A year ago, I was lamenting how I had finished reading only two books. I was thinking, that's not good, I'm not reading as much as I used to. Was I get dumber? I had noticed that with my schedule, I rarely had large blocks of time that I could spend reading. Instead, I had these slivers of time available in-between tasks, 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there. This disjointed schedule was much better suited for reading articles and news on the internet.

It was hard to quantify exactly how much I was reading on the internet though. With a traditional book, you had page numbers, and back in my childhood days, we would always record how many pages you had read as a learning metric. Unfortunately with internet articles, it's hard to judge since every site varies in page layout, font, etc.

To help count how much I was reading online, a friend at work introduced me to Delicious, a social bookmarking utility. Basically every page I visited, I could bookmark and tag with metadata. It was also nice that my blog could pull the latest articles I was reading from Delicious (which you see on the left rail here).

Managing bookmarks on Delicious was incredibly useful because I used to use Firefox to manage all my bookmarks, but it was incredibly hard to find old bookmarks. If I was on another computer, I wouldn't have access to those bookmarks stored locally on my other computer (yes, I'm aware latest version of Firefox solves this problem with sync). I've also had Firefox crash on me, and I lost all my bookmarks before. So, it was settled, I would store and share all my bookmarks online with Delicious.

August 31st, 2010, I embarked on my quest to measure how much I read online. In one year, I have amassed 3679 bookmarks.

Here's some stats that I crunched.

Top 20 Domains I Read From

# of bookmarks I save over time.

Top 25 Topics I Read About

america, politics, military, internet, business, technology, google, history, obama, science, china, finances, funny, security, geopolitics, terrorism, revolution, video_games, protest, libya, mobile, recession, yahoo, afghanistan, jobs

Top 20 Domains I Read From

43% of the content I read comes Yahoo!, Business Insider, and Wired Magazine.

Domain	# Bookmarks
news.yahoo.com	620
www.businessinsider.com	497
www.wired.com	494
www.youtube.com	105
www.nytimes.com	79
www.bbc.co.uk	64
www.guardian.co.uk	56
i.imgur.com	49
finance.yahoo.com	47
www.rockpapershotgun.com	38
www.telegraph.co.uk	37
www.time.com	34
en.wikipedia.org	32
english.aljazeera.net	31
techcrunch.com	27
www.washingtonpost.com	27
www.cbc.ca	25
online.wsj.com	24
www.huffingtonpost.com	20
www.reuters.com	17

Bookmarks By Day Of Week

Looks like I read the most on Mondays.

Become a fan of me on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/the_chan!

I just got back from a week in the mountains serving in Royal Family Kids Camp (RFKC). It's a summer camp dedicated to neglected and abused children which is sponsored by my church. This year, we had about 30 kids. Each cabin had two kids, two camp counselor, and one assistant counselor, so the kids get a lot of attention and supervision. The rest of this blog entry will just be a number of mini-stories from camp that comes to mind.

Home of the Underdogs

Before camp started, I was talking to some of the organizers of RFKC, and one of the problems they face was a marketing problem, in that people didn't know what RFKC was. I spent the week thinking about a clever unofficial tagline for the camp. I've come up with "RFKC: Home Of The Underdogs." There's two meanings behind it. First, if you look at the kids that attend the camp, they are the ultimate underdogs of society. The second meaning was by the people who volunteer to help out at camp. I looked through the rosters and thought, this is quite a ragtag band of people, how could this group of people possibly pull off a successful camp; yet, by the grace of God, we're able to pull off a great camp. There are definitely a lot of underdogs on staff.

Everyone loves an underdog story, and I love betting on the underdog.

I Am Chan

Since the kids are in the state foster care system, there are a lot of extra privacy and security concerns for the children. One of the restrictions is that we can't let the kids know our last names because the system doesn't want the kids trying to contact us after camp is over. Unfortunately most people call me 'Chan', 'Chan Can', 'Channy Chan Chan', and other variations. There were a number of times that the other counselors would inadvertently call me 'Chan' and I would give them this shocked stare; they would pause and then realize their folly and try to quickly change the subject before the kids caught on.

Hoarders

One of the things highlighted in our training is that some neglected kids who are not fed properly will develop a habit of hoarding food. Hoarding is a defence mechanism for them because they don't know when the next time they will be fed. This year I actually witnessed this behaviour in some of the kids. During meal time they would grab a plate of food, eat a little bit, hide some food in their clothes, and go up for more food and repeat. They also had a tendency of eating very quickly. We would explain to them that they didn't need to rush or hoard because they could eat as much food as they wanted, and there was plenty of food, but that doesn't work for the first couple days. Once you have a couple days of consistency, where you prove that there is plenty of food, and they won't go hungry, then their defence mechanism goes down and they start trusting you and start eating normally.

A Test Of Wills

Monday is typically the hardest day in my opinion because you get your kids, and the kids and counselors don't know each other very well yet in terms of social/cultural norms, expectations, and boundaries. We had one kid who was 11 years old who was quite challenging because mentally and physically he had developed slower and was more like an 8 year old. The kid was also attention starved, and would constantly talk and make noise to get attention. The constant talking made it quite interesting for bedtime because he would keep everyone up in the cabin. The other two counselors had the night off, so I had to take care of the situation. As a result, I stood next to the kid's bunk and told him that he needed to lay down and not make noise. I also explicitly told him that I could literally stand there all night. The challenge was on, and for the next 30 minutes he kept trying to test this boundary, and I didn't yield. I stood there and shushed him every time he started making loud noise again.

By the 30 minute mark he had given up and started sleeping; however, I had a feeling he wasn't going to get into a deep sleep, so I stood there as a precaution. Fifteen minutes later, he woke up again and tried to misbehave but he saw me standing there and gave up and slept. I assume when he fell asleep the first time, he lost track of time (it helps that the room doesn't have any clocks, and he didn't wear a watch) and when he woke up the second time, he must have thought I was really going to stand there the whole night if if needed.

The irony is that this kid would always complain about being tired and wanting to sleep during the day.

God Moments

All of the counselors arrive at camp a day early (Sunday) in order to setup and prepare. That Sunday night, Pastor Art gave communion and addressed us all about how important this camp was. He noted how we were doing God's work and we would be helping mend, restore, and encourage these neglected and abused children. The verse Psalm 82:3 came to mind, "Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed." As of late in my prayer life, the phrase, "if you tell me something worth fighting for, I'll fight that war" was a recurring theme. That Sunday night, I just knew through and through that I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right cause.

One of the exceptional things about this year was that all of the kids in the cabin this year wanted to pray at nights. Normally you have to coerce kids into doing things like pray, but they were all wanting to do it. Even during they day they would ask if they could pray at night. The kids were even fighting over who could pray during meal time. I guess that's a good problem to have.

On the final day of camp, it's easy to just turn your brain on autopilot and just cruise to the finish line because you're tired and the kids will be going home. Everyone stayed diligent and there were some pretty incredible stories from the final hours of camp. For my team, the kids were participating in the Hope Tree activity where they were writing down their hopes and dreams, and we would pray for that. It was kind of heart-wrenching that some of the simple things that we take for granted like seeing your own family is such a distant dream for some of the kids. Some of the kids opened up and talked about why they were in foster care because of what their parents had done, and it was just shocking hearing what people would do to children. What an incredible cost to children and society. In the closing ceremonies, the kids were just so appreciative for everything we had done for them. A lot of them didn't want to go home because for they felt like this was a real family.

The hardest part is coming home, and watching the kids go back to the environments they have to live in. [Read full story]


Continue reading "Royal Family Kids Camp 2011"

I'm kicking off a series entitled simply, "Things I Learned In 2010" as a way to reflect on last year. I've been working on my battle plans and strategy for 2011 and I find it's always important to look to the past's lessons to inform the future. So I thought I'd write about my inspirations from last year before unveiling the 2011 theme.

Let me set the stage for the first topic of 'Humble Confidence'. In 2010, I saw a number of leaders (whom I respected greatly) step down from their respective roles and move on to other endeavours. These changes obviously took a while to get used to and adapt to because of the big shoes that had to be filled. People spoke of these leaders with high-regard and almost reverence. Their reputations precede them. I've heard it said that their presence is felt even when they are not physically around. I pondered what made these leaders great? What was the commonality amongst them?

Last year I also had the opportunity to give a talk about managing finances, and I invited some successful businessmen to help out as guest speakers on specific financial topics. These again were people I held with high regard, and I wanted to know what their secret was. This was definitely a change for me because I come from an environment full of negative encounters with genuinely evil people behaving very unethically when it came to business.

After a couple lunch time discussions with peers about what makes these leaders great, we concluded these were common attributes they had all possessed:

• Had a humble confidence.
• Had their facts straight, and talked straight with you.
• Had a genuine interest in you as a person, rather than treating you as a resource.
• Had unquestionable integrity.

When I was back in Canada, I was watching a lot of Dragon's Den, and there was this clip from season 3 where they interviewed the Dragon's (venture capitalists) about what made a good business pitch?


Robert Herjavec reinforces the point that successful pitches involves people with a humble confidence. These are folks who are not overly confident and seem arrogant. These folks are also not underwhelming in confidence to a point that they seem weak. The key is humble confidence and having your facts straight. Have you ever watched a presentation crash and burn because the person is spouting shaky incorrect facts, and they get destroyed in the question and answer period? Have you ever seen a leader take all the credit of his success without acknowledging his team, and you see his team members grumble under their breathe? It's an absolute train wreck.

The reason why I introduced good business pitches is because I think leadership implicitly requires you to pitch well. One of the keys to leadership is being able to articulate a vision and convincing people to follow you in that vision. I'm a firm believer in the idea of the marketplace of ideas, where ideas compete with each other, and the best ideas should survive. Being able to convince people that your idea is good is critical to your success in the marketplace of ideas.

In closing, I think one of the secrets to great leadership and success is the ability to maintain a humble confidence, no matter how far you've come, how much you've accomplished, or how big your salary is.

I'll end this quote, "For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." - Matthew 23:12

Last year, I interviewed a ton of programmers at work. Our interview process is a multi-layered approach; each layer acts as a defence intended to filter out candidates along the way as they run the gauntlet. The first line of defence is with our recruiters who makes first contact with the candidate, chats with them, and ask some simple technical questions. The second line of defence is the phone screen interview with one of our programmers. The final line of defence is the on-site interview where the candidate meets with several managers and programmers. The reason for all these hoops is because it's actually very expensive in terms of time and money when you get a bad candidate come through.

One day I get an e-mail from our recruiter informing me that an on-site interview was being scheduled. I took a look at the candidate's resume and found something quite peculiar, the candidate had a bachelor's degree in writing, and a master degree in journalism. Don't get me wrong, the degrees are perfectly fine, but this isn't the usual educational background that I see for programmers. Interestingly enough, the candidate had also published several books about a programming language that use. I assumed that if you could write a book about a subject and have it published, then you would be a domain expert in that area. So this was going to be an interesting interview.

The interview day finally comes, and it's my turn to interview the candidate. I do my usual introduction, and then immediately ask him what his story was. How does a writing major transition to the world of computer science? The candidate asserts that writing good software and writing are actually very similar disciplines, it all comes down to syntax and grammar, and being able to express yourself creatively. A part of me was somewhat skeptical about this analogy because I remember all those painful math and algorithm courses that I took in university. Is every writer out there really a closet programmer just waiting to be discovered?

I jump into the technical portion of my interview and ask the candidate to write some code on the white board. I present a fairly simple programming task and the candidate seems to be stumbling through it. I go through a couple questions related to what he had written on the white board, and asked how he could optimize the code to run faster, and he was completely stuck. I look at one of the functions he had used on the board and asked him if he could implement a simple naive version of it by hand, and he could not. Long story short, the technical portion of the interview didn't go well at all.

I left the room fairly unimpressed. I met up with a colleague who had interviewed the candidate earlier just to trade notes. I asked my colleague if he had read the candidate's book before. My colleague said he read snippets of it on Amazon.com, and it was absolutely garbage. I thought to myself, how could a bad programming book possibly be published? In academia, when you publish a paper, they're typically peer-reviewed which ensures a certain level of quality. My colleague laughed at my naivety; he explained that book publishers/editors aren't necessarily domain experts in good programming practices, and that's why there are a lot of really bad programming books out there. Just because you could publish a book about programming doesn't mean you're a good programmer.

This was an eye opening experience, and I definitely learned something that day.

Fox Business News was filming in Silicon Valley yesterday, and they made a pit stop at Yahoo! HQ. I happened to be walking by during the interview with Juniper's CEO, and you can see me walking in the background in a blue shirt at the 3 minute mark of the video.


Enjoy! I hope this helps me get discovered as a TV personality.

So for the last two Sundays, I've had the privilege of speaking to young adults at church about managing finances. Last week, I focused my talk on credit cards since a lot of people run into troubles with them. I highlighted that if you build up a good credit score, then you can gain access to credit cards which have amazing features. I was ranting and raving about the Visa card that I had, but unfortunately no one in the room could apply for it because it's exclusive to the Royal Bank of Canada. I realize that I was being an unsatisfactory tease for doing that. As a result, I did some research on American credit cards and I'm going to suggest a few cards that I came across. It's a convenient time for me to write this since I'm looking into ditching my awful American secured credit card, so I'm in the market for a new card anyways. A number of folks have been asking for suggestions on credit cards, so here goes.

The first card I'm seriously considering is the Citi Forward Visa.

Overview

Card	Citi Forward Visa
Interest Rate	12.99%-19.99%
Annual Fee	$0.00
Rewards	5 points per $1 spent on dining, books, movies and music; 1 point for other purchases.
Credit Score	Good
Balance Transfer	0% for 12 months

Here's all the disclaimers about all the fees and how much balance transfers will cost.

Points Value

The first thing I always look at is how much the points are worth in real dollars. I went to their rewards site, and found that you can trade in your points for flights, movies, dvds, gift certificates, cash back, etc. To measure real dollars, I looked at the cash back reward. They say 8,000 points gives you $50 cash.

So lets do the math, $50 / 8000 points = $0.00625/point.

If I spend $1 on dining, books, movies, or music, that gives me 5 points. $0.00625 X 5 = 0.03125. That's equivalent to 3.125% cash back. That's not bad at all.

However, for all other expenses, $0.00625 X 1 = 0.00625. That's equivalent to 0.625% cash back which is lower than the average reward.

The biggest expense I have is actually eating out, and movies, so if I spend all my entertainment dollars on this card, then it's worth it. For all my other expenses, I would use my other card because I get the equivalent of 1% cash back on that card.

Assume I spend $400/month dining, and $100/month on movies/books, then that's $500/month X 5 points X 12 months/year X $0.00625/point = $187.50/year cash back.

Bonus Points

The Citi Forward Visa offers a couple of bonus point offers:

• 6,000 Points after you make $250 in purchases within the first 3 months
• 2,500 Points when you sign up for Paperless Statements within 3 months of account opening
• 100 Points each billing period when you pay on time and stay under your credit line

Lets assume that you can meet all of these criteria, lets do some math.
6,000 points + 2,500 points + 12 months X 100 points = 9700 points X $0.00625/point = $60.62. This means in your first year, you get that much cash for free if you fulfill their bonus points offer.

I really like that this card rewards you for paying your credit card bill on time every month.

Rewarding Fiscal Responsibility

There's two rewards that this card offers which rewards fiscal responsibility, which makes me feel this is a great card for young adults. The first was already covered above, you get 100 points for every month you pay your bill on time, and stay under your credit limit.

For every 3 month period that you pay your bill on time, and stay under your credit limit, Citi will lower your credit card's interest rate by 0.25% (maximum 8 times, or -2% total). If you don't carry a balance on the credit card, then this isn't really a benefit. However, for those who do carry a balance, this could be a nice way to gradually save some money since debt gets a little less expensive.

Card Benefits

Here are some additional benefits with the card:

• $0 liability on unauthorized charges (ie fraud)
• Cellular Telephone Protection -
  If you pay your monthly cell phone bills with your Citi Forward Card and your cell phone is damaged or stolen, you have supplemental insurance coverage that reimburses you for a replacement phone
• Extended Warranty -
  The terms of the original manufacturers' U.S. warranties (of one year or less) may be extended up to one additional year on most items purchased on your card
• Auto Rental Insurance -
  You're automatically covered when you reserve and rent a covered vehicle with your Citi card and decline the car rental company's collision loss/damage waiver insurance.
• Retail Purchase Protection -
  Most items purchased with your card are eligible for protection against accidental damage or theft up to 90 days from the date of purchase
• Travel & Emergency Assistance -
  You're protected when you’re traveling in the U.S. and abroad. Travel & Emergency Assistance services include medical and legal referrals, lost luggage assistance, emergency transportation, translation services and more

Conclusion

I think if your biggest expenses every month is dining, books, movies and music, then this card is right for you since it offers a generous 3.125% cash back (equivalent). I've seen other cards that offer 5% cash back, but it's isolated to a narrow class of expenses, such as only for gas. You know your spending habits, so you'll have to calculate how much money you might make off this card, and if this is the best for you.

I really like how this card also has features that reward good fiscal responsibility, it has no annual fees, and has a whole whack of extra benefits. The benefits I use most would be the cell phone insurance, the extended warranty, and the rental car collision insurance.

(*) Next week I'm going to go over a credit card that caters to investment-minded people.

Disclaimer

Credit cards are a two-edged weapon. It can bring amazing benefits, and it can bring amazing destruction. Credit cards are not for everyone, and I only recommend this card if you're financially responsible. All these benefits the card brings are instantly negated if you're paying 19.99% interest.

This does not constitute financial advice. Please consult a financial advisor for professional advice.

Full disclosure: I do not own shares of Citi or Visa at the time of writing this article.