Hi my readers in bay area, sorry for being late in posting this information about the meetup. Again, let me irritate that I am the typical Perception type of person in the MBTI test, and I enjoy doing things in the last minute. This is not good, but this is just my preference that I need to use counter-preference to balance the way I organize my life. Anyway, finally, one day before the meetup day, I am excited to post the Wangjianshuo’s Blog Meetup in Palo Alto. This is the second time I organize a small meetup in U.S. Some of you may remember or joined the first Meetup in San Francisco, two years ago on April 24, 2005.

OK. This is the second one. This time, I choose it put it in the more heart area of the Silicon Valley – just at the University Ave near the Stanford University.

Here is the Location

Starbucks Coffee: Palo Alto

278 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA

(650) 321-8600

Below is the map. It should be the white building at the corner of University Ave and Bryan St. Zoom out if you want to find the location. I know for most people in Bay Area, you don’t need direction to get there. Please note: there are two Starbucks on the street. Do remember to find the one with number 278.

Sorry for not being creative, but there is not so many places on the top of my mind that I have an expected and consistent experience worldwide. Parking lots are available nearby.

Time

The time of the meetup span from 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM, Sunday afternoon, Sept 9, 2007.

You can drop by at any time. It is just a casual event, and you are welcome to bring your friends. I should be there from 3:30 PM.

Topics?

I don’t have any topics to discuss. I just know I have many readers and friends I have never exchanged emails, or left comments before, or someone we have exchanged emails but didn’t have the opportunity to meet. This is just a set of the time and location. If you don’t have any arrangement, you are welcome to come.

Maybe, there is a topic about this little blog. I am running this blog for 5 years next Tuesday. There is a lot of stories to tell in the last 5 years, and if you want, we can start with this.

Logistics

I am not counting the numbers, or doing any registration kinds of logistic. Let’s keep it stupid, and simple. If you want to join the meetup, just drop by before 5:30 PM, Sunday. If you want to write a comment to introduce yourself before you come, you are also very welcome to do so.

Cannot find me? Send me a SMS on your mobile phone to +8613916146826 and I will get it. Yes. It is a plus sign that you enter into your mobile phone.

See you on Sunday!

Update Sept 10, 2007

Yes. It is a great meet-up in the Starbucks in University Ave. I think we should have a photo but I forgot.

Nina, Meng, Bob and Yuxiang came, and we just have some free chat. It is nice to everybody.

There is always something interesting outside our homes.

Jin showed me the famous cornfield along the Lawrence expressway in Sunnyvale last night when we drove back to my hotel. At night, I didn’t see it so clearly, but I managed to find it out on Google Earth.

Here is a report about the cornfield.

Joe Francia, the owner, just keep the land and won’t sell it. He loves to grow food on his own land. If he stays happy with it, why sell the land for millions of dollars? Interesting guy and gave me a lot inspirations. Thanks Jin to show it to me. BTW, we talked about the land when I asked a silly question yesterday: where are the farm land in Bay Area?

P.S. Google is also very interesting service. I wrote this blog with just a title and a Google Map. I take a snap and when I am up and continued to write this blog, I searched “Cornfield Sunnyvale” and found this blog entry is already the second result in the search result page. Wow. I want to give credit to Google for searching so fast, and also give my blog some credit for being a reliable content source that Google bot loves.

Update: Sept 9, 2007

Yin, Tina and I visited the cornfield in Sunnyvale again, and took some pictures. Here you are.

More pictures of the cornfield can be found here.

Alan de Botton is right. When people are traveling, they sense the world in a much more sensitive way. Like me, during travel, I always have more to blog.

This time is about jet lag. Everyone has its own jet lag pattern. I have my own. As I slept well last afternoon, and fall asleep immediately after I got to bed yesterday at 12:30 at mid-night, I wake up for the first time at around 4:00 AM. The second time I wake up, it is just several minutes to 6:00 AM.

I feel this scene is so familiar to me: early morning, and it is still dark outside the window. It is very quiet although cars passing by the window one by one. It is the Hamilton Ave. They are only identified by the colors of their head and rear light, not by shape.

I said I don’t like planning, but this is purely software – I mean the mind, but for the hardware, I mean the body, it still strictly follow a plan, and wakes up or fall asleep at its own pace, isn’t it?

OK. This is a day full of meetings, so let me go downstairs to get my breakfast. I do feel hungry now.

P.S. Somebody said muscle memory lasts longer than mind memory, and a typical example is to recite a poem or learn to ride a bike. The feeling of body can easily draw us into history if we have ever had the same feeling. Let me: It is for sure that I will feel very hungry at noon time when I arrive (like yesterday) and very hungry at this morning. This all seems so familiar to me.

I am coming, my bread and banana.

I am at Larkspur Landing Hotel in San Jose.

Long trip, but this time, I am a mature traveler, and everything is perfect so far. This time, I even have a little schedule. I didn’t have that before. According to MBTI test, I am a very typical Perceptive (vs Judging) person. I got full score for all the questions indicating perception. The key character of P person is “like flexibility”, and don’t like plan…

Here is what the plan says, and I have put the actual time behind it.

Thursday

8:16 Arrival (8:00)

8:30 – 9:00 Custom and entry, sending a message to Wendy/Yifan (8:00 – 8:30)

9:00 – 10:00 George at SFO (8:30 – 9:30)

10:00 – 10:30 Pick up car (9:30 – 10:00)

10:30 – 11:30 SFO -> Hotel (10:00 – 10:30)

11:00 – 11:30 Checking emails (11:00 – 12:00)

11:30 – 12:00 Lunch at the Vietnam Noodle Place (12:00 – 12:30)

12:00 – 16:00 Sleep

You see, I can always save some time for routines, and even driving, but not on “checking emails”…

The weather here is great – the best weather in my limited travel experience. Is there a song named “Always Sunny California”? Every time I just have that song in my head when I drive.

I am heading to San Jose tomorrow. Just checked the weather and found out it is only 14 degree to 23 degree there. Pretty cold compared to Shanghai. I have already packed some shirts into my package.

Tomorrow will be a long day – I am going to stick to the same day of Sept 6, 2007 for 24 + 16 = 40 hours. From the perspective of a human being, there is no difference – I just wait for the time to pass by, but from the calendar and time zone perspective, it is not wrong to say the day was extended. We see how different using different views of the same thing. Isn’t it interesting?

Tomorrow, the direct flight from Shanghai to San Francisco UA858 will bring me to SFO, and when I arrive there, after the long trip and at about 0:00 AM Shanghai time, it is just a normal Thursday morning before 9:00 AM. When I drive my car from Avis to the highway 101, the rush hour just finishes, and most people started their day in their office, and no one will notice someone just completed 4000 miles journey and appear on the highway. Thanks to travel that give me the sensation of what is going on that normal people in normal life won’t feel. That is the beauty of travel. Is there any way to keep every day as fresh as Sept 6 for me? I didn’t find a solution yet, and suspect that my energy can be easily used up for all kinds of “new things” in my old environment.

Anyway, in the next few days, don’t trust the time shown on this blog since the time is Shanghai time, and when I write it, I am following the Pacific Time.

I am going to San Jose this week.

Here is my schedule:

Sept 6, 2007 Shanghai to San Francisco via UA858

Sept 12, 2007 San Francisco to Shanghai via UA857

I know I have a lot of friends in the Bay Area. Do you want to have a small meetup? Maybe on this Saturday near Stanford area. If you want to come, let me know. If there are some people (say, more than 2), I will think about a meetup there. Just comment or drop a mail to jianshuo at hotmali dot com.

I am flying back to Shanghai. If I can choose, the next time I travel, I will never try to transit in Tokyo. The travel time is 50% more than direct flight from San Francisco to Shanghai:

10DEC 10:50 SFO -> 15:05 NRT (11 hours 15 minutes), NH007

11DEC 18:40 NRT -> 21:05 PVG (3 hours 25 minutes), NH921

Flying time: 14 hours 40 minutes

Transition time: 3 hours 35 minutes

Total travel time: 18 hours 15 minutes

Direct flight is only 12 hours.

San Francisco is Raining

It is raining! It is pouring. To drive on US-101 is like operating an aircraft in the sky. I could hardly see the surface of the road. The rain completely covered sky, and the water brought up by the wheels of cars formed a thick layer of white around the 30 cm surface of the road. Looking back from the rear mirror, and I could not see wheels of cars behind me. They all look like boat floating on a white surface. It was amazing!

I am so happy to attend Carroll’s party for the second time. Wonderful time for me. Thanks.

Hello from San Jose. I arrived at 10:00 sharp at hotel. This time, I drove without a map. I am happy that I finally setup some sense of location, and for most places, like University Ave, Downtown Mountview, San Jose, Stanford, I don’t need a map now.

Getting to bed to have sleep now to kill the jet lag – my way.

Hope this is not too surprising. I am visiting San Jose again from Dec 3 to Dec 10. This time, I transit in Tokyo.

In the last few weeks, I went to U.S., stayed for 10 days, went back, and stayed for 2 weeks, and then will visit U.S. again, and will stay for one week, and then fly back to Shanghai. I am just like a clock… Ding dong, Ding dong ~~~

Jet lag can be tough for me. I am the jet lag type of person, and hope this time, the sleep method still works.

In the last week, the whole week, I didn’t take any pictures in Chaminade Hotel in Santa Cruz. The week was so intense that all my time, including nights were used up. I did manage to take severl photos (when it is not too dark outside). Here they are:

Chaminade seems to be a famous place. When I am back, Haisong told me he was also in the same hotel one week ago, for the Young Leader’s Forum (from National Committee of US. Chinese Relationship). How interesting that Haisong also jumped from the same pole as I did.

The Pole

Regarding the pole, it is a wooden pole about 10-20 meters high. People are required to climb onto the top of it and jump to touch the small ball. That needs a lot courage to do it. See some photos from the YLF (not me, or my group).

Image in courtesy of vishaan

Image in courtesy of vishaan

Image in courtesy of vishaan

I am back to Shanghai. Nice flight. I am not sure whether the trip was too intense for me or something else, I slept so well on the plane and was not aware of what happened during the trip. I wake up a little bit, wrote about 18 emails, and fell a sleep again. I managed to wake up about 14 minutes before departure, when the land of Shanghai is clearly in my sight again.

For the first time in my life, I had a seat on the second floor of Boeing 747. The seat number is 18H. It has a nice closet on the right hand that you can put all your package into. I enjoyed the seat so much.

Meanwhile, I suddenly missed the sofa outside the conference room of Chaminade – the light brown sofa facing the pacific, and with sun-shine directly pouring down. Combined with jet lag, and intense day, I could easily fell asleep on that sofa – I told Micki that it is my paradise. If there is one facility I miss most in Chaminade, it is the sofa.

Jet Lag

Getting back is much easier. Even a sleep cat as I waked up early in the morning. Managed to keep on bed until 6:00 AM, and I finally got up. 5:50 AM is a magic time for people in Shanghai. 5 minutes ago, it was completely dark, as dark as night, and now, lights came out (what an amazing thing), and I can recognize trees and flowers (there are still some) in my garden. So let me take some time to write some emails back to the friends (very close friends now) I met in the last week.

I will head to office in about one and half day. Wendy had a training program just beside the office building I work, AND they offer free parking. We decided to leave early today, to match up with the worse and worse traffic on Nanpu Bridge.

Nice to be Back

Although I enjoyed the trip so much, and enjoy meeting nice guys within and outside eBay in the Bay Area, it is still the best to be back to home, and sit near my garden.

I completed the amazing five days in Chaminade in Santa Cruz. What a journey it is! It takes some time for me to reflect and recap what I have experienced with the team, but there is no doubt that it was such a unique experience for me personally, and it placed big impact on me. Due to confidentiality requirement, I cannot explain more in details about what I did, but I will sumarize the learnings in the next few weeks on the blog. Now I am just too tired to keep my eyes open. When I feel really sleepy after 22:00, I know my jet lag completed go away. What a exciting news for! But the bad news is, I am flying back to Shanghai tomorrow. I will drive from Santa Cruz (nice place, but I didn’t have the time to visit downtown and the beach yet) to SFO. I will need to adjust the time zone again. These weeks will be tough since I am flying between Shanghai and San Francisco back and forth at interval of 10 days – the date for me to completely get rid of jet lag. :-) It is part of life, isn’t it?

There are several services that I very seldom use in China, but I use it frequently in the bay area.

1. Google Map and Driving Direction

I don’t use map as frequently as here. I need to check Google Map once or twice every single day to get driving directions. In Shanghai or even in other cities in China, to check an online map is just for fun – to checkout something I am so familiar and see what the map says.

2. Local sites

It is the same meals. I need to check out a restaurant first before I go out. In Shanghai, I only need to set an area, and there are so many restaurants there. Here, you have to get a restaurant first so you know your driving direction.

3. Voice Message

I start to leave voice messages when the person I call didn’t answer the phone immeidately. I am still not used to this kind of “non-instant” communication, but it seems to be the common way to do it. In Shanghai, people seldom uses voice message – we just try to dial again.

P.S. Route CA-17

Route CA-17 from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz is still scary for me. I can drive at daytime, but at night, it is so scary for me – nothing just two lines of dots winding around before you, and you have to be fast – 55 – 60 miles/hour seems much more faster than it actually is.

Buck’s Restaurant

Buck’s Restaurant seems really popular. We went there for lunch, saw many people waited in line and it would take 40 more minutes to get a seat. Finally gave up.

I saw the Google Plate Tina talked about, with a tag line: “We are too dumb to buy Google stock, but we bought the plate”.

University Cafe at University Ave

Stayed for the whole afternoon in the university cafe. It is not bad. The next time, I can directly arrange some meetup there. Good place – I love the orange juice. :-)

Today, I finally formed some basic idea about the roads in Palo Alto. University ave is east side extension of Palm Dr, and Sand Hill Road is a major road connecting El Camino Real and 280. University Ave. also connects US 101.

On eBay Park

The eBay Park on Hamilton Ave is a great place. I had full day meeting with buddies here, and it was nice. I found out some good food in the cafeteria – chicken with steamed rice. It is so nice to finally find some food I enjoy.

Meeting with Friend at Night

I managed to drive from Hamilton Ave up to Sushitomi Restaurant in Mountain View. Silicon Valley has so many small cities like Mountain View, which is basically one central avenue (Castro St). I have been to this area for three times, so is pretty familiar. The only problem with my drive is, I spent more than 10 minutes to get to CA-17 at Hamilton just because I missed the entrance from east to west, and have to get a U-turn in the Friday traffic on Hamilton. So the finally trip was more than 30 minutes.

Public Lecture on Stanford? I Missed It

What I planned for the night? I went to Stanford to listen to the lecture from Anousheh Ansari, called A Journey to the International Space Station. The lecture was held on the Stanford campus, at Kresge Auditorium, Stanford University.

Why I go there? Stanford is my one of my dream university, and since I am in town, why not visit the campus (again). I saw the poster about the event in a Iran grocery store near eBay campus yesterday, and decided to go. My friend Michael Stephanblome said something like “Why bother check out buildings in a city? Check out the people!”. It is very to the point that it makes much more sense to me to attend a lecture in person on the campus than wondering between the buildings.

Wrong Way! Took 1 Hour to Get There

Imagine how long I took to get to Stanford? One hour from Mount View. What a shame. I didn’t bring detailed map with me. I have no problem locating Stanford at all, but to get to the right Auditorium is just a big challenge. The campus looks like a maze for me. Finally, I got back to the Palm Dr – the famous entrance that I can recognize, made a U-turn at the end (wrong way), and then move east bound, until I hit Campus Dr. I followed the Campus Dr to Serra St back to El Camino Real (wrong way again) where I came from, realize it until I reached Page Mill Rd, and U-turn back to turn to Serra St, Campus Dr E again. Anyway, you know how hard it was (and how stupid I am).

Finally I spent about 10 minutes to park – how come Stanford had so many cars on Friday night! Do the student really study so hard?

Full! The Waiting List Seemed Full Too

When I get to the gate of the Kresge Auditorium, the lecture already started for 1 hour. It is about the story of Anousheh Ansari

, the first female private space explorer. I cannot mistake the auditorium since there are so many people outside it – looked pretty like a social event.

To my disappointment, the guard didn’t allow me to enter (no surprise – why all other guys waited OUTSIDE?). He said it is absolutely full – there was even no standing spaces. People outside were waiting for some one who leave, so they can enter.

This is to my surprise that a public event on campus attracted so many people, and they waited outside for one hour.

So, finally, I saw a nice auditorium, and get some idea about Stanford – I practically created many of the road on campus (without a map).

My first visit to U.S. was around the year of2000. I prepared for the trip for almost 1 month – from visa, to map, to research, to exchange money, and to create plan… The excitement and curiosity made going aboard very different from going to other city to me.

However, after visiting U.S. for more than 10 times, to visit a U.S. city is not a big deal any more. It is just like a Beijing trip (and a Beijing trip is like visiting another area in the city).

Money? Where is my Money?

After Boeing 747 of UA 858 arrived in the San Francisco International Airport in the typically sunny morning in the bay area, I realized that I didn’t bring a penny of USD with me during the trip. I still have much Renminbi cash in my wallet, but no USD. I don’t worry about it at all, since I have a magic plastic card – the visa credit card with me, and hopefully, the trip will be OK with the card. The only problem I can think of is, how to pay the tip in hotel.

To travel with no local cash? Bay area seems to provide this opportunity. I remember my first trip to San Jose with 100 USD and some changes in cash, and turned out to bring the 100 USD note back. I just spent the money on tip in hotel.

Australia is not so Credit Card Friendly

We applied the same “credit card” only approach in Sydney this Oct, but failed. The first problem is, the shuttle bus does not accept credit card, so we have to take train. There are many places, like restaurants, and coffee where credit card was not accepted, or at least not welcomed.

In Shanghai? Never go out of airport without RMB cash. The taxi, metro, bus, and food court, for example, all accept cash only. Exchange RMB at airport before going out.

Chance to Exchange USD? Oh. No. Thanks

We witnessed how fast the world is changing. During the first few visit to U.S. in 2000 – 2002, the first thing I’d like to do after getting ticket and visa is to exchange 3000 USD of cash, no matter I needed it or not. At that time, the exchange rate was something around 8.28 RMB = 1 USD, and USD kept going strong. To go aboard was one of the only few opportunity for people in China to exchange some foreign currency. If someone wanted to buy something from outside, they have to trade USD in black market. Any cash people had can easily change back to RMB at much higher exchange rate. Even friends wanted to exchange some USD from you at higher rate you pay the bank.

Just within 4 years, everything changes.

First, people can trade USD pretty freely. With a national ID, people can exchange up to 20,000 USD per year. This was enough, at least people didn’t have to go to the black market just for some USD to buy a book on Amazon.

Second, USD consumption in credit card can be paid by RMB. There is no limitation on it. If I pay USD with my credit card, I can make up the balance simply by RMB.

Third, and most important reason, USD continue to go soft and I don’t want to hold too much USD in cash.

So in the last three trip, I didn’t exchange any cash at all. I have some USD changes that I will bring to U.S., just in case. However, this time I even forgot the changes.

The good thing is, from renting a car, to hotel, to restaurant, everywhere credit card is accepted.

Till now, I didn’t see any problem. What a risky game I am playing. Hope everything should be fine. I will report my the first place I met problem later.

P.S. I am just a small potato in the big wave of change in history. My personal experience in the city or on the road sometimes reflects the bigger change in someway.

From the March of 2005, many Stanford people entered my life and became my good friends. Many people in eBay graduated from Stanford, either from Computer Science, or from MBA program. The list is just too long to name one by one. Among them, Xiaofeng Jin is an important person. She introduced me to the great network of Stanford. We met for the first time in Starbucks and scheduled to talk for 1 hours, but it turned out to be 4 hours. Xiaofeng highly recommended me to go to Stanford for either Salon or EMBA program and described her wonderful 6 weeks in Stanford – it was very attractive for me.

Today, Xiaofeng did another great thing. She invited me to join Stanford Alumni meal in Shanghai, so I extended my “Stanford network” to many more great people.

The Meal

We had Marie Mookini, the Senior Associate Director of MBA Career Management Center (CMC), the former Director of Adminsion, and Virginia Roberson, from MBA Career Management, Xiaofeng, Raymond, Nisa, and Jane (all GSB graduates)… It is about 11 people – a small group. Just as Virginia put it, Stanford GSB enjoys smaller groups, and the feeling of a family. I like that.

Taken by Jian Shuo Wang, on December 12, 2005. First visit to Stanford

Stanford = Internet?

In my mind, Stanford is an icon for Internet. I first know about Internet when I listened to a lecture in Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1995, and the professor talked about Jim Clark, and Marc Anderson, the two founders of Netscape. They came from Stanford. Not to mention the later Jerry Yang, SUN, eBay, Google… A big part of the Internet industry is something like a Stanford history.

Stanford to me means Internet and Innovation in the first few years. To me, it is just like a university with only one major in my mind – computer science (or Internet entrepreneurship). (Just kidding. I certainly know they have other great departments).

Recently, I found Stanford means more than innovation. I still need time to get used to the facts that B-school of Stanford has a very diversed students, working on many industries, from banking to to biotech, from real estate to energy. How that works with the Stanford innovation tradition still puzzles me.

Anyway, what I learnt most from my friends in Stanford (for example, from Xiaofeng) is, “Inspirational” and “Visionary“. I like these two words very much. Along with the word Innovation, they are my most favorite English words. :-) The best place to find the combination of these three ehtics is Stanford. I don’t think Harvard offers Inspiration and Innovation as much as Stanford does. To me, Harvard means more like Business. (MIT? I was a very big fan of MIT when I was in university, but later found for Internet industry, Stanford is THE place).

I am feeling the strong desire to learn some business recently. Last time, when ex-Microsoft people (EXMSFT) met, we talked about Meetup: MBA or Not, that is a Question. I don’t care the Master degree – (why should I care?) but I do think the skill to speak a new language is important for me – the language of business. I am thinking seriously to get to business school for several months now. Virginia showed us the new campus (not a new building, a new campus!) of Stanford GSB. The campus is to complete in 2010. Maybe at that time, I can go…

S t a n f o r d – this word looks nice.

P.S. Thanks everyone for giving me the permission to write about the event, and sorry that I don’t have other’s names yet. When you are with this blog for long enough, you know my rule for privacy is not to mention people’s name unless 1) I got explict permission, or 2) the person also has a blog.

Company List:

eBay

Cisco

Sun

Intel

Yahoo!

AMD

Palm

Apple

Cisco is huge. There are so many buildings along the Tasman Dr. There are large Chinese shopping center and many Chinese restaurant near them.

The naming of the company is the cisco part of San Francisco, and the sign is the Golden Gate bridge.

Sun is so similiar with Stanford University. There is no surprise. SUN = Stanford University Networks.

There are only two companies I saw in U.S. that have fence or walls around the company: Intel, and AMD.

To be frankly, Yahoo!’s compus is not worse than Google’s – even better with the nice bay view and nice art.

Not impressive at all – only several buildings.

I heard the reason why Apple name their loop as Infinite Loop is, they once bought large mainframe computers, and they said the computer was so fast that they can execute even infinite loop within 2 seconds.

I am heading to San Francisco airport now, and my flight will leave SFO within 4 hours. I will be in Shanghai around 7:00 Monday, 12, 2006. During the 10 hours, there is no way to access emails (obviously), and phone calls (even more obvious). :-)

The trip is very rewarding for me, both on business and on personal side. No only I had the opportunity to join the four full day of session, I was able to experience Silicon Valley in a much deeper way, and more importantly, invited to home of my friends here, having dinner with them, and had wonderful discussion. Wonderful trip! It is.

It is already late after I am back from good friends home. I hope I can post more about the trip when I am back to Shanghai. Tomorrow I am flying back to Shanghai via UA857 at 14:18. Obviously, I don’t have time to put more information on blog tomorrow.

To be short, I visited about 10 high-tech companies in silicon valley one by one in half day, from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. San Jose, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, and Mountview, all these places offered many great things, but nothing is comparable to the high density of famous high-tech companies, espeically the microchip and Internet companies. So this morning, I wrote down a list of about 31 companies in Silicon Valley, and finally, I made a route to visit 10 of them. Here are the company name list and pictures.

Company List

• BEA
• eBay
• Cisco
• Mator
• Creative
• Yahoo!
• Intel
• AMD
• Palm
• Apple

Pictures

This may not easy to see. The logo is Yahoo!

I am very happy that I know the locations of the companies, and next time, I can find every single one of them without a map. Meanwhile, I learnt the geography of the Silicon Valley much better, and how the highways connects with other and remembered some key local roads.

Will tell more about the story soon.