@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Ceo All Hands 10-7-08 Final

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD?

Today promises to be the beginning of a hopeful new era. An era of promise. An era of potential. An era of prose. An era of pragmatism. An era of parsimony before profligacy. An era of perspicacity and mostly an era of people everywhere realizing they have a shared responsibility to make POSITIVE differences.

I feel this and believe this because today Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44^th President of the United States of America.

Now, I am one of those people who is extremely analytical, politically independent and if someone doesn’t square with my sensibilities or they don’t elicit in me the belief they possess a handful of key qualities, then I’m not going to buy-into them, journey with them or wax lyrical about how wonderful / smart / wise / beautiful / charming they are when they’re not. Although not entirely immune to political spin I can separate the wheat from the chaff, the beauty from the beast and I’m a realist.

These five qualities are:

·       walk the talk whilst enabling others to participate in the journey

·       personal integrity and principles

·       genuine commitment to others

·       dynamic and informed inclusion

·       family orientation and community values

Most people refer to Obama’s electrifying eloquence at the Democratic Convention in July 2004 as the moment they “knew” he had the makings of a President and a popular one. For me it’s a continuum of Obama’s judgment calls and personal modus operandi that’s impressing me over time.

Firstly, I watched a BBC news item showing him in his capacity as a law lecturer in which he mapped out the organizational structure of the American legislative system in a clear, simple and appealing way. Whilst I listened to him explaining it to his students I remember instinctively thinking, “He’d make a great corporate strategist or even better a CEO!” There was something so naturally smart about the way he made sense and order of the system and articulated it which made me take notice.

Secondly, I found myself on Sunday afternoons following the ‘C-Span’ coverage of the Democratic nomination race between Senator Hillary Clinton and shortly-to-be inaugurated President Obama. I even had a heated debate with one of my best friends who lives in NYC and who was absolutely loyal to Clinton as a potential Presidential candidate and a fellow woman. I presented the case that gender and race are not what matters but how US$-for-US$ each candidate was delivering on their campaign strategy, offered a unified approach to tackling serious challenges ahead (Iraq troop withdrawals, global economy and fostering peace and prosperity) and successfully communicating their policy messages over. This, to me, would provide some indication of how well or otherwise they would execute their responsibilities in the White House: of selecting a strong, diverse and cohesive team; co-ordinating, managing and delegating people; multi-tasking plans of policy implementation; and persuading people to participate and become more appropriately informed.

At this point I had predominantly heard edited 5-minute sound bites segued together or read fantastical hyperbole from his “converted fans” (aka political and media pundits), provided by various global media outlets and not any lengthy interviews with the man himself.

Then on the same Sunday in February 2008 ‘C-Span’ broadcast Hillary Clinton’s rally at Washington State University and straight afterwards Barack Obama’s at Wright State University (held Monday 25 February 2008). That was the day when the contrast between Hillary Clinton as a potential President and what Barack Obama offered became crystal clear. Whilst Hillary Clinton did some grandstanding, brought some former Generals including Wesley Clarke onto the stage with her to boost her “Commander-in-Chief” PR spin and made some seriously ill-judged chest-thumping remarks about how she effectively exported women’s rights to China, Obama focused on three items:

·       personal humility and gratitude for his family experiences

·       the story of how he experienced his mother’s passing from cancer and wanted to improve the healthcare system because of it

·       the economic situation for car workers he’d met in Detroit

It was somewhat ironic that Hillary Clinton the female candidate tried to show a macho, “I DID this,” political big beast and decisive side whilst Obama the male candidate was exhibiting compassion, empathy, “We can do it” and a commitment to rolling up his sleeves to serve others.

Finally, a few weeks later, I read about how much Obama’s campaign was raising in funds compared with the Clinton camp, what approach each side was adopting to convert interest into actual votes and the manner in which each candidate was conducting themselves (Clinton’s tears in the café compared with Obama’s cheerful optimism and then nuanced sobriety when the situation called for it) and I sensed Obama would not only win the Democratic nomination but also the Presidency since John McCain had issues stacked against him in policy as well as media friendliness terms.

So here we all are literally just an hour or two away from the biggest Presidential inauguration experienced to-date in the United States. The expectations and pressures on President Obama’s shoulders are unprecedented and there will, doubtless, be mistakes along his Administration’s journey. There are all types of challenges which will need appropriate attention in a timely manner — some of which are concisely explicated in the ‘What Obama Should Do Next’ debategraph:

* What Obama Should Do Next — David Price, debategraph

I am hopeful because the way he and his team have conducted themselves to-date has been one of leading by example and inspiring others to join them to do likewise and in reciprocity. True leaders have a natural knack of delivering on their promises and other people’s potential. People of their own volition and goodwill WANT to help them and go those extra leagues on a journey because there is an inherent knowledge that the person who is leading them has their interests, opportunities and development front and center of their consideration as much as their own personal gains. It’s a WIN-WIN modus which benefits both the elected leader and the person(s) empowering them with those responsibilities.

I was lucky enough to work for a great manager once and I recognize some of his traits in President Obama so I have a positive feeling about this new era which is only an hour or two away on the horizon!

Go USA and all my American friends! My best wishes are with you on this momentous day!

REGENERATION: A POEM

My generation, MySpace, a few score years since the Space Age

Seeing with both eyes, East and West,

Ear to the mobiles and satellites,

Today hope hands us our new flights,

From whence we smell perfumes of peace and treasures unknown,

Over Himalayas we shall scale step-in-step, Heart-with-heart.

Sensations and sense inhaling and infusing us whole,

Our regeneration of smarts and smiles.

Sparked by a shining new President.

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© Copyright Twain Luu, 20/01/2009. All rights reserved.

DINNER

The photograph above shows black turtle and white butter beans which I bought from Planet Organic. I decided to cook a coriander duck and bean soup as part of this evening’s meal. Each component complements the other taste-wise.

Fusion in which everything retains its own identity and yet works well with other ingredients is definitely A-OK with me! 

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This post was originally published on Tuesday 20 January 2009 @ 16:16 GMT.

Tomorrow the world will witness the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America and I am SO glad the Americans elected someone who’s smart, articulate and inclusive. Mostly, I’m glad that, although he’s provided the satirists with a wealth of material, George W. Bush will no longer be President.

Here are some of his most famous gaffes:

* Top 20 gaffes by Bush — Times Online

* Watch George Bush’s finest gaffes — Guardian

* Top 10 George W. Bush Moments’ — The Letterman Show clips on YouTube

The historians will doubtless pore over Bush’s legacy and books will be written, including by the soon-to-be former President himself. For me the most external signs of his contribution to the world stage is the current global financial crisis.

This morning it was announced that the UK government will pump in GBP tens of billions more to get the credit facilities to where it is badly needed — SMEs. The previous GBP37 billion has supposedly been hoarded by the banks into their capital reserves and not allowed to trickle down into small businesses or people applying for mortgages and other loan arrangements, thus delaying any recovery. Compounding this capital flow stagnation is the very real underlying concern that the toxic mortgage CDOs may prove to be more difficult to value than previously thought.

NO ONE has a grasp on the enormity of the potential losses on these risky commercial papers.

My mind whizzes back to university classes on Net Present Value metholodogies, then to Equity Valuation Modelling courses which formed part of my banking training and next to in situ application of DCF, mark-to-market and other frameworks I used to manage a Strategic Investments portfolio of technology companies. I wrote the Strategic Investments policy paper at the bank, made the write down recommendations on underperforming assets after getting updates from various CEOs and CFOs and co-authored Private Equity term sheets.

I have some insight into the approaches that different parties will take to evaluate the full risk exposure any government would have — particularly now that there’s talk on both sides of the Atlantic of the creation of a “Big Bad Bank” into which will be transferred and ring-fenced all the troublesome mortgage CDOs. The sensible move would have been to do this back in Q1 2008 and to have sent in independent auditors on behalf of the government(s) to conduct valuations on the mortgage CDOs in tandem with the banks’ own writedowns. A much clearer picture of the extent of the toxicity and what taxpayers could potentially become liable for would have emerged sooner and enabled government(s) to step in and restore general market confidence with other more effective measures rather than simply print more money and underwrite bad bank loans.

As it is whichever parties are now mandated to evaluate each bank’s toxic assets has an even steeper mountain ahead. They’ll have to account for the cash injections already as well as the erosion of goodwill and the volatility of interest rates during the course of this last year.

There will need to be some serious roll our sleeves up and THINK these valuations through carefully before any further action is taken which increases taxpayers’ burdens further. It is beyond a joke and a gaffe that ordinary people are now acting as insurers to the financial institutions instead of banks and asset management companies providing them with assurance that their savings and investments are growing and ensuring their financial here, now and future are safe.

Here too the economic historians will write reams.

From my perspective, the responsibility of the banks, the regulatory agencies, the ratings agencies, the professional advisors (mgmt consultancies, accountants, lawyers, etc.) et al aside, soon-to-be former President Bush and his Administration also contributed to the current dire global economic situation by their overly laissez-faire monetary policies.

Bye-bye Bush and here’s a huge “Hurrah!” and hope for the return of BRAINS and sense everywhere!

Periodically, I’m capable of staying awake until the wee hours without feeling at all soporific and last night was one of those nights. It can be quite useful if I want to be in the code bunker / read a voluminous report with complete focus.

Anyway, I found myself up at half past midnight watching BBC News America, ABC World News with Charles Gibson, Katie Couric on Sky News (CBS stream) and Sky itself. This was after watching the Politics Show to catch up on analysis of the main issues of the week: Heathrow’s 3rd terminal being approved and its contingent green controversies, the crisis in Gaza and the Business Minister’s apparent gaffe over “green shoots of recovery”. 

What a night it was for news!

BBC News 24 reported on the ‘Miracle over the Hudson’ and the cool captain who thankfully brought the Airbus with its 155 passengers safely down — albeit over the Hudson River (what a remarkable feat!). Then coverage switched to President Bush’s farewell address to the American people before providing updates on the UN food compounds in Gaza being bombed and set alight.

Every imaginable emotion was evoked from the series of news items:

* amazement, joy + wonder

* sobriety, disappointment + relief 

* anger, horror + concern

Later still I had a series of near-real and extremely lucid dreams which seemed to foretell my family life within the next two years. As usual I recorded it into my dream diary and wait to see whether they are even vaguely predictive.

At the beginning of this year I had this intense feeling that this is going to be a positive year in certain ways.

‘The Miracle on the Hudson’ is a sign that even amidst the global economic gloom and current situation in Gaza good things do happen and we can hope they will continue to happen (and even bigger and better good things).

This evening I met my friend GC for dinner at Locanda Locatelli, which was nominated for the 2008 London Restaurant Awards (Best Italian) and is a place where celebrities and bankers (on company account) like to talk business. We sat next to four bankers and it was obvious they were bankers because no one speaks about macroeconomics, spreads and leverage unless they are and some bankers have a habit of speaking louder than the general population so even if you’re not deliberately eavesdropping you can’t help but hear snatches of the statistics and quotas they’re preoccupied about!

Since GC and I have discussed the US$700 billion bailout, reform of the international regulatory bodies and the Madoff case at some length, we didn’t join the bankers in their pet subjects.

On our table I was busy enjoying these dishes:

* wild pheasant ravioli

* roast rabbit leg;

* Montebianco which I don’t have a photo for but it’s essentially a chocolate brownie with a scoop of slightly alcoholic ice cream on top. This is then covered in whipped cream and chestnut paste.

Our topic of discussion was the crisis in Gaza and I told GC I’ve been providing some input into David Price’s excellent debategraph on the matter over at the Independent online:

* The Crisis in Gaza — debategraph

My approach has been to facilitate the contextualization of three main areas:

(1.) Who are the key players and what they’ve done or are doing to advance / derail the Peace Process?

(2.) What are the historical events which triggered the conflicts between the two parties over the years?

(3.) What is the track record of the previously abandoned peace agreements and what can be learned from each attempt to secure peace?

Whilst suggesting additional sources for me to gain perspectives from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, GC told me a statistic which I had never heard about previously: 47 percent of the population in Gaza is under the age of 14.

This absolutely shocked me and made the ongoing conflicts even more heartbreaking. With this newly acquired information I later did a Google of “Gaza 47 percent children” and it produced a link to this article from Medical News Today (Aug 2006):

* 98 percent of Gaza’s children witness or experience war trauma

Without any religious, political or any other demographic bias IT IS NOT MORALLY JUSTIFIABLE FOR ISRAELI + PALESTINIAN ADULTS TO SUBJECT THE CHILDREN IN THE GAZA STRIP OR IN ISRAEL TO THIS CONTINUING CONFLICT.

Since I’m not a politician nor do I work for the UN and nor am I a journalist (BBC, Sky, CNN, Xinhua, et al) I’m aware I don’t have a mandate to contribute to the drafting up or sign-off of any Middle East Peace Roadmap. Nor can I ensure the peace is kept. Nor can I get into the countries involved and report from the ground to highlight atrocities on both sides since there seems to be censorship and control of the media in place.

However, I can help populate the debategraph for Crisis in Gaza on the Independent online site and hope that the global online community will stay objectively informed about the issues involved, step up to the plate and say, “Enough! We NEED and would like self-sustainable peace in this region, indefinitely. Here’s how…”

Whilst anti-war street protests and petitions to the government are part of the heritage of democracy I sometimes wonder how effective they are and what their aims and achievements are. Perhaps it would be more progressive if a group of anti-war protestors drafted a comprehensive 10-point action plan of “How to effect peace in the Palestinian-Israeli issue’ and this somehow was integrated in the actual government policy operational strategies of both states as well as the Quartet’s (the US, the EU, Russia and the UK).

In certain ways it would be easy to say, “It’s THEIR problem. The politicians have to deal with it.”

Nevertheless, as President-elect Obama’s election campaigned showed: the people have the power to effect change. Therefore I have a hope the global community will say, “Please change the broken record on the Middle East Peace Process. It’s what the children now and the next generation of Palestinians and Israelis deserve.”

Some light philosophy of Life instead of hard tech for a change……

FAMILY

This weekend my brother popped by and we had a good catch-up about family matters: our mother, our concerns about how she’s coping since our father passed away in 2007 and finances. My brother and I haven’t always agreed on issues (yes, there was some healthy and natural sibling rivalry growing up) but we’re always in tune when it comes to what the best options are where our mother’s concerned. This is quite a Chinese family thing — although I’m sure it’s the same in other cultures and with other families.

My mother can be something of a tour de force; she knows her own mind and still regards herself as very much the adult whilst we’re the kids. Ours has always been a matriarchical family: the women are the powerhouses. It can be quite a challenge to persuade her that our suggestions are better because of this “Mother knows best” syndrome (yes, it afflicts Chinese families too — lol). It’s all pretty funny since my brother is now officially an adult (he’s been married a couple of years) whilst I’ve shown some maturity, insights and responsibility in my career successes.

After our family catch-up I went into Covent Garden which I haven’t visited in many months:

This is where ‘My Fair Lady’ is set and where we meet Eliza Doolittle for the first time, btw.

Anyway, I discovered a new store, La Anabela, where they’re selling premium chocolates and quality liquor and teas. This wasn’t eye-opening in itself. It was when I heard a young Indian woman say, “Yes, Dad. I do want chocolates but not from there! It’s so expensive!” and then I discovered that the Dad she was referring to was a 60-something Caucasian that was eye-opening and smile inducing. I couldn’t work out whether she called him “Dad” because she was adopted, he was her father-in-law or as a term of cheeky endearment for an authority figure family friend. It also made me think of my Dad and how he too would spot a store and ask us if we wanted anything from it.

Mostly, it made me appreciate the heterogeneity and complexity of family structures these days.

FRIENDS

A friend I fell out with over 7 years ago has been in touch to ask me to catch-up for a coffee.

THE FUTURE

Well, my first responsibilities are to my family which means my career steps forward will have them at the core of my considerations.

BEING TWAIN

SO much has happened in my life to-date it’s taught me invaluable lessons and I shouldn’t complain about the ones I wish I hadn’t had to learn from — including falling out with friends and the passing of family members. It doesn’t have to be innocence we lose when a grandparent dies; it can be an insight into how to comfort and be there for others. Re. falling out with friends, we can learn about forgiveness and that we’re all fragile, fallible and Life may not run the smooth way we expect so we have to share fortitude and good fortune.

What is being Twain?

Probably a synergy of learning Life’s lessons in progress……………..ONWARDS + FORWARDS!!!

I have extremely good feelings about 2009.

The first person to wish me a “Happy New Year” was my friend, GC, whom I’ll be catching up with in London soon. This Christmas has been another of those great reminders on how lucky I am with the people who’ve known me for years. My Aunt Margaret sent me a very touching letter, my brother’s godfather wrote to say he’s 94 and remains in fine fettle (which completely warms my heart to know), a friend wrote that I’m “special” and that she’d never told me before but it’s true, and my best friend said she really likes the present I knitted her.

In tech terms, we have the launch of these gadgets to look forward to:

·      Android phones (Kogan + Samsung examples)

·      MSi Wind

·      Nokia 97

·      Intel Classmate PC

·      Zune

·      Asus U6V Bamboo

Plus a dream iPhone?

TECHNOLOGY PREDICTIONS 2009

Naturally, I trawled the Web to gain some insights and here are the more insightful articles on how the tech landscape is likely to shape up this year:

* http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=777212

* http://www.capgemini.com/ctoblog/2008/12/technology_predictions_2009_th.php

* http://cleantech.com/news/3945/nine-clean-technology-predictions-2009

* http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2336693,00.asp

* http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/189-Predictions-2009?source=RSS

TWAIN RESOLUTIONS 2009

I have three simple ones:

(1.)         Focus on Media Sensors tools. 

(2.)         Interact more productively with my friends.

(3.)         LOL and LOL again.