Invitation to My New Blog

May 29, 2006

I hope you had a great Memorial Day! A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Bay area to visit some clients. I also had a chance to meet up with several friends each night for dinner. At one of the dinners, I met up with Zhiyi Yu, a classmate of mine from college, who is now a senior executive at openBC, and her husband, Eric Ly, a serial entrepreneur, who is now working on his next startup. Kevin Chen, a friend of mine from BCEC and his girlfriend, Wei Kuan, was also at dinner.

One of the things we talked about at dinner was the weekly emails that I used to send to my friends and acquaintances for six years, from 1996 to 2002. It all started back in December 1996, when I decided to forward a piece of humor to some friends in my small group. Over time, I started to add more and more friends to the distribution list. In addition to just a piece of wholesome humor, I started to add other components to the weekly email, such as an edifying story, a thought provoking question, or a mental puzzle. I also usually start the email with a short paragraph summarizing what I did that week, where I traveled to, etc. I actually looked forward to writing my weekly emails, because it gave me a chance to reflect on my week, and keep a record of my activities. It was a kind of a short diary.

When the whole blog phenomenon started, I thought about my weekly emails. In a sense my weekly emails were a blog. I thought about putting all my weekly emails into a new blog, but I decided that it would take too much effort. When I finally started to write a blog, I didn't just want to write a blog about my week like most people who write blogs, so I decided to focus my blog on networking for career advancement, called Altimeter.

At dinner, everyone encouraged me to put my weekly emails into a new blog. So, that's the reason for this blog, Abby Li's Dad. I have put all my weekly emails into this blog as archives. Going forward, I will try to write something on a weekly basis, as a reflection of being Abby's dad, Melissa's husband, or as an executive at RichFX, etc. I will probably focus this blog on fatherhood. So, if you are a parent, I especially welcome your thoughts and advice on how to be a good and Godly parent.