Changkhui: Changkhui

Having been chatting on MSN for a while, we felt like we could make an episode out of this, so we might as well. MonoBangkok was one of our listeners, who resided in LA for the last 6 years. However, his life there was not on bed of roses. He had to work in a Thai restaurant for 2 years before he could afford a place in a MBA classs. It could have been an episode on Study Abroad, but more the content was more on life there rather than on the study part, so we decided to put it here, saving us another episode, too.

As to mark the event, we launched this episode for our 2nd-year anniversary. We managed to get Pakorn, Senior Vice President of DTAC, to share some information about iPhone, what's the big deal of having it in Thailand and when we can see this. We were very thankful for the info. And then we put mEnE, one of our listeners, Kangg (Siampod) and Ford to share their experience at the Thailand Next Web Apps 2008 on August 16, 2008. It was nice to hear such movement in Thailand and hopefully, we would see much more than this at Bar Camp Bangkok 2.

This was supposed to be a four-man episode, but due to unscheduled work, we had to settle with three. Piyatad (Job) was back, sneaking from the back door at home, to join us. We talked about work-life balance at the office. It was getting harder and harder to say which was work and which was not. Also, we talked about the use of Twitter and Job had an idea to use it at work and family.

We engaged Koson to share his 3G iPhone experience, now that he had it. The usual suspects turned up during the conversation, such as short-battery-life problem and MobileMe, but the apps were nice, and some were even free. We ended our conversation on our appearance on Prachachart Thurakit.

Due to comments on our webboards and, also, lack of creativity on my part, we talked about the notebooks. This time, we focused on monitor, battery, mouse, keyboard, harddisk and power supply. We also mentioned the up-and-coming BarCamp Bangkok 2 (http://www.barcampbangkok.org) on Saturday August 30, 2008.

Had we known that this would be a popular episode, we would have prepared much more. Obviously, this was recorded directly after the previous episode. As usual, Wiroon prepared a script and everyone contributed accordingly. Again, don't quote us or use this as a guideline, we just shared our experience here.

Having heard a few arguments lately, we decided to share our experiences on this. Facing some difficult staffs, who would like to be managers, but were not qualified, we talked about what kind of qualities we look for when we promoted ones. We would like to emphasize here that not everyone wanted to be a manager and we were not discussing about leadership and manager, either. Nothing ideal or theoretical, we just shared our experiences.

In reply to a fan's request, we talked how we went about selecting our notebooks or laptops. We started from what we used and liked and ended up in what criteria we used in selecting one. Also, we talked about the notebook companion, the case. At the end, Passakorn also talked about the latest seminar that he attended at Bank of Thailand, a new process for cheque handling.

Passakorn went to CommunicAsia 2008 in Singapore a few weeks ago, so he talked about what he saw over there. Worawat, who was, at one time, a frequent visitor, also shared his experience when he went there for training.

In tradition of bidding farewell to Bill Gates leaving Microsoft, we dedicated this episode on Windows, hate it or love it, this is the most successful operating system in the world. Ford and Passakorn shared their experience and opinion about Windows. It seemed that they got carried away, this was one of the longest episodes of Changkhui, so far.