Foodie adventures in Asia

Wow… it’s been a while since I last posted. I’ll have to do a backpost on various restaurants that I’ve been to since March. In the meantime, a few key places I was able to check out during my last two weeks in Singapore and Tokyo.

- Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice – this is supposedly the best chicken rice place in Singapore (at least based on Makasutra’s ratings). Tony Bourdain was also here in his last “No Reservations” trip to Singapore. The restaurant that is located in Maxwell Road Food Center even has a picture of Tony. AWESOME!!! My final assessment? Absolutely the best chicken rice in Singapore. Instead of paying for a $20 chicken rice at the Mandarin Hotel, I’ll be coming here instead. For just $4, Tian Tian is not only a better value, it’s probably even better than the Mandarin hotel.

- Waka - This chanko nabe (hot pot) restaurant was opened by the famous sumo wrestler Wakanohana. The main store is located in Roppongi, Tokyo. This is my second time to Waka and I’ve never been disappointed ever with the food. For the hot pot soup base, I’ve had the miso and soya sauce flavor. My personal favorite is the miso based soup. It’s made of 5 different types of miso and the richness is beautiful with ramen noodles. Of the various toppings that you can include in the hot pot, the one thing not to miss out is the chicken meat balls (tsukune). They have two types of tsukune – the regular chicken meat ball and a special version where they mix in duck cartilage. If you’re like me and are into strange foods – you have to order the duck cartilage version. Waka’s collection of sake and shochu are also very impressive. You’ll definitely want to order his 麦焼酎「六十六代」 “rokujyurokudai” shochu. It’s very smooth and has a beautiful toasted flavor in the shochu.

- The ultimate place to try sake is Shunraku Kissei. This izakaya (Japanese bar/restaurant) located in Akasaka Mitsuke, Tokyo, has one of the best sake collections that I’ve seen. The tencho (manager) Asuka Fukuyama is extremely knowledgeable about sake. Every time I’ve been to Shunraku Kissei, she has introduced me to very rare sakes that even people in Japan do not have an opportunity. On the list of sakes available, Shunraku Kissei carries two of my favorite sakes – 上喜元 (jyoukigen) and 南 (minami).

I think you got the wrong email address…

I recently received in my email inbox copies of contracts that were clearly not intended for me. Unfortunately, the sender had sent it to the correct username but the incorrect domain name. I promptly responded to the email thread with -
“Please note that you have sent this email to the wrong person. I believe that you were trying to get in touch with xxx@yyy.com”.

Immediately after my email, the conversation that I was unknowingly invited to ceased.

Sadly, this is something that happens quite often and when it does, PR disasters do emerge. Here are two recent examples -

• A secret memo from Eli Lilly ends up in the NYT reporter’s inbox because the reporter has the same name as the co-counsel representing Eli Lilly.
• The US Air Force sends emails to a British tourist site because senders were using “mildenhall.com” instead of “mildenhall.af.mil”.

I believe Sophos recently conducted a survey and found that more than 50% of company employees have sent an email to a wrong recipient. Clearly… it’s a problem especially with the number of emails growing over time…

Drop me a line if you have ideas to discuss on this particular problem…

Donut Sandwich???

I was scanning through some old photos in my iPhoto album today and I came across this hilarious picture that I took over Christmas in Singapore.

Now, I did not have the opportunity to order it, but I really hope that it’s not what I think it is…

Why, I think it’s a delectable, savory Donut Sandwich!!!

If I’m reading this correct, some mad man at Donut Factory decided to replace your standard onion bagel with a deep fried dough… urghh….

From Edmonton With Love.

One of my favorite post work activities is to enjoy the local food specialty when on the road. This week, I had the opportunity to return back to Canada – specifically, Edmonton.

Now, the immediate question to ask is what unique local fare is in this mostly cold region of the North? It turns out that Canada has the third largest Ukraine population behind Russia and Ukraine. In fact, I was told by my friend  in Edmonton, Gary, that the US State department would send its staff to Edmonton for language instructions before going to Ukraine.

So, under -11 degrees C weather, I ventured to find a good ole’ Ukrainiam dinner in Edmonton. All roads and suggestions pointed to a place called “Taste of Ukraine” – a family run restaurant on 122nd Street and Jasper. George (aka Yuriy) and Orysia (aka Odarka) were former teachers and first generation Ukrainians living in Edmonton. From their love of Ukrainian culture and food was born this restaurant in 2004.

The moment you walk into the restaurant, you’re welcomed with art and cultural objects from Ukraine. George and Orysia return back to Ukraine once a year and bring back art to be displayed in the restaurant. My personal favorite is a painting right above the bar – two Ukrainian friends happily drinking vodka. So, to fit into the Ukrainian mood, I decided to pamper myself a little with some caviar and vodka as an appetizer.

Each mound of black sturgeon “Osetra” caviar came on a “mlyntsi” (crepe or blintz). The salty sturgeon roe was washed down with an icy-chilled shot of “Slava” vodka. Ah… almost like the Bourdain episode in Russia…

Instead of choosing a uber-hearty dish of ribs, chicken kyiv or the “Cossack Feast”, I elected for dish of small varieties. The “Delightful Creations” is a great way to try many things on a single plate -

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On my plate, I ordered -

• Varenyky (pyrohy) ~ Вареники
• Holubtsi (cabbage rolls) ~ Голубці
• Potato deruny (pancakes) ~ Картопляні Деруни

A single word to describe the fare – HEARTY… This food definitely fits with a cold weather (Ukraine and Edmonton alike). The starch with cheese and potatoes… wow… this was definitely a filling meal. The meal ended off with tour by George around the restaurant where he showed me the cultural art pieces that he has collected over the years. Because we had both read the “Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World’s Most Coveted Delicacy“, we discussed briefly the demise of the wonderful delicacy. I love family run restaurants that show off their cultural heritage. They are proud of who they are, where they come from and are always excited to share with you what they eat. I applaud Taste of Ukraine for adding diversity and cultural foodie exposure to our everyday lives.

Thinking of Going International?

Is your startup thinking of going global? Attracted by the possibility of conducting cross continent business or negotiating contracts with a foreign language translator?

Well, I was just speaking to a friend of mine today and his startup is looking to expand beyond the borders of USA. Because of my experience of working on two different geographical regions in the world at startups, he wanted to know my thoughts on when is the right time for a startup to go global.

Question 1 – Why go global?

Without a doubt, foreign markets are very exciting because of the huge potential revenue potential available. Markets such as China, Japan and the E.U. either boast of huge consumer markets or sizable enterprise customers. This is particularly important for the next few years with the concern of the US economy (for this blog, my assumption is that the startup is based in the US). In addition, with the fall in the US dollar, US goods will be cheaper for foreign markets to purchase and will drive revenues for a US based company. An excellent example is IBM – their last quarterly earnings increased by 24% because of successes in foreign markets.

Question 2 -Why not go global?

The first critical question here is will the cost of doing business overseas outweigh the return revenue? And often, it’s the cost that most companies underestimate. Here is a list of costs that I’ve learned to take note of when going international -

• Product cost – internationalization of product (e.g. unicode, architecting the product with language resource files, etc.)
• Product cost – localization (e.g. end user/admin UI translation, documentation translation)
• Product cost – certifications (e.g. hardware certifications for power or radio transmitters in different countries)
• Product cost – localized features (specific features that are needed to win in the region but are not used anywhere else)
• Selling cost – human resources (e.g. hiring a local team vs. shipping someone over from head office)
• Selling cost – localized marketing (e.g. what country specific marketing campaigns should be invested in)
• Services cost – support (e.g. compared to your primary market, some countries have a lower tolerance for problems and have a higher requirement for when they be addressed by)

The other aspect of the equation is the revenue piece – sales cycles of the same product are often different the moment you leave your primary market. For example, in countries that are centered on relationship selling, the sales cycles can be longer. Therefore, it is important to be patient when selling in these countries. During the early days, it is important to view them as the investment stage and have lower revenue expectations.

The second critical question here is do you have the ability to undertake another geographic market.

To answer this question, the following issues need to be addressed:

• How much more of your product do you still have to build for your primary market?
• How much of your primary market have you won and still need to invest into?
• How applicable is your solution to overseas markets? (i.e. is there as strong a need for your product as in your primary market)

When you’re opening a foreign market, you’re going to be diverting resources (money and people) to a different area. No army likes to fight a multi-front war. Likewise, with a startup, fighting a multi-front market war can be very draining to everyone if there’s still more work to be done in the primary market. For example, critical features needed to win in the foreign market will be prioritized lower in the backlog list if there is still a huge set of features needed in the primary market.

Question 3 – How to go global?

Once you’ve decided that the plan is to go international, the next question of implementation comes up. With it, are some common questions that are debated -

• Do we hire local representation or depend on a distributor/reseller?

Personally, I am a fan of having someone in country representing the company. However, I also recognize that in certain countries (e.g. Japan, China, etc.), it is required that you have a local company representing you.  That said, at the end of the day, the distributor/reseller’s resources are dedicated to them and not you. Therefore, to achieve your revenue success in the country, it is important to have a local resource to push your agenda and help direct sales activities back to you. In addition, in difficult customer situations, you want to make sure that your company is well represented at the table and jointly present a balanced story of what occurred.

• Distributor vs. Reseller… who should represent us?

In my opinion, if you are a cutting edge technology and opening a new product market, you need direct touch with the customer. As my old boss Dion told me once – resellers fulfill the market, they don’t build the market. Therefore, a distributor that has a direct sales force and carries a dedicated revenue number will have a advantage over one that does not. Creating extra layers of resellers will remove visibility into the opportunity and prevent you from having any impact over the deal. Net-net: Even if you are working with a distributor/reseller, your company needs to be close to the action.

• Master distributor vs. many resellers

In my opinion, when you’re first entering a foreign market, it’s important to have focus. Signing up an army of resellers will result in enablement havoc. Your attention will be constantly shifting from one party to another. What’s worse is that they’ll all be fighting to get a piece of the small beginning revenues – dealing with channel conflict during the early beginnings is very unnecessary. So, with “focus” in mind, my vote goes to master distributor.
Question 4 – Can I change my mind after I go in?

My experience is that once you’re in and have signed customers, it’s very, very, very, very difficult to say “we’re pulling out”. The second round of restart will be extremely difficult because you have left with a negative impression on the market. Certain markets (such as Asia) are extremely sensitive about this. I had a reseller tell me that one of my competitors will never be able to re-enter the market because they had abandoned customers and partners. In summary – if you’re going in, make sure that you’re 100% dedicated to it.

So, my ideal situation to enter into a foreign country is as follows:

• Single master distributor
• 18 – 24 months exclusivity with pre-paid royalties tied to that (can be renewed after contract expires)
• Distributor has an active sales force that can sell directly to customers
• Active sales force carries a dedicated revenue number for your product
• In-country resource
• Market Development Fund – derived from a percentage of sell through or bookings. Marketing budget targets are fixed and co-shared between the partner.

In the early days, a company needs a partner to build the market and the relationship must be structured as such from the beginning.

Wow… what a week for hard disk encryption…

Hard disk encryption has been a quick-fix solution to ensure that a computer user’s sensitive information is not accessible. A solution like this provided companies a means to pro-actively address the public’s concerns that private information was being stolen. A company has even put together an online tool to show the financial damage a company can receive upon a data leak incident.

Unfortunately, recent research from Princeton University has uncovered a way by which the root key used to encrypt the hard disk can be uncovered very easily. It’s quite a simple idea that takes advantage of the fact that contents stored in DRAM takes time to be completely lost from memory. By exploiting the small window of time, an attacker can copy the contents that are stored in memory. Because the root key needed to decrypt the protected hard drive is often stored in memory, this newly validated attack can be used to crack the security.

Below is a video that describes in more detail about the attack:

So, why is this attack important?

Well, for starters, it reminds all of us that no security is 100% unbreakable. Security is an ongoing arms race whereby there will be new attacks and new defenses. Even for the key bit length obsessed person would have to admit that at some point in time, increased computation power will allow brute force attacks to be successful. [i.e. there will always be opportunities for new security companies]
Secondly, securing the data containers are not good enough. Hard drive encryption provides you with an secured box that you can put your data into. Once the box is compromised, all of your data immediately becomes accessible. Instead, encryption and security that is of higher value should be built into the application or content itself. Therefore, if there is data that is really sensitive, encrypt the files, emails and column specific data. That way, no matter where the data gets moved to, the information always remain protected. In addition, a compromise of one piece of data does not equate to the compromise of all data (although, this does depend on the encryption methodology you use). [i.e. container encryption is needed but will be a commodity over time; high value encryption integrates with the application and data]

Don’t get my wrong, I’m not saying the hard drive encryption is not useful. Quite the contrary, I’m looking forward to the day that Seagate and other hard drive manufacturers have hard drive encryption automatically built in so that it becomes an expected feature and free. Instead, what I’m advocating is that for the addition of application based encryption. That way, even if some one takes a “common duster spray can” to my laptop computer, I can still feel safe.

Beerfest – San Mateo Style

There’s no better way to end President’s Day weekend then with tasty grilled meats and gorgeous beer. Without a doubt, cooked meat from my good buddy Tony Dorie’s BBQ grill is absolutely beautiful. Yesterday, Tony and I re-created a usual crowd favorite of grilled skirt steak. The skirt steak was marinated with Tony’s home made BBQ dry rub and then smothered with maple syrup from Quebec, Canada – a testimony to great things that can be created from US-Canada cooperation.

But enough about grilled meat, let’s turn our attention to the beers that were served yesterday night (as we watched Beerfest [scene from the movie below] and foodie shows hosted by the other famous Tony).

• La Fin du Monde from Unibroue – This Belgian style triple fermented beer is so rich with flavor (it’s also rich with alcohol – 9%). It’s an incredible beer from Quebec, Canada that starts off a little tart on the palate and then ends off with a gorgeous toasty finish. La Fin du Monde (French for “The End of the World”) is named to commemorate the early European explorers who believed they had reached the end of the world when they discovered the Americas.

• Éphémère from Unibroue – This is a really fun beer to drink. The crisp, green apple flavor gives the drinker a refreshed feeling after the first taste. This light fruit beer (5.5%) was a nice break from the other dark beers that I bought.

• La Terrible from Unibroue – Terrible this is definitely not… This is a Belgian style dark ale that is very, very, very rich. I tasted toasted malt and spice in the creamy body. Terrible also has a 10.5% alcohol level and…. a shelf life of 10 years??? Because of the lees are bottled with the beer, it allow Unibroue beer to continue fermenting if kept in the dark in unrefrigerated. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to keep a bottle in my house for longer than 12 hours…

• Red Strip from Desnoes & Geddes Limited – Since Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations was featuring Jamaica, it was appropriate that we toasted each other during the show with Red Stripe. Unfortunately, Red Stripe ranked lowest on my list from yesterday night’s beerfest. It was, well… weak in flavor. But, to be able to drink Red Strip together with Bourdain on TV… beautiful…

• Triple Bock from Sam Adams – WOW!!! This is definitely not your typical beer – it tasted more like a sherry. Made with malted barley, noble hops, yeast and maple syrup, this thick syrupy concoction is aged for several months in oak whiskey barrels. At 17% alcohol content, this is a super intense beer that should be slowly savored at the end of the meal. The best part of this beer can be found on the Sam Adam’s website -“Due to legal restrictions, Samuel Adams® Triple Bock® can not be sold in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia.”Ah… lovely California… thank you for your liberal beliefs…

From our No Reservations – Red Strip experience, I’ve discovered a new way to appreciate Bourdain’s shows. While watching the featured country, drink the local brew! It’d work great for episodes such as Germany or France. However, I’m not sure that Masato (human-spit-fermented-yucca-liquor) from Peru is readily available at my neighborhood BevMo. *whew*