I have been marking midterms since yesterday. My whole body is sore. I never knew marking is so hard.
Just writing the grade at the end of each question in red, contemplating on whether I am being fair or not….. it is just too difficult.
In the beginning I was so indecisive…. I wanted to call Carla, the prof. I am TAing for, all the time. But that is not appropriate, is it? I had to be more independent and responsible. So there, I decided to put my marks on the papers and I kept going till now…
It kind of feels good :)
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Boston Trip
Boston Trip was awesome! Here are few highlights of what we did and the places we went:
Monday: New England-Canada Business Council and later MIT Entrepreneurship Centre
Tuesday: Visit General Catalyst Partners for breakfast General Catalyst Partners
They invest in early stage companies and help them grow. General Catalyst has approximately $1 billion under management and is headquartered in Cambridge. Deep pocket, eh?
Then we went on a tour of the following companies which General Catalyst has invested on
JumpTap (245 First Street)
To BrightCove (1 Cambridge Center)
To ChoiceStream (210 Broadway)
And at the end we had barbeque dinner at Charles Hotel which was nice!!!
Wednesday:
Very bad weather, rainy and windy.
Breakfast at Choate (Centre of Boston – 2 International Place for a seminar titled "Start-ups 101" (which they normally present to the MIT Entrepreneurship program).
They have a very nice view of harbour. We took picture but since didn’t turn out good due to the storm outside.
Then 4 of us who work for Infusion at this time went to Fidelity Ventures, one of Infusion’s clients, and had a meeting with Stephen Jenvey, an associate in Fidelity. He demoed the solution for us and we got to ask whole bunch of questions in regards to future opportunities in this space. It was very informative.
Then we got a cap to Genzyme's corporate HQ. It was still raining and umbrellas were not helping!
Genzyme Center: This building is one of the first and biggest scientific research laboratory to receive certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED(R) (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System(tm). Genzyme has received certification under the LEED system, which was created to define "green" building by providing a common standard of measurement. Very nice I might upload some picturesJ
Then we walked to MIT and got all soaked up! It worth it though the event was great. To be completely honest I don’t think I learned that much from this event. They basically talked about Angel investors and how they are different from VC firms which I already knew most of it.
MIT Enterprise Forum "Talk to an Angel" talk – Cambridge near the centre of Boston. – MIT Kresge Auditorium.
This event was broadcast globally. Panels consists of John May, Cynthia Fisher, David Friend, and Bob Greene and was moderated by James Geshwiler.
And that was it for Boston the next morning we left Boston and came back to Canada. I liked Boston a lot and I would move there if I get a chance. so far I would like to NY and Boston!
Monday: New England-Canada Business Council and later MIT Entrepreneurship Centre
Tuesday: Visit General Catalyst Partners for breakfast General Catalyst Partners
They invest in early stage companies and help them grow. General Catalyst has approximately $1 billion under management and is headquartered in Cambridge. Deep pocket, eh?
Then we went on a tour of the following companies which General Catalyst has invested on
JumpTap (245 First Street)
To BrightCove (1 Cambridge Center)
To ChoiceStream (210 Broadway)
And at the end we had barbeque dinner at Charles Hotel which was nice!!!
Wednesday:
Very bad weather, rainy and windy.
Breakfast at Choate (Centre of Boston – 2 International Place for a seminar titled "Start-ups 101" (which they normally present to the MIT Entrepreneurship program).
They have a very nice view of harbour. We took picture but since didn’t turn out good due to the storm outside.
Then 4 of us who work for Infusion at this time went to Fidelity Ventures, one of Infusion’s clients, and had a meeting with Stephen Jenvey, an associate in Fidelity. He demoed the solution for us and we got to ask whole bunch of questions in regards to future opportunities in this space. It was very informative.
Then we got a cap to Genzyme's corporate HQ. It was still raining and umbrellas were not helping!
Genzyme Center: This building is one of the first and biggest scientific research laboratory to receive certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED(R) (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System(tm). Genzyme has received certification under the LEED system, which was created to define "green" building by providing a common standard of measurement. Very nice I might upload some picturesJ
Then we walked to MIT and got all soaked up! It worth it though the event was great. To be completely honest I don’t think I learned that much from this event. They basically talked about Angel investors and how they are different from VC firms which I already knew most of it.
MIT Enterprise Forum "Talk to an Angel" talk – Cambridge near the centre of Boston. – MIT Kresge Auditorium.
This event was broadcast globally. Panels consists of John May, Cynthia Fisher, David Friend, and Bob Greene and was moderated by James Geshwiler.
And that was it for Boston the next morning we left Boston and came back to Canada. I liked Boston a lot and I would move there if I get a chance. so far I would like to NY and Boston!
Friday, June 9, 2006
The Strength Of Your Beliefs
I watched “The Insider” while I was in Boston. Wow, what a good movie. I really really liked it. I was so immerse into the movie that in few instances I didn’t even hear my roommate talking to me.
"The Insider", director Michael Mann's ("Heat") fictionalized account of the events leading up to the long-running news programs' darkest hour. The story starts in 1993, and the ex-tobacco executive is Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe), the Vice-President of Research at Brown & Williamson, who is fired by the CEO for 'poor communication skills'. However, before he is shown the door, he is ordered to sign a confidentiality agreement in order to receive his severance pay and continued health benefits.
I don’t want to tell you more about the movie and ruin it for you but what I want say is that it takes a lot to do what Wigand did. I also watch V for Vendetta the day before yesterday. Both movies had the same theme in my pinion.
How much are you willing to sacrifice to stand by your opinions/beliefs? I have been asking myself since the day I watched these movie. I don’t know about you but I am not sure if I believe in anything or love something enough to scarify my life for it. But again I guess it all depends on your priorities. Sometimes I wish that I’ll be in a situation to have to test my personality but then I take my wish back.
Life is so complicated that I am sure I will be tested at some point down the road! I only hope it is not a matter of life or death.
"The Insider", director Michael Mann's ("Heat") fictionalized account of the events leading up to the long-running news programs' darkest hour. The story starts in 1993, and the ex-tobacco executive is Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe), the Vice-President of Research at Brown & Williamson, who is fired by the CEO for 'poor communication skills'. However, before he is shown the door, he is ordered to sign a confidentiality agreement in order to receive his severance pay and continued health benefits.
I don’t want to tell you more about the movie and ruin it for you but what I want say is that it takes a lot to do what Wigand did. I also watch V for Vendetta the day before yesterday. Both movies had the same theme in my pinion.
How much are you willing to sacrifice to stand by your opinions/beliefs? I have been asking myself since the day I watched these movie. I don’t know about you but I am not sure if I believe in anything or love something enough to scarify my life for it. But again I guess it all depends on your priorities. Sometimes I wish that I’ll be in a situation to have to test my personality but then I take my wish back.
Life is so complicated that I am sure I will be tested at some point down the road! I only hope it is not a matter of life or death.
The Ride to Boston:
We left Waterloo this morning at 8:30 and got here, Boston, around 10 pm. It was a long bus ride but it didn’t seem as long. I was actually very productive and got some of my readings done including the first chapter of “The World Is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. As I was readying I remembered my undergraduate classes where I first got introduced to Friedman through “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”.
“After 9/11, Friedman says, he paid less attention to globalization. He spent the next three years traveling to the Arab and Muslim world trying to get at the roots of the attack on the US. Friedman later realized that while he was writing about terrorism, he missed an even bigger story: Globalization had gone into Globalization 3.0 which is about shrinking the world from size small to the size tiny. So he wrote The World Is Flat to explain his updated thinking on the subject.
Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt.
” Today, “individuals and small groups of every color of the rainbow will be able to plug and play.” Friedman’s list of “flatteners” includes the fall of the Berlin Wall; the rise of Netscape and the dotcom boom that led to a trillion dollar investment in fiber optic cable; the emergence of common software platforms and open source code enabling global collaboration; and the rise of outsourcing, offshoring, and supply chaining. Friedman says these flatteners converged around the year 2000, and “created a flat world: a global, web-enabled platform for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time, distance, geography and increasingly, language.”
Even though I agree with Friedman but can not stop to think that the facts are a bit exaggerated. Now I don't necessarily agree or disagree with everything that Friedman writes but one thing is hard to refute: his understanding of innovation globally and the impact it is already having on the United States. And the pace will only pick up with time. This is an era that everyone can compete globally and collaborate on each other’s knowledge to innovate. Would politicians allow this? Would china and India be able to play catch up to US and Europe? As far as I understand so far only the non-innovative and routine parts of jobs are being exported to them. In previous versions of globalization manual labour was off-shored and now coding and call centers are exported to those areas. Is coding considered manual labour these days? Who would think!!!
What do you think?
I was telling one of my good friends about this and he sent me his soft copy of the book so now I get to listen to it when I’m driving ;)
“After 9/11, Friedman says, he paid less attention to globalization. He spent the next three years traveling to the Arab and Muslim world trying to get at the roots of the attack on the US. Friedman later realized that while he was writing about terrorism, he missed an even bigger story: Globalization had gone into Globalization 3.0 which is about shrinking the world from size small to the size tiny. So he wrote The World Is Flat to explain his updated thinking on the subject.
Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt.
” Today, “individuals and small groups of every color of the rainbow will be able to plug and play.” Friedman’s list of “flatteners” includes the fall of the Berlin Wall; the rise of Netscape and the dotcom boom that led to a trillion dollar investment in fiber optic cable; the emergence of common software platforms and open source code enabling global collaboration; and the rise of outsourcing, offshoring, and supply chaining. Friedman says these flatteners converged around the year 2000, and “created a flat world: a global, web-enabled platform for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time, distance, geography and increasingly, language.”
Even though I agree with Friedman but can not stop to think that the facts are a bit exaggerated. Now I don't necessarily agree or disagree with everything that Friedman writes but one thing is hard to refute: his understanding of innovation globally and the impact it is already having on the United States. And the pace will only pick up with time. This is an era that everyone can compete globally and collaborate on each other’s knowledge to innovate. Would politicians allow this? Would china and India be able to play catch up to US and Europe? As far as I understand so far only the non-innovative and routine parts of jobs are being exported to them. In previous versions of globalization manual labour was off-shored and now coding and call centers are exported to those areas. Is coding considered manual labour these days? Who would think!!!
What do you think?
I was telling one of my good friends about this and he sent me his soft copy of the book so now I get to listen to it when I’m driving ;)
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