7 Year Anniversary of Wedding

Today is the 7 year anniversary of wedding for Wendy and me.

In 2003, I was admiring Kayne for 4 year wedding anniversary, one week after Wendy and I got married.

After 7 years, we are even more happier – than 7 years ago. Wendy and I am together since 1996, much longer than getting married – that is about 14 years ago. In 2003, I can still list what we did together in the last year. Now, I found it harder to make that list – it is easier to list what we didn’t do together in the last 7 years than things we went through together. All the sweet, and pains, we came along together. The same experience made us similar persons, and one family.

Thanks Wendy for the wonderful years, and look forward to the long, long future to come.

New Year Eve 2010

The year of 2010 arrives. Happy New Year!

I never expected I could welcome the new year the way I did. To be short, I ended up helping to deliver milk tea at the New Year’s Eve. Let me tell you more.

Unexpected

Wendy and I brought Yifan to celebrate the New Year. Yifan happily played in the Metro station and enjoyed watching metro trains.

Wendy’s milk tea shop was doing very well, but no one ever expected that the huge volume of people after 10:00 AM. Many shopping malls close at mid-night, and many people waited till 0:00 AM to celebrate that wonderful moment with their loved one. Then, the small shop is suddenly short of hands, and there are long lines of people waiting there.

Then we sent Yifan back home, and went to the shop to help. I choose the only job I can do – delivery the tea after it is made.

My Only Service Experience

Let me share the interesting experience with you, as a milk tea server.

Good experience:

  • My good friend in eBay was definitely right. He quit his job as executive of the big company and started to sell ice-cream for some time. He told me how good it is to see people’s smile to receive the icecream.
  • I experienced similar thing when I deliver the hot tea to people in the freezing cold nights, especially those who have waited for some time.
  • Doing physical work make people happy (at least in between of computer and business related work).
  • It is nice to say thank you to everyone, and see someone say thank you to you.
  • It is amazing how quick people can make a cup of tea – faster than I can deliver. There are many steps involved, and there are many ingredients, but the experience girls just made it so quick – 20 – 30 seconds per cup.

Bad Experience:

Some people are rude. To my greatest surprise, most rude people I saw that night are women, and many of them are very young. They throw their tickets to the table (some times, it directly go to the ground).

It makes me think the right of a customer. No customer is entitled to be rude, no matter how much money you pay. I am in a little bit better position to keep confident, and don’t bother about the offense. I don’t feel bad because in this interesting scenario, I know my pride has nothing to do with other people’s attitude.

To conclude, what was a nice experience for me. That is very different from my previous world. I talked to at least 50 times more people than I do on my daily life.

P.S. Just curious: anybody who bought milk tea and saw me there?

I am not Computer Science Major

When I have to write algorithms related code, I feel the limitation of my knowledge. From time to time, I need to turn to Wendy for help. She does not like to code as I do, but she completed 6 years of under-graduate and graduate study in Computer Science from Jiaotong University. I didn’t. My major was Automation, not pure computer science.

I have been puzzled by this for three days. Is there any chance that my readers can help me to solve this puzzle?

I have used query builder to create two structured query tree: q1, and q2.

I want to know whether the set represented by q1 is a subset of q2 or not.

Example in PHP:

$q1 = new AndQuery(new Query(‘id’, 123), new Query(‘age’, 13));

$q2 = new Query(‘age’, 13);

echo $q1->isSubsetOf($q2);

I need the function of “isSubsetOf”.

In the example, it should return true, but the real world situation is much complicated than that.

The need for such a function is, I have several search database optimized for each use, and each of them is represented by a query. For any user issued query, I can compare the query and the existing datastores. If I can confirm that the query result is subset of a datastore, I can safely use it to speed up the return of the results.

Milk Tea Business

It has been few days after Wendy opened her milk tea shop. Let me share some of my thoughts for this small business.

My Position

I support Wendy with all my heart, but I intentionally keep a far distance from the business. There are several reasons. First, it is Wendy’s business, not mine (well, although legally speaking, I am also an owner). I know it is her dream to own a shop, and I let her do it without interference. Second, to run a shop requires a lot of time and energy, and I have my business to take care of. Sometimes, to put a firm line and won’t over commit is a must in today’s world. It is more of a joyful journey than a serious business anyway. I want to be a helper and observer, more than a participants. If I retire one day, I may be very happy to join in, and deliver milk tea to customers. That would be very interesting (more interesting than sitting in an office).

Milk Tea and Happiness

I was surprised to discover the connecting between a milk tea shop and happiness. Yes. It is just a mom-and-papa type of small shop. But when you quietly sit from a distance of the shop and see smile on people’s face, you just feel good about it. Just like Disney, milk tea is a business delivering happiness to people. Restaurant? Maybe “decent”, “elegant”, and “just nice”, or book store – “knowledge”, “empower”… for milk team, the term connected to it may be “happiness”, “romance”, and “relax”. I will be happy if someone say: That milk tea is so GOOOD!

A tip for this specific shop: the standard flavor of the shop tends to be a little bit sweet, as many customers told them. So you can choose mild sweet when asked.

Staff and Post-90s

I realized many of the staff in the shop were born after 1990 – the post-90 generation. They are doing very well – energetic, with nice communication skills. I was actually surprised. They were all recruited on Baixing.com within 4 days, and Wendy said: Good job! and I am happy to hear that.

Location, Location, Location

As you can imagine, the location of the shop is the key to the success of the business. Wendy was very lucky to find a shop in one of the best location in Shanghai. That is at the exit of the busiest Metro station (People’s Square Station), opposite to one of the landmark of the area (Raffle’s City), and besides arguably one of the busiest pedestrian in Shanghai – the one crossing Xizang Middle Road. To be short, it is at the center of the whole city. Technically speaking, it is 371 meters away from the theoretical center of Shanghai (which is the Park Hotel). If you search “Shanghai” in Google Maps, the shop is 300 meters away from the point marked as Shanghai. It is also within the same block of that point – the location of the Shanghai Municipal Government.

Sitting by the shop at night, and seeing huge flow of people passing you, and see the nero of Nanjing Road, you surely know that you are feeling the pulse of the city. I love that location.

Best Wishes to the Business

As any new venture, there are risks, and returns, joys, and sadness, ups and downs. There is a good start. At least the next time, we know where to hold our blogger meetup. I guess the next time, we will do it in People’s Park, with milk tea delivered. I believe Wendy may be kind enough to give us special “Buy one and get one for free” offer. :)

P.S. Another good news. I finally got back my eBay id: jianshuo. I love a simple ID without ugly numbers attached to it, like jianshuo99, or jianshuo2009. Now jianshuo is my gmail id, hotmail id, Facebook id, twitter id, Paypal id and eBay id. It is pretty good evidence that I am an early enough adapter to most new services. My eBay id was already 7 years old.

Wendy Opened a Milk Tea Shop

I know this may be very surprising news for most of my friend, but it is not a joke. Wendy (if you don’t know her yet, she is my sweet wife) opened a Ding Tea (a Taiwan brand) milk tea shop at People’s Square in Shanghai. The grand opening is today (well, not an extremely grand opening, but a warm, crowded, and nice opening).

The Location

Here is the location of the shop:

211 Xizang Middle Road, Shanghai, China

It is at the corner of Xizang Road, and People’s Blvd.

It is opposite to Raffle’s City, and at the foot of the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum

It is also at the gate of the People’s Park and at Metro Exit #3 of People’s Square station of Metro Line #1, #2, and #8.

Why

This is an even more important question. Wendy always has a dream of opening a milk shop (it seems it is many girls’ dream), and I support her to do it with all my heart. Too often that people have dreams but don’t have time to go for it, and I am happy for Wendy to be able to do it. It is more about a hobby and an experience, other than anything else.

The next you visit the People’s Square, do stop by the store and have a cup of milk tea. If you have a Dianping account, you are welcome to leave your comment there.

Recording of Memories

Will life under camera be better than without one? I guess the answer is yes, just like life with blogging.

After play with Sony Handycam CX500E for two nights, I said this to Wendy: “You know when we should have bought this camera? 1996!” That was the year when we just met.

Look at this sweet family!

P.S. I am trying to recover my account on eBay – that was registered on Nov-13-01 in China – a 8 year account with eBay. It was suspended…. Hmmm….

End of a Holiday without Wendy

Three days past so quickly, that I need to face a working Sunday tomorrow.

I didn’t feel well at begining (as I said, I felt like caught by flu), but I am fine very quickly, with temperature always between 35 -36 °C (my meter IS working very well).

Wendy went to Xiamen, and Gulangyu Island with her friends. So it is a dragon boat festival without Wendy. I slept for long hours in the last three days. Elliot Ng was right. If getting sick happens to be at the same time of a long holiday, that is a sign that I need some rest. There is a theory in Chinese medicine (which I don’t really believe in) that when people starts to slow down, the body gets a chance to get sick, something it does not have time to do when you are working so hard.

So, I feel I am fully rested already, but the challenge is, how to get back to the fast track tomorrow after sleeping days and nights for so long.

BTW, Yifan is very happy when he always can find his father around him. Even though sometimes I am just sleeping, he would come and try to use his small hands to make my eyes open. He is also happy to follow whatever I do. I stood by the wall, and he did it. I walked and he followed. I sat down at the stairs, and watch a book, and he sat down at another stair and played his red car.

Yifan is turning two years old the next week.

6 Years of Marriage

Today, Wendy and I have been married for 6 years. Wow! I hear the applause…

It is a tradition between Wendy and I that we will take one day off, and spend the whole day together to celebrate our anniversary. I looked through my previous blog articles, to try to remember what we did before. Although I don’t write down exactly what we did each year, I have a rough idea of the past 5 years.

  1. March 17, 2003 Marriage Announcement. We got married.
  2. March 17, 2004 OOB for Wedding Anniversary We went to Sanya, Hainan to celebrate the first anniversary, after buying our car Goudaner.
  3. March 17, 2005 No blog entry, but we went to the Fengxian Beach of Shanghai.
  4. March 17, 2006 Report from Search Engine Strategies I was not able to be able to spend the third anniversary with Wendy due to business trip. A pity.
  5. March 17, 2007 4 Year Anniversary of Wedding – we went to attend Ziheng’s wedding ceremony.
  6. March 17, 2008 Shanghai Zoo. We took one day off, and visited the Shanghai Zoo together.

So today, both Wendy and I took one day off, and went out of Shanghai.

The Perfect Day

We once planed to have breakfast at Garden Hotel where we hold the wedding ceremony, but we wake up a little bit late, so we had simple but happy breakfast at KFC (oh. I know it is not as romantic as it should be, but it is also very sweet).

Then we drive all the way to Suzhou. We had nice lunch at Wumen Renjia 吴门人家 near Zhuo Zheng Yuan. Interestingly enough, we made a small mistake to have ordered three fat meat dishes. Anyway, we don’t care about adding weight today.

Then, we visited my favorite place in Suzhou – Suzhou Museum by I.M. Pei. I became the tour guide to show Wendy the wonderful architect of the museum.

In the afternoon, we visited Wendy’s favorite area Jinji Lake of Suzhou.

Photograph by Jian Shuo Wang

I will surely use another article to tell you the miracle of Jinji Lake. It is a another modern West Lake in Suzhou. We had Haagen-Daze ice cream, and Japanese food on the Ligongdi of Jinji lake.

At about 8:30 PM, we returned via A11 (1 and half hour drive). We are happy to see Yifan smiling at home.

The Perfect Wendy

I’d like to take the time to thank Wendy for all she has done for me and the family in the last 6 years (actually it is 10 years since we lived together). Wendy is always gentle, nice, smart, caring, and patient… I always think I am the luckiest man to have Wendy, and we fits each other very well.( According to MBTI test, I am an ENFP, and Wendy is an ESTJ.) Wendy, Happy Anniversary.

Indian English

Wendy’s team in Microsoft support India customers. Something she suffers a lot is the India accent English. She now brings an iPod, and put some India podcast in it, and listen to India English all the way to work and back to schoo.

Indian -> American -> Chinese

A very interesting thing I found out is,

American can understand 80% of Indian accent English,

American may be can understand 50% of Chinese English (English with strong Chinese accent, also called Chinglish)

However, Chinese can only understand 10% of Indian English.

(The numbers are just for illustration propose – my guess number – you just get the idea).

India English

Ashish Gadnis is one of my best friends who came from India. He speaks amazingly good English, but he has the ability to switch instantly from American English to Indian English. During the last YLF in Nanjing, I tried very hard to learn some Indian English. The sample English sentence I learnt was:

I am a developer from Mumbai

The key is Mumbai – it was pronounced something like Bum-‘bay with strong sound on the ‘bay’ part.

I hope Wendy can get used to India English soon, so the conference call is not that painful, but I also hope Wendy do not speak India nEnglish after that.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day is not a native Chinese holiday at all, but in China, especially in Shanghai, people won’t miss any chance to celebrate love, thanks, or just for fun, as long as there is a related holiday.

Me? The same.

Happy Valentine’s Day to Wendy

For this V Day, I planned really early. I started to grow rose last May in the garden. It is just outside our window, so we can see the rose grow everyday.

I am happy that in Jan, the rose start to boom, and have sever really nice flowers.

Look at the flower outside my window!

I agree it is not that beautiful, but I watched it everyday, and thinking about cut it and present it to Wendy during Feb 14.

I also pray that the flower is still there are one month.

The miracle is, after one month, the flowers are still there – although just few, but they are still there.

In the last week or so, I often joked to Wendy, and happily bring her to see my rose, and promised that I will send a rose to her during the Valentine’s Day.

Cut the Flower

So tonight, I cut the flower and gave it to Wendy.

At least, I have a rose on V-Day.

Hmm… Both Wendy and I regrets for a while after the beautiful rose is on our hands. When it is on our hands, it is no longer outside our window. Wendy said: “You really should leave the beautiful flower on where they are, and so we can see the live rose everyday.”

Hmm… Maybe she is right. But….

Photo of the Rose

Now the rose is on my table. Sorry for cutting it off from where they belong to. Their life may end quickly, instead of being there for another month. Why didn’t I have this kind of feeling for any other flowers I bought? Look, they are beautiful, isn’t it?

I also brought home some “professional” rose, because I don’t want Wendy to feel that I just want to cover this day up with a cheap (or zero cost) rose.

But now, I do feel my relative ugly rose is more expensive than the “professional” roses.

Anyway, I hope Wendy is happy with all the arrangement I made. (Of cause, this includes Yifan – who enjoyed tearing the wrap paper of the rose a lot).

Wendy’s Wallet was Stolen

Wendy called me this morning, and told me her wallet was stolen at Xujiahui.

This is bad news.

It is just 100 meter from where I dropped her off, and her office, and the pocket picker steal her wallet easily and quietly. Typhoon hit Shanghai, and everywhere is wet and everyone is watching their steps, and this is the best time for those bad guys.

Wendy lost all his bank cards (credit cards and debit cards), Sodex card (for use in restaurants), public transportation card, and card to enter our residential area. She also has her National ID in it, plus small amount of cash.

She spent quite some time to call all the related bank to claim the lost of the cards, and it may take much longer to get a new National ID.

So friends, be careful.

I hate pocket pickers.

Second Thoughts

Not many people can make us more angry than a pocket pickers. I hate them. However, my second thoughts are, there are many more people other than pocket picker who took more money from our pocket and did it more frequently, but we never really noticed. There are thousands of ways to do it – legally or non-legally. I recently read many books on financial and politics. That is the reason this pocket picking even made more alerted of those invisible “robberies”.

Thanks Wendy for Finding my Passport

Wendy, thank you so much for finding my passport, finally! I was not able to find my passport anywhere at home – not in my document case, not in the drawers I used to put passport into, not everywhere. I don’t want to lose it again.

Finally, Wendy found it in the side pocket of my camera case!

You know how smart Wendy is? When I was emptying every drawer, she just sit there and thought hard. Her reasoning was:

  • the passport must be with me during my last overseas trip – it was in this March in Cambodia .
  • What was with me during the trip?
  • If the travelling case turned out to have nothing in it, what else did I brought into that country?

The she directly went to the camera case, and searched it inside out. She finally pulled the passport out of the side pocket. I also searched that camera case, for twice, without finding anything.

Thank you Wendy! Let me write an entry as a small gift to thank you.

Photo of the lovely banana boat at Sanya, Hainan. Taken in 2004, on the day of our first anniversary.

P.S. From the passport, I found out my last visa expires on Oct 18, 2007 – my birthday. That is also my only valid visa on my passport. Well. That is to say, I cannot set foot in any country outside China and U.S. The annoying fact is, even in China, I cannot enter Hong Kong without a new visa-type of permit.

4 Year Anniversary of Wedding

Today is the 4th year anniversary for Wendy and I got married.

Four Years!

We register for marriage the same day four years ago, then I happily announced it, and then held the wedding ceremony about 6 months later.

We bought many flowers and candles to decorate the room, and went out to have a simple but happy lunch together (at Lan Cun Road).

I am sorry that I have to go to the 5G Review to deliver a presentation that afternoon, and could not be with Wendy, then we reunion at about 5:00 PM, then attended the wedding ceremony of a good friend from high school. Many other high-school friends in Shanghai also showed up in Jiading.

Bought iPod Mini as Gift for Wendy

Wendy is happy today, since I bought her a Apple iPod Mini.

I am happy today too, since Wendy is happy. :-)

I further realize money won’t make people happy, but gift will. Gift will make two persons happy.

The iPod

I cannot believe how popular iPod is in China. We went to the iPod Reseller at the Metro City, and it was crowded there. About 6 customers are pushing each other at the desk to get a chance to experience iPod. The price for the iPod Mini is 1650 RMB (around 199 USD).

iPod seems to have a magic for people around me. I am not a big fan of music, nor is Wendy, but since Wendy is so passionate about Podcast these days, and she is expected to get on board the UA858 to Seattle soon, the 12 hour battery time is just enough for the long and boring flight. :-)

Wendy Started to Learn to Drive

Wendy completed her first driving course this morning. Now she is able to put the gear to the first and second shift. During my long business trip to Beijing, Wendy has to go to work by Metro, while the car was parked there for two weeks.

My Experience of Learning Drive

Metro is, any way, the reliable, convinient and cheap transportation. There is news that Shanghai will pause the Metro plans in response to the country wide adjustment of enocnomy. One week later, the speakman of Shanghai government proactively communicated with the citizen that the news was not true and Shanghai will continue to build more Metros in the future and move 40% of the transportation volume to Metro. The other 30% is buses.