Shanzhai Lu

Obviously I have something to say about where US-China relations seem to be heading. But it's Monday and my schedule is slammed. So just wanted to get a quick thought out.

My friend Calvin wrote a guest post on TechCrunch yesterday. Just read through the comments that follow and you might get a sense of why many of us who hang out on the bridge between the US and China are shaking our heads these days. On both sides.

Google vs China. Sale of defense weapons to Taiwan. Folks in the US fanning the fear of a red planet flames. Folks in China with metaphoric guns drawn getting defensive on why everyone's backing them into a corner.

Lou Dobbs called. He wants his show back.

Anyways, more on this later...

Update: I have writer's block. But worked it out the other day. I think I'm going to launch a new media company. Stay tuned.

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At the risk of appearing a bit new agey, I thought i'd share a bit of today's horoscope:

What is the definition of a failure?

It is a person who has stopped trying to succeed.

When should you stop trying?

Never.

Love it. ^_^

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Catching up at lunch yesterday I was telling my insanely smart friend Kevin about this frustration of mine.

He said I was a Tummler.

So now I feel much better going into the new year feeling like there's a place for me at the big kids table.

But I'm still not sure how to answer the "what do you do" question.

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this year, i'm going to start giving shout outs to people who influence and inspire me in the hopes that you'll get to know who they are and the work they do too. 

meet isaac mao. if you don't know who he is, you should. especially his thoughts on what he calls "sharism" -- it resonates with me.

i'm honored to be able to call him a friend and always appreciate the time he's taken from his insanely busy schedule the past few years to catch up for a late night coffee here or a lunch there when our paths cross in shanghai. he is truly inspiring.

also super grateful that he's set aside time and confirmed to speak at [re]think : shanghai in may. he'll be sharing his insights about "cloud intelligence"

in the meantime, have a read of his most recent article in the guardian. it gives a nice glimpse into what's on his mind lately.

you can follow him on twitter at @isaac and say hello. he's a really nice guy.

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it's 2010.

wow. where'd the decade go.

i spent much of new years eve on a flight from boston to los angeles looking back on the past ten years. a little out of character for me because i am perpetually moving forward trying to outrun myself and i hate looking back. but a 6 hour flight across the country on new years eve will do that to a person i guess.

ten years ago i was living in shanghai. 23 years old who refused to spend her post college years climbing a corporate ladder within the confines of an office cubicle. china dotcom bubble was in full swing. i had to be in shanghai. it was my first failed startup. and i was hooked. drive fast, take chances my friend jd used to say in our early days in china. lots of crazy drunken nights at bonne sante with jeff, weaver, miyuki, sok, sam, michelle...

i spent 5 fast paced years in shanghai. new york on crack people sometimes say. i loved it most of the times. i hated it towards the end. the money was good. the work hard, drink hard took its toll. you worked hard to try and keep up with the pace of the city. a city constantly torn down and rebuilt while you were living in it. you drank hard because at times it seemed the only thing left to do at the end of the day. i dated a nice australian guy for much of those years. he wanted to marry me. it took me one question about where i wanted to live in sydney to realize i didn't feel the same. i was 27. i missed the states. my parents were aging. my marketing director position was getting localized. a new version of shanghai was emerging. one that didn't need me anymore i felt. it was time to head home.

i looked to hawaii as a transition in 2003. i met joe and can honestly say i know what it feels like to fall madly -- and blindly -- in love with someone. i knew i was going to marry him. i even told miyuki nine months before he asked me. he was a naval officer. a navy diver. and a nuclear engineer. we eloped in hawaii. we were so happy. that was half a decade ago. it sounds more dramatic when you can say it that way. i'm a drama queen at times so indulge me for the duration of the blog post.

life. seriously, you can't script this stuff. because if you could, i certainly wouldn't have written the next chapter the following way.

my sister susie committed suicide 3 days after joe and i got our marriage certificate. i became pregnant with my son a month after. 4 months after he was born, joe deployed to iraq on an aircraft carrier. 6 months after that we were trying to piece our marriage back together. 6 months later the bush administration got the idea to do a surge deployment. off he went again. 3 months later we were trying to piece our marriage back together - again. 6 months after that he left us. 6 months after that the divorce was finalized.

as downward spirals go, we never stood a chance.

...

the past ten years of my life. exhausting at best. depressing at worst. but absolutely necessary in lessons learned about myself.

so what do you do when you find yourself afraid of standing still for fear that you'll stop dreaming.

1. you work.
2. hustle with purpose. because you're a single mom with a boy who needs you.
3. challenge old thinking. because you realize everyone is making things up as they go along in life. some are just better than the rest of us at pretending they know what they're doing and where they're going. 
4. disrupt with new ideas. because change really is the only constant. and i don't know about you but it's much more fun being part of change than holding it back.
5. connect and share. because you realize you spent an insecure part of your 20s thinking you had to deal with a wide variety of assholes who knew better than you in order to move forward. then you wake up one day and realize it doesn't have to be that way. no more. you choose to surround yourself with good people. devil's advocate to your dreams. what is that? sorry. there is no room in my life for the devil or anyone who advocates on his behalf. 
6. move forward. because moving forward is all you really can do when you don't have much to look back on. the other alternative to that would be to stand still ...and stop dreaming. that's just not an option for me. my big sister's depression taught me that.

so here i am. moving forward into the new decade simplifying my life with three lessons i'm carrying over from the last one.

...

stay resilient.

surround myself with good people.

don't stop dreaming.

...and do it all from hawaii. i can't wait.

...

happy new decade.

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cool little horoscope for Pisces this month says:

At school, they teach us all to read, to write, to add numbers together and to behave ourselves.

They give no classes in how to develop intuition - or how to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with our fellow humans - or even how to relax and enjoy life without feeling constantly pressured.

No wonder our world is in such a state. We are all urged to value achievement more than empathy and money more than love.

Yet life now offers you a real chance to unlearn all that.

You can take your highest ideals and pursue them with pride and confidence.

woo hoo. unlearning. i like that.

see. i was a mediocre student.

never felt motivated by the belief that my grades directly correlated with my ability to make something out of myself one day.

i cried during my first algebra test in 9th grade because i got automatically stuck in the honors class since i was Susie's sister.

my transcript was a trainwreck and disproves the theory that all Asians are straight A students.

i secretly think part of the reason I moved to Shanghai in the 90s was because you needed street smarts more than straight A's in that environment. i did well and finally made my mom proud.

proud enough that to this day she still says it's not too late for me to go back and get my MBA.

um, seeing as how that involves taking a standardized test, I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon.

besides, i'm too busy these days.

so many things left to unlearn.

:)

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My son and I were sharing some mommy and me time this morning over hot chocolate. I said too bad we didn't have marshmallows. He asked what a marshmallow was. I searched Flickr to show him and came across this image. Don't you love random awesomeness that comes up in Flickr searches.

It's called: "Self Portrait as a Marshmallow (I'm the one on the right)"

Makes me feel sorry for the marshmallow on the right. I guess that's the point. Interesting.

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We plot, we plan, we assume things are going to go
A certain way and then they don’t and we find ourselves
In a new place, a place we haven’t been before, a place
We never would have imagined on our own,

And so it was difficult and unexpected and maybe even
Tragic and yet it opened us up and freed us to see
Things in a whole new way

Suffering does that—
It hurts,
But it also creates.

How many of the most significant moments in your
Life came not because it all went right, but because
It all fell apart?

It’s strange how there can be art in the agony…

~Rob Bell

My favorite line is the part about how suffering can also create.

I can relate to it.

I live with a restless desire to make things happen and move things forward every day.

Since my sister's death.

Since my divorce.

Since the failure of a recent startup.

It took the observations of a friend to confirm what I already know about myself.

What I'm doing now.

Where I'm going.

Where I want to be.

Has everything to do with that rear view mirror of where I've been.

...and where I don't want to see anyone else end up if I can help it.

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I don't know about you but...

I subscribe to the belief that people connected via social media are generally good.

Except of course, when they turn out to be full of shit.

Then they become people who are full of shit connected to people who are generally good via social media.

I believe a more case study way of saying this is coined in Jeremiah's recent post.

He's referring to companies with "digital combovers" <-- LOL.

But I would argue that this also applies to people as well.

Listen to Jeremiah.

Ditch the digital combover.

You're not fooling anyone.

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