04/29/2005 - 04/30/2005

Americans need to 'easternize' to capitalize on chinese market

Rather than wait for China to adopt Western business styles, U.S. corporations and investors would do well to 'easternize,' Silicon Valley venture capitalist Joseph Schoendorf said last week.

"A lot of my friends who have come here think China is westernizing, but from what I've seen and been reading about China and Confucius, we'd do better in the U.S. if we easternized — my word," Schoendorf said in his keynote speech at the Asian Technology Roundtable Exhibition (ATRE), a two-day technology and investment forum held here. "There is a core set of values here that I am struggling to learn, and I like what I'm learning. I don't think China is westernizing, nor do I propose that China do that."

stranded rover employees

Eleven of MG Rover's overseas employees are still waiting to return to the UK - more than two weeks after the collapse of the company, it has emerged.

The staff, who were in China, India, South Africa, South Korea to buy components, say they are thousands of pounds out of pocket, with no return tickets and no UK homes to come back to.

hong kong

Upping sticks to Hong Kong is for people with robust constitutions. The hustle, bustle and excitement are set amid pollution, overcrowding and a culture of long working hours. But if you can work as hard as you can play and crave variety, start pestering your boss now for a transfer to the Hong Kong office.

puma closes in on spanish market

With the growth in the U.S. Hispanic market driving up demand for soccer-related products as well as other apparel and accessories, Puma North America launches its new Spanish-language site.

“The Spanish-language market is huge for us,�? Pulsifer says. To quickly serve the market, Puma decided to build a Spanish-language replication of its English-language e-commerce site, Store.Puma.com. But when it considered hiring an in-house Spanish-speaking content manager to replicate the English-language content on its new Spanish-language sister site, it realized that an in-house approach would take too much time and expense, he adds, noting that an in-house person might take days to upload Spanish-language content. “Every month we add several new products to our site,�? he says.

sad result of language barriers in hospitals

When a Spanish-speaking hospital receptionist refused to interpret during her lunch hour, doctors at St. Vincent's Staten Island Hospital turned to a 7-year-old child to tell their patient, an injured construction worker, that he needed an emergency amputation.

With no one to bridge the language gap for another patient, a newly pregnant immigrant from Mexico with life-threatening complications, doctors pressed her to sign a consent form in English for emergency surgery. Understanding that the surgery was needed "to save the baby," the young married woman awoke to learn that the operation had instead left her childless and sterile.

US internet advertising surge

U.S. Internet advertising surged 33 percent in 2004 to a record $9.6 billion, surpassing levels seen during the early Web boom, and will grow at a similar rate in 2005, according to data released on Thursday.

word of the day: extol

extol \ik-STOHL\, transitive verb:
To praise highly; to glorify; to exalt.

The processes of nature, which most writers extol as symbols of renewal and eternal life, were always seen darkly by Kerouac. --Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac

Let your deeds themselves praise you, for here I leave them in all their glory, lacking words to extol them. --Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha