君不见黄河之水天上来，奔流到海不复回。
君不见高堂明镜悲白发，朝如青丝暮成雪。
人生得意须尽欢，莫使金樽空对月。
天生我材必有用，千金散尽还复来。
烹羊宰牛且为乐，会须一饮三百杯。

岑夫子，丹丘生，将进酒，杯莫停。
与君歌一曲，请君为我倾耳听。
钟鼓馔玉不足贵，但愿长醉不复醒。
古来圣贤皆寂寞，唯有饮者留其名。
陈王昔时宴平乐，斗酒十千恣欢谑。
主人何为言少钱，径须沽取对君酌。
五花马，千金裘，呼儿将出换美酒，与尔同销万古愁。

 在青岛偶遇的婚介广告：Unlimited dating arrangements till the knot is tied with Rmb 9.99 (about US$1.25) only … What a steal ?!

Yesterday, I was asked why building my own space instead of opening a blog at the off-the-shelf blog sites. Several reasons:

1. Ownership: I like the feeling of owning my personal space with my own domain and my personal touch. Renting a space from the landlord doesn’t incentivize me to cultivate it with 120% effort because what i can do with it is very limited. From the business perspective, the return on investment will be different. It doesn’t need to go further when news spreaded out that sites like engadget could be sold for millions…

2. Customization: What I can do with my space is limitless. As long as I want to learn, there is a vast resource online to teach me how to put all sort of things on my space, from blogging, content managecommerce, galleris to BBS, online chatting even e-commerce components. When I was little, I was really longing for a set of construction toolkit, with which I could make skyscrapers, crane, fire-fighting vehicles and even the very crude transformer. I remembered I was lingering at the store doorstep (成都市人民商场玩具部）for hours, begging my mom to buy the set for me. The trial went in vain, just because my parants could affort. It was one of the most expensive toy at that time, almost worth a whole month of my mom’s salary… While my mom always said that it would took her half a year to save the money enough to buy a pair of leather shoes… Well, with the internet, I can finaly play an engineering role, although clumsy almost to the extent of idiot in the begining, I enjoy the process every day. It does’t cost much, thanks for the endless hosting choices and all the open source softwares. It doesn’t stress me out if anything goes wrong. After all, all the visitors just have to bear temparary broken links or 404, 500 errors… What’s a big deal?! So, I am addicited to learning, trying, making mistakes, correcting them, and moving on.

3. Sense of achievement: The feeling is great when every bit of work goes live!

The experience actually makes me think how the internet/e-commerce companies shall cope with the outcry for more ownership and sense of control on the net. According to Kenny Pate, my manager at ebay, it’s time to make the walled gardens open!! I just can not agree more. Think about it… Once hundreds and millions users use your software perform the most important tasks to them daily, even if they never come to your site any more, are you still afraid of lacking channels to reach and supply the air to them? 前一阵热炒的讯雷、天空等软件的收购案大概也是沿着这个思路吧。

上海吃客流行的复茂小龙虾。这是咖喱味的，水煮的比咖喱的味道还好一些。可惜，等到水煮的千呼万唤地端上来，我还没来得及拍照，就被一群食客一抢而光了。

瞧瞧门口这万头攒动的样子，人为食忙。。。

吃小龙虾之必备行头：塑料围裙、手套、超多的餐巾纸 （Talking about napkin: Once several friends went to a Korean BBQ place in Sunnyvale. The place was really authentic that neither the owner nor the waitresses could speak English in complete sentences. That shouldn’t be a problem for eager eaters. Several girls managed to order with half English, broken Korean and Chinese. In the middle of the dinner, one girl urgently need some napkins. For some reason, she didn’t pick the word “napkin”. Instead, she shouted to the waitress “tissue! tissue!”. it seems like the waitress had nevered heard that word, so my friend was totally ignored for about 5 min. In the end, the desperate friend waved and yelled to the waitress “tissue, tissue, please”. The waitress, eyes roaming over the room and finally doubtfully focused on my friend, stared at her for 30 seconds and then shouted back ”napkin, napkin?!” We all laughed…bitter and sweet…over years’ effort trying to speak English as native speakers…)

My first post was published on July 25th, 2006, 1:09AM, Shanghai time.