I have many photos – more than 10 thousands at least. When I look at these photos on my hard disk, I am thinking: maybe I should share the photos. Since I don’t like to take pictures of myself, and most of the pictures are on a business or personal trip, majority of the pictures are about the place I had been to. So it may be a good idea to share the pictures in case someone is also interested in going to that place.

I put the photos onto http://wangjianshuo.com/photo and added a link on the navigation bar on homepage.

Hope you enjoy it.

P.S. It is just the beginning. I am using Picasa to generate the HTML version of the photo gallery.

One month ago, I talked about Back to Technical World. It is very interesting that 5 years ago, when I just about to join Wicresoft to run the ESS business, I wrote an article named: Business is Business. In that cold December, I wrote:

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.

5 Years since claiming to be a businessman, to recent getting back to technical a little bit, and now, I am even sure that business is still the most important world I should play with. It is true that I don’t need to be in the technical world for too deep and too long.

At the bottom of my heart, I don’t like business, although I even tried to learn it. Friends comment that I am not a business man. I am NOT! This may because of the nature that I enjoy philosophy and reasoning better than competing. But it seems I have to change to the world I am physically in.

I ever wrote Dislike Doing or Starting to Do. It seems to be it is me who didn’t want to start dive into details of the business world. Let me give it another try in the next half year.

Originally, I wanted to go to Shengsi, the island near Shanghai for a meeting, but the recent storm broke my plan completely. I miss the sunshine yesterday, and today, it is another world – rainy, and windy. Everyone has an umbrella in hand. People told me, recently, Shanghai looks like London.

At the elevator of Raffles City, I met two interesting people. I was told they are the top power sellers on eBay in the world. That means, they sell more than anyone on eBay. I was surprised they were LA based Chinese, and they speak very good mandarin (I don’t want to reveal the name before getting permission though).

Getting downstairs, I routinely bought two Beard Papa bread with me. One for myself, which I ate within 1 minute, and the other is for Wendy. I didn’t know the brand Beard Papa before, until RC recommended to me, and said it is popular in Japan. It tastes very good, with cream inside the bread.

The most amazing news today is the release of Google’s Chinese name. It is “谷歌”, meaning the “Song in the valley”. It is so hard to attach this name with Google. Give me some time to get used to it. Anyway, it sounds so funny to me.

What to write today?

Suddenly found there is no topic to write today. It happens frequently before, but this is the first time I write about it. :-D

So, what should I write today?

1. Server changed to bluehost.com. They seem good. The transition is smooth (pretty smooth), but I still lost some comments (5?). Feel bad about it.

2. Back from Donews gathering this year. Had wonderful dinner with Friends.

3. Went to Internet cafe again.

4. Focus Group is really helpful.

5. It is better to go to bed now.

The last day of Feb. Here is the status of my life.

• I am reading “The Search” by John Battelle. Thanks Xiaofeng for sharing the book with me. I have already covered the classic history of Goto.com/Overture.
• I have another small book written by Robin Lee (Li Yan Hong), CEO of Baidu.com, back in 1999. At that time, Robin didn’t start Baidu yet. The preface of the book was Charles Zhang (Zhang Chao Yang), currently the CEO of Sohu.com. There was very limited copy for that book. Hengge (boss of blogbus.com) borrowed the book from me. This Monday, Larry Zou (CEO of wealink.com) got the book from Hengge and start to read it – the journey of a small booklet.
• It is cold and raining. I hate the weather like this.
• Published an article on Fashion Travel (Chinese version National Geographic) with my silly big face and mvm‘s
• Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of Kijiji. One year was not easy. There are too much moments in the 365 days. We will celebrate the event with a two-day training session.
• Edgeio.com was announced and attracted much buzz. That is the latest movement of decentralization of ecommerce on the Internet.
• I am now a big fan of My Own Swordsman (武林外传). It is so funny – a TV play like Friends or Sex and City, but happened in ancient China.
• Recently my productivity increased a lot, but also consuming too much brainpower, and I feel very tired recently.
• Wendy is back from Seattle. I am happy about that.

At night, chatted about my previous years, and I was amazed by how far I have gone through during the last few years. There are many moving moment when I lost my way, when I got excited, and when I fall into the lowest side of my life. It is an interesting story.

Getting back to office, I found a piece of video I recorded before – 5 years ago. I believe at that time, I was working for eCommerce team in Microsoft.

Download file (60K in size)

Also found out a picture taken on May 20, 2002. How fast the time passes! It is already 3.5 years. This was in the middle a product.

Jian Shuo Wang at Asia Community

And this:

At product RTM (Release To Manufacture date

This was taken at May 31, 2004. This was the end of another product.

Yesteday, Xiaowen (the girl on the picture) dropped an email to us for the Yuanxiao Festival. It reminded us that it was already one and half years since this picture was taken… To many friends, we make plans that we must gather once every one year. For some, we even set to meet once every several years. It sounds ridiculous when we make commitment for so long a period of time, but time always runs much faster than we can imagine.

When I thought of some other old friend, I surprised myself: “What? We haven’t seen each other for a decade already!”

Getting back home late from a small gather of old friends. 2005 almost past, and it was nice for us to review the year and talk about the interesting year. Everyone is looking forward to a great 2006. I am the same. It is late so I I will skip blogging tonight. (actually, it is not skipped – just a short one)

How fun. Some one searched:

I am extremely busy recently in Google and got to my site. Haha.

my life is busy

P.S. I found a strange trend that when I ask my friends around me, “How are you doing these days”, the more common answer is “Busy” or “exteremely busy”. I have two or three friends who are always happy to describe how many lunched they have skipped or how many nights they didn’t sleep. The question is, is “being busy” something to show off? Is he taking “being busy” as an accomplishment or archivement?

I hope I am leading an effective life, instead of busy life. :-)

Let me get rid of my hotmail backlog. Sometimes, I can check hotmail account several times to se if there is no emails for me, but some time (just like recently), I didn’t check it in the last two days and found 50+ new emails. I know I missed more recently. I have to appologize for not responding to many emails about information on Shanghai, such as how to get from one location to the other, how to buy certain goods in Shanghai. I really love to answer these questions, but it is obvious that I don’t have the bandwidth to handle that. Many one idea is to ask for some volunteers to help, but I believe I don’t have time to manage this, the other idea, I guess is better, is to direct the questions to a volunteer groups, Shanghaiist.com. It is a small group of people living in Shanghai willing to help people. Dan Washburn, the famous journalist, my good friend and a frequently mentioned person on this blog, started the website and I am honorablely be part of the team. Although I told Dan that I may not be able to contribute a lot, Dan still kindly kept me in the membership list:

Shanghai blogs

Bingfeng Teahouse

China Herald

Micah Sittig

Myrick

Running Dog

Shanghai Eye

Shanghai Diaries

Sinosplice

Wang Jian Shuo

They have formed up some ways to help people to answer questions about Shanghai. The column is called Ask Shanghaiist. On the website, Dan said: “Need answers? Advice? Ask Shanghaiist! Email shanghaiist(@)gmail.com.”

BBS on this site is also a good choice. The community may help.

The weather is hot and all kinds of functions of Shanghai are therefore under a stress test – a test that seldom happened so strong before. The 37 – 39 exteremely hot weather not only generated red high temperature alarm, (later changed to black high temperature alarm), but also generated huge volume of phone calls and emergency on-site request.

Taxi? Never Think About it.

8:00 AM in the morning, the air starts to burn my skin. The Sun almost killed me. It is impossible to get a taxi at this time – there is almost no taxi, no to mention empty one. Calling the taxi service numbers, like 96961, 6258000 – whatever number you call – the line is always busy. I know they have a very large call center, but the volume should be bigger. Waiting for half an hour for a taxi in the burning air is not good experience, especially when you see people are waving their hands to call taxi along the road, you know the possibility for you to get one is almost zero.

Fresh Water?

Newspaper reports many workers distributing fresh water got sick after working in the Sun, and the demand for fresh water increased dramatically, and people cannot get their water in time. The service line is also busy.

Air Conditioner

The hot weather added burden to A/C and some breaks. The repaire center got so many calls that they can only schedule the on-site to several days later. A lot of people complaint about it on radio station (I heard one this morning) and on TV, on newspaper, but there is no good solution since the repairing forces are so limited.

Recently, to get more space for my team, we moved to Zhang Jiang High Tech Park, which is in Pudong. In Shanghai, there are many places like the Silicon Valley in U.S, and Zhang Jiang is among the earliest and the biggest. It is at the east terminal station of Metro Line #2, and not too far from the Pudong Airport (about 25 km away?) The air is completely fresh. There are many trees, and parks with very few traffic. It is just like San Jose – without a car, actually there is not much to do there.

Zhang Jiang has been the top destination (my guess without solid data support) for high tech companies. The registered companies there enjoy many tax benifits and better government policies. More and more companies are moving in and the space is starting to be hot. I remember years ago, it can easily offer big area of land for big companies to setup headquarters there. Now, it is another story – the companies have to try very hard to get into the space.

I will post some pictures soon.

Thanks for everyone’s discussion on my work and life balance. ILH asked:

Is it worth it if you are starting to neglect your personal heath and sacrifice your family life in order to have a full time job, maintain a couple of Weblog, and have a lots of social activities? Posted by: ILH on May 14, 2005 02:19 AM

Well. It is NOT worth to have a full time job to sacrifice my family life and health. In Stephen R. Covey’s First Things First put this sentence as the headline of the first chapter:“How many people on their deathbed wish they’d spendt more time at the office.”

I totally agree. What I am doing is really integrate my dream, my life and my job together. I have my commitment to every friend around me, my family, my company and my life. I believe I can balance for most time. This Beijing trip is an exception, that I believe what I sacrified well paid for what I got. Thanks for everyone’s care.

Share a picture of Jin Mao Tower in Pudong with everyone:

Photography by Jian Shuo Wang

At the first try of Flickr, I know I will pay for this service. It is only a matter of time. Today, when I wanted to upload, the bandwidth I have used reached 99% and I cannot upload. I am not frustrated at all, since my credit card is ready within my reach. I paid 24.95 USD for the Flickr Pro immediately. It works great. Now I have 2G disk space (or bandwidth) and permement archive (for one year).

Before I paid, I noticed there are 2 new mails. I was quick enough to complete the payment and thought I can check the mail later. It prooved I was completely wrong.

In one mail, my reader snack offered a free flickr account for me: “I have a Pro account, and they gave me 2 additional Pro accounts to give away for free. I have one left – would you like it?”. I would definitely say “I like it”, if I didn’t pay. :-) I would like to thank Snack for the kindness so much. Flickr account is a perfect gift to share, I agree.

Meningitis outbreak was reported in Anhui. Based on the information I got — the radio, the newspaper, the TV, the Xinhua and China Daily, everyone is saying Shanghai is safe, and the meningitis cases are even fewer than last year. This is what I heard. I don’t feel anything in daily life that was infected. There are no rumors, no attention. Shall we claim it is safe this time? I don’t have the enough information to make the judgement yet. What I do know is, I got emails asking me about the situation about meningitis in Shanghai. International travelers have concerns now.

I am feeling terrible today. I got cold yesterday. Today, I felt weak. The temperature of Shanghai changed dramatically these days. It will get colder in the next few days with lowest temperature from 4°C, 0°C, -1°C, to -3°C of next Monday. So my buddies, if you are also in Shanghai, take care and keep warm! Cold or flu in China is not so serious as in U.S. In U.S., flu kills. In China, it is the less impacting illness.

I had three caplets of Tylenol Cold in the last 18 hours already. I hope it will help relief of cold symptoms. When I was in U.S., I was so cautious not to get cold since I had no idea about how hospitals work there. I guess many foreigners do the same in China.

Go to Drug Store for Cure

The easiest way to get medicine in China is go to the drugs store. There are OTC icons on these medicines that you don’t need a doctor’s Rx to buy them. It is definitely the cheapest way to fight against normal diseases if you know which medicine works for you.

Hospital? Oh. No. Thanks. I avoid going to hospital as much as possible. I believe there are problems with the current health care system. The hospitals rely on the medicine reselling as an important revenue source, so the doctors tend to give Rx and ask patients to get the most expensive medicine. They even give more than needed.

Whenever I go to hospital for fever or cold, it is guaranteed that I got the bill of 120 – 200 RMB for normal cold. Before they talk with you, the doctors will ask for blood check first. It is expensive. They gave many types of medicines that serve for more than three days. Do they really think only the combination of all those expensive medicines and three or more days can cure me?

Wendy Does Not Believe in Hospital

Wendy got cold in last October, went to hospital for many times and got injection for two days. One month later, she is just getting worse and worse. She recorded the experience on her blog (First several days, one week later, the worst day). During her illness, I was in Guangzhou. I wrote “Wendy has been ill for some days. She caught cold and didn’t show any sign of recover after the injection. I hope the statues bring some good luck to her. I have my finger crossed for her recovery soon.”

Finally, about one month later, we didn’t believe in those doctors in hospitals any more. We went to a small drug store and asked for more medicines they suggested. The apothecary said: “The medicine is not useful at all. Listen, your lungs have been infected already. Take these.” We didn’t believe in her either, but we finally paid for the cheaper medicine. Two days later, Wendy recovered fully. Later, when we got ill, we’d like to go to the small drug store first.

The Medical Insurance

The good thing is, I can use my Medical Insurance Card 医保卡to pay the bill. It works like a credit card. The difference is, I don’t have to deposit to it. The insurance does. It is the SOCIAL medicine insurance. Meanwhile, with the receipt, I can also reimburse the money from the commercial insurance company.

For those who don’t have either of the insurance, they are in big trouble. In Zhan’s case, he wasn’t able to raise the enough fund to liver transplant, and his insurance didn’t cover that. Wendy and I bought additional commerical insurance before to cover these high-cost diseases. The percentage of people who buy those insurances like us is small but rising these years.

I suddenly found I didn’t take a look of my own life for quite some time when I read Wendy’s new blog entry. It is a very nice summary. Just listened to the Shanghai Radio Station Traffic Channel at 105.7 and Yangyang was broadcasting, and I found she is quite interesting to share her personal travel plan to Tibet before she went there and get back to be the host of the program after the long vacation. She mentioned about her trip in her program and I feel very nice for this kind of personal feeling. It seems she is broadcasting her blog in addition to the traditional traffic condition broadcasting. It is interesting.

Recently, I often update blog between 0:00 AM – 1:00 AM, even later. To be honest, I changed the time of these post a little bit earlier so the post still fall into the day they should belong to. There are too many things to do and I often quote the Happiness Index survey in which Shanghai is the Second Unhappiest City. I said “Want to know the reason why people in Shanghai are unhappy? Look at me!”. I was kidding. To choose to be busy is different than be chosen to be busy, and even better than having nothing to do….

Recently, I work at a customer site near Xintiandi (to be professional, I won’t disclose the name publicly, and don’t ask. :-D). I join the group to drive to Metro Station and take Metro. You can call it Park and Go. The interesting thing is, I drive from Pudong to Xujiahui Station and park my car at the underground parking lot in Metro City and then take Metro Line #1 to South Huangpi Road Station. At night, I take Metro to Xujiahui to pick up the car, along with Wendy and drive back to Pudong. Wow. I guess not many people in Shanghai will do this.

If you know a little bit idea of the map of Shanghai, you should know how crazy it is. Actually, I am driving from the east-most part of the city to the west side of the city, park it at the busiest commercial center and take Metro to another. The reason I didn’t drive to Xintiandi is, the parking fee is really high and I have decided never drive to Huangpu, and Luwan district at rush hours. It is a waste of time, gas, and good mood.

Tomorrow, I will fly to Guangzhou for training and get back on Friday.

Almost half year after I moved to Pudong, I finally get my home in good order. Today, as Wendy and I celebrate the 1.5 year wedding anniversary, we welcame our first batch of guests: Grace, Claire, Xiao Gao, and Ricky. They share something in common – all of them are best friends and all of them keep blogs. It is late after the party and I will write more about the new home soon. The reason why it takes so long to settle down is, we have more than 60 boxes and we have to clean them one by one and put the stuff in the boxes into their new place in the new home. So from today, I guess the life is completely back to normal. It seems to long a process, isn’t it?

I listed my mobile number on my contact page. Some one commented that “Jian Shuo Wang is really crazy that he put his mobile phone number onto his blog! The whole world can see it.”

I Never Received Any Spam Mobile Call or SMS

I am not crazy. To publish a mobile number on the web is not that astonishing as others think. I am comfortable with it. To put on an email address in its original form may bring many spam emails, but a mobile number is not as attractive for spammers, especially for international spammers. :-D If they want to spam, mobile number is much easier to guess than email. Let me tell you the rule if you are going to spam (take it as a joke). All mobile numbers in China are 13 digits. The first three can tell you the operator the mobile is using. 135, 136, 137, 138, and 139 belongs to China Mobile while 131, 132, 133 belongs to China Unicom. In Chinese version of Google (swtich the interface to China in Google Preference), type in any mobile number and they tell you the operator, the type of the subscription (Shenzhouxing or Quanqiutong) and base city. Here is the information for my mobile. Since China Mobile is going to open the 134xxxxxxxxxx number range, it is pretty sure that the existing number range are almost full. Back to the spamming topic, a spammer can just start with my number and increase the number by one (I know it is one of my friend’s number), and spam it. Then increase it by one and spam again. At last, the spammer will reach all mobile in China. (Don’t tell others that I told you this :-D).

I was kidding regarding spam idea. The point is, they don’t need to actually see your number before they send spam SMS or call you. Unlike email, they have to pay much higher for either SMS or call, so mobile spam is not popular yet.

I Love to Receive Calls

Till now, every call I received was a pleasant story.

I received call from United Kingdom, they asked for the financial institutes in Shanghai. I received call from a reader, who sat at the Startucks of Beijing (Near Guomao) and just called to thank me for the stories I wrote. I received other calls from different part of the world (German, United State, Spanish, and India…). The good thing is, I *always* got the call at day time. It seems the notice about the time difference worked:

If you are out side China, please consider the time difference between Shanghai (GMT+8) and your place. I did get phone call from U.S. at mid-night. :-D

International caller’s number does not show up on my mobile’s screen. It displays “Unknown number!” if it is an international call. Whenever I see this number, I know it is either my reader from out side China or my elder brother in Portland.

I also got calls from book agents, magzines and newspapers. Some of the interview was conducted via telephone, such as the MarketPlace interview and the China Radio International’s. Yesterday, I got a call from MetroZine, the most popular free magzine (in terms of wideness of distribution). They asked if they can use some of my Pudong Articles in their magzine. I said, “Yes. Thanks for asking.” Things like this happen all the time. I love it. The base line is, they respect my work and checked my permission before using it (see On Credibility). They won’t call me if they cannot find my mobile number.

The most interesting call I received was from Italy. Any one still remember the English Instructions in Yantai? Two days after I posted the entry, a girl called from Italy at around 6:00 PM Shanghai time. She said: “Well. I saw your post about the instruction in Yantai. You know what? I am now in Italy and I came from Yantai. My friend happened to be the manager in charge of the computer facility in that hotel. I called him and he said, the instruction was not printed by them and they would have people change the instructions to the correct version. He just wanted me to tell you, that now everything is OK.”

Haha. Small world again. What an interesting story. I am happy that this blog helped to improve something. It is like a media already. I didn’t post the story becaue the girl perfer now to post the story immediately when I checked her permission to disclose it. She said, how about two or three month later? OK. Now it is almost three month. I appreciate her friend’s effort to change the instruction and I want to thank the girl in Italy to take the trouble (and money) to call IDD to me just to let me know.

P.S. Comment feature was of this entry is closed on May 21, 2006.

No matter how the media reports, I am feeling the development speed of Shanghai is slowing down, from the tiniest things happening around me. Shanghai is still growing, but not at a speed like years before.

When I was in university, especially in the years of 1998, 1999, Shanghai changed so much. New bridges, new shopping malls and office buildings (like those in Xujiahui) and the elevated roads became into being. When I return from a vacation longer than 2 weeks, sometimes only for several days, I will find significant change in the appearance of the city. That was the most exciting part of the city and is among the most exciting memories I had.

However, I don’t feel the excitement when I am back to the city. The basic infrastructure of the city has been built and now the constructions are focused on improve, instead of build. I don’t see something very new when I am back. The city does not change at the speed it did.

The Shanghai’s growth seems to be slowing down.

P.S. F1 ticket

I got the assignment to buy 21 F1 tickets tomorrow for Sept 26, 2004. I am not sure if I can get it now – it seems too late. Even if there are some tickets left, it should be the grass ticket – the area without seats and people have to stand there to watch. Anyway, compared to those who traveled thousands of miles to Shanghai to see the circuit, it is much easier for us to watch it.