Random Brain Dump

As a former Yahoo! employee, I’m happy to see Microsoft gave up on buying Yahoo! It’s a good thing.

But as an investor, I’m running out of patience waiting for viable strategies for turning the company around.

As a Google investor, I’m thrilled at the fallout since the possibility of getting gang up is gone.

As you can see, I’m all mixed up with this… 🙂

Taking advantage of the beautiful weather this past weekend, we took the kids & their cousin to a local park for a “bear picnic.” They each grabbed their favorite teddy bears and we spent the afternoon eating, flying kite, taking pictures, biking, reading and playing. I can’t remember the last time I got to nap in a breezy afternoon in the park like that…

I am part of the “boat people” generation. Our family left war-torn Vietnam in the 70’s. I have vivid memories of the escape. While it was harrowing, to a 12 year old boy, it was an adventure. The reality was a lot more tragic.

It is estimated that half of the 1.5 million people escaped Vietnam perished in the South China Sea. I can attest to that at some degree since dozens of my relatives never made it, including an uncle and a cousin who also was my childhood best friend.

Existing documentaries about them were usually told at a macro level and in the political context of the Vietnam conflict from American point of view. Human strategies were usually sensationalized at grand scales– inevitably emphasizing the positive: the message of hope, undeterred determination, overcoming wretched beginnings, etc… I’ve always felt that there was a lack of the element of raw story-telling, and that these tragedies are most appropriately captured and depicted at the intimate personal level without the context of politics.

So I was intrigued when I read about documentary called “Bolinao 52“, airing on PBS this week. It documents the journey of Tung Trinh, as she retraces and re-tells her torturous journey as a survivor.

Trinh’s rickety boat set out with 110 people in 1988– only 52 survived (thus the name of the film). It spent 37 desperate days stranded in the open sea with people fighting hunger, thirst and hopelessness. The young mother saved her precious ration of water for her boy, drinking his urine instead. She took turn to bail water from the leaky boat after the engine died. Her companion died next to her one night. In the darkest hours, the survivors turned cannibals and ate the dead. Minh, the leader of the boat rationed the human flesh to those who have the strength to bail water. Later, Minh was accused of murdering victims for their flesh.

They ran into USS Dubuque, an American Navy ship heading to the Persian Gulf. A few men dove into water and swam 500 yards to the ship, desperately seeking help. The sailors shook a monkey rope sending one of the men back into the water. The exhausted man drowned while the men looked on. Captain Alexander Balian, the commander of the ship, ordered a few sailors to give them the beef stew left over from lunch. Then he ordered his men to abandon the ship and head straight to Persian Gulf to fulfill their mission: protecting oil tankers from Irianian missiles.

The survivors were eventually picked up by a Filipino fisherman and were towed to the town of Bolinao.

Captain Balian was later court-martialed. In a collectively generous gesture, all 52 survivors submitted their signatures as a petition to pardon Captain Balian. But the U.S. Navy found him guilty of dereliction of duties and stripped him of his duties in 1989.

Tung settled in the U.S. with her boy, while Minh found refuge in Europe after the U.S. denied his entry into the country.

Suzanne & I ditched the kids & spent Saturday evening dining with a few old friends of ours at Ana Mandara in SF. I learned later that it was Loanne & Wayne’s 10th anniversary– they flew up to the Bay Area for the weekend. Congrats to them. How time flies…

It’d been awhile since Suzanne & I had a fine dinner with the company of only adults. Fine wine, yummy food, good conversations, old friends… ingredients for the making of a memorable time. Thanks everybody for making it was most enjoyable evening!

This week has been full of conferences for me. First I attended Interwoven’s GearUp. It was fun in part that I got to hang out with my friend Bill (an Interwoven employee) for a few days. I haven’t seen much of Bill last few years. The keynotes were usually boring, but the highlight was Guy Kawasaki’s presentation: most lively and entertaining keynote I’ve ever attended. Big take-away from Guy: “it’s okay to ship crap!” 🙂

I also went to the Web 2.0’s Expo. It was bigger than I had imagine. Everything and everybody is working on something labeled web 2.0 I guess. There were booths from a lot of small companies I never heard of. Social networking and cloud computing seems to the major themes. I’m surprised that I didn’t see Facebook there. Yahoo’s booth was tiny at the corner.

The coolest demo was TellMe’s mobile app on Blackberry. You speak to it and it displays search results on the Blackberry. It’s basically search on voice recognition. Very useful…

I was watching TV the other evening and began falling asleep on the couch. Footsteps woke me up and I discovered Katelyn unfolding a blanket and trying to put a blanket on me. She gently put the blanket over me and made sure my toes were covered. Then she quietly left for her bedroom.

I still haven’t talked to my precious girl about it yet…

Few that know me a long time understand that I’m an night owl. Actually, I’ve become an insomniac!

My bad sleeping habits seem to stay with me after those initially stressful nights as a new dad when my girls were born. But I think it’s combination of things. My late-night gaming habits at the time probably didn’t help. Both of my parents are also insomniacs to various degree, my mother being the worst. Her nights are rarely restful. But my grandfather is well known for his insomnia. I remember from my visits, he would get up in the middle of a sleepless night and play his erhu (a traditional Chinese fiddle). And sometime he would even sing. Needless to say he regularly disturbs the entire village nightly. But I think his sleepless nights were caused by his choice of drink: tea. I don’t remember him drinking water, there’s always tea brewing in one of those tiny traditional tea pot by his side. And I remember the tea was darn bitter and strong.

But I’m not suggesting insomnia is necessarily genetic though…

I actually don’t have problem falling asleep; staying asleep is the problem. I’d find myself awaken during the night with total alertness– my mind would be racing 100 miles an hour. Sometime I would get up and immediately find my brain immediately processing some information, sometime complete with a context. My brain obviously is working while I was asleep. Sometime the processed information are present and pertinent, sometime random and senseless. And this would happen several times a night. There seems to be a constant alertness about me.

Staying in bed to force myself back to sleep is usually futile. I’d get out of bed and spend the next 2 hours in front of a computer or TV. Often, I’d stay up until the morning. My system would go with 3 or 4 hours of sleep per night some time weeks-long before crashing in total exhaustion.

My wife claims that I’m a very “light sleeper”; the slightest sound of a flick of a light switch, turn of a page, a fluff of a blanket would disturb my sleep. And my kids learned this too, whenever they come in the middle night to ask for something or to snuggle in with mom & dad, they always come to my side of the bed since their footsteps would’ve awoken me already.

On the other hand, I don’t experience the telling sign for insomniacs: daytime sleepiness. I’m always alert and totally functional during the day time. I’m a one-latte-a-day type of guy, so my system isn’t compensating by loading on caffeine. Sleeplessness is accommodated somehow so in general I’m not distressed.

When I crash though, my system would be out completely. I don’t compensate by a longer night of sleep. I’d still get up early in the morning, but my system would be out completely. It’s one of nights when I get a complete and full sleep. Another way I compensate is a catnap on the weekend. 10 or 15 minutes in the afternoon and I would be fresh– power naps from my college days I guess…

So all this make a full night of rest rare for me. It’s a vicious cycle: series of nights with limited sleep, followed by a night of crash. It’s definitely not healthy. This past winter I got really sick. The stress from a new job didn’t help. But the insomniac nights almost did me in. I was bed-ridden and close to getting pneumonia according to my doctor. I was on all kind of antibiotics and took me over month to recover!

So a few weeks ago, I decided to get help and went to see a specialist. I spend a night getting strapped in at a sleeping disorder clinic. I’ll write about that experience sometime in future.

I spent this past winter replacing all our light bulbs with energy efficient ones and doing minor insulation on doors and windows– just part of a personal effort to be a good environmental citizen of our precious Earth.

Happy Earth Day everyone…

Ran accross a t-shirt with the above graphic and I just had to order one for myself. Geeky, sure but I like… 🙂

UCLA basketball team lost to Memphis Tigers this past Saturday. Memphis proved to be the stronger team. UCLA offense was lacking once more, and unlike the regular season games, their defense wasn’t able to contain Memphis. Their guards were outstanding, forcing a running game and repeatedly exposing UCLA’s lack in speed with slashes & fast breaks.

This is tough for UCLA fans– 3rd straight final four losses in a row. People are starting to compare these Bruins to the Buffalo Bills. LA Times is already blaming Coach Howland. Reaching final four is still an outstanding accomplishment, but this is still a bitter pill! This plain sucks…