For those who hire people

Oh goodness, it has been almost a month since I last posted. I'm not giving this up, just that it has been a rather eventful month. I was away for almost 2 weeks in Amsterdam for work and some sightseeing. I think I walked too much (including a 40min trek to the tulip fields) and returned completely exhausted. Photos will be up soon, hopefully Canonet won't be letting me down. Thank you to Daniel who lent me not only his Canonet but also the legendary workhorse Mamiya RB67; unfortunately it was too heavy to lug around on travels. I am looking forward to using it now that I am back.

So I went to the library to collect a reserved book soon after I arrived back home. Strategic Interviewing comes highly recommended by my firm, which has adapted its approach to our daily use. I personally think it is an effective and objective approach to assess people for the role in question, and it is close enough to making interviews more of a science than an art (or gut feel). Fundamentally, it's being clear about what you want and checking off whether job competencies are met. It is important to set goals for the interview, define job competencies clearly, and find out whether these competencies are met and how they are met. Like most good things in life, consistency is what makes the difference here. The process should be applied equally and rigorously to all interviewees so that an objective assessment and comparison can be made to identify the most suitable candidate.

Country Driving

Country Driving, the latest and last of the three books by award-winning writer and researcher on contemporary China Peter Hessler, is a marvellously well-written account of his journey across China on the automobile, collecting thoughtful observations of how the burgeoning highway network is transforming China today. The first part of the book tracks Hessler's road trip along the Great Wall, from the coastal region all the way into the interior and the Qinghai plateau, crisscrossing the Wall's cultural and archaeological history and lives of rural peasants in far flung villages that are more than a world of difference from the developed Chinese cities. The second part is more focused geographically on a small village Sancha, outside Beijing where the writer was based as the correspondent for The New Yorker. Hessler acquired a holiday home-cum-writer's retreat there, where he spent weekends with the Wei family and noting down keen observations of how a young peasant who remained behind in the village - an unusual situation given the booming rural-urban migration that has swept across the nation - struggled to adapt to changes brought about by modernisation, making the best of what he can. The last part of the book deals with the bustling factory town of Lishui, in the Zhejiang province where every small town is being turned into a development zone by local officials who behave like seasoned entrepreneurs, raising funds in a way not unlike that of the Carlyles and Blackstones, to blast away mountains, pour on the asphalt and stack up the factories, churning out "Buttontown" and "Pleatherville"; an entire town produces buttons, supplying 70% of the buttons to clothes in China, and another spews out pleather, or plastic (PVC) leather products 24/7, together with toxic fumes of DMF, a chemical used in the manufacturing process. These trips are all made via the automobile and Hessler also has a thing or two to say about driving in China, most of which are refreshingly humourous. Most of all, Hessler writes with a lot of heart and the reader can really feel his affection towards the people and places he has spent time with, listening and learning with respect and an open mind, creating a vivid and moving landscape of a nation always in a hurry to get somewhere.

Bloesem

(Guusje)

(junecrafts)

(KStudio)

Bloesem is a blog that I like very much and visit often. (On top of Sandra Juto and My Funny Eye)

Shoe Painting!

Lovely customised hand-painted shoes!

Personalised too!

via RuggARTS

Ma Jian

One of the earliest Chinese writer to travel to China's interior and document his experiences and observations, especially about China's minority groups. Ma Jian ranks alongside Gao Xingjian, Nobel Prize (Literature) winning author of the seminal novel Soul Mountain. 马建之路 is Ma's travel notes gathered during his wandering days more than 20 years ago which saw him traverse over mountains in the south and across plateaus in the interior west. He went as far as Hainan island in the south and Xinjiang region in the northwest. What clearly moved him was the sheer poverty and simplicity of the ordinary folks he encountered, notably the minority groups who were among the most underprivileged people he had seen so far in China. I wonder how much of that has changed since.

Oracle Bones

The subtitle of Peter Hessler's second book (first one being River Town) reads: A Journey between China and the West. It is more than that; the book weaves through time and history, from the earliest dynasty of the Shang to modern day boomtown Shenzhen, traverses geographically between China and the USA, as Hessler tracks the immigration story of his Uigher friend who sought political asylum with his Homeland America, and touches issues from culture (Chinese writing system, the anchor of the story as Hessler traces the life of oracle bones scholar Chen Mengjia) to politics (cross-strait issue) to democracy (local elections) to architecture (Beijing's hutong).

I found it hard initially to make sense of the flow of the book, as it seems on the surface to leap from one topic to another, some quite unrelated. At times, the book also appears to be a mishmash of observations about different aspects of China gathered during the author's almost ten year-long stay in Beijing. But things started to make sense after a while, as I realised that this is the way China is: everything is happening at the same time, and at frightening speed. Yet everything is interlinked. It is a story of ordinary folks in past and present China struggling to understand their lives which had been and still are constantly shaped by dramatic forces beyond their control - the Shang rulers who used oracle bones to divine their empire's fortunes, a stubborn scholar driven to suicide during the Cultural Revolution for his staunch opposition to the reform of the Chinese writing system, a futile battle against the destruction of Beijing's traditional courtyards to make way for modernisation, the marginalisation of ethnic minorities etc are all threads of a common story where their confluence and conjunction create the China today.

River Town

I first learnt of Peter Hessler, when I read his wife Leslie Chang's Factory Girls, which I blogged about earlier. Hessler was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker based in China for 10 years. He first lived in China when he went as a Peace Corps volunteer to a small river town along the Yangtze river to teach English and literature. River Town is a diary of his observations about the people, culture and life in Fuling, a town near the Three Gorges. I am not a heavy reader of travel-related literature but River Town is incredibly well-written, immensely thoughtful and often very funny. What got me hooked were Hessler's acute observations of things and people around him, his analytical turn of mind that produced sensitive portrayal of his experiences and how his role and identity shifted and adjusted to the vast differences he encountered daily. He also wrote Oracle Bones, a collection of stories about ordinary Chinese people, which is the next book in my reading stash. His newest book Country Driving was published in early March this year.

Lamma island - Seagull's take

Bolstered by my lovely all-by-myself day trip to Cheung Chau, I happily set out to explore another outlying island, Lamma island, this time with my husband the following day which was a Saturday (= no need to work). As biking around Cheung Chau was quite a breeze given the relatively flat terrain, I urged him to also get a bike on Lamma island. Boy, was it a huge mistake. We were completely ignorant of the geography of Lamma, which had only one path running across from one end to the other of the small island. The good thing is you will never get lost. The bad thing is to get from one bay to another, one has to cross the ridge and our bikes were totally useless on those horrendously steep slopes. The worse thing was we had to climb back over the same ridge again to return our rental bikes (the alternative was to lose our deposit of HK$600). I then realised why there were two ferries leaving separately for two different parts of Lamma from the mainland - Sok Kwu Bay and Yong Shu Bay - because people simply pick one bay to visit! The tasty though slightly pricey seafood meal at the end of our hike did soothe our rather broken spirit (legs felt broken too) but the savoury mantis shrimp and succulent bamboo clams were soon forgotten as we grudgingly trudged back up the ridge to return our rental bikes. Another reason why Lamma wasn't particularly appealing was the large expat population living on the island, which sort of turned it into a yuppie (plus white trash) hangout with the usual bars, booze and Western grub. Lamma is a 30-min ferry ride from the mainland which makes daily commuting to the mainland quite bearable. It is away from the city and yet not too far that you are cut off from your urban comforts. The first thing we saw when we landed was a row of real estate agencies hawking the ideal seaside home, followed by a row of restaurants and bars catering to the expat population. There were much less interesting sights to shoot, plus we were totally whacked by the punishing "mountaineering" experience.

A herb garden on the island. This is the entrance. The owner is a young HK couple who grows organic herbs and use them for making tea and snacks that are sold in their cafe.

A creative way to label the plants using upturned glass bottles and white paint.

The cat which is very much a part of the herb garden.

Houses on the hillside.

There is a huge power station (three smoke stacks and at least 4 storage tanks) on one end of Lamma island. I guess a lot of electricity is needed to keep the bars, restaurants and large air-conditioned homes going.

Cheung Chau (3) - Seagull's take 2

Flower shop

The Chinese New Year celebrations were just over.

The mist was rather heavy and the view wasn't fantastic. On a clear day, you are supposed to be able to see HK Island.

Cheung Chau has a number of small rock formations and they have names like Vase Rock, Human Rock etc. I don't remember seeing any sign for this one though.

Cheung Chau (2) - Seagull's take

The prep work going on for the Cheung Chau Bun Festival in May at the island's central parade square.



Colorful flowerbeds lining the streets, complete with mini white picket fences!


One way to get around - a tricycle with attached wagon for man and goods.


Apartments look like this. Very old style. This may be on an island but being HK, the flats are still quite tightly packed. There are some blocks where you can reach across from your balcony to your neighbour's and nick her clothes.