[I_Am_Experienced] Coffee - A small slice of discovery.

Roasting - Flavour & aroma!

All of the flavour and aroma that we enjoy in coffee is created by the roasting process.
Green coffee beans are heated to between 180ºC and 240ºC for 8 to 15  minutes,  depending on the degree of roast required. The heating process precipitates the release of caffeol, or coffee oil, the essence of coffee that we enjoy in the cup.

Roasting is one part art, one part science, and several parts judgment. Too much heat and the beans are roasted too dark and too much caffeol is burnt; not enough and the caffeol is not precipitated. In industrial quantities, the process is carefully controlled, but in smaller quantities, it is down to individual judgement. The higher the roast, the more uniform the resulting flavour.

Flavour: the distinctive quality of a particular food

Aroma: a distintive and typically pleasant smell

 (The image is from http://www.sauvieislandcoffee.com/roasting.html)

How good a cup of espresso?

Good espresso is expensive to make because in order to extract the greatest amount of flavour from the coffee, a high level of pressure is required and thus a high specification machine. 

Yet when making espresso, it is important not to over-extract the coffee, which means the machine should be switched off sooner, rather than later. While the coffee is still coming out as a golden brown liquid, it is perfect. This liquid is the crema, that lies on top of the black coffee underneath. The crema will disappear a few minutes after the coffee is made, but in those few minutes it will tell you everything about the quality of the espresso. Too light, or too thick or too thin: all mean that the espresso is sub standard.

 (The image is from http://whipup.net/2006/06/21/flickr-ing-espresso-art/)

How good a cup of cappuccino?

Espresso is the foundation of cappuccino; it is the coffee upon which a luxuriant structure of frothed milk is ladled and poured.

It is essential that the cups are warm when the milk is poured in or the froth will deflate. They are normally stored upsidedown on top of the espresso machine. The combination of frothed and steamed milk is then poured and ladled onto the coffee in the cup, gently as though folding it in. The small amount of remaining milk is also poured in to realize the perfect cappuccino.

Forthed: formed by a rising or overflowing mass of small bubbles

(The image is from http://boncafevn.com/eng/recipes.html)

[The information is from http://www.ico.org/]

[I_Am_Experienced] Bàn hai cái sự đời!

   Lủng lẳng bàn cái sự đời
   Ngắm nga ngó nghía rõ là rất hay

Sự đời 1: Muốn làm cái mà người ta làm được
Cái sự đời này rất hay, hay ở chỗ là cho người ta một động lực để học tập, làm việc và để sống. Nhưng cũng khổ, khổ ở chỗ là làm người ta mặc cảm và tự ti, trong lòng cứ băn khoăn không biết làm thế nào để đạt được. Đã đọc "Don't get mad. Get wise", tác giả bàn cái sự đời này giống như là món nợ thứ hai giữa mình và người khác và thực tế là kẻ thù lại chính là bản thân mình: cứ nghĩ sâu xa hóa ra lại hại chính mình.

Mấy ngày nay tôi lại bị bệnh này. Ngồi cứ ngó long ngong, vớ va vớ vẩn với mớ bòng bong rồi làm những chuyện thiệt tình là rất mong lung. Bệnh này phải được trị bằng cách đọc sách để thấy thế giới này thật lắm mênh mông, mình có những ưu điểm trời cho mà người khác không có. Một phút buồn, cộng 2 phút tự hào và 5 phút tự mỉm cười.

Sự đời 2: Mối quan hệ và tình bạn
Người ta cứ cố gắng tạo ra nhiều mối quan hệ và vô hình chung thành ra "chẳng có bạn". Cái sự đời này lại liên quan đến chuyện "quan hệ lợi ích" và xuất hiện nhiều trong các mối làm ăn và kinh doanh. Tôi gọi nó là "mối quan hệ". Còn tình bạn thì khác, số này ít hơn nhưng quan trọng, "dễ thương" hơn và khó xử hơn. Tạm gác những chuyện lùm xùm, bỏ qua mấy chuyện rắc rối, cứ bàn cái sự trong sáng của tình bạn: có thể chia sẻ, hiểu nhau và quan tâm nhau. Cái này thì "mối quan hệ" chẳng làm được.

Dạo này bị "mối quan hệ" làm cho trầm trọng dù rằng rất chú ý đến tình bạn. Thôi thì cứ chờ sung rụng, được không? Nghĩa là chờ tình bạn đến đấy. Bỏ nắng, phủ mưa, tầm tang một giấc mơ trưa thuở nào?

[I_Am_Free] Ba mươi, ba mốt và hai mươi sáu

     Hai tuần thức đêm với Roland Garros, hồi hợp từng đường bóng, cháy lòng với những pha giao bóng ăn điểm trực tiếp và vỡ òa với những game đấu trường sức.

     Note này tôi viết về Francesca Schiavone, một người hùng về ý chí và bản lĩnh. Trước khi vào giải đấu các chuyên gia họ nói gì nhỉ: Với cái tuổi 31 thì Schiavone khó có thể nào lọt được vào vòng bốn chứ đừng nói đến là bảo vệ thành công ngôi vô địch Roland Garros. Nhưng với tôi thì tôi chẳng tin và bình luận này. Với cái tuổi 31, và đặc biệt với môn tennis, người ta cho rằng đã qua thời. Nhưng chính Schiavone đã chứng minh điều ngược lại và "liếc mắc" một cái với "Gừng càng già càng cay nhá". Nhìn Schiavone giao bóng vào những điểm góc, lên lưới sắc bén và đánh trường sức tán về hai gốc mới thấy được nghị lực phi thường của chị. Xem chị thi đấu tôi cứ nghĩ tới ca sĩ Phương Thanh nhà mình: cháy hết mình cứ như đây là trận cuối cùng của mình vậy. Và giờ đây vào ngày hôm nay chị ngang nhiên bước vào trận chung kết với Li Na và trở thành nữ vận động viên quần vợt lọt đến 2 trận chung kết Grand Slam với cái tuổi "băm" của mình. 

    Note này tôi cũng viết về Roger Federer. Trước giải đấu người ta cũng không tin rằng anh sẽ được vào chơi trận chung kết. Với sức bật mạnh mẽ từ đầu năm, Djokovick đã thắng liên tục 42 trận và anh bước vào trận bán kết gặp Federer với tư thế của kèo trên và nếu thắng anh sẽ vượt qua Nadal để lên ngôi vương năm nay, cái mà anh mơ ước từ nhỏ. Cái tuổi 30 của Federer làm người ta ngờ vực và dĩ nhiên ở kèo dưới. Cũng như Schiavone, người ta không nghĩ là anh ta sẽ vượt qua Djokovick. Set đấu thứ nhất: 7-6 nghiêng về Federer, rồi 6-3 mà phần thắng cũng về Federer. Tôi nghĩ trong đầu lúc này: các nhà cái đặt cược đang đau đầu lắm đây. Set thứ ba Djokovick thắng lại 6-3. Và set thứ tư là một trận đấu nghẹt thở. Cú giao bóng ăn điểm trực tiếp của Federer đã đưa anh vào trận chung kết với một trận thắng rực rỡ. Cái tuổi già không phải là tất cả.

   Note này tôi cũng viết về tôi. Nhiều lần lắm tôi nghĩ cái tuổi 26 của mình sẽ là một trở ngại để đi những con đường mới mẻ, sẽ khó để có thể vượt qua những bạn trẻ hơn. Nhưng cũng như Schiavone và Federer, dù so sánh có hơi khập khiễng, tôi vẫn tin rằng mình sẽ thực hiện được những gì mình suy nghĩ. Tôi thấy tự tin hơn hẵn.

   31 chưa phải là già.... 30 còn đang ở đỉnh cao... và 26 vẫn tràn đầy năng lượng và tiến tới.

[I_Am_Special] Cupcake project _-_ __ _-_

That's is my Cupcake project which was presented in the final presentation of Entreprenuership class!

[I_Am_Experienced] From Zero to Hero!

MAX LEVCHIN and PAYPAL

    Why did Max Levchin draw my attention to PayPal’s success? Mostly accidentally, he and I have the same patience to standardize innovatively the world. Probably I give prominence to myself over-self-confidently, but at least that is my emotion after doing careful analysis. I am thinking of online marketing, whereas he thought of financial security. I wish to standardize the world of online advertising by formalizing the method of communication among advertising participants, while he did change the world by safe online payment. He was of sustainable success, and I have not been so far. Consequently, discovering Max Levchin’s work is of great importance due to the fact that it is going to inspire me sooner or later. It is extremely the countless number of interviews with Max Levchin, but I would like to look at him into the slices of an entrepreneur’s principles.

    The sentence, “PayPal went to public in early 2002 and was acquired later that year by eBay for $1.5 billion”, has become well known because of being not only the most meaningful event but also the telling period of PayPal. Nevertheless, traveling back 1998 to observe the very first day of PayPal, Max Levchin illuminated strongly the first principle of entrepreneurship: starting with our means.

    Is Max Levchin a successful entrepreneur? This is absolutely right but not sufficiently because a security person is who he was. Max Levchin received the bachelor’s degree in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997 and what he wanted to do was crypto and security [1, p.8] upon which PayPal was born relying. In the other side, creating the first security software on Palm Pilot [1, p.9] and finding out his destiny to implement crypto on handheld device [1, p.9] demonstrates that Max Levchin started with what he knew the most: crypto algorithm. Additionally, Max Levchin did know that Peter Thiel, who was the one of the most influential co-founder of PayPal, was a hedge fund manager [1, p.8]. By the undeniably victorious career, Max Levchin made the principle, being means-driven rather than goal-driven, more transparent.

    Developing product is the most desirable curiosity in PayPal history, in the sense that the principle of transformation, which is adopting a unique set of decision-marking strategies, is expressed wonderfully. The very first product on which Max Levchin concentrated initially was a crypt library that he early realized its lack of demand. Afterwards, Max Levchin continued to do exaptation, a type of transformation, in the means of which the product was transformed to a wallet application for new customers who used handheld devices instead of software developers before [1, p.10]. The next iteration, cryptographically secure IOU note [1, p.10], was initially and enormously meaningful to PayPal’s success, which Max Levchin did reweighting type of transformation. Furthermore, deleting/supplementing type of transformation was demonstrated in the challengeable decisions, which was to kill handheld version and go with web version, forming PayPal today.

    Starting with our means and transforming our product is wasteful without people opening the opportunities, creating the products, and maintain business organization inasmuch as the principle of forming partnership is a necessary and inevitable step to go up victory ladder. PayPal is a striking example. Peter Thiel and Max Levchin not only worked together for the very first idea, but also made a commitment that Peter was CEO and Max was CTO [1, p.9]. Attempting to have a good cofounder was Max Levchin’s advice for young programmer [1, p.18]. Moreover, he definitely affirmed that Peter Thiel was the reason of PayPal’s success [1, p.18]. In addition, in order of fixing fraud problem, the most competitive feature of PayPal, Max Levchin convinced a student, Bob, to drop out of Stanford for a year and work with him [1, p.13]. As Max Levchin said: “Different people taught me different things” [1, p.18], building partnership is to drive the future.

    From the point of view of an computer-science researcher, I unavoidably love Max Levchin’s argument that security is not in any sort of a sense of anti-hacking defensive but just security in a wider sense: risk assessment. From the perspective of entrepreneurs, starting with means, transforming product, and forming partnership are essential to build up an outstanding business. Are these always-powerful foundations? The answer is “Who knows?”. Nonetheless, at least and for the most part, the case of PayPal and Max Levchin demonstrated them strongly. Experience is substantive but not enough. Therefore, let’s discover by ourselves based on these principles in order that when to be asked “Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?”, then like Max Levchin, we will answer “No”.

[From the final assignment of Entreprenuership course] 

(The image is from venturebeat.files.wordpress.com)

Reference

[1] Founder at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days, Apress Media LLC, 2007

[I_Am_Experienced] “JARS OF BALLS” – AN ATTEMP TO INDENTIFY ENTREPRENEURS

    “Do you want to become an extraordinary businessman? Let’s play an easy game, “Jars of Balls”, showing who you are and how to make this expectation come true”. That’s an extremely impressive story that I am really excited about after finishing the 1^st part of Effectual Entrepreneurship. Contradictorily and surprisingly, the interesting insights behind that story tell us the primary natures of an entrepreneur. You, like me before, may fall into a questionable space. However, let’s discover the story because the game has just begun.

    Three are three jars: the one having an equal number of red balls and green ball, the another containing balls with unknown number of red balls, and the last one without any available information. The player wins if picking as many red balls as possible. Let’s image the game in terms of the fighting business environment: You, a business starter, are standing at the point of jumping into the one of three markets: predictable, risky or unknowable. Each of them is a different edge.

    Prediction is safe but boring. Most of us are going to pickup the first jar because there are exactly red balls. Undoubtedly, this choice is the safest due to predictable situation. Why do I have to consider the others? The game ends, yet the transparent market that kills creativity limits the choice. With the 2^nd biggest coffee producers in the world, most of business starters in Vietnam want to begin their career by building a coffee shop. They have an assurance that their business is acceptable in that market. Nevertheless, by the bomb of emerging coffee shops in Vietnam, the waves in the red ocean[1] pull them into the unsound competitive war. Therefore, should they choose the second jar?

    That’s a joke if you don’t think entrepreneurs are risk-takers. If choosing the second jar containing balls, you overcome the game mathematically, analytically, and controllably. Relying upon the existing historical data, trials, or errors, decision-making under risk involves estimating likely changes, calculating the possibility of outcome, and plan proactive actions. I had disagreed with the argument that entrepreneurs do work on controlling risk much. Instead, they accept risk as a given and work on controlling the returns, and assume personal responsibility for influencing outcome. Is it useless to predict the risk always happing? Entrepreneurs are outcome influencers in the levels of risk rather than risk-takers.

    “How do I control a future I cannot predict” is the unknowable game of entrepreneurs. Uncertainty in the third jar is not only unknown but also unknowable. It becomes inspirable, challengeable, movable, flexible and curious. Entrepreneurs play an unpredictable game and have the great possible of failure, don’t they? Are they heroes or stupid guys? In the blue ocean[2], they must as smart as possible to discover their right paths. They are not heroes but future controllers. They are not stupid guys but who challenge loss and failure. “Uncertainty is at the heart of real value in entrepreneurial opportunity” is what the entire story’s about.

    In conclusion, it’s insufficient to recognize the whole principles of entrepreneurship with few words. “Jars of Balls” illuminates the pivotal signs of an entrepreneur: extraordinary forecaster, future controller, and outcome influencer. These signs make a mirror to help business starters identify who they are and how they should do to become the true entrepreneurs. Max Levchin with PayPal, Tim Brady with Yahoo, Blake Ross with Firefox, are there the basic principles for being successful entrepreneurs? The answer must be YES, but that is a different story.

[From the assignment 2 of Entreprenuership course]

 (The image is from http://www.sharpastoast.com)

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[1] Red ocean indicates known market space where the competitive rules of the game are known

[2] Blue ocean indicates the unknown market space, untainted by standards, expectations, and competition

[I_am_little] When I was too young!

A story that I became a leader …

That was a really wonderful time of being a student that I became a member of Secretary Board of Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) of University of Sciences (HCMUS), responsible for all activities of the first-year students, then Vice President of VSA-HCMUS for the whole students’ activities. Consequently, I had a lot of communication experience including primarily:

-      Organizing students’ events, formal conferences, a lot of kinds of official meetings

-      Directing the student activities and preparing for the next-generation leaders

-      Make presentation a lot in order to finish my responsibilities

-      Creating a large number of sorts of the official documents

Like that a little fish attempts to live in a wide ocean, inasmuch as being a leader at too young age, I met a lot of problems and had to make decisions without training in advance. Some of such problems were the followings:

-      Leading the group of members that had more experience lessened my confidence at the beginning

-      I usually used every way to convince my members although some of them were not happy with my decisions

The most memorable thing was that I made a disaster in discussion with a volunteer in Green Summer Campaign 2005. It was really hard time but a motive for improvement.

Working experience, a place to grow up …

After having graduated, I have worked for a big company for three years so far as an development technology engineer, so I had a lot of experience in written communication, says, writing reports, formal emails, discussion in board, and in spoken communication, such as presenting ideas to customers, negotiation with my upper managers.

That is the extremely useful time, which I have lived in business and organization cycles.

(From an assignment of Advanced Communication course)