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Lauren update 05/15/2006

It’s been a hectic month.

I went to Microsoft National Architect Forum on April 18th, came back two days later with a cold.

I then spent a week trying to recover from the cold. In the meantime, my father-in-law went back to China and we had a hard time adjusting to his absence.

In the meantime, my group at work re-organized while I was gone, there were quite a few changes.

Lauren’s nasal congestion got worse over the days, and I spent quite some time everyday trying to clear her nose. She still spit up milk and then she started crying during the evenings.

I went to the Food Marketing Institute Show 2006 in Chicago, and just came back on May 9th.

We brought Lauren’s to the post-office to get her own passport on Friday.

Hopefully, I’m done with business traveling the whole year, and I can spend more time with Lauren and my family.

Lauren’s doing alright. I brought her to her pediatrician on Wednesday. Our Ped answered all my questions, and could not find anything wrong with Lauren. We were both glad but also not so sure about the advice given because they sounded remarkably like the ones given before. We’ll just have to run with it.

To summarize, Lauren’s doing well, she’s gaining weight, and now spend quite a few hours of the day giggling and interacting with people.

We are looking for recommendation for good nannies in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in the East Bay. If you know any good ones, please email me.

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Back from USNAF

I spent last Tuesday to Thursday at the Microsoft US National Architect Forum.

The USNAF has recently been broadened from a regional event to a national event. Basically, Microsoft brings out a group of IT architects from various companies, mostly from their clients, and provide them a place to network and share architectural thoughts.

My company only got one ticket to the event, so I was a bit surprised I was the one to attend. It was hosted in Vail Colorado, a great skiing destination. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any skiing done because the schedule was really packed with sessions and the ski season was almost over at this time of the year.

There was also a problem with my flight. I originally booked a flight on Tuesday that leaves OAK at 11:10am, and I already printed out the boarding pass from home. On Tuesday morning, before I left for the airport, I had the foresight of checking on the flight status, and found out the flight was cancelled! I wasn’t even contacted about this, and I learned from my travel agent that I was bumped to a later flight, which leaves OAK at 5pm. I was a bit disappointed, someone could have at least let me know that my flight was cancelled. Anyway, the 5pm flight introduced a new problem. There was a reception scheduled on Tuesday night, however, since the flight takes 2 hours, there is 1 hour timezone difference between Vail and Oakland, and the Vail hotel I’m staying in is 140 miles away from the airport. I only got to the hotel at around 11:30pm, well past the reception time. So I missed the reception, which was definitely a good opportunity to network.

Another thing I found out was I was feeling dizzy because of 8000 feet above sea-level of Vail. I didn’t sleep well at all the first night, only for about 5 hours.

I woke a bit groggy the next morning, and I had a full day ahead of me, so I got up and started the day.

There was a bus waiting in front of the hotel taking us from our hotel to the Marriott for the morning session. I got on the bus, and arrived at Mar riot within 5 minutes. It was a nice day, the sky was blue and mountain-side was covered by snow.

I mainly went there to find out what people are doing in Enterprise Architecture, and how far down the road they are with Service Oriented Architecture. Thus most of the sessions I signed up for are either panel discussions or round-table on EA and SOA topics.

Most of the sessions were well organized and well presented. However, most weren’t presented at the level of detail that I’m interested in.

Overall, it was a fine experience. I was able to talk to people in the same line of work. The only regret I had was that I wasn’t able to finish the last keynote session by Paul Glen, the author of the bestseller Leading Geeks. I stayed for the first 30 minutes, and it was the most fun I had during the whole NAF. However, I had to leave to catch my plane. I did get a free copy of the book, and I’ll review it once I’m done reading it.

Until next time.

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Soft Skill #1: Leadership

Lately, I’ve been thinking about why some leaders are more effective than others, in other words, what makes a leader great? I also wanted to learn how to become a great leader.

There are many books on leadership. Two of my favorites are Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani and Winning by Jack Welch.

So what makes a leader great? Here are my thoughts.

Character traits of a great leader

  • A great leader needs to be full of positive energy. We all worked with people who are full of positive energy, these are the folks that are optimistic and realistic at the same time, they know if they apply themselves, they can achieve the goals that they set out to achieve. On the contrary, working with people who are negative all the time can be a real energy drain.
  • A great leader needs to be able to energize and motivate. Just influencing others with his positive energy is not enough, he needs to be able to energize others, to drive the team to reach higher goals.
  • A great leader needs to be authentic. No one wants to follow a phony, being genuine in his interactions, and practice what one preaches is very important for a leader.
  • A great leader has humility. He is not arrogant or inflexible, he relies on the people who he chooses to give him honest feedback and recommendations. He respect other’s opinions and the differences in people, and seriously consider their opinions.
  • A great leader is persistent. He will not be easily discouraged.
  • A great leader needs to have the inner strength and self-confidence to make tough and/or unpopular decisions. He also need to make the right decisions to begin with, this is what Jack Welch calls having an “Edge”.
  • A great leader needs to have emotional competencies (EQ). He needs know his own emotions, manages them well, empathize with others, understand others’ emotions and manages them well as well.

Skills and competencies of a great leader

  • A great leader needs to be able to execute. Anyone can plan, however, what separate great leader from the rest is that a great leader delivers the result that continuously exceeds expectation.
  • A great leader needs to have foresight. A leader needs to lead, and know intuitively what’s around the corner. To know where one’s going is utmost important for leaders at the top of an organization.
  • A great leader does not expect his subordinates to work harder or work on things that he himself is not willing to take on. Leadership is not a privilege that allows one to delegate unpleasant tasks.
  • A great leader is always prepared. Giuliani was so effective right after the tragic events of 9/11 because he and his office spent so much preparing for just this kind of catastrophy.
  • A great leader holds his subordinate responsible yet gives them the creative freedom to come up with solutions on their own.
  • A great leader is outward focused, instead of himself, he focuses on building and mentoring his people, he’s a clock-builder instead of a time-teller (these concepts are from the excellent book Built to Last ). The greatest legacy of a great leader is not himself but the great organization and the people he leaves behind.

Here is what a great leader is NOT

  • A great leader does NOT have a big ego. Having a big ego can manifest itself in many different ways, and most of them will have a negative impact on the people he works with.
  • A great leader does NOT need to come from outside the company. Another excellent book by Jim Collins Good to Great made the argument quite convincingly based on research.
  • A great leader is NOT necessarily charismatic. It doesn’t mean a great leader can not be charismatic. There are quite a few great charismatic leaders like Jack Welch. However, there are just as many leaders who are not such as Abraham Lincoln. Built to Last contains many examples of leaders who are not charismatic.

Here are the steps I’ll take to become a better leader:

  1. Do a serious and realistic self accessment on all traits, skills and competencies I currently have.
  2. Set leadership goals for myself
  3. Identify paths to fill the gaps
  4. Identify mentors both from work and from life
  5. Continously improve and measure my own progress
  6. Explore opportunities from work and life to lead, to practice what I learned.
  7. Repeat until I reach my leadership goals.

As you can see, to be a great leader, one needs to become great in many areas. I myself have quite a long way to go, although the journey should be just as enjoyable as the end result.

More soft skills discussions to follow.

Any thoughts?

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Lauren’s second outing

The weather was surprisingly warm on Saturday. We originally planned to have lunch to celebrate my father-in-law’s birthday, and since the weather was so nice, decided to check out Japanese Garden after lunch.

Lunch was excellent, Ray’s Sushi in Hayward is very dependable in their quality. Lauren cooperated by falling asleep the moment we entered the door.

After a nice lunch, we set out for Japanese Garden which was only around 2 miles away.

Again, it was quite sunny and warm, much different than the raining days during the week. After we got to Japanese Garden, we found there were a large wedding party taking photos in front of us, so we have to move around a bit. The garden was exactly what I remembered, I’ve been here couple of times before, and it sure brought back some memories.

This time the wind is not as strong as last time, and Lauren’s in a better mood. She’s wide awake, and even spent some time watching the koi fishes in the pond.

I took a few nice photos, however, I didn’t have time to charge the battery on the flash when we left, I had to make do with the built-in flash which surprised me with the good job it did.

You can judge by yourself. Here are couple of photos.

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Lauren in the park

So we finally brought Lauren outside.

It’s about time. We didn’t want to bring her out any earlier because there was really no need and the we’ve been pretty busy on the weekends.

On Saturday, the sun finally broke through, and we decided it was time for her to taste the outdoor life.

It was by no means a smooth ride. First of all, the place of choice, Japanese Garden in Hayward, closes at 4pm. We only found that out when we are ready to move out at 4pm, and I thought to check the park hours. So we switched to Plan B, which is Marina Park, kinda windy but will have to do.

The other hurdle was the Baby Trend Snap N Go stroller we have. It was given to us by my mom’s friend. She also gave us the infant car seat that we are supposed to use with the stroller frame. However, try as I did, I just couldn’t get the seat-belt on the stroller to hold the car seat properly. After consulting the manual, and tinkering with it for a good half hour, I finally found that the frame was actually set to the wrong setting, and I had to make some adjustments. I guess the family who gave us the car seat and stroller used another car seat with it.

So with Lauren fed and wide awake, we embarked on our first trip to the great outdoors as a family.

Marina Park was an absolutely beautiful place, however, because it’s next to the bay, it’s usually quite windy and chilly over there. When we arrived, things were looking up. The sun’s still up, the wind’s not too bad, and there are not too many people around.

We parked the car and put Lauren in the stroller and started strolling around.

Lauren was very interested in the change in scenery, she looked around and had this curious expression on her face, or maybe she was just feeling the wind on her face.

We decided to go to the playground because there is a building next to it to block the wind. There were quite a few kids playing in the area, so we found a bench, and settled down. There we were able to take a few photos. Lauren’s eyes were scanning the playground all the time, taking in all the sight and sound. Ten minutes into the photo taking, she got a bit tired and started to fuss. We knew it was time to go home, so we put her back into the stroller and strolled back to our car.

One unexpected find was a family of Canadian goose claimed the grassy area next to our car as their home turf. They briefly scattered when we arrived, but came back and stood their ground when we got in our car. Of course, by now, Lauren’s sleep so she didn’t see them. I’ll have to tell her when she grows up then.

Please keep our family in your prayers. Oh and don’t forget to adjust to Daytime Savings Time.

Photos from the trip.
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Lauren’s ten weeks old

Lauren is exactly ten weeks old.

JY Lauren to see her pediatrician last week. As usual, she brought with her a list of questions. We do have a few pressing questions for the doctor, and were given satisfactory answers.

The good news is that Lauren’s developing very well. She’s almost 12 lbs, and is now in the 75% percentile rather than the 50% she was in a month ago. Her height is also now in the 75% percentile.

We were also told that she has thrush in her mouth, we were wondering what those pink pasty stuff was on her tongue. She was given an oral suspension to treat the thrush.

All in all, a good checkup.

JY has returned to work, it’s really hard for her to achieve work life balance with a new baby. Thankfully, my mother-in-law is helping us with the baby. However, her visa is only for 6 months, we’ll need to find another baby-care option once she’s gone.

Please keep us in your prayers.

Couple of recent photos of Lauren.

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What’s more import to one’s success – soft skills or hard skills?

Coming from a software development background, I used to think hard technical skills are everything. I even looked at people without the technical skills with pity, and wonder how anyone can possible do any meaningful work without a deep understanding of all the intricacies of technology.

Fast forward 4 years, my career has taken quite a few turns, now I’m an Enterprise Architecture for a large retailer chain. It’s becoming more and more clear that having technical skills is nice but is not enough.

The problem with moving from programming to other fields is that now I’m dealing mostly with people. It’s not that when I was a programmer I didn’t have the deal with people, but most of the time a programmer spent was in front of a computer thinking up algorithms. I enjoyed it tremendously, and found the work quite satisfying.

However, with programming becoming a commodity with the influx of foreign talents and offshore-outsourcing, development looks less and less like a viable option.

I’m glad I made the decision into going into application, solutions then enterprise architecture. It’s been a long road where I learned a lot of things. But only recently, in the past year have I seriously focused developing my soft-skills.

By soft-skills, I meant non-technical skills. These are mostly skills dealing with people and non-technical situations such as leadership, decision making (rational and intuitive), negotiation, influence, emotional intelligence, public-speaking, communication, and time management. There are also character traits that one can learn to develop such as persistence, optimism, conviction, self-confidence, etc…

I now understand one can not succeed without the soft-skills. Because success comes much easier when you surround yourself with the right people and choose to deal with the right people.

On the surface, soft-skills do not seem so important, what if you are an extremely shy but steller programmer, you’ll still be fine doing what you do. However, if you ever want to move to another job that requires dealing with people on a daily basis (as simple as team leads or architect), having the right soft-skills are absolute crucial.

There are two attributes to people skills that make them more valuable to technical skills.

  1. They are transferable. Soft-skills can be used wherever you work, and are applicable to life in general.
  2. They don’t become obsolete as quickly as the technical skills.

People may argue those two points, and I can just imagine someone saying “yeah, you are saying that only because you are doing architect work now”. But sooner or later, they will realize the value of soft-skills unless as well.

I’m doing saying technical skills are not important, on the contrary, they are very important, and my work depend a lot on it as well. What I’m suggesting is that you spent time developing your soft-skills as well. As I’m developing them, I keep finding new and exciting things to learn.

I hope you will become more success when you master the soft-skills that can make your better at what you do.

More on the specifics of the soft-skills later.

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Our top three concerns for Lauren

Lauren’s now eight weeks old. She’s grown quite a bit, now much heavier than before. By our estimate, she’s about 11.5 pounds. She’s going to see her Pediatrician tomorrow, and hopefully things will turn out well.

She’s been mostly an easy baby and not so fussy. She has a few persistent problems that we are still trying to deal with.

  1. She’s gassy a lot of the times. She sucks in milk with vigor most of the time, and as the result, a lot of air go down with the milk as well. Thus we had to interrupt her feeding and burp her quite often. Sometime, the burping can take an hour or longer for the air bubble to come up. We started using Mylicon drops couple of weeks ago, which sped up the burping process, but still her burping routine still takes considerable effort.
  2. She sometime spits up milk. In the past two weeks, Lauren spitted up 2 oz of milk three times. Twice was because she was fed more than 5 oz of milk without burping, and the other time was because of her overeating. However, it was still a concern for us. JY will ask our pediatrician tomorrow if we should check Lauren for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD).
  3. Her nose fills with snots at least once a day, and because she doesn’t like to breath through her mouth, she’s fussy and cries until the snots are removed. The snot-removal process is not pleasant, she clearly demonstrate that by using her little fist to push away the bulb syringe. I’m usually the one who does the honor, and yes, I’m an expert at this stuff by now =)

Despite all her problems, Lauren has developed well. She sleeps well, is spending more time playing, is becoming more responsive, and she smiles at the most unexpected times.

Hopefully we’ll have good news after Lauren sees her doctor tomorrow. Please continue to pray for Lauren and our family.

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Jonathan一岁了

刘健和邓涛是我们的好朋友。所以当我们听说他们的公子Jonathan要开生日party，我们当然要参加了。
我们从小看Jonathan长大（其实他也才一岁），他从小就很白，而且特别喜欢作出一幅无辜的样子。而我们妞妞也喜欢作出一幅无辜的样子，真是非常“相配”。

这是妞妞第一次参加朋友的生日party，对她来说意义重大。所以我们给她穿上了最漂亮的粉红色外衣，戴上piyo-piyo帽子，象个小公主。

我们到的时候吓了一跳，好多朋友已经到了， 一共有5个孩子（包括妞妞），两个孕妇和十五六个大人，这个哭，那个闹，简直是鸡飞狗跳。我们因为要给妞妞喂奶，所以去得有点晚，觉得有些不好意思。好在大家都能理解。

我上次看见Jonathan，是在四个星期前。那次我和JY都觉得好像他一下子长大了好多，头比原来大了一大圈儿，不过还是很可爱。

刘健和邓涛准备了丰富的晚餐，我尤其喜欢恩泉作的夫妻肺片。

吃完晚饭后，开始拆Jonathan生日礼物。凯波送给他一个超大的玩具，我和JY都在想，我们家这么小，如果凯波也送个我们的妞妞这么大个玩具我们该怎么办。我们送给Jonathan一双New Balance的鞋，六号大。刘健跟我提过他又给Jonathan买鞋，所以JY和我决定给他买双我们喜欢牌子的。

当拆礼物快结束的时候，妞妞大概是因为刺激过渡开始闹了，我们就提早告退了。好在妞妞一上车就睡着了。一到家妞妞睁开眼睛就扑在姥姥的怀里委屈得大哭。那个晚上妞妞睡得特别好（可能是白天兴奋了）。

我和JY商量想等妞妞一岁的时候也给她办同样的生日Party.

下面是几张我照的照片。
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更多的照片。　

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Picking toys for Lauren

As all you parents know, there are many types and brands of toys on the market, it’s really hard to find the toys that offers the best Return On Investment (ROI), both monetarily and in terms of time spent playing.

From the books that I’ve been reading, it seems to me that a good toy should serve the child’s needs for playing, holds her interest and helps her with her physical, cognitive, social and emotional development.

Given that toys are such an important part of a child’s development, it’s the parent’s responsibility to pick the best toys for the child, and engage in toy playing with the child.

It’s indeed an awesome responsibility and as usual, I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about which toys are best for my child at all different stages of her life.

Baby 411 book mentioned a booklet published by US Consumer Product Safeway Commission, called “Which Toy for Which Child, Ages Birth Through Five”. I was able to locate an online PDF copy of the document here. However, the PDF file’s quality leaves a lot to be desired. It’s better to request a hard-copy by email info@cpsc.gov to request Publication 285. You can find more information at the bottom of this page.

What this publication tells you is the appropriate toys for various ages, this particular publication covers birth till 5 years of age. I find the categorization of the toys into Active Play, Manipulative Play, Make-Believe Play, Creative Play and Learning Play makes a lot of sense, and the succinct abilities and interests sections quite informative.

There are also quite a few toy books on the market. The one recommended by Baby 411 is Oppenheim Toy Portfolio 2006 Edition: The Best Toys, Books, DVDs & Music for Kids. Although I have not read the book, the namesake website at http://www.toyportfolio.com has quite a few reviews of specific toys, and I found the review insightful and informative.

The book I did read, called Toy Tips : A Parent’s Essential Guide to Smart Toy Choices was also good. I found the information in the book a bit more general in nature than I expected, but it did brought several things into my attention especially regarding the repeat playability of toys, technology toys and classic toys. I wasn’t thinking in those terms before. I also enjoyed the http://www.toytips.com website. It features toy and other baby gear reviews for children.

Given the three wonderful resource I mentioned above, I was able to come up with a simple toy searching framework.

  1. Understand the Lauren’s next development stage and the required toys categories ahead of time, focusing on the skills I want Lauren to build
  2. Take inventory of current toys, find out which categories they fall under
  3. Based on the categories of toys, browse through http://www.toyportfolio.com and http://www.toytips.com for their recommended toys.
  4. Once the toys arrive, inspect them for loose parts, then note their future playable time.
  5. Once Lauren reaches the age for a set of particular toys, play with the toys together with Lauren to observe whether she is able to play them with and her level of interest, and make adjustment accordingly.

I’m just beginning to understand the importance of toys, and will welcome any feedback you experienced parents have in order to be more “toy smart”.

Have fun.