Archive for the 'CurryStar News' Category

Environmentally Friendly, Sustainable food supplies - Crowdsourcing meets Food meets Travel

Published
by
admin
on May 29, 2008
in CurryStar News and tech
. 0 Comments


As mentioned before, I am creating a product that Hong Kong people can be proud of - a community to help people make environmentally friendly choices on food. I have spoken with some business partners and friends and we are all very excited about the idea.

I’ve had this idea for more than a year now, and after leaving Yahoo, I’ve spent time researching into web technologies that would help me achieve this goal. I’ve networked with businesses and industry experts that will help me on different stages of the project… Crowdsourcing, Web marketing, development, Environmental and Social Responsibility professionals, WWF HK, CSR Asia… etc.

Finally, it has come down to one of the last, but very important issue - the domain name. I’m thinking about using this one - currystar.com. I registered this name with the intention of opening this food / menu site. I only put my own personal blog on it because the site wasn’t ready yet and I was learning different web blog / CMS systems.

So, should I use currystar.com? And move my blog back onto the free cloneofsnake.wordpress.com site? Or perhaps one of my other domains - iswack.com or streetwalker2.com

I like currystar.com because I think the name sticks easily, but if I can find a better name that stands out just as good, and is related to food + environment + travel… then I may choose that instead.

Sold our house in Seattle, bought a new condo in New York

Published
by
cloneofsnake
on November 13, 2007
in CurryStar News, Japan, graduate school and real estate
. 0 Comments

I’ve meant to come back and post about all the things that I’ve been doing, but I’m not too good with multi-tasking… Whenever I’m too concentrated on one thing, I don’t want to spread myself out to do other things.

Anyway, after my last post and my last day at Yahoo!, I flew back to Seattle and stayed for a couple of months. Our family house was still there with no one living in it, so my mom and I went back to pack everything up and put it on the market. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to move from a home of more than 15 years, but I can tell you it’s no fun at all! How I wished DragonBall’s Capsule Corp. was real… LOL.

While I was in Seattle, I continued to communicate with my friends at cuusoo.com and refine my research plan. (I’ll post it on here later.) I also emailed the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies at the University of Tokyo to clarify about the research plan and the “Supervising Faculty of Choice”. You have to fill out that field on your research plan, but it seems that you don’t have to contact the professor beforehand. I sent 3 emails to 3 different faculty members, only the 1st one returned my email, the rests simply ignored me. (I sent the email in Japanese too! I’ll also post that here later.)

Another requirement was the “Japanese Language Proficiency Level” form, which I needed to find a teacher to administer some sort of test to me. This turned out to be a lot harder than I originally thought! No one at the University of Washington’s Japanese department could do that for me. In the end, I went back and contacted Yamada Keiko in New York, whom I had gotten a last minute crash course from back then for the interview of the position at Yahoo Japan. She gave me the sample JLPT Level 2 test, which was pretty tough! Continue reading ‘Sold our house in Seattle, bought a new condo in New York’

This is a blog about many failures (and hopefully a few successes)

Published
by
cloneofsnake
on May 30, 2007
in CurryStar News and wisdom
. 0 Comments

There’s a Chinese proverb - “Failure is mother of Success” 「失敗是成功之母」, I’ve known it since I was a little kid but I’ve never really lived according to these words of wisdom… until now.

I’ve read numerous books and articles on famous people, I’m intrigued by the charisma that only a person who had overcome hardship can possess. People are always attracted to the successfuls’ achievements and social status. However, one thing I noticed is that when they talk about how they became successful, every single one of them would tell stories of immense hardship, yet their expressions were not of pain or disgust, but rather joyful! Almost seemed reminiscent of the hard times! Why do you think that is?

Words of wisdom that I heard from Hiroshi Tasaka, a Professor at Tama University and President of Thinktank SophiaBank, the other night at Japan Society’s “U.S.-Japan Innovators Project Symposium: Improvisation, Creativity, Collaboration: Fueling Innovation in the 21st Century“. “When do you think we grow as a person? Do you think we grow when we’re living life smoothly? No. We grow when we encounter hardship.” You can try to plan ahead in life, but while you’re planning, life is happening. Some would even say that it is all the mishaps and failures that forces one to adapt, that shapes a person’s life.

Hardship makes a person grow, builds a person’s character, shapes a person’s life. Hence when successful people tell their stories, they reminiscent of those hard times, as it was the hard times that pushed them to work harder than everyone else and brought them to where they are today.

Through this blog, I’m going to document my journey from the USA to Japan. My goal is to go to graduate school in Japan, and ultimately, live and work at one of the big internet companies in Tokyo. I have already endured a few spectacular failures! (Don’t worry, I’ll be sharing them with you shortly.) This blog will be my almost live reality show. :) You’ll all be able to watch me crash and burn! Wish me luck!!