old rag mountain

They say you haven't lived here unless you've hiked Old Rag Mountain, sometimes described as one of the best hikes in Virginia. Although Old Rag is in Shenandoah National Park, it's not directly off of Skyline Drive. Refer to the Road and Trail Map (in pdf) for directions.

I finally hiked Old Rag this past weekend with Helen and Luan (who I haven't seen in years) and it was great -- other than the fact I wasn't too prepared for the weather. A little over halfway into the hike up, we noticed that it was snowing. Yeah, snowing... in April. Luckily for us, the flaky weather kept the crowds away and the trail remained fairly sparse most of the way up and back. As a result, I was more focused on keeping warm in my short-sleeved shirt and windbreaker than composing a good picture at the top of the mountain. Despite the cold and clouds, I did try to snap some shots at the top though.


Although the rock scramble near the top was pretty straightforward, it once again reminded me how much arm strength can help in these outdoor activities, and how much I need to keep working on my arms :)

encore presentation

Tonight on PBS, Charlie Rose is rebroadcasting his interview with Thomas Friedman, columnist for The New York Times, and author of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. In Washington, you can find it tonight on WETA 26 from 11pm to midnight. Elsewhere, check your local listings. Check it out if you get a chance... I promise it's interesting :)

30 years

This week marks 30 years since the fall of Saigon and the media is focusing some of their attention to cover the anniversary. Two articles appeared in Sunday's Washington Post (free registration required): 30 Years Later, Immigrants Shed Vietnam War's Burdens and Vietnamese in U.S. Take Stock of Community. Two travel articles appeared in Sunday's New York Times (free registration required): A Former Enemy Rolls Out the Welcome Mat and Going to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). This evening, PBS reaired a 1983 documentary on American Experience, Vietnam: A Television History, Episode 11: The Fall of Saigon. Two other documentaries aired on American Experience in the past that I enjoyed were Daughter from Danang, about an Amerasian adoptee's quest to find her birth mother in Vietnam and Return with Honor, which tells the story of American prisoners of war in North Vietnam.

On a related, but more personal note, the 30th anniversary of the end of the war also marks 30 years since my parents arrived here in the states from Saigon.

hodgepodge

Bahar's latest pictures
I met Bahar back at UVA when he was living in the Theta Tau house. These days he's living in Malaysia as a photographer for Agence France-Presse. His website is back up and running and he has some new photos up relating to his coverage in Malaysia of the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. Thanks to Surreal for the link.

Giada De Laurentiis and Sushi-Ko
So, only a couple of days after my entries about Giada De Laurentiis and Sushi-Ko appear in my blog, two articles show up in the Washington Post about this week about the same. The Wednesday Food section has The Food Network's Latest 'It' Girl and A Few 'Everyday' Recipes from Giada De Laurentiis. In today's Weekend section, Tom Sietsema offers his opinion on Sushi-Ko in A Word for the Wise.

Congratulations
Congratulations are in order for newlyweds Marilynn and Onur, Christine and Tuan who've moved to Dallas, Jami and Jon who are expecting their first child, and Jessica for finding a full-time position.

Thanks
I'd like to take a moment to say thanks to all my readers. Whether you've stumbled in from another site or if you're my good friend, thank you for your readership. I'm always surprised to hear someone tell me that they read my blog regularly and enjoy (most of) the eclectic topics I write about. I'll keep working to keep my content fresh and of course I always welcome your feedback.

grill season

Now that the weather's warmed up, I've been firing up the house grill and grilling most anything I can get my hands on. In the past month or so, I've made: herb-rubbed pork chops, jamaican-style steak, vietnamese-style steak, classic steak, classic hamburgers, andouille chicken sausages, grilled portabella mushrooms, grilled asparagus, and grilled barbecue-style chicken. I'm going to make beer can chicken again sometime soon too, although I'll need some people to help me eat it. I'm really looking forward to try grilling salmon on a cedar plank and trying some more grilled vegetables, and grilled pineapple too. Ok, so time for a couple of my grilling notes:

Charcoal grill versus gas grill -- ideally, have one of each so you can be really flexible. But if you're like me and you don't have room for both and can't afford both, just pick one that you would use more. I use a charcoal one here, which I enjoy, but I grew up with the convenience of a gas grill. Just realize that you might have to modify some of the recipes based on the grill you are using. A charcoal grill is more of a challenge, obviously, but I think a charcoal grill is a little more fun.

Charcoal briquettes versus hardwood charcoal -- hardwood charcoal is better, although it's more expensive. Hardwood charcoal has a better smell, burns cleaner, and burns much hotter. Charcoal briquettes are cheap and available in most every store, but are made of compressed sawdust and who knows what else, and produce an acrid smelling smoke when first lit until it ashes over. Either way, you should wait for your charcoal to ash over before putting any food on the grill, but especially so with the charcoal briquettes. I like to use hardwood when I'm cooking something really nice and using briquettes when making picnic style foods. There's no sense in ruining food you paid good money for by being thrifty on charcoal and not having your fire hot enough to cook it right.

Chimney starter -- get one, it's only about 10 to 15 dollars for one. Throw out that lighter fluid and don't buy any more of it. It makes the fire stink, it doesn't light all of the charcoal evenly, it's toxic (liquid and fumes), and it's not cheap. A chimney starter is essentially a sheet metal cylinder with vents, a handle, and a grate inside. You stuff two sheets of newspaper beneath the grate inside, and fill the space above the grate with charcoal. Light the newspaper and in ten minutes or so, all your charcoal is evenly heated and ashed over, ready to be poured into the grill, all without a drop of lighter fluid.

Grilling versus barbecuing -- it's not the same! Grilling involves cooking directly over the heat or flame while barbecuing involves cooking using indirect heat. That is, the heat source is not directly underneath the meat (or vegetable). Grilling is generally a fast-cooking method, while barbecuing is a slow-cooking method. I tend to favor the term indirect grilling to barbecuing as barbecue is an overloaded term. As a noun, it means pulled pork with barbecue sauce in the Carolinas. As a verb, it means to slow cook, indirectly, over a fire. As an adjective, it describes an American flavor that most of us know.

Building a two-level fire -- master the skill. Part of the challenge of charcoal grilling is that you don't have handy knobs to adjust your fire with. However, there will be times when you want to cook something over high heat and times you want to cook something over medium heat. (If you want to cook over low heat, consider barbecuing instead of grilling.) The solution is to build a two-level fire. After you empty your chimney starter full of hot coals into your grill, add some more (unheated) coals to one side of the grill to add more fuel to the fire and to raise the level of the coals closer to the grill grate. This hot side of the fire will be very hot. You want to use this side of the fire to brown and sear the meat initially, then you will want to use the lower level of the fire to finish cooking your meat. Recall that browning gives your finished piece not only texture and color, but a whole lot of flavor as the brown color is the caramelization of the sugars and the conversion of all the amino acids into the complex flavor molecules. However, browning is different from burning and blackening, which imparts a very bitter taste to the meat. There's nothing worse and more frustrating than having something burned on the outside and raw on the inside. I will say that a plain old one-level fire is just fine for hamburgers and hot dogs :)

Respect the grate -- clean and oil your grill rack before grilling anything. Use a stiff wirebrush (you don't need a fancy one, a cheap stainless steel bristle wirebrush costs a dollar at the hardware store) to scrub the grate once it's heated. Any particles and chars will come clean off and drop into the fire where it will turn into ash in about ten seconds. Oil the grate by dipping a wad of two or three paper towels in some vegetable oil and using a pair of tongs to wipe down the grate. Oiling the grate wipes off any remaining particles on the grate and prevents food from sticking on the grate.

Enough with the health warnings -- I think everyone is too scared about meat not being cooked well enough. Yes, you should follow food safety tips, up to a certain point if you want to maintain some level of taste in your food. Some health agencies tell us to cook our chicken until 180 degrees, while tastewise, chicken is done at 165 degrees. At 165 degrees, your chicken is not pink, it is not bloody, it is done, with juices running clear. At 180, your chicken is about as hard and dry as the rock sitting next to your grill, as overcooking any meat causes the proteins to contract up tightly. I say use common sense.. Buy your meat or fish from a good source, store it at the proper temperature until you are ready to use it, and don't let it sit around, use it as soon as you can. When cooking, experience helps the most in knowing when something is done (as you literally can feel if it's done when you touch it), but if you want to use a thermometer, don't use the temperatures on the chicken package or the temperatures printed on the thermometer as a guide. Check in a cookbook that produces good recipes and results. My rough advice: cook your chicken to well-done at 165 degrees, cook your pork chops or pork tenderloin until there is tinge of pink in the center at 150 degrees, cook your beef strip steaks to 120 degrees for rare, 125 degrees for medium-rare on the rare side, 130 degrees for medium-rare on the medium side, 135 to 140 for medium. Also keep in mind that when you take the meat off the grill, it will continue cooking for a while so if you see pink when you knife-test it on the grill, it may not be there in ten minutes. One safety note though, if you cut into your chicken on your plate and you see pink, put it in the microwave for one minute on high. Chicken should never be pink, but the microwave does a great job of quick-cooking it to well-done when you don't want to put it back on the grill.

Give it a rest -- when you take meat off the grill, let it rest on a plate for five to ten minutes before cutting into it. As the meat starts to cool, it will contract and hold it's juices in. If you cut into it while it's still piping hot off the grill, the juices will all run out on to the plate, and the last bite of your dinner will never be as good as that first bite you try on the cutting board.

Have a beer (or glass of wine) in hand and a friend nearby -- it makes the whole experience more enjoyable.

Have fun learning! Part of learning is making mistakes, but it's all good as you're having fun doing it (and if you have some easy backup foods for dinner). When my housemates and I first moved in, we were grilling on aluminum foil, pouring on store-bought "sauces" (just look at the ingredient list on the back), and most everything we made was burning on the outside and raw on the inside, especially chicken. Chicken is the best gauge of learning how to grill in my opinion. Once you learn the technique of grilling chicken to well-done without burning it, I think you've mastered the art of grilling, and it only gets better from there :)

Happy grilling this season!

grocery shopping

I do all my fruit and vegetable shopping at SuperHMart/HanAhReum (the local Korean grocery store) now and here's why:

3 pink grapefruit * $1.00/3 = $1.00
4 Sunkist oranges * $1.00/4 = $1.00
4 Granny Smith apples = 1.72 lb * $0.89/lb = $1.53
5 Fuji apples = 2.50 lb * $0.79/lb = $1.98
4% VA Tax = $0.22
Total = $5.73

This is unbeatable -- under six dollars for one week's worth of fruit. (Almost as cheap as the time Alicia and I went produce shopping on a stormy afternoon in San Francisco's Richmond "new Chinatown" District.) Not only is the fruit so much cheaper than at Safeway or Giant, the fruit tastes better too. I don't have all the prices from Safeway to show you, but I know Fuji apples at Safeway are $1.99/lb, over double what SuperH charges. The variety at the Korean grocer is also much wider (in terms of variety of items and quantity of each item) compared to Safeway. However, I suggest going only at night to avoid the ridiculous crowds during the day and to avoid having your ankle jammed by an aggressive shopper's cart.

In terms of a fun food shopping experience though (removing cost as a factor), I think Whole Foods in Clarendon wins the award. I went there with crhino on Saturday morning to get a Jamba Juice (only the Whole Foods in Clarendon has a Jamba Juice in it) and we roamed around the store trying out all the samples: wine, bread, spinach and feta dip, salsas, about six cheeses, some fruit, and some herbal elixir that looked like it should have been sold out of the back of a Conestoga wagon. Everything in Whole Foods looks quality, the fruit and vegetables, the meat, the food bar, the dried goods, and even the shoppers (who made me look terribly out of shape). Of course, we walked out with just our Jamba Juice because if we actually shopped there, we wouldn't be able to make our rent payment. Sometimes it is worth it though, as their bakery and sushi is awesome. The sushi at Whole Foods Clarendon is made by chefs from Sushi-Ko, who've been in Glover Park (sometimes called Upper Georgetown) since 1976, and in my opinion has some of the best sushi in Washington... try the tuna sashimi there if you ever go, as I sat there at the dinner table stunned for about five minutes at how amazing it tasted.

sunny washington weekends

Sunny Washington weekends are a rarity and this weekend is expected to be the second nice weather weekend in a row. Last weekend I got a chance to go on a hike in the Bull Run Mountains (near Haymarket) with Helen, who was checking out local places to hike for the UVA Club of Washington. I brought my camera, which I just cleaned up a few weeks ago, to get some photography practice in. My favorite picture from the roll:

Both pictures are from the top of the trail, looking westward towards the Shenandoah Mountains. If you've driven eastbound on I-66 and seen some big white rocks embedded in a hill on your left (a little before you pass the old stone mill on your left), that's the top of the trail.

I didn't get a chance to look eastward, but I am guessing it would look a little sprawly with Haymarket, Gainesville, and Bristow beneath. This weekend is a semi-working weekend for me, but I'm going to take advantage of the nice weather at some point. Oh, and the UVA Club of DC is going hiking on 15 May.

cincinnati chili

Cincinnati is home to the Reds, the Bengals, Jerry Springer (former mayor), WKRP in Cincinnati, some good friends of mine, and Cincinnati Chili.

Baby,
If you ever wonder
Wonder whatever became of me
I'm living on the air in Cincinnati
Cincinnati, WKRP.

Got tired of the packing and unpacking
Town to town, up and down the dial
Baby you and me were never meant to be
So maybe think of me once in a while.
I'm at WKRP in Cincinnati.

Anyway, Cincinnati Chili combines elements of midwestern American cooking with middle eastern cooking (allspice and cinnamon). I made this a couple of weekends ago when we hosted Wrestlemania 21 at our place and I think it turned out pretty well.

Cincinnati Chili (serves six to eight)
2 teaspoons table salt or more to taste
1 1/2 pounds ground chuck
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 medium onions, chopped fine (about 2 cups)
2 medium cloves of garlic, minced (about 2 teaspoons)
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups water
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 teaspoons dark brown sugar
2 cups tomato sauce
hot pepper sauce

1. Bring 2 quarts of water and 1 teaspoon of the salt to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the ground chuck, stirring vigorously to separate the meat into individual strands. As soon as the foam from the meat rises to the top (this takes about 30 seconds) and before the water returns to a boil, drain the meat into a strainer and set it aside.

2. Rinse and dry the empty saucepan. Set the pan over medium heat and add the oil. When the oil is warm, add the onions and cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are soft and browned around the edges, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in the chili powder, oregano, cocoa, cinnamon, cayenne, allspice, black pepper, and the remaining 1 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until the spices are fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in the broth, water, vinegar, sugar, and tomato sauce, scraping the pan bottom to remove any browned bits.

3. Add the blanched ground beef and increase the heat to high. As soon as the liquid boils, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the chili is deep red and has thickened slightly, about 1 hour. Adjust the seasonings, adding salt and hot pepper sauce to taste. (The chili can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat before serving.)

Serve over spaghetti and warm kidney beans with shredded cheddar cheese and finely chopped white onion.

Recipe courtesy of America's Test Kitchen (free registration required). Yeah, these are the people who wrote my favorite cookbook, The Best Recipe.

the switch (back)

I finally made the switch today, or at least put my money where my mouth is. I'm retiring my battered and broken PC laptop in favor of an Apple laptop. Feels like I've come full circle as my first computer was an Apple computer. My dad spent around $3,000 at Micro Center (the original one in Columbus, Ohio) way back in 1986 for our Apple IIc, and that's not adjusting for inflation either! (I ran the inflation calculator and $3,000 in 1986 is equivalent to $5,139 in 2005 -- geez, next time I see my dad I'll be sure to thank him for making that kind of investment in me -- that kind of money doesn't come easy.) If I remember correctly, the Apple IIc (1 MHz, 128 KB of RAM) was about $1,300, the Apple RGB Color Monitor (80 columns by 24 rows) was about $500, the Apple Mouse II (one button) was $100(!), and my trusty Apple ImageWriter II color dot matrix printer ran about $600. I think the rest of the cost was rounded out by the warranty (which we probably shouldn't have bought because nothing ever broke) and early-era edutainment software (like Math Blaster and Word Attack) and some software to print stuff with. We bought a copy of The Print Shop and printed junk out until the printer ribbon ran dry. Those were the days, when you had to perforate the holes off the sides of the printer paper before stapling and turning your assignment in. Almost twenty years after we bought this computer, it's still working, with all of the software we bought for it, including one of my favorite pieces of software ever, AppleWorks version 3, my first word processor and spreadsheet program. I tried to convince my dad to get Bank Street Writer (anyone remember that one from elementary school?!) but we got AppleWorks instead to be one step ahead of the school.

I don't think I've been happy with my word processor since then. When my uncle converted me to PC, I started out on Word Perfect 5.1, which was insanely annoying compared to AppleWorks. Then Windows 3.1 came around and instead of exiting Windows to start Word Perfect, I'd click on Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0 to do my editing. I've been stuck with Word until recently when I've just been using a plain old text editor to do most of my composition. When I'm finished with the actual brainwork of writing, I dump it into Word and do my formatting, or mark it up in HTML, or if I feel like a geek I'll mark it up in LaTeX (a typesetting program) and generate a PDF file out of it.

So, just for kicks, here's the Apple IIc, inside designed by Steve Wozniak and his team, outside designed by Hartmut Esslinger of Frog Design, who also designed the first black-box TV for Sony (almost all TVs are black boxes now), designed the brand strategy for Lufthansa Airlines, designed the user interface for SAP.. this guy is good.



Can't forget my workhorse printer, the Apple ImageWriter II.


I'm hoping my next Apple computer will be just as fun as my first one.

everyday italian

If you watch the Food Network, you've probably seen Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis. I picked up an issue of a local newspaper last night, On Tap, and Giada De Laurentiis was featured in a story as well as Dave Attell (of Comedy Central's Insomniac). (I'll get to Dave Attell in another post.)

Everything about Everyday Italian is kind of puzzling. First, the close-up shots of the cutting board, food processor, and pans are ridiculously close up. So close that the context is completely removed. I'm watching her knife cut some vegetable on the cutting board, but it's zoomed so far in that I can't even tell what vegetable it is or how much of it she is cutting. Second, I have a suspicion that Giada De Laurentiis doesn't regularly eat what she cooks as she is very thin and the food she is cooking consists of heaps, and I mean heaps, of cheeses, butter, and heavy cream. Don't get me wrong, it looks like it would all taste great, but I think I'd get full from just having a few bites. Maybe it's all about that portion control thing.. you know, everything in moderation :) Lastly, I don't understand why they make it a point for her to have her hair up while she's in the kitchen and have her hair down (and I think she changes her clothes too) when she brings the food out of the kitchen and over to the table with her friends. Why can't she just look the same as she comes and serves dinner? It's like she has two different persona: the kitchen persona and the dining room persona. I just find it a little odd. The On Tap article mentioned she was doing a local book signing and Q&A at Borders to promote her new book, but apparently it already happened last Monday.

Enough talking about food though, I went shopping for new clothes today and trying on shirts in my size that have a closer fit made me realize I have a heck of a lot of work to do at the gym.

The weather's great here in Washington and the Cherry Blossoms are in full bloom. I really enjoy this time of year. It's so nice that even the peak tourist bloom doesn't bother me. Gotta make the most of it before the humidity sets in (and I know it will happen soon).

the scan

I got a little mention on Cindy Webb's column, The Scan, for catching a minor typo in last Monday's entry. The Scan is a daily digest of tech news culled from print and Internet sources and I've been a regular reader for a while now. Heck, I was a daily reader of Cindy Webb's washingtonpost.com column, The Filter, which was similar in spirit, until it ended earlier this year. The Scan is one of the better tech news reads out there as the rest of the tech news sites (CNet, ZDNet, and even slashdot) have filled their pages with advertisements, fluff, and gossip. Granted, I think I appreciate The Scan more than most because I work in the technology industry and I enjoy reading about the business component of it. Maybe one day if I figure out what's going on, I'll make it into The Scan, but as part of a tech story instead ::grins::

The little mixup was about Richard Bronson versus Richard Branson (the rebel billionaire from Virgin Group), which actually reminded me of the Simpsons episode where the Simpson family was trying to go to Branson, Missouri but found themselves in Bronson, Missouri instead, where everyone in the town looked and talked like Charles Bronson.
"Hey ma, how 'bout some cookies?"
"No dice..."
"This ain't ovah..."
Speaking of Branson, Missouri, I saw a picture of Yacov Smirnoff when I was at the DC Improv last weekend. You might remember Yacov Smirnoff from the 80s with jokes that started, "In Russia..." He also had that catchphrase, "What a country!" I think he showed up in the Simpsons somewhere too with the joke, "In Russia, car drives you!" These days, Yacov runs the Yacov Smirnoff Theatre in Branson, Missouri where he does his comedy shows.

HTO events

I picked up the Events and Classes handout at Hudson Trail Outfitters and there are some interesting events coming soon.

Thursday 14 April, Fairfax - Climbing (class)
Thursday 2 June, Fairfax and Pentagon Row - Orienteering (class)
Sunday 5 June, Fairfax - Group Trail Ride (event)

Classes are from 7:00 - 8:30pm. The group trail (bike) ride starts at 8:30am and the trail is 10 to 12 miles.

I first heard of orienteering at the Health and Fitness Expo a few months back, but it sounds pretty cool. Here's the description that Hudson Trail Outfitters gives on their handout, but not on their website:
If you love maps, exploring, and the great outdoors try orienteering.

You'll be hooked for life. HTO invites you to learn the sport of navigation with a map and a compass. Orienteering is a competitive form of land navigation by walking, running, skiing, or mountain biking to a series of points shown on the map. If you have ever wanted to go on a treasure hunt or just and adventure this is the sport for you. We'll answer your questions; we'll discuss safety, equipment, and how to get started.

I've always wanted to learn how to navigate with just a map and a compass.. or heck even using a handheld GPS, so I figure this might be a great chance to learn.

I've been thinking about this for about a week or so, but I think one of my new personal goals is to hike/climb a "significant" mountain by the time I turn 30. Significant enough where it's a well-known mountain that's challenging to tackle, but not so significant that I couldn't climb it without crazy equipment and guides. So climbing Everest with the Sherpas is probably out of the picture for the moment. However, I've been told that Kilimanjaro is pretty cool and that there are plans for a small group trip out there within the next couple of years.

thomas l. friedman on the charlie rose show

I just finished watching an awesome Charlie Rose Show where Charlie Rose interviewed Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman brought up some interesting points, some of which are in his book, The World Is Flat. He went over his list of the ten events that "flattened" the world (and these are my thinking notes, so they probably won't make much sense out of context):

1. "11/9" - 9 November 1989 is when the walls came down and the Windows came up. The Berlin Wall falling on 9 November 1989 and Windows 3.1 being released five months later marked the beginning of globalization (at the pace we know it today).

2. 9 October 1995 - Netscape goes public and the dot com boom begins. The Web starts to take off and the investment money starts pouring in. In five years, 11 trillion dollars gets invested in fiber optic infrastructure, which significantly drops the cost of communications then and in the long run. This marks the start of people connecting and communicating with each other faster and cheaper.

3. Applcations start connecting and communicating to each other. This combined with people connecting and communicating with each other starts a new era of collaboration.

4. Collaboration through outsourcing. Organizations realize that sometimes it's better to let someone else do a portion of your work if they are good at it.

5. Collaboration through offshoring. Organizations realize that the someone who is good at it (and cheaper at it) might be overseas. The factory manufacturing goods for Wal-Mart moves from Canton, Ohio to Canton, China. Example: 1500 Russian aerospace engineers are working from Russia for Boeing on the 787 project.

6. Collaboration through open sourcing. Example: A student at Stanford and a developer in New Zealand work together to produce Mozilla Firefox, for free, collaborating over the Internet, and achieving five percent of the browser market share with 10 million downloads.

7. Collaboration through insourcing. Example 1: If someone's Toshiba laptop is broken, Toshiba tells the user to go to their local UPS Store to drop off their laptop. The laptop gets shipped to UPS's facility in Louisville and to the side of the warehouse is a clean room where UPS employees fix the laptop and ship it back to the user when it's done -- all without Toshiba ever getting involved. Example 2: An order is placed thorugh Nike.com and UPS employees at a UPS facility process the order, box it up for shipping, and deliver it straight to the customer's doorstep. Think about this: that person driving the Papa John's pizza delivery truck may well be a UPS employee!

8. Collaboration through supply chaining. Example: A Dell laptop is designed in Taiwan, manufactured in several locations in coastal China, receives parts from Ireland, Israel, and a multitude of other countries in the world and then is shipped to Nashville for final delivery within the US. Dell is really aware of its supply chain and if it knows that there is a problem with the 20 GB hard drive supply, customer service and sales immediately start pushing a promotion where a customer upgrading to a 40 GB hard drive will get a free printer and some extras. Essentially, based on knowledge of its supply chain and where the weak points are, Dell can "shape" its demand through its sales and promotions to circumvent the deficiencies in the chain, transparently providing value to the customer.

9. Collaboration through informing. Google and search engines have enabled people to find the resources (in terms of information and people) they need, anywhere, anytime. Example (this is totally real): Colin Powell needs a copy of a UN Resolution to look over. Instead of calling his aide in to retrieve it, Colin Powell brings up google, and finds a copy of the resolution in an instant. Now the aides realize just showing up with the document isn't good enough anymore, they've got to show up with some extra added value, something to contribute to the information, raising the level of collaboration.

10. Collaboration steroids: Wireless and Voice over IP (VOIP) allows items 4 through 9 above to happen anywhere, anytime, over any device.

Although items 4 through 10 started out as individual phenomena, they are all converging and mixing and matching together as needed to further enhance collaboration and flattening the world. That is, making geographic distance (and to some extent languages) a less important factor in business.

So, the big questions for us here in the US: where are our political leaders and our general public going to get in the loop? Our industry leaders (and some members of the public) know exactly what's going on, but for some reason no one else cares to get it. What are we as a country going to do about it? We've depended on importing brainpower for a while, but with all of the communications technology and the post 9/11 immigration restrictions, we're essentially telling this brainpower to "stay home." So where will we get this new brainpower from? How come so few kids want to become scientists and engineers? When was the last time a kid said she wanted to be an astronaut? Kennedy's goal of landing on the moon inspired a generation of people to become scientists and engineers, but that generation is now retiring, with few people to take their place. When will our leaders challenge today's youth to get involved in science and engineering? What about a call for a goal of energy independence?

Preparing for the future: first, one can never have enough education (specialized and generalized). Second, we have to learn how to collaborate with people from different cultures. You thought communicating with people in the US was hard enough. We're going to have to learn how to work with people who speak different languages, people who have different cultural values, people who have a different way of seeing the world. Who ever thought that jobs today would have titles like: Director of Search Optimization Technologies and Director of East Asian Operations.

One last thought from Friedman that caught my ear: "The moment someone buys a product from Wal-Mart, a new one is being manufactured in China to take its place on the shelf. Along the same lines, the moment a suicide bomber blows himself up in Baghdad, another one is being produced in Riyadh." Really, globalization does involve both the Lexus (chasing materialism and consumerism) and the Olive Tree (holding on to traditions and cultural identity). The problems that the world faces now are directly related to and a part of globalization and we need to face those facts. The Western political leaders unfortunately are trapped in the old foreign affairs mindset of nuclear threats and powers. (Yes, the old world threats are real, but they are sort of missing the boat a little by not acknowledging globalization, both in terms of benefits and drawbacks.)

I'm really looking forward to reading Friedman's new book and checking out the documentary on Thursday night. I think it's going to help clarify my thinking and help me explain it better.. I hope :)

born into brothels

This past weekend, I got a chance to go downtown with Alicia to the E Street Cinema to see Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary this year. The documentary's filmmakers follow children who are growing up in the squalor of Calcutta's red light district. One of the filmmakers, Zana Briski, gave some of the children cameras and taught them about photography while trying to get the students enrolled into boarding schools away from the brothels. The film was eye-opening for sure, but also frustrating and depressing at the same time. Frustrating and depressing in the sense that these children in the brothels have so much potential, but they seem so trapped in a setting (the brothel, the slum, the parents, the bureaucracy, the rest of society) that applies constant pressure to quash them and their hopes. I have to give credit for the filmmakers not only for a job well done, but for being able to endure the setting and being able to make a difference in the kids' lives. Excellent filmmaking that is well worth a watch. Check it out if you get a chance.

Opening soon at the E Street Cinema:
15 April - Voices in Wartime
29 April - Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room

thomas l. friedman

Although I've been scaling back on my news reading, I still enjoy Thomas L. Friedman's New York Times column. I'm still working on his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization and I just found out that he's published a new book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Washington Post Book World review). (I'm going to wait until the book comes out in paperback so I can finish The Lexus and the Olive Tree first.) Through other reading, especially The Economist, I am somewhat familiar with the topics Friedman addresses in his writing, but his writing is so good and so accessible to general audiences that I like reading his work, not only to get his viewpoint on the topic, but just to read great writing. Friedman has a way of taking a somewhat complex topic with social, political, economic issues, and explaining it clearly to the audience, without removing or glossing over the details. The other thing I like about his writing is his travel stories and journalistic adventures, although secondary to the topic at hand, they are a fun read.

This Thursday 7 April, Does Europe Hate Us? Thomas Friedman Reporting premiers on the Discovery Channel at 8pm and again at 11pm. Here's the synopsis:

With the European Union on the threshold of redefining the global balance of power for the 21st Century, the continuing confrontation between the U.S. and Europe has profound implications for the future. Thomas Friedman explores the hatred toward America.

I am looking forward to checking it out, especially since I liked watching The Other Side of Outsourcing: Thomas Friedman Reporting.

Not directly related to Friedman is a series I heard on Marketplace (airs on public radio) on The Surprising Legacy of Y2K. One of those legacies is the global technology/services outsourcing market that we have today. Pre-Y2K, programmers in India learned on older COBOL-based mainframe systems because that was the only technology available (costwise) to them at the time. Once we realized Y2K would cause technical problems here in the US, companies found resources in India in terms of professionals working for a lower wage who also knew these older systems really well. Those US companies hired firms in India to help with the Y2K conversions and migrations. Turns out companies in India then invested their earnings in infrastructure (new computers and faster telecommunications), which then set them up to be in a great position post-Y2K. With faster telecommunications, they could run call centers. With upgraded computers, they were prepared for the next wave of software development. So even though the Y2K problems (and contracts) were over, US companies decided to keep the Indian companies on to do further software upgrades and development. Granted, there are still major issues still being tackled, such as project management and quality control, but with labor being significantly cheaper, there's still room to make mistakes and learn without hurting the bottom line too much. For those that think that India will come to dominate the technology industry, lest we forget how fluid globalization is. Let's go back to Friedman in The Other Side of Outsourcing:

The impact of outsourcing on India as a whole isn't quite as dramatic. India's outsourcing revenues amount to a little more than 2 percent of its $600 billion economy, and the inflow of formerly American jobs hasn't made much of a dent in a nationwide unemployment rate of 8 percent — more than two points higher than the present joblessness figures in the United States.

Even in prosperous Bangalore, there are not enough jobs to go around. Recently, according to the Express India newspaper Web site, a melee erupted in front of a major software company where 8,000 applicants had been waiting in line for hours to interview for jobs. And critics of globalization and free trade warn that whatever economic benefits are gained by India and other outsourcing countries may not last. If the model for outsourcing holds true, skilled jobs eventually will flow from those places to countries with even lower wages, such as Vietnam.

The story continues...