For the longest time, I managed my things-to-do with a sticky-pad piece of paper that I kept in my wallet.  On this paper, I’d write in tiny script all the things that I needed to take care of or remember.  As I finished items, I’d just scratch them off.  At the office, I’d use Outlook, of course, and got fairly proficient at using the “Task” feature fairly effectively.  However, both of these systems suffered from a lack of flexibility and mobility.  For the longest time, I realized I needed something better to manage tasks and ideas.  Basically, I needed a way to capture ideas easily and quickly at any location.  For the longest time, I considered getting an iPhone.  Finally, with the help of a friend in Hong Kong, a colleague and I decided to bit the bullet and do it.  I wanted to buy in Hong Kong because there you can buy the unlocked iPhone and therefore don’t have to sign the nonsense two-year agreement.  So, whenever I arrive in the US, I can just pop in my T-Mobile card and I have instant access.  The same also goes for any country in Asia.

The iPhone is not the be-all-end-all device that constitutes my “new system”, but I credit it for really opening my eyes to the power of “mobile computing”.  I’ve had my iPhone for about four months now and I’ll never go back to a bulky system like Outlook and Office.  No way.  I can still remember coming back to the office after Christmas and Chinese New Year and thinking that Outlook felt like a large anchor around my neck.  This is one reason why I worry a bit about Microsoft’s future.  Much of the company’s revenue comes from cash cows like Windows and Office.  But, both of these businesses face huge dangerous flaming arrows from the likes of Apple, Linux, and a myriad of cloud computing companies that I’ve embraced because their product is simply better.

But, even before purchasing the iPhone, I started playing around with a couple of web applications:  iGoogle and Evernote, both of which I am very impressed with.  Evernote is a free fantastic note-taking application that leverages great search technology instead of organization.  So, I don’t worry about where I should put my notes, I just create them and Evernote indexes them, searching for keywords (even keywords within images!) so that when I later search for a note, it’s easy to find the notes I’m looking for.  The application is great because it’s designed to work on the internet.  There’s a browser plug-in which makes it easy to take notes while surfing the web.  See the video demo on the Evernote homepage for more.  iGoogle is great for pulling together a few simple Google web components into a single page that I can view without even scrolling:

(above) My own iGoogle page (I’ve chosen random themes!). Google Reader is the first Google application that I latched onto. It works great at aggregating the various blogs that I like to read. The Google translator is great for chatting in Chinese. When I don’t understand some of the characters (which is most of the time), I can just plug them in here and get a quick translation.  Of course, now that I don’t have to use Outlook, Google Calendar is a natural choice.  Features are still being added, and sync support for the iPhone was recently added.  I haven’t adopted this yet.

You can see another web app that I like to use:  Remember the Milk.  This a cute little app that is a very good note taking system, much better than my pitiful little wallet sticky note.  With Remember the Milk, I can create notes for on any date and write a note to remind myself.  I can also categorize and prioritize them which makes working on a family of tasks easy.

I’m also experimenting with my own personal Joomla! site, hosted on my personal web space.  Joomla! is a general purpose CMS system.  I’m using it an super note-taker.  Something where I want a little more organization than Evernote.  So, I have various project ideas and progress listed there.  I also use it as a place to organize jobs that I outsource to various people in China, or anyone really when I’m not using Elance.  For example, I had a word-processing job that I outsourced to a contact in China.  I created a video using the great Windows Media 9 encoder of my desktop where I walked through the steps that I wanted done for hundreds and hundreds of pages of material.  I then created an account for the person that was working on this job, then, uploaded the movie and the files needed.  It was easy for her to log on, understand visually what needed to be done.  It worked great.  This site would be perfect for this sort of job, but I really need job level access for each account I create.  Instead, site access is at privilege level, and there are only like three levels!  Not sure how I’ll manage this, but that will eventually be a deal-breaker.

The iPhone is what ties most of this all together.  There are Evernote and Remember the Milk applications for the iPhone, both of which work beautifully.  Unfortunately, Remember the Milk costs $25, but it’s certainly worth that.  The Evernote application adds audio recording support, so if I’m in a big hurry, I can create a quick idea or task note with my voice on the iPhone and it will upload in the background to the web.  That’s the beauty of all of this: it syncs easily with the cloud (the web) and is therefore accessible from any computer.  The concept is so simple!  I can still hear the whines of my MS colleagues, “Man, I can’t get Outlook to sync with my iPhone.”  I tell them, “Your problem:  OUTLOOK!”  Time to modernize!  However, the various Google applications still aren’t represented very well on the iPhone, but they’ve got the cloud-computing idea down and, of course, they work great on the browser.  I have no good Joomla! access on the iPhone, except for the browser, and that’s not good enough yet.

So, this new system is a work-in-progress, but the results so far are promising.

I found Theron engrossed in his laptop in the Hong Kong airport after my plane finally arrived Friday night (12/5).  (There had been an hour-long delay while JAL exchanged jets.)  My abnormally short haircut which apparently made me unfamiliar at first glance, but the surprise I intended was my newly learned ability to speak a little Mandarin.  (Ni hao! Wo shi Meiguoren. Wo hen hao.  Xiexei.  Now back to English.)  Following a brief train trip into Kowloon, Theron reciprocated an old surprise tactic I used when he first arrived in London in 1991, having me keep my eyes to the ground until we were in optimal viewing position of Victoria Bay.  Of course, it was breathtaking…I mean after I looked up.  Accommodations in the Kowloon Shangri-La were mighty posh.  We slept in, caught an American-style breakfast at a corner cafe, then strolled Kowloon’s bay walk.  Three different groups of Chinese students stopped us to interview us for a class project, practicing their English.  We ignored less wholesome solicitations, though I think Theron really did want to demonstrate to me how you can enhance your luck by giving a boardwalk stranger money.  It seemed to me that, because it required one to part with some wealth to become lucky, we were better off with the “bird in hand” and so kept walking. We had hoped to get a visa for me in short time, but there was no visa service over the weekend.  (Curses! More time in Hong Kong! I began to wonder about the wisdom of “a bird in the hand.”)  We wandered central Hong Kong pretty thoroughly through the day, photographing immoderately as we went.  The chain of escalators served as our main corridor to higher ground.  Charming side streets and the lovely sage-green mosque near the escalators’ end captivated us along the way.  Fans of “college drankin’” will be disappointed to note that we nobly resisted Cochran’s (“Buddeh?!”) beckoning.  Our wanderings took us among concrete mazes of walkways along, over, and under serpentine roads before the wild cries of monkeys drew us to the zoo.  Watching the monkeys frolic in feats of agility, we took a load off the dogs.  (It was good to sit down…’til the ants began to eat us. Well, really, there were no ants.  I just tend to sing the blues.)  On the downward portion of our journey, an enchanting display of roses frozen in ice, hanging from the limbs of a tree and brightly dripping in the sun caused us to pause and peruse in Causeway Plaza with a number of other camera-wielding types.  The subway then carried us back to Kowloon where we gathered our things (mostly my big and disintegrating duffle bag) and set off in a taxi for the ferry port from whence we departed for Macau just before sundown.

Macau is the Asian Vegas.  Garishly lit buildings glare in the harbor, and the gold-glass, light-spangled Grand Lisboa towers over all like a giant torch.  I think “grand” is not quite the descriptor for it, but “big” or “gargantuan” and “gauche” are certainly accurate.  We stayed at the Guia Hotel next to the lighthouse.  (Now, it has been an odd thing for me to find American-style Christmas decorations–right down to the paper snowflakes–and music everywhere I go on this trip, but it was equally odd to see Portuguese alongside Chinese in this town.  But at least I had a chance of figuring the meaning of the Romance language.)  From our hotel balcony, we had a pretty good view of the lights below.  Also, not a bad room: Sai Long continues to deliver.

Descending into the neon maelstrom, we found not a single respectable local restaurant for dinner.  McDonald’s and Pizza Hut stood like sentinels for America’s good ol’ fast-food industry on one of the main drags, but we were trying to blend in with the locals…until we realized there were almost no Macau locals, as everyone was there from places elsewhere “for the casino” and/or “for the girl,” as a friend of Theron’s says.  So we gave ourselves over to the tractor beam clutching our wallets emanating from the Grand Lisboa.  Security was tight at the GL, so much so that, though we did not go through the metal detectors in the main lobby nor those on the second floor, we had to actually sit down and eat at the second floor restaurant overlooking the open casino floor before we could casually take the escalator down to it, unharassed by the guards in gangster suits.  This may be a TSA operation.  As we ate, we were amused to note the ebbing and flowing tides of men at the bar along one side of the room.  The bar was positioned such that customers sitting at it faced a stage which all too frequently featured dancing girls (Yes, scantily clad; need you ask?).  When the show started, the tide of men trickled in around the tables, getting six-people deep along the bar. The show featured something like choreography to such hits as Strauss’ “Wine, Women and Song” waltz (there’s a theme here working on very deep subliminal levels, deeper than language and cultural barriers, even) and with introductions by the other Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” (making connections at levels deeper than even Nietzche could fathom).  Somewhere in there, the 19th-century can-can skirts gave way to things that would be generously described as bikinis. Then the movement stopped (an end to the dance, we presume), the curtain closed, and the testosterone tide retreated to the mere sideshow of gambling.  We toured the floor and paused to watch the high tide.  These faces transcended blankness, and the absence of applause following the onstage to-do was deafening.

Next morning, we were up early to try to get photographic evidence proving that Theron’s friend Da Li actually runs marathons.  We had no idea where to find the runners, and we were further daunted by the fact that our uncertain destination was always moving.  Not too far beyond the shadow of the Grand Lisboa, we spotted a couple of sweaty, haggard-looking folks moving at a pace too slow to be casino customers fleeing creditors or pimps, so we knew we probably had the right crowd, though the fact that police were merely calmly supervising did raise doubts.  Nevertheless, standing alongside a road which rose up out of a tunnel that may well have led to the underworld (which would explain the people running out of it, the plethora of police, and the proximity of the Grand Lisboa), we caught sight of a man in a red shirt and a white hat thereby fitting the description Da Li told Theron to expect, and sure enough, it was Santa Claus (for all you kids out there) or Da Li (for nonbelievers).  Theron ran alongside him for a while, snapping photos dutifully.  I confess to having enjoyed an opportunity not to run or even walk at a brisk pace, merely standing there waiting to see how far Theron intended to go and trying to decided whether I would eat breakfast at McDonald’s or Pizza Hut if he chose to keep going to the finish line.  Theron returned, and we commenced exploring the non-Vegas districts of Macau which proved quite intriguing as a remnant of the colonial days.

The old town square was grossly glutted with a reindeer-sleigh-and-”old man Christmas” display (Is there no escape?!), but the wavy mosaic pavement was inviting.  We found a hole-in-the-wall wherein we could have a little breakfast for a very reasonable price, then continued our explorations.  The antique stores’ wares and prices were attractive, but I vowed to restrict shopping on this trip to tailored clothing.  The ruins of St. Paul’s were packed with tourists.  We were confounded in trying to photograph the small nearby temple by other photographers in the way.  Didn’t they understand that I wanted a photo of it without them in it and that it’s all about me?  I mean, really!  The Guia fort on the hill presented an amusing tableau of an old-world defense against the encroaching new-world capitalism, since the old cannons all seemed to be aimed toward the Grand Lisboa and her sister establishments.  I fear the battle is lost. In a quieter corner of the fort overlooking St. Paul’s and a sweeping view of the city, Theron and I sat down for a rest, and Theron began to worry me with talk of plans of becoming itinerant in China, wandering and living with no home to see how cheaply he could get by.  I had begun trying to think of how to tell him gently that I thought this was an absolutely terrible idea when he relieved my worry by saying that it was only speculation and that he had no intention of actually going through with it.  (To any of you living in China reading this: please keep an eye on him, lest he should begin to make serious plans of this nature.  Alert us in the US immediately if he starts talking about getting rid of his apartment and earthly goods.)

In the afternoon, we met Da Li (doing well, in spite of the fact that he had run for 26.2 miles that morning) under the Macau Sky Tower where people were paying around $200US for the privelege of being pushed off a plank for a free fall of 233m, the highest bungy jump in the world.  Appropriately, the first person we witnessed enjoying this rare opportunity screamed like a victim in a slasher movie.  We are delighted to have this on video for your viewing pleasure.  Walking on the glass floors of the observation deck was not a little unnerving but certainly thrilling.  We considered doing the bungy jump, but it just didn’t seem worth $200 for about 5 minutes of thrill, the vast majority of which was hanging upside-down over the landing mattress in front of gawking spectators who might record your less-than-dignified reaction for their blog.  A meandering walk took us over a nearby hill to a brief tour of St. Lawrence and on to A Ma Temple, where the air was thick with incense and the rock walls were carved in characters painted blood red.  Pangs of hunger drove us into another hole-in-the-wall, this one a two-seater where we enjoyed rather spicy noodles in hot broth.  Finding a cab back to the hotel was not easy, and time grew short.  Fortune favored us at last, and we gathered luggage from the hotel and reached the ferry port with plenty of time before depature.  Theron bought a ticket for Shenzhen and I one for Hong Kong where I still needed to get my visa.  We rehearsed our rendez-vous plans for my arrival in Shenzhen and then parted.  Minutes later, we were amused to meet back up on the otherside of customs: all customs lines led to the same lobby before departure.  We then made our farewells again and went our separate ways to be reunited two days later in Shenzhen for some real adventures.

5 – 7 December, 2008.