George Chen DOT COM

Random thoughts of the day:

When you go to a Japanese restaurant you see people rubbing disposable chopsticks to remove splinters. I have never seen that done in Japan. After a bit of research, this is what I’ve found out:

Q. Am I supposed to rub my chopsticks together before my meal?

A. Some think that rubbing your chopsticks together before a meal is a Japanese custom meant to remove splinters. In fact, rubbing chopsticks together can encourage more splinters than it actually takes off! This ritual originates from an early Charlie Chaplin movie that was popular in Japan before WWII. In this movie, Charlie Chaplin rubs his knife and fork together as a gesture of culinary anticipation. The Japanese people who were fans of the movie at the time, mimicked this action with their chopsticks. After WWII, American GIs returning from Japan brought this American born custom home again! In Japan today it is not a commonly practiced custom.

As for me, I don’t do it. Unless you are cool like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner.

I am not a “tree hugger”, but I switched over to “Payless Billing” on a few of my accounts today.

I am sure this will benefit the corporation America greatly (on cost saving), but at least that’s something anyone (with a computer) can do to try help out the environment.

Not sure the site LifeHacker got some tips or tricks like this. 😛

I don’t post a lot of "personal stuff" on this Blog, but here’s a link to a few of the pictures from Alison and my wedding. Thanks for all the hard work Brian. 🙂

Is sooo pase to blog about the whole Toyota Prius buying experience. In fact, it’s kinda lame, and I’ll laugh at you if you do. But this afternoon I am going to check out a Prius due the recent passage of the new California Law that allows solo drive to use the carpool lance as long as you have a tree hugger mobile (aka Prius).

Hell yes! Time is money and I waste a lot of time in commute. If Prius can cut down on my commute I am sooo getting a Prius. Stay tune.

Like my parents, I am not a big "birthday person". In fact, we’re pretty low key about any type of celebrations. That doesn’t mean I don’t like to spend time with love ones and family – I just don’t want to make a big deal out of it.

Today is my birthday and a couple of good friends from work insist we go out to our favorite place for Pho. Jee sent me a very nice IM greetings. My best friend also sent me a nice email which surpassingly didn’t go into my auto spam mail folder. Then a nice family dinner with Alison and my parents.

I do have one correction to make. Everyone ask me how old I am and I have been telling people I am 34 – which is wrong. I actually turn 33 today. Maybe I’m blue for the whole day since in a way I do "feel" 34. Who knows. But thank you mom for correcting me. I am only 33.

George, George, Garreth, and Monte.

Google’s Hong Kong Satellite map is up and running.Worth take a look. Found the building where I used to live too. Where I went to school. Hong Kong is a very pretty place up from above! And most of the key locations are very recognizable from above too. Hong Kong Stadium (yes, I lived very close to it). Happy Valley – horsey racing and gambling action… And Two International Finance Center currently the tallest building in Hong Kong (415m/1,362ft).

I rarely talk about work here…. If I do, I usually just complain. But for once, I want to talk about scrum and the fact it’s pretty cool.

Scrum is actually a rugby term. According to Merriam-Webster, it means "the forwards of each side come together in a tight formation and struggle to gain possession of the ball when it is tossed in among them".

Scrum focus on team work, yet each person is tasked to tackle their own road block. In software development (or internet development sense), it means knowing exactly and honestly how many hours you’re going to work on a project (in our case, a day is a 6 hr block).

By giving an accurate estimate before the project starts, you plan for your next 30 days. With scrum, you will know exactly who’s working on what, who’s behind, who need help, and who got nothing to do.

I have heard designers complain about scrum. Designers don’t like scrum because they feel like they are being dropped into the "middle" of a process – while the process is usually short and rapid.

For the designers that are used to the "Design Process", scrum might appear to "leave no time for design or inspiration". Our team deal with it this way:

While our current scrum is about what I am going to do in the next 30 days. The design artifacts I produced in those 30 days will be become a new engineer task for their next 30 days. That means, designer can still participate in scrum as an on going effort and engineer won’t sit around with nothing to do.

The whole thing is still pretty new to me. There are still projects coming to me in the waterfall approach and not in a scrum format, so going back and forth between the 2 does seems weird at time. But so far so good in regarding my scrum world.

I was right behind the car that got hit. The truck was inches away from me. I took this picture while I was pulling away. 101/Mathilda Ave. is a VERY dangeruous intersection.

I see a lot of people wearing the Lance Armstorng Foundation LIVESTRONG yellow wristbands these days. In fact it is everywhere. Just thought I should note that on my Web site. I got my mom one and even Alison is also wearing one that I got her. I don’t wear it because it sticks to my arm while I sleep.