stlplaceI went to West County mall in the weekend, my first trip after coming back. Among all the St. Louis malls, I like West County the best because it has some of my favorite products (or stores): Apple store; Journeys, the shoe store has Crocs and Heelys; Dick’s Sporting Good has Crocs and Under Armour. Here is my impression on them.
I got it in email. The Seattle’s Best Coffee is opening stores in the Borders Creve Coeur and South county stores (it already opened in Borders Chesterfield and Brentwood). Here is the link for coupon.
As you may know, Starbucks also started in Seattle in 1970s.
I saved an invoice of gas before the trip (early March), it was 2.379 per gallon. When I came back, it went up to 3.049 at the same Shell gas station at my neighbourhood. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I paid too much attention to the Chinese stock market and lose what’s happening in the middle east and Nigeria? One thing I do know is the crude oil price did not change too much during this period.
It’s the so called “golden week” here, it’s also my first time spending the golden week in China (we did not have this kind of long holidays back in middle 1990s). I will spend some time with my family and friends. No more stocks. No more computers (if I can accomplish that), and I can not promise I will write blogs in next week (May 1 to 7).
Happy holidays !!!
I’m not talking about the credit card use (I’ve talked a bit in my previous posts).
It appears to me Chinese are using more and more plastic bags for packaging: from the morning “Bao Zi” to “Ma La Tang” (Chong Qing hot pot) on the street.
I got the Diplomat luggage back. It took me quite a while to get to the elevator in “Si Chuang Da Sha”, because it’s 9 AM in the morning and obviously the building does not have enough elevators (lifts). This is something new to me but not to many Shanghainese: people lined up for the elevator. The good part is, I got my luggage case back, and it only cost me 20 Yuan (to install a wheel), which is the price of a big Mac. I will put on a picture later on. On serious part, I think the cheap labor in China help the low inflation in the US and other developed countries in a big way (cheaper goods).
Enough praises for Shanghai, let’s look at the other side of the coin.
Traffic, very few cars will stop and wait for pedestrains to pass, from time to time a bike would zip through (in front of) you;
Cigarette smoking is prevalent in restaurants, sometimes I think about smoking myself because I heard it’s safer than second hand smoke;
Wait in line at banks, I only waited at China Merchant Bank, one of the top banks in China, but still…
Sogou, the new search engine from Sohu, has a ranking for every web site. I went to their web site, and checked out the following web sites:baidu (type in link:www.baidu.com in the blank and hit “search”, do similar for the other sites), netease, sina, sohu and stlplace. Here are their scores:
baidu: 90, sohu: 81, sina: 72, netease: 64, stlplace: 37.
Jeremy Siegel, a Wharton Finance professor and a well known author, took 100 Wharton students to see Buffett as an annual tradition between the school and the Oracle of Omaha. Here is Jeremy’s report. You don’t need to read it all. I think this is the most important part: “Priorities:…But Warren does not stew about past mistakes. He wisely counsels that anything that happens to your finances is secondary to the important things in life – picking a suitable and compatible mate, developing a relationship with your children, and doing something that you enjoy…”
Laura Rowley, a journalist and an author, also shared similar views.
I ordered a book from Dangdang.com, the China’s own Amazon.com. The process was fairly straight forward except the payment. There are lots of online payment options in China these days including the bank card. But I don’t have a special PIN from my bank, so I chose “cash payment on receipt” instead. The book came today (that was fast, consider I ordered on Monday?). Besides saving some money (dangdang gives 36% off, even adding 5 Yuan delivery fee, it’s still cheaper than buying at book store), I wanted to try the online shopping in China. So far so good.
By the way, the book “Road and Dream” was written by Wang Shi, the founder of Vankie, and the guy who climbed many mountains including Mount Everest, or Chomolungma.