Alvin Lai - Home

Gmail now supports IMAP!

2007-10-24T02:42:00Z

What does this mean for you?

Previously, Gmail only supports the POP3 protocol, and now we have IMAP. So what?

Now, gmail conversations you read in Exchange or Apple Mail.app are also reflected as marked in gmail.

Woo!

Exploits of a Mom

2007-10-11T15:11:00Z

This just tickles me like there’s no tomorrow :D

For the non techies, the mother in the comic actually gave her son a name that deleted the school’s database of students through a method called SQL Injection, so cool! :D

Cooking Up a Storm of Creativity

2007-10-11T08:00:00Z

Or brainstorming.

Surely you have engaged in this activity either being tasked as a school/work project or unwittingly partaking in it whilst chilling with a companion over latté, enjoying and building upon each other’s random banter.

At times it would be so enjoyable and you’d just go on and on and on, seemingly churning out endless ideas that could be improved upon infinitely. On other occasions, it feels like a draining activity that sucks the life out of you, especially when its a compulsory sit-in activity that demands results.

Why? Because brainstorming is a tricky business that depends on attitudes.

In the class of Technology Entrepreneurship I’m enjoying at Stanford University, I have the privilege of exploring creativity and brainstorming from Tina Seelig, the Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. The next section of this blog post would be based upon what I’ve found useful in the quest of successful brainstorming.

Rules and Tricks

No bad ideas

You’ve probably heard this one countless times, simply put, don’t judge ideas, whilst avoiding putting others down and psychologically stifling others, a thought might lead to an interesting related one, or potentially triggering something off the mark that could be a winning champion.

An extra take-away would be to bear in mind that currently unfeasible impossible ideas can lead to potentially powerfully paradigm shifting concepts, and that’s is what innovation is all about. This reminds me of Seth Godin suggesting marrying totally whacky concepts together.

Build on ideas

Expand on ideas, keep contributing to it, improving it without caring whether about its feasibility. It’s not the end goal that matters, but rather the thought process and the increased possibility of branching off to cool new thoughts.

No hiearchy, but take turns

It sucks to have the thought of offending your boss or your sweetheart lingering around, so get rid of that, come to a initial common agreement that we are all but flesh and bones, and no one’s more important than the other during that period of time. You can resume your role as the loving ever obliging boyfriend after then.

Whilst its liberating to be able to contribute without any psychological niceties, brainstorming isn’t a free for all slugfest, respect is still critical, ensuring that everyone’s opinion get heard, easing everybody into active contribution mode.

No conformity, conventions and limits

Get rid of the norms and social expectations.

Who said pigs can’t fly? Well they might float if you pump them with enough helium.

Don’t catch me on animal rights issues now! I’m only brainstorming!

No best idea, don’t limit potential

The inclination to cease improvement upon reaching the ultimate end goal naturally seeps in when we feel something at its current state is perfect.

How about try reframing the idea – like how can it be implemented in another way, medium or factor?

Wild ideas

While this wasn’t covered in class, not stopping at taboos might yield interesting results.

The facilitator and the honored participants

In some sessions, there’ll be someone who would be the person to invite others to come together for some good brain storming fun.

Keeping in mind that participants have great honor to be part of this activity simply because your view is unique, special and valued.

It’s not easy being a facilitator, because you’ll have to remain unbiased, steering participants without a personal agenda and reframing topics for maximum idea generation goodness. But you’ll get better with time and practice.

Additional Tips

Fun, playful, energetic upbeat music Unbolted furniture Act out ideas, role play Chocolates and caffeine are your best friend Post its, pass it on

Ending thoughts

The type of company matters. Surround yourself with positive, constructive people who are willing to give things a second thought. Whacky ideas seldom materialize with quick presuming wet blankets :)

Now. What do you think?

Looking back

2007-10-11T07:56:00Z

With just 3 months left in the Valley, it’s a good time to look back.

Very different from a regular student exchange program, groups of NUS Overseas Colleges participants in Silicon Valley actually get a job working full time for a salary, get together to form households, rent full sized houses, buy their own cars, pay their own bills, you get the idea, it’s very much like settling down in America, for real.

The NUS Overseas Colleges program is quoted from its website to “infuse a spirit of enterprise into NUS education, providing NUS students with a globally-oriented educational experience.”

Indeed, that is true, with so many valuable components painstakingly pieced together over the years and only made possible with the work done by the people before us, with staff like Jupe forming strategic alliances with high technology startup companies for internships and previous batches of NOC students handing down contacts and relationships of worthy organizations and individuals.

Because of this we are very privileged to be able to have very awe-inspiring mentors like CEOs from Digg, Meebo, Google and so on.

The buddy system where the incumbent batch would be assigned to help the incoming junior batch to ease in and settle down is especially heartwarming, as it encourages the spirit of paying it forward, forming close friendships the process.

All these would never be easy for a single person starting up here alone (actually I know of just one, the CEO of Red Pod). We are so lucky to be able to benefit from the time accumulated fruits of labour!

But of course that’s pretty much what everybody enjoys in the process, are there other intangible and subtle stuff that is not immediately obvious to the onlookers?

Plenty!

Just being here with a couple of friends in this big wonderland called America with plenty things to do, I’ve become a more independent and resourceful person, constantly finding out the hows and the wheres to do new crazy exciting stuff.

I’ve done crazy hikes and scaled half dome in Yosemite National Park, planned and executed a successful and enjoyable outdoor camp trip where we slept under the stars, met up with a stranger who works in Intel to go para-gliding and many more!

Moving out of my comfort zone, charting out and venturing into previously unexplored places. Getting lost and finding your way around, being ever ready to take on challenges and conquer the unexpected.

I will return to Singapore stronger, better and ever ready to take on new challenges that come by my way.

Just a mere 3 months, and I’ll be back. Life will never be the same again :)

I cooked!

2007-08-12T16:12:00Z

Pepper celery/onion/meat

Tomato/onion/meat

Bak Kut Teh!

Although I succumbed to not wasting the extra red dates and it turned out a little more like red date soup grr

Tired of accumulating stuff?

2007-08-07T18:18:00Z

Aren’t you tired of rummaging through drawers of stuff, finding things that you have no immediate need for but feel maybe would be useful sometime down the road?

I sure have.

From old physics textbooks that I might need to refer, perfectly cute looking empty containers that would make potentially nice containers for presents to downright ridiculous spare pen caps just in case I were to lose the one on my current pen (Yes, looking back it was plain silly).

Other than keeping things, there are other ways to get stuff like impulse bargain purchases to storing something you don’t use because it’s ‘too good’, like ‘good china’.

Finally, there is a logical reason to this seemingly absurd behavior.

One of my favourite essayists Paul Graham wrote about accumulating stuff and how it affects you and I today in several different ways:

Wastes time
Saps your energy
Costs you money
Chains you mentally

We overvalue stuff

Many things have gotten a lot cheaper, with advances in technology and mass production by the Chinese and Indian powerhouses. However our attitudes toward stuff have not adjusted correspondingly, thus we overvalue stuff.

Paul argues that this mentality affects the poor and I kinda concur.

When I first came to America on a budget with 13 other people, everyone had one mission – to get as much stuff free or at a garage sale bargain from Craigs List or from our seniors.

Fair enough, we saved a lot on the essentials like tables, mattresses, table lamps, and fans. However our garage soon filled up with stuff we got free which nobody really used, but thought would be useful in the near future. When our seniors had to vacate their apartments to return to Singapore, we saw all kinds of stuff being relocated to our almost full garage, for our batch to pass down to our juniors. Believe me, there were hardly any climbing space inside. When our juniors came to scavenge, I saw the same cycle happening :)

Having too much stuff around you is stressful

For the first time after getting rid of a whole lot of dreadful stuff in my room, I feel real peace and serenity in my own room to get stuff done … and blog!

Paul attempts to explain why:

I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what’s around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.

Now I realise why my mom nags at me so much back in Singapore to get rid of stuff in my room – she finds it tiring and depressing with little room for people in a room full of stuff! My mom will be so pleased when I get back, finally she’ll be authorized to dump a whole lot of junk haha..

Is this purchase going to make my life noticeably better?

With all the fantastic bargain sites like Slick Deals, 1SaleADay, Woot within shipping reach here, it’s really tough resisting impulse buys. Likewise other retailers who have spent years figuring how to make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that “shopping” becomes entertainment, or shopping therapy, stress relief, as my dear friend Trina would say :)

A few helpful basic guidelines from Paul to rational purchases:

Would I use it constantly?
Is it JUST something nice?
Worse, a mere bargain?

Food Wastage

Check out this carton containing 6 pint baskets of strawberries Colin and I bought for a mere $8 by the road side on our journey to Los Angeles. It was so fresh with a lip smacking tinge of sweetness that we had strawberry for lunch, a dinner side and supper :)

Maybe not as relevant to stuff in general, but I’d like to include the topic of food due to the similarities of not wasting food to hoarding stuff.

I’m not sure if it’s an Chinese or Asian thing, but not coming from an extremely well-to-do family might have a part to play in this.

I stuff myself because I feel guilty wasting food.

Asian kids might recall their parents chiding them not to waste food with the African kids got no food guilt trip or reincarnation believing grandmas warning us about being reincarnated into a poor desperate starved person (or animal) due to sinful food wastage in the current life.

As a result, I grew up with the habit of cleaning my plate, often stuffing myself to discomfort because of this guilt.

It’s silly, but not without a logical explanation.

Kids my time have little pocket money, and we generally relied on our parents for food. Eating out felt comparatively expensive back then.

As my allowance increased with age and now finally earning my own keep, coupled with the food wastage guilt trip, this mentality has not quite adjusted yet.

To make things worse, American food portions are huge, often twice the size and cost almost twice as much as compared to Singapore dollars.

As a result I put on a whole lot of weight in the first few months I came to California. Now that I’ve kinda settled down, I’ve been jogging almost everyday (weather’s real good here!)

Wow!

It’s great having a peace of mind again and being able to blog effectively. The related thought on food wastage came to me spontaneously as I was finishing off the point about “Is this purchase going to make my life noticeably better?”, isn’t it amazing? Blogging about a topic and having relevant thoughts just appearing out of nowhere?

Superfabulous! :)

Unexpected

2007-08-07T15:50:00Z

A water loving jack russell at Malibu beach.

The gorgeous beach!

First off, it’s really been a while since I’ve updated the blog, apologies friends, mom and pop who have been constantly checking back to see if there’s anything new :)

There’s just so much to do here besides working at a startup company and taking Stanford courses, meeting entrepreneurs, helping out with events & projects and having fun with travelling! Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles to name a famous few :)

I’ve also found time to contribute a theme to an open source project Amahi :

Silicon Valley’s amazing. Lots of unexpected stuff, just a few days ago, a stealth startup entrepreneur I totally do not know sent me a private message on Facebook asking me to meet up at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. We met and had a good discussion on topics relevant to his stealth startup, potentially able to get him on as a mentor for my other friends at NUSEA.

Potentially many things to do here! Must prioritize! :)

I Love This Ad

2007-04-19T22:42:00Z

Nexus2007: Leading in Times of Disruptive Change

2007-03-21T15:04:00Z

Who said that Singapore's lacking in the entrepreneurial scene?

A bunch of great guys I've met last year have been working hard to put together this awesome conference that highlights exciting fundamental changes currently happening in business and technology.

And it's finally here, on March 24!

Check out the lineup:

Future of the web: which focuses on the long tail effect on the web

And who's speaking? Prominent people from Salesforce, Amazon, Yahoo!, Google. I wish I were back home to attend this!

Global entrepreneurs sharing their war stores

Who? Silicon Valley startup bosses: Fazad Naimi, my NOC friend's boss and Cory from the successful Second Life MMORPG.

Open Source innovation:

O'Reilly Radar. I'm sure you've heard of O'Reilly right?

And that's not all, go check it out on their website http://www.nexus2007.com

How much to sign up? Just SGD$15 for a once in a lifetime opportunity to immerse yourself in the Digital Revolution.

Who knows, you might meet someone there to start something big :)

My silicon valley abode

2007-03-13T01:20:00Z

A couple of people have been bugging me to show them pictures of what kinda house I live, so here goes :)

Hint: It's somewhere in Sunnyvale, California.

Rent's $2200 per month, shared among us 6 tenants.

View from outside.

Walking into the gate.

My backyard, got gardener come in every week trim one somore :D

From the main door..

My modest kitchen

Washing machine and dryer

My room upstairs. When we got the place, the room was EMPTY, my room mate and I had to sleep in sleeping bags! We gradually got 2nd hand furniture from garage sales posted via craigslist and made it nice and cosy.

Queen sized spring mattress, with Ralph Lauren comforter, and the reading lamp+chair combination that I've always wanted! :)

My rooom from another angle

The bathroom

Great Customer Service & Frankness as an Angry Excuse

2007-03-10T09:40:00Z

It can be frustrating when things do not go as planned — miscommunication, technical difficulties, unexpected long waiting times you name it.

It is right for the service provider to test his system, but not at the expense of the waiting customer, who is already miffed at the problem.

The tipping point comes when the customer receives an insult in exchange for an attempt to seek redress for the inconvenience.

The business would not only lose that customer, but potentially hundreds that customer would recommend against the service.

A mistake a startup cannot afford to make.

Frankness is good in many aspects like maintaining healthy relationships to attaining better understanding.

But when it is used as an excuse for reckless venting, it might be better to remain silent about it in the first place.

One good rule of thumb when addressing an issue frankly is to ask yourself, am I using this privilege of being frank as an excuse for anger?

Some good silent thought process before a frank encounter goes a long way.

Actually, every large company goes under..

2007-03-08T17:21:00Z

I really like Seth Godin phrase:

"Actually, every large company goes under... except for the large companies that take risks and reinvent themselves. The rest of us just fade away, sooner rather than later."

Then he goes on to prod us, even more so we should start doing our own thing if we were to succeed.

"Actually, the top spots and large investment stakes in big companies are pretty much all taken, so if you weren't lucky enough to end up on top, (or if you don't want to spend your career waiting for your boss to die) the only way in the world you're going to succeed is by doing your own thing, building your own division or starting your own gig... and by teaching the big guys a thing or two."

Aren't you convinced yet?

Learnt: Patents and Me-too branding

2007-03-08T08:02:00Z

My professor John Nesheim challenged us to blog what we learnt each day, so there'd be a nice log of 365 entries by the end of the year to reflect upon when I get back to Singapore, so here's the first.

You can patent the non-obvious process.
It's not easy for big corporations who have established their brand name to emulate you and do a me-too — because it would only cannibalise and hurt their existing brand.

Journey to Silicon Valley!

2007-03-08T06:37:00Z

Finally, after wading through tons of work and distractions, I found some time to post this up. Enjoy!

Uncertainty was abound during the first week, when we arrived without knowing about anything. But it was also the period where everyone learnt the most about themselves. A wonderful experience!

Takeoff from Changi Airport

Transit in Narita Airport

2 hour wait, with Kaiwei looking funny :)

Esther and Quek

Kaiwei and I were bored so we went exploring.. and found a Akihabara store!

that sells delicious looking cuttlefish!

and some kinda small fish.

Finally, off to America!

Food-fare on board Northwest Airlines.

Some nice looking American bridge

Reach liao woo!

Breath taking scenery outside San Francisco airport

More breath taking scenery outside San Francisco airport

Waiting for seniors to pick us up. Still remember Devika coming to pick me up wearing her act-seh sunglasses :)

What's my first meal in America? In and out burgers!

The burger you guys saw in the previous blog post

Fries done animal style!

Seniors kindly put us (Bernard and I) up at their place, at Bernado's.

Bernardo's damn hip la.

As public transport is virtually non-existent here in Sunnyvale California, the first batch rented a Pontiac — USD$400 for a week man!

Weather's great, nice and cool with interest flora and fauna to see..

Beautiful leaves, aren't they?

The Vine's household, who put up the rest. Wonder what Bernard is really clutching. :)

Driving around in the rented Pontiac

Vine's mini eco-system in a rice-cooker..

David then brought us around in San Francisco..

The car got hyperdrive mode one u know.

You never know how it feels like in hyperspace.

Happy that we came out alive, 70MPH hyperspace haha.

Saw Gap!

The night streets of SF.

Try parking man.

Can eat happy liao :D

Shuyang no look tea pouring

Here comes the food. Jellyfish!

Crab! But still no match for my Dad's :D

The walnut prawns are seriously good.

Pork, I think..

A wholesome spread!

Awesome fish..

I couldn't resist a picture with this steep a car park.

We then drove up to Twin peaks and savored the stupendous scenery..

Sorry for the lack of updates!

2007-02-14T18:28:00Z

After staying in California for slightly more than a month, this is my first blog post in Silicon Valley!

Apologies to all you friends out there who keep asking me to update my blog and post pictures!

Here's one for starters — my first meal in california: an In-and-Out Burger!

I have been contemplating real hard whether to migrate my blog to a new platform (Mephisto or SimpleLog) and to remove like 8000+ Trackback spam and 14000+ Comment spam. (Which I have just removed)

I've finally decided to stick with Typo as I kinda like it's interface, not to mention the uber-cool integration with Textmate.

2am and I gotta work tomorrow.. stay tuned for updates! =)

Update: Happy Chinese New Year! Finally migrated to the Mephisto blog engine woo! Pictures coming up soon!