A mentally Sauna today, I've been experience too much for these few days, the change pace and the direction making me nervous, thanks for my wife who support me in every direction and helping me resume my confidence.
the negotiation with CHT is in freeze, no improvement at all, although this is in my guess, but I can't disclose it too much as our Japanese colleagues are trying their best to build up the logic in negotiation; as this is a " negotiation " no proven threat won't make significant improvement; even we present an idea counter proposal , but they can easily say to us : they understand it but won't accept it; as we already pave the road for other ISP, the effort is a pay off for other players, they can ride on and enjoy every improvement we made through the diplomatic and commercial negotiations; I know they won't make special arrangement for us due to the ' Public entity " concern and I also understand any step back from they will result to a giant impact to them, by detail calculation, they claimed a 200 million lost when agree to reduce / discount to all ISP with the new scheme, but they didn't count in the shrink of capitalization in the stock market, when announce the reduce price of ADSL, the market capitalization drop 2.4 billions NT already. so if we stick on our revenue lost and increasing cost, they will never treat it as a negotiation buffer.
Chairman is coming on next Monday, I scheduled the meeting with Chairman of CHT, hopefully, we may get some improvement by then.
yesterday, lunch with another Japanese colleagues who take his own holiday and coming for " showing " his intention to work with us in Taiwan, I told him 3 obstacles to be overcome , the language issue, the people issue and the career issue, I don't know if he is comfortable with my points, but the intention of his working in Taiwan is pretty strong, I have no objection, but if we need to pay her triple the salary comparing with local staff and provide him better accommodation / position, then I will have second thought about it, once we will go for IPO, I shall have the full control of overhand cost and to think carefully of who to make decent contribution with less cost. this is a very pragmatic question and I will not escape from it.
this morning, the invitation of deliver speech in NTCU is a rare experience, this time, I try a new way to present my speech, with no power point, no slide, but session of music to reflect my " growth map " in the music industry, this is a reflection for my past 10 years, with songs and story telling, I am taking the audience to a music journey with me and share with them the inside story of those songs and activity.
lunch invited by Professor Kao is a career shock to me, I have no idea that he is planning to make me the President of PBS in Taiwan and have collect all the power to exercise on this intention, I told him this is like my goal in 50 comes earlier, then the fight between sense and sensibility occurs, my heart told me this is the dram I always want to pursue, my brain told me this is to early to adapt and may be treated as a business executive escape from the battle field, to run a NPO is what I am looking for in my 50's and to contribute to the culture / media development in Taiwan is what I always want to be, but .... when ring my wife, she says no immediately and advise me don't take it , I got a chance to consult with 2 of my EMBA classmate before Sky / Jeff concert, they don't really understand me and they don't have e clue of how my and my wife building our relationship and sharing the life together, as she will take every consequence after the decision is made by me, so I need to respect her feeling of my career options, we know only a few family in Taiwan share so deep and share so much, I ma lucky and I will not feeling frustrated any more.
the problem is how to say " I am sorry ' to professor Kao is the proposal been approved by Executive Yuang ?
I enjoy the 3 hours of concert, bring Peter / Jasper to the back stage and greeting to artists, friendship existed and my heart is warm.
2 in the games for 2 hours is quite exhausted, only Tom and I are OK for the Ping Pong session last night, when arrived , We bump into each other at the convenience store, there's a surprise waiting in the health club, walk in as usual, turn on the light and we saw a brand new table -- the standard tournament table, we were so exciting, although we use the facility not as frequent as other members , but we are the loyal members in the corner of table tennis, we are impressed by the owner who is general enough to think as we do.
but only 2 persons in the game, it take 2 to tango, it also takes 2 to ping pong, but only 2 is really driving us sweat and tears -- I am too exaggerative; so the exercise time ended earlier than before, we finish the game by 9 pm, taking a cab home and having plenty of time talking with family, late night, me and my wife want to take a walk outside, so, we visit the super market in our community, 11:30 pm, we pick some food and I bought half bottle of red wine, as Mr. Sue advised, I shall take some red wine occasionally and treat it like medicine, remember foreign customers ? People said ' to your health ' when propose a toast to each other.
Wife feel I am a little bit frustrated, do I ? I am not sure, but to have the stud port rib in Shemengtin alone yesterday, it sound to her is " Frustration ", I don't feel lost, but I should not giving up the dream of chasing dreams, it can be big, but not necessary to be rich.
Been away from the blog for a few days, lots of thing happen during these few days, cause it's too trivial, I can't really memorize and write it down, let's begin with the Sunday event, in the morning, I finished the first draft of my thesis, this is due to the appointment with Professor Chuang, I need a monitoring system to push me writing, no matter how rich I may present it, but if there no clock behind and tickle by the professor, I will never begin my writing, at the noon time, I brought 2 kids to a newly open Japanese-Italian restaurant, we are attracted by the cake, so, I made the decision to bring them over and leave enough time for my wife to prepare the dinner with Director Chang Yi and Miss Yang; the spageritt is good and the pizza is OK, I didn't try any cake, but 2 kids seems satisfied with the cake, both of them ordered the second piece.
After meal, we went to the Fine Art Museum of Taipei and attending the Italian design exhibition, how strange, we get involved with Italy today, we stroll around the museum for a hours and half, then I took them to the Children's recreation cent across the street, we take the floating coffee cup -- this is the only attraction we took, after it, we all sit in the Imax and watching the film " River ? " the best animal to build the Dan in the upstream river , the film told us, a couple of river ? can put down 400 tress per years, a great deal.
the night with Director is full of fun, AJ is a new attendee, Mr. Shu brought the creative genius Mr. Cheng. we had a good time in New Hama.
Monday is so busy, 2 very important and interesting interviewing, 2 different people follow 2 different character, Met with Professor Chuang after the session, yes, I know, I need to re-write the thesis again, the thesis writing is academic, can't be to oral when flowing with your mind, I may need another 2 weeks to polish the article.
hear after is the letter I wrote to Dougals today after consult Alex's opinion, I am a little bit disappoint as there's no response from Leslie, I realize I am only a customer in his category, never be recognized as a friend; to know the truth is good, to some extend, it hurts a little, but you know the answer earlier, you pull yourself back to reality sooner. I share everything with my wife, she is the only person I can really counting on.
See off my parent to Taipei Railroad Station on Monday morning, we bought a package for them in Lalu Resort, acclaimed the best resort in Taiwan, managed by Ama Resort team. I knew they goanna enjoy it, not an exception.
here comes the letter :
Dear Douglas;
Thanks for sharing time with me on the 24th of May and advice me how to seriously consider the industry and position I am applying for。It is a true honor to sit beside a great mind, listen to the voice of a leader in person and at the same time digest possibly the most difficult decision in my life。
Although I don’t have an engineering career before, but giving the fact that I established So-net Taiwan ( Sony Network Taiwan Limited )– a Type 2 telecom company mainly focus on internet ( data ) service ( ISP ) 3 more years ago。working together with network engineers, system engineers and by helping rationalize the architecture for our network services, I followed almost every step for the construction of our ISP business, major functions such as : International Access Procumbent, Building partnership with carrier like CHT ( for resale of the ADSL modem and rental for Truck ), moving our IDC from KGex to Sparq and improve the operation service level, negotiating on purchase the BRAS equipment from Red Back; revitalize our billing system license from Portal Software; these experience and learning reflect to my rapport relationship with people in the technology / engineering field and result to the achievement of winning the “ Best Quality and Service ISP in Taiwan “ survey conducted by governmental body -- DGT in 2003。 By doing so, I inspired tech geeks in our company to think differently and to treat commodity alike bandwidth a resource to be further optimized。All the tech / engineering related training build me up to another person other than who deals with artist / media / entertainment issue for the past years。
As telecom industry and Broadband evolving in rapid pace, numbers of brand new or enhanced technologies sparking somewhere around the world。I would like to be the man in the frontier picking up the appropriate technology to fit our growth and to satisfied our customer , if I am not the person, and then I should be the best friend to him 。 「Be friend with those people who obtain the expertise I don’t 」 is the secret result to why I outperform a few professionals in the competition among varies industry。
My view to the terminology “ Technology “ may differ from others。 I think technology is the instrument to improve product / service in order to provide a “ Better Usage “ , “ Better Communication “or ‘ Better Life “ to our customer, no matter they are corporate account or end user。 And my interpretation of “ Technology “ is in its soft form -- which means the spectrum of the term 「Technology 」is wider than it’s academic definition; I believe 「Working with professional engineer 」 is a 「 Human skill technology 」, I believe 「Re-assemble talent to perform their best 」is a 「 Leadership technology 」,I believe 「Understand our customers’ needs and wants」 is the 「 Competition technology 」. And so on….
As for how to improve my in-depth understanding of nowadays telecom trend and be friend with the equipment / hardware / software? I definitely need savvy telecom professionals in Sparq / Singtel providing me the on-the-job training, not in the direction of how to work these machines, but how these equipments perform its duty in order for us to either offer a better service to our customer or create a unique competitive advantage in the telecom service industry。 In addition to the basic training, I will also appreciate the opportunity to learn the “ new and innovation business models “ in the telecom industry business operation segment for providing a 「Solution based」 service to our customer。As I am a quick learner ( my background proved it ) and full of passion to learn new things, combining other attributes such as : honesty, humble, empathy ; it will ultimately take me to the fast lane in learning all the telecom technologies I need to know now and in the future。
「Commitment 」is the keyword behind all the success, the formula remain unchanged for centuries。 It doesn’t required additional explanation; what I would like to address is 「Chasing the Dream 」, It might need the highest level of commitment in life, and I did achieved a few dreams before。 they are : Becoming the youngest Managing Director in Sony Group; Establishing the first Chinese artist to an internationally recognized star; Pursue MBA degree in National Taiwan University without any prior University Degree ; Transfer myself from entertainment field to Type 2 telecom / ISP and win respect in 3 years; Become a YPOer by the age of 43。To take up this new challenge, the level of commitment should be even higher, because it involved areas where I might not familiar with before. And I am ready to commit more; devote more; learn more and grow more。Honestly speaking, this should be the biggest dream to chase ever。
This letter is neither to “ Defense “ any points raised from our conversation nor to “ Selling “ myself as the best candidate to win the recruitment; but to illustrate my viewpoints toward a few “ concerns “ in practice。
I appreciate the chance to express myself again and do hope the letter echo to voices from both of our heart。 Again, thanks for sharing time with me and building the concrete “ Why ? “ and “ How to ? “ between us, it is indeed an unforgettable encounter for me。
Sincerely Yours,
Roger Lee
2004/5/25
