dolma

If you live in California and don’t get tanned, there’s something wrong with you.

I wasn’t quite light-skinned before I went to Stanford. And after a year’s sunbathing, I have become even more dark-skinned.

I went shopping last Saturday and tried this brown evening dress. The color doesn’t look perfect on me because I look even more dark-skinned in brown. But the salesgirl tried everything to sell me. She said: “you look like a Phillipine beauty in brown!” She didn’t pick the desirable adjective, but I’d still take it as a compliment. And I bought that brown dress in the end.

As one of my American GSB friend wrote in his blog - it is considered more attractive in China to be light-skinned rather than dark skinned. It is an interesting observation and it’s so true. Girls in Shanghai always hold umbrellas to protect themselves from sunlight, use whitening skincare products, etc. I never did that and don’t think I’d ever do so in the future. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why I love California =)

Be tanned and happy.

A quick update - I am going to spend 2/3 of the summer in Shanghai and the other 1/3 in Africa.

Now I’ve been back in China for a few days. In the past few days, I have been busy hanging out with friends…dinner apointment, brunch, karaoke, etc. It’s fun to be back and see all the old friends. But I already started to miss Palo Alto. For me, life there is simple happiness. I like that, more than the ever reilient Shanghai.  I miss that group of tanned and happy people.

To feed my newly bought Bose speaker system, I am desperately looking for good music. And then I suddenly recalled a site a friend recommended earlier - Last.fm

It’s an awesome online radio/music sharing site. It taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user’s musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, etc. What I found greatest about this site is that you can listen to a radio stream of a particular music genre you like and just let it play out, which introduces lots of interesting music and songs unknown to you before.

Check it out here http://www.last.fm/

好久没来写字了。

今天到机场送走了老哥和嫂子，回来一个人整理了老照片。

忽然想起一段话

生命是幻觉，烟花绽放了，我们离开了

“And it was at that time that I thought about Benjamin Franklin writing that Declaration of Independance. Him saying that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I thought about how he knew to put the ‘pursuit’ in there, like no one can actually have happiness. We can only pursue it. “

– The Pursuit of Happiness

I experienced a moment of happiness today. Did I pursue to get it?  I don’t know. The only thing I know is that I was very very happy. 

“I’d never forget the smile on your face when you broke the news to me.  It’s radiant happiness!” Rong said.

Perhaps I did pursue.  Did I?

It suddenly occurred to me that I should be able to log onto your college homepage from the internet here.  So I did.  Of course there’s nothing new on it.  But there you go - I read these quotes again. They symbolize an age. Those days rushed into my mind again.  I missed them.  Do you?

Chill, man!

Be Disciplined

Be Happy and Be Nice

Love Life!

Judge

Best Use of Time?

Plant an Oak Tree

Hours; Years

Eighty Percent of Success is Showing Up.

Improve a little everyday

There is nothing so rewarding as a job well done.

You Son of Bitch! What Have You Done with Your Life!

Watched Martin Scoreses’ New York New York!  Great actors and actress. Wonderful music! Captures some small details of the City, one of my top loves in the world. And then it occurred to me that Beijing is great too.

At the night before heading back to the Farm, I am already missing Beijing. Beijing is just awesome.

Maz wrote in his recent email after a short home trip in Bejing:

“Beijing is getting even more polluted and the traffic remains hopeless.  But it still makes me feel great.  And the moment my plane touched the ground at London Heathrow, I became homesick.”

Beijing is rough and polluted and paralysed yet great. 

The dryness and chill in the air.

The sunshine through his window. 

A not-to-miss-again jazz show.

I am longing to come back.

Beijing! Beijing! 

Inka Lounge - this is the name of the hostel I am staying at tonight in Lima.  After a 2-week backpacking trip in Peru, I am ready to head back to SF and then Beijing. The dinner tonight with Rodrigo marked a perfect period for my first Latin American adventure.

Peru is a fantastic country. It´s got some amazingly diversed landscape - desert, rain forrest, snow mountains, vocanos, cayon, etc.  The southern part I visited is like a synthesized version of greater Tibetan region in Southwest China, with a strong Spanish flavor. The northern part is equally interesting, featured by probably the most beautiful snow mountain in the world, Alpamayo. I wish I could come back and climb that mountain.

More to come, with pictures!

The cutest birthday present I’ve ever got.

DJ miu on YouTube

波多黎各是一个有既有风景，又有人文的加勒比海岛国家。这里离美国东岸的一些城市相对较近，3-6小时飞机，很多人特别是纽约客前来度假，把物价抬高了。吃得有点一般，没有什么特色，还很贵。除此之外，其他的感觉都很好。这次5天的短短旅程，记录比较值得一提的几件事：

阴差阳错：感恩节本打算去墨西哥，结果签证被耽搁了，临时改去波多黎各。我和同学小沈及Judy周五最后一刻确定了行程，周六一早便赶往oakland机场，jetblue的航班前往波多黎各。航班长达10多个小时，中途在纽约转机，都回趟国了。jetblue果然low cost carrier，长途飞机也没有饭提供，不过我们last minute订的票也不low cost。。。

生物光湾 (Bio-lumiscent Bay) 这是一种奇特的海湾，水中生活着会发光的微生物。平时它们是不发光的，但被触动后就会发出类似萤火虫的荧光，非常好看。我们夜里滑着独木舟(kayak)出海，在没有月光的晚上看海面上点点浮动的荧光。抬头是满天的星星，低头是浮动的荧光。分不清哪个是天，哪个是海。可惜我们三个都没有带SO，这里还是很适合跟SO来浪漫一下的。看够了，就跳到温温海水中游会儿泳，太享受了！

古巴朗姆：San Juan有世界上最大的Bacardi酒厂，并对外开放，免费让游客参观。这种家喻户晓的朗姆酒原来发源于古巴，后来古巴革命，整个Bacardi家族移民美国，在北美和中美洲建立了很多分厂。现在已经发展成世界最大的朗姆酒品牌。在小店里买了两瓶国内没看到过的酒款，满载而归。

热情岛民：在Old San Juan，波多黎各的首府旧城坐公交车，上车就要用硬币买票。我们总是身上没有足够零钱，屡次有热心的波岛人民伸手相助，给我们一两个硬币。感激涕零！对西班牙裔民族的印象好了很多，并发誓以后再遇到陌生人有难，一定鼎力相助。

沙滩美女：我走过的地方虽然不少，但还是第一次来到满眼白沙滩的海域度假。每天无所事事，晒日光浴，看日落，浮潜(snorkling)，已经是很享受的事了。这次还给同学在海边拍了搔首弄姿的美女照，给漂亮MM拍照本身就是件很享受的事=)

Today’s the last class for my installation art course.  We had an exhibition of our final team project at an art studio on campus.  The piece is called 5133P.  Some friends came and we had a good time.

And then I realized how fast time passed, in a blink. I am done with a quarter on “the Farm” already!

Looking back, I am so glad that I have taken this installation class.  It’s so time consuming that it appeared to have eaten up times that I could otherwise spend on other interesting things.  But the truth is that if it’s not for this course, I would have wasted those times taking naps, chatting online, etc.  It actually made time for me. If only I felt a bit less energetic, a bit less passionate, my experience would have been much deprived. 

Couple of weeks before, I went to a talk by Bill Drayton, the founder and CEO of Ashoka.  I have a lot of respect for Ashoka and Drayton; therefore I had somewhat high expectation for the presentation.

To my disappointment, the speech was far less impressive than I thought it would be.  Drayton was a thin, pale-voiced, nerdy or intellectual type of person.  He is a thoughtful gentleman, but absolutely not a great speaker, I concluded.

Then I started to read the book How to Change the World by David Bornstein, a book talking about social entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas to make the world a better one, based on the stories of 10+ Ashoka Fellows he interviewed.  In this book, there’s a description of Drayton by Bornstein:

“Bill Drayton looks like someone you might expect to find in a library on a Saturday night.  He is inordinately thin.  He wears out-of-fashion suits, thick glasses, and wallabies.  His hair is limp, his skin a little pale, his tie generally askew.  Yet his eyes convey a sense of excitement about life, a seemingly boundless fascination with the world that is reminiscent of a young child’s curiosity.”

This is so true of Drayton.  He looked exactly like this when I met him.  But I didn’t recoganize his reminiscent eyes at all.  Partly because I was sitting in the far corner of the classroom, and partly because I was bored by his speech.  It suddenly dawned on me that being a great/charismatic speaker doesn’t necessarily mean that you are a great person.  And vice versa.

In a recent read of Tim Burke’s blog about lecturing, Feng said that merely being interesting and funny is not enough to be a great speaker. One could be interesting and funny without imparting any knowledge.  Lecturing is not entertainment.  What’s great about good speakers is that they are both funny and people walk away having learned something from them. 

So Drayton isn’t a particularly bad speaker.  If I had paid more attention to follow his talk, I would have learned more from it.  Likewise, Guy Kawasaki wasn’t a brilliant speaker if you don’t remember anything significant from his speeches.  We should watch out as much for the boredom we feel when we listen to a serious speaker as for the laughter made by some funny talker. 

I read about the book The No Asshole Factor on the Jackson blog (even a library has a blog now!)  It’s a new book by Robert Sutton, a professor at the Stanford engineering school and also a GSB professor for OB class.  You might like the author simply for the fact that he walked away from Harvard Business School Press because they wouldn’t allow him to use ‘asshole’ in his title.  According to Guy Kawasaki, the book is “the definitive guide to understanding, counteracting, and not becoming an asshole”.

There’s an interesting method that Sutton cites on his blog to recognize who is an asshole.  It’s called the Starbucks Test.  It goes like this: If you hear someone at Starbucks order a “decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n’-Low and one NutraSweet,” you’re in the presence of an asshole. It’s unlikely that this petty combination is necessary - the person ordering is trying to flex her power because she’s an asshole.

In a video pod about the book, Sutton mentioned that based on deviance studies, to allow one asshole in a group is not necessarily a bad thing.  On the contrary, it helps re-inforce good behavior as the group see how not to behave.  I had an instant click with this theory - there’s an obvious asshole in one of the groups I belong to at the GSB.  The presence of one such individual and the fact that we all recognize that he is leave everybody else better off.

I was borrowing a book at the art school library in the Cummings.  Suddenly I realized again that how many resources we have here at the school, be it an easy access to Bloomberg, a Stanford-proprietary intellectual capital, a network of people who share similar passions, etc and etc.  And these resources lend us the luxury of having many choices that we otherwise would never have.

To give a flavor of what these choices look like -  I got 50 emails on average everyday, 30 of which are spam or irrelevant, 15 are my own correspondence I need to deal with, and among the rest 5 are often interesting leads that my classmates cycle to the GSB community.  For instance, today I got this email from an alum, asking for a hand on his case-writing project in Nigeria during this coming winter break. If I opt to act on some of these many leads, it could easily turn out to be something really meaningful and impactful for my life. 

But then again, it’s easier to get amazed at so many choices than to prioritize and take action.  Especially when you don’t have a sense of priority, it’s hard to determine which one is the option you want to take.  So the problem is that it’s hard to leverage the resources when you don’t have a focus.  I have little idea what to do after school.  I am trying to explore as much as possible.  But when overwhelmed by so many choices, it’s easy to get lost and end up getting nothing out of it.

Barry Schwatz, a professor at Swarthmore, said in his book The Paradox of Choices, “Knowing, for example, that you have to look for work in Boston, because your romantic partner would be going to school there, is a benefit, because it helps you to reduce the options you will consider. Close relations provide the beginning of the answer to Microsoft’s question of where you want to be today.  And it’s a question that you might otherwise spend your life trying to answer.”   I guess one of the important messages Schwatz’s trying to say in his book is that you need to find your focus and the sense of priority so that you don’t get lost when facing too many choices. 

So the daunting question for me now is to find the focus. And it is especially true from a career management perspective.  Otherwise, I will eventually get lost and burnt out in running around all sorts of recruiting activities. 

But the good thing though is that I guess I won’t be worried too much about my ’someone’ question.  Because I have found my answer to that question.  And the answer, according to Schwatz’s theory, helps to address the ’something’ question.