IT-stories. Part 1

Every time returning from business travels, my boss hands me out just another batch of tissue paper sheets, restaurant menus, adverts and whatever leaflets finely written all over the clean surface. Those are "short stories". It's beyond my comprehension why one has to write them with a regular pen on a scrap of paper if the person has got a notebook PC. But that has always been the way it is. My job is to keep it all, sort out, make head or tail, retype, and ... not to show to anyone. While the first ancient folios can be found online (Roman holidays, The light side of the Earth, Comdex Fall (2) (3)), hundreds of others were persistently kept in the dark and not published. Even if they really were published some time, but only for the "private eyes", nor were announced elsewhere, although the employees and friends were looking forward to seeing them and preferred reading such "cuff notes" rather than official coverage reports.

A real pity... They tell a lot about the real people, real events, the IT high-life chronicles of the world - the Silicon Valley, Hanover, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Las Vegas, Toronto, Moscow.. While decoding and retyping those itineraries and recollections of Comdex'es, Computex'es, CeBIT's and simply all our IT "merry-go-round" in Moscow and other cities, I often giggled alone at especially well-done extracts.

In the end, I persuaded the boss to consolidate that all, add tons of available photos and arrange in sensible order. So today we are publishing the first part of five true-life IT stories. Others will appear soon once ready. Our lives are not only about announcements of new hardware rigs and their tests, it is much more amusing.

Aleksandra Ordzhonikidze

Mason's heartaches

Still a year ago, as many as three of our ladies worked in the IT industry in Taiwan - Natasha Beluga and Vika Kulikova at Iwill, with Jannet Webskowski at Abit. Jannet was the first to leave - hear American husband simply grabbed her and escaped to his home country. Natasha was the second to give in - got married to a German who immediately took his beauty away to his private residence near Berlin.

Finally, Vika took up Jannet's job at Abit, and poor Mason is still sad recollecting the fabulous Russian flower garden at his company and is begging me to find some in Moscow nice to look, educated, unmarried, with good English, educated marketing expert and knowledge of IT industry.. Isn't that too much for a young charming lady? What a hard nut to crack you are asking me to do, Mason!

Mason Su & JP

Mason is actually a very good man. He himself is the owner and manager of his company, which is not typical of Taiwan at all. Let's put it straight - by investing money into a project, the businessman is first of all after profits. And he does not care at all what to produce - be it condoms or video cards. The only what matters is money - dollars, NT, even rubles will do.

Mason is different - he is in love with his own small factory, he adores every PCB produced by his conveyer and is willing to tell and show round his "farm" for hours. Employees, even former workers, adore him.

- Vika, I've been to Mason's today.
- Wow, that's cool! Have you passed my regards over to him?

Now his company occupies a building. Several of stories for engineering services, marketing department, sales. One storey is taken by two production lines.

The day I visited them they were involved in a big order for US Army, so it was forbidden to take any pictures, but no problems with covering the production process itself. I remember that board was for a dual-processor Xeon and cost the American military merely 1600$ a piece. A really good order, isn't it?

Iwill specializes at workstations and servers for as many as eight to sixteen processors. They are also ready to supply assembled systems with complete debugging, which is preferable for systems of such level. They look so formidable that you don't dare to come up to them. Imagine yourself assembling a multi-processor Xeon or Opteron, fitting 4-8 CPU pieces, 32 bars of register memory 1 GB capacity each, controllers, a bunch of hard disks, exotic adapters, a lot of system coolers. In the end, you get a multi-storeyed system for 6 units with a pair of 1 kW PSUs.

And all that rig worth 30,000$ won't start up! The debriefing may last as long as a whole week until the tiny faulty connector is found. Then there goes another week of tests.

In the basement, there is a free canteen for the employees, where they serve regular meals the way it is for factories, not a restaurant of course. But it is free. Everyone has own named dish, and Mason used to run around a lot before they found "public" plates for JP and myself.

On the huge display screen of the canteen at IWILL, there is a local news program. The plot is simply fantastic! Taipei taxi-drivers are demanding the government to make part of them redundant.

- JP, I didn't catch the idea - is that a strike of taxi-drivers?
- Yep

JP is also watching the screen bewitched. He has already acquired a good command of the Chinese language.

- What do they want?
- They say, there is a fierce competition. They are asking to take measures.
- Which? Shoot down half of them?
- Well, I really don't understand myself.

After Moscow, it's all paradise over here - always warm, the food is cheap (a lunch in a restaurant is worth 150-250 Russian rubles), taxi is real cheap and always metered. They don't beg tips on principle, no crimes about that at all.

Every second car in the street is a yellow taxi. While standing at the crossroad, you see that the whole street is yellow. Once you get out of the hotel, you immediately find yourself in an air-conditioned taxi and often with a LCD TV-set. Prices are three times as low than in Moscow, whereas petrol is twice as expensive.

Now it came to strikes...

Patricia, my love

For the past two years running, Mr.Tismer from Gainward (or "Mr. Twister" as we called him behind his back) has been regularly traveling to Moscow on business. A typically tedious German, but we actually believed that Gainward was a German company and that all the bugs and errors found in nVidia's references, famous remakes of the BIOS are all done in Germany. We proved wrong!

The headquarter is based right near Taipei, with all the engineering services of Gainward.

Patricia is in charge of Russia's market. She is as good as a Chinese princess with manners worth of a high-society lady, which is in fact very near to the truth.

Patricia Lee

She comes from a very rich Taiwanese family. Today, it's just a party on the occasion of opening another fashion night club where she is a co-owner, and at the end of the meeting we were granted an invitation to embark on her luxurious limo and urgently move to the club. Here we are - me, JP, and May.

May is Jean-Pierre's spouse with a thermonuclear engine running inside all the time. They are owners of the Taiwanese advertising agency ITmediagate, my true friends and good partners.

JP and May

The club is as fresh and new as from an advert. Those invited to the opening were friends, "promising contacts", and local celebrities to whom I am being introduced in turns.

- Are you an artist?
- No, I am a journalist from Russia.
- Wow! Great!

The tables are laid out in the recesses of the floor, and while maneuvering between the bar and your seat you are always risking to fall upon somebody's table and breaking the neck of some Taiwanese celebrity, sweeping all their Japanese feast off the table.

I had to confine myself with a bottle of sake which is a lethal dose for a common Chinese.

Patricia was the hostess of the ball, she welcomed guests, introduced to each other, showed them round their seats, helped in orders... well, I was unable to run after her at all. But being a true Chinese lady who was well aware of men's needs, she brought in a local TV announcer with a dollish face instead of herself.

We were listlessly discussing the meals, weather, and the club, and then the talk worn out. The people were perplexedly watching my complete lack of enthusiasm, not understanding much of that European who is unaware of the brilliant sun!

JP was winking at me, trying to encourage, but they took my Patricia away, so I was sadly chewing my crab sashimi... The young lady realized what the trouble was and quickly made off...

Keelung is based on Mars

Holidays at last! No meetings, no hardware rigs, no notebook! I sit at the computer for so long that all the left organs of mine will soon atrophy.

At the weekends, Taiwanese prefer going out to the ocean. Those who are better off book hotels on the coast and move over there for two days with their families. Those who are even richer than that cruise around their mistresses put up over various hotels of the shore, spending a day with each for a change.

We are common people - a pair of salmon sushi pieces at 50 cents each make us happy, sate, and pleased. In short, we are riding over to the coast with Vika to Keelung for a swim, sunbathing, strolling around mountains, trying fish cafes.

Buses travel back and forth to Keelung from Taipei Main Station (there is a small barn right opposite the "Nova" computer shop - that's the bus stop). It takes one hour to get there, and the ticket is 45 rubles (1.5$).

The bus arrives at the central berth of the city, and to get to the beach you have to take another local trip.

The word "beach" is too much of me to say. Taiwanese hate swimming, which is understandable - ocean is not sea. Even in the windless weather, sea waves are huge. The ocean will either drag you away or burst you at the rocks and break your bones. Formosa is a volcanic island. Mountains loom up straight by the shores. It is not an easy task to find a sandy beach and flat coast.

You have to jump a lot over the coastal boulders until you get to the water. How can you lower your body exhausted by heat to the water? The trick is dangerous and hard enough - I would not recommend repeating it to anyone.

Viktoria Kulikova

But the sightseeing around is incredible - absolutely Martian landscape. For thousands of years, wind and water have washed up all the soft tufa and slags, stripped and polished the fossilized lava streams to luster.

To prevent locals from heart attacks and mass jumps from the rocks, Vika was sunbathing following the rules of the Chinese morality - in a small skirt. But only until another wave has covered her. So we had to make off into the mountains for drying up shirts and skirts.

As we rounded another mountain enjoying the magnificent views and squealing with delight, our legs deadly tired and sweat flowing down in streams, the day was coming to an evening.

We finished our adventure at the berth, sitting at a sushi bar stretching legs and savoring the past day - fantastic!

- Hey, Vika, when are we having the official launch of i915?
- Don't dare ask me that - you know that better than I, you announced it on the web site in yesterday's news!.

Rita can't stand saunas

Computex-2003 has gone down in history as the "September Computex". You even don't have to specify the year - all those involved what it is all about.

"Russian board"

At MSI party, the Russian board is supervised by Rita Chiu, a modest tiny Chinese lady, then in charge of Russia's market. She looks troubled by something.

- Rita, what happened?

Finally, she is bringing herself to telling.

- Is that true that presentations in Russia are normally held in saunas?
- True!!! - all the "Russian board" responded in all together with faces serious.

The thing is that two months before the events ABIT had arranged a grand event at "Admiral" club in Moscow where among the other entertainments there was sauna. A pair of my candid photos from sauna caused a big sensation both in Moscow and Taiwan.

Rita was especially anxious about that - it was her who was in charge of those events in Moscow.

Steve, Irina Zhukova, Ksenia Polyanina,... all sitting quietly and hardly suppressing the laughter, clearly understanding that another MSI presentation in Moscow is very unlikely to take place soon.

The following day, that story was told to Aleksey Voronkov (ASUS). Dead after another night at Carnegie`s, he immediately turned lively:

- What if we hold it in a sauna?

"That's our territory!"

To play a dirty trick with a competitor is the holy of holies. In Taiwan, that is done with a special Asian charm.

At the September's Computex, sort of a colorful "sumo wrestlers" show was played at the ASUS party. A wrestler wearing a T-shirt with the ASUS logo was methodically crushing rivals - one wearing the "MXI" logo, with "Gigabite" on the other's. Of course that even was reported, and the photos appeared in Internet.

In 2004, in the evening after the first day of the expo, Gigabyte grabbed all the Russian press and drove away somewhere to the mountains. In a couple of hours of riding, on their right they saw ASUS' assembly shops and their headquarter. The folks noisily discussed that all and forgot at once - it's all clear we are riding towards the northern mountains, to the estuary of Danshui river.

Some time later we got off by a restaurant at the territory of Taipei Institute of Arts. All are a bit annoyed - why have they driven us over to the middle of nowhere that you even can't escape. Well, where to escape actually? There aren't even any taxis, and you'd have to walk for at least an hour to get to the nearest underground station.

Starter is training to use chopsticks

But the cuisine proved excellent. All have long got used and even taken a liking to the Chinese menu and are expertly handling chopsticks. Starter who was the first time in Asia is trying not to lag behind the others and refuses to use a fork - finally, he stood up.. hungry. We ate it all up earlier than he somehow learned to pick up something with chopsticks. Sake and beer was finished in 10 minutes. There were 20 of us - they might have ordered some stronger drinks for us, Russian journalists, who are hardened after daily table battles. We managed to persuade Melody to fetch us a bottle of Santori, and the strain was gradually getting down.

I get out in the air for a smoke, watching the southern sky full of stars and flood of lights below. We are almost at the summit of the mountain, the huge illuminated Taipei lying below. What a beauty!

I am peering through the window-pane into the restaurant hall and understand it's high time we finished with Santori.

Separated from our table by a screen, all the top management of ASUS is there - presidents, vice-presidents, ever gloomy Alex Kim, charming Angela Xu, and a lot of people we've known. Wiping my eyes and glasses didn't help.

I through off the cigarette and bewildered moving towards Alex Kim:

- What have you been doing over here? ...

The reply he gave should be written into all the marketing textbooks on running business in Taiwan:

- That is our territory!

The intonation of Alex Kim was hard and didn't bode well. We were indeed brought to the zone of ASUS, their favorite restaurant and the sponsored university. We chatted a bit, exchanged our local phone numbers, kissed good-bye with Angela (Alex and Angela were waiting for their firstling soon), bowed with the president, and went off to our place to digest the blunder. Judging by their faces, everybody was already aware of what had happened.

Two days later Alex Kim confessed I was the only person who dared to come up and greet ASUS - "..you are careless - you can do whatever.."

The role of journalists is similar to peacemakers, OSCE observers, or Red Cross officials - they are entitled to contact with all the rivalry parties simply due to their professional activities. No use taking offense. That is our right.