Today (November 11, or 11/11) is actually a special day in China, the "Singles Day." That is because in Chinese, a single person, especially one who has entered marriage age but still unmarried, is often referred to as a guang gun (光棍), which literally means "bare stick." Four 1's in a row do look like sticks, don't they?
I am thinking that in four years we will have 11/11/11. :-)
The first week with the new project team went great. It is in fact a relatively new experience for me. Even though I have been an "engineering manager" for a while, this is the first time that I manage a team of this size (over 15). In fact, my job title remains as "product manager", and if you look at our company's org chart, there is no one directly under my supervision, while I am a "shared asset" to all project teams.
It's not exactly that I wanted to lead a team (I know how hard you have to work), but when the opportunity presented itself, I did give some thoughts on how to make a difference (I shared this a little bit in a couple of earlier entries). At the end, I decided that it's going to be fun and joyful.
I know it sounds odd to say that I decided to have joy. Doesn't joy come naturally? Well, if you know me - or if you know the serious side of me - you know that it does take me some effort, but that's exactly why I find it worthwhile to try. I am the same type as this group of engineers! If I can have fun, so can they.
Today (Friday) I shared with them the meaning of TGIF at the beginning of our morning team meeting. Before we talked anything about work, I shared with them a few fun things about how Americans spend Fridays. For a moment it didn't feel like an engineering meeting; it was such a pleasure to see those smiles. Then we talked about work and our plan. At the end, I mentioned that initially I had hoped to invite them to lunch today, but due to a demo requested by our U.S. client at noon, I decided to move the lunch to Monday.
They seemed quiet, so I said, "Why, didn't you hear what I just said?" They replied that they were just stunned. They didn't expect it, and it had never happened before. (Now, that was stunning.)
You know what the best part was?
Toward the end of the day, I tried to wrap up everything early, because Friday night is Nicodemus night. But you know, as a project manager, you are supposed to stay behind to see how everyone finishes his or her work and then you compile a status report. It so happened that the workload was a bit heavy for the team today, and it was clear that we wouldn't have an early finish.
I went upstairs to start the Nicodemus club activities. A brother began to lead the praise songs. I went back downstairs to check the team. They were almost all still there, and their collective message to me was, Jim, we've got everything covered - you just go back upstairs to run the activities! (I finished my work afterwards.)
I cannot say that a working day like this is all fun, but when working with a team like this, I couldn't help but to feel joy.
I watched the movie American Gangster last night...Wait! You say, this movie is still in the theaters in the U.S., and it's not distributed in China. How did you get to watch it last night (assuming you are in China)? For those of you who have lived or visited China, you probably know the answer; that is one of the reasons I am posting this entry.
First, back to the movie. I thought it was a very well made movie. It's not the type of movie that I am always interested in - mafia, crime, etc. - but I did enjoy, for example, The Godfather. I enjoyed it because of the great acting and the attention to details (that's credited to the director, I'd say). For the same reasons, I enjoyed American Gangster last night. It was worth every fen that I paid.
That brought up the second topic. I didn't pay that many fens for this movie. Now you know that I am talking about the cheap DVDs sold on the streets of Shenzhen (or elsewhere in China). Yes, it's my bad to directly support the pirating industry, but the greater vice - for me anyway - is how often I couldn't resist the low price and bought DVDs that I would later regret. Imagine the time that I also spend on them!
On a lighter note, the covers for these DVDs of foreign movies sometimes can be quite funny. One time on a back cover I read the following English summary of a movie, "This is easily the worst movie I've seen this year..." Doesn't sound like what you'd like to put on if you want to sell it! (It was probably a user comment direclty from IMDb.com.)
Last week when I got back home one day, there was a notice on the door. It was from the apartment building management, asking me to provide the reading of the water meter for the month. (It was at the end of October.)
I thought that was a piece of cake, but for whatever reason I procrastinated. Finally during the weekend I was going to get it done. I found the water meter and opened the cover. There it was, with all sorts of things for me to read. There were some digits, and there were some dials. With all the technical background that I had, I suddenly got confused. How do I read this thing? Do I only report those digits, or do I only report the reading from those dials? Or both?
With all the technical background that I had, I came up with an idea. I took a picture of the water meter with a digital camera. Then I went downstairs and showed the photo to the maintenance guy, who taught me how to correctly read it. He also had a big smile the whole time. (He would expect most people to call him to go upstairs if they didn't know how to read it, he said.)
This reminds me of a story. A few people went for a job interview. To test their know-hows, the hiring party handed them each a pocket watch and asked them to find a way to measure the height of a building. They went ahead and put in use all their knowledge in physics and mathematics (you know, gravity). Except one guy, who didn't do any of those, but he was the one who at the end came up with the most accurate number. How did you do it? He was asked. "Oh, I found the building manager and said to him, 'If you tell me the height of the building, I will give you this pocket watch.'"
As of now, I still can create and edit blog entries on this site - but it continues to be blocked in China, thus I cannot read my own blog as easily as you do. (Then again, I write these down for you to read.)
There are, of course, blog sites that are not blocked in China - yet. Take Yahoo, for example, is pushing out its blog site. It's currently still in beta, and it only has a traditional Chinese version since it's being developed by Yahoo Hong Kong. It has all the fancy features, taking advantage some of the newest and coolest web technologies.
I am reluctant to jump over because 1) My friends back home (U.S.) may have a difficult time with the Chinese interface even though I could write everything in English; 2) I am not attracted by the flashy interface since all I need is something simple. It's like with my cell phone: It's old, but it makes calls and sends text messages. That's all I need. Likewise, I will stick with this blog site for now.
The reason I bring up this Yahoo Blog site is that it is developed, in a big part, by my Chinese coworkers! One division in our company, a software outsourcing company, is doing the development and testing for Yahoo Hong Kong and Yahoo Taiwan. I paid a visit to them the other day and saw the things that they had done. It was pretty neat.
This is a quick advance note that I will have another home visit to the Bay Area from middle of December to early January. I look forward to seeing some old friends again. :-) I will send out the exact dates (likely through email) when everything is finalized.
This is continuation from yesterday's story. I thought the first day with the new team went great. I could sense that they enjoyed today's work. (Then again, we just had a major release over the weekend, and it was not as tense today.)
I enjoyed it too! I was especially happy to be able to sell my "vegetables and water" talk in the morning meeting with the whole team. After sharing my expectations for the team, I posted the question, "Do you know the secret of doing projects successfully long-term?" I gave the answer after a brief pause, "Eat more vegetables and drink more water!" As they began to laugh, I added, "I am serious. I hope each of you eat healthy and drink plenty - this way you also go to bathroom often instead of being glued to a computer all day!"
Yesterday (Saturday) we had a major software release, and some of my coworkers went to the office to perform a final round of testing. When I got home after attending a Cantonese fellowship, I was told that they found a few issues and those issues needed to be fixed right away. A few of us, managers and above, got on a conference call with our U.S. client, trying to solve these issues. We started at 10:30 PM, and the phone call ended at 2:30 AM.
This is life of software engineers. To them (us), the life of a project or product seems more important than that of our own. It's probably acceptable if we pull a late night like that once in a while, but unfortunately it has been norm. Often, it isn't even so much demand from the project or product, but we are pushing each other to make a "perfect" release.
Then today (Sunday) - you can imagine that I didn't get up very early - in the late afternoon, two managers contacted me. They needed my help to update a particular document so that they could send the latest version to the customer. This would have been a fair request had it been a working day. But it was Sunday, and I was resting. So I told them that 1) The U.S. customer wouldn't need this document today because it's their weekend; 2) I was resting and I'd rather work on it tomorrow (Monday). They said that they understood, but their boss had asked so.
Their boss is also my boss, our engineering director, who was also on that late night conference call. So I said, fine, I would talk to the director myself. I contacted our director and repeated the two points above. He wished that we could get this done today so that we wouldn't have to worry about it tomorrow. Very sound, except that he was going to worry about it tomorrow regardless. We cannot go on like this, I said as respectfully as I could. Meanwhile, I had plans for tonight, and I'd rather continue to work tomorrow. He finally yielded.
I did have plans for tonight, which was to join an English fellowship. I shared my experience and we pr*yed over the situation. I need Him at work.
In fact, tomorrow I will take on a new responsibility. One of the project managers will go on a business trip for a month and half. During his absence, I will take over his team. This is a very tired team - not surprisingly - and the team morale is low. I heard indirectly that our director has not been happy with this team. But other than putting more pressure on the project manager, I don't know what else has been done. I thought about it over the weekend, asking myself what difference I could make. I was reminded of this story:
"Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see." So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days. At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. (Daniel 1:12-15)
