Back from Asia...

What can be more of a perfect way to fight jet lag than to keep my blog up-to-date? ;) So I just came back from a combination of Taipei, Beijing, and Hong Kong. This trip was half business and half pleasure. The business purpose is to explore my future opportunities in Asia while catching up on some oversees work for Metacentrix. As for pleasure, well, I just haven't had a vacation in ages. So I did the usual Taipei night market, Great Wall visit, LKF parties and such.

Although I didn't have my camera with me for the most part of this trip, I managed to still take a few pictures here and there:



Out of all three places, the most outstanding experience must have been Beijing. While I was there, I ran into my friend, Francis randomly and finally got to catch up with him a little bit. It turns out that he's now working as a program manager at IceBreaker, Inc. What a perfect job I must say. He works half the time in Seattle and the other half in Beijing. It's almost my perfect scenario. The only difference would be that in an ideal world, I would replace Beijing with Hong Kong. Of course, that's only a fantasy especially when Beijing is developing at such rapid speeds. Any entrepreneur with the right mind would hit Beijing over Hong Kong any day.

To give you an idea how fast Beijing is developing, on my first night there, right downstairs from my friend's apartment, there was a barebone empty leased space with construction tools all over which was apparent that they hadn't even started renovating the place yet. However, the next night as I walked by the same place, this same exact space became a restaurant already and was in business with lots of customers inside. That's something that you won't see in the US or even Hong Kong for that matter of fact. Now I only wonder if this speed of development will sustain after the 2008 Olympics. After all, the Olympics is what really prompted the recent rapid development efforts. After seeing Beijing, I am even more excited to see what Shanghai is like. I can't wait. I am just not sure when the next time I have enough vacation will be given my upcoming family reunions.

Lastly, the other worth while event I attended was the Info Expo in Taipei. You have to see it to know what I am talking about. They effectively bring street market tactics into a high tech environment. ;) See pictures in link provided above.

Happy New Year everyone!