GSE University.

Welcome everyone !!!

SeongHoon Whang(황성훈이사), may he rest in peace, passed away this morning from a liver cancer.

He was an old-timer who started in Sun Korea back in 1996.  He was our first employee of professional consulting division in Sun Korea.  He was one of the smartest person I've known and well respected.  Really sad to see him go so early ...

A very busy week for Sun.  Both CommunityOne and JavaOne conferences being held in San Francisco back to back.  First OpenSolaris - OpenSolaris 2008.05 has been announced and released during CommunityOne which you can download now.

You should also review our announcement of world's first open storage platform from last week.

Matching Wine and Food

There is a lot written about best wine-and-food paring.  Some people are very prescriptive about it and some people say the best pairing is whatever you like.  No matter what! 

There is no rule behind it - rather than rules, it's based on instincts and experiences.  However, there are definite pairings which create synergy to enhance each others taste - it's like squeezing flesh lemon onto your oysters.

One example of this is blue cheeses, because of their strong flavor, overpower most wines except one type - dessert wines.  This is why most of you know Roquefort cheese with French Sauternes is a classic match.

Now, living in Korea, we must answer this question..."what goes best with Kimchi(or spicy food) ?"  For those of you who had wine with Kimchi can testify to the fact that spicy taste of Kimchi overwhelms wine, right ?  So, what pairs best with Kimchi and spicy food ?  Try out these three wines recommended by 신의물방울.  I have not tried them myself, so I will let you know as soon as I do  

The first two probably taste spicy which match the spiciness of Kimchi and the champagne's strong stimulating experience enhances Kimchi's strong flavor.

For second consecutive years, Sun Korea has been selected as "the  best place to work in Korea" in a nation-wide contest conducted by Hankyoreh Economy 21, a leading business publication.  Sun Korea was one of 11 companies selected this year representing respective industries.

This is a great recognition for every individual at Sun Korea in striving to make Sun Korea "the most admired company" in Korea - CONGRATULATIONS !!

KSUN(Korea Solaris User Networks) is sponsoring OpenSolaris Conference on March 29th(Sat) as described below:

This photo was taken during Hal's Q3 extended staff meeting in Seoul a couple weeks ago.  James(Americas VP) kept asking difficult questions   Who washes all these hundreds of side dishes ?  You guys eat so much, how do you stay so slim ?

It's done.  It's finally settled - the war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats.  Here are a couple of news from thedigitalbits and NYT.  Now I can finally invest into the High-Definition format.

Bluray is Java friendly with Bluray Disc Java(BD-J) which is an interactive platform for Bluray Disc's advanced content.  Thus, this historical milestone in HD format war is also a win for Sun.  If you want to deepdive into BD-J, please try this videocast.

On a personal note, this really gives me an excuse to buy a Playstation 3 although my kids and I are fan of Wii - especially the latest game Super Mario Galaxy...

Happy Lunar New Year !!

Korea is one of Asian countries which celebrate the lunar new year.  We had the luxury to stay away from work for past 3 days (wed thru fri).  During this break, I finally accomplished something I've been meaning to do for a long time - upgrading/replacing my home computer.  Before I get into the details, here is...

BEFORE


AFTER


Do I need to explain the first picture? - it was basically a messy uncontrolled environment.  That was just under my desk and the top of the desk wasn't much better.

Now, you may ask... why I gave up a desktop PC and bought a laptop/notebook PC?  Well... this wasn't any ordinary notebook PC, it was 20 inch desknote PC(this is what notenook with bigger than 17 inch LCD is called in Korea).  In every features aspect, the new desknote PC was better than my old PC.  The most impressive features were:

• it only needed one connection which was power cable. 
• it only weighs 7kg(15.4lbs) and actually mobile from a room to room in the house.
  
• it's actually a multimedia station with a remote control.

Information and communications technology accounts for roughly 2% of global CO₂ emmissions.  If you break this down by types of devices, the biggest culprit turns out to be PCs and monitors which accounts for 39% of the CO₂ emissions, followed by servers ar 23%.  My drive behind replacing my older PC was not necessarily in reducing the carbon footprint, but in:

• reducing noise pollution
• cleaning up under and over the deak - cleaner environment
  
• reduce heat being generated
• becoming mobile
• etc...
  

With this I am personally contributing in being eco responsible and Sun is doing its part in being eco responsible and also providing eco innovation solutions.

I will answer the last question before you even ask...why didn't I buy iMac?  I did consider, but two biggest contributing factors were:

• Korea is probably a country with most Microsoft ActiveX dependent web sites - e.g., can't do any bank transactions on non-Window/Explorer environment.
• my children do not use Macs at school - use only Windows

This is a part of reasons why Apple computers are not widely used in Korea. 

Anyways, my home is now a bit more eco friendly.

"What is the most expensive wine in the world?" 

It's the bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite from Bordeaux sold in an auction in1985 for $160,000.  You can read more about it here.  This was said to been purchased by billionaire Malcolm Forbes.  Unfortunately, it wasn't kept in proper conditions - put on display under strong lights and at the wrong angle. These conditions eventually made the cork fall into the bottle, and the wine lost its value and was thrown away.

And, now you know why wine should be kept in a cellar under a proper temperature and never kept straight up for a long time - if the cork does not come in contact with the wine, it dries up and loses the ability to seal.

Earlier this week, I visited our Taiwan office in Taipei.  We have a very strong group of Systems Engineers which is part of GC(Greater China) GEM(Geographically Established Markets).  It has been over 10 years since I last visited Taiwan and first time in this job - I definitely need to visit more often to aid the growth - there is a great potential here.

After Taiwan's parliamentary elections last weekend and a presidential election to be held in March, there is a great hope for recovery of a sagging economy.  The result of parliamentary election was a landslide victory for opposition party which signaled desire for change and economy improvement.  I was amazed at the similarity betwwen Taiwan and Korea's political/election situation.  Korea's new president was elected last month from an opposition party by a landslide victory also and parliamentary elections to be held in April.  Korea's result also reflected people's desire for globalization and economy improvement.  I believe recovery of economy and unbounded growth await both countries.

Yesterday, Sun made a history by announcing agreement to acquire MySQL -  an open source icon and developer of the world's most popular and one of the fastest growing open source databases.  This without a doubt will become a significant milestone in Sun's history.

Whenever I give a "Why Sun - Sun's History & Vision" speech to new hires(coincidentially, I gave presentation to Sun Korea's new hires yesterday), I recognize key innovations which drove Sun during past 26 years - Solaris, SPARC, and Java.  I personally believe working with MySQL/open source will be another key innovation/event going forward which we can look back in the future to be at equal level.

The significance of the announcement is described by both Jonathan and Greg ...

I have been away from blogging for a bit too long

It's time to return from holiday mode and get back in shape.  I usually don't make new year resolutions because I end up not accomplishing them.  My philosophy is "just do it or get it done when you need to ..."

I am starting the year on a good note - a compliment from my boss Hal Stern.  Thank you very much.  I view it as a recognition to APAC Systems Engineering community and APAC's business success during past year.

It's time to travel again and start blogging again ...

Last week, we gave our older daughter(Kelly) her 8th birthday party at home and invited 15 of her girl friends.

During the party, they kept asking me to play "Ghost in the Hospital".  What is Ghost in the Hospital?  Have I been traveling too long?  I told them we didn't have a such DVD.  They responded by asking me to bring my laptop and hook it up to our PDP and download the movie.  At this point I was a bit amazed - maybe they know how things work ...

I hooked my laptop.  Turned on the TV.  All ready to download a movie and asked them what next ?  To my surprise, they instructed me to go to "youtube"  Then, I realized what they wanted to do.  So, we typed "Ghost in the Hospital" searched for short clips of real(?) ghosts appearing in the hospitals and watched it together.

Lessons learned from this experience:

• popularity of "youtube"
  
• kids ability to learn
  
• generation gap
  

This is me playing golf in freezing temperature today - I think it was minus or close to zero celsius.  It definitely is my last round until next Spring

p.s. Yes, the white stuff in the picture is snow. 

I am back home working in Seoul office after a four consecutive weeks of traveling - I attended  6 meetings in four different countries.  You wonder how I do this.   Well...I have a simple philosophy on this.  "If you can't fight it, enjoy it.  But, more importantly, condition yourself that this is a part of the job"

But, seriously, after all these meetings, I feel good about the progress "Systems Engineering" group in APAC is making in terms of FY08 goals and improvements in becoming trusted advisors for customers.  We may not be comparable to our competitions in terms of size, but we are definitely comparable and exceed our competitors in brain power.

It's time to spend time with my family during the holidays and rejuvenate myself before I hit the road again...

I got into watching American TV series with Lost.  The first season was very refreshing - never seen anything like it on TV before.  The second season was interesting because it answered many questions but posed even more.  The third season dragged on and I lost interest quickly.  The fourth season episodes are peding due to 2007 Writers Guild of America Strike.  In my opinion, the mistake with Lost is not ending the show when the public interests were at the peak - it could have remained a classic.

So, my interest turned to Prison Break where there were so much hype about the show in Korea.  The first season turned out to be much more intense than the hype.  The process of breaking out was so thrilling, I was always waiting for the next episode.  The second season was as exciting viewing how fugitive survived or died.  However, the third season, currently being aired, is also on the track of boredom - I don't know why they are back in prison and trying to escape again   Prison Break is on the same path as Lost trying to stretch the series unnecessarily due to it's popularity.

However, my REAL interest is in Heroes.  This series is a cross between Lost and X-men.  It's on its second season continuing to build excitement.  I can't say enough about how exciting this series is - it's my best pick so far.  I hope this series ends on a climax and does not try to extend itself beyond its age.

To close this posting, I am recommending a Japanese manga  - "Death Note".  It comes in manga, anime, movie versions.  The manga and movie have complete different endings and both are very creative - I recommend you read and watch both.  I have no doubt you will love this series.

I mentioned during one of my previous posts about wine studying.  It's been less than a year since I started and  I am enjoying it tremendously.  As I gain knowledge and acquire tasting skills, I thought I share some interesting facts about wine.  This will be my first of many posts to come ...

There is a misconception that all wines improve with age.  However this is not true.  Over 90% of all wines produced in the world should be consumed within a year.  And, more interestingly, less than 1% should be aged more than 5 years.  But, no need to be alarmed.  1% equates to over 35 million bottles of wine produced in a year worldwide.

Finally returned home from the largest field engineering event at Sun - CEC 2007.  This is there were 1,000 more engineers attending the event compare to last year.

Interesting trials held this year were unconference and speed Geeking sessions.  Here are two posts to give some flavor of what went on (one, two).

APAC GSE management team got together on Monday night for a team dinner at Planet Hollywood where this picture was taken.

On a personal note...I resisted getting to the gambling table until the last day after the event was completed ... I somehow felt I was obligated to do it just becase I was in Vegas...well as always I tried and donated money to Vegas fund

I am currently attending our annual Customer Engineering Conference(CEC) in Las Vegas.  These are all the great things happening in CEC this year.  Make sure you check out GSE divas photo journal of the event.

We also announced this morning our latest products based on T2 processor during the second day of CEC.

More to come ...