Cologne won’t cover my gluwein breath!

by admin on December 4, 2011 in Travel with No comments
christmas market cologne 2011

Christmas Market 2011 in Cologne

6 out of 7 Christmas markets down, countless number of Gluwen cups, a billion homemade cookies and …I am TKO! (total knock out) or zzzzzz

chocolate tool shop

chocolate tool shop

I had such a lovely weekend thanks to an awesome school friend and of course the little dumpling that accompanied me :) Cologne is a town about 2.5 hrs by train from Amsterdam and is widely known for their Christmas markets. We’re talking serious Xmas market here.  Not so much of a hidden gem as you will find buses of tourists from The Netherlands, France and Belgium chatting it up all throughout the city.

[...More than 160 stalls offer a large scale of traditional goods and handcrafted gifts. Each one has its own flair. Their sparkling lights and peaceful atmosphere attract millions of visitors from all over the world every year...] Source and Further Reading: Cologne Tourism Christmas Market

Walking around the city for two days and 14 hours, we got a great look of the city. Pretty impressive shopping stores with lots of selection and things I’ve never seen before. By far, I saw the most pimpest camera ever. Holla at your paparazzi. flash!

pimp camera

pimp camera is too hot to take off the wall

 

I definitely had my satisfying intake of meat. The Christmas market was filled with so much meat: meat on a stick, meat on a bun, meat inside a blob of sauce…I had a ton of meat! and it was so good.  Beef, chicken, fish, pork….all tickling my stomach as I’m sitting on the train back to Amsterdam.  Something about over eating and washing it down with Gluwein, hot wine, makes these markets so much fun.  I also had my first Glubier (glow beer), which is basically hot beer.  After trying, I’m still sticking to the idea that beer should be only served ice cold.

meat everywhere

my preferred usage of an overgrown toothpick

The Cologne Cathedral, Kölner Dom, is one of the most impressive building that I’ve seen.  Especially after watching the series Pillars of the Earth and learning about how these churches took generations to build, I really find these structures quite remarkable.

upside down in from of Cologne Cathedral

upside down in from of Cologne Cathedral

Great Thai restaurant!

Ok so here comes the little business part of me who likes to comment on processes that I like. We ate at a Thai restuarant that was really tasty :) but what really stuck out was the way they were able to serve people with minimal amounts of staff. There was one person responsible for keeping all the tables clean, one person who took orders, and the rest was self-serve. You take your own forks,chopsticks and even serve your own drinks. But for less than 7 euros, you can eat like a champ with some authentic Thai…some more meat!

Spiting fancy wine in Lille like it’s my business

by admin on November 20, 2011 in Culture Curiosity, Out-of-office Lifestyle, Travel with No comments
masses

Say what??? Oh yeaaaa, I was spitting 20 euro bottles of wine and cognac from 1990….it felt so wrong, yet so righhh……..no, it was probably just dead wrong.

When a friend asked me last week if I wanted in on a weekend road trip to Lille, I didn’t hesitate for a second. I had the pleasure of being at one of France’s largest wine expos called the “Salons des vins des vignerons indépendants” (Independent winery exposition). Eight times a year held in a different cities throughout France, this event gathers several hundreds of wine producers to give them a chance to showcase their unique fermented grapes of oh la la la la! It’s freaking huge! There must have been something like 500 different wine brands, each carrying their own assortment of wines and other specialties (red, white, rose and champagne and cognac….and excuse me, need to spit…aperitif, chocolate made with wine, .etc) Where the heck do you begin?

Bottles up!

As any amateur drinking tourist, clearly shown by my drinking etiquette and accented French, I was thinking about how the heck am I going to try all these wines without getting a lil tipsy? And so I had the chance to do something that I never attempted before. I spit wine like I was spitting sunflower seeds at a baseball game, over and over again. Show me the bucket!

That’s right, I was spitting wines and liqueurs that were 50 euros a pop without any hesitation. This was my “goldie popping collar moment”, but man did it feel so wrong! I still can’t believe I was spitting out some of these out especially in the face of the producer. It felt like I was spitting someone’s present right in front of their face.

  • The wines that were too spicy…spit.
  • Not smooth, spit again.
  • Tingle in the mouth….just walk away and don’t look back.
  • Cognac please…need to cleanse my wine breath

I also learned two things!

I can spit out 50 types of some and not get too dizzy, although I was breaking out in little sweats.  Not sure if that’s b/c of my Asian gene or just because I was nervous spitting in front of the producer.  I also learned that the wetness (rain) of seasons truly impacts the taste contained within the grapes.  Drier temperatures help the wines taste extra delicious because the grapes are able to extract more flavor.  And so that same wines can taste so different when the only difference is production year.  I’m no wine connoisseur, but the difference was pretty shocking among some 2008s and 2009s of the same brand.  Another hint, 2008 wasn’t a great year for french red wines.  I’ll go for the 2009, a very hot year in France, and give my “pshhhh non merci” to the 2008s unless it’s a medal wine, which by the way, I am happily taking home.

A great event filled with laughs and very friendly people. I guess having people come tougher around to toast some wine makes a great social.

Vive le bon vin! and bottles up!

Off to find some mussels!!

Objects in Nature and Their Ability to Communicate in Business

by admin on November 2, 2011 in Blog, Business Bounce, Uncategorized with No comments
lizard long tail

Nature Objects and Ability to Communicate

At my 9-to-5 cube-less cubical, I’m putting together a research report on how natural language technology can broaden customer service capabilities on a website, or as the industry would say, “more efficient web self-service”.  The natural language technology behind the scenes is pretty cool.  Get the computer to act more like a human and better customer service can be created.  Beyond that, it’s just pretty insane that computer getting better at detecting emotion and human intent and able to provide services on an individual basis.   My last blog post had a nice video of how natural language technology could be in the next couple years.  See The Future of CX [video]

The upcoming research will be presented in 3 parts (short paper, presentation and video) and so apart from gathering the analytic results and writing the text, I’m also incorporating some visuals that will help illustrate the story.

One of the challenges to using good visuals is using images that can make immediate sense to someone.  For example, a picture of a cute baby typically creates laughter. A black and white picture can signify historical reference on one hand or elegance or cleanliness on the other.  I’ve recently noticed that nature and animals themselves can also help communicate information in an entertaining way.  Although these images may not automatically trigger an understanding for someone, I think people are able to associate physical attributes of nature within the business world, both for fun and internalizing data.

I wanted to show some examples:

Nature showing Pareto Principle

Part of the research will be displaying how most common FAQs of a website only provide support to approximately 20-30% of user questions.  In retrospect, that means that top FAQ lists are unable to support the majority of customers in a quick fashion.  And so this relates to two theoriesPareto’s Principal – also known as the 80-20 rule

iceberg to show Pareto principle

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes -Wikipedia

Long tail

lizard long tail

Long Tail - A long tail distortion will arise with the inclusion of some unusually high (or low) values which increase (decrease) the mean, skewing the distribution to the right -Wikipedia

Growth

elephant

Bell curve – Normal Distribution

camel to demonstrate bell curve or normal distribution

Future of customer experience

by admin on October 27, 2011 in Blog, Business Bounce with No comments
robot thinking

I can just see it now that some of my friends are probably going “uhhh Mike, what are you talking about?” So I work for a company that focuses on customer experience.  It sounds like this weird concept to some of my friends, but it’s really simple in that we help companies deliver their services and assistance to their customers in most effective ways.

I particularly focus on online customer experience and have had the opportunity to learn a lot about natural language technology and how this technology can help companies with the customer serving objectives…again, another term that would make my friends ask “Mike really? What are you on over there in Amsterdam?” Natural language technology is actually used to make computers act more like humans.

Maybe you’ve seen the new Siri in action on the iPhone 4S.  Ask Siri “where is the closest bar?” and it will give you a decent response that’s probably even more accurate than a friend’s.  But rather than explaining what natural language is, the company I’m working for, RightNow Technologies (*currently being acquired by Oracle), just made a video about how natural language technology can be used to create some pretty cool customer experiences that are shopping, looking for information and of course finding that perfect gift for an anniversary.  Look for Pamela at 2:52 to see natural language in action.

Anyhow, this video had me thinking that this type of technology is not so far into the distant future.  Who knows who will be serving you in a few years to come.

Pretty cool stuff, hope you enjoy! The Future of CX (Customer Experience) envisioned by RightNow.

Occupy Wall Street Amsterdam

by admin on October 23, 2011 in Blog, Travel Trott with No comments
ows7

I haven’t read much into it, #OWS (Occupy Wall Street), most likely because it hasn’t been in my face.

…until today.

In the city center in front of the Amsterdam stock exchange (AEX Index) building, Beurs van Berlage and across the street from where I first started working when I moved to Amsterdam, I spotted the Wall Street protest. Here’s some photos to share, which for me, kinda gives a little more reason for me to read more into this event.

If you go to the website of Occupy Wall Street http://occupywallst.org/ you’ll find their mantra. A couple things I found very interesting right off the get go:

  • Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement
  • using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

I’m curious what will become of these protest especially being leaderless.  And secondly, I found it pretty ironic that Western nations are following tactics recently seen in the Middle East….maybe this is a reason why I don’t see so much news media on this topic?  A slant maybe?

Anyway, there’s a pretty active forum and I found this I protest because… post on why people protest.  The responses are all over the place but it’s a good place to start and understand what is becoming of this protest.

Some responses:

I protest to get laid by chicks who don’t shave their underarms

I protest because it is cool and I want my Mac Book Pro paid for by the 1%.

i protest because it is my right as an american to stand up when i see my country being sold and polluted and its people dying in the streets. i am tired of injustice. i am tired of pollution. i am tired of poverty. and i am really tired of war. this is the only way i can see to add my voice to the many saying STOP — i want a better country — and a better world will follow

I protest because I am tired of watching friends and family die because they cannot afford medication or health care. I am sickened by watching the lines at the food bank stretch across the road because people can’t afford food. I am disgusted by watching good people who work and try to pay their bills being thrown out on the street because they cannot pay their mortgage payment. I am fed up with people not caring about other people and worrying about their own material gains to the exclusion of all else. I am frustrated by being blocked at every turn trying to get people to listen that we need social, political and economic reform. I realize that I am only one person, I cannot change the way the world thinks alone, but together, people who feel like me can make a difference. We can force laws to change, we can make others aware of the basic human condition and the ways that we can improve it. I add my voice here because maybe with one more voice, people will listen.

 

Call to action. Thank you for everything Steve

by admin on October 6, 2011 in Blog, Business Bounce, work life with No comments
steve jobs

I never had the chance to meet, to shake hands or to describe the impact his creations had on my life.

The passing of Steve Jobs has left a void, an empty feeling.  But his legacy of empowering billions of people, through devices and conversations, will be forever engraved in my mind.

If the best way to honor someone is through actions, then what can, or should we do?

I say to continue toward empowering the billions and empowering the remaining billions.

Thank you Steve.


Steve Jobs Inspirational Quotes
View more presentations from InsideView

 

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