Hi, I'm Clement Ng, a designer working for a web startup based in Sunnyvale, CA. This is my personal blog where I blog about my personal life. If you are so inclined to get to know me, you can also find stalk me on tumblr or twitter. ;)
People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities. — Linda Ellerbee
My last post was about taking up the new job and moving to Shanghai… That never ended up happening. Well, I did take up the job but I never gone back to Shanghai since that initial trip. Instead, my company brought me out to the headquarter in the bay area twice since. First trip was a month long from January to February. In fact, I’ve been here in Sunnyvale since late March on my second trip. The current plan is still 3 months and I shall head back home in late June, but we’ll see how it goes. Things have been going great. Friends from So Cal have come up to visit and I have made a trip down as well. It’s certainly a lot more exciting than living in Hong Kong, partly because of my not knowing that many people there but I think mostly it’s my perspective and attitude. Either way, I’m surely enjoying it a lot more here.
If you haven’t noticed already, I’m slowly slipping back into hiatus… And I don’t think I can give anymore excuses about being busy and what not, since we all know that if you care enough about something, you’ll always make time for it. Perhaps it’s because I feel like my life is no longer interesting enough to deserve blog posts, or perhaps I have just moved on to easier, cooler, hipper, geekier microbloggingsystems, or perhaps I’m just too lazy to write lengthy blog posts. But I can never abandon dabs, especially after so many years of happy and tearful memories we shared.
A few weeks ago Dr. Ted, the former Chief Scientist at my previous work, Veoh, contacted me and asked whether I would be interested in working for a new company he just joined at their Shanghai office. The company concerned was Infovell. They were one of the 77 companies at this year’s DEMO. I was interested but didn’t really expected the opportunity to go anywhere. However, after a dozen emails and a few conference calls later, I found myself on a flight to Shanghai for 4 days to check out the office and meet the guys I’ll be working with in a near future. I was there since Thursday and came back just last night. Ted was there as well for a couple of weeks. Qianjin, the company founder, was really hospitable; treating us to nice dinner every night and providing great accommodations. It was my first time going to Shanghai and it was a pretty impressive city, certainly catching up quick to Hong Kong.
I accepted the offer mainly for the opportunity to see more of the world while I’m still young and for the work experience I will get working with a group of smart people. I will be leaving my current position at aNobii and joining Infovell sometime near the end of next month. I always say, life is so unpredictable. Sometimes you just need to go with the flow and see where it takes you.
Google is a tech company with many great products defining this generation of the web culture. Despite their company motto of Do No Evil, the amount of information they obtained certainly has raised many people’s concerns and worried others. Personally I’m more or less on the side of admiration towards a company that has accomplished so much with unwavering determination. However, this official blog post of Co-founder, Sergey Brin certainly has me convinced of the founders’ sincere belief of Do No Evil. To stand up and speak up against Proposition 8 and declare the position of the company on such controversial issue with little to gain but a lot to lose, Sergey has earned my utmost respect. Let’s hope that many more Californians can recognize that this all boiled down to an issue of equality and join Google in doing no evil.
Here is a wonderful video I came across with a simple and clear message. Even though this commercial was made in support of legalizing same-sex marriage in Canada, I think the message is universal and fits quite well here.
