Domo! Alvin Lai desu!
Look! Our dear Shao Shao having a wild time in the Vasquez household! Smile until sooo happi!

Here in Silicon Valley, National University of Singapore (NUS) students on the NUS Overseas Colleges program work full time at high technology startups and take courses at Stanford University in a bid to experience and do entrepreneurial things like start startups, organize events and pursue their passions (ok that was a mouthful :D).

6 of us rent a nice place called Vasquez Court and we soon became the Vasquez household. Our dear happy friend Shao Shao (Shaorong)’s a guest today and from the looks he’s so happy to be here!

Okay enough messing around, here’s what really happened.

What started out as a simple invitation for a group of GEM students became a big gathering where people invited more people and their GEM classmates, to the point it became like a big meetup. We had nice Singaporean dishes and we got to meet and make new friends!

I personally met GEM classmates who work in Google and Microsoft and even people who are really excited to pick up Ruby on Rails! How cool is that!

We should do this often man! Ok, nuff said! Pictures!

See everyone so on pose and pose! Especially Bernard damn gek seh Eugene’s like tickling Weichong’s tongue, Shao Shao posing like Farmer brand peanuts and Gavin’s forking his nose and both Zai Zhuang and our teh ping hui looking pretty.. Hmm..

Our nice Chinese friends, huan yin guang lin!

Cool dudes!

I can’t wait for the next gathering!!! :D

We recently concluded our recent RainMakers Live event, NUSEA’s biannual mixer. However, with so many mixers and panel discussions in the valley, it’s difficult for our event to stand out. We wanted to do something more than organizing an event and getting speakers. Already, NUSEA had our fair share of learning from experience of others - What we really need to do is not to just engage in passive learning - But to be involved in active learning and creativity. (Check out Mohan’s interview with Folksonomy) Therefore the main considerations we had when organizing this year’s event is:

“How can we come up with an event where participants themselves were an integral part of the show? How can we encourage active learning, rather that simply sitting down and listening to people who have “been there and done that?”

NUSEA members put their thinking caps on and came up with the idea of having an entrepreneurial game. Participants got a chance to be part of the event by actively getting involved in forming teams, brainstorming ideas and pitching ideas to other teams at the event. We further refined it by inviting a cool new startup, MINT to deliver a challenge to the participants at the event. We deliberately did not inform the participants about the challenge before the event and we wanted them to think on the spot. Participants had just over half an hour to come up with a plan for MINT. The top 3 teams will then pitch their ideas to the judges from MINT. The winning team will walk away with a $500 cash prize sponsored by MINT.

It was interesting seeing the different mixes of the teams and their dynamics. Most teams came up with elaborate sketches of their ideas, along with funky team names. The best part was that participants were actively engaged to think on the spot and interact with people they met at the event itself. We were really privileged to have Justin Ricaurte who flew down all the way from Seattle to join us!

The event was not big scale. No famous panelists. Nothing ordinary. Nothing fantastic. However, all of us had a great time at the event and we achieved what we set out to do, or more likely what we set out not to do and that is to not do “yet another panel discussion”.

Isabelle from SABA has kindly organized an appreciation session for the NUSEA committee last night at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto.

We got to interact with a brillant man - William Chang , VP R&D and CTO of Stryker Endoscopy, the keynote speaker for the night. His talent in innovating has also opened him to many startup opportunities - Steve Jobs and Wozniak from Apple have even interviewed him personally and offered him a job after that. At age 14, he won the Most Ingenious Creation of Technology competition despite pitting himself against university students.

Each of the committee members in the 9th batch also gave their parting/thank you speech to SABA. Their emotions was expressed in their own unique distinct style - As they share their thoughts on how intangibly enriching the entire NOC program (and interaction with SABA) has transformed them.

Peng-Huat (the VP of SABA) and Isabelle was really appreciative of the work NUSEA had done so far. They were generous with their compliments and they offered their tokens of appreciation to Alan (the slavedriver), Chin San (Reality Distortion Field welder), Weijin (the talented pianist), Justin (the phantom singer with an amazing voice), Harville (the smooth Emcee) and Christine (the lovely co-ordinator).

All the NUSEA members who worked with SABA can attest that with all the network, support and experience, SABA had been a very strong pillar of support of NUSEA. NUSEA 9th has ended their term officially, but the 10th batch will continue working to build up this relationship further.

Thanks to Ah San, the NUSEA team had a chance to visit the Oracle headquarters in Redwood City after our GEL lessons at Stanford. It was a timely visit. Tom Kosnik mentioned in our GEL class today about the leaders that we like to work for. And our class discussed extensibly about Larry Ellison, the controversial CEO of Oracle. Kevin Walsh has kindly agreed to host us for a company visit, and he shared with us what Oracle does, and an overview of their strategic developments in the new century.

It’s interesting to learn how Oracle branded themselves in the China market - 甲骨文. For those uninitiated, this item was actually the turtle shells that the ancient Chinese believed holds the keys to the future.

One of the takebacks, which was really relevant to us was how he manages his time. Being the CTO of the Oracle Asia Pacific Region, and the senior VP of Research and Development (Asia). His principle was to keep life simple, and he explained the problems in maintaining 2 houses (since he often flies around between Beijing, Singapore and Silicon Valley). He used to work 20-hours days when he was younger, only to realize that it is not a sustainable lifestyle. He came up with this quote:

“No matter how successful your business life is - If you lose the balance, you are not living a life.”

Its definitely not the end of the journey…

As I sat there and looked around during the event, the only thought that came to my mind was “They did a wonderful job!! =)”

NUSEA had our bi-annual mixer event today titled “RainMakers Live!: The Arognaut’s Journey”. It was a stupendous event with a great array of speakers and vibrant, enthusiastic audience. The event was highly praised by everyone for having an insightful theme and for being very well organized. As you all know by now, Argonauts are defined as successful immigrant entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who returned to their home countries to fuel the growth of entrepreneurship by setting up companies, mentoring and affecting government policies and in the process, creating new entrepreneurial hubs. The topic of discussion was proposed by none other than our dear president, Mr Soh Chin San. While being at the event today, I could not help but reflect on the first rainmakers meeting we had and hearing the mysterious word Argonaut being mentioned for the first time.

I remember writing a post on my own personal blog whereby I was discussing ambition and why people strive to achieve. At that point in time, I was trying to find a reason why people would want to step out of their comfort zones to achieve something. Its ironic because I stepped out of my comfort zone to come here and yet I asked myself this question.

The culture of the valley has taught me to look at the process and not just the end. It has taught me to:

1) Value the people I meet and the time I spend with them

2) Cherish the friendships I forged

3) Appreciate the lessons I have learned to overcome obstacles and difficulties

4) Have trust in the people I work with

Honestly, I have to admit that I have not totally acquired all those lessons. I am going through that process now.

Looking back, I believe the best satisfaction the rainmakers committee got was through sourcing for speakers, marketing the event to organizations, planning the event and meticulously going through every detail of the show. Getting the “job well done” pat on the back was definitely nice, but the ultimate satisfaction was having the opportunity to put together a great show while working together and bonding with your closest friends.

So looking back at ambition, I guess the end result is not really that important after all. What’s really valuable is the process of going through it and seeing it done. =)