Although I missed the lecture about International Space Station, I didn’t miss a great meetup with Tina and Jin.

Silicon Valley is a great place to meet people – smart people, entrepreneurs, VCs, and techies, geeks… I didn’t really get it for the first few trips to the Bay Area. Although I visited most high tech companies, the most fun part of being in the Bay Area is to spend time with People! Tina and Jin are obviously among the interesting and inspiring people in the valley.

Started with a Short Drive, and Entered a Closed Cafe

Jin joked why Stanford students work hard since all the restaurants and bars, and cafe close early. We went to one on El Camino Real only to find out it is closed. Closure of business at 6:00 PM seems an unreasonable time for me. It is especially so for a tea house.

Then we moved to the University Ave., THE street of Stanford. Last time I went there was with RC. There ARE some bars there, and they are pretty crowded, with even long waiting lines outside. Stanford students do have some place to go on Friday night.

I settled down at Coupa Cafe. Elliott put it as the first recommendation when we choose the meetup place for tomorrow. It was really nice!

Topics

We chatted a lot of topics, and many of them are interesting. For example:

History of Palo Alto -> Stanford -> Foreign International companies in China -> Trespassing -> Vote of BART extension -> Six Apart and Husband/Wife business -> VCs -> Sand Hill Road and VCs on it -> HYSTA (Hua Yuan Science & Technology Association) -> Community and Circles of Friends of Innovation/Startups -> GSR and NLVC -> Life in the Bay Area -> Logistic of McDonald/P&G/Starbucks -> Failure and Success of Microsoft China -> Google in China? ->Stages of a Startup -> Types of VCs (Grand Hytta type?)…

Anyway, there are a lot of topics, and I should definitely write some articles to summarize the thoughts of my visit to the Valley. I start to feel the value of the Silicon Valley – the inspiration, the people, and the network just stress people to think (think out of box), and generate new ideas one by one.

Let me write it up.

Tomorrow? Whole Afternoon in University Cafe

Tomorrow, I will have lunch in Buck’s Restaurant at I-280 and Woodside Road. After that, I will be at this location from 1:30 PM to 5:30 PM:

University Café

271 University Ave

Palo Alto, CA 94301

In case anyone want to drop by, you are welcome.

Update November 11, 2006

I may leave University Cafe earlier, like 5:00 PM. If anyone plans to come, please notify me in advance by posting a comment on this page. I will check it before I leave the University Cafe via GPRS (roaming mode) on my mobile phone.