ZAY Blog

At the beginning of every single term, one thing that I will definitely do is to make a trip to the office of the campus newspaper and ask for a refund.

Not that I am short of the 3.50 dollars, and not that I think it is nice to chat with the cold-faced person who treated me no better than some rats, but I still make the trip every term.

And the reason is because in my opinion, the campus newspaper simply has a couple of students looking for a good reference but who are actually too lazy to understand about this world.

Therefore, it is not surprising that in one of the recent editions of the campus newspaper, someone threw strong support behind Stephen Harper, who claimed that:

“(Canadians) don’t want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.”

And the article simply went on and on about the presumed torturing of people who disagreed with the Chinese government, and the presumed abuse of people who wants to topple CCP.

First, I have to say that I am ashamed. As a Chinese, I am ashamed to see that some of the people in my country, for some very selfish reasons, to make insulting remarks about the Chinese government.

If you can read Chinese, and if you happened to go to one of the more prominent Internet forums in the Chinese communities in North America, you would inevitably find tonnes of posts asking how would it is possible to apply for refugee status in Canada or US.

And if you start to think that those people are a group of persecuted victims by the communist regimes, nothing could be more wrong than that.

In fact, they are a group of people who are either not talented enough, or not hardworking enough to earn a decent job in Canada or US and to fulfill the criteria to immigrate to these two countries, or who are just simply too lazy to go through the regular route of immigration.

These people are not wanted and welcomed in China, but Canada tend to take them with high regards, because it is simply another opportunity to stir the sentiment of the presumed Chinese human rights record.

When I was walking to my work everyday last summer in downtown Toronto, I actually saw some ladies in their 60s, who did not speak English properly, trying really hard to give the anti-China newspaper to the passers-by. Remind you, those people who are exactly brought up by the Chinese government, the government did not mistreat them, and the government was actually kind enough to let them see the world, and they are holding newspapers that is attacking the very government that helped them to survive for 50 or 60 years in their life, unharmed and safe.

And then it was the Celil case, who is no more than another loser trying to topple the Chinese government after acquired a Canadian citizenship through the generous refugee program.

I do believe the organization that he was involved in: East Turkestan Liberation Organization (ETLO), the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the World Uyghur Youth Congress (WUYC) and the East Turkestan Information Centre (ETIC), are declared as terrorists. And almost every single Chinese, regardless of the Han Chinese or the Uyghur Chinese, agrees that they are the terrorist from any perspective. They explode bombs in buses, and are well-armed to fight against the People’s Liberation Army and to kill the soldiers of the government. And I am not simply hear this from the government newspapers or TV stations.

To my fellow Canadian friends, does that remind you of the Quebec sovereignty movement in the 70s? How did the almighty Canadians treat them?

Oh, by the way, did I mention that during the so-called Tiananmen Square massacre, all students leaders eventually received their US citizenship and become professional authors to anti-Chinese publications? Did I mention that those students leaders were spotted eating in a small restaurant, which was considered as a luxury in 1989, while their fellow schoolmates are starving?

And these are the people that the Canadian and US government are offering sympathy to.

Please, if you do not know anything about the Chinese government and the Chinese history, and just want to hide in your campus newspaper office to earn some positive remarks, write anything you want, but don’t insult my country.

By the way, I am by no means affiliated with the CPP, and I’ve been exposed to western media since I was 13. I do not think everything with the CPP is perfect, and I think I’ve been discussing this issue with many people, but yet, in my entire life, I have not suffered from any so-called persecution that the western media has portrayed.

Probably the biggest news in the IT industry is the recent takeover proposal of Microsoft to Yahoo!.

Yahoo!, not surprisingly, rejected the offer from Microsoft on Monday, and it seems that they have engaged in active discussions with News Group to prevent a hostile takeover from Microsoft.

It actually reminded me of a Chinese movie that I’ve just watched last weekend.

In the movie, a lady quarrelled with her husband and moved out, and she regretted later on. In order to win her husband back, she actually asked a colleague of her who have absolutely no interest in her, to pretend to be her new boyfriend and showed off in front of her husband. Eventually, her husband got jealous and they two become a happy family again.

I am pretty sure that is not the only movie that talked about a scenario like that, in fact, it is pretty typical in many movies that I’ve watched. And right now, this is analogous to the takeover battle between the largest IT enterprises in the world.

Yahoo! was once the best search engine in the world, and ten years ago, many Internet-savvy users (such as myself), dig stuff that we need from Yahoo!. Unfortunately, Yahoo! eventually lost its focus, and when it finally, after many acquisitions and attempts to figure out what this company should do, it it already far behind the new born Google.

As it was mentioned by many information sources, the largest problem with Yahoo! is on its corporate culture, where, just like many other MNCs, does not really foster a sense of creativity. Many wonderful ideas were buried in the bureaucracy, and the company itself has not realized the fact that putting eggs into too many baskets is just as bad as putting all eggs in one basket.

On the other hand, the reason why Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world is pretty much because of the fact the Microsoft enjoys a certain degree of monopoly (although everyone in Microsoft would deny that, but how about like 80% of all PCs sold worldwide have Windows in them?) in the operating system and productivity suite. For years, despite the rise of many companies whose unwritten ambition is to take down Microsoft, no one could done that.

Not until Google, who has a search engine algorithm that even other big players in the industry admit that it is at least “one decade ahead of us”, and who have been very successful in providing the GMail services, online productivity suite as Google Docs, Google Spreadsheet and Google Presentation, and with the birth of the Android platform, it is directly putting itself into challenges with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.

However, Yahoo! is still the second most used search engines in the world with five million Yahoo! accounts, and Microsoft still enjoys the de-facto monopoly in the operating systems.

And I do not think it takes too long for both Steve Ballmer and Jerry Yang to figure that the only way to survive is to be able to combine their strength together.

However, no one wants to sell themselves cheap, and particularly for companies like Yahoo!, who still carries the memory of their glorious past. On the other hand, Microsoft is more like a 30-year-old man who is pursuing a 50-year-old woman, no disrespect, but I think Microsoft will still consider every single penny it pays on top of the 31 dollars per share it offered would be too much for the marriage.

News Group is by no means interested in Yahoo!, although it has acquired companies such as MySpace and so on, because it does not make any sense for Rupert Murdoch to step in the hot battle zone between Microsoft and Google at this point of time, when he does not have the expertise nor the experience after the purchasing Yahoo!.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced the big senior management shuffling to get ready to take over, and rumours is that Microsoft is ready to go again with another proposal of about 35 per share.

So, time for Micro-hoo? Or Ya-soft?

Recently, I’ve been following very closely with the case of Societe Generale and now-infamous trader Jerome Kerviel, who is been blamed for causing close to 5 billion Euros of loss as a result of trading on futures contact.

I was amazed, honestly, by the fact that he was able to, single-handedly (although this is being disputed at the time this article is written), build more than 50 billion Euros position within a couple of years, supposedly went unnoticed.

And he actually made some profit (about 1.4 billion Euros) before taking the big hit due to the recent recession of World economy.

And what he did was strikingly similar to what George Soros, the greatest hedging fund manager and the man who broke the Bank of England, did, back in 1992.. (Well, minus the part of computer hacking and so on).

Both were trading futures contracts, both spotted an arbitrage opportunity that others would probably think that was insane, both were playing around with the tiny margin of exchange rates, and both were building positions that were multiple times of their limit (Soros borrowed most of the 10 billion he used to short sale Lira and Pounds, among several positions that he has hedged against other currencies).

The only difference is that back in 1992, risk management was very little known and since Soros was the boss, he was allowed to take such a risky move.

And George Soros made the right bet, and earned a billion in 24 hours, but the unfortunate Jerome Kerviel did not, and lost about 5 billions.

And George Soros became the most successful fund manager in the world, and Jerome Kerviel become the newest criminal and possibly will be condemned for the rest of his life.

As we all know, large profit will only come as a result of large risk, and from the investors perspective, the higher the profit, the better.

If that were to be the case, why should we hate Jerome Kerviel while we worship (to a certain extent) George Soros?

And the bigger question is: did we, in the midst all the regulations and risk control processes, accidentally “kill” many more potential risk-takers who could potentially become the next most successful fund manager?

To me, Jerome Kerviel is just an unfortunate genius, who, perhaps should be born 20 years earlier.