Shawshank's 岁月点滴

It came rather shocking to me despite his years long struggle with cancer. Although Jobs has stepped down and up a couple of times before, this time all looks it’s final — an era is over.

Perhaps no other companies bears a more personal mark than Apple. He founded Apple computer, and ousted a few years later after failed in a political fight. Few years later he returned, saved the company from limbo before he glorified Apple as the most valuable company in the world.

Despite his controversial management style, he is no doubt the greatest manager in the world. When interviewed by our VP for a managerial position, I was told, since I am well on my path on the technical career ladder, “Don’t be sad if you don’t get it, because you can make as much as many directors do.” For someone who only cares how many dollars he can bring home every month, yes, it indeed doesn’t matter. But, for a company, managerial talent determines if the company is going in the right direction; technical talent can only help the company go faster. It’s like the difference between efficient and effective, it’s clear which is more important. The most painful thing in one’s career is watching the whole team going on a wrong direction or direction-less while having no managerial authority to turn it around.

To be a good manager, one has to have be a visionary, leader, executioner, and politically sensitive. In short, one has to be a complete package. Of all of them, leadership and vision are the most important, the void of which only makes one a supervisor, not a manager.

Managers are crucial to a company’s success, or failure. While in the late 90s when GM was still the largest company in the world, we joked about how hard it is for a CEO to bankrupt a huge company like GM, and yet 9 years later the joke became reality.

Managers of a company bears immense responsibilities. In some sense, they deserve to be rewarded more heavily. It becomes more and more popular to evaluate with quantitative metrics, while these metrics can do a decent job in measuring one’s short term performance, they fall short on the in the long term. So, as a responsible manager, one must balance between the two. When a company’s managers has turned into nothing but a whole bunch of bonus-sucking parasites, it’s time to say bye-bye. Because it won’t be far before the company falls apart.

吃完饭，我躺在沙发里，把polo抱在怀里，他的头枕在我的左臂。
他半睁着睡眼，安详地看着我，我的眼也看着他。
我意识到
我已经成了一个爸爸
每天抚摸着怀里的他，白天一切身体的疲惫和心灵的烦恼都会消散而去
而看不见他的白天又时时挂念，抱歉不能多陪他一些
这一切都是那么的心甘情愿
polo就是一个永远长不大的孩子

人来人往
只有他在每天回家时会永远第一个出现在你面前，由衷地兴奋喜悦
那时，你知道，你对他有多重要，他永远不会舍弃你
尽管这个永远只有15年

Charlie Wilson has a special place in the US political history. He was a congressman representing part of east Texas, which was characteristic of ultra conservatism and Christian values. However, he was famous for his playboy life style with women, alcohol, and drug use. Yet, it’s not what the movie Charlie Wilson’s War is about.
His main contribution was leading a US covert operation against Soviet Union in its Afghanistan War. With the money, weapon and military training support from the US, Soviets was finally defeated, leading to its collapse a few years later.
Personally I think it’s a very good movie. The director, while on the one hand, praised his effort to curb the spread of communism; on the other hand, is never frugal in revealing the dark corners of US political system, all of which are unfortunately, hopelessly, true. Let’s read through some scripts in the movie:
(FYI, the characters involved are:
Joanne Herring: A wealthy Texas woman, an ultra-right wing, anti-communism, Christian. Wilson’s secret lover and political donor.
Gust Avrakotos: CIA operative, person who carried out Wilson’s initiatives.
Bonnie Bach: Charlie Wilson’s Administrative Assistant)
Section 1:
Joanne Herring: May I ask what it is that I’ve done to make you dislike me, Mr. Avrakotos?
Gust Avrakotos: I like you just fine, Mrs. Herring, it’s just been my experience that when people with money and too much free time get involved in politics, pretty soon, I forget who it is I’m supposed to be shooting at.
Shawshank’s comment:
“Power to the people” is nothing more than a slogan any more. Some ultra right wing political faction in Houston, Texas ended up having changed course of a country (Afghanistan) and the whole world (the collapse of Soviet Union) The “butterfly effect” is scarily amazing.

Section 2:
Charlie Wilson: But I have to tell you, I’m elected by Jews.
Joanne Herring: How many Jews do you have in your district?
Charlie Wilson: Seven. But congressmen aren’t elected by voters, they’re elected by contributors, and mine are in, well, New York, Florida, Hollywood, because I’m one of Israel’s guys on the Hill.
Shawshank’s comment:
The founding fathers of this country painstakingly designed the political system to prevent under represented groups’ voices being ignored, to prevent factions from overwhelming it; yet, they still failed, only 200 years after the system was established.
In essence, campaign donation is just a form of legalized corruption, bribery.

Section 3:
Charlie Wilson: You want me to come to Houston and see a movie?
Joanne Herring: There’ll be women and wealthy donors. See you Friday.
Charlie Wilson: Yes, ma’am.
Shaswhank’s comment:
“Follow the money” It almost becomes the universal law in the world. A sad truth.

Section 4:
Charlie Wilson: You know, I had a neighbor, growing up, with a name right out of Dickens, Mr. Charles Hazard. And Mr. Hazard didn’t like the neighborhood dogs messing up his flower beds. One day, I heard a bunch of yelling from across the street, so I ran on over to Mr. Hazard’s, and there were about 15 grown-ups standing around my dog, Teddy, who was writhing on the ground in obvious agony. Blood was pouring out of his mouth. Mr. Hazard had ground up a glass bottle and put it in a bowl of dog food and fed it to him.
Bonnie Bach: What did you do?
Charlie Wilson: Well, I got some gasoline and burned down his flower beds. But that wasn’t satisfying enough. And then I remembered, Mr. Hazard was an elected official. He was the head of the town council. His reelection every two years was a foregone conclusion. So come Election Day, I drove over to the black section of town. Now, these people hadn’t voted in any of these elections, and I filled up my car with black voters and drove them to the polling place and then waited, then drove them on home. But before they got out of the car to vote I said, “I don’t mean to influence you, but I think you should know Mr. Charles Hazard has intentionally killed my dog.
About 400 ballots were cast in that election. I drove 96 of them to the polls. Hazard lost by 16 votes.
And that’s the day I fell in love with America.
Shawshank’s comment:
In the early days of American democracy, only people with property had the right to vote. The reason behind was only people with their own stake in the country have the real interest in extending the country’s benefits. Later on, as part of the outcome of civil rights movements, suffrage was extended to everyone. Careless voters sometimes become the decisive force in determining the political outcomes.

Final comment: US is supposed to have the best political system in the world, and unfortunately what’s happened in the past week has made it very clear that it is in a dysfunctional state. You might be able to find answers to this situation from Charlie Wilson’s War.

To start off, it’s not about picking the better off the two, but pick the less worse. Despite all the recent Euro PIGS debt crisis, ECB, Germany and France showed European’s determination to hold the Euro zone together through decisive and prompt actions. In contrast the much less sever debt ceiling negotiation turned into a political farce, it has failed in both politics and policy arena. We have a dysfunctional congress, as well as a malfunctioning government. To make matters even worse, I don’t see any light of hope in the next 4-8 years void of another national crisis in the same magnitude of another 9.11 or Pearl Harbor. In comparison, the answer is Yes! it is time to heavy on Euro.

Talking about comparison, China might be the best buy among all markets. First of all, its financial system is primitive, which also means it’s much less vulnerable; secondly, with its rich reserve, it has a LOT of means to stimulate, stabilize, and grow its economy.

Life is full of ironies. I bought the house for its convenience: 2 minutes to Memorial Park, 5 minutes to downtown, 3 minutes to Washington Ave, 6 minutes to Galleria — But I have almost never been to those places after I moved in. Earlier this year, I started trying several restaurants and bars on Washington, a couple of fire-drill shopping at Galleria…. And today I went to Houston Arboretum and Nature Center by West Loop.
It’s a amazing small park located in the center of the city and yet it can offer a “wilderness” felt only state parks 70 miles away can do. The unfortunate part is the timing can’t be more wrong: The high heat and drought has suck the life out of the little place and there isn’t much sign of bloom.
The dry leaves
Life, struggle for life, and past life

DOW plunged over 500 points, coupled with S&P’s 4.78% drop, suddenly all the pessimistic news flooded almost all media, and they both happened within one day. In theory, the big sell-off was triggered by (1) the debt ceiling package. With over 2 trillion cut in government spending, companies are going to feel the pain at Uncle Sam’s tightened belt. (2) the bad news from European PIGS’ sovereignty debt crisis, to be precise, Italy this time.

BUT, wait a minute. It doesn’t make sense! It’s already the third day after the debt reduction package was announced. All the bad news should have been already consumed. Furthermore, the 2.6 trillion dollar cut is only going to happen over the next 10 years, not over night. There is no good reason for people to freak out like this. In Europe, Italy just passed austerity measure a couple of weeks ago, and the whole European Union is very adamant on keeping themselves together, France and Germany are going to step out in time of another crisis. With all these “reasons” moved, what’s the real motive behind?

The fundamental theories classic textbook teaches us are all based on two assumptions: (1) market is efficient, (2) people are all rational. Is it really so? NO! Market is not efficient, it always favors the smarter people with more information; human beings are not rational, we all desire to make the money we don’t deserve, and this is called greed; and we all freak out facing urgent situations with ambiguity, and this is called fear. Over the course of today, the famous fear index, VIX surged over 35%, closed at the highest in the past 3 months.

Having said all these, it is true the negative news (production, job, etc.) ought to cause the market to adjust, but it is the fear and greed factor that caused this over-adjustment.
I predict the market will bounce back tomorrow, with maybe 300 points gain. But, the mid term is still gloomy. Obama has proved himself a midget in economics. With the uncertainty he has created in economy, companies are unwilling to hire or invest; his surrender to the Republicans on the debt ceiling issue gave another blow to his already feeble political power. Combined with a dysfunctional and selfish congress, he can do nothing down the way to turn the economy around. The spin here is, QE3 is coming. That might jack up the stock market a bit, so as to carry Mr. Obama to his second term (next year is election year), and cause the gold price further up, and bring wide spread inflation over the world, but, that’s not going to help the economy, just like its previous two failures.

Sit tight and watch, it’s going to be a doldrum ride. There might be a few exceptions. One of them being Apple. This is a economy with structural imbalance. People who have job are safe, and people who don’t are still jobless. Being an apple-hater I have to say it’s a great company. With a PE ratio of 15, and many many other market opportunities to tap open, the company has great potential to rake even more money.

Tonight Polo said bye-bye to his playmate of July Sushi. Before the departure, they played for the last time, and, Sushi gave Polo a kiss:

说你爱我到永远