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.
I was in Zhangjiang yesterday. Here are some pictures of the Zhang Jiang Hi-Tech Park.
Location: It is east of Maglev Longyang Road Station. It means it is closer to the Pudong airport (a little bit) than the Maglev terminal station.
Why it is different?
It is the Shanghai’s high-tech zone, with a lot of chip design, manufacturing, bio-tech, and software companies. It is the terminal station of Metro No.2.
What is one the picture?
It is taken from Zhang Jiang Mansion, the tallest building in the park to south, and to north.
What is the lower building in the last picture?
It is villa.
Here is the letter:
Dear Mr Wang,
Hi, I am name removed from Singapore. I am deeply impressed how resourceful and helpful your blog/website are.
Kindly allow me to consult you regarding one matter. I will be visiting Changshu next month & will carry with me a big luggage bag. I understand there are 3 ways to travel from PVG to Changshu:
(1) From PVG, take direct bus to Suzhou. From Suzhou, take a taxi to hotel in Changshu. Total travel time: ab. 160 min. Total cost: ab. RMB 175.
(2) From PVG, take taxi to Shanghai shuttle bus station, then take a bus to Changshu shuttle bus station, then take taxi to hotel. Total travel time: ab. 190 min. Total cost: ab. RMB142.
(3) From PVG, take bus to SHG (Hong Qiao Int’l Airport). At SHG, take bus to Changshu, then take taxi to hotel. Total travel time: ab. 190 min? Cost: ab. RMB 97?
Pls advise which is the best route (1), (2) or (3) for me to take considering the fact that I am carrying a big luggage with me.
Ease and convenience are more important than costs factors.
Kindly advise the details (where to buy bus ticket, where to take the bus/taxi etc) of the recommended route.
Thanking you in anticipation.
I will answer the question after dinner. :-D
2 hours passed
I am back from dinner and have the energy to help on this question.
Disclaimer: I didn’t personally try this route, the information I provided is based on the information I got from Internet or from my observation. It may contain mistakes.
I would recommend option 1), if cost is not a priority. Reasons:
To reduce the burden of carrying big luggage with you, I suggest you to get to a Suzhou as soon as possible, instead of hanging around in the city of Shanghai. The long-distance bus is just outside the international arrival hall. You can use the small cart to move your luggage to the station (I am not sure if you need to lift it for some stairs, or you can get there from the level 2 of the airport.
At Suzhou, many taxis should line up and I believe the person who pick you is lucky, since the 38 km distance is a good business for them. He can help you to get the luggage to taxi and out at the hotel in Changshu.
Option 2 is a little bit troublesome, since the PVG to the nearest shuttle station may be as far as Changshu to Suzhou, no to mention the burdern to get off taxi, onto bus, and off bus and on to taxi again… Also, it may not easy for you to find out bus station – bus station is not as easy to find in Shanghai as airport or train stations (as in any city)
Option 3 is the worst. Considering the time you spend in Shanghai – from one airport to the other airport, that takes about one hour. This distance is far longer than the Changshu-Suzhou distance. It won’t save you money or time.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
OOB today. Too much thinking recently. Thinking is better than writing sometimes. Let me catch up soon. Now? Going to bed… Zzzz
I should put a disclaimer at the top of every entry I post:
Although I made all effort to make sure I honestly record what I see, I hear, and I think, this blog does not represent Shanghai. People with different history and status have competely different view about the city. It of cause does not represent China.
I read a peom about life in city v.s. life in village. I think it is very true. It reveals how different the two lives are. Let me translate some sentences of the peom and explain why it is true.
I live in city – I was born in hospital
I live in village – I was born in my home.
Don’t take it for granded that there are hospital in all villages. I viisted places where people deliver their babies in home.
I live in city – from today, I become happy citizen of the country.
I live in village – from today, I become a honorable tax payer for the country.
Actually everyone pays tax, but the burnden for people in countryside are much higher compared to the low income they have. They pay not only tax. There are many other fees they need to pay for the village.
I live in city – I am ill. Dad bring me to hospital. I am courious whether insurance cover it.
I live in village – I am ill. Dad sold the pig, and bring me to doctor.
Medical insurance only covers people in city. People in villages, and people who move from one city (home city) to the other city typically are not covered by any medical insurance. If they get ill, they need to pay for themselves.
I live in city – My family bought motor cycle, and prepare to buy car several years later.
I live in village – My family bought a new baby pig. Perhaps the year after next year, it will have more baby pigs.
Still, big contrast about what people are thinking about and expectation about future.
I live in city – Dad want to have a business of his own.
I live in village – Dad want to go into city, to be a farmer worker
Go to city is the dream of many people in villages. Now, farmer worker is a way, but very hard way. They work on construction site and work all days and night.
I live in city – country gave Dad all kinds of benefits, and waived all tax.
I live in village – Dad has to pay all the tax and fees back in home, and need to pay to get all kinds of licenses.
In the previous years, startups and small businesses in city was encouraged, but the situation for farmer workers got worse. From last year, things are getting better.
I live in city – Dad to go bank everyday, and servant smiles to him.
I live in village – Dad ask for delayed salary at the year end, but was beaten and insulted by business owners.
The previous years, farmer workers’ salary is not ensured. Many work for the whole year, and want to get their salary for the year. Many cannot get their salary, and don’t have money to go back home… The situation is better this Spring Festival.
I live in city – Government said Dad work on startups, and benefit the economy
I live in village – government said Dad’s rushing into city made big problems, and maliciously asking for salary.
I live in city – I can move freely in my country.
I live in village – I can live freely in my village.
This is interesting part. For people living in cities, they have city Hukou (or residential certificate) and they typically enjoy going to other cities. However, for people in villages (farmer resident), their move in the country, especially to move into city is restricted. Without Hukou, they don’t have benefit, don’t have medical insurance, and their child cannot go to local schools. (This is changing)
I live in city – Tomorrow is promising.
I live in village – Tomorrow is hopeless.
This is totally two different expectation about the future.
Totally Different
That is the current situation of the country. There are many good things everyday, and there are many bad things. One thing to point out is, many situation listed above are true about two years ago. Now, although it is still true in majority population, a lot of things are improving in the last two years. There is still a long way to go.
Went to Hangzhou for Masup Camp China 2 on Saturday.
Left Shanghai on 7 AM and arrived at 11 AM – traffic jam in Shanghai for half an hour, jam in Hangzhou for 40 minutes, and stuck on the highway for about one hour.
This is part of a series article: From Shanghai to US – A Handbook. These articles are to help my friends (obviously in Shanghai) to plan their first time visit to U.S. To be concise, I only outline information that I think helpful for this group of people. So don’t be surprised if it left some important information outside the scope.
The most critical, and troublesome step to go to the States is the Visa application and interview process. Let me break it into short sentences.
Disclaimer: I don’t want to appear as object. It is just my personal thinking about my personal experience…
May 18, 2006 – it is pouring outside. There is no way to call a taxi on road, to be exact, there are almost no cars on the street. Typhoon will hit Shanghai tonight. Whenever typhoon comes, I keep my finger across and hope my trees in garden will be fine…
Low Tech World
Tonight, I chatted with Yatao. He said: “Before 1995, I don’t have telephone, don’t have email, and don’t have mobile. How hard it was to visit a friend in another city! I even cannot imagine how we meet at train station.”
I have exactly the same feeling. If there were no email in my life, no website, no telephone, no mobile, and not anything that is powered by electronic, what our lives would look like?
How hard it will be?
The other question is, will we be happier at that time? Maybe.
Chat with Fay today. I found Humanity is an inspirational word. When I am thinking about the business we are doing, we dig very hard into the details about what value we provide to users. At the end of every thread, I found out humanity is the final answer.
Fay put it very well. She reminds me in the year of 1900, when motor and cars were invented, it brought mobility and freedom to life. No matter how hard and detailed the manufactures’ work are, at the end of day, it satisfied the humanity need – people can get from location A to location B at any time they choose.
Internet is great. It changed people’s life. The last time I read the word humanity was in John’s book The Search
“… thousands of people very rich, improved the businesses of hundreds of thousands of merchants, and fundamentally changed the relationship between humanity and knowledge. In the process, Page and Brin have become fabulously wealthy and movie-star famous. And it did not take them …” on page 66.
A lot of things are important, but at the end of the day, only smile on human face explains all the reason why people work so hard.
Why I Have to Keep Thinking
Recently, I was put into a position that force me to think really hard about the deep reason we do it, and find out reasons about what we do, and how it is meaningful even after several years, even there are many people standing up and say no…
On Enemy
Jack Man’s last interview on Future Life is definitely a successful one. I didn’t watch it, but I heard one quote:
“When there is no enemy in your heart, there is no enemy in the world”.
It echos my thinking about Passion for Contribution, and Confident about Return. When your goal is to contribute, and competitors only help you to grow, you see no enemies, you see no angry, and the only thing you feel is passion. That is the situation everyone should be in.
Don’t Know What I am Talking About?
Don’t worry. I don’t know either. There are too many thread in my mind now, and I didn’t put it into a logic order. I hope it will come out later, but now, let me put it down and help me thinker deeper.
Vince’s email mentioning Way Back Machine reminds me to check out what Wangjianshuo’s Blog looks like three years ago. Here are some snapshots.
| 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 |
| 4 pages | 15 pages | 35 pages | 23 pages |
Inspired by a this photo taken by Wang Xiaohui:
Image credit: Xiaohui Wang in her book Xiaohui Wang in Dialogue
Just got my HP Deskjet 3500 Series Printer out of my storage room.
HP Deskjet 3500 Series Printer
It still works – after staying in the room for about two years.
It printed out a testing page – with a nice butterfly on the top. What a surprise when you get some colorful picture out of a two year old printer that I almost forgot.
The printer came with my home PC HP Pavilion a610cl that I bought almost two years ago. I never used it after I set it up and installed print cartridge. I have a lot of cool toys and never use them. After the new Kijiji product goes online with personal management feature, I will add all these toys to share them with my friends nearby… I don’t expect to get money out of the m, just want to share some of my cool stuff to hose who work in the same building, live in the same area or my friends…
Once upon a time, we asked ourselves – are you going to be a good man or a bad man? All movies, and all novels are telling the story again and again about how important it is to be basically good, and how to be good. It seems to be a question that have absolute right answer. However, it is not that easy to answer sometimes.
I met with a Singaporean today, who is really bad. He didn’t follow the contract and didn’t show sorry about that. To be honest, I feel very good about people in Singapore, and still respect. So I felt so shamed that the guy with name Chen comes from Singapore… I didn’t get angry for years, but today, I am really angry. (What about the last time? When my car was scratched by a drunk driver)
For get about the story. I start to think how important to follow the rule of being a good person. It seems not so easy.
What is Good?
Thanks to novelists and artists who hold mirror for the society and people can see themselves, and get a better sense. I’d like to thank Shakespeare to show us the story of Romeo and Juliet. When we read the story, everything thinks he/she will be on the side of Juliet, and Romeo. The fact is not.
I seriously doubt with the limited information I get, I would be one of the people vote against their marriage if I were born in the age of the story. So whenever I saw a negative story on newspaper, and everyone reading the story will be angry, I start to think, well, there is possibility that we are the angry people in the Juliet and Romeo story. The worst thing is, you may never have a chance to know that you are wrong.
The Romeo and Juliet of the Current Age
A story gave me strong impression. It was a sad story, something like Juliet and Romeo story. Meanwhile, it is a true story.
The story is about two persons falling into love. One of them is a super star in Hong Kong. They deeply love each other, but the public does not allow them to be together. The public, everyone, thinks it is not proper for them to love each other.
They found every single chance to meet, and to stay together, despite all the media negative reports, and huge pressure from their families and friends.
Finally, one of them just jumped from the top of the building at April 1, 2003, and died. The whole Chinese world was shocked about the death of the super star…
If the story ends here, readers will say, why stop them, why not them follow their love? It seems we would not be part of “the public” in the story.
Think twice… Are you so sure?
The man is Leslie Cheung 张国荣. His partner is also a man….
We are not that Sure
In the story, when we hide the names, and more importantly, when we hide their gender, people would say one thing. After the how story is revealed, we are not that sure.
Not every story is told in its logic order. Not everyone can get enough information from newspaper. We are in the same situation in my daily life. Our story is not told in a way that we see in movies. In movies, or novels, when person A talked with person B, and it will show you what happened after person A left B, and show you again what A and B talked when they met again. If we are the B in real life, because of the absence of the part between the two meet up, we never be able to act fairly. When this happens, B may be a bad guy in A’s eyes.
That is how this world works.
To be Fair, To be Good
I have made up my mind to be a good man. It means you need to do your homework to understand others, and don’t take it granted for not understood.
Knowing that we are only part of the story, and can only see part o f this world, I believe we can form a better idea about this world.
Xintiandi is a wonderful place to go at night. But before the nice-look buildings, bars, and restaurants were built, it looked like this. It is not that fancy, but it is the history of the city, where many people lived there for generations.
I found out these pictures I took at the end of 2004. Let me show you the pictures of locations near Xintiandi. I believe another area of Xintiandi will raise from this land.
Before the modern buildings, were some old historical architectures.
Most of them have been towed down. For this one, how knows its fate.
Like this one. Look at the arch and the design – it is a nice building.
The stairs, and the rooms – all desctructed
The tractors is standing by to get rid of these houses.
There are still some people living in the buildings, How can you imagine that!
The nice decoration on the arch of the door.
The poles are also created with efforts and sense of art.
shanghai_how_xintiandi_was_built_20.jpg
shanghai_how_xintiandi_was_built_26.jpg
shanghai_how_xintiandi_was_built_27.jpg
At the ground of the towed-down area, some cooks are kiling their time when there is no one in their restaurant
shanghai_how_xintiandi_was_built_28.jpg
At the newly built building, workers are drawing the “lines” between bricks
More workers on other areas.
Including the top
Google Satellite Map
From the Google map, you can still see the area with all the houses there.
What? I wake up at 2 PM today?
It is a normal Saturday (the only difference is, Wendy is out to some place in Zhejiang for team building). I opened my eyes for the first time, and thought I should wake up and have my breakfast – “It should be as late as 10 AM already.” I thought.
However, the big yellowish round clock on the left side of my bed shows 2:00 PM. The clock must be wrong. I checked the battery. It seems to be working.
Confused on the bed for one minutes or two, and looked out of the window, I finally figure out, it is myself instead of the clock that is wrong.
So, I woke up at 2 PM today. I doubt without an alarm clock or Wendy, and if I didn’t start to feel starving, I may wake up when it went dark? Maybe.
I am a sleeping cat. Back to university, my record to continous sleeping is more than 40 hours (finally I got up to feed myself to keep alive). My brother volenteered to participate a study by a Sleeping Institute in Toronto. The researcher just didn’t understand why he can sleep that long. I guess we share the same thing.
Anyway, I am now awake, and going to the kichten to look for some food again. Thinking of last night, I start to wonder, why I am always in a situation to look for food? Hmmmm…
Look at this newly released Google Trends picture:
Image in courtesy of Google Trends
shanghai
beijing
guangzhou
Shanghai is more searched in Beijing. I didn’t expect result like this, but it is understandable.
Friday night, it rains in Shanghai again. Wendy went to off-site in a remote place in Zhejiang. Their bus should left Xujiahui soon. I bet she will be back on Sunday night.
Just left my office and go to the Raffles City to look for some food – whenever I look for food, I think I am not too much difference with a dog. Hungry? So start wandering on street and hope to get something interesting to eat. Well. Delicious is not the term I use as my object. Nothing is delicious after you have eaten it twenty times.
The big shopping mall is at the heart of Shanghai – just at the People’s Square. But there is not good foods anywhere – expensive foods are typically not good, as in many places.
I walked to the direction of the Ajisen Ramen. There are 30 people lining up at the gate. It seems if I wait there, it may easily kill half an hour. It reminded me of Jan 21, 2005. It was also a rainy Friday night. Everywhere is fully booked, or enough people lining up. So I get back to the first floor, thinking about what to eat. Finally, I made a decision that I will laugh at myself – I went to KFC to get some fast food. There are also many people there, but I can get my food within 5 minutes.
KFC meets my expectation very well – not good food. Don’t feel satisfied as all. But anyway, I am not hungry.
Wang Xiaohui
I read Wang Xiaohui’s second book. I fall in deep interest to this photographer. I appreciate a lot of sentences and ideas she expressed in her interview. Today, I read something about her life. She treat her whole life as a behavior art show, and document everything with her camera, and her diary. She said, if I can only take two things with me on my journey, I will take camera and diary.
She records her 15+ years with camera and diary, and published the details with a book. I like the attitude, and have the feeling I am doing the same thing. I may want to be more sensible and thoughtful when I record MY life, so it is valuable for me after 10 years.
Life
Recently, everyday after work, I feel very tired. To sit there just think hard consumes more brain power, I believe. This is a weekend. Don’t know what to do yet. My guess will be, keep thinking hard… :-D
I believe keep doing, doing and doing for some meaningful thing is important. I don’t think anyone would argue about this. However, what is meaningful will bring a lot of argument.
Why You Blog?
In a Kijiji event in Shanghai University tonight, students asked why I kept blogging for more than three years. “What makes you keep doing that?”
I think it is a great question to ask me, or ask anyone who kept doing.
Does Consistency Helps
Many people started blog but quit after three weeks. Someone decided to recite all the words in an English directory, but quit when they encounter “B”. More people make up minds to start running, but stop after five morning exercise.
People believe the reason they cannot keep doing something is due to lack of consistency – consistency means the firmness a of people’s mind.
I don’t think so. I don’t think I am a person of consistency, and have the ability to do anything longer than a week. It has nothing to do with consistency.
It must be Meaningful
I believe you have to find out a reason to do something. As long as the reason is still valid, and you can feel it is valid, you keep doing. If you don’t think it is still meaningful, you may quit. I do.
Most Confusion Time
For this blog, it has millions of page views every month. If you know more than one thousands people are waiting to see your article today, do you see the value of keep blogging today? Maybe you do. I do.
However, when there is no one visiting your site, do you still think it is meaningful to do that?
Back to the end of 2002, I was confused sometime. At that time, the server is still in my reading room in my home (the reason I didn’t remove the home part from my blog URL https://home.wangjianshuo.com). When I blog everyday, and see the access log, there are only 20 to 100 page view that day. At the first month, out of excitement of trying new stuff, you may want to keep the server up everyday. However, after the excitement went away, I start to think, does it make sense to keep the server up 24 hours day, consuming electricity and making big noises in my home?
That is the hardest time in my 3 years of blogging. I can keep doing something for a long period of time, as long as I still believe it is meaningful. In my blogging case, what is the meaning to still keep blogging once everyday?
Finally, I thought of the reason – to keep accumulating my thoughts on daily bases. It may be a big boook one day.
As soon as I realize to have visitors or not is not the meaning of my blogging, I feel happier. Only after I realized to write for myself, instead of for visitors, and page view is more meaningful to me, I found the reason to keep blogging. So I kept doing that.
In the last three years, I always keep the belief, that at first, I write for myself, to accumulate my life experience. Secondly, if it can help someone out there (maybe after one year or two), that is better. As long as these two points still make sense for me, I will keep blog. If one day, I found it is not meaningful for me to blog, I will also quit (hope there is always reasons to keep blogging).
Why People Quit
Some people start out of curiosity, and don’t find any reason why he/she start to blog. Well. Good. Just quit. Good for him/her.
Some people admire others’ high page view and blog for page view. They quote all interesting articles others wrote, and think hard about what attracts users most. If they can keep doing that, it is good. But the problem is, it is too long for them to see the result. For me, it takes two – three years. If there is no other reason to keep doing that, they will quit. They quit not because they are lack of consistency, they quit because they didn’t feel any sense of connection between what they are doing (blogging) and what they think is meaningful (page view).
It is the same for running. If someone just enjoys running very much, they keep doing that. If someone hate running, but only do that to improve health, they quit because they cannot observe the difference after running for three days, and start to doubt whether it is meaningful to run. The same as reciting a directory (which I never think meaningful as a way to learn English).
Passion for Contribution, and Confident for Return
The other day, I read an article about Contribution and Return. The article said: visionary, and successful people in history are so passionate about their contribution, meanwhile be confident for the return they can get. The unsuccessful people are doing the other way. They care too much about return (in terms of $$$), and have no interest in contribution. Just like a good writer only cares about writing good article (contribution), while don’t want to pay attention to manuscript fee. Bad writers only cares about how much they can make, and don’t care about how good he/she writes. That is the difference between good writers (who becomes better and better) and bad writers.
So Bill Gates do care about its contribution, so does Edison, the two founds of Google, and lots of successful business owners. They do care about what they can do to help. Although they are confident about return, they don’t do business just for the return. (Of cause, things changes after a company goes public).
If the reason to do something is to contribute, and you are satisfied with your contribution, you can keep doing that.
If the reason to keep doing something is to get return, chances are, you cannot get return as you expected, and you stop.
That is my thoughts about reason to keep doing something or stop.
It is brought to my attention that Hotmail is presently blocked in China. I can access it everyday (I don’t know why, but it just works for me.), but I saw a lot of complains on my old post: Does Hotmail Work in China?. There are 52 comments so far. Why? Because it is the first result for Hotmail China in both MSN Search and Google search.
Well. It seems I need to do a little bit homework to find ways to help people out. Here is my analysis.
The Problem
When you type http://hotmail.com or http://www.hotmail.com, you will receive DNS error, as if the site never existed. You may experience long waiting time, before it reports the error.
When you type in http://hotmail.com, it reports DNS error, like the screen capture. Created at 21:40 May 10, 2006 at China Telecom FTTB+LAN in Pudong, China
When you type in http://www.hotmail.com, it also return error, but this time, it return the default error page from China Telecom: advertisement from Yahoo! China, including Yahoo! MP3 search, Baidu.com and Sina.com.cn. Created at 21:40 May 10, 2006 at China Telecom FTTB+LAN in Pudong, China
It seems the domain name DNS service is blocked.
The same problem happens with the Windows Live services, http://live.com.
When you type in http://live.com, it returns this error. Created at 21:40 May 10, 2006 at China Telecom FTTB+LAN in Pudong, China
Other Impact
Since recently, MSN transformed its passport services (the familiar hotmail logon page) to live.com. When live.com is blocked, as shown above, all Microsoft services related to authentication dies. For example, the popular MSN Spaces, a blogging service, becomes instable because it requires authentication. Other services, like http://download.microsoft.com is also reported to be impacted.
I chatted with my friends who may know the situation. None of them really have any suggestions, except asking me to use a proxy server.
Workarounds
Let me try to give several workarounds I collected. It may work now, but no garrentee it works in near future. Just let me know if any method works or stop working. At least at the time I write this article, I personally tested all the methods. They work at least for me on China Telecom FTTB+LAN home broadband in Shanghai.
Option 1: Use Mobile Version
Only the domain names are blocked. The server is live. If you have ways to access the servers without using the hotmail.com or live.com domain, you have a chance. Here is a backdoor:
MSN Mobile logon interface
This interface is designed exclusively for Windows Mobile cellphones. You can login to check your emails. The interface is very simple and small – to fit into mobile – but it is better than nothing if you urgently need to check your Hotmail messages.
The reason it works is because, the link I provide will redirect you to this URL:
https://mobile.passport.net/si/default.aspx?
lc=2052&id=961&ru=http%3a%2f%2fmobile.msn.com%2
fwml%2fmigrate.aspx%3freturl%3dhttp%253a%252f%252f
mobile.msn.com%252fhm%252ffolder.aspx%26fti%3dy&
mlc=zh-CN&mspsty=302&tw=1814400&kv=7&ct=1147269673
&ns=hotmail.com&ver=2.5.1027.0&ec=e21
It does not use the hotmail.com or live.com domain
Thanks for this article to share this methods with me.
Option 2: Using MSN Messenger 7.0
If you have MSN Messenger 7.0 or 7.5 (I am using 7.5) on your computer, you can simply click on the Mail icon to enter Hotmail. It is still using the old passport service, not live.com. Please make sure you are using these versions, not MSN Messenger 8.0.
Option 3: Logon to Passport First
If you feel the mobile version is not acceptable, try this.
>
Passport logon page
Also live.com is not accessible, https://login.live.com is OK. Please note the URL is https:// instead of http://.
After you enter your Hotmail username and password, you will see the MSN Account Services page. Click the hotmail link on the left top of the page, and you should be able to access hotmail.
Option 4: Direct URL
This URL works for me. But I have no idea about whether it works for you. Let me know your feedback.
https://login.live.com/login.srf?lc=2052&sf=1&id=2&ru=
http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/sbox%3fid%3d2&tw=0&fs=1&kv=0&cb=&cbid=24325
Option 5: Use Outlook Express
Just configure Outlook Express to check emails from hotmail.
If you haven’t done it before, here are the steps:
Go to Start -> All Programs -> Outlook Express.
Tools -> Accounts -> Add… -> Mail
Display Name: Your real name, click Next.
Email address: yourname@hotmail.com, click Next.
Accept defult HTTP as server, Hotmail as provider, and click Next.
Enter your user name and password, click Next.
Click Finsih. Then click Close to close the account tab.
Then you will have all your mails in your hotmail in your mailbox.
I’d like to hear your feedback about what option worked and what didn’t. If it didn’t work, please post comments and let people know what you have tried, where are you, and which provider you use.
Good luck!
I enjoyed chatting with George from New York the other day in my garden. We discussed about doing business in China.
George said, when he consulted his friends about anything in China, he often got the answer: “It is not impossible, but difficult”.
“It is really frustrating to me”, George said, “basically they didn’t answer my question at all.” George added, “What on earth does it mean by Not impossible but Difficult?”
That is the Way it Works
I laughed out load. I rest assured George that it is very common answer, and is absolutely the right answer to many questions he asked. If he asks me a lot of questions, I would answer the same way, “it is not impossible, but difficult”. Let me tell you why.
In China, the culture is not based on philosophy, reasoning or mathematics.
Mathematics and most science has predictable and certain answers.
If you ask
What is the result of 1+1?
The answer is 2.
But human being is not that predictable.
If you ask
What happens if I show this picture to this person?
The human interaction is not that predicable.
He may smile;
he may turn away;
he may be angry;
he may also run into tears.
It depends on all kinds of factor including what the picture is about, what the relationship you have with the person, what time do you show the picture in his life. When there are too many factors, we call it something like an ART.
U.S. rules works more like mathmatics; China rules more works like human being.
In U.S., rules works like science and mathematics. If you ask:
“Can I do this?”
Typically, you get a Yes or No answer.
In China, it’s more like an art, instead of an equation.
“Can I do this?”
“Well. It depends.
Typically, you CANNOT do that.
BUT if you know the person who is in charge of this, MAYBE you can do that.
BUT if it is the time that the law is enforced these days, even your friend MAY NOT be able to help you these days.
BUT if you wait for several days, your friends can help you with that….
The scenario is on show everyday.
Here are some examples.
Regulations?
The new law system in China is just developed within 50 years, with 20 years of interruption (when basically no law at all). So it is not mature, and people didn’t get used to laws and regulations yet.
For example, if you ask “Can foreign Internet companies run business in China?” Well. It is a tough question. If you expect YES or NO answer, it is your problem that you don’t under the country at all.
The right answer MAY be “NO”, because there are regulations and laws explicitly says foreign Internet companies cannot operate in China.
But don’t stop here. Otherwise, you are assuming no one in China ever realized the existence of Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, or any NASDAQ listed Chinese Internet company, like Sina, Sohu…
It seems the answer is “YES” despite of the laws, but you cannot say that. It is very complicated to hand the situation in China, that requires skills not available from someone who never lived in China.
It is Not Impossible, But it’s Difficult
You will experience these type of answer all the way.
Something I feel very strange with I discuss topics with my foreign friends is, they try to think stuff in a logic way.
People keeps asking questions to me. It sounds like “What is the difference between the two markets, China and U.S.?” “Why does people do this?” “Did they do this because of this…?”
Well. For me, I tried very hard to answer the questions, but to be honest, I felt I am not telling the truth. It is not accurate to answer with either “YES”, or “NO”. There are not directly reasoning between cause and results. For me, I do be able to answer many questions in the western thinking model, but many times, if I do care to help people to under the local market, I would stop and say: “The reasoning and logic people use here is different from the one you use.” “Let’s start again by analyzes it in this way….”
That is the reflection of Asian culture “Harmony” + “Ambiguity”
When the West Meets the East
When the West culture meets the East in Shanghai, there are a lot of conflict.
I see people from the States come to China to make money. They just come and go. Some makes huge money, and some just keep losing money. The difference relies on the way people think. I am quite amazed to see how difference the gap is.
It does not work that well to believe rules, science, mathematics, western logic and all these stuff to be the ONLY and Universal way. There are countries in Asia that human factors play more important rules. It does hurt efficiency, I agree, but it is the reason why the culture lasted thousands of years – no single way to run smoothly in this country, but no single force can destroy this country. It’s like how the nature works.
If you don’t understand what “It is not impossible, but it is difficult” means, you don’t really understand China yet.
P.S. I have a special category called westmeetseast in this blog, and put all observations about this culture conflicts under this category. As you may noticed, I finally decided to remove Google Adsense from my individual entry page, and use the precious place to place a navigational box of “related entries”. Hope you will find the small box helpful to find related articles.