Lust for Life

GotINTERNS.com

So guys, this is what I have been busy with in the last half a year.

http://www.gotinterns.com

It's a place where employers can post their internship openings, and university students can look for internships.

The website is publicly available and almost ready. We are now recruiting local small businesses and partnering with local universities. A lot of marketing and networking to do, tiresome, but extremely interesting.

8:45 | 评论 (0)

Citizenship Oath

My coworker Sergey from Russia took his American citizenship oath on Thursday in the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

He said there were total of 1,243 people that day, from 103 different countries.

That's 1,243 individual stories, stories of people immigrated and struggled and survived in this country. Fascinating to think about it.

23:50 | 评论 (0)

I am on Twitter! ;-)

http://twitter.com/cznworld

10:41 | 评论 (0)

NPI (Non-Profit Ideas)

I've been entertaining business ideas for some time now. To my pleasant surprise, non-profit ideas start coming to me as well, which is what I eventually want to do.

Here are a few cool ideas that I ran into lately.

Yahoo News – "Manila trash becomes hot London fashion item"

This organization employs local women, turns rubbish that can be found in trash dump into fashion items such as handbags, sells them at a high price in London, and in turn funds the organization’s operation to offer jobs and hot meals to the local slum dwellers.

Another idea is Micro Financing, the most famous being Kiva, where you can lend small amount of money, as little as $25, to an entrepreneur in (usually) a third world country, where they have little access to traditional lending. They can use the money to buy a cow, build a fence, etc.

I think this is a great way to combine charity and making people feel like Warren Buffet on a mircofinance scale. Sadly, I found that Kiva does not cover China, where more than 300 million people live below the poverty line. My guess is that they might not want to deal with the Chinese regulations. Fortunately, I found out today that 2 American ladies covered this market via http://wokai.org.

Lastly – and this is not an NPI but I think is really cool. This guy did a motorcycle trip from Romania to Mongolia, and he split the trip into 500-kilometer chunks, and sold each for 50 euros, which my friend bought. The buyer gets a story, a pebble, and photos. You can see his website at:

http://www.mongolia.ro/eng

20:54 | 评论 (0)

Potentials

Another year has passed by and it’s my birthday again. It’s been a challenging year but hey, I survived and am still going strong.

 

A few highlights of the year include went to a new country (Czech Republic), learned windsurfing and motorcycling, and started my own company. More challenges, traveling, and more importantly, funs are waiting for me in the coming year. I am looking forward to it!

 

But what I wanted to talk about today is about potentials.

 

I was at dinner table with this girl Rosie and her newlywed husband Sergio from Peru. Rosie mentioned that her mom has her parents’ 10th baby coming. The story started from there and I learned that Rosie has been working for this architecture design firm for 2 years after college, and she is 20 this year.

What?

 

Yes she went to college at the age of 14 and graduated from it at 18, and Sergio graduated from college at 19. They met in Peru when she was working there and they are now happily married.

Rosie went on to explain that because her parents are in the military and moved a lot (from Kansas to Texas to California to Alabama and back to California and back to Alabama), her mom always home schooled them. This way they not only saved a lot of money, but more importantly a lot of time. At the age of 13, Rosie was already studying calculus, many years earlier than normal kids in the United States would do.

 

I would like to stress here that I don’t think Rosie is the smartest person in the world. She is very smart, no doubt about that, but I’ve met smarter. We both agreed that her story shows that we are a lot more capable than we think we are, or than the society defines we are. Same thing goes to Rosie’s mother. She is having her 10th child, something deems almost impossible by most in America because of cost. Yet she managed, and she and her husband are happy, and one of her other kid is getting his PhD at the age of 22.

 

Talk about our potentials and capabilities.

 

I am reading about this Chinese lady Lei Wang, trying to be the first Chinese woman to conquer the highest mountains in each of the 7 continents, as well as the North and South Pole. Now she only has Mount Everest to climb next year. She says on her blog that when she was 20, the longest distance she ever ran was 1000 meters. Now in her mid 30s, she can easily keep her training at half or full marathon intensity.

 

http://thegoldenpig.org/

 

The list goes on, including Team Hoyt, the 68-year old father who pushes his disabled son to complete marathons and Ironmans.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Hoyt

 

Talk about our true potentials and full capabilities.

12:12 | 评论 (3)

Sent from My Train (TM)

Sometimes I wonder if I wink too much in my regular emails and text messages.

 

http://noematical.blogspot.com/2009/08/winkey-face.html

 

That aside, my friend and I have filed an application to form my first company. We are forming an LLC (Limited Liability Company). Let's see if the application goes through. I'll then tell you guys the name of the company (or maybe after we trademark it), and what it will be doing.

 

That aside, the coolest thing happened to me this month, I think, is that I figured out how to tether with my cell phone. That is, I am posting this blog right now on my laptop, from a high-speed train, connected to the internet through my cell phone and Bluetooth. It looks like this:

 

Laptop ==(Bluetooth)==> Cell Phone ==(Modem)==> Internet

 

The even cooler thing is, I hacked my cell phone to do it, so I am getting the Internet at zero cost to me.

9:21 | 评论 (4)

NASTTRADE

This is what I have been busy with since January till about the middle of last month.

http://www.nasttrade.com

I am off to do another project now. Will report here once it's ready to go.

23:08 | 评论 (1)

Housing Madness

I am, even myself unable to believe, in the property market like all those people.

Yeah, I know some of you reading it are as well.

To figure out how much house prices usually should cost, amid this madness, I did a quick search on the internet. I found this website. Let me just post here the figure I found most fascinating from it.

As you can see, in the United States, in the past 30 years or so, if we take out the inflation, is almost flat! That means, suppose today I have $100K in cash, and I use it to buy a house; 10 years later, if I sell the house, I am going to make the same amount of money, inflation adjusted. That is, if I put the $100K in a bank, and suppose the bank's interest rate is always packed with the inflation, I will make the same amount of money, as if I invest it in a house.

In the meantime, I will be paying property taxes and home owner association (HOA) fees. Of course, I would be paying for rent otherwise anyway, if I were to invest my $100K elsewhere. But, what if I can make better use of the $100K, say invest in my own small business or my life, and generate a much bigger return? Plus obviously I wouldn't be then tied down to one place.

Something to think about.

14:09 | 评论 (0)

de Chen

I just had a bizarre idea two days ago. As some of you may know, my last name is a very Chinese one - Chen. I was thinking, hey, what if I name my kids “blah-blah de Chen”? That would serve two purpose:

1. It's fun an unique; probably no one else has attempted before.

2. Due to the meaning of “de”, any name becomes “blah-blah of Chen”. So let's say it's a boy and his name is Victor, then Victor de Chen could mean “Victory of Chen”. Pretty cool, isn't it?

23:37 | 评论 (3)

Books I am Reading

I've been reading 2 famous "self-help" kinda books. Now I can testify that they are famous for a reason. They (at least seem to) hold the truth, and make me think (which is not always good ). They are:

"Who Moved My Cheese", which talks about changes in life, that changes are part of life. Suppose the cheese is something that makes you happy. If one day, your cheese is gone, instead of crying and yelling "it's not fair", you might be better off move your butt and look for new cheese.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie - I have been running into difficult situations dealing with people. A book that has been an international bestseller since 1935, well, it better hold some truth in what it says.

And I recently picked up this book, "The 4-Hour Workweek", whose title attracted me. Yes, YOU, YOU CAN, a computer programmer typing in London, or a journalist scripting in Bucharest, or a pilot in between shifts in Guangzhou, or a salesperson preparing gifts for clients in Nirobi, or a HUD specialist burying yourself in paperwork in San Francisco. You know I am talking about you. Well, you must read it yourself to see if you agree and are willing to work hard to achieve it.

20:50 | 评论 (2)

CS Job Interview Must-Reads

Somebody sent me 2 websites on how to prepare for interviews as programmers. Both of them are great. I can't help to share.

"How to Get Hired - What CS Students Need to Know" by Dan Kegel.

"The Five Essential Phone-Screen Questions" by Steve Yegge.

20:35 | 评论 (0)

Six Degrees of Separation

I never thought I would have a connection to Hilary Clinton, or better, Barak Obama. Well, I just learned today that my coworker Matt's wife, has a best friend whose name is Richard Verma, who was picked by Obama to serve as Assistant Secretary of State, working directly under Hilary Clinton.

So that's me -> Matt -> Richard -> Hilary/Barak.

Now you are only (at most) one degree more of separation away. Pretty cool, isn't it?

22:55 | 评论 (2)

Organic Lawn Mowers

A couple of weeks back my colleague George and I noticed that there were a lot of sheep hanging out in the grassland, right across the street from our office building. We took a walk there during our coffee break and shot the following photos.

It turned out that the City of Milpitas (or San Jose as it is right on the border) hired the shepherd to "mow" the grass which was too long. He gets paid and his sheep get to eat. Sounds and feels idyllic, doesn't it? But in the middle of the Silicon Valley?

Here's the shepherd dog that really looks like a sheep!

22:37 | 评论 (0)

Saturn, Newspaper, and the Economic Downturn

This is a bit of an overdue blog. I apologize for not writing much lately. I will try to keep up with at least one post per month.

Truth is, I've been wanting to brag that I went to the California Academy of Science in a March evening, and I saw Saturn through a telescope! It was surreal! So the event I went to was called “NightLife”. I have to admire whoever thought of this idea. Everyone was dressed up in party outfit. There was DJ; there was wine; there were also penguins and albino crocodile and dinosaur fossils. It was on the “living roof” of the California Academy of Science where a telescope was set up for people to view the stars. I saw Saturn. It looked so much like in textbooks, with its rings, that it almost seemed surreal.

Another thing I wanted to talked about is this new wave of newspaper closure in the US, due to the economic downturn. Last month Seattle's Post Intelligencer printed its last issue (see Guardian's article on it). Next month my favorite “BestLife” magazine is closing down. San Francisco's only major newspaper the San Francisco Chronicle is threatened to be shut down. This is sad. I grew up reading newspaper every night. I can't possibly imagine a major liberal city like San Francisco without its own newspaper. Nor can I imagine reading news only online. A city needs quality voices. A person needs time away from the internet.

20:43 | 评论 (2)

The Obituary Bit on The Economist

 Yesterday this thought just came to me: would it be odd if I'd say that my goal in life is to achieve a corner in the Obituary column on The Economist?

I was reading the ones on Alison Des Forges and Christopher Nolan yesterday on my train home*, and they wet my eyes easily. There are two funny dilemmas here. 

One, not everyone mentioned in the obituary on the Economist are "good guys". Good in the sense that they are admirable and inspirational, and that they have done something bigger than their lives. Forges and Nolan are two of the examples. But formerly I have also seen obituaries on merciless drug cartels ornotorious businessmen. So that's not good.

Two, even in the case of the "good guys", they might not have enjoyed the life they were living, even though they might be passionate. In the case of Forges, she reported on genocides; Nolan was living on a wheelchair and could write only with his forehead. 

Therefore, that was still a random, unorganized thought needed to be sorted out.

 

*. Yes, by the way, I have moved to the great city of San Francisco, one of the most liberal in the United States. So I am commuting by train to work every day, to avoid the slow-killing conjestion and carbon emission.

12:33 | 评论 (0)