Stairway To Heaven

Eight years ago, my then-girlfriend and I made our first World Cup bet. It was 2018, a teenager named Mbappé was tearing through his first World Cup, and we were still in our dating days — the kind of couple who turns everything into a small competition. We each picked a champion, shook hands, and a tradition was born. Four years later, in 2022, we did it again — this time with a one-year-old on our laps who contributed mostly by chewing on the remote. And now, in 2026, the game has grown into a full five-person family draft, with rules, priorities, and one very opinionated five-year-old. The rules Simple, but sacred: everyone picks before the tournament starts, picks are made in priority order, and — most importantly — you cannot pick a team someone else already took . First come, first served. The stakes: bragging rights, and a "potential award" that Grandma takes very, very seriously. Pick #1: The five-year-old oracle Our son got first priority — house rules favor the youn...

In the past month, I was involved in the renovation of our new home. Though it was not a big project, it did draw quite some attention from the family, as many small renovation decisions need to be discussed before consolidation. Indeed, I acted more like the project lead and coordinated between the contractors and the family members. Yesterday morning, my wife and I went there together to inspect the current status. She is quite satisfied with the result.  (Image of trees from a lounge room of my new apartment) Wifey loves to summarize and improve with feedback. As it's close to CNY,  she asks how my company is doing and what the plan is for next year. I shared besides the multimodal video AI agent, I am also working on two other AI initiatives.  One is related to prudent AI for more constrained industries such as manufacturing, finance, and healthcare. This initiative is primarily led by a Singaporean partner, who has deep business connections and foresees a potential f...

It comes pretty naturally for me to use AI agents for different tasks, and I'm a paying customer for some of them for the team, as well as for my own use. The reason our team continues to pay for these services is related to a brutal fact: it's too costly to hire skilled human beings to do the work. Take some of the tools, for example.  We used Lovable for prototyping and diagram creation. It helped our team communicate more easily with customers, especially SMEs and individual entrepreneurs seeking idea validation. SMEs/Individuals may not be able to commit to a full project due to limited budget and a lack of tech expertise. They expect a tech consultation that helps them visualise their ideas and map the workflow, and identify the gaps on why/which it may/may not be the right idea to proceed at the moment.        (Shao and my AI Agents created using ChatGPT) The traditional MVP/POC process will be more costly and time-consuming. With the right tools, like L...