Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

India trip

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I don’t know it is lucky or unlucky, I am drafted by my manager to service in the India tour of duty.  I will be going to Bangalore in the name of being a technical expert for 2 months.  The excuse on the surface is knowledge transfer so the Indian team will learn the Canadian way chip design.  The real motivation is the manager want us to keep an eye on the Indian guys, so they will deliver their assignment on time.  I have no idea what is my role in the assignment, but it is quite likely I will be in exile for two months.

Indian is one of the last places on earth I want to visit.  First of all, this country is stupid.  If they are boasting themselves as the outsourcing center of the world.  Why the hell there is so much paper work to get an Indian visa.  All nationality require visa to enter India, it is definitely an measure turn away potential tourist or business.  In the matter of fact, why would anyone from the western country need visa to visit India, it is unlikely we will become illegal immigrate.

Once I heard my India trip, I went to Chapters and bought a India tourist book.  I was hoping there is at least something interesting to see in India.  To my disappointment, I flipped the tourist book cover to cover, I found nothing interesting at all.  India is a very backward country, everywhere is a mess.  Taj Mahal is probably the only thing marginally interesting.  Ok, it is a marble palace, what a great tourist photo spot.  Someone maybe interested to explore the history and culture of Indian.  I have absolutely no interest in learning the Indian culture, which I think is a lesser culture compare to the Western or Chinese culture.  Why would any one interested in such a backward culture that is incompatible with modern world?  India would be a much better place if Alexander the Great successful transform India to Greek culture or one of the Chinese dynasties conquered India.

On the bright side, having some India experience will definitely help my career growth.  Outsourcing to India is a trend in the hi-tech industry after all.

Daily Scribble

Home sweet home

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After 11 hours of flight, finally I am back to Vancouver, finishing my two and a half weeks HK trip.  I guess I am not compatible with HK.  I have been coughing and have running nose for the whole trip.  It must be due to the heavily polluted environment of HK.  HK is too crowded everywhere, full of people and noise.  I have a sensory overload for the first few days.  It took me a while learn to filter out the background noise.  HK suppose to be a fun city, but I already passed the age to have fun.  I visited many places during my trip, checked out the city, new mega-malls, country side, so-called tourist attractions.  Out of all the places, the most beautiful place is Tsuang Kwan O Chinese Permanent Cemetery.  It is quiet, with ocean breeze and seaside views.  I won’t mind having a house in the land of the cemetery.  It is such a waste letting dead people take over this prime location.

My cousins are visiting HK around the same time.  So this trip is also a family gathering.  I am surprise to see how big my cousins becomes.  For the first 2 weeks of the trip, I am staying with Pat at her friend’s place.  It is pretty good since they have a guest room.  After Pat flew back to Vancouver, I moved back to live with my grand parents.  Their place is pretty small, I have to sleep on the couch.  My grandpa wake up at 5a.m. every morning, so I was woke up 5a.m. everyday as well.  Luckily I cam fall back asleep for another 2 hours once he left for exercise.  I have been sleeping in sleeping bag for the whole trip, I really miss my own bed.  It is time to sleep and have a sweet dream.

Daily Scribble

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  Time flies.  It is the almost the end of 2007.  I am on my way to a 3 weeks long vacation / wedding preparation trip to HK.  I probably won’t update my blog when I am away on vacation.  I will resume writing after I come back from HK on the  2nd week of January.

I have to do many things for my short stay in HK  I have to visit all my relatives, Pat’s relatives and prepare for our wedding.  I will have 4 days of free time from 4 Jan to 9 Jan after Pat come back to Vancouver.  For my friends in HK, I will try to contact you and let’s find sometime to meet up with each other.  Please leave me your contact in the comments, which is only visible to me.

See you next year.

Daily Scribble

Patent review meeting

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Somehow I have to get up early every day this week, today is a 8a.m. patent review meeting.  I was asked to sit in the meeting to review two verification related the patent application from Israel.  Verification related IP is really hard to patent, it is not that we are not innovative.  The problem is there is no way for us to enforce our patent.  We see our competitors’ chips, but we don’t know how they verify their chips.  They can do pretty much whatever they want behind closed door.  In the past few years, we start to see 3rd party verification IP on the market.  Verification IP is just software, so it falls into the same category as software patents, which is different from the hardware patent my company familiar with.

Anyways, the Israel guys presents two patents application to the patent committee.  I was asked to review the initial patent application as one of the few “verification experts” in the company.  Helping the lawyers to determine whether the idea is patent worthy.  We have to examine the application base on whether it is new, whether it is trivial and whether the patent is enforceable.  If the patent in question is truly innovative, it will worth the trouble for me to get up early, but it is exactly the opposite.  The Israel guys are trying to patent an idea we have been using over 3 years in Vancouver.  This idea is so good that we even asked Cadence for feature enhancement to put it into their verification tool.  Actually, the idea is already implemented in the latest tool release.  The Israel guys must be living in a cave, it seems they are so out of touch with the latest verification technology.  Even if this idea is patentable, there is no way for us to enforce the patent.  We will never know other companies copying our way or not.  The only company we will ever see any infringement is from Cadence.  It is the last thing you would sue your tool vendor, when there are only two companies on earth making the tools of your trade.  Reviewing the patent itself is a total waste of time, I can’t believe some one is dumb enough trying to apply for a patent on this piece of antique.  However, it is an interesting experience to attend a patent review meeting.

Daily Scribble

Indian flu

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My boss come back from a business trip in Indian and got a flu.  I am sitting right next to him, probably that’s how I got a flu.  When I woke up this morning, I am having a headache, muscle pain, soar throat and drowsiness.  Unfortunately, I have whole day meeting today and piles of work waiting me to finish before I take off for  vacation, so I couldn’t skip work today.  After work, I went straight to the pharmacy to buy Neo-Citron.  Hopefully my flu will go away tomorrow after I drink the flu formula and have a good rest tonight.