Sunday, January 21, 2007

7 habits of highly efficient people

There was a book 7 habits of highly effective people, this post is NOT about that.

The article I read when I am at work today (sorry, boss) is quite interesting. Here to share with you. The article is in Chinese. So can't share with those who can't read Chinese, I apologize. Here is the link:
http://www.psytopic.com/mag/post/918.html

Why I did this post is because I want to remind myself the last habit mentioned. Roughly translated as following.

Job itself doesn't bring you financial security. we can only win by independent thinking, creativity, learning ability, and flexibility; Being rich, doesn't mean you can be rich forever, what you can rely on is your abilities to build your fortune.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Spaghetti and HDR

Saturday, home made spaghetti dinnerRecipe (everything minced)
Meat, Tomato, Onion, Carrot, Red pepper, Mushroom, Garlic, Shallot, Ginger. All bought from local market



And of course CHEESE! (from local Carrefour)
and Chef


HDR is High Dynamic Range, it is a graphics technique, it makes you picture looks more like movie (or unreal). I would like to try to use this technique when I got my mini tripod. Basically I just shoot multiple pictures with different exposures so that I have all of the brightness levels that I want in my final image.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Back from Wuzhen (乌镇)

Extremely low budget trip to a old town. 140 KM to the west of Shanghai

Motivation: a TV soup (似水年华) was shot there.

Schedule:
S at, Jan 13th 14:50 Shanghai->Jiaxing (1h Train) 16:50 Jiaxing->Wuzhen(1 1/2 h Bus)
Sun, Jan 14th 12:50 Wuzhen-> Shanghai(3 h Bus)

Highs:
  • Buildings & Old looking streets on the sides of the river (canal).
  • Friendly local folks.
  • Free sample of local distilled liquor.
Lows:
  • Packed with tourists from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m most times of the year.
  • Expensive entrance tickets.
  • Most buildings and streets are (re)built in year 2000 with the old looking according to a local lady:(.
  • "official" lodging and food inside the "scenic" area way to expensive
  • The rest of the town is just as plain as other un-developed area in China.
Rating & Conclusion:
2 of 5. I would recommend you to take the day return trip from Shanghai, Hangzhou or other close-by city, if you insist to go there.

Online album.

Monday, January 8, 2007

Talk with general manager and Harvard Business School Reception

Today I got my Nikon P3 digital camera. I won't buy any accessories from them, cause since they sell the camera at this price and they charge a lot for the accessories, I will buy a 1 GB sd card and get me off ground.

Then in the afternoon I got a chance talking to the general manager of the innovation center I am currently working at. Basically we exchanged ideas on what I will do in 2007. At last he casually asked how I was doing, and I said I got my self some new nice gadget and did some serious thinking what I want to do in the near and far future. Then he said, care to share some thoughts ?and I said I was thinking about going back to school to do a Ph.d. Then he really gave me some good hints, he said I should picture what I might be doing in 5 years, and then try to put that image on myself see how happy I would be in that position and how much satisfaction I could bring to my self, and he said if I want to start a company of my own or bring more money probably a MBA is better(like my ex-boss is doing).

I registered a HBS (Harvard Business School) MBA reception in Shanghai few weeks ago, and it's tonight, I went there, it was MUCH more formal than the MBA reception of University of Chicago. I asked 2 questions
1. How many China Mainlanders they admitted last year
the guy is from career service department and the alumni are not current students so they guess the number was about 8-16.
2.Give 2 or 3 points what they like the most and hate the most about HBS
of course the answers vary.
I got the feeling that the competition's gonna be really tough there, there is a detail I noticed during the Q&A session, each of the 5 alumni has a mic and one of the alumni's mic wasn't working, 4 others sit there and did not offer to help, then the career service guy just couldn't watch it anymore and came up to offer a help.

Since I got the camera, I will try to take pictures from now on if I go to events like this. Excuse me for this time, I didn't charge the new battery ;).

Sunday, January 7, 2007

My new gadgets

Got my HP Deskjet F388 all-in-one from www.newegg.com.cn this weekend. Reasonable price, reasonable performance. SOHO made just easier

I will get a Nikon P3 digital camera next week. Main buying factors are
  • Mainstream DC, does 8 Mega pixels, 2.5" LCD. 1/1.8" CCD which enables better picture quality since most mainstream DC's use 1/2.5" CCD.
  • Vibration Reduction, WiFi(though limited only for photo transfer to PC)
  • Use SD card which is dirt cheap now. (around $12 for 1GB here)

Monday, January 1, 2007

Why? Why now?

Why moving blog?

Cause windows live space sucks in China. Few days ago there was a earth quake near Taiwan, it broke China's main fiber connection to the U.S. (See
The earthquake broke my internet, Maybe we’ll get something better?). Rumor says Microsoft promised to run MSN and other service in China few year ago, but in reality it's not happening, after the earth quake only Gmail and Gtalk remain functioning. This has given me confidence in using google's service in China and thus it is why I am moving my blog to blogger (I can login using my google account).

Why now?

I have relocated (moved back) to China for 1 year and 5 months now, I think lots of Chinese people who studied abroad or studying abroad is watching China closely, so I would like to share my experience here. I wish it can help some of the overseas student community and thus share our unique experience.

Recommend

Today I would like to recommend www.linkedin.com for me, I can find my ex-boss, my ex-colleague, some of my college's friends and Professors and my current boss' boss on it:).