Work
May 18 2009
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 microblogging systems, 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.
Oct 20 2008
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.
Jul 30 2008
This past weeks were hectic with work. (OMG, this has become my opening line for so many entries already. I have really turned into a workaholic.) Right after we got done with the new shelf view, we immediately started working on an iPhone web-app for the 2008 Hong Kong Book Fair. The deadline wouldn’t have been as tight as it was if we weren’t trying to get it out by the iPhone Hong Kong launch party on the 17th. aNobii was one of the few presenters to demo our web-app at the party. We had this whole Mac-vs-PC skit planned, but we got cut short since we went over our 8 mins allowed. Oh well, we were almost done anyway.
Then we were at the book fair on Monday for an interview with Next Magazine. That journalist certainly asked a lot of questions, but I doubt it will get published anytime soon. The same journalist has already come up to our office once a couple months ago to interview Greg (my boss + aNobii founder), and that ended up going nowhere.
I had worked for more than 2 weeks straight on the interface and interactions of the app. I was so proud of myself since I have always wanted to make a functional web-app for the iPhone since it first came out, so this was a great opportunity for me. All the interface effects were built with the Mootools framework, with AJAX for data retrieval. I know the book fair is over already, but you can still check out the app on your iPhone at hkbf.anobii.com/iphone. I guess you can also load it up on Safari if you don’t have an iPhone. For those who don’t have either, a video demo is available on our press kit page. :D
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