A Note of the Sunday

Sheshan

The Mount She (It is pronounced as Sheer, not as the female pronoun), is the closest mountain to Shanghai (it is at the Qingpu District of the city). It is maybe the only climbable nature thing in this city. Wendy and I decided to go there and climb the mountain. It is not far from our home in Pudong – 51 km. We climbed the mountain – it is lower than most of the buildings in this city – less than 90m. Within 20 minutes, we went to the top and get to the ground, pretty confused, and disappointed by how low the hill actually is.

But anyway, it is a very nice place to spend some time. The national park is free of charge. You just need to get to the gate before 4:30 pm.

Steve Jobs’ Video

On YouTube, I spent some time to watch a lot of videos of Steve Jobs. The videos are just charming. Among them are some interesting clips I want to share with you the funniest one:

Steve Jobs Funniest Joke. Even Bill Gates Laughs!

He said Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction”. (Ship-pointed-to-the-right-direction is quote from the former CEO of Apple, Gil Amelio, who badly screwed the company).

Storm at Real Estate Market?

At Sheshan, I saw about 20 real estate agents running everywhere to stop cars passing by, trying to sell low price villa to the passengers.

Photo by Jian Shuo Wang

The red price line was surprising – it said 50% off! I have no idea about whether it is the actual cut, but it just give me the dramatic feeling of a burst of bubble in the real estate market – very dramatic feeling. Let’s just wait and see what is going on.

A New Week

A new week is ahead, and I am really excited to start the week tomorrow. There is a big blueprint out there, and I just want to get it started, and finish it ASAP.

York had a blog presentation about his 2005. I realized in those days, people have enough time to write blogs. I reviewed many of the articles on my blog I wrote many years ago. I had to admit that the quality of the entries are much better than today. We are slower in those days, and have much more time to spend to record the life, than we do today. Slow down a little bit, pick the most important things and have inner peace…. inner peace…

Competence Level

If we use “I understand” and “I don’t understand” as one axis, and “get things done” and “cannot get things done” as another axis, we draw an interesting competence chart with four quadrants.

I don’t understand why you cannot get things done

This is lowest level. If I know how we can do it, but don’t understand why you cannot get things done, that is a series problem.

I can understand why you cannot get things done, or why you can get things done

These two are relative the same level – the two persons are of the same level – both can or cannot solve the problem.

I cannot understand why you get things done

This is the perfect situation. The other person is impressive. He/she can archive much more than what you can.

Some Interesting Reading

I didn’t read too much recently (I mean on website). The abundance of information turned Internet from a book into a endless maze. I often follow a link just like a cat chasing the wool ball, and forget where I was, and even where I am going. I don’t like this kind of reading experience. Reading is turned into glancing, and my limited attention was evenly distributed to 20 sites and 200 articles (article titles to be more exactly), so I almost read nothing.

Well. Recently, I did spend some time to read some high quality blog, and got some interesting articles, like this:

Mark Suster’s experience with Venture Capital (via Feld’s blog).

How interesting. People often think they have the privilege to be superior to others – as a manager? as an interview? or simply as a customer? They show completely different attitude to different people. Maybe this is called civilization. Interesting post, and I like Mark’s description that turned the experience into a vivid blog post.

This is also via Feld’s blog:

Deal Size

What is particularly interesting for me is,

Brad and I have been doing early stage investing since the late 80s (me) and early 90s (Brad).

This may be a standard opening sentence of many articles in U.S, but investing from 80s is amazing for me. What does China look like in early 80s? The change with name “Reform and Opening Up” just happens, and people just enjoy to have the right to “make money” – I mean more money than the country wide same-salary approach. If you see how big the change is, you can see how much the opportunity is. It is not easy to compete with someone who have accumulate professional skills for 20 years. However, in China, in many fields, it is blank market with no strong professional. So there are huge opportunities. That is what I see this market.

World Cup is Over

World Cup is Over

World Cup is over. I didn’t watch many games during the World Cup, so I decided to stay late last night (or to be more accurate, this morning) for the World Cup Final. It was 8:00 PM Germany time, and 2:00 AM Shanghai time. What a tough job to stay awake in early morning. The 120+ minutes game lasted until 4:00 AM. When Italy beat France and won the championship, light pours inside the room through window. The Sun came out soon after that. I slept for 3 hours, and went to work. The ability to stay late at night has dramatically decreased these years. 

What a moving story Zidane performed in the final game!

Welcome to Zaobao Readers

Yesterday, I saw many readers coming from Lianhe Zaobao of Singapore. This blog was featured in an article English blog is Gaining Momentum (CN). The article was written based on a news report by China News Agency. The China Radio International (an English program) also broadcasted the story based on the same article. It seems News Agency is a influential one. (Did I asked a stupid question?) There are just many industry “common-sense” I don’t know. It is just like my talented non-IT friend asking me “I heard Bill Gates just quit from Intel…”

The fact part of the article is not accurate. Most of the media reports are not accurate, especially those articles saying good words about this blog. :-) Anyway, let it be. I don’t spend too much effort to correct those wrong statememts.

“What we do is never understood but always only praised or censured”. Nietzsche said. (Quoted from The Gay Science, Section 264)

I did Ignore World Cup

I believe someone may feel that this blog is lack of something. I also feel so. It is unusual for a blog not to mention the World Cup in Germany, isn’t it?

I did ignore the existence of world cup. I love to play football. I am still excited about the scene of one hundred students running and kicking on the same playground when I was in middle school. We went to play football at 4:00 PM and got back to dorm at around 6:00 PM, when it was completely dark.

There were many students sharing the same playground. Some played from south to north, some from east to west. You can imagine what a chaos it was.

Till now, I still haven’t watched any game yet, and didn’t see replay of a goal. It is not intentionally. It is just my life.

Yesterday, I put all my sports equipment into a centralized cabinet, including running shoes, clothes, tennis/ping pong bats, yoga related stuff, and basketball… It is a good idea to exercise more often, I thought.

There was a saying: “People say sports are good for health. It is true, only before TV was invented”. When people gather before TV set, and have beers, it is no longer sports. It’s just a movie.

How embarrassing it is that China, as a country with so many people, didn’t enter this World Cup. It may be a reflection of lack of sports facility. For example, I cannot find anywhere to play football – for free in Shanghai. I don’t think kids will pay to play football.

P.S. Day of Failure

What a day. Wendy and I got tired back home, without archiving any thing. We joked “It is a bad day to do anything”. We got up early in the morning, wanted to go horse-riding, then gave up for not finding the location. We went to break fast at Yonghe, and they served meal so slowly, and provided hot drink. Wendy held the drink while I drove – too hot to drink. After 10 minutes, she was angry and throw it into garbage bin. There was no hope for the drink to cool down in anther 10 minutes. We went to bank only to find out the bank was closed. We had to get back home.

In the afternoon, we kept trying. We went to a new place to try the yoga class with free coupon. There are too many cars there. When we found the parking lot and appeared at the gate, 1 minute past the starting time, and were refused.

I asked Wendy: “Where are we going now?” Wendy said: “Home”. I said: “Go home, the second time, in the same day?” :-)

What a wonderful day we had!

Hello, I am OK now

Hello! Hello! I am OK now.

I recovered from the most serious illness in my life, and now am perfectly OK now. The illness is nothing. To be short, the wisdom tooth grew up and caused problem on tonsil, and then caused hot fever.

Listen to the Body

Jack Z dropped me a SMS: “Take care and listen to your body”. It is good tip: Listen to the body.

The body is actually talking to you all the time, but most of the time, we don’t listen at all. This time, I spent 2 days, completely to listen to the body, and play game with the body. It was nightmare, but interesting (I mean only when I recovered, I would say so…)

The Circle

Because I had high body temperature, it was not possible to think too hard. Even turning on TV made me sick. So I just sit there, hours and hours.

I could feel the body started to become hot, and hotter. At the very beginning, only the chest, then the upper arm, the lower arm and finally hands. When my palm started to feel hot (that kind of hot without sweat. Only hot), I knew the body temperature must be 39 degree or higher. The thermometer showed my guess was correct.

Then I drunk hard (it hurt when I swallow the water), and within 5 minutes, sweat came out, and became pouring on my face, I can feel the body started to cool down. Within half an hour, the body temperature went down to below 38 C.

The problem is, before the tonsil recovers, the up and down cycle continued all the time.

Be Careful. Not be Sick Anytime

Being sick is so bad, that you’d rather gave up a lot of important stuff just to keep quite and not-so-painful life.

Barry listed seven things he matters most in his life.

  • Health
  • Social
  • Finance
  • Work
  • Leisure
  • Mental
  • Ethics

    I would agree. Sometimes, we devoted ourselves too much to work or fiance success and forget about health. That is not a balanced life.

    Thanks everyone. Two days formed some good habit for me. I didn’t rely on computer and Internet as before – anyway, stayed away from computer for about two or three days didn’t kill me. It made me realize I had so much time when you do nothing…

    May everyone be healthy and happy.

  • I am a Patient Patient

    Let me explain what is the “Last tooth in mouth”. :-) It is the inner most tooth, that just grew out last week. In China, people call it “The Tooth of Wisdom”. However, it is troublesome, really troublesome.

    I went to hospital three times these days, and my body temperature was as hight as 39.8 C.

    If it were stock price of a company, I believe many shakeholders will be happy, but for me, stakeholders, including me and Wendy, were not happy.

    These two days, I was a patient. A very patient patient. It is the most serious health problem in my last 10 years. Can you imagine that I sit at my living room (and sometimes sleep) for the whole day on Saturday without doing anything? I believe I havn’t do so at least in the last 10 years. :-D

    Anyway, water and medicine help, and now I am pretty good. The temperature has get down to less than 38 C. Hope I will be fine soon.

    Got Fever – 38.4 C

    I cannot imagine that. The last tooth in my mouth came out, and my mouth is painful. The worse is, I start to have fever. The current temperature is 38.4 Degrees C. Well. Let me think whether I should go to hospital to get a shot.

    With Google Coop, let me create a service that you can search in Google terms like “Wangjianshuo Temperature”, and it returns the current temperature of my body. Sounds cool? Let me get injection first.

    On Credibility

    Eric is angry today. His blog article on 75 Rules of Thumb of Software Development (Chinese site) was quoted by CSDN without prior notification on the homepage. The worst is, under another person’s name. 27 comments quickly followed the original article including an editor from CSDN.

    When I just started this blog, I read this article: Honesty Honesty (Credibility Revisited). It is a very good starting point for me to keep my promise on credibility. I became very careful to quote, and to give credit to where it belongs to.

    You can build web site credibility by providing third-party support (citations, references, source material) for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people don’t follow these links, you’ve shown confidence in your material.

    Quoted from On Credibility (via Honesty )

    My Rules

    Here is my own rule regarding credibility – always check the owner for permission before quoting any article. I seldom quote (in full) articles on this site since they belong to where it is. If I want people to see it, why not just give comment and provide a link? Readers can go there to see themselves. Pulling the content into my own site and even worse, pretend it is my own content does not help to build up my own credibility.

    Nice People Always Check with me before Using my Content

    I appreciate people who checked with me before using my articles or photos. The second most frequently received emails in my email box are mails requesting permissions (the first frequently asked questions are about visiting Shanghai). I happily granted all of them – I don’t remember a single rejection so far and I always thank them for asking. At least I know my pictures appeared at a TV commercial in Tokyo, many text books in universities in U.S. and Europe. I know my article went to some websites. The most interesting story is, one musician used my photo as the cover of his album.

    I am happy that they at least provide a link back to my site or they print my name with the pictures or articles. Some even promised to send me a hard copy when the book is published. They are all nice people.

    Dan

    Dan discussed about credibility and credits with me and we laughed a lot about his experience. He said one newspaper (I’d like not to mention the name but it is among the largest) editor called him to ask for permission to use his article. He suggested some modification and asked to put a link on the article. The editor said “Well, but the article is on yesterday’s newspaper already.”

    Creative Common

    Not everyone will check permission like this editor (although he checked too late). Isaac Mao and other guys are working on the Creative Common in China – the idea is label the content with granted permissions so people don’t need to check for permission before use the content. Even in CC, link back and credit are required since it is the property of the content that should always go with it. I didn’t adopted Creative Common yet since I still didn’t really read the full license yet.

    Digital Words in Real World

    Zheng 2.0

    Zheng was among the happiest blogger these days. He had a son on Aug 23. He called hsi son “Zheng 2.0” in his blog. Many people came and sent congratulations to the happy Zheng 1.0. (via IsaacMao). BTW, he said his son was “released”.

    404 Error

    Here is another example to use computer words in real world. The day before yesterday, we were busy working in a small lab when someone came to look for a person.

    “Is Mr. Somebody here?”.

    “404 Error” was the reply.

    The man turned and disappeared. The rest bursted into laughter. Someone corrected: “I didn’t have the chance to tell him: 302 – Restroom on the 18F!”

    This is the usage of the Status Code in HTTP Protocol in real life.

    Jain Suho Wnag @ Bieijng

    I changed my display name from “Jian Shuo Wang @ Beijing” to “Jain Suho Wnag @ Bieijng” three days ago and kept the wrong spelling for every word till just now. I received more than 10 queries about why I changed it this way. My friends are nice and they reminded me that I spelled my name wrong or spelled Beijing wrong. Haha. It was an experiment and it was just for fun.

    Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

    Tihs is inteserting. I chnaged my nmae and poeple siltl fnid it esay to recgonize my nmae or the ctiy nmae :-D

    Get India Visa in China

    After I setup this site, I am often mistakenly regarded as Mr. Know-Everything… I am surely not. I only took the advantage of knowing both Chinese/English languages. :-D

    XHJ asked me about how to get India visa for Chinese citizen. I didn’t know that before, but I saw this information may help XHJ to get married with the girl he loves. I read some Chinese website and got the following information:

    Visa Type: Business Visa

    Valid period: 2 months

    Max days to stay: 30 days

    Requirement: All passport visa holder

    Materials needed: two 2′ photos, photocopy of national ID (both side), passport valid for 9 months.

    Source: http://www.china.org.cn/chinese/TR-c/215864.htm

    More information on India Visa: