Bento Box Bits of everything

1. 

   Doug
   August 14th, 2010 - 00:02

   Well, my friend Erik’s dad I guess would be a “mentor” although he’s completely hands off this whole process. He’s stopped by the office less than a dozen times in the last six months. He’s just extremely confident that we’re going to do fine. He has a ton of experience with intellectual property, inventing, starting companies, and dealing with VCs himself. He worked for a company that was making Atari games in the past… it was the Atari game that allowed you to run track vs another person in a video game race. He created the pad. I don’t remember the whole story, but he had an opportunity to patent the pad.. but for some reason was unable to. Well, long story short the same patent was used for Dance Dance Revolution pads and the person who bought this Atari company is now a multi-millionaire.
2. 

   Doug
   September 4th, 2010 - 07:03

   By new “9-5″ I meant a completely new job.

   I mean if you read the blog, my life is pretty 12 hour days and 3 meals a day on weekdays at the building cafeteria. You can imagine that while the food is much healthier than standard American cafeteria fare, it’s still probably not prepared in the best way. My friend Erik is kind in denial, claiming it’s the best thing since sliced bread but I think he’ll be surprised if he ever gets blood test results back home. There is quite a bit of “hidden” oil in the cooking to make it taste better. It’s just that American stereotype that if it isn’t deep fried “it can’t be that bad for you”, as if deep frying was the only way of cooking with oil. Not to mention the meals are completely non-nutritionally balanced. The vegetables are way overcooked – there is a definite lack of rough fiber in the Chinese diet; I think this is not noticed because the meals are extremely carb heavy and “easily digestible” (how would white rice ever make you constipated after all?). So basically that’s the meals, stir fried or over boiled vegetables, plain white rice, and a small meat dish. No fruit. I was started to get intense muscle cramps from the only workout I could manage in the office (running up 16 flights of stairs to our office 3 times a day). The cramps only went away after I traveled to the grocery store to get bananas. Gee, shouldn’t that be a tip off that our meals aren’t nutritionally balanced? The guy seemed to think that popping vitamins would be fine, not realizing that some vitamins just get pissed or shat right out without the right nutrition in your body (this is why sometimes Unicef giving out vitamins to starving African children are useless, they’d actually be better off giving the kids 2 liters of coke because their bodies are so undernourished, the vitamins cannot be processed properly! The soda would go a long way to fattening them up, and getting them to a healthy weight).

   But hey I digress, that is just one of many problems. Go eat somewhere else you might say, it’s just too bad that the closest restaurants are all unhealthy and about a 6-7 block away. To get to the grocery store I have to walk about 1 1/2 miles. Take a cab? Maybe, if there were any in our area to grab. Typically we have to walk 1/3 – 1/2 mile just to the main strip to hail a cab, and by then we just said “f it” and walk the additional 1/2 or 1 mile because it’s not even worth the cab fare.

   Not to mention in this Guangdong weather fruit spoils faster.

   The stress was getting to me as well, which is probably why I developed hemorrhoids in the first place. They’ve become really really painful at an accelerated rate. I requested my friend get me a new chair or new desk early on when I thought my only problem was hemorrhoids, and that was rejected, accepted, then rejected again. He felt that it would be “playing favorites” by buying me new equipment on company money. What if everybody suddenly wanted a new desk or chair just because they wanted to? I argued that the equipment is company property, usable by anyone even in the case that I leave the company but it rather fell on deaf ears. The only compromise the guy had was “i’ll pay for it with my own money, but you cannot tell anyone in the company”. Gee, thanks. That was too little too late by then, I was feeling extremely sick and fatigued. I finally checked myself out at the local clinic and they told me I had a problem, so I went straight to Guangzhou the next day to a legitimate hospital and found I had a anorectal abscess. The abscess has now developed into an anal fistula which needs to be drained of pus. The hemorrhoids are kind of a “bonus surgery” since I have three rather large painful ones, they’re going to probably rubber band those like you suggested. I’m really not sure 100% until I go to the hospital this Monday.

   So that leaves me where I’m at now. I am spending more on this surgery than the piddling piss money that was meant for our living expenses can pay for (a total of 3,500 USD for 7 months of work). In the end my surgery will be about the same amount, 3,500 USD except I only managed to save 500 USD so far for myself.

   Anyway that pretty much ends my startup dreams. There are a lot of other reasons why I am leaving, but my health is probably the main one. I got really bad blood test results in my physical, so I need a radical diet change once I get home. Simply eating the same shit in China isn’t going to fix the problem (I had a blood test in August 2009, and I was fine on all counts). The problem is simply China and my friend is quite in denial about the dangers of stress on health (what do you expect from a Big 4 alumni? He is out of touch with the word “moderation”).

   Maybe someday I’ll look back on this and have a slight pang of regret, but I won’t regret getting my health back on track and getting the hell out of China. It’s shitty out here!
3. 

   Doug
   September 6th, 2010 - 05:33

   Either way there’s no hard feelings. Development will continue, they are delayed until January so we’ll see what happens then. My buddy is trying to buy me out right now for a rather trifling small sum. I know he’s more than likely going to turn around and if the product is viable, sell that share for a significant second investment amount. If I don’t sell though, he would be upset because it’s his family money going into it. Without his capital, there would be nothing going on at all. I felt as though a significant number of my ideas went in this project. I don’t really feel like selling out at all to be honest, but in the interest of being a “friend” I’m going to let it slide. Some things are more important than money. I wouldn’t really have gone to China in the first place if it wasn’t for him. I gave him nearly 7 month of my life – I’ve given more time to worse.

   We’ll see what happens, whatever the case best of luck to him. I might do the “start-up” thing again someday, but maybe more on my terms with more reasonable accommodations than what we had. Even life at a start-up needs some “balance”.

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