Hard Boiled Suzhou

Although it looks like “14″ on the cake, its actually “41″. I’m North of 40. Which does not make me happy. Family makes me happy. They are my present from G_d. My wife didn’t get me any present because she does not know what to get me (other than things I can’t have like a PS3) . But they did make a delicious awesome ice cream cake.

Other things that happened / happening around my B-Day:
1. My two assistants gave me cards. I took them out to lunch (at the Japanese curry restaurant). No food review…next time.

2. Saw the midnight IMAX showing of Pirates of the Caribbean (meh…entertaining but I hardly remember it), and probably this weekend will see Kung Fu Panda 2 with the family.

3. Going to Shanghai now to see friends Jason and Tavon.

4. Akiva loves to take pictures. Here is a self portrait.

Also, for all the people who wished me Happy Birthday through the Facebook: thank you for you wishes.

The first night of Passover fell on a Monday, so we had a little children’s seder with the four of us. Haga and I were busy at work so didn’t have time to prepare much. I made the Harosetz out of peanut butter, apples and wine (yes, I know that Ashkenazim Jews are not supposed to have legumes because supposedly there is yeast in it, but I’m a reform Jew and I don’t believe that our religion was created for the sake of lawyers).

In the past, we mixed wassabi with ground daikon radish in order to simulate horseradish. This year I bought jarred horseradish, which was not as powerful as the wassabi-mixture or the true stuff, but still had a strong effect on my children.

We invited several friends for Passover seder on the Saturday (April 23rd) night. We invited 13 people, but one didn’t show up because he’s in Beijing and his boss just showed up (Jason), one because he was traveling (Jim), and one didn’t show because he’s the husband and I don’t know him (Feifei’s husband…whatever his name is). Also, two friends didn’t show up because they are big big dumb-asses (Gareth, Tavon). So we had 7 people over.

Some of the following is written so that I may remember important preparation details next year.

I went to the Jewish Center in Shanghai to get Matzoh (2kg total) , Matzoh meal, and gefilte fish. My parents also sent some Matzoh, which was good because that gave us just enough to eat Matzoh every day of the week. Horseradish was available at the Euromart (in the warehouse). Parsley was available at the Summit Market. All other ingredients from local wet-market and Korean beef store. Got the extra tables from the kind people at the police mini-station inside our complex.

I prepared the Harosetz (with raisins, 2 mango, 3 apples, cinnamon, 1 cup of combined almonds, walnuts, wine). I made the matzoh balls (4 eggss > 1 cup m.meal + 4 Tbs soda water). Gefilte fish came in a can and was really good. I mixed jarred pickled beats with the morror to use as a topping. Chicken soup (boilled chicken 6 hours…1 chicken. 2011price=45rmb). Haga made the salmon (for next year, 1 salmon/10 adults). She made the beef&apple brisket stew (about 2-3 jin, 8 hours cook time). Boiled asparagus. Haga’s yam and apple pot dish. Chocolate covered matzoh and sliced pears for dessert.

The only problem with this whole thing was… the night before I had horrible stomach pains and up-all-night diarrhea. The next day I pretty much new it was not viral…my stomach was OK and didn’t have fever. But I had no energy and was extremely dehydrated. As I was gulping down sports drink, I accidentally let it go down the wrong pipe, which caused me to throw-up. So there was a real danger of having to cancel Passover. But I just decided that the show much go on. And with Haga’s help, the show did go on. I was not the most energetic leader. But I think I did an OK job all considering. I fulfilled the biblical commandment anyway.

Hi all,

As anyone who has followed this site (www.taikongren.net … not the family blog, although some of you are reading this on the family blog and some on Facebook) for a while can tell, the site sort of died.  And that is in part because I am no longer a consultant.

Basically, I like being a consultant in China.  I like learning about business and sharing what I learn with my customers.  I like problem-solving my customer’s organizational development problems.  However, after much reflection, I came to the obvious conclusion that I’m not necessarily very suited to be a management consultant.  My communication style tends to be direct and somewhat aggressive, which puts some people off.  I often take the corporate back-stabbing personally and react with extreme impatience. As a consultant, I’m often in the middle of people who want to backstab each other; thus I’m an easy intermediary target.

More importantly, to be a consultant for factory managers, I need to develop relationships with said managers.  Sometimes this works out great and leads to long-ish relationships which benefit both my clients and myself.   However, even if I develop a great relationship with a General Manager of a company or factory, often he/she will move on to another position outside of China.  Then the replacement manager will not necessarily like me.  This happened at my last “gig” and it happened repeatedly over the last six years.  Furthermore, I really don’t like to form relationships for the sake of doing business; I like forming relationships because I generally like someone.  Often the people I like- who also like me- have some personality, temperament, or values similarities to myself.  This means they don’t always last long in any given corporate environment.

So I have *mostly* left the consulting business. At least, Management Consulting in China is not my main occupation at the moment.

Now I’m the CEO of my EOS (www.eos-sama.com), a small publisher which publishes table-top hobby games and table-top Role Playing Games.

I started at EOS last September.  My partner and friend is the founder of the company, Mr. Syn Chen. (below is his picture…he hates that picture). 

He started EOS about eight years ago.  He published two or three role-playing game books, a card-based game, and a few supplements.  Then stuff happened to him (military service, marriage, divorce, video games, etc) and the company died for two years.

This year, we are going to publish a Role Playing Game (RPG) book and board game in May (Nobilis and Trail of the Brotherhood), and an RPG (Legends of the Wulin) and a Nobilis supplement book in August. That’s all for the USA market.  If everything else goes right, we will also be publishing an Wuxia-genre card-based game in Hong Kong and Taiwan in July and September, followed by Mainland publication in November.  And we hope to publish a 5 part graphic novel set and a third RPG book this year too.

Next year, it is my hope to publish Japanese language versions of many of our products.  Japan is the second biggest market for RPG and boxed games.  And once in Japan, we can start also selling special hobby toys, like paintable Wuxia-action figurines modeled after Japanese adult video star, wearing school-girl costumes.

My long-term goal is to introduce RPG games to China.  Because I think Chinese young people could use this a tool to increase their creativity.

On the other hand, everything might fail, in which case, I would have blown the savings from my last year of work as a consultant, and I will have no career.  As I write this sentence, I start getting pains in my stomach.  Fortunately, I have several excellent (and one chewable) antacid medications available.

As for my former business blog site (www.taikongren.net) … I’m thinking about keeping it going, but start blogging more about the developing “game” market in China.  There really is no such thing at the moment… Its not a Chinese cultural norm to play Monopoly with the parents (although Wei-Qi / Go is pretty big).  But there are some things happening here.  And if I start blogging about this now, I guess my blog would be the first English-language blog about this market and industry.

That’s all for now.  One blog has come to an end.  A new blog at the same URL will begin.  And for those of you reading this on the Covners’-in-Asia family blog (www.taikongren.net/hard-boiled-shanghai/) … life goes on.  Miss you all.

Its Spring now. My camera is broken. Will get it fixed. Akiva is doing Taikuandou. Both boys are practicing baseball with Haga at school. They started swimming lessons. I will get my butt to the bird-and-flower market to get some seeds and do some planting.

I have not posted about my new company / job… more on that later. But this post is not about the life around me, but rather is a political rant.

I hate blasphemy and, to a lesser extend, idolatry. I don’t mean garden variety blasphemy. I’m not talking about taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’m not talking about crazy speculative fiction about the nature of our religions (ie. Da Vinci Code). I’m not talking about the likes of Monte Python and South Park (my favorite show BTW).

I’m talking about those pig fuckers who say they have knowledge of the Divine Will. And I’m especially talking about those who would claim that the Lord of Mercy, the Heavenly Father (or Mother, if you will), would bring misery onto a people because of the supposed sins of their co-religionists, or because of the sins of others of the same nationality. This is blasphemy because it assumes a deep, specific understanding of the plan of the Creator, which the prophets do not even have. Furthermore, it implies that the Creator plays favorites with his children, like a really bad parent. It denies the idea that G_d is love. It implies that the Creator practices collective punishment.

Its funny that I would be so bothered by the blasphemy of others; I’m not 100% sure I believe in a Supreme Being. Or, I should say, only some of the time I have that faith, and most of the time I don’t. I’m terrified about the prospect of Void and the prospect that we are all just bio-mechanical machines put on this Earth for not greater purpose. But as long as a part of me sometimes believes in a higher power, that part of me knows that the Power does not bring suffering onto us because of our sins. We bring plenty of suffering upon ourselves and others without needing divine retribution.

We Americans have a pretty good idea who many of these Blasphemers are. al-Qaeda and Westboro Baptist Church should probably win awards for most ostentatious displays of blasphemy. I would also include comments by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell after 9/11.

Now I would like to point out the recent comments of a few other butt-heads.

• Captain of the Seasheppard, and Dolphin-rights activist Paul Watson, who wrote the poem below for publication on Facebook on March 14th:

(this is taken from www.sankakucomplex dot com/2011/03/14/sea-shepherd-quake-is-divine-retribution-against-japan/ …. I’m not linking this because site very very NSFW and I want my parents to think I’m relatively wholesome and they may not understand what I did with the URL above)

• Shintaro Ishihara, current Governor of Tokyo City, former movie actor, and denier of the Rape of Nanjing said:

“America’s identity is freedom. France’s identity is freedom, equality and fraternity. Japan has no sense of that. Only greed. Materiality greed, monetary greed.This greed bounds with populism. These things need to be washed away with the Tsunami. For many years the heart of Japanese always bounded with devil. Japanese’s identity is greed. We should avail of this tsunami to wash away this greed. I think this is a divine punishment.”

(above is found on the Wiki page linked above, but became known to me through other sites such as Sankakucomplex)

• And finally, 29% of Americans who believe that natural disasters are often punishment from G_d.

In the case of Ishihara, I’m actually happy; I used to think Japanese were smarter than Americans and would never a stupid loudmouth neo-fascist good-ol’-boy. Now I can feel that, as an American, I’m not intrinsically stupider than Japanese people.

In the end, all this blasphemy means nothing…as long as people don’t believe in it. I’m not going to change anyone’s opinion on the nature of Providentialism here or anywhere. I believe people will say hurtful things and believe vile ideas until we have collectively uplifted ourselves to a higher level of consciousness and moral intelligence. I just wish that would come sooner than later.

We discovered another Korean restaurant. It does BBQ meats like others. This one was more like a bar though. I can’t really say what was different. I just felt more raw.

Speaking of raw…

Instead of the usual free appetizers, we got a bowl of onions, vinegar, and a raw egg. I mixed it up and ate it. It was the best onions and raw egg mixture I ever ate.

Instead of the usual Bimbimbap (stone pot rice), the waitress fried up our rice, egg, and pickled vegetables on our table-grill. It was very good.

The kids ate noodles, which they liked.

The beef was very good too. I didn’t take pictures of it as I was busy eating. We dipped the beef in a bowl of garlic with some oil.

The restaurant is located in the Hupan Garden Neighborhood center… sort of in the passageway between the North building (where the wet market is) and the South building (where the other restaurants and Korean shops are)

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I other news, we walked around a lake.