The Hanzi Man - Wu Yimin

I was with Apple-ISS Research Centre from the summer of 1993 to the fall of 1997 as a senior software engineer in the handwriting recognition group. I stayed at Keng Ridge Digital Labs after Apple-ISS dissolved until joined Motorola in late 1998. I moved to California to be with Motorola Labs Silicon Valley in 1999 and returned China in 2009 mainly working on software, internet and IoT technology for healthcare and senior-care. I am currently CIO of Zhejiang Medical and Healthcare Group (www.zmhgroup.cn), a provincial government owned enterprise.

Happy moments

In early days of the organization when it had only a dozen or so of people on board, the entire team used to have group lunch on Fridays in some of Singapore’s finest restaurants, such as those best food places in the famous Holland Village. That’s where I first learned the difference between the Northern and Southern India food.

In a summer afternoon, we were all happy to see a stylish bar opened at the top floor of the office building for group chats, brainstorming sessions and games as well, and in some evenings canned beers and BBQ food were provided at the roof top overlooking the woods on the hill at the back of the building.

Stressful moments

The research centre would regularly hold a board meeting every quarter and each group was lined up to give a presentation during the day. It usually took a few days of hard work for the team to sort out the results, data, slides and printouts.

On one weekday, the centre manager took the entire organization out to the central part of the city for team building activities and he let each group compete to look for answers to the quizzes about the surroundings of the nearby area within a given time period. It was not an easy task because most of us were just new comers to Singapore.

Exciting moments

In Nov. 1995, Apple launched its world-first speech-pen-keyboard integrated Chinese input system “Chinese Dictation Kid 1.0” with most core technologies developed by the research centre and it even won “The Best of the Best Software Product” title at Comdex Asia, Singapore.

One day, the centre manager announced that we were entitled to purchase Apple products for personal use at a good discount then many of us got excited for the coming deals. However, at the end, we found out that the discount was far less attractive than we imagined, a big disappointment.

Sorrow moments

The entire organization was saddened at the news that our expert linguist, Dr John Choi, once the key researcher with us but left to join a new company in California by then, died in an accident near Berkeley when riding his motorcycle, which seemed to be his favorite hobby.

In the fall of 1997, Apple decided to cease the operations of the organization and I had to bid farewell to many of the most intelligent and friendly people in the world. However, fond memories of the organization and its beautiful people were deeply cherished ever after.