Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

This is no laughing matter. It happened in the 30’s when America suffered from the Great Depression. As the result, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans got deported, 60% of them were US Citizens and many of them were children born in the US.

Now, if the Congress passes this bill to align the illegal aliens with the murders and rapists as criminals, then the horrifying history is going to repeat itself. Those American kids would either be forced to live in a foreign land where they have no ideas about, or check into orphanages.

Keeping our border safe is one thing, but kicking these people out who have already had roots here is just totally wrong! Forget about the American Value, the congress better start funding social services ‘cause they are going to need a lot of orphanages to house those kids without parents.

12, 13 years ago at the dawn of the first Internet boom, we transformed the way we share and deliver information by moving them online, graphically. Now, we are moving human interactions, communities, and user contents into the Web space and the results have been phenomenal. There is even a name for it: Web 2.0

Newsweek has done an interesting article to talk about the new era of the Internet: The Living Web. . Check it out. A few of the biggest new kids on the block:
1. mySpace.com
2. Digg.com
3. Flickr

Along with the massively exploded numbers of blogs out there, we are really entering the era of the Living Web. If you have never played with any of these, you gotta ditch those reality shows and enter the 21st Century.

I signed up with digg.com a few months after the site was launched. I have never thought that in less than a year, Digg has joined other big boys and became part of the icon of the new Web 2.0.

I am really excited about this new stage of the Web development. I really think that we are at the early stage of this exciting new era and there are plenty of opportunities out there if we can come up with some great ideas. So where to look for these opportunities? It falls back to the good old golden rule: Supply and Demand. As a web user, what do I want? What do the people around us want from their Web experiences? Now we have ways to allow users to present their own contents and share with others, but how should we organize this massive amount of information? How can we utilize the new information that has never been available before? Seriously, if you think about the output from 30 million+ blogs, 60 million user profiles from mySpace, gazillions of pictures from Flick, great things can be done with these user generated contents which used to be only in the individual’s head. I have been thinking about these questions lately and got quite a few ideas. A simple example: the marketing research groups can filter mySpace and have a tons of information as what products are in demand, how to reach the potential customers and what are the most effective ways to market them. Because? These information are spelled out on these webpages. It’s matter of who is going to turn that information into useful data. GREAT! I just shared my million dollar idea with the public!

Some Silion Valley frontiers are already putting their ideas into actions. Check these guys out: (Who is Building The Next Web)

To those stock-pick lovers, keep your eyes open too because one of these new players could be tomorrow’s eBay and Google.

When I took the new teaching job back in Jan this year, I was fully expecting to work as a low key technical trainer and just do my teaching.

Just 2 weeks ago, my role and responsibility suddenly changed. Now, I am appointed as the new education manager of the new organization we are building as the result of the recent acquisition. So forget about staying at home and teach. I have been flying non stop in the last 2 weeks to attend summit meetings to lay out plans to build this new organization. Like a few years back when I worked on a high profile DC job that nearly destroyed my mental heath, here I am again, sitting with a full room of execs and VPs throwing big words at each other and demanding big dollars without the politeness.

I was much younger then, less mature and was very much afraid of these big boys. 4 years have passed and I noticed a huge difference between me now and the me then: I don’t give a fuck of what’s going on… Last week, I booked a 5pm flight to come home. The partner who owns the organization suddenly asked me to stay for one more day for a meeting that I was never invited to. I flat out said that I had to go home tonight. In front of all the VPs/Execs, he yelled at me, “Christine? Do you want to get fired?” Crap! What do I care?! I quit once remember? So I threw my hands in the air, “Great! FIRE ME!” Everybody busted in laughs and continued with whatever they were doing… I ended up delaying my 5pm flight to 7:25pm, attended the meeting for 2 more hours, gave my opinions and flew back home.

One thing I learned from these Big Boys in the last 2 weeks was that these guys all have big nasty attitude and have “I am the Boss. Don’t mess with me” written all over on their foreheads. As opposed to the file and rank employees like myself, we are used to the concept to “perform well” and to “please our boss and others”. The more we try to please others, the less respect we get. It’s week 2 into my new job and I have been putting on a big nasty “Don’t mess with me or no education for your people” banner on my forehead too. It’s been working quite well and I have networked with quite a lot Partners and Execs in the last a few days to talk about Value-Adds and importance of getting their people trained… I know.. I know.. It’s all corporate buillshit… Even though I am working in a cut throat environment right now, nothing is like working on a fucked up slavery client project. To be honest, I don’t think these big guys jobs are that hard. The consultants who are working on the fields truly have the hardest jobs. So my hat’s off to those of you who are still out there busting your asses everyday. It’s a great job to start your career with, but don’t stay out there for too long… I know I will never get back to the consulting career again…

Yes, the original Yuna’s Village is suspended and got moved over here as my historical museum collection now. If 500 years later our future great great …great grand kids want to build an Ancient American Blog Museum, I know I can contribute quite a bit.

Anyway, I finished the design work last night to migrate this site into Free The Cow Project to have a new fresh start. Yes, it is a sequal of my beloved Yuna’s Village…. It’s also a new chapter of the next phase of my life.

• new job
• new city
• new side gigs
• new home (soon)
• new friends….

Gosh, I am starting from ground up again and live my life in a totally different way. Although everybody is seeking for stability, but this change might not be a bad idea… it could be a turning point…

So here I am , Yuna is turning into a cow and trying to fight a way out of the barn. After running the Free The Cow Project for 3 weeks, I truly believe that I can succeed one day. When you really put your foot down and do something, everything is possible. See! I have made about 40 bucks already from the side gigs!!