Monthly Archives: December 2002

Realize Your Potential – Wine

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The theme of this year in Microsoft is “realizing your potential”.

It is a great topic. Before tonight, I thought I cannot drink too much wine or bear. But to my surprise, I attended the annual party and drunk a lot of wine. I had 2.5 full cup of white wine tonight – about 1000 ml and three cups of red wine, along with count-less cups of bear.

It is amazing if not astonishing. Before that, I cannot drink any wine or hardly can have much bear. Now I am OK and am not drunk. This can be a milestone for me in social communication.

Before today, I really hesitate to build up my capacity to drink wine. I think it is bad thing to drunk too much. Now I believe as long as it is OK for the body, this social communication is required and benifits for the person and for the business.

Hopeful, this is the right direction we need to grow up to get used to.

Nanchang – It Only Means Hotel to Me.

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Hi,

I am in Nanchang, the captical of Jiang Xi Province. It is after two days trip before I get into the hotel of Cloria Plaza Hotel. The hotel is nice, and much above my expectation for a four star hotel – see my previous blog on a four star hotel in Chengdu.

From 7:00 PM, I had a great meeting with my CEO and the other good collegues and friends there. After that, we went to Kara-OK for entertainment. It is a nice night and I realized it is a good way to host some kind of entertainment for a team to build up the spirit.

Before I arrived in hotel, I also visited Jiang Gan Shan and donate a school bag to a girl there and also denote 100 RMB for the books the students are using. It is nice experience for me. I donate my tender love to them and hopefully, this event also marks a great milestone for them. — I do since I remember the times when other companies come to my school to donate.

OOB for Two Days

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I will be OOB (Out Of Blogging) for the next two days. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know OOB – it is something like OOF (Out Of Office) and maybe I am the first one to use this term.

I will leave Shanghai and visit Jing Gang Shan, Jiang Xi in the next four days. We take train there – special train just for Microsoft (China). I will be on the training for one day and on bus for the other. The earliest time to get to a hotel should be on the night of Dec 29. My blogging will be paused for two days.

Merry Christmas

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Merry Christmas!

I’d like to send my greetings to all my friends:

To the new friend we just get to know: Alex, Daisy, Ricky…

To my dearest team: Steven, Eric, Linda, Yayi, Kenny, Grace, Wendy, Eddy…

To my families: Feng, Zhao, Sheng, Dang, parents and brothers/sisters.

To my classmates: Ruifeng, Xiaogong, Jia,……

To my best friends growing up together: Xiangfeng, Lijie…

To my friends online: cuanyu, christina,

To my knowledgable friends: Yizhong, Hao, Isaac,…..

To my friends met in Daocheng: caca, jingbo, laobing, yanlin, yehong…..

To my friends in CZ3794: Zhenyu, Jie…

To my teachers and mentors: Tao, Mr. Kang, Prof. Ju,

To everyone I have every met but don’t know too much: Haoyuan, Qi….

Merry Chrismas to you all!

About the Pudong Airport Staff

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Please read this complain on my PVGBBS.

Dear Mr. Wang,

I am very disappointed to see that the staff working in Pudong Airport speak poor English, They either can not understand questions asked in English, or can not answer quetions fluently and effectively.Furthermore, they don’t even use ‘May I help you’ or ‘Have a nice day’such neccessary greetings to English-speaking guests. It really shames me,shames Chinese people, shames the airport as well as Shanghai.

Furthermore, it seems the domestic flight ticketing counter does not accept foreign credit card and the machine for accessing credit card is quite old.

The last thing I would like to say is that the airport staff have not been well groomed. they are supposed to iron their shirts, comb their hair well and pay more attention to their motions and gestures.

I sincerely wish these problems I mentioned above would be corrected and improved in very near future.

Source: PVGBBS

I completely agree with Grace on the service quality of PVG. It is true that the service is very bad. Grace is very careful to note the small differences between the service of PVG and other airport – these details make big difference in general.

I need to explain that it is very interesting atmosphere in China that private companies provide much better quality of service to customers – by private companies, I mean the companies owned by business owners. On the contary, the state-owned enterprises still use the old way to treat their customers – rude and hash…

Pudong airport is still the state owned property. There is not any incentive for the staff, even the managers of PVG to improve the quality – the better their service is, the more effort they need to pay, but there is no any change on their income or bonous. It is the same case as in the famous Pearl Tower in Shanghai. You can try the service – still bad.

ChAnge

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A big change in life happens. Sometimes people gather, happy and excited to know each other, sometime they have to depart. That is nature. Thanks for everyone around me everyday. I will announce some changes in my life very soon. But I prefer to keep it confidential now.

Let People Advetise…There is Nothing Wrong with it

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Today, I saw a pro-spam comment posted on my entry of “Net Send” – Yet Another Type of Spam. Here is the quote:

So, what do you do when you go to your mail-box outside of your home? Do you beat up the postman when he delivers a piece of junk mail or do you go to court because you received the latest sales flyer from Radio Shack or maybe you call ABC and NBC when your favorite movie is on TV and here comes a commercial. I think not! This whole Spam Issue makes me sick and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Let people advetise…there is nothing wrong with it…it is how you got your website on one of the top search engine pages….OH!, Maybe you forgot that!!!

Click here to see full text of the comment.

Very good comment, isn’t it?

This comment helped me to further realize the diversity of the world. At first, I was astonished to see there are some one like Marketor who thinks highly of NET SEND – let me avoid to quote it as spam for a while. I also see how angry he/she was when I call NET SEND spam. These are two different ways of thinking the same thing.

To be honest, this message is a little bit offensive when he asked Didn’t they teach you in school to CLICK YOUR DELETE Key or that little x that is in the top right hand corner of the pop-up. But I am happy that there are some discussion around this, from another persepective.

“PS…How long will you leave this message on your board?” asked Marketer.

Why not keep it? I am not the one who will delete negative comment immediately. I will leave it as long as my site is still there.

But I still think net send advertisement is spam

So, what do you do when you go to your mail-box outside of your home? Do you beat up the postman when he delivers a piece of junk mail or do you go to court because you received the latest sales flyer from Radio Shack or maybe you call ABC and NBC when your favorite movie is on TV and here comes a commercial. I think not! This whole Spam Issue makes me sick and you should be ashamed of yourself.

It is true that I, and most of us, accept commercial on TV. Although nobody turned on TV just for commercial, we can accept it since it is still reasonable for the advertiser to pay for the movie. We see the movie since someone paid. It is the same for junk mail in my mailbox – I mean post-mail box.

Please Remember to bring a SHOT-GUN with you the next time you are driving in a city and you see a sign on a building that is advertising that particular business and then take perfect aim and blow a whole in it. This way you can go to jail for a while and leave hard working people alone.

It is also acceptable since the advertiser paid the building for the advertise. I don’t care unless the ad is too ugly.

However, if the advertisements go furthure, extend outside the boundary they should be kept within, and enter my personal boundary, I will think it as spam. That is, if someone goes into my house and put the flyer on my desk when I am working, when they paint the advertisement on the white wall of my guest room, if someone seize me tightly and force me to listen to him how good the product is, no matter whether I am walking on the street or having my dinner – I believe they are outside the boundary of acceptable advertisement and should be treated as spam.

Why net send advertise steps out side the boundary?

Online advertisement is not that offensive, since it is the reason why we get free resources. Popup advertisement is a little big annoying, but it is ourselves who want to visit a web site and we need to accept it.

However, net send advertisement directly popup on MY screen no matter what I am doing. It is just like someone jumping into my room and paint their advertisement on MY wall. I don’t care if he/she do it on his wall or on his friends’ wall – as long their friend is OK for that. But I am angry if I see these kind of popups.

Please continue to discuss this

Please continue to post comment to express what do you think of this matter.

Forbes Interview – cont.

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Today I dressed very formal – business formal for the interview of Forbes. I am not used to dressing so formal actually – I am always a causual boy instead of a business man.

The interview is very interesting. Actually, I am very impressed by the friendly reporter from Forbes. She did very well in asking quesitons – detailed and tough questions. She even asked about where I came from. “Henan”. I said. “Then which city?” “Luoyang” “What is the population of Luoyang?” “About 2 million for urban area and 6 million in total”. You see, this is the profesionalist of a journalist. She really looks into details and want to find something special and interesting from the details.

It is a very interesting interview. Thanks to Robyn.

Forbes Interview

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I am informed that I will be interviewed by Forbes tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong. I am interviewed not because of my accomplishment, instead, I am selected as the representive from GTEC to describe how GTEC can be so successful. This is not the first time for me to be interviewed. The history includes some famous media like People’s daily, China Youth Daily, Xin Min Weekly, 21 Economy Observer, Shanghai TV, but most of them want to know more about GTEC. Actually, I am on the should of a gaint. But tomorrow, it is the first time I am interviewed by a foreign media.

I have to say, there are many “secrets” behind the success of GTEC. I really love this place and enjoy working with smart people around me. Let me think about what I have to say to Forbes and update you with the experience tomorrow.

Recent News

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Something strange and interesting:

1. Microsoft.com cannot be accessed via Great Wall Broadband Network and some China Telecom users in Shanghai. It reports the same error when Google.com is banned. However, this only affects Shanghai. This has lasted for 4 days in GWBN.

2. Heavy rain today in Shanghai. There is no empty taxi on the road. I walked 1 mile in the rain and catch a crowded bus to office.

3. I talked with Prof Ju and really admire his knowledge and thinking.

4. Too many things to do and I struggled to complete only half of the to-do-list on my PLOG (Isaac’s term = paper-log = notebook). I have to complete the second half tomorrow, since it is already deep 1:30 AM in the night. (I have changed the time of this entry so it falls to the entry of Nov 17. Thus I avoid a blank day in my blog)

Small World Again

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I love to talk with people, so I joined the meeting organized by Katrina. It is in the Softel Hotel at 7:00 PM. I am not sure about the content of the meeting before I went there.

When I steped in to the guest room, surprisingly, I met Katrina, the organizer of the meeting and some other participants. They came here either from email, from ICQ or from That’s Shanghai advertisement. The goal is for some kind of business opportunties. Among 4 for them, I know three – two are the helper for the summit and one are my university classmate. We shorted out – what a small world.

The meeting itself is not interesting. It turned out to be multi-level marketing presentation. I have no interest in that, since it is illegal for multi-level marketing in China. It may succeed in other regions, but not here.

But the conversation with my old classmate and the two girls are very interesting.

Blog, More than Software – Isaac’s Speech

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I just returned from Isaac‘s speech at ASTI.

I have to say, it is a wonderful presentation, and I really enjoyed the 3 hours with friends from different background and working in different companies. Here are some key take-aways from this session.

  • China is not a country good at writing. – Isaac
  • 6 keys of blog: WGTETL (Write, Gather, Think, Enjoy, Taste and Learn) – Isaac (The original word in Chinese sounds beautiful.)
  • Idea: It is a great idea to broadcast events by blog.
  • Find the person to help you go aross your boundary
  • Blog should be the information gathering tool

Note: Pardon me that I don’t have time to record the details of the events :-) But anyway, this further helped me to understand the importance of finding the person to help me to cross my boundary of life. Hao helped me to get to know the software engineering community. Michael from ShanghaiExpat.com introduced the expat gathering to me so I can enjoy the happiness to talk with people from different country. Prof. Ju also opens to door to IEEE and other commitees to me as well.

I’d like to thank Hao and Xun to organize this event. Thank to Isaac for the great speech. I will mark 9 out of a 1 to 9 ranking system for this speech. I enjoyed the discussion with other participants too.

Cost Center and P/L

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I am busy learning the concerpt of Cost Center and P/L these days. It is essential to understand business. I don’t have time to update this blog and may fail to write, but I will update you with the study result.

If you have any book or URL that can help me to understand these basic fiancial and accounting terms, please refer it to me. I know very little about it now.

Some random quotes from the web:

For purposes of accumulating costs and for program management, each distinct project, regardless of source of funding, is identified by one or more cost centers. Each cost center is assigned a distinct seven-digit number. The first three digits identify the performing OU and division and the last three digits identify the source of financing which supports the work. The fourth digit is an optional designator for use by the OU.

Source: NIST Fund Structure

Short Self-Introduction

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I am asked to introduce myself in short words. It is easy. I have personal website and some kind of bio, but it is either too long to read or out of date. I’d like to spend some time to update my self-introduction.

I am working in Microsoft Global Technical Engineering Center. Now, I am working on the following projects:

1. I work on the Asia Community. I will drive the community efforts across Asia region. The main regions include China, India, Korea and Taiwan

2. I also manage the Microsoft Development Management Advanced Training business in the year 2003.

3. I was also a member in PMT.

Business is Business

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I found myself to be a business man recently. I am working on the figures of money everyday, just like the owner of a startup.

It is a completely new world when you are counting about the P/L. In the next few weeks, I will spend some time on the finance and business part. This is a major focus shift for me. I am no longer a technical person.

Isaac’s Blog Speech

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Hao told me that Isaac will deliver a Blog speech on Nov 15, 2002 in Shanghai. It is interesting and I have planned to meet him there.

Isaac is very active in online education and any new tech. He owns www.isaacmao.com and cnblog.org. The later has become very popular in bloggers in China. I heard of him via my friend Yizhong at 4 years ago as the CEO of Tangram Co. Later, I found his articles on media and it seems a lot of my friends know him. :-) I am going to meet him for the first time after knowing his name for 4 years.

Regarding the topic, I am not completely sure what he will be talking about. I am writing my own blog, but I don’t think blog is something that innovative. I doubt it will bring revolution to the web, as some media said.

Actually, it really depends. Just as Email is not revolutionary in itself, but the adoption created a new era of application. Browser itself is simple, but it is another killer application. Blog itself is a simple idea, but the speed it dumps the thoughts will eventurally form a new era of information. Who knows.

Daocheng VCD Received

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What a surprise! I received a small package from Zhongshan today. It is marked as toy. “Strange”. I thought.

I opened the box and found a very nice package of CD. It has a nice cover with the picture I took. It even comes with a small book of the articles the group memebers wrote. Fantastic!!

Thanks for CGZ and LKP for their great contribution! It is a very nice gift for everyone of us.

Update: July 1, 2003

Online broadcasting of the Daocheng video at http://xpstream.winisp.net/jianshuo. It is a 10 mins preview and the full length video is 1 hour and 10 mins in length. It is only available in format of VCD disk.

Cracking XBox

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Today, my friend told me that he had somebody crack his XBox for 150 RMB.

There is already some venders in Shanghai to crack XBox for people. It takes about 2 days and cost 150 RMB (about 20 USD).

After that, all kinds of piracy disks are open for your selection. The original disk costs 49-59 USD, but the pirated disks cost only 25 RMB.

Update Buying an XBox in Shanghai December 26, 2003

To answer your question to get an XBox in Shanghai, I have discovered a small shop with XBox in stock.

Room 339, Pacific Computer Shopping Mall, 1117 Zhao Jia Bang Rd. Shanghai

3rd Floor of Exit 10, Xujiahui Metro Station

Mobile:13601833873

Tel:63908171

Information source: Their Advertisement in Metro Station

I visited the store. They are selling the model on the Hong-Kong’s market. It is sold at 1750 RMB