Leglessbird 停不鳥: Leglessbird sharing May 2010

Newsletter May 2010

Bagan, Myanmar Dec 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a while since our last update in Dec 2009. We hope this sharing finds you well.

In the past 6 months, there seems to be endless disasters around the world with numerous devastating earthquakes, volcano eruption, oil spill in Mexican Gulf and Singapore; major international incidents Euro zone crisis, unrest in Thailand, escalated South/North Korea conflicts. Makes you wonder what the most important things in life are.

Highlight of our activities in the last 6 months:
Travel: Christmas trip to Myanmar and Easter trip to Silicon Valley and Ottawa (more details below)

Farming: We started sub-renting a small piece of farm land in Lantau and we are loving the planting, the harvests, and the taste and health benefits of eating freshly picked organic vegetables. We wish to spread this idea and more friends can appreciate the goodness of "back to basic" lifestyle. What we have harvested so far Chinese cabbage, lettuce, shark's fin melon, cherry tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, beans, potatoes and corn (菜心，生菜，芥菜，魚翅瓜，車里茄，紅蘿蔔，青瓜，豆角，薯仔, 玉米).

Teaching: In addition to his consulting work and angel investment, Dominic has been doing more teaching, executive training and public speaking: Xi'an Jiaotong (China), PolyU, HKUST, CUHK, HKU SPACE, Independent Professional Association, MAD (Make a difference) conference and La Salle College

Irene's new career: Irene is happy with her lifelong career as an IFA (Independent Financial Advisor)

Networking: ushi.cn 优士网: Dominic becomes one of the charter members of a new online business network community that aspires to be the Chinese Linkedin. Follow this link, and become Dominic's direct contact on the network

Connect with Dominic on ushi!

Community Work: International English Contest National Finals in Beijing and regional finals in Hong Kong

Protect the environment: (1) We have started to bring our own mugs, chopsticks, knifes and forks to fast food places (instead of using their paper cups and plastic); (2) We put a sticker on our mailbox that says

支持環保! 拒收無收件人姓名和地址的垃圾郵件。
Protect the environment! Refuse to accept junk mail without recipient's name and address.

Leglessbird: Leglessbird blogs have a new look and platform: Leglessbird, Restaurant, Movie, Book, Wealth, Independent Professional, Dominic

Upcoming talk: e-Presence/e-Profit workshop, Sat 12 June 2010, 3pm
"Want to maximize your online presence?"
"Want to make money online 24x7?"
http://www.ip-a.org/events.php

Please drop us a note when you have time, we would love to hear from you!

Cheers,

Irene and Dominic,

May 2010

Follow us on:

TRAVEL
Myanmar
We visited Myanmar in December 2009 and had a great time visiting over 6 cities. Irene did an extensive search and managed to find a very good local travel agent that provides reasonable price for private tour, excellent ground trip planning and with nice and knowledgeable English speaking guides in every city, what more can we ask for? We did all our correspondence in English via email. Let us know if you want the contact info.

Golden Rock, Myanmar

Lake Inle, Myanmar

Click to view album

Silicon Valley, and Ottawa trip
Dominic went with the Savantas Science and Technology Delegation to Silicon Valley at the end of March. (External link), it was a very successful trip where many interesting and useful discussions/visits were conducted. Hopefully, the delegation collectively has learned the key factors that make Silicon Valley the most successful technology innovation place globally and apply them to Hong Kong. He also assisted one of his clients to settle into "Plug and Play Tech Center" in Sunnyvale. Above all, he enjoyed seeing many of his old friends in the area. Afterwards, he had a nice family reunion in Ottawa, Canada.

Irene's new career: Irene is happy with her new lifelong career direction.

After all the efforts, I finally enjoy working every day again. I felt so blessed when working with like-minded colleagues and delivering good values through my job or leisure activities. My mini crisis started from 2000, when I was confused what my purpose of work should be and felt that I was wasting my time. I went to study a Master degree at Warwick hoping to find my direction. An amazing year passed, but I was still lost. The past 4 years of being an independent professional has given me many chances to travel and discover myself. Gradually I realize that my goal is to do something that I can continue to learn and grow, at the same time I can enrich other people's life by sharing my knowledge or experience. This is what motivates me and makes myself most contented. Looking back, I consider our mindset, health, resources management (time & money etc) are the factors enabling Dominic and myself to enjoy our balanced and healthy lifestyle. Since 2002, we have engaged an independent financial advisor to guide us on our investment. My objective of working with our advisor is to assist others to pursue their ideal lifestyle and realize their dreams in life. Though education and sharing, more people are better off.

TEACHING AND TRAINING
Dominic taught an e-commerce module (part of a master course) in Xi'an, China over a weekend in Jan 2010, which he enjoyed very much. He is also doing some talks at PolyU, CUHK and HKUST.

Click to view album

Executive training
We launched Independent Professional Association at the end of last year as a platform to promote independent work and support the independent professional community (consultants, translators, writers, trainers, designers and more). We did our first 3-part training series on "How to launch your independent career/business", the course is being adopted in Dominic's weekend teaching at CUHK's entrepreneurship centre.

Dominic has also teamed up with Simitri Group to provide consulting, training and coaching to corporate clients in Asia. He is also working with another corporate training company.

At the end of May 2010, he conducted lectures in Macau with HKU SPACE to help small medium enterprises and social enterprises to set up their low-cost high performance infrastructure for web domain, web applications (e.g. email, website, CMS), software (office, accounting), telecom (VoIP, e-fax) and mobile office.

MAD Conference (Make-A-Difference) http://www.m-a-d.asia/
In Jan 2010, Dominic helped moderated a session on "Entrereneurship" during the MAD conference (a great youth conference for promoting creativity and providing alternative career choices). It was great talking to 3 entrepreneurs and learning from them how they have each created their business from scratch and are of very different natures.

Click to view album

International English Contest Beijing National final 17-22 Feb 2010. Glad to say that our Hong Kong representatives have won many prizes including the Championship of senior high and junior high schools.

Click to view album

BEA International English Contest - Hong Kong finals 12 Dec 2009, 20 students were selected to represent Hong Kong to the Beijing Finals

We are very grateful to all our sponsors including Bank of East Asia, Lions Club of Metropolitan Hong Kong, Cambridge University Press, Gowell Software, Dr. David Li, Mr. Fred To and all the judges including Sir Ti-Liang Yang.

Click to view album

CAMBRIDGE (The Friends of Cambridge)
Cambridge alumni Reception to meet Professor Alison Richard, Vice Chancellor of The University of Cambridge - 7 April 2010

Informal microfinance chat - 'a number of ways to make a difference' - 27 Feb 2010

ORGANIC FARMING - in Lantau

Harvesting

插秧, Transplant rice seedlings

Antarctica talk at offline club of iProA, 6 Feb 2010 Photos album

Reunion with the Hong Kong representatives of the International English Contest

Click to view album

BOOK REVIEW:

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, PhD
I have got this book as a gift from a friend who bought this at Stanford University's book store during our visit.

This is an interesting book that talks about mindsets, specially, the author classified them into two types, namely, Fixed and Growth. The fixed mindset people cares more on preserving their current success (if any), or avoid anything that they may fail, especially in front of others, if so, they blame on others or circumstances instead of themselves. The growth mindset people love to learn, and get better, success and failure are all learning experience and they are hungry to get more.

Read more...

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Fridge
48 Peel St, Soho, Central (walk up from Hollywood road, next to Makuba Bar)
+852 28101098
Western food in Central