Categories
advice and tips China Life Tips

China travel tips, 2026 edition

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(Working in progress as of 04-05-2026, soft launch for now as I expect summer travel to take off towards the end of May. Thought may be helpful for friends who have not visited China for a while)

I am learning from the one and only Apple in terms of their iOS new versioning convention – iOS26. Their new versioning scheme is not entirely ground breaking, btw. If you pay attention to the new cars in the USA (likely in China nowadays too), the new car model or next year model is usually available the year before. For example, right now 2026 Toyota RAV4 is already available. I was a car junkie back in the days – I could tell almost every car’s make and model on the highway when they drove by because I am a slower driver 🙂 But this is mostly useless knowledge too 🙂

Yesterday I came across 2 blog posts almost 20 years ago – More Shanghai travel tips and Travel tips for Shanghai. A lot has changed since then, this is obvious because not only because of the 20 years but also because of the smartphone revolution happened in last 15 years or so.

App, 微信支付 WeChat Pay

Let me give an example, I recall in March 2023, after a break of more than 3 years (2020, 2021 and 2022), I flew back to PVG and saw my parents again in Ningbo. At the KFC store, they already stopped taking orders from the counter, everything is done via app or via 微信小程序。I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know way before that, at a bank branch in Shanghai, I am supposed to take a number from the computer (printer), which is equivalent to the ticket dispenser here in the US. But I didn’t know and waited in line directly until I realized that I didn’t have a number. Anyway, at KFC, the cashier or 伙计 tried to teach me to download the KFC China app on my iPhone, and because my app store country is set to the USA, it could not find the app 🙁 She has to manually put in order for me, and I was able to pay via WeChat pay though.

Hotels

I wrote quite a bit of kids friendly hotels that I stayed in China: mainly Shanghai and Ningbo Beilun.

Eat

This is mostly for my own benefits 🙂

Shanghai: 台乡缘（2024）

文兴酒家久光百货店（2025）

桂满陇虹桥枢纽浙菜 (2025)

Ningbo:小鱼厂私厨 鄞州 (2025)

Categories
advice and tips Saint Louis

I’m looking for a new gym and/or swimming pool

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And I am open to all suggestions 🙂

Some background – amid the most recent war and the turmoil in the middle east, I thought about quitting JCC earlier next year – I shared my thoughts here YT Video (in Chinese) a few days ago.

Now I think I may do it a bit sooner – the earliest time I think is starting next month May 2026. This is a bit like if people decided to move on from a relationship or a job, it doesn’t make much sense to hang around long, if they don’t expect things to change. In this spirit, I think about cancelling the membership at the end of April – before they start charging me the month of May membership. I know I had said a lot of good words for the J, the short name for JCC, over the years: including my blog posts over the years and this one in particular. Both my kids participated the Day Camp there in summer. But now I think it’s time to move on.

I am thinking about some alternative locations for indoor swimming, if I continue to do that. Another thing I like to have is an indoor walking track – West County mall is one option (in that case The Lodge at Des Peres may be fit the bill?). I like to walk outdoors. But here in STL, there are quite a few months in the year that the weather will be either be too hot or too cold to walk outside, or too rainy. And I can think of the below list. I will be taking time to decide my next move as I am not in a hurry. I would join the Olivette’s Five Oaks off Warson, the closest community center (walking distance from my home), if they have one of those. But it seems to me they only have work out (exercise) machines (treadmills, bikes, weight machines etc.), and pickleball and basketball court. I am decent on pickleball, but I haven’t been fully sold on that sport. Btw, about 2 years ago I poked fun at the pickleball here.

The list

Center of Clayton || Membership rates below (monthly), probably the closest among all the gyms.

 catergoryResidentCorporateNon-Resident
 Youth (3-17)$32$38$42
 Adult$47$56$67
 Senior (65+)$38$45$49
 Family $78 $90 $111

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Maryland Heights Community Center: it looks like their rate is much cheaper than the J membership.

Prices below are listed as Resident/Non-resident

Adults (Ages 16-61):

  • 12 Months: $270/$324
  • 6 Months: $169/$203
  • 3 Months: $101/$115
  • 1 Month: $41/$49

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Not too far from Maryland Heights CC, the YMCAs (Edward Jones branch)

Richmond Heights

Lifetime Fitness (this one is a bit more expensive; I feel it’s too expensive for my income or taste)

Forest lake tennis and swimming club (outdoor pool only): my younger daughter is already doing weekly tennis clinics there.

The Lodge (Des Peres)?

Categories
Business Investing Software development

Vertical industry software

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or SaaS

CashBoard: quite a while ago, I did a side gig job (year 2012), and I used this app for PDF invoice (professional looking)

ServiceTitan Inc (now a public company TTAN): saw a plumber uses this to generate receipt for me when I paid via CC. Just as I was looking at a possibility to look at buying some of their stocks, I realized they have quite high stock based compensation. ServiceTitan Announces Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results (My Q: are they the biggest in the industry?)  

Google Search: “how much of servicetitan’s operating free cash flow is from stock based compensations”

Niche players in their respective markets

Bumped into latter two because my younger daughter does violin and dance.

MyMusicStaff (Teipen Music Academy uses it)

The Studio Director (SLAD uses it)

Other examples of vertical industry software (or SaaS)

Constellation Software (Wikipedia): this is a Canadian conglomerate of vertical software companies. It’s probably the latest of its kind. Its stock is traded at Toronto Stock Exchange.

Personally I worked for companies such as Siemens Digital Industry Software (Wikipedia) and Autodesk, both in the CAD, and related CAM, CAE, PDM/PLM industry.

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School kids Life

镇海中学石蕴玉老师

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我初中的英语老师。”其实我喜欢石蕴玉老师，她也走了，戴着一圏圈的近视镜，一个个过我们的英式英标” (我的王同学说的）。石老师有可能是解放前在上海的租界教会学校学的英式英语：这本身并不重要。她是我的英语启蒙老师：她是非常好的启蒙老师。万事开头难 –  “The first step is always the hardest“。这也让我想到另外一句“千里之行始于足下”（记得当时周老师常说这句，他会把它刻在讲义里）。对我来说，美式英语大概是高中时在镇中的新的语音实验室里听托福或类似节目才开始的。

我估计我们上初中时，石老师大概有五十岁左右。如果说周国夫老师，我们的班主任/数学老师，是严父，那么我觉得石老师就是慈母。我估计石老师大概比周老师大几岁。周老师对石老师也比较尊重。石老师眼睛高度近视，在我们那个年代80年代初，我的初中是 83 到 86年，她的眼镜也就非常厚。她好像身体不是特别好，印象中有一次好像她有视网膜脱落。我估计在我们那个年代，这种手术可能要去上海或者杭州这样的大城市。

我记得两件小事。有一次，她让我上讲台去背书，我不知道为什么反正那次我背不出来：可能是我没有好好准备，也有可能是我比较紧张。我那时可能是初中二年级，我小时候比较喜欢哭。那次不知道为什么，我背不出来，忍不住，就开始哭。石老师没有批评我，她只是鼓励我好好学习。

还有一次，我不小心把英语作业本的封面给撕开了一道缝，我也没有胶带，或浆糊，直接吧作业本。后来，有点在我意料之中的，石老师把我的作业本给补好了。

我大学毕业四年以后就出国。我记得大概是二十年（具体哪一年我现在记不清了）之前，我的一个老家在镇海的初中同学告诉我，石老师去世了。

Categories
Software development

I learned a bit more GitHub Copilot recently

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I worked on a small project (in the Agile or JIRA world, it’s a story), and I experimented Copilot more this time, in fact, I think I tried to use Copilot as much or as practically as possible, for 2 out of the 3 main coding tasks. This is in addition to the Copilot code review feature which I have been using probably for a year now. Back to the coding tasks: refactoring and adding unit tests are the two main tasks that I used Copilot extensively. I also think Copilot did a decent job on bath. The 3rd task, which is to create a controller (an end point), I forgot to try the Copilot – hope I can try something like that down the road.

I used the IntelliJ Ultimate edition for my Java project IDE, and I was familiar with some IDE basic features on refactoring, such as extract methods, or change method signature. This mini project involves moving code from one layer down (from UI to the service layer). Copilot did it in one shot when I asked it to perform the task, from and to, mainly using the correct prompt.

For Unit Testing, I did two things, I changed the mocking framework from EasyMock to Mockito (which is more modern), also I added and cleaned all the unit tests, as much as I can. I admit I am still learning on the unit testing front. Sometimes I felt it’s somewhat like “teach an old dog a new trick”, I mean the “test driven development” or writing a complete unit test suite. But I am getting there: not just on Java, for JavaScript, I had some fun writing Jest test as well. For Java it’s JUnit.

Code review

This is similar as before I worked on this mini project, but I am getting more out of the Copilot code review comments, most of which I think is valid.

On a side note, I did a coding test for this LinkedIn AI trainer gig – not sure that I passed it, as I was not very confident on my Python language. But I still think it’s good exercise for me – I mean the coding test via HackerRank.

Categories
car

Toyota customer support program for engine maintenance light

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Certain Toyota models in recent years. I brought the 2020 Camry to the dealer this am, and it was indeed the coolant engine valve issue #24TE04 – this link goes to the PDF file hosted at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website. The PDF file has the complete list of impacted model and year.

My local Toyota dealer fixed it at no cost for me – share here for awareness as I think both Camry and RAV4 were top selling sedans 🚘 or small SUVs 🚙 , respectively, during those years.

一般情况下，engine 的灯亮，如果发动机温度正常，不冒烟，其它都正常，应该也还好。但是我也很理解女性司机对这些灯亮感到紧张。这也是我把它给修好的一个原因因为这车主要是我太太和孩子开；另外一个原因是manufacturer warranty cover 了这一项。

Earlier: 好像这个问题是wide spread 的。困扰了我大概一个星期，因为这个warning 一下子有，一下子没。一开始我以为是oil change 的提示：她家的车一般有每五千英里换机油的提示。结果换了机油还是有这个warning.油管上有巨多的相关视频 here are couple YT videos – DIY: Replace Toyota RAV4 Coolant Shut-off Valve • Easy Repair Step-by-Step Codes P268111 & p268115 and Free Toyota Coolant Leak Fix | Dealer Extends Warranty For Coolant Bypass Valve . 一个原因是Camry 和RAV 4在这里销量是排在前的。我想很有可能是丰田在设计和制造上的缺陷。

I also made two YT Shorts video, here is one and two.

PS: some good YT videos on Toyota maintenance: These JAPANESE SECRETS Will Make Your Toyota And Lexus Last Over 700k Miles (Japanese Motors) and Toyota Owners Stop Making These Critical Mistakes! (The Car Care Nut)

PS 2: The Car Care Nut has a video How To Get Over 300k Miles Out of Your Modern Toyota on Toyota maintenance to keep the car last longer.

Btw, he has a car shop TCCN Automotive Inc. in Chicago, and I just realized St. Louis has a similar mind car repair shop too – Jamco – (Japanese Auto Maintenance Co) – here is their Google review and I came across one comment:

“Established in 1975 by David Monnig as a Honda & Toyota specialized repair service. Built on honesty and integrity, JAMCO Is still operated In the same fashion today. With old fashioned customer service, owners Micki Monnig & Don Mascare, with long term mechanic Kent, second generation mechanic Joe and secretary Heather will happily assist you with your Toyota & Honda needs.”

Categories
Business Investing Software development

Will many software companies die due to AI?

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Full disclosure: I worked in the software (or IT) industry for last 25+ years ago. I put most of my 401k in the S&P 500 index funds. I also have a little individual stocks in my IRA and brokerage accounts, although comparing to the S&P 500 index fund, and other stock positions such as BRK.B and KO, my software stock holdings are insignificant.

google search for saas apocalypse

Fortune 2026/02/04: $300 Billion Evaporated. The SaaS -Pocalypse Has Begun.

2026-2-26 Yahoo Finance (PitchBook): Q&A: Francisco Partners on the software sell-off

Reddit: The “SaaSpocalypse” is the latest wall street hallucination!

There are tons of YouTube videos on this topic recently. Personally, I think the reality will probably somewhere in between, just like this LinkedIn post.

Recent I wrote this blog post – My dream, software development jobs, and software industry

And just today, CNBC – Moody’s cuts rating on private credit fund run by KKR and Future Standard to junk as bad loans grow; Apollo gives investors only 45% of requested withdrawals from $15 billion private credit fund

Categories
Software development

Learn agentic AI in 30 days and AI coding certifications

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Chatgpt: learn agentic AI in 30 days. I just got started: better late than never. Adapt or become irrelevant (as a coder). I am not sure if the link here will work for everyone, but one can type those words, and Chatgpt will come back with the 30 day plan. I think 30 day is good. One factor that drove me to learn, was I saw requirement for a Senior AI developer position, and the recruiter (whom I had a brief interaction probably 20 years ago) responded, with some AI related questions below (note this is just a subset, she asked some other questions too).

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Years experience working with AI Tools such as Windsurf and Github Copilot?

Windsurf – a year; GitHub Copilot – 2 years

Windsurf  

AI principles including LLMs, RAG, agents, and prompt engineering

AI Integration into app workflows

Familiarity with AI SDKs and frameworks (e.g., OpenAI SDK, LangChain) is a plus

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I quickly realized that I need to brush up skills to be relevant to say the least.

The second point, probably more importantly, is I want to be relevant for the upcoming AI tsunami – the agentic AI coding and all. I did start look at it recently, and documented my learning here in a google doc.

Certifications

Thinking it may be useful, or at least helpful if one wants to do more structured learning. Here is the google search.

PS: I gave it a bit more thought on certifications. A few years ago I thought about getting the AWS certifications, probably in 2020 or 2021. I bought the cert prep course at Udemy and eventually didn’t complete the prep and attempt the cert exam. From my personal experience learning CFA many years ago, while the prep process will help me to learn, the cert itself is not going to make huge difference in career – it may still help one to secure an interview or a job. But I think the learning the AI is more important. Again this is because AI is and will have even more impact to our lives or work. If I could use an analogy, in 2008 I had my 1st smartphone (Blackberry), and first iPhone was debuted in 2007, in a few years, iPhone basically defeated Blackberry. I think similar things will happen to coding between AI and human beings. AI (the super computer) will beat us human beings eventually – probably it won’t take long there either.

It doesn’t mean we have to accept the defeat, and find another trade job (electrician, or plumber), but we can still do other parts of the tech job: requirements gathering, supervising AI agents (somewhat like supervise the junior engineers), talk to end users and thinking about the bugs and features, etc.

Categories
401k and Personal Finance advice and tips uber-and-side-hustle

Tax season

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Uber Driving

Noted this: why the Uber 1099-k includes gross income (google search). The important part is: You report the 1099-K gross amount on your Schedule C, then deduct the fees and commissions as business expenses to ensure you are only taxed on your actual earnings, notes TurboTax and Stride Health. (this is from Google AI overview)

Btw, I am not sure if this is new for this year (tax year 2025). I assume if one has tax professionals do the tax, they will catch it. For those DIYers, or people who don’t drive a lot for Uber, this heads up may be relevant. Personally, I added up all the money I received from Uber (at my bank website), and added them up, before comparing with the tax summary from Uber.

Update 03-07-2026: Filed via Turbo Tax e-file.

Update 03-10-2026: I realized I forgot to expense the Internet (Broadband) cost, as both my wife and I work full time from home. Well, if there is any other significant reason that I need to amend the return, I would include that change as well. Otherwise, I just make a note here for myself – don’t forget to expense it next year.

Update 03-15-2026: both federal and state refunds are in my bank account.

Categories
Software development

My dream, software development jobs, and software industry

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I sort had a bad dream last night. I dreamed that my old colleague admonished me for not working hard enough. I think perhaps I had too much work-related stress recently.

On a related note, 我感觉AI对大众码工(yours truly included)和大部分软件公司和IT行业的冲击才刚刚开始。。。 大厂已经裁了几轮了。。。Personally I am at peace if I have to drive ride share or food delivery to feed or support my family – I felt I already enjoyed my 25+ years of 码工job，and now it’s probably good for me to do something different 😂

Btw, I could be a little biased (because I have been in the IT/software arena, and on LinkedIn since 2008), but it seems to me there are tsunami of people looking for work now #OpenToWork . The overall situation looks pretty bad. And we know in the USA, the current administration is pretty much hands off to the AI, gen AI etc.

PS: I came across Anil Dash’s article here – What do coders do after AI? I quote some below, as I tend to agree with his assessment. I think he said some of what I wanted to say, and said it much more elegantly.

……But the level at which the change is happening in this transition is one that gets closer to people’s sense of self-worth and identity, rather than to their perceptions of simply having to acquire knowledge or skills. It doesn’t help that the change is being catalyzed by some of the most venal and irresponsible leaders in the history of business, brazenly acting without any moral boundaries whatsoever.…..

……I’ve come to the personal conclusion that the only way forward is for more of the hackers with soul to seize this moment of flux and use these tools to build. The economics of creating code are changing, and it can’t just be the worst billionaires in the world who benefit. The latest count is 700,000 people laid off in the last few years in the tech industry. We’ll be at a million soon, at the rate things are accelerating. Each new layoff announcement is now in the thousands.……

……I’ve spent my whole career working with communities of coders, building tools for the people who build with code. I don’t imagine I’ll ever stop doing it. This is the hardest moment that I’ve ever seen this community go through, and it makes me heartsick to see so many people enduring such stress and anxiety about what’s to come. More than anything else, what I hope people can remember is that all of the great things that people love about technology weren’t created by the money guys, or the bosses who make HR decisions — they were created by the people who actually build things.…..

Also this post on LinkedIn by Laurie Voss, let me quote below as linkedIn post search could be buggy from my observation.

I have always been the kind of developer who only cared about outcomes. Give me the tool, the framework, the head start. I just want my website.

A totally different kind of developer exists who cares about the craft. Getting that function just right. Those devs are in pain right now.

LLM-powered engineering is the ultimate outcome-based method: in the extreme case you ship code you’ve never even read.

This is anathema to those who care about the craft and you can see their cultural convulsions across social media every day. “People aren’t caring AND THEY SHOULD WHAT IS WRONG!?”

I don’t know what’s going to happen to the craftspeople of code. I’m not here to predict their irrelevance, they could end up being the most important people to cultivate in a world where nobody reads code. But I know they’re in pain right now, and my sympathy is with them.

It is a very, very weird time to be a software developer and anybody who tells you they know where this is going is deluded. We have shaken the kaleidoscope as hard as we can and the pattern it will land in is a total unknown.