Clouds of Memories

Sometimes I think I am destined to do cloud computing.

When I was young, aged around 4 or 5, I liked to lie on my back, and watched the clouds drifted above in the meadow nearby my house in the bright blue sky. I liked seeing some strands of clouds gathered and formed some unknown shapes that looked like animals such as elephant, cat, dog, horse, and even a dragon, while my childhood mates were playing tag and running around. I also wondered to where the cotton candy-liked cloud would float? Somewhere faraway beyond or within my reach even after I've grown up? That thinking always fascinated me, and occupied my mind most of the time.

Memories of clouds

The little village was my entire world at that time. The coconut trees, grass field, small hills, scattered houses, and even flowing river, pedaling bicycles, loitering dogs and passing train were all still images in my early days’ memories. The only moving objects were clouds, hung high and low, thin and thick in the sky, in thousands different expressions and appearances, easily spilled out of my childhood boundaries, and has rooted deep down in my dream.  

Artist's impression of cloud city

And, anyone who knows Chinese would know that I have cloud city in my name. The name seems to bind my fate to clouds even more. And, as I write poems and published books, the simple but rare formed of words that contained artistic conception are often thought by people as a pen name.

Besides, I like the way Chinese landscape art-paintings with light colors or without the use of any color. The simple Chinese ink painting uses the Taoist principles of harmony to depict white clouds, the liu-bai technique, or intentionally leaving it blank, is best capturing not only the outer appearance of a subject but its inner essence of energy, life force and spirit. The empty spaces to portray clouds provide the room for viewers to fill it up with their own imagination.

Leave Blank technique to depict clouds

Even when I started this blog five years ago and named it Traveling Mind, it was the outcome of freely traveling cloud that first struck my mind.

Due to my liking of cloud, I felt the closeness and attachment to this buzzword Cloud Computing, not merely because it would be the future trend of software application development.

We devote a large part of our resources to build TimeTec Cloud services, hoping it will drive us to somewhere farther with greater achievement. And, we finally come to this most anticipated event - the launch of TimeTec Cloud next month and certainly one of the big moments of FingerTec.

To build a city full of computing activities in the clouds, the dream is so vivid now, and the direction is unmistakable and clearer when the days get closer.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

A Brighter Sky

When we started to market FingerTec products in Hong Kong some years back, we were heavily surrounded by low-priced China products. Our associate company felt edgy, because Hong Kong is just a tiny dot with a huge Mainland China overhead on the map, the inflow of these products was fast and easy. Their low price strategy gave an impression that they could swallow Hong Kong market at anytime. And we also observed the silhouettes of low-priced Biometrics products scattered in the classified section of the newspapers in Hong Kong.

A few years past, this time when we returned to SecuriTex Show in Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, an exhibition that aimed for domestic market, I didn’t see any low-end Biometrics products from China around. Their ads from the local newspapers disappeared as well.

FingerTec booth at SecuriTex, Hong Kong

Founder Globaltech Ltd, our associate company later confirmed to me that these products are almost vanished from the Hong Kong market. “The sky is getting brighter, and our growth rate for FingerTec is 30% each year for the past two years,” Eric See, CEO of Founder GlobalTech happily pronounced.

To survive and prosper in Hong Kong, product quality and service are the two main essences, according to Eric. Besides, FingerTec has made its reputation with some large and successful installations such as NTT data center and Fine Asia Watch Chain Stores in Hong Kong.

SecuriTex Show is organized every two years for end customers to source for the best and suitable security products and also for the industry players to establish its network and exchange market information and experience. The security industry is relatively small in Hong Kong, you know everybody; everybody knows you.

The opening date of SecuriTex Show just coincided with the candlelight vigil of 4^th June this year. The event commemorates the 23^rd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre that happened in Beijing, and had drawn a record high of 180,000 people to the Victoria Park, not too far from our Exhibition Hall in Wan Chai.

After the show, I walked slowly down to the park, reached there just before 7, and saw the crowd started to flow in from different directions but mainly from the Metro station. I was delighted to see so many young people, obviously born after the historical event, joined the commemorative rally too.    

When the Chinese government cracked down the Tiananmen Square demonstration by killing hundreds of university students 23 years ago in Beijing, I was just graduated from college and involved myself with a few NGOs in expressing our condemnation of the massacre to the China Embassy in Malaysia. 

Candlelight vigil to commemorate Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989

Today, when China is still suppressing any commemorative events for Tiananmen Square Massacre, the yearly candlelight vigil in Hong Kong has becoming the conscience of China to call for democracy, after the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from United Kingdom to People’s Republic of China as Special Administrative Region in 1997.

With more people and younger generations taking part this year, the candlelight had brightened the night sky.  

  
by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ