I’m just a total sucker when it comes to Muji products, looking forward to their first shop in Melbourne, Australia, someday.

Note: The ring is important so that whichever page I last worked on can be the first page the next time I use it.

jazz, art, design: +1

The above pictures were taken at the garage of my parents’ house back in Jakarta, Indonesia, sometime in the 90s.

The story revolves around an elite group within Lockheed Martin called Skunk Works, who worked on top secret projects and engineered some of the most famous aircraft in the history of aviation. The book was authored by Ben Rich, Skunk Works second director, and central to the story was Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson, the founder of Skunk Works who was a genius on both technical and management fronts.

There were many gems scattered throughout the pages, but my personal favourites were these words of wisdom during conversations between Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich.

The first one was when Ben told Kelly about his plan to attend a 13-week advance program at Harvard Business School, which was only available to 150 carefully selected executives. Kelly wrote Ben a glowing recommendation, but still insisted that it would be a complete waste of Ben’s time.

I’ll teach you all you need to know about running a company in one afternoon, and we’ll both go home early to boot. You don’t need Harvard to teach you that it’s more important to listen than to talk. You can get straight As from all your Harvard profs, but you’ll never make the grade unless you’re decisive: even a timely wrong decision is better than no decision. The final thing you need to know is don’t half-heartedly wound problems – kill them dead. That’s all there is to it. Now you can run this goddamn place. Now, go home and pour yourself a drink.

After Ben completed the program and returned to Skunk Works, Kelly asked him for his appraisal of the Harvard Business School. Ben wrote the equation: 2/3 of HBS = BS .

The second one was when Ben revealed that he had been approached by Northrop, a rival company, and was offered a significant salary raise along with the opportunity to build a Skunk Works-style group within Northrop. Here’s part of Kelly’s response…

Hell, in the main plant they give raises on the basis of the more people being supervised; I give raises to the guy who supervises least. That means he’s doing more and taking more responsibility. But most executives don’t think like that at all. Northrop’s senior guys are no different from all of the rest in this busines: they’re all empire builders, because that’s how they’ve been trained and conditioned. Those guys are all experts at covering their asses by taking votes on what to do next. They will never sit still for a secret operation that cuts them out entirely. Control is the name of the game, and if a Skunk Works really operates right, control is exactly what they won’t get.

And the most inspiring of them all was Kelly’s can-do attitude which he used to improve the people around him. Here’s what he said after Ben told him that there was no practical application to liquid hydrogen because it was so dangerous to store and handle, based on Mark’s Mechanical Engineering Handbook, the engineer’s bible…

Goddam it, Rich, I don’t care what in hell that book says what you happen to think. Liquid hydrogen is the same as steam. What is steam? Condensed water. Hydrogen plus oxygen produces water. That’s all that liquid hydrogen really is. Now, get out there and do the job for me.

A must read, even if you’re not an engineer, even if you’re not running a company, specially if you like pushing the limit of what’s possible in whatever field you’re doing.

Four hours ago I started watching the gran finale of Iron Chef series run on SBS, Hiroyuki Sakai vs Alain Passard (it was awesome!), and the first thing I did after the show finished an hour later was to search for “Iron Chef” on Twitter, I wanted to find out other people’s comments regarding the episode. Sure I found many related tweets, but the search result was polluted by some other tweets about Iron Chef in general and had nothing to do with that particular episode.

That led me to think, wouldn’t it be nice if OzTV app is able to filter those tweets? What about knowing how many people are planning to watch the show before it airs? And to push it further into the realtime realm, how about finding out who else is watching a show when it airs? Think location check-in a la Facebook Places and Foursquare, but this one is for TV shows, click the “I’m watching Iron Chef” button and have a conversation with other Iron Chef fans using Twitter via OzTV app (purely just my imagination at this stage).

I first realised that us Australians do like to tweet about popular TV shows when Masterchef became a global Twitter trend for the first time. That’s when I started thinking that watching a TV show is actually (A) a gathering of people (B) with a common interest (C) at distributed locations. There got to be a way to turn those tweets (and any other form of online conversations about a TV show) into valuable statistics. What’s the most popular TV show today? this week? this month? Which TV show has the most number of people planning to watch it? or commenting about it when it airs? or liking it when the show is finished?

Having those statistics allows us to reveal more interesting information than the existing one dimensional TV rating system in Australia. Social sites like Twitter enables parts of the data, OzTV app is in a good position to enable the aggregation of those data along with their own data, and turn them into valuable statistics.

To add some substance, here are some ideas on how each feature might be implemented:

• Conversation / filtering tweets about a TV show: generate a hashtag derived from the name of the show plus a prefix, e.g. #ozironchef, or identify the tweets mentioning the name of the show with geolocation of the place where the show airs at the time.
• How many people are planning to watch a TV show: count the number of OzTV reminders against the show, or add an “I want to watch this” button.
• How many people are watching a TV show: have an “I’m watching this” button, or count the number of people tweeting about the show when it airs.
• Most popular TV shows: count the number of likes, conversations, etc, against the shows, rank them over periods of time. Perhaps TV channels would be interested to have their shows featured on OzTV app a la promoted tweets.

Pushing my luck, and this depends on the quality of the data that OzTV app has, it would also be cool if the TV show page on OzTV app also lists the Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of the people involved with the show. E.g. Masterchef page displays the Twitter account of the show hosts and contestants.

Watching TV needs to be a more social experience. The question is whether applications like OzTV app will morph from a content provider into a community of Facebook and Twitter users? I understand that, at the end of the day, it all depends on whether the users will use those theoretical features on OzTV app or not, and whether those users will get some benefit out of using those features. But if we look back at the number of people tweeting about Masterchef combined with the popularity of OzTV app, a social OzTV might just work.

Do one thing and do it well. Taking my thinking hat off, I can understand that OzTV app might want to fully concentrate on being the best TV guide it can be. Instead of worrying about the social aspect of watching TV, there are still so many other things it can do, many platforms to expand to, like iPad, Android, Windows Phone, etc. Let’s see how many years, if ever, social TV can become a reality.

Any chance of getting a VC funding, hiring more people, and making social TV happen sooner?

Update (09/07/2011): Twelevision has solved the conversation part of social TV.

On The Great Wall of China.

In front of National Stadium.

In front of National Aquatics Center.

And on the security monitor at the Huixinxijie Nankou station.
I hope that guy staring at me wasn’t the Chinese Secret Service.

For reference, check out the HOWTO, Dwight Howard style, MIT style, Filipino Prison style, more stuffs on YouTube.

Pictured above is my copy of Rework. The photo was taken by Latte Girl at the State Library of Victoria.

If there’s ever going to be anyone changing the way we work and the way we run a business, then I’ll bet my money on the 37signals guys. This is one book I’d suggest everyone to read (unless you’re filthy rich and never have to work). I see Rework as the agile movement for the broader working industry. There are so many practices that are just brain-dead-absolute-must pick ups. The challenge out of this will be on the natural fact that people are uncomfortable with change, even when the change is for the better.

I finished reading Rework several months ago, and as usual, I kept a list of my favourite lines from the book. 37signals (via Jason Fried) kindly gave me permission to share those lines on my blog, so here they are:

Cover – What you need to do is stop talking and start working.

Ignore the real world

p14 – The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you.

Failure is not a rite of passage

p17 – Success is the experience that actually counts.

Work work work work work

p25 – They (the workaholics) try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions.

Be a starter

p28 – You just need an idea, a touch of confidence, and a push to get started.

Make a dent in the universe

p31 – Don’t sit around and wait for someone else to make the change you want to see.

Scratch of your own itch

p34 – The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use.

Start

p38 – The most important thing is to begin.
p38 – The real question is how well you execute.

Not an excuse!

p40 – The truth is most people just don’t want it bad enough.

Startup

p57 – Actual businesses worry about profit from day one.

You need a commitment strategy not an exit strategy

p59 – You should be thinking about how to make your project grow and succeed, not how you’re going to jump ship.

Less is a good thing

p68 – So before you sing the “not enough” blues, see how far you can get with what you have.

Basics

p74 – Nail the basics first and worry about the specifics later.
p75 – Details just don’t buy you anything in the early stages.

Decisions are progress

p77 – Commit to making decisions. Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward.
p78 – Don’t make things worse by overanalysing and delaying before you even get going.

Get it out there

p93-94 – So we used the time before launch to solve more urgent problems that actually mattered on day one. Day 30 could wait.
p94 – … the best way to get there is through iterations. Stop imagining what’s going to work. Find out for real.

Pour yourself into your product

p139 – Pour yourself into your product and everything around your product too: how you sell it, how you support it, how you explain it, and how you deliver it. Competitors can never copy the you in your product.

Focus on you instead of they

p149 – It’s not a win-or-lose battle. Their profits and costs are their. Yours are yours.

Let your customers outgrow you

p157 – Scaring away new customers is worse than losing old customers.

Don’t out-spend, out-teach

p173 – Buying people’s attention with a magazine or online banner ad is one thing. Earning their loyalty by teaching them forms a whole different connection. They’ll trust you more. They’ll respect you more.

Fake fake fake

p183 – It’s OK if it’s not perfect. You might not seem as professional, but you will seem a lot more genuine.

Everything is marketing

p193 – Accounting is a department. Marketing isn’t. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.

Pass on great people

p206 – Great has nothing to do with it. If you don’t need someone, you don’t need someone.

What does 5 years experience mean anyway?

p213 – How long someone’s been doing it is overrated. What matters is how well they’ve been doing it.

Hire managers of 1

p220 – Managers of one are people who come up with their own goals and execute them. … How can you spot these people? … They’ve run something on their own or launched some kind of project.

Hire the better writer

p222 – Writing is today’s currency for good ideas.

Everyone on the front lines

p242 – It’s feeling the hurt that really motivates people to fix the problem. And the flip side is true too: The joy of happy customers or ones who have had a problem solved can also be wildly motivating.

Culture is the by-product of consistent behaviour

p249 – You can’t install a culture. Like a fine scotch, you’ve got to give it time to develop.

Decisions are temporary

p251 – Optimize for now and worry about the future later.

Build a rockstar environment

p253 – Cut the crap and you’ll find that people are waiting to do great work.

Send people home at five

p 258 – You want busy people. People who have a life outside of work. People who care about more than one thing. You shouldn’t expect the job to be someone’s entire life – at least not if you want to keep them around for a long time.

Inspiration expires now

p271 – Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you.

As I read through the book, I couldn’t stop relating each chapter with my own experience working in the industry for the past 9 years. And here’s hoping the next 9 years will be more rework-able.

Let’s start with a paragraph from TC article

Local businesses can also set up coupon offers through their Google directory page, which would turn the QR code into a mobile coupon, and help entice someone standing outside a store to come in: “If you found us on Google, you get 20% off.”

MMW not only copied exactly the same paragraph, but also added

This is where the true benefit lies.

And my take is… Coupon only benefits if you want to attract potential customers not standing outside a store, e.g. if you do a Google search and you find the Google directory page along with a coupon from the said business. On the other hand, if you do want to attract someone nearby your store, surely a large 20% discount or a SALE sign will do a better job than a garble of black and white dots inside a square.

I think the true benefits of having those QR Codes placed on the door of your restaurant/store are

1. To convince the potential customers to use your business by exposing them to positive reviews and ratings.
   This is why Google only sent the window decals to their top listings, businesses having negative reviews might not be so keen.
2. To increase the possibility of those (potential) customers revisiting your business by providing them with the address, map, and contact details.
   This replaces the traditional role of business cards.

Both points are nothing new, they already exist all along with print media (brochures, business cards) and human interaction (conversation, words of mouth). Brochures and business cards will eventually run out and there’s a limit to the number of people you can reach by talking directly to the person. So you move those content online, in this case as a Google business listing. And what is the easiest way to link you and those online content? QR Code! QR Code is the simplest mechanism to retrieve those content (point and click) and to keep the content with you (as a url bookmark on your mobile phone).

And next up is a question asked by MMW that’s already answered by the two points above.

… which begs the questions why would someone need the information if they’re already standing in front of the business?

The same reason why businesses often place their brochures containing those information (including address and contact details), right in front of the store itself? To attract passers by, to get them to enter their store.

Moving on to another point from MMW

Still, I think the learning curve associated with QR-codes and the device limitations will hinder the campaign from the beginning.

While I agree with the device limitations argument (considering we’re talking about the US here, and not Japan), I don’t think learning curve would be an issue. When I visited Japan, where QR Codes were everywhere, I saw elderly people scanning those codes with their phone just fine. If pointing and clicking using a mobile phone camera became a hindrance, then I seriously question the future of humanity.

Another point from MMW

iPhones and Android-based phones are the only devices capable of easily obtaining a QR-code reader support.

The definition of ‘easily’ is arguable, but here’s an extensive list of mobile phones with QR Code reader support.

And the last point from MMW

Google better provide extensive and informative call-to-actions with their decals to get people interested and informed about how it all works.

I think the demo video from Google is informative enough. I don’t think Google should emphasize on getting people interested. What’s better for Google to do is to make it easy for people to use this piece of technology. If it’s useful and easy to use, then people will eventually be interested.

Google needs to improve the availability of QR Code reader on more devices, just like what they’ve done with Barcode Scanner and zxing project. Perhaps Google should acquire QuickMark and release the iPhone app for free. I’m not sure whether people will be happy to pay $1.99 just to do something with those decals (considering Google suggested QuickMark app, and assuming the free readers weren’t that good). The Google-sponsored 40,000 downloads is definitely a nice start on their behalf.

Now, moving on to the comments on the TC article…

lewis shepherd said

Google proving it is a “fast follower,” copying Microsoft yet again. http://www.microsoft.com/tag . Not only following the technology,…

and Tim Acheson said

Microsoft had already launched their own barcode solution, Microsoft Tag

and LS sarcastically said

Microsoft once again copying Google’s barcode solution.

<sarcasm>I love it when people disregard the fact that QR Code was created by Denso-Wave in 1994 and it has been a royalty-free technology. These people tend to think that innovation only comes out of either Google, Microsoft, or Apple.</sarcasm>

One of the few comments that I like was from Research who said

Guys did you hear something about geotagging? Why do you need a sticker if you just can be next to the store pull your mobile phone and start the app which shows you whatever info you want to know about the area?

My respond to this is that ‘the sticker’ is useful as an indicator that the store has an online presence on Google directory page and that the store is a place worth checking. Imagine having a day trip and there are 15 stores that you find interesting, are you going to pull your phone each time and hope that the place you’re standing in front of has been geotagged or is listed on Google / other sites?

<tongue-in-cheek>Geotagging will make these window decals (not QR Code itself) obsolete when Apple offers iHuman app implant that connects your offline physical world to online data.</tongue-in-cheek>

Back to the comments… there were also quite a number of people talking about how Google has become too big, a monopoly, and I quote,

It’s one huge shark swallowing it all up.

I think despite how Google is becoming more and more evil, like Microsoft was back in the 90s, I’m glad that they keep pushing technologies that simplify life. And if they make tons of money out of the whole process, they do deserve it.

Having followed the world of chess ever since I was a teenager, I’ve always been interested to know how great chess players think, to know their opinions about life, to know the things they went through to achieve their extraordinary skills… and this book offers exactly that.

Garry Kasparov wrote about his experience, his thinking process, and how he applied all those things into various aspects of life. These are my favourite quotes from the book:

Ch1 – The lesson
p14
It’s not enough to be talented. It’s not enough to work hard and to study late into the night. You must also become intimately aware of the methods you use to reach your decisions.

Ch2 – Strategy
p19
“Why?” is the question that separates visionaries from functionaries, great strategists from mere tacticians. You must ask this question constantly if you are to understand and develop and follow your strategy.

Ch3 – Strategy and tactics at work
p36-37
… our goal is to improve our position. You must avoid creating weaknesses, find small ways to improve your pieces, and think small – but never stop thinking.

Ch4 – Calculation
p50
A computer may look at millions of moves per second, but lacks a deep sense of why one move is better than another; this capacity for evaluation is where computers falter and humans excel. It doesn’t matter how far ahead you see if you don’t understand what you are looking at.

Ch5 – Talent
p65
Break your routines, even to the point of changing ones you are happy with to see if you can find new and better methods.

Ch6 – Preparation
p73
If you said you ddn’t have enough time, that meant you were not well organized.
…
Botvinnik summed up his philosophy by stating, “The difference between man and animal is that man is capable of establishing priorities!”

Ch7 – MTQ: Material, time, quality
p96
But I believe that by using your time wisely you can put all your material to your best advantage and achieve the ultimate goal of quality. That’s the promise of the material-time-quality concept–in chess and in life.

Ch8 – Exchanges and imbalances
p102
If we can detect or cultivate a weak spot in our opponent’s position, we can then attempt to transform our position to take advantage of that weakness.

Ch 9 – Phases of the game
p112
So dedicate yourself to making the time, finding a space in which you can think and learn, and finding new ideas with which to shock your adversaries.

Ch11 – Question success
p135
Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well. When something goes wrong, you naturally want to do it better next time, but you must train yourself to want to do it better even when things go right.

Ch12 – The inner game
p145
That’s why I always think of Simon Bolivar and remember that experienced soldier who studies the battlefields in the aftermath of the war returns with both wisdom and renewed courage.

Ch13 – Man vs. machine
p166
Weak human + machine + superior process was greater than a strong computer and, remarkably, greater than a strong human + machine with an inferior process.

Ch14 – Intuition
p178
As they develop, our instincts–our intuitive senses–become labor-saving and time-saving devices; they literally cut down the time it takes to make a proper evaluation and act. You can collect and analyze new information forever without ever making a decision. Something has to tell you when the law of diminishing returns is kicking in. And that something is intuition.

Ch15 – Crisis point
p184
But in fact, crisis really means a turning point, a critical moment when the stakes are high and the outcome uncertain. It also implies a point of no return. This signifies both danger and opportunity…

Another thing I like about this book is that it also validates my belief on the importance of wanting to improve the way you do things, and also on the importance of understanding what you are doing.

And regarding Garry’s current involvement in politics… as much as I wish him all the best, I’m afraid this is one battle he’s unlikely to win despite his brilliance (and I’d love to be proven wrong!). Politics defy any form of logic and reasoning, chess is a much more peaceful world in any way.

At the the shrine, people bought a wooden tablet and wrote their prayers on it, they then hung the tablet on a wooden plank along with the other tablets. While with Wish site, people submitted their wishes, which would then go to a moderation queue before appearing on the site.

The similarity is mainly on the idea of making a prayer/wish, with a certain degree of anonymity, and it is then available for others to see. What was interesting to me is the way they handled ‘inappropriate’ content. They filtered out most of the ‘spams’ by making it a non-free process (most people wouldn’t spend 500 Yen just to spam). They also put a piece of paper with an explanation of how the process works, and that’s where I noticed this sentence “Please write down your prayers, in a faithful spirit of respect and devotion.”

That sentence highlights the main difference between our visitors. The shrine visitors made the prayers mostly with a good intention. While Wish site had to face the evil spammers and  angry people on the Internet, besides the real wishers who simply want make a wish. The long walk from the main shrine to the entrance gave me a lot of time to think of how I should improve the way Wish works, the site has stayed too simple for the past 3 years, it’s time for some improvements. Stay tuned!

Some pictures from the shrine…

A couple reading the prayers. This is similar to browsing the wishes at Wish.

A text based prayer with a simple timestamp. We got that at Wish.

Some people like to draw. We got it too, though most picture submissions weren’t original content from the submitter, so this part hasn’t worked well at all.

I didn’t spot this until I returned to Melbourne. Is that kennysia.com on the second tablet from the top? He did go to Japan in April. For the uninitiated, Kenny Sia is Malaysia’s most popular blogger.

I spotted the first QR Code in Melbourne in July last year. Telstra has been campaigning the use of QR Code, mostly on their products and ads. There have been few magazines using QR Code to link to some pages on their own sites. I’m predicting that this technology will become much more mainstream in Australia within the next 2-3 years, providing steady adoption of smart phones with QR Code support.

During my trip to Japan few weeks ago, I was amazed to find out that QR Code was used everywhere (not literally _everywhere_ of course). I started taking pictures and videos of those QR Codes to the amusement of the locals, something that’s very common to them was very new to me.

Here’s a nice example. On one morning, I was walking to Ikebukuro Station via the underground pass, and I noticed a new Disney poster on the wall.

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Stitch. Notice the eyes and noses of each character are still visible within the QR Codes.

And here’s the weird scene I witnessed in the evening…

I saw passers by stopping in front of the poster, scanning the codes using their mobile phones. It was so weird for me, but I’m sure, again, it’s very common to them. At that point, I wondered if I would see a similar scene in Melbourne within the next few years.

And a few more…

McDonald’s placed QR Codes on the soft drink cup, burger wrapper, and paper bag amongst other things.

Snack food packaging.

Building guide.

T-shirt tag.

A poster at a mall. Ever thought that one day you would see a large garble of black and white dots just so you can scan it with your mobile phone?

On a magazine.

Ok, I’ll stop here, you’ve got the idea. The above pictures and video are only a few examples where QR Codes were used as links to web pages, but bear in mind that it can be used for many things other than for storing URLs, like nutritional info of a sandwich.

I’m excited to see more uses of QR Code in Australia. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll see one on a coffee cup at a cafe in Melbourne.

I traveled to Japan from Melbourne with my brother. We visited Tokyo, Kamakura, Yokohama, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, and Okayama within 2 weeks. We chose Tokyo and Osaka as our ‘homebases’, i.e. we booked accommodations at those two cities and traveled to the other places by train. We canceled our plans to visit Nikko and Nagoya because the travel time was too long for a day trip.

What do you need to prepare?

1. Flight Ticket
   We bought cheap(er) tickets from Jetstar, the budget airline subsidiary of Qantas. Their planes were rather small, so if you’re tall, you will have neither much leg room nor comfortable head rest. I highly recommend lots of stretching during the 10-hour+ flight and bringing a neck pillow (trust me, you won’t regret it).
   If you’re traveling from Melbourne, a ticket to Tokyo Narita Airport is cheaper than to Osaka Kansai Airport. Though bear in mind that Narita Airport is about an hour away from Tokyo via Keisei Line.
2. Accommodation
   You will need to provide proof of your flight ticket purchase when you book your hotel. We booked ours from International Tourism Center of Japan (ITCJ), I think it’s safer to have a third party record of your bookings. My requirements for the accommodations were (1) not expensive but not shabby, (2) private toilet, and (3) laundry facility. We stayed at Grand House Chang Tee Hotel at Ikebukuro, about 20 minutes away from downtown Tokyo via Yamanote Line, and at Hotel Kinki (Kinki is another name for Kansai, a region in Japan), very near to the heart of Osaka. You can also book for a Ryokan via ITCJ web site if you want to experience staying at a traditional Japanese Inn.
3. Japan Rail Pass
   You will need to provide proof of your flight ticket purchase and accommodation booking when you purchase the Exchange Order for the Pass. Japan Rail Pass is your ticket to use train and bus services operated by the Japan Railways Group which cover 99.9% of your traveling needs as a tourist in Japan. Please note that you can only purchase the Exchange Order from outside of Japan only. The Exchange Order would then be exchanged for the Pass upon arrival at the airport. We purchased ours from H.I.S. Travel (Melbourne office location). Another thing you need to know is that public transport in Japan is expensive and you actually save money by using the Japan Rail Pass.
4. Visa
   Check if you need a visa to enter Japan. Australia is one of the countries which have visa exemption arrangements with Japan, so Australian passport holders don’t need a visa, yay :). My brother had to apply for visa at the Consulate-General of Japan in Melbourne. He got it within a couple of days after submitting the application, about a month prior to the trip.
5. Universal Adapter
   Japan uses 100V electricity voltage while Australia uses 240V, and they also use different socket to Australia (check out world electricity standards). Most of modern gadgets handle 100-240V. I brought my mobile phone, camera, Nintendo DS, and electric shaver chargers during the trip and I could use them in Japan without any problem. And for the socket, I purchased a universal travel adapter online, they’re cheap and useful for your future travels. Don’t bother buying the adapters from Dick Smith (Korjo brand), they’re too expensive, only work for a specific country, and the adapter for Japan doesn’t have the ground for Australian plug.
6. Japanese Yen
   We arrived at Narita Airport after 9pm and all money changers were already closed, and obviously all the banks were also closed once we reached Ikebukuro at 11pm. I managed to get some Japanese Yen in Melbourne before the trip, and brought some Australian Dollars with me which I then exchanged in Tokyo. Surprisingly the exchange rate was better in Australia at that time, I still have no idea why. I also compared the Melbourne CBD’s money changers’ exchange rates, my conclusion: the one at Bourke St (right behind the tram stop) was a rip-off, while the one on Swanston St near Collins St offered the best rate.
   Tip: the Japanese pronounce Yen as ‘en’.
7. Medicine
   Some pharmacies in Japan (don’t get confused over there, when you see a sign that says ‘drug’, that’s the pharmacy) do have English speaking staffs. But I don’t want to get anything lost in translation when it comes to health so I brought some Panadols and Travelans with me.

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Q: Do I need to know Japanese language?
  A: Not really. I reckon anyone could easily travel around Japan knowing just…
  1. Gomen nasai, nihongo wa dekimasen.
     I’m sorry, I can’t speak Japanese.
  2. Sumimasen.
     Excuse me.
  3. Arigato gozaimasu.
     Thank you.

  You can easily find tourists information center or JR offices at the train stations in Tokyo and Osaka where most of the staffs do speak English. While at the restaurants, sign language worked wonder for us, just point to the picture, indicate how many servings, and pay.

• Q: Do I need to bring a Japanese dictionary?
  A: No. Leave it at home.
• Q: How much does food cost?
  A: It depends where you eat. An average meal costs between 500 Yen (at train stations) to 1000 Yen (at the malls). Snacks cost 100-400 Yen.
• Q: Do I need to bring guide books like Lonely Planet Japan?
  A: I brought mine. Even though I found some information about Japan in the book to be quite interesting, I reckoned it’s too thick and heavy, and the maps (the main reason why I purchased the book in the first place) weren’t accurate. I ended up asking for English maps at the tourist information center at each city we visited.

Hope that helps, and if you have any further question, please leave a comment.

There’s a joke in episode #227 on how Dick ‘hates’ Groovy (of course he doesn’t) which led him to repeat the phrase “I love The Groovy, Man” several times during that episode. So, to help Dick Wall convince the world that he, in fact, loves Groovy… I fired up Photoshop and quickly whipped up this show poster idea.

Sent to the posse a month ago, they liked it (thanks a lot guys :) ) and gave me the permission to post it on my blog.

Now, there are still Tor, Joe, and Carl…

Update (16/03/2009): the above picture was mentioned on Java Posse #232 – Newscast for February 25th 2009, listen to Dick reiterating his love for The Groovy at 15:25.

Kimurakan serves the best bento in Melbourne, hands down.

Left to right: sambal terasi, sambal Lampung, sambal Dua Belibis, sambal ABC, dodgy chilli oil, Chiu Chow chilli oil.

When I first moved to Australia, I didn’t realise that Indonesians’ affinity with chilli is unusual. It wasn’t until a Singaporean friend said to me “Wow, you Indos sure put chilli in everything,” before I poured a large amount of sambal Lampung on my slices of pizza.

I had a go at browsing Citysearch.com.au to see how it looks like on a handheld device. I think the site is still quite usable, the default CSS works fine. Business Finder HTML chunk need to be moved further down so verticals content is served first. Spoiler: starting from 5:00, I was trying to figure out how to click a link using the stylus and it took too long after 2.5 minutes, so I stopped the video. If you got bored, fast forward to the end where I gave myself an applause. Spoiler 2: at around 2:40, my brother made a voice cameo appearance by asking for the bus timetable.

In this video, I edited my profile, set my location to VIC, and saved it. Shelfari then displayed the correct location (VIC), but then I switched the screen to another page, and returned to the location details. This time Shelfari displayed just VI. I repeated it again with a different page and the same problem occured.

Please pardon the low video quality, I used Windows Media Encoder and Any Video Converter.

About a month ago, I contacted Shelfari and told them about a bug on their edit location functionality. I received a reply from their community manager and was asked whether I still had the same problem and that she couldn’t reproduce the error. I replied the email, confirming about the problem and provided a list of step by step instructions. I didn’t hear back from Shelfari since then.

Fast forward to the present, the bug is still here. I understand that this kind of bug might not be as important as other things on their priority list (like OpenSocial). But I guess as a huge fan of Shelfari, it’s the least I can do to help. On the other hand, if they open up a public API :)… imagine the possibilities.

Update (17/06/2008): Shelfari launched a new version today, nice look and feel touch up, plus lots of other updates. The edit location bug is still there though, should I create another video report with the new version?

Update (18/06/2008): Someone from Shelfari notified me via email that the bug is logged but didn’t make it to the release. I’m glad that they contacted me, thanks!

Update (18/01/2009): As much as I like Shelfari, I’ve decided to stop using it to manage my readings list because I want to cut down the number of online accounts scattered over various web sites. So I ended up using a Facebook app called Visual Bookshelf from LivingSocial. I had a look at Shelfari’s Facebook app, but they had a lot of complaints about the app not working at all, it’s just weird to abandon a Facebook app and losing potential users like that. But then again, the bug on the above video hasn’t been fixed either. Shelfari’s bookshelf UI is the best compared to other similar services, but it’s more important for it to work rather than to look good.

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.

I probably got more from that dream and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the ones that I did accomplish.

You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work.

When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

Head fake learning is absolutely important, and you should keep your eye out for them because they’re everywhere.

The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.

It’s pretty easy to be smart when you’re parroting smart people.

It’s very important to know when you’re in a pissing match. And it’s very important to get out of it as quickly as possible.

Until you got ice cream spilled on you, you’re not doing field work.

I can’t tell you beforehand, but right before they present it I can tell you if the world (his students project work) is good by the body language. If they’re standing close to each other, the world is good.

If you’re going to do anything that pioneering you will get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it. I mean everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Somewhere along the way there’s got to be some aspect of what lets you get to achieve your dreams. First one is the role of parents, mentors, and students.

And he (Andy Van Dam) said, Randy, it’s such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant. Because it’s going to limit what you’re going to be able to accomplish in life.

You just have to decide if you’re a Tigger or an Eeyore.

I have a theory that people who come from large families are better people because they’ve just had to learn to get along.

Loyalty is a two way street.

Syl said, it took me a long time but I’ve finally figured it out. When it comes to men that are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do. It’s that simple. It’s that easy.

You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth. Being earnest.

I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.

Apologise when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.

Don’t bail. The best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap.

Get a feedback loop and listen to it. Your feedback loop can be this dorky spreadsheet thing I did, or it can just be one great man who tells you what you need to hear. The hard part is the listening to it.

Don’t complain. Just work harder. That’s a picture of Jackie Robinson. It was in his contract not to complain, even when the fans spit on him.

Be good at something, it makes you valuable.

Find the best in everybody. Just keep waiting no matter how long it takes. No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side, just keep waiting, it will come out.

Be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.

It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.

I think the most important message from his lecture is that leading your life the right way is never just about you, it’s about you and the people around you.

The way Randy passionately talked about life reminds me of Roberto Benigni’s character in Life is Beautiful, albeit a slightly more arrogant version :).

Update (26/07/2008): I checked my blog comment alerts this morning, and learnt that Randy just passed away. In my mind, I had always hoped that he would beat the cancer… somehow. Rest in peace, Randy. Our thoughts are with your family and friends.

The Syllabus

pg 10

“Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?”

The Audiovisual

pg 18

“Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do”; “Accept the past as past without denying it or discarding it”; “Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others”; “Don’t assume that it’s too late to get involved.”

pg 21

“There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I’m so angry and bitter. But it doesn’t last too long. Then I get up and say, ‘I want to live . . .’”

The Classroom

pg 33

“I’m on the last great journey here–and people want me to tell them what to pack.”

pg 34

“Have you found someone to share your heart with?” “Are you giving to your community?” “Are you at peace with yourself?” “Are you trying to be as human as you can be?”

pg 35

“Dying, is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy.”

pg 36

“I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that?”

pg 40

“Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.”“A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.” “A wrestling match. Yes you could describe life that way.” “Which side wins?” “Love wins. Love always wins.”

Taking Attendance

pg 42

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.”

pg 43

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

The First Tuesday We Talk About The World

pg 51

“One day, I’m gonna show you it’s okay to cry.”

pg 52

“You asked about caring for people I don’t even know. But can I tell you the thing I’m learning more with this disease?” “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” “Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act.’” “‘Love is the only rational act.’”

The Second Tuesday We Talk About Feeling Sorry For Yourself

pg 61

“Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people to trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too–even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.”

The Fourth Tuesday We Talk About Death

pg 81

“Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”

pg 82

“The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

pg 83

“Because, most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”“Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that you can die at any time–then you might not be as ambitious as you are.”

pg 84

“Even I don’t know what ’spiritual development’ really means. But I do know we’re deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationship we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.”

The Fifth Tuesday We Talk About Family

pg 91

“If you don’t have support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish.’”

pg 92

“This is part of what family is about, not just love, but letting others know there’s someone who is watching out for them. Knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.”

pg 93

“There is no experience like having children. That’s all. There is no substitute for it. If you want to have the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.”

The Sixth Tuesday We Talk About Emotions

pg 104

“If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.”

pg 105

“I thought about how often this was needed in every day life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how feel a surge of love for a partner but we don’t say anything because we’re frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.”

The Seventh Tuesday We Talk About The Fear Of Aging

pg 118

“Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”“You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five.”

pg 120

“You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.”

The Eighth Tuesday We Talk About Money

pg 125

“These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.”“When you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you’re looking for, no matter how much of them you have.”

pg 127-128

“If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.”

pg 128

“Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won’t be dissatisfied, you won’t be envious, you won’t be longing for somebody else’s things. On the contrary, you’ll be overwhelmed with what comes back.”

The Ninth Tuesday We Talk About How Love Goes On

pg 133

“I’ve got so many people who have been involved with me in close, intimate ways. And love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.”

pg 136

“Part of the problem, is that everyone in such a hurry, People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. They find those things are empty, too, and they keep running.”

The Tenth Tuesday We Talk About Marriage

pg 149

“If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.” “And the biggest one of those values.” “Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”

The Eleventh Tuesday We Talk About Our Culture

pg 156

“Every society has its own problems, The way to do it, I think, isn’t to run away. You have to work at creating your own culture.”

The Audiovisual, Part Three

pg 163

“Be compassionate, And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place.”

The Twelfth Tuesday We Talk About Forgiveness

pg 164

“There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?”

pg 167

“Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you.”

The Thirteenth Tuesday We Talk About The Perfect Day

pg 173

“That’s what we’re all looking for. A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing.” “Which is?” “Make peace with living.”

pg 174

“As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away.”“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

pg 177-178

“There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like.”

pg 178

“Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.”

I read Tuesdays With Morrie back in 2001, this book is a humble reminder every time I jump on the wrong direction in life.

This book is my bible.