When people travel, they use fresh eyes to ask silly questions that is not often noticed by local people. That is one reason why people travel.

I have my question of today: When I had dinner at California Cafe at Stanford Barn 700 Welch Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 (recommended by Yelp), I noticed that they have Feb 20, 2010 printed on the header of the menu. That is what we often find out in nice restaurants here in the States (and now in Shanghai).

Why they did it? Is the main reason coming from changed menu dishes, or just to let people feel more special?

Street Names in America is mystery for me. Let me randomly put some street names I am familiar with:

• Hans St
• Serra St
• Alma St
• Quarry Rd

These are not English words. Does people invent a word and use it to call the place they live, or what?

I at least understand certain types of road names:

• Interstate, or state roads that are numbered, like US101, I-280, CA-85
• Named after another name, like Oregon Expr, Santa Cruz Ave
• Just some nice names that means something: Sand Hill Rd, Sweet Oliver Rd (inside Stanford), Garden Dr.

But the names I listed at the very beginning does not fit into any of them… Can anyone help to explain this?

Just want to wave and tell everyone that I have safely and smoothly arrived at Palo Alto via United Airlines UA858 (seat 41B through Gate 95 at SFO), and drove all the way down from the airport to downtown (via AVIS Pontiac G5 car, via US-101, Oregon Expr, El Camino), and arrived at Travelogue.

This is the airplane that took me here (at the time of the shooting, it was still parking at Gate D77 at Pudong Airport).

Photo by Jian Shuo Wang

Hotel – Travelodge

It seems it is too noisy here, and I need to actively look for a better place to stay. Although I Now Prefer Inexpensive Hotels, and I never lived in five star hotels on business trip, and always find the cheapest hotel possible to save cost for the company, I just realized the hurt to productivity may not compensate the little saving. I stayed for some days in the Super 8 at the opposite side of the street – was not very good (the smell!). This time, I moved here, still not a good option.

The Bay Area is not Sunny!

It is the rare time, that I don’t see a shining sunny California at my arrival.

Big face of me

Twitter?

I can use Twitter without a proxy, and feel… hmmmm… strange. Although I can access Twitter either in Shanghai (via a proxy, of cause), or bay area, the difference is huge. It is not just convenience or not… I am just not used to it. Need some time to get used to.

My recent US trip started to form a routine. It always start with a PHO noodle – the Vietnamese noodle somewhere near the hotel I stay, and ends the trip at Tomokazu Japanese Cuisine noodle shop near gate G100 of San Francisco airport.

Choosing Food

In the bay area, the closest food to Chinese food, including Chinese restaurants, is actually Vietnamese noodle. I didn’t make a mistake here. I did mean INCLUDING Chinese food. Well, actually there is no such a thing called Chinese food, just like there no such a thing called European food. Most of the Chinese food here are Cantonese cuisine, not the food I am used to. I just need 1) Noodle 2) Hot soup instead of cold (iced!) water 3) Salty food, not just rice 4) with meat AND vegetables in it (cooked not fresh vegetables).

Routines

My personal type is perceiving – not the type of people who enjoys routines. But recent trip to US made me very routine oriented – plan exactly where to have lunch far in advance, and plan who to meet several weeks before. That is what the US society requires (no appointment? Sorry), and that is how I also found effective. By knowing exactly what I am going to do in the San Francisco airport to the detail level of where to have lunch actually save my brain energy and focus it on more important things.

Finished my Noodle, and End of my Trip

Just finished my noodle, and my noodle trip to US ends here. The UA857 to Shanghai is actually delayed to 2:30 – 2 hour delay. Rare, but it happens. BTW, there is no free wifi in San Francisco airport. I miss PVG now.

BTW, this morning, I am very sure I completely get rid of the jet lag – I was violently forced to wake up by several alarm clocks, but I still slept for 10 minutes more. Yes. This is exactly who I am, not the person who wake up 2 hours before the alarm clock, and feeling excited about the new day. Now, the sleepy cat is going back.

I am Back Home, Sweet Home!

Wendy and Yifan, I am back. I am bringing gift to Wendy I am sure she will like, and I am bringing toys to Yifan that I am even sure that he will be extremely happy – the cars – big cars! Cannot wait to see smiles, or screams from Yifan and Wendy.

I am sitting at my small table in the Super 8 hotel at Palo Alto. Yes. It is a small table, and a small room with noisy refrigerator, and it smells. But, I am happy.

Life as an Entrepreneur

Kissing goodbye with 5-star hotels, business class flight and jumping back to the real life of an entrepreneur, I just don’t believe I could make a better decision. The corporate style of work is just not my style. Let me tell you, Super 8 is really good – not because of it is good (please fix the noise of the refrigerator!), it is because it symbolize the spirit of cost saving, and the place you pay attention.

Pay attention on what you do, what you think, not where you stay!

Business Ambition

Paul Graham talked about Cities and Ambition. Silicon Valley is the area full of ambition. To be more precious, the ambition is in Palo Alto, in Mount View, in Melon Park, and in Sunnyvale. The ambition flows in entrepreneur’s mind.

I am very sure at this quite (again, except the noise from refrigerator) night, there are many entreprenuers are still working hard, or more importantly, thinking hard.

They may be showering now, thinking some hard problems, and forgetting to turn off the water. They may be driving but still thinking something important in the company. They may be in the office alone, when everyone else in the company has already left, so he can see his company from another angle. They do it because they believe in something big that others don’t really believe in.

And there are great people on the Sand Hill road, and in downtown Palo Alto. They are ambitious too, and they have a bold vision to the future. This trip actually changed my fundamental impression of how Venture Capital works. Or, to put it the other way, how the really outstanding VC works. It is all about ambition that is far beyond most people’s expectation, and the experience to make it happen.

Intellectual Power

There is nowhere like the SV that shows the importance of Intellectual power better. Well. Maybe Cambridge in Boston demos that more clearly. The intellectual power in SV is more mixed with experience and business. It is mixed with pattern recognition – the pattern for great things, or bad things – people smell things.

Interaction with great people here requires a lot of intelligent power. I never get so tired with the same amount of talking time than anywhere else.

Travel

Elliott shared with me his observation: Travel is life intensified. Yes. I had 7 meetings today, and meeting about 20 people. I had more meetings yesterday. I seldom do that in Shanghai, just because we had plenty of time. We should live a life like this in Shanghai also. :-)

Wrapping Up

I’d like to thank everyone I met to take the time to meet with me. To protect people’s privacy, I won’t list the names, or even initials, but I do want to thank everyone for your time. It is such a privilege to be able to talk with great people like you. Sometimes, I feel to have a hat of “flying all the way cross the Pacific” helped me to get access to people here – remote guests always comes before local people, aren’t they?

I have never been happier than staying in this small Super 8 room. I am sure I will keep staying at motel as long as I can. Not about money at all. It is the inspiration, and the message it sends to myself, and to people around me.

Good night America, and Hello, China! I will be back fully refreshed. SV is my source of inspiration.

Before 2005, I always tell people – I love Seattle, WA, because of the great trees, lakes, mountains and great cities. At that time, every of my US trip is in Seattle. It turned out that I said that just because I never visited Silicon Vally. This is exactly the reason people travel – never make decisions about what you want most before you explore more places and lifestyle – the type of seeking for something unknown.

Why I Love Sillicon Valley

Althouh I would say many things: the convinience of access (no transition of flight is needed from Shanghai), the always sunny weather, the bay, the nice spread of cities, and realtively very good traffic, the key is the intellectural power and innovation you can get in this particular area.

I just had a whole day conversation with eight great people in the history of Internet/IT industry, and I admire so much about their clarify of pricinciple and mission, the extereme passion for something that has big impact, and the strong brain muscle to see things through.

Inspiration

People are really group animal – when you stay with people like this mind, you inevitably get affected, and think, and behave the similar way. I, as an ENFP type of person, inspiration, and theory, and people, and something new, and talking, etc, are so important to me. I got exactly what I wanted in this bay area.

I simply love it. It is the best place I can imagine to be (well, learning from the previous lesson, a better way to put it is, it is a better place than Seattle. Period.)

Although with busy schedule and cost concern, everytime I tried to postpone or cancel a sillicon valley trip, but every time, I am so excited about what I see here, and never regret for a single minute that I am here.

If you are technical guy, and especially an ENFP guy, you definitely will enjoy the place as much as I can. For the rest personality type, I think you will like it too (althogh I cannot say since I am not other type).

I am a Local

From the day one I am here, I refuse to use a GPS. I would rather get lost and wander for a while in the unfamiliar street to build my sense of this area than following the GPS direction. Now, for most of the places I go, I just drive there without the help of any map or GPS. The most visited places are the down town of each of the small cities – Castro St. in Mountain view (and Villa), University Ave in Palo Alto, Murphy in Sunnyvale, and Sand Hill/Stanford area. I am also used to be I-280, I-880, I-680, US-101, CA-85, CA-237 highway system here, and also the El Camino Real, Middlefield Rd, the Page Mill Rd… See, I am a local already, and I know where to take nice brunch in the morning in this area. I just hope one day I can bring Wendy to the area (she never been here), and show her my favorite places.

Again, too late, time to sleep. It is 12:30 Pacific Time.

P.S. Wendy SMSed that Yifan got angry with her again. Hmmm… What happened?

How embarrassing!

I got a ticket for overtime parking in Palo Alto downtown today.

I parked the car into the purple zone. Then I visited Tina and have lunch together. It is the first Monday after the Independent Day. We walked to many restaurants from her list one by one, only to find out all them are closed, and one even closed for two weeks!

15 minutes later, we stopped the Palo Alto downtown guided tour and went to the Japanese restaurant to have Sushi. We had wonderful conversation, but jet lag hit me at about 1:30 PM. I could not stay awake, and proposed to have a cup of coffee.

The 2 hours at Coupa Cafe was great. The small road reminded me to Shanghai – some streets in the French concession is exactly the same. If you watch the phoenix trees, and some Chinese girls walking along the street – I just feel that I am in Shanghai.

Then we chatted a lot of things, and enjoyed the “Shanghai” misconception, and the beautiful weather, the sweet to death Cafe Mocha…

But Tina’s question broke all the nice things, and seems to be a stop sign of a nice music: Jian Shuo, where did you park?

…….

1 minute later, we were at the side of my car, and found the ticket was already comfortably lying on the window of the car. Tina regretted that she should have asked and give me permit to display on the window.

Well. My first overtime ticket! I know Randy will be very happy to know that, and say “Welcome to America” to me again.

It is $30. I remember I saw the person enforcing the purple zone 2 hour parking when I left my car. He is using a hand-held scanner to do it.

Sorry for that, and I will pay it the day after tomorrow when I have other meetings in Palo Alto again.

In China, there is no such a thing of zoned parking, and 2 hour enforcement. Need to pay attention the next time. Hmm… How embarrassing it is to have a ticket.

Meanwhile, I know my friends in China are busy moving their cars on Kaixin001.com to avoid vitual ticket. I got the real one. How embarrasing it is (Have I said I was embarrased before?) Hope my painful experience brings some joy to you.

Just one quick question: why people in California always have their car light on even in day time? It seems waste of energy, and pretty annoying. On the rented car, the light switch default to AUTO, but does it mean to shut it down in automatically in sunny California at day time?

BTW, I inherited this habit of forgetting to close the light when I am back to Shanghai (completely manual lights), and Wendy always reminded me about that.

Another exciting day in Sunny silicon valley just ended. I would say every time I visit the Silicon Valley, I just love it more and more. The valley is all about new ideas, inspiration, and thoughts about the future. I chatted with Reid, and Jin, and my friends in the Chinese entreprenure community at lunch (with a side trip to Costco to get the shopping list I got from my friends filled). All of the meetings were very good. In Silicon Valley, what the future looks like really matters for many people, and you can just go ahead to talk about it without getting a strange look (like in Shanghai or Luoyang). With Jin, I got very excited about the future of Smart Grid – the power management system, although it may be 5 years or 10 years from now. It seems to me just like another Internet. This is also my first introductionary talk about clear energy. Not to mention Reid’s wonderful mind – some of the tips are still singing besides my ear now.

It is pretty late (0:25 AM local time) now, and I hope to get to bed quickly, and don’t over sleep tomorrow morning. Good night!

Thanks Carroll to inviting me to her wonderful party again. There are very nice conversation going on and great food, and there are fireworks! Look at the wonderful fireworks and view!

Credit: Photo taken by Jian Shuo Wang.

Credit: Photo taken by Jian Shuo Wang

Credit: Photo taken by Jian Shuo Wang

Credit: Photo taken by Jian Shuo Wang

Credit: Photo taken by Jian Shuo Wang

I should otherwise be sleeping at hotel, if there were no meeting that afternoon. Since I got to the Stanford anyway, it was nice to hang out for a while and take some pictures, and make some drawings.

Hoover Tower

Stanford has a nice tower – the Hoover Tower:

Credit: Photo by Jian Shuo Wang

I was there on July 2nd, when I just landed from SFO airport. I took several minutes to draw what I saw. It is embarrassingly bad drawing

Hand-drawn by Jian Shuo Wang

Stanford Bookstore

Then I sit down in the Stanford Bookstore to rest a little bit, then I drew another picture of what is inside the Bookstore.

Drawing by Jian Shuo Wang on July 2, 2009

The actual picture is like this. Not exactly the same – I “moved” the shelf at the front, and as any drawing, ignored a lot of details. Anyway, I still think it is a OK drawing.

Credit: Jian Shuo Wang. I hope I didn’t break the rule of no photos – didn’t notice such sign at entrance

Hey. Did anyone say that drawing can cure jet lag?

Just kidding.

It is another sunny morning in bay area. So lovely weather, and I am sitting in my favorite (or OUR favorite?) University Cafe. Interestingly, although I love new travel destinations, I always enjoy have meal or cafe at exactly the same location. So I arranged most of my Palo Alto meetings in the same place: University Cafe, 271 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA. I am enjoying my nice orange juice, and expecting my breakfast:

Breakfast Burrito: eggs, Bacons, Turkey, Breakfast Sausages, Potatoes, Cheddar & Jack Cheese, Side Salsa.

It is so nice to be able to read menu, and know what to expect, the result of my menu learning effort.

Update: This is the final food.

Tina took me to the Buck’s Restaurant at Woodside by I-280 before, but the line was very long and we gave up. I only saw the “Google car plate” on the war, with a tagline – something like this: “we are so fool that we missed Google stock, but we got the plate.”

I went there the next trip, but still, too many people. Again, I gave up.

Today, I finally entered the restaurant. It is not empty but still have several seats – BTW, is this another sign of US economy slow down (if not recession)?

But as almost every coffee or restaurants in the Palo Alto area, out of the busy conversation from other tables beside me, I heard some words: “Series-A, investment, term sheets”

My Miserable Lunch

I ordered something worth of 10 USD with a very long name. I thought it is something big. I was given a salad with eggs, and green leaf plant (remember that I said I am like a rabbit? I feel the same thing again). I ate it, and waited for my main course.

Later, when the waitress took my empty dish, she asked:

“Do you need any dessert, sir?”

What? I was completely lost. I was still starving. If I had known it is salad, I should have avoided it. Then I ordered a pie, and that is really good.

After the lunch, my stomach is half full, and completely cold.

“Hey, where is the nearby Chinese restaurant, or at least Pho?” I really wanted to grasp someone and ask.

Two days after I arrive at the bay area, I still didn’t see anything wrong. I arrived in Saturday, and has a bunch of meetings in San Francisco. Everything seems great. Now, it is Monday.

However, some chat with my friends today is all about negative news.

Lehman Bros’ Bankruptcy

I may be too late on news, but I just heard about the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. I just heard it 10 minutes over coffee from my old friend in eBay.

What? What is happening. Then I realized the Dow Jones dropped by 504 points, the worst since 9/11. It is a bad day today.

How interesting that my first meeting tomorrow will be at Lehman Bros’ office. It is a awkward situation. How about the meeting tomorrow?

But there are much bigger question to ask beside my little meeting: What’s next for the US economy?

Feeling the Recession

I haven’t experienced recession in my life time. The China economy just keep growing in the last 30 years since I was born. There are some problems, but not as big as US recession this time.

My friend told me that Americans just cut their spending, and don’t pay for many things. They don’t buy new things, they don’t have expensive dinner (or even don’t dinner outside), and they don’t plan for vacations. (By “Don’t”, it really means less). Jobs are cut, and the cloud just appears to be everywhere.

To add a note to this, yesterday, I had appointment with a friend at Starbucks, 1 Market Plaza. We went into the building just to find out the coffee shop has been closed. It just echos of the news that Starbucks is closing outlet because people don’t buy expensive coffee as often as before.

It seems people in American is tied more closely to economy and finance world than we are. I still cannot understand what is going on now. Would like to hear what do you think about it.

And, the question is, what about China?

I am joining a Silicon Valley Chinese engineers/entrepreneur meetup in Google, organized by Tina and hosted by Meng in Google this afternoon. It is a private personal meetup that I’d like to join every time I am in town.

Looking forward to it.

Due to jetlag, I wake up at 3:00 AM, and 5:00 AM. At 6:00 AM, I cannot sleep and left the bed at 6:30 AM. For me, when I am feeling sleepy and don’t want to wake up at 8:00 AM, I know my jetlag period is over, which I expect to be 3 days later.

Travel is an very important habit changer. It changes the time you wake up, the way you think about things, the way you make appointments, the way you eat, and many aspects of your life, especially the bay area, which has a strong tradition of doing things.

I am even thinking about the breakfast meeting, which is never thought of in Shanghai.

Dinner with RC in downtown Mount View, and the visited the Red Rock at the Villa and Castro there with Yi Jin, Henry and Teresa (is this the right spelling). Yi Jin seems to be the person I meet every time I am in bay area. He was heavily involved in the HYSTA (Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association), which is a very nice Chinese technical community. Time flies and I have know Yi Jin for 2 years.

The atmosphere of Red Rock is great, as many of the coffee in the Bay Area. It gives me the feeling that if you are in the Nanluoguxiang, you don’t want to have coffee in Starbucks.

Many appointments ahead. Looking forward to it.

P.S. I still have about several hour in the next few days unallocated. If you would like a meetup, since I am here, do drop me an email at jianshuo at gmail.com. Let’s meet.

Every time I travel to different country, I tried hard to understand how the society works. This time, I want to seek for some help to understand “car towing at owner’s expense” terms displayed in many private properties.

Look at these plates (which I took when I visited Cisco).

© Jian Shuo Wang

© Jian Shuo Wang

And here (in Creative Labs).

All these notice states that “Unauthorized Vehicles will be towed away at vehicle owner’s expense. This kind of plates are everywhere. So I am curious about it and did some research.

CVC 22658

On these plates, I found the magic number: California Vehicle Code 22658. What is that? Specifically, what is the 22658-a?

A simple search to this number yield the following result:

22658. (a) ( )1 The owner or person in lawful possession of private property, including an association of a common interest development as defined in Section 1351 of the Civil Code, may cause the removal of a vehicle parked on the property to a storage facility that meets the requirements of subdivision (n) under any of the following circumstances:

(1) There is displayed, in plain view at all entrances to the property, a sign not less than 17 inches by 22 inches in size, with lettering not less than one inch in height, prohibiting public parking and indicating that vehicles will be removed at the owner’s expense, and containing the telephone number of the local traffic law enforcement agency and the name and telephone number of each towing company that is a party to a written general towing authorization agreement with the owner or person in lawful possession of the property. The sign may also indicate that a citation may also be issued for the violation.

Another Example of Law and Law Enforcement

This is another interesting sign about law and enforcement (FYI, the other one was “The Right to Refuse Service to Anyone”).

Let me try to “guess” how it works, and please tell me if my assumption is not correct.

All properties in U.S has an owner. Either individual/family, or company, organizations, or government (all kinds of government).

All private properties are protected by law. The property owner (like the companies in this case) has the right on this land to remove any violating vehicle. There are also some commercial service, like Pro-star Towing in the first plate, who are willing to help property owners to enforce their right.

If it is allowed by a law (like CVC 22658), the tower company can directly tow the vehicle to a location that complies to the law (there are other terms in 22658), and the owner of the vehicle has to pay for that fee.

So the property owner is happy since they enjoy their rights (no one can park illegally there), and the towing company is happy (making money!). Only the owner of the car is unhappy – paying money, and take all the trouble to bring it back, so they will avoid it.

Is that correct?

Thought about China’s Law System

The reason I thought about this was about the parking in Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Parking is a problem there. It is chaos I would say. There are illegal parking everywhere, some were even creative enough to park it in the middle of a road or corner of a road, thus no other cars are able to leave.

The security guards worked very hard to prevent it from happening, but how can they possibly enforce that with such a big campus and just 10s of people?

So they put all kinds of stuff to the key locations on campus – signs, chairs, stones, ropes, flags – almost everything to pre-occupy those locations so it is hard for cars to park there. That makes the whole campus a mess. As you can imagine, that does not work. They put a chair at the road side, wishing drivers see the chair and park somewhere else, but cars just park side by side with the chair – making the road narrower.

Of cause, the most useless thing is a “No Parking” sign.

Police Enforcement, or Owner Enforcement

Police does not work so well. First, there is no law or even custom to say the land is owned by someone. In technical terms, no one in this country owns any land, so they don’t have any rights. Secondly, if you want to remove some vehecle, call a police. This may turn police into a big towing company (using tax payer’s money).

I think the California way works well even in China’s environment.

Your Thoughts or Experience?

I clearly understand as a visitor, there are still a lot for me to explorer. If you happen to be a lawyer and know more about it, would you please share more thoughts about it? I am also interested in knowing anyone had the experience to be towed, or has enforced such towing before.

Is there any side effect (or negative effect) of this law?

P.S. Toys for Happy Holiday

Let me share the toys Wendy and I liked a lot 2 years ago. We put them into hidden place to avoid Yifan. :-) Yifan has his own toys.

© Jian Shuo Wang

Last Tuesday, I visited Six Apart, the maker of MovableType, my favorite blogging software. I have a lot of friends there. Let me show you pictures first.

Thanks Ginger for taking the great photos for us.

Chris and Me

Photograph by Ginger

Story behind the picture.

I know Chris with introduction of Andreas, who worked for BV Capital at that time. Chris was the CEO of Rojo at that time. I admired him a lot because his early company Red Herring (Red Herring started from his parents’ home in Woodside, CA, according to Wikipedia). We talked a lot last time and when we almost finished, he introduced companies nearby, and he mentioned Six Apart. Then he gave Ginger a call and shortly we appeared before the entrance of Six Apart. That is how I turned out knowing my friends there. With the later acquisition of Rojo by Six Apart, Chris came along and joined Six Apart.

So, Chris is a long time friend of mine, and I own big thank you to him.

Below. On the left front is Barak, CEO of Six Apart.

Photograph by Ginger

Below. This is the 5 year anniversary cake Ginger and MovableType team prepared for me. They are so sweet, and I enjoyed the nice chocolate cake very much. It is both beautiful and delicious.

Photograph by Ginger

Below. Look at this picture. On the left is me (I am gaining weight. I know!), and in the middle is Anil Dash, VP and Envanglist for Six Apart. He is now in New York. I red a lot of entries of Anil on MovableType blog. He is an amazing person with exact the kind of character a community influencer need: engaged, helpful, sharp. I regret I didn’t have enough time to spend with him during the trip. On the right is Ben Trott, the founder of Six Apart. I didn’t see Mena this time, since Ben and Mena’s baby is expected to arrive very soon.

Photograph by Ginger

Below: Brad Choate. I know him first from the great plug-in he developed, before he even joined Six Apart.

Photograph by Ginger

Below: Me chatting with Ben, Chris, and Andrew (who was so kind to share the expensive best-seat baseball tickets with me and Ginger).

Photograph by Ginger

OK. That is all for the photos.

It was to my biggest surprise that the MovableType team had a celebration party for me when I arrived. I didn’t expect that. Ginger showed me a post on Six Apart’s intranet that says: “Cake at 4:45 PM”. Maybe that is a surprise for the team members. I am very happy to meet them again after my last visit in 2004. 3 years flies and the team is doing very well.

On behalf of the MovableType user community, I’d like to thank the team for the great product they developed. I am a happy user of MT.

Looking forward to seeing everyone soon.

Hi, I am back! I am back to Shanghai on the delayed flight (3 hours) UA857. Jet lag is much better this time, although I still feel it a little bit. This is the email I sent to my friends I met the first day.

It is wonderful to know you, a group of nice, interesting and smart guys, in the bay area. Let me share briefly about what I did for the rest of my trip after meeting you guys – you were the first group of people I meet during my short stay.

Besides all business meetings which occupied the day time of all workdays, I managed to put many activities on nights or weekends. Every time I am here, I hang out with local people to understand what they are thinking and their takes on recent China issues, like “Made in China”. As always, I meet my American family (I am very proud of), alsoI met with the girl in San Jose city planning committee to know about their work to change the city plan for San Jose – it is once per ten year task.

Yi Jin and Tina drove me around the Saturday morning (the cornfield), met with other people (Alex, and Wenjin), and had great time in Computer Museum in Mount View. I enjoy the museum a lot. I also took the wonderful Sunday morning in Berkeley to meet the couple friends – wife is city attorney of Berkeley and husband is Executive Director of California City League. It is so interesting to know how government here works – the city level, state level and federal level, and the frequently used term – check and balance. A lot of insights there. We had a blog Meetup which Yang Meng also joined. I even visited Six Apart, which they host a big celebration party for my 5 blog anniversary. My last night was in AT&T Park in San Francisco to watch San Francisco Giant vs Arizona Diamond Rocks baseball game. As Ginger warned me, it is the kind of slow pace sports, but I do enjoy that.

What a long week for me. Like every trip, I got a lot of insights about how the society of America works. Silicon Valley is a great place to get inspirations and to get new ideas. I am looking forward to seeing you again soon during my next trip.

That basically summarizes what I experienced in this trip.

Acknowledges

I’d like to thank every one I meet and people who hosted me, showed me around and spent time with me.

Richard,

Tina,

Isaac,

Chris

Manulae

John

Caroll

Jim

Shiloh

Hong Feng

Yang Meng

Randy

Yumi

Hongfei

Alex

Wenjin

Ginger

Andrew

Ben

Brad

Zhang Lei

Zhang Zhen

Sophie

Bob

….

This is not a complete list, and does not include people I meet for business proposes in the day time. Thank you for made my trip such a wonderful experience for me.