Bridge the Gap

新年快乐! 恭喜发财!

Happy New Year to all of my friends and colleagues in the US, China, and elsewhere.  I wish all of you a prosperous and healthy Year of the Ox.

The Color of the Rainbow

Much has been written analyzing the presidential election in the two plus weeks since Barack Obama defeated John McCain to put himself in line to become the forty fourth President of the United States.  

I’ll save the analysis and thoughts about what an Obama presidency could look like for future posts.

In 2000, I was living in London when George Bush snuck into office.  In 2004, I watched the election results on a big screen television at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Shanghai.  Thus, it was particularly special this year to work on the Obama campaign.  After a hectic morning in the boiler room and a surreal (read quiet) afternoon and closing of the polls, the campaign staff headed to Winston Salem’s Millennium Center to watch the election results.

Virginia was the first battleground state to be called for Obama and soon after Florida was blue.  As they confirmed that Barack Obama would be President the campaign staff mobbed the stage and led the celebrations.

Now I’ve always been a somewhat reserved person and I stayed on the floor on the Millennium Center.  I worked on the campaign for three phenomenal weeks, but did not think it proper to be up on stage with people that had been putting in seven days of work for three, six, nine months or longer to help us win.

But that does not change how I feel.  While the economy tanks and the debate about whether or not Senator Clinton will become Secretary of State continues, I am extremely happy.  President Obama is going to be a great leader and I have the utmost confidence that he can and will navigate a strong course for the US in what will be a difficult first term.  

Obama’s victory is especially poignant for me because it has been viscerally painful to watch the country I love falter and wander aimlessly for the last eight years.  This, at a time when the rest of the world has been moving forward.  China, India, Europe, and the petrocracies are certainly hurting with the global pullback and will likely continue to have economic challenges for a while.  But the US has been incredibly misguided for the 2000s.  Leaders in Beijing have certainly been thanking their lucky stars that the US got itself bogged down in Iraq.  A largely unfocussed, naïve US leadership has allowed Beijing to press its “peaceful rise” rhetoric while pushing its soft and hard power abroad and increasing the United States’ economic reliance on the Middle Kingdom.  

So now we get back to reality.  I am hopeful that President Elect Obama will use his power wisely and not overreach in his first term.  It is becoming clear he will need to pick his key issues because there will not be enough capital to fund too many big initiatives.  Foreign policy challenges may be on the back burner while the TARP bailouts are decided, but I am looking forward to a US government that once again acts as a global leader, rather than a global police officer.  The twenty first century will be the Asian century – there is little doubt.  However, the US can and should remain the dominant global power through a combination of diplomacy, hard military power, continued economic innovation, and the influence of US culture.  

President-elect Obama’s books are apparently flying off the shelf in Shanghai bookstores, in spite of widespread racism and a usual ignorance or disinterest amongst most Chinese when it comes to US politics.  I look at it as a sign that people recognize that President-elect Obama will be a positive force not only for the US, but for the world overall.

I am deeply proud to be an American and am extremely thankful that for at least the next four years we will once again have a true leader in the White House.  A close friend related a story to me the other day:  His niece lives in Taiwan.  She is about ten years old and has never been to the US.  Still, she chose to write a poem for her class about President-elect Obama.  In the poem she wrote that Barack Obama is not black, Barack Obama is not white.  He is the color of the rainbow.  

Thoughts on the Campaign

DISCLAIMER:  THIS BLOG POST IS MY PERSONAL OPINION AND IN NO WAY REPRESENTS THE OPINION OF THE NORTH CAROLINA OBAMA CAMPAIGN FOR CHANGE

I'm sitting in an office in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, one week into my stint working for the Obama Campaign for Change.  It has been a fabulous experience thus far, working with so many driven, inspired people, who are trying to help put Senator Obama in office as President of the United States.

North Carolina is a battleground state in this year's election, which is pretty odd for those of you who are not familiar with US politics.  This is typically a red (Republican) state, with a lot of military families and an overall conservative outlook.  There are a number of universities here, which tend to be more liberal, but a Democrat has not carried North Carolina in more than 30 years.

This year is different though - we have a wonderful, inspirational candidate in Barack Obama.  We also have a war in Iraq and a teetering economy.  So the polls are basically deadlocked between Senators Obama and McCain with 12 days to go until Election Day.

I've really enjoyed being on the ground and helping reinforce the campaign staff that has been working hard to make North Carolina blue.  I've been knocking on doors, calling people and helping organize events since I drove the 9+ hours from New York to Winston Salem last Friday.

The two major issues are pretty obvious: the war and the economy.  I was out canvassing last weekend with a guy who personified “Joe Sixpack.”  He is a family man and works in the local government.  He has voted Republican in almost every presidential election, but this year has been volunteering for the Obama campaign.  He told me he is getting squeezed hard by the economic downturn and by the sounds of it he is doing relatively better than a lot of the people he knows.

What really hits home though is the war.  I was speaking with one middle aged man who had just sent his stepson off to Iraq the previous week.  This guy was still undecided, but was leaning toward voting for Obama.  He had a big family and you could tell that sending off a son to the war was weighing heavily on him.

I came back from that canvass and was talking with some of the field organizers in the office.  Someone mentioned that one of the folks there had a cousin who had been killed in Iraq the previous week.

I've always been a pretty conservative Democrat when it comes to international relations and military force.  I supported the War in Iraq initially, when it seemed there were WMD there.  I believe that the US should use its military abroad when it best serves our national interest, even when we have to act unilaterally.  That being said, I have long thought that we should take the bulk of our forces out of Iraq as soon as the Iraqis can handle their internal security themselves.  We have done all we can there and should balance our support for the Iraqi government with the need to focus on other important security risks abroad and the economy back home.

After starting to hear the stories of folks in North Carolina it is pretty clear why the polls are so close.  Senator McCain is so out of touch with the lower and middle classes here on the War in Iraq and the economy and Senator Obama is providing a strong vision of how to get this state and this country back on its feet.  Hopefully the campaign can get out the vote and we will have the first Democratic Presidential victory in North Carolina since 1976.

The Exhibition is Coming

So I have been busy running around China the past few months for work, but I am finally managing to make time to organize my photographs from the past several years. Still preliminary, but it looks as if at least one and likely two galleries will exhibit my work later this year in Shanghai. Some preliminary proofs below:

新年快乐！

Happy New Year!  Wishing everyone a 2008 filled with health, happiness and success.

This is Somewhat Embarrassing

Hmmm.  So I realize I have not posted to BTG since August.  Shame, too, as there are some decent slices of life, political analyses, financial market takes and restaurant reviews that are half written in my drafts folder.  Oh well.

The second part of 2007 has been a positive time, with some frustrations mixed in for good measure.  Dad's cancer is in partial remission and seems relatively manageable for now.  Work is going pretty well, with a number of new and interesting deals and internal projects.  I've restarted my photography in earnest and hope to mount an exhibition in 2008.  Running is also becoming a part of my life again, with at least two marathons planned for next year.

Apologies to readers, but over the next couple of weeks I'll be trying to make up for lost time.  Come back soon for posts on the state of Chinese private equity at the end of 2007, how the US presidential race is (surprisingly) become a New York one, new happenings in the Shanghai art scene, and why I love the wintertime.  For now an amusing anecdote:

I was in New York recently for Thanksgiving and reconnected with an old friend of mine.  She tracked me down through Facebook and we met for a coffee.  Very interesting woman who was a concert pianist and then went for an MA in International Affairs as part of a career change.  Anyway, we were talking about my Dad and his cancer and she told me that her mother had died of the same type of cancer he now has, eight years ago.  I knew her mom had died of cancer, but not that it had been multiple myeloma.  Now, we had just been discussing relationships and my friend mentioned that what she remembered of my Dad was this:  Years back, she had come to a dinner party I'd had at my parents' home and asked my father the secret to a long and happy marriage.  He replied, "To know when to shut up."

Sunny Days

Today is the third day in a row that the skies over Shanghai have been a crisp, azure blue.  The sun is shining and the city is gleaming.  I've been in Shanghai almost three years now, and I really can't think of a period when we have had such brilliant skies.  I never thought of Shanghai as a beautiful city until now...

Private Equity in China, or Where I Have Been for the Last Month

So you might have noticed that BTG has been lacking in new entries as of late.  The major reason is that I have come back to the dark side and returned to the financial industry.  I joined a private equity shop about 6 weeks ago as a Director, helping run the day to day business of the firm.  Since that time I have been in Shanghai, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Tianjin, Beijing, Harbin, and Hong Kong, doing marketing and beginning work on a new investment.  It's been an adjustment after my relative life of leisure earlier this year, but it is extremely interesting.

Private equity in China is still developing, so the established models one finds in Europe and the US simply are not here.  That makes the deals much tougher to do, but also more rewarding (potentially).  I have to say that I am learning a ton and really enjoying getting my hands dirty again after my high level, macro focused work at Intel.  More about the new company in a later post, but wanted to say hi to everyone again and let you know that I will not be quite so absent going forward.

Family Matters

I took a trip recently to the US, my second in three months.  I planned to go for about ten days in total, first to Chicago to attend the law school graduation of my cousin Michael and then to meet up with a former grad school classmate in Vegas for some fun.

My cousin Michael is a great guy. He is a brilliant, kind person, who is a lot of fun to boot.  We used to go out a lot in DC and he decided to go back to law school a few years back.  Mike had always been one of those intelligent, thoughtful people who were not so focused on academic study.  He received his undergrad degree from American University and went on to a string of positions in the DC area that were not bad, but not amounting to what one would call a strong career path.

I was extremely happy and proud of Michael when he decided to go to John Marshall, a respected Chicago school.  Marshall is famous for being one of the first programs in the US to offer an evening program to study the law.  Mike had gone through the main full-time program.  It was 7,092 miles to travel to attend the graduation ceremony and it meant postponing a long-overdue trip to Europe, but I knew my friend’s in London could wait a bit longer for a visit.

The plan was to fly in and out of Chicago with a trip down to Vegas for a few days.  My parents were coming in for the graduation as well, and given that my Dad had been going through some health tests for what was an unidentified malady, I was looking forward to quality time with the family.

Chicago was a lot of fun.  The graduation ceremony was very nice and I got to meet Michael’s girlfriend Julie, a Chicagoan who he has been dating for about a year and a half now.  It had been a dozen years since I was last in town and I was really impressed with the whole scene – some excellent restaurants (Tru is definitely one of the best I have been to anywhere), bars, cultural attractions, and people. Most of all though, I was happy to see Michael.

Mike is going to be a great lawyer; he has one of those capacious yet incisive minds and is a tremendous people person.  He worked part-time during school for the Illinois State Attorney General’s office for almost two years, which gave him some great experience in the courtroom and an opportunity to understand the legal system from the inside.

Unfortunately, as fun as Chicago was, the gaiety was overshadowed by the fact that the previous week my father’s mysterious health problem had been given a name: early stage multiple myeloma.  This is a cancer of the plasma cells, which are the white blood cells that produce antibodies.  The cause of the disease is still elusive; scientists think that it may have some genetic roots, but that it results mostly from environmental factors. My father tested negative for the genetic markers, so for him the exact cause is completely unclear.  Whatever the case, due to the diagnosis Dad and Mom did not come to Chicago.  The trip to Vegas for fun and relaxation turned into a trip to New York to see my parents and to celebrate my father’s birthday (which was a few days after the graduation).

It is a hard thing to watch your parents get older, particularly when their health starts to fail.  My father has had various health issues over the years, but this cancer is in a league entirely its own.  I extended my trip and spent two weeks in New York, making sure to get up for breakfast early with Dad and being there for him as he started his chemotherapy treatment.  On the positive side, his treatment regimen results in an 80% remission rate and a 38% cure rate, far better than what was the case even a year ago.  Still, Dad’s life will never be the same again.

My father is an old-school family man.  The only way I can describe how I feel about him is to say that he is my idol.  A blog is not the place to talk in great detail about a father-son relationship, but let me say that everyone should be so lucky to have a father like mine.  I have learned so many lessons from him, about commitment and working hard and about taking care of business when push comes to shove.  The most important things he has taught me though are not about professional life.  They are personal, about defining one’s own version of success, having a balanced life between family and work, always trying to help others better themselves, and knowing what is most important to oneself and placing that at front and center of your daily life.

My father is not a CEO, CFO, Managing Director, President, or other such business leader, positions that I will likely ascend to later in my career.  He has been a high school science teacher for almost his entire professional career and also taught at the local college near the family house in Staten Island.  Nevertheless, he has taught me so much about what it means to be a success and a leader and how to make one’s way in the world.

Change is always the constant in life.  Good changes and bad changes.  2007 has begun with many positive things, including my cousin Michael’s law school graduation.  It has also brought some challenges and difficulties, chief amongst them my father’s cancer.  Still, whether positive or negative changes, my family has helped me learn to keep focus on what is most important and take things in stride.  Although I live literally on the other side of the world from most of them, that strength will always be an integral part of my life.

恭喜发财! 给你拜年!

Happy Chinese New Year!  I hope you all have a joyous and fruitful Year of the Golden Pig.