Met with Stan in Chatea.

Good chat.

He helped me to ask the question to myself again: Doe sit make sense to see everything too clearly and enjoy Taoist thinking. Is it so important to clearly predict what is on the other side of the mountain before you start climbing? What’s the other side? It must be a decline – continuous decline.

Good point.

Weather Stuff

Shanghai is hot, and rainy (in the next few days). Get prepared, friends.

Shanghai Local Guide

Also, I found an interesting site at http://www.shanghailocalguide.com. Pretty interesting service. Wendy enjoyed the great service (and expensive one) in Europe of private tour guide. I believe in Shanghai there are opportunity in this field, and Shanghai Local Guide, or Aron is the first this kind of freelancer service I saw. Is there any other such site that I didn’t know?

This morning, York has his new baby!

The whole team is very happy about him, and I, in particular, understand how exciting and sweet it is.

Congratulations, York.

People call the newly born baby York 2.0, or some calls him

NEW YORK

P.S. I had wonderful night with the third delegation Jan and I hosted: the U.S China Working Group of U.S. Congress Delegation – arranged by NCUCR… I also met Sean, founder of neocha.com.

Congrats to George and Iris for their wedding today. I share their happiness and best wishes!

I was happy to attend their wedding at beautiful Gaoyou Road in Xujiahui, and took the chance to reunion with fellow Microsoft guys.

When I meet Annie, and exchanged name, she asked: “Are you THAT Wang Jian Shuo?” I said, “Yes. I am the Wang Jian Shuo of Wangjianshuo.com”. :-)

Happy Birthday to Jia!

Had wonderful birthday party tonight.

Nice night. The best classmates I have are my high school classmates. We were in a class numbered 926 between 1992 to 1995. We keep close contact to most of people in the class till now – 10 years after graduation. But it is not easy to get together.

Today, four of us (plus Wendy) get together, and had a dinner together at the San Xiang Tower (三湘大厦). There are really good Hunan Dishes there.

On the photos are Jian Shuo (in Internet industry now), and Xiaogong (who is in Microsoft, and before was in Visa office of U.S. embassy). On the right is Chu Xiang Feng, who is an architect, and then on the right most is Shen Jie, a producer and reporter from CBN (第一财经).

Since we are from completely different industry, and we didn’t see each other for some time, it was pretty difficult to understand what everyone is doing.

Questions For Jian Shuo: Are you still in Microsoft?

A: I just celebrated the start of my third year in Kijiji last week.

Question for Xiang Feng: What do you do as an architect?

A: I design public architect.

Q: Oh. Then you design gardens? (I asked this question).

A: Not really. I design museums, railway stations, and libraries.

Question for Wendy: What major were you?

A: CS.

Q: What is CS then? (Xiangfeng Asked)

A: Computer Science.

Question for Shen Jie: You must know the stock market very well. Did you make money?

A: I work on macro economy observation.

Q: Oh. Then you know foreign currency exchange very well. (Wendy asked).

A: Well… Not really. It is not macro economy….

Questions for Xiaogong: What do you do?

A: I am with the customer service organization, and I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, …..

Q: So can you tell me what do you do then? (Shenjie asked)

A: :-(

It was so interesting for some good friends of 10 to 15 years ago (I am in the same class with Chuxiangfeng since Grade 3 in primary school to end of high school. That is 10 years!) to gather and to explore what others are doing… Well. It is not easy, but it is so interesting.

I always admire Carroll who has life-time friends. They come to her Chrismas tree trimming party continous for half centuary. I value my old friends so much. They are the best gift I got when I grow old…

From Eric’s blog, he is flying to New York. He posted two pictures, which does not seem to be true – it is more like a 3D model.

Photograph by Eric Zheng

Photograph by Eric Zheng

Few days ago, when Eric chatted with me on MSN, he said he was going to New York. I asked why. He simply said the cheap flight ticket is good. He cares more about the cheap flight ticket, and the trip is even like a side-result of the flight. :-) So he is there!

It reminds me of the cold winter in New York in 2004.

Look at what I have here for that winter:

1. Taxi in New York City
2. Life in New York is Tough for Me
3. Subways in New York
4. Skyscrapers in New York
5. I am in Shanghai
6. Cold New York
7. New York Pictures
8. Christmas Eve in New York City
9. New York – Day 2

P.S. Recently found new blogs

1. Xiang Li
2. Estelle Yang

We had lunch at Hengge’s home last Sunday.

Blue sky – although it is not that blue, but the sunny and clear Sunday is rare.

The new buliding near Blogbus’ office seems to be a big one.

The area at Long Hua Road seems to be a place with good potential – maybe like 798 in Beijing. The difference is, it is a morden art and design district, instead of just a place of art.

This is a short notice to some of my friends in Bay area.

For some reason, I lost some contacts in my address book (maybe due to synchronization problems), and I am able to recall the email address or other contact information for some of my friends in bay area. I’d like to drop a small note to you, but I didn’t. For example, Carroll and Jim, I’d like to pay a visit, but it turned out not possible on this trip. Please drop me a mail for your email address again? I just feel so bad that I lost it.

End of the message.

Sunday, I was happy to invite friends to my home in Pudnog for dinner. It was great experience to have my friends around the shining dining room. It is also a good incentive for me to clean up the rooms and garden, to prepare for the home visit.

Shanghai is too large, and my home is just too far. It is not very convenient for people to be there – especially for my friends in Puxi and my friends who don’t have a car.

After one day of housework, I’d say, I love my home so much. No where in the world is as good as home. No where. I confirm that.

I setup the Sun umbrella in the garden, and lay out my sun chairs. It is a nice setting even for a bar, or restaurant, but there is not so many people visiting. I feel excited when people came and can enjoy my “garden bar” in the garden. The mosquito is a problem though. I am thinking of the anti-mosquito lights to kill them – the light with blue bulb and high-voltage lines around the bulb. The best decision I made was to have a power outlet in the garden, so make the installation of the anti-mosquito equiptment possible.

The glasses I bought from IKEA on Friday were fully levarged. I like the IKEA glass designed by IKEA – I saw the glasses in Qingdao (where IKEA don’t have a store).

Image in courtesy of IKEA

We also enjoyed good wine brought by Chen, with our SVALKA wine glasses.

Image in courtesy of IKEA

Life is beautiful, isn’t it?

11 years since we graduated from high-school. Or to be more accurate, 11 years from the “Black July” – I mean the Entrance Exam for Colleges.

Shen Jie, Xiaogong, Ziheng, Dingding, Zhiming and I, 6 of the 10 classmates in Shanghai got together. Our last year’s 10 year anniversary party in Qingdao didn’t happen last year, since I suddenly became very busy, so we have to plan our 15 year anniversary of graduation in the year of 2010.

It’s always nice to meet with old friends.

P.S. Typhoon is coming. Wind blows outside window. I hope this time, not too many people complain about my “policitally incorrectness“.

P.S. 2 Quote of the day: “Plan is always useless, but planning is useful”.

Had a gather of my old friends in Microsoft this Saturday. We have been working together as a team, and I am so fortunate to have worked with them, and I believe they are also fortunate to entered Microsoft as intern.

Meanwhile, it is the show case of my new digital camera: Nikon D50. I finally bought D50 instead of D70 or Canon 350D.

P.S. Photo posted without prior permission yet, but I think my friends should be fine with it.

Early Summer

Here are some test shot I took today – some plants.

Conclusion: The old saying “Camera is not the most important factor of good photo” is true, but at least, it is one factor.

P.S 2. Look at these beautiful photos. Its beauty is breath-taking.

Run, Linda and Jack visited my home (to be more exact, my garden) this afternoon. Happy about that. The Sun of spring shines perfectly and we were happy to eat banana (my favorite), and apple (Wendy‘s favorite) under my big umbrella.

I took every minute in the middle to complete my reading of Yuhua’s new book: Brothers.

Then we went to the Centuary Park. It starts to become crowded in Spring. There are people everywhere. So we jumped onto a boat.

Below: Jack on boat.

Below: The Xiangmei Garden tower

Podlook Office

The other highlight of the day is to visit Jack Gu’s office. They created podlook.com in the small room. I joked, when Del.icio.us was sold, their office may be similiar to this one.

I took some pictures. Hope this helps to record the starting point of a future famous company.

Above: I draw this big head boy on their wall. There are many drawings on their wall already. No wonder the first sentence Wendy said was “Am I in New York?”

Xiang joined us later. I became aware that everyone on this picture used to or is working for Microsoft.

More pictures of the visit.

In the cold Beijing morning, I waked up – ealier than avarage, and went to the Yansha (Lufthansa Center) to meet Sarah. Sarah is a nice journalist. She created a lot of reports on China for Newsweek. Among them, my favorite one is the Microsoft Culture Revolution – the cover story with a portrait of Bill Mao. After check Starbucks at the nearby hotel, the one at the Pacific Center (they were all closed), we finally settled down at Bookworm Library.

I met three friends three times at the Bookworm. It is my most preferred location in Beijing to meet friends.

I’d rather keep the content of the talk (in journalist term) “off the record”. I learnt that “off record” means the listener need to pretend that he/she heard nothing. :-)

Chatting with friends are nice. I have some wise and inspiring friends around me. I feel so lucky about that. Some ideas captured during the chat.

1. The trends are pretty linear and it is important to keep close eyes on what is about half steps ahead you.

2. Accumulate something that is can be accumulated, instead of some temperary stuff that can be easily crashed or taken away. What is more important does not really mean what is commonly accepted.

3. Focus in one specific area and be really good at that area works better. Maybe Wiki is a great way to organize knowlege related area.

4. News is something like sales. Reporter sale the news to editor, editor wrap it up and sale it to cheif editor and then sold to end user.

5. Good interview questions are those questions that no matter positive or negative, no manner comment or no comment all make the headline news.

P.S. They are all thinking of quitting blog in 2006 and change to something new.

Thanks for sharing. Good luck, guys.

Links: Chedong/Ada, An Ti (ops!)

The other day, on the street of Los Gatos, I saw a plate before a garden shop (I don’t know how to put it better. It is a shop selling flowers, garden tools and decorations). It says: Friends are flowers in the garden of life.

I have a lot of flowers in my garden of life. Robert Mao is one. Today is his birthday, and I’d love to send a happy birthday card. My card is special, a page on my blog (this page). He runs UUZone and inspired me a lot about the new ideas, philosophy of life and how to think out of box and get actively involved in the technical discussion around the world – he, as the CEO of a Nanjing based company, actively participate in many international events, that really helped a lot on the business.

Happy Birthday Mao!

P.S. Mao is right. I got the notification from UUZone to notify me about his birthday. I said last time when we met: you are actually running a birthday business.

P.S. 2. The other sweet quote I saw in the shop was: Come into the garden. My flowers want to meet you. :-)

P.S. 3. A Really Good Personal Information Management Tool

Till now, I really want to find a good personal information management tool. Here are my personal challenges:

1. I got a lot of emails. Many of them are a question in my hotmail email box. I replied, and that’s it. It seems we two are the strangers in a metro station that we see each other once, smiled to each other, and that is the only contact we meet in our whole life. Even if we meet sometime later, we have no idea that we have met before. My initial think is, it is nature. Do not try to improve it, since it is how the nature works. In the long run, one’s whole life is something like the 3 seconds in the metro station – happens quickly and disappears as quickly.

2. I have very good friends and important friends to me. I want to have some ways to get connected and say hi sometimes after 3 years we haven’t contacted each other.

3. Meet people. For example, when I come to San Jose, I have many friends (old or new) to meet, but finally, sometimes I forget who lives nearby, whether he/she is in town and finally, we don’t meet.

There are many social network software. But just like a good bed does not solve the sleeping problem. There must be some way (methodology + tools + rules) to help me out. It gives big opportunities to the SNS companies.

I welcomed Robert Mao (from uuzone.com)and Hengge (from Blogbus.com) (and his little ballet) to my home. Very nice gathering and we enjoyed the small garden under our “sweet-scented osmanthus”. It is the autumn time and the smell of the tree is wonderful.

Tonight, I met two nice guests from Six Apart in Shanghai – Ginger Tulley, Six Apart’s director of worldwide strategy and analysis, and Nob Seki, Executive Vice President and CEO of Six Apart in Japan. Thanks Ginger and Seki to send me a Movable Type T-shirt. Ginger asked: “We have T-Shirts with either Six Apart and MovableType. What would you like to have?” Although the actual answer will be both, I chosed the MovableType version, since I will be using MovableType for 3 years in 2 weeks, and my first blog entry ever is MovableType Successfully Installed on Windows XP (on Sept 11, 2002).

MovableType T-Shirt

During the dinner, we talked a lot about the history of Six Apart and the Internet trends in China. Ginger already told me that Six Apart was named after the birthday of the two founders Mena and Ben. Their birthdays are just six days apart, so they named their company “Six Apart”. I just found out we three were born in the same year. If I’d set up a company with Ben, maybe we should call it “Twenty Six Apart”, since I am 26 days younger than Ben.. :-)

Seki seems to have uploaded some pictures he took at the Bund already.

Jian Shuo, Ginger and Seki

Here are some other pictures I took during the night. I haven’t been to Bund for quite some time. It is very beautiful after so many times of visiting.

When I started to use MovableType almost three years ago, I could imagine MovabeType can be very successful (although I didn’t expect the name change to Six Apart). However, it is by no means for me to expect that I will finally meet Mena Trott and Ben, the founders of MovableType after two and half years. Yes. I visited Six Apart office today and was hosted warmly. The best part is, I met Mena and Ben in their conference room, and Barak, CEO of Six Apart. It was wonderful experience for me. I am a strong advocator for MovableType. I didn’t expect the star couple is so young (the same age as me) and they look very nice. Ben even looks a little shy. We chatted a little bit and checked if Mena and Ben mind if I put the conversation on my blog. They said “No. Not at all.” It is the reaction from a very experienced blogger and a blogging tool maker. :-)

What a wonderful day. I will update it later since I need to catch up my lunch at 7:45 pm tonight. I also met Chris, the CEO of Rojo.com and the team. It can be another very cool application on the Internet. Read here for more details.

P.S. I am at one of the top floor of the highest building of San Francisco, the Transamerica Pyramid. The view for the whole bay area is great!

Update About Mena and Ben

The story of Mena and Ben will be another classic startup story. They met in high school and got married before MovableType. Mena is a wonderful writer and among the first bloggers and she asked her husband to help to create software to her to write blog. I guess it can become a pattern for successful product: When a girl ask her boy friend or husband to create a tool for her, chances are, the product will be very popular for others as well. As Wendy put it, it is something with love – with a very specific persona in mind when creating the software. The persona guides the developer (boy friend or husband) to have a consistent view of who the user is. In addition, there is enough motivation to do that… So, I guess if someday Wendy ask me to create something, it can be a great thing.

Mena explained the history of Six Apart in easy and attractive way. It reminds of the old days when MovableType 3.0 Developer Edition was released, along with the charging model. It was a hard period of time for them. The feedback from the community was extremely negative. I remember, at that time, I understood the reason why MovableType changes to the charging plan and why people get so upset about the change. Finally, Mena started to write a series of article on her blog, explaining the thinking behind the change. I believe the articles worked perfectly. Mena handled the crisis extremely well. I though Mena should be something around 30 or 40 in age, judged from the article, but I was so surprised that she is so young, just like a (beautiful) girl next door. I will still be a MovableType fan. Just as Pierre, the founder of eBay, shared in the conference call with us, a human voice is critical to a successful community and business. Mena is the human voice for MovableType, just like Griff to eBay, Craigs to craigslist, and Bill Gates for Microsoft (in early days).

Selim helped me a lot for the business. I chatted with him today and we searched Selim Freiha, his name, in Google, and found some. I said: “My PageRank in Google makes it possible for me to mention your name and I am sure the page will be the first result in Google soon.”

So, here is the test page. I present it as a gift to Selim, the great guy who knows Excel extremely well. Let’s see if it goes to the top of the search result in Google after three days – Google now index my site at max interval of 3 days now.

P.S. The last time I attempted to do the same thing was about Wicresoft, the Joint-Venture of Microsoft. Now it is the second result for Wicresoft in Google. :-)

I met with Weigend, the former Chief Scientist of Amazon.com in Shanghai tonight. It was a great experience to talk with them on the new ideas around blogging and social software. I totally agree his two principles on new generation of software: 1) Fast Feedback 2) Low threshold for participation. Dr. Weigend believes with tags and analysing of user’s behavior, we can create something very new. I agree. He took a picture of us with his Palm and send it to Flickr. :-)