eddie tsai

longpants: junglecents: mustache tie clip I just bought this....

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:12:22 -0400

junglecents:

mustache tie clip

I just bought this. Saw it, had to have it, looked it up on the internet and bought it. Found at http://www.tsaiclip.com/.

"i hate mosquitoes"

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:42:10 -0400

“i hate mosquitoes”

My Heart is so Jetlagged

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 03:54:57 -0400

22 hours till Jenn lands in Nice. I have a 5 hour drive ahead of me. Staying in a Marriott Courtyard by the Toulouse airport, these points sure come in handy. Now the question is whether I spend the night at the airport, or would the parking cost trump that of a cheap hotel. Can’t seem to reach my French host family which I guess isn’t the best sign.

By the way, Toulouse is beautiful - except it turns into a ghost town after 8pm on a Friday night. People seem to drink their dinners… Which I learned starts at 7:30p. Another useful lesson was the difference between restaurant (full quality service), bistro (small with untrained services, dishes scribbled on chalkboards with standard dishes), cafe (coffee, booze, moulds frites and croquet monsieurs), bouchon (pig and duck), brasserie (wine), salon (like a US cafe), and bar (same).

My new home, Chateau Fleury

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:30:50 -0400

My new home, Chateau Fleury

"Be water my friend."

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:17:00 -0400

“Be water my friend.”

- Bruce Lee (according to a Zara t-shirt found in San Sebastian)

Zorriolo Beach - San Sebastian, Spain

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 05:09:05 -0400

Zorriolo Beach - San Sebastian, Spain

Detour into Spain

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 05:08:00 -0400

As the sun slowly dips into the ocean and the crowds are migrating from the sand to the bars, I can still clearly see the outline of Christ overlooking the city at 9:30pm. Unlike the famous Redeemer looking over Rio de Janeiro welcoming guests with open arms, this Christ stands above a castle praying quietly over thousands of topless sunbathers.

I write this while sitting on Zorriolo beach, a surfer paradise in San Sebastian. I’ve decided that I’m really too old for hostels now and have been fortunate to find a place to stay at an apartment owned by a surf instructor, literally living across the beach. My private instruction with in the ocean helped me correct some of the bad habits I carried from my previous experience in Biarritz - spread wide after the jump, arch up before catching the wave, and stare into the distance. The feeling is nostalgic of old time travel films, where the screens become wavy like the motion of the ocean and coasting/warping toward an idyllic ancient town with so much history. Then I lose balance, fall overboard, swallow some sand, and arrive amongst the beautiful Basque people frolicking on the beach.

Biarritz is the Ritz

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:00:00 -0400

It’s not usual I start the day after noon but after my 1,000km/8hr drive from Nice to Biarritz, I decided to reward myself with some extra shut eye. My first stop was the beach, where else? I looked for the surf school that my hostel recommended (and offered discounts to) and was able to catch the last class of the day. My classmates were 4 French girls, 2 sets of twins if you can imagine that. With my board in hand marching excitedly toward the waves, I barely noticed that the topless women on the beach were very beautiful, unlike those I’ve encountered in previous experiences.

I learned fairly fast on my beginner’s foam longboard. I have previously taken courses at Newport Beach so the basics came naturally - the weather was beautiful and the ocean had a clean salty taste. I came back very tired and treated myself to some canard (duck) and a glass of wine in the city centre. The next day I would discover the Basque sandwich comprised of nothing but bacon and fries stuffed in French bread. I’ve decided to cut my week trip in Biarritz short and spend some time in Spain - I wasn’t really improving in French and the costs were getting out of control.

Le Grande Plage Beach - Biarritz, France

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:03:00 -0400

Le Grande Plage Beach - Biarritz, France

Kickstarter Epic Win!

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 05:04:00 -0400

I can’t tell you how excited and relieved I am that we reached our $3,000 funding goal in 30 days. There were a lull during the middle that I was not sure I if we could recover from. Biggest lessons I learned in marketing the moustache tie clip? Publicity needs to be personal. We had to reach out to credible people who want to tell their friends about our clips. Now that the tie clip “project” is finished, we will have to package/ship out a 100 clips before Jennifer leaves for France and figure out our future marketing plan with business post-Kickstarter.

Lambo Reventon (edit: LP640?) Parked At Casino - Monte Carlo,...

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 10:00:00 -0400

Lambo Reventon (edit: LP640?) Parked At Casino - Monte Carlo, Monaco

Monaco is Nice

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 04:54:00 -0400

Monaco is a very difficult country to drive given its cliffside environment - tight passageways, hairpin turns, and blind hills. After viewing the 100th Ferrari/Lamborghini/Maserati/Bentley F1 wannabe pass by I started to hardly noticed. The only car still in my memory is the matte black stealth Lamborghini Reventon (€1M). That car was a beauty and the poor car was surrounded by tourists and the car was planted with handprints. A few minutes later the Monte Carlo casino employee had to set a sign that said please do not touch the car in 3 languages. More money more problems… Or as a colleague once put it, “rich white guy problems.”

Finding warmth in Cote D'Azure

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 11:00:00 -0400

After spending two days of driving and coming very close to reliving my homeless night in Lyon story 6 years ago, I have arrived in Nice… Only to find that the friends I were to meet up were nowhere to be seen on the French Riviera, well at least till I wandered around the city for 2 hours, bumping into these ladies in their “Sunday’s best” hats. It was a bit moment watching them go parasailing a few hours later coming out with battle wounds. Good news is that we have a few weekend trips planned together, including Oktoberfest in Munich.

This would be my first in-depth trip to Nice, very different then my previous backpack and run experience. The city has grown on me now that I have discovered the old town and some nice restaurants. I still cannot comprehend why people like the rocky beach though.

"When there’s a burning in your heart And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were..."

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:39:00 -0400

“When there’s a burning in your heart
And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born
Then it’s time to go
And define your destination
There’s so many different places to call home”

- Death Cab for Cute - You Are a Tourist

Shiny FoundersCard Invitation

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 16:49:00 -0400

FoundersCard is a members-only community for leading entrepreneurs and innovators. Our members are entitled to unprecedented rates and benefits from premier travel, lifestyle, and business brands as well as access to invitation-only networking events.

I received an exclusive invitation to a passport to the entrepreneurial lifestyle. It reminds me of the time I discovered the American Express Black Card and spent a few Google searches trying to discover how I could possess such prestige.

The FoundersCard almost validates my transitionto entrepreneurship, and even perhaps the success of the Moustache Tie Clip Project. It’s quite excessive; without a serious expense account (a la gdifc) I may be missing out on some of the baller benefits with NetJets and Maverick Business Adventures. There are, however, many practical benefits for startups including major discounts with Fedex (25-50% off, Shopify (our Tsaiclip host), and the occasional chiq hotels (The Standard, W, and Ace). Most of the discounts seem to be New York-centric, which really makes it a shame that I’ll be leaving for Paris in a few days. With a $495 annual fee and $65 initiation fee it isn’t the easiest pill to swallow for a start-up, but I will make sure to splurge on all the local benefits if end up in the Wharton exchange for INSEAD P4.

Hope the card has a nice ring to it when I drop it on the VIP counter - well actually I’m going to hold off until I find more Euro/Asia uses for it.

Received my MBA

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:39:00 -0400

Just purchased my MBA, not the 57,000 EUR tuition, but the svelte Apple MacBook Air. Haven’t had my own computer in sometime. Alas, I’ll miss the Lenovo X220, it was like the oddly heavy stumpy kid I lugged around with me through the crowded Rockefeller Center area - its packed in a FedEx box ready to fly to New Jersey (god help it).

It’s really odd to see the MBA become the lowest end notebook that Apple offers - and with it’s push to remove all physical media it really is making waves. Installing an instance of Windows 7 is a little more annoying without drives though. Which brings me to the new Lion OS. All the new features seem to push the Mac into the iOS territory - the Launchpad, the dragging gestures, and the fullscreen modes. Using a glass trackpad, is like using an iPad, sometimes there’s just a little bit more friction/stickiness that just makes smooth cursor movements difficult.

Overall I give the new OS thumbs-up, but it does have too many ways to reach an app. There’s at least 3 (gesture, F4, task bar) or more ways to access LaunchPad, of which is just another way to launch an app (taskbar, spotlight, applications folder). A lot of this design feels really redundant, but I guess more options is better than being stuck with only one. Still undecided if it’s better to use the MBA or the iPad 2 to take notes. I’m seriously becoming an Apple fanboy, but don’t have the iPhone right now to complete the trifecta. Being an owner of AAPL shares has its perks, also.

For those going to INSEAD - student discounts in the US only apply for US schools. I gave them my invite letter and a the INSEAD / Wharton partnership website and said that I did not have an ID yet but am a student of the University of Pennsylvania. Worked like a charm - but buying one in Hong Kong is still significantly cheaper (damn tax).

Au Revoir

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

I am very grateful to those that I have worked with at Capgemini – it’s been over five years and I’ve learned so much playing the role of mentee and hopefully have parted some wisdom as a mentor here. It’s been a wild ride and I want to thank everyone for the amazing experience.

Myself and Jennifer launched a project on Kickstarter to create...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:35:00 -0400

Myself and Jennifer launched a project on Kickstarter to create Moustache Tie Clips to the world. It’s kind of insane that we embarked on this mission but I think its taught us a lot about ‘starting up’ and designing a product from inception to creating actual product, and then putting it to market. Check it out at www.tsaiclip.com

"Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life..."

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 07:24:00 -0400

“Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect.”

- Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich)

Defining a Year

Thu, 05 May 2011 22:49:00 -0400

It’s amazing how long I’ve had INSEAD on my mind. I’ve attended no less than 3 information sessions in New York before finally biting the bullet and applying. It wasn’t as if I was just waiting though - I was working on my resume, building and refining it to this point where I now have work experience across 9 countries in diverse industries. Setting up the interviews while working in Hong Kong was probably a good move as it showed some initiative of wanting to be in an international environment.

So 10 months, and approximately $8,000 USD tuition for each of those months. I’ve met some of the students accepted in New York for the occasional drinks / dinner and if this is any indication of the future then I will likely spend twice that in travel, dining, chateaus, etc. I’m going to lay it out here and declare that I am going in with the intention of coming out an entrepreneur in an emerging market - some may say that’s vague/generic but we’ll see a year later if this is still my direction.

Still haven’t finalized my campus decisions - Fontainebleau for P1, P2… maybe P3? Or Singapore P3? Wharton P4? Graduate in Singapore?