Over the past seven years I have worked on a variety of outsourced software projects with people from the US, Europe, India & China which has led me to one rarely spoken but rather obvious truth: even in well-managed environments outsourcing doesn’t work very well and often leads to less-than-satisfactory outcomes.
It’s that time again to look back at an assortment of shots I’ve grabbed throughout my daily life in Hong Kong over the past few months. Being the world’s most vertical city, its sheer density lends itself to an almost endless supply of places to discover where often the most mundane of circumstances lead to the most memorable sights.
As any visitor to Taipei discovers, one of the cities main attractions are its many night markets. On my previous trip I covered some of the big ones – Shida, Shilin, and Ximending, but on a recent trip to Taiwan I paid a visit to one of the smaller and more traditional ones, namely Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市).
Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 the tech world has been solidly focused on mobile and for many publishers having a mobile presence has become a must (often irregardless of users actual needs). Of the thousands of apps available, the average user will probably only use half a dozen with any regularity, so cementing your app in this hallowed position is no easy task.
Book reviews are not usually my thing, but having recently finished Haruki Murakami’s epic three-volume novel, 1Q84, events conspired which were a little too coincidental to pass over. For those unfamiliar with Murakami’s work, he is one of Japan’s most famous authors whose work is humorous and surreal, often focusing on themes of alienation and loneliness. Many of his novels focus on the mundane lives of ordinary people who are suddenly catapulted into deranged circumstances.
If you wondered why I didn’t post last week it’s because I was swimming with the fishes – quite literally. Friends had been encouraging me to learn scuba diving for the past few years so I decided to take a break from my usual routine and give it a try. I travelled to Kenting National Park (墾丁國家公園) in the far south of Taiwan to take a three-day PADI Open Water Diver course.
Under the principle of “one country, two systems”, Hong Kong is defined as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. It borders the neighbouring city of Shenzhen immediately to the north (where I lived for two years previously) which is physically divided from Hong Kong along the Sham Chun and Sha Tau Kok rivers. I recently visited the border town of Sha Tau Kok (沙頭角) on the Hong Kong side…
When people ask me what I do for a living I often struggle to explain myself – being a ‘Product Manager’ can mean a lot of different things but whether you’re building something physical like a car, or virtual like an app, a Product Manager has to be able to operate on multiple fronts to juggle business, technical, and creative demands.
For any visitor new to Thailand, one of the first things you’ll notice are the small three-wheeled taxis which zip around the roads at alarming speeds with little concern for the rules of the roads. These motorised rickshaws are of course the ubiquitous tuk-tuk (ตุ๊กตุ๊ก), so-called because of the sound they make. With their brightly coloured metallic bodies and swarthy drivers they make a great subject to photograph.
In post-industrial cities across the world there has been a trend of turning disused warehouses and factory spaces into creative hubs for artists. Since 2001 in Hong Kong, after many meatpacking and textile storage facilities moved to mainland China, more than 80 units in the utilitarian industrial blocks of Fo Tan district have been re-purposed and transformed into art studios, creating a vibrant if well hidden local arts scene.