It is the third time in San Jose in the last 12 months. My impression are not the first-impression, just some more deeper understanding.

1. Mountains are Great.

There are mountains whenever you drive. The mountains are just there, far at the horizon. No wonder at all, because the Silicon Valley is a valley anyway. There are mountains on both side. This time, I am closers to the mountain on the east side, because I move around places along the US-101 expressway. Mountains on the left reminds me of the saying “Old Wide West”, since there are not many trees on the mountains – just yellow surfaces.

2. Efficiency of Expressway.

It is not the first time I drive on highways like US-101, CA-17, I-280, CA-85… The efficiency of the expressway still impress me a lot. It is due to the very good order – one lane on which cars moves slowly does not prevent cars on the other lane to run up to 60 miles/hour. That is very impressive. Also, what I enjoy (and feel a little bit scary) is to drive the car very fast on the via-duct, especially those left or right turning via-duct. Its like drive a race car to have the slight leaning turning roads on viaduct.

The highway network connects places, and the difference of remote, urban are not clear. I live in the Double Tree near the San Jose airport, and there are many choices to go to the other place – I can take US-101 which is just beside the hotel or take CA-87, which is two blocks away. The choices are great. In rush hours, however, we may be in a position in which we regret not to take the other no matter which one we take.

3. Noise is not that big a problem.

I am amazing how noises work in San Jose. I stayed in places I would avoid before. For example, the Double Tree Hotel is just at the edge of the San Jose airport. Driving out of the hotel, I can see aircraft taking off or landing – very big one overhead. I can hear the landing or taking off, and see it from the window. However, for some reason, I didn’t feel it too annoying. On the other side of the hotel is the highly loaded US-101. The trees separate the highway and the hotel, and it helps a lot.

During the daytime, we had meeting in a conference with window facing the North First Street of San Jose. The trolley went outside the window. Inside, it sounds like a silent movie – we are not disturbed at all.

That is the benefit of having many trees, and the buildings are very distributed, so the noise (I think the cars and planes make a lot of noises) was well absorbed. In Shanghai, on the contrary, noises got bounced back and forth between the buildings and make situation worse.

P.S. Part of the impression may be out of curiosity. Things will change if you stay in one place for long enough – good things may be bad. Of cause, the other consistent feeling, as a person from Shanghai, is boring. The consistency of business simply drives me mad. You have Macy everywhere. You have all those stores everywhere sailing exactly the same thing… It is the same with supplies – just the Nortel phones, 3M stationary, Starbucks in-house coffee, and same brand of Kimberly-Clark napkin… Everything is just the same. You can imagine if the whole nation is using the same brand of product, the efficiency of producing them will be very low. However, the only problem is, higher efficiency causes a boring life. How painful…

Arrived at San Jose. California is always sunny – the three trips to CA were 100% sunny. I doubt whether CA rains or not.

With the United Mileage Plus membership, I got 44A seat – the United Economy Plus seat with larger space. :-)

Had lunch at Wing’s Chinese Restaurant. You have to be in the States to really understand why applications like Google Maps are so important. Of cause, it is the same. When you are in China, and you may find online shopping (B2C) and local services not that important. At least as important as in the States because: 1) People don’t move as frequently. 2) Most restaurants are at working distance. Business model in China and U.S. should be very different depending on the environments.

(Forget about the date of the blog in the next few days. The time and date are totally a mess now for me).

Pause the blog for a short period of time. I am flying… to San Francisco via UA858.

It will be another long day.

Jian Shuo Wang is heading to San Jose on June 5, and will return on June 11, 20006.

Ticket information:

I am a big fan of technical details, abbr. and the secret codes used on the airline ticket. Here are all printed information on my ticket. I enjoy dig into details to find out meaning behind these characters.

NON REF/CHANGE FEE APPLIES VA

LID ON UA ONLY PENALTY/CHANGES31MAY06

WANG/JIANSHUO

SHASHA

W(LB1I/qG

SHA MERCHANTS INTL

RANS / GDSL

SHANG HAI CN

08306115/04 /0

SHANGHAI PVGUA 858T 05JUN 1245 OK TKXSPCNS

SAN FRANCISCO IUA 857H 1418 OK HKW6MS

SHANGHAI PVG

VOID

CNY 6950 SHA UA SFO 329.37TKXSPCNS UA SHA 534.46HKW6MS NUC863.83END ROE8.04546 XT 20AY304US41XA47XY41YC1206YQ37XF SFO4.5

CNY 90CN

CNY 1636XT

CNY 8676CASH

CPN 1

AIRLINE CODE 016

FORM 9415

SERIAL NUMBER 361 305

CK 4

What does it Mean?

Curiousity is very important part of my life. I keep being courious to many things around me, including this ticket. Hope one day, I get some idea of all the information of the ticket.

Looking forward to Sunny California

I love travel but I hate jet lag. Hope this trip I will be fine.