John's Observations

https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_dalio_how_to_build_a_company_where_the_best_ideas_win#t-120684

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbK4KeD2ajI

2015年就已经看过柴静的调查纪录片，关于霾，我2年前就已经关注到，但2年内我对此毫无方法，只能看着它越来越严重。我只能选择是去北京，还是选择留在香港。我该庆幸自己有选择的能力。

- 解决思路：排出去的污染空气我们无能为力，我们只能改变自己，从源头上减排。

- 中国人，难管！即使有政策、法律，却没有执行。民智未开，没有环保意识，30年的高速发展都是为了赚钱，到现在依然如此。 

- 执法主体不明确，执法力度弱。有法不依，有法不执，就是逼百姓造假。

Study things, be interested in things, be incredibly curious about things, live in the moment. 

1. The feeling you have when you are suffering the critical issue facing your company, are mostly wrong. You must have the belief that as a CEO you have to figure out the solution even though it seems the probability is lower than 0.1%. 

2. Stop marking up your words to your employees when everyone knows the company is not very good. Being honest to them is showing positive signals that we are all on the same boat and we have to solve the real problem together. Communication efficiency becomes very critical for a company during bad time. 

3. Firing your employees is a very technical work. Those who stay and keep following you are the most important persons you need to care. 

4. Hiring senior managers and firing them later on are also technical. Several important steps should be very carefully considered. 

The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers

The round pegs in square holes

The ones who see things differently

They are not fond of rules

And they have no respect for the status quo

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them

About the only thing you can't do is ignore them

Because they change things

They push the human race forward

While some may see them as the crazy ones

We see genius

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who DO!

The lecture presented by the guest speaker, Robert Du, co-founder of New Oriental and now a successful investor in a hedge fund, was unexpectedly useful to me. I was so excited to find out that a mysterious legend investor is talking and thinking in a way that I have been always thinking in. Investment is also about a person's faith, characteristics, wisdom, judgement, knowledge, emotion, etc. A very rewarding night. 

As the year of the Horse started, I kind of unconsciously choose to take more responsibility in my life. No matter for myself, or for my parents, or for my brothers, or for the society, or for ultimate meaning of being a human being alive, I should exactly choose to take more responsibility to learn more, earn more and accomplish more. It comes with so much pain. But I do feel that as long as I follow the pain, the meaning of everything is there. 

I am not a serious person. I just do it seriously.

Today I bought some fax paper (a roll of paper) and use it to cover the wall in my room. I tried to write everything in my mind on the wall and see what I am. It is kind of an experiment to find out what exactly I want to do in this new year. I came up with this idea last night, and kept thinking that Bill Gates may probably do the same thing in his "think week" each year. I need to invigorate my thinking. 

I stop my thinking and come to my blog because one thought just caught me. In physics, there are some constant numbers or conditions which have the exact, precise values so that creatures can occur on earth. And it was how lucky that I was born in 1989 so that I missed the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930s, civil war in the 1940s, the three years of great Chinese Famine in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, and the 30 years of Reform and Opening Up from 1978 to 2000s when Chinese pioneers, entrepreneurs and policy makers struggled to find out the best way to develop, so that from the time I could remember, I am living a life without war, panic or famine. 

Should I thank for god's design of my existence in 1989? Yes. That's as mysterious as the constant numbers in the universe. 

It has never happened before that I realized how fast the time is flying while I feels good as I have tried my best to live my life to the most in this year. Sorry for myself that I became a little bit lazy at managing this blog when I came back to HK. But it is quite a good time to look back at my life in 2013. There are several things/moments that deserve to be recorded. 

New Year Eve @ Time Square, NY

This was how my 2014 started. I stand on the 46th street near Time Square in Manhattan, and counted down with hundreds of thousands of people, making a call to my beloved girlfriend and try to tell her how much I still love her. However, my true feeling was that our relationship was probably not going to last long. As Taylor Swift was singing We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together that night, I actually felt so down. But it was still a great night and I love New York.  

Love - be brave enough to let it go

It was the first time I seriously dealt with a girl, my best friend, before I went to study abroad in Berkeley. But things became too complicated from the moment we developed the relationship especially when I was in the US and tried my best to think about any proper way to please the people I love. I held the kite so tight that the line was eventually cut off in the wind that came out of nowhere but was strong enough to break up our relationship. Such kind of experience which ended in February, one time was enough to make me grow up. Everyone agrees that pursuing true love needs courage. Well, so does letting it go. Should I be brave enough, I would have suffered less pain during the time in the US. My blindness, optimism, childish, idealism, hesitation, had somehow hurt all of the people I love including myself. 

Fenox Venture Capital - a precious experience

This experience really broadened my horizon and expand my network within entrepreneurs. I still keep in touch with my supervisor and help him contact with Chinese startups when necessary. I dream of one day I will return to Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur. 

Master of Finance at the University of Hong Kong 

It started in September. I used to think about writing something about the financial industry in Hong Kong as I am getting deeper and deeper into it. But I gradually figure out there is nothing so funny or attracted to me that I will be very happy to make a conclusion and extract some wisdom from it. Is Black-Schole's model so fantastic that it can mathematically calculate the option price? Well, I still admit that financial industry plays a key role in a society, and it would be dangerous to make a judgement before I really master it. I will see what kind of wisdom I can get later. 

Gradchef.com - A small project to grow big

Life becomes unpredictable and mysterious as long as I work hard enough and prepare well for any opportunity. As I worked really hard at venture capital firm, and went to startup events and forums in Beijing, I brought passion and a ready mind back to HK and I met my friends who were doing a project in a quite early stage. After a dinner with Ruoyu in MongKok, he invited me to join Gradchef team, in late September. Things went just as I planned. The website functions well and I keep on promoting it. Although we are facing many obstacles, I believe our team can collaboratively figure out the solutions. We are from different backgrounds with different knowledge. We are sincere and open-minded. It's been around 6 weeks since it was launched and we have got close to 5k visitors. I believe we can grow it into a big thing. 

Next stop - Fortress Hill 

I have been living in Tai Wai for 4 months during which I didn't have much time to hang out with classmates or make new friends. It was a bad idea to allow my friend to decide where to live after I came back to HK because I was in the US last summer. Tai Wai is a totally different world from HK island and I can't feel any passion here, but the elders going to buy food every day. Such peaceful environment is quite satisfying my two roommates, but not me. It's another CUHK. I have decided to move to a new room in Fortress Hill, a cheap room close to North Point, where I will see a history of Hong Kong, a group of people from Fujian, a more severe conflict between the rich and the poor, and more convenient to meet friends working in the financial industry. I just can't wait to move there. 

THREE THINGS IN MY EXCHANGE LIFE Qiaomu Lai (NA –Economics)

I will never forget the exchange year in The University of California at Berkeley. There are so many things I have learnt from both inside and outside school. Among them I want to share three things.

Working hard and playing hard

This is the most impressive thing I learnt from American students. In the classes, they were very active to ask questions and talk in the group discussion. Everyone needs to read course materials before classes so that they can catch up with the professor’s ideas and learn from in-class activities. They are also very good at taking notes, which really shocked me. For example, in the course on International Relations, most of the students brought their computers and kept typing keynotes fast. They were so focused in class to make sure they understand the content so that they don’t need to spend too much time after classes. As they study very efficiently, they spend plenty of time in social activities after classes. I found that there are a lot of fraternity houses around campus organizing parties every night. American students are proud of their fraternity and willing to spend time playing with brothers and sisters. This is a big difference between Chinese and American students as we don’t care so much about the importance of playing. However, life consists of not only studying and working, but also playing and enjoying time with friends and families. As long as we manage our time efficiently, we can work hard and play hard.

Travelling to understand the culture

During the winter vacation, I traveled alone for almost a month around six biggest cities - Boston, New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle. Traveling alone needs courage and sufficient preparation. Before the trip, I spent plenty of time on searching for cheap and safe hotels, transportation and places of interest. I strongly recommend living in Hostel International where you can meet people from all over the world and that was how I made many friends during the trip. Traveling is a good way to obtain a comprehensive picture of U.S. about the history and current situation. What I am more interested in is how Chinese immigrants live in the U.S., and the difference between the old and young generations. Each city has a Chinatown where you can find the answer.

Great working experience in Silicon Valley

Working in the U.S. is the best way to know how American people live in daily life. Through university career platform, I found an unpaid part-time job opportunity in a venture capital firm in San Jose. It is well known that Silicon Valley is the home of innovation, startups and big companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Moreover, venture capital firms are institutional investors who are focusing on searching for great startups and entrepreneurs, and then give them money. As an analyst, I had to work very hard to understand different industries when I ran through different companies with due diligence and wrote a lot of reports. From early March to late July, I also had many precious chances to interview CEOs and attend innovation events or forums. Those people I met were devoting their life to solving existing problems and changing the world. Inspired by the passion of the people in Silicon Valley, I also want to build a startup that will make the world better.

I would like to extend a special thanks to Paul and Cecilia who offered me useful help and organized many events for us new exchange students and finally gave me a precious opportunity to visit Google headquarters.

Quick impression of Quanzhou (QZ), China. QZ is of over one thousand years history and was the biggest port in Tang Dynasty. It was also the start point of The Silk Road on the sea. Pictures are as listed below:

Cao'an: the last temple of the religion Ming 

Old tree of 1000 years

East and West Towers in Kaiyuan temple that is of over 1000 years.

Nanyin opera: South of Fujian style opera

Charity show for the public in front of Confucius temple

Clay figurine of catoon characters

From American SV to China's SV, I have met many entrepreneurs, startups and investors. Located in ZhongGuanCun, a high-tech district in Beijing, China's 'Silicon Valley' is home to Chinese top incubabors, venture capitcal firms and startups. There are many energetic entrepreneurs living here and cultivating their dreams. For those who are not familiar with China's current situation, I want to share with you my experience here.

Firstly, you may need to know that startups are raised in every region of China except for Beijing. However, BJ has the biggest number of startups. In the graph below, 37.74% of startups were raised in BJ during second quarter this year. Following BJ, they are Canton with 15.93%, Shanghai with 13.44%, Zhejiang with 6.17% and Jiangsu with 4.19%. 

There are some reasons that keeps attracting entrepreneurs coming to BJ, although the weather is pretty hot and humid. 1. Central government is located in BJ, where people can quickly get regulatory affairs done for their new businesses. 2. Most of China's high-tech companies have headquarters in BJ. They hire a lot of intelligents from all over China to BJ. 3. BJ has the most of top universities in China, such as Peking U, Tsinghua U, etc. 4. Top venture capital firms, i.e. IDG, Microsoft Venture, KPCB, and incubators like Innovation Work, Cheku Coffee are loacated in BJ.

Notwithstanding, I still notice that some companies are moving out of BJ, to Zhejiang or Sichuan. It is mainly due to the high consuming price, high rental price, bad transportation condition, large population and severe weather. Personally, I suffer a lot from BJ's weather and too crowded subway. This being said, BJ is really not comparable with San Jose. 

Secondly, there are many smart people in BJ attempting to boost China's high-tech innovation and seek their fortune here. I can see some of them being pretty smart and understanding China's market profoundingly. They regularly get together in coffee stores and discuss about new ideas and market trends. Some famous ones are Cheku Coffee and 3W Coffee, both located in ZhongGuanCun, which are a combination of typical coffee store and incubator. I can take a coffee there and enjoy the conversation of people sitting beside me. For instance, I found that many of them were talking about apps so that I know that mobile apps are the heatest field in China. In addition, they periodically organize talks about heat topics and invite famous co-founders to share experience. People come here mainly to exchange business cards and meet the speakers. 

Thirdly, there are many events, conferences and forums in BJ. 2013 China Internet Conference was successfully organized just these 3 days during my stay here. I was so happy to see that China's entrepreneurs are catching up with western world. They are making China's society better and better as they also notice the chances in online education, mobile health care, wearable devices, big data, and especially car pool apps that are very useful in BJ, and even gay dating platforms. These are disruptive powers that will change Chinese people's ideology and improve our culture. It is amazing to compare China's situations between 10 years ago and now. Internet is making our life better and releasing our minds from thousands of years' cultural restrictions.