Categories
Business

A new beginning

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For some of the auto dealers in this country. I know this title is a bit misleading, but it’s no worse than those “attention getting” balloons flying outside of car dealerships 🙂

balloons at car dealers

Categories
Career CFA

China Investment Co. is hiring

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Here is their web site. Unfortunately the decriptions are in Chinese, and they require resume in Simplified Chinese. The positions are based in Beijing.

Thanks to my wife who found their Ads at WSJ yesterday. It says apply at their web site: www.china-inv.cn . The application deadline is June 28. As name implies, most are financial related postions, but they do have a few law, IT postions as well.

China Investment Co. pic

If you never heard of China Investment Co., they are China sovereign wealth fund who invested in Blackstone (pre-IPO; NY Times) and Morgan Stanley (2007/9; ChinaDaily).

Categories
Software development

This Green dam thing

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(Update June 11) Here is a review of the software, by experts at Univ. of Michigan.

(Original) Yesterday I read from WSJ that Chinese government is asking the PC makers to install anti-porn software “Green dam” from July 1. I can understand western media’s interest here: the intension of government is more than protecting the Chinese kids, it’s more about controlling access to the world wide web, blah blah blah. I think this kind of analysis overly simplied (and obscured) many things happening in China. The real situation in China is more complicated. Since I grow up in China and read Chinese, I visit Chinese web sites from time to time. One thing I found over the years, is there are much more sex related content in Chinese web sites, even for sites like Sina, Netease (163.com) or Sohu.

green dam anti-porn software
(User Interface of Green Dam software, source: WSJ)

Categories
gadgets

The cost of promoting TDMA

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TDMA, or TD-SCDMA, is a Chinese domestic 3G standard (Wikipedia). China was not behind the west in terms of 2.5 GSM network and applications in recently years. Actually the development of mobile phones are so successful, the total users of China mobile phones users already exceeded half a billion (source: digitimes). China Mobile (NYSE: CHL), the largest mobile operator, has more than 400 millions customers at the end of 2008.

Categories
Fun

Netjets had a good weekend

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Yesterday, the jocky it sponsors, Kent Desormeaux won the Belmont, one of the triple crown in horse racing.


(source: http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/article/120965).

Today, Roger Federer, its spoke person, won the French Open. The Ad below is a bit old, but Netjets released a new Ad shortly after the win, which is a bit funny.

Categories
Software development

Compuware: first look

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(Update 06-11-09) Upon second look, sold the stock.

Compuware Logo pic by Wikipedia

Got some Compuware (Nasdaq: CPWR) shares last week in my SogoTrade account (for speculation purpose). I used their DevPartner products (integrated with Visual Studio, sold to MicroFocus lately, see news below) for memory debugging and performance tuning. Very impressed by their products from my experience. It can catch some unexpected memory error (sometimes introduced inadvertently due to time constraints in development).

Categories
Career

How to find a job in the recession?

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Compiled from various sources in last few months. I read those articles first from Yahoo Finance career-work section. A lot goodies there.

(AP) Even in a recession, some companies are hiring. Quote:

Help wanted: pharmacists, engineers and nurses. Believe it or not, even some banks are hiring, at least for their technology teams.

(CNN Money) They are hiring.

(Money magazine) Smart job strategies to avoid layoffs.

Categories
gadgets

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic: first impression

Reading Time: 2 minutes

The thing finally came from Dell Small Biz (via UPS). My initial impressions: meet expectation (I understand this is not an iPhone killer, rather a notch below iPhone, as the $240 price tag much lower than iPhone $499 price tag).

IMG_6975
(Left: iPhone; Right: Nokia 5800)

1) The size is about right, slimmer than iPhone, but wide enough for most applications;

Categories
China

That special day

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I felt I have to say a few words about that day. After all, some friends back home have already express that in various means.

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of that day, a lot good things have happened to my home country in last 20 years. The giant US corporations are making money in China, left and right. Chinese company has bailed out the General Motor in a small way yesterday. So everything looks like “ok dokey” again. But we should not forget the history. From psychological point of view, getting over denial is one of the most difficult and important thing. So let me roll back the clock.

Twenty years ago, I was a graduating senior in high school, at the time I was thinking this Culture Revolution thing is deja vu all over again. Things are quite chaotic at that time, esp. in the capital. Then things happened on that evening (morning). As we all went back to classroom, preparing for the Gao Kao (College Entrance Exam, the black July, July 7 to 9), I have one thought: life is the most precious thing in the world, taking innocent life is not right, for whatever excuse one may claim.

Twenty years later, I am sitting here, I think I still have the same thought.

Categories
China

Who is Sichuan Tengzhong?

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四川腾中重工(in Chinese, Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Machinery) The little known Chinese Co. who bought Hummer brand from GM yesterday (News: Bloomberg; Reuters; Tengzhong web site). Quote Reuters:

Tengzhong, formed in 2005 through several mergers, makes special-use vehicles such as dump trucks and fuel tankers, as well as construction machinery, energy equipment, and structural components for highways and bridges.

It has 4,800 employees, according to its website, about the same as Changfeng. The site does not disclose any financial data.

Special Vehical made by Sichuan Tengzhong
(Special Vehical made by Sichuan Tengzhong, full size pic here. From the pic it appears Tengzhong is OEM maker for SinoTruk 中国重汽)

Why Tengzhong bought Hummer?