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Fun

Got the Diplomat Luggage back

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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).

IMG_4884 

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gadgets

A GPhone Google Cell Phone in the Making?

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I saw this article from Sina, it says a Google Cell Phone is under development. It will support 3G and EDGE, and will have Google search and Gmail services. It is set to debut in 2008. Here is a picture. I don’t see anything special about it. Do you?

Categories
Life

Tragedy in Virginia Tech

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By now we all know what happened in Virginia Tech, a big public university with good engineering reputation in Blacksburg, Virginia. Although many people are really angry at “how can this happened again, even after the Columbine”, I think right now the proper thing to do is: give our thoughts and prayers to the people lost their loved ones. After all, life is the most precious thing.

I never visited Virginia Tech, but I visited Richmond, the capital of Union, a few years back. I did like the hills and natural scenes there.    

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Shanghai Composite

Current Status of Chinese Stock Market

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Normall I don’t comment on the general market trend (I took cue from the Oracle of Omaha because he does not predict this). But China domestic market is just too crazy in my mind. New record for the index everyday. New record for the new accounts being opened everyday. People talk about stocks everywhere. One day I heard a friend recommend a stock, the second day it jumped almost 10%. No, I hadn’t bought that particular stock because I felt I want to follow Buffett rule: buy the stuff I can understand.

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China Stocks

Crunching Time for Tax

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I believe the dealine is April 17 in the US. If you have not done so, this is a good time to do so. I found the Turbo Tax Online discount link still works (15% off).

On a separate note, more than 1.6 million people in China filed personal income tax for last year. Only individual has annual income over 120,000 Yuan need to report. The average income of that group was 320,000 Yuan (80% are workers, “Da Gong Zhu” in Chinese), and the average tax is about 50,000 Yuan. Wang Jianshuo has a good formula to calculate tax in his blog.

Categories
Business China

Trains to Raise Speed

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I remember in the old days (15 years ago) it took 8 hours to travel from Shanghai to Ningbo. Now it took less than 4 hours. They are raising the speed again this year, according to the news. The D series train is expected to travel at 200 Km per hour, much faster than 40 Km per hour in my college years. This is just another sign China has been through in last 15 years, on the economy.

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China Stocks

Shanghai Composite Index

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Hit new high today, it closed above 3500 today (3531 to be exact).

I heard from the news on April 9, there were 180,000 new stock trading accounts being opened. As you may know the new accounts and trading volume of 1st quarter already exceeded last year’s No. Feel the power of Chinese stock investors (or speculators)? Someone did a simple calculation, let’s assume on average day 100,000 people opened the acct, and average account has 50,000 Yuan, that’s about  5 billion Yuan new money every day. If we assume 20 trading days for a month, that’s 100 billion Yuan a month. That’s on the demand (demand for stocks) side.

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Stocks

Interactive Broker Open IPO

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(Updated April 16) I placed my bid through WR Hambrecht today.  

I mentioned this a while ago. Today I received email from WR Hambrecht. The bid starts on April 16.

Last Nov I opened the acct at WR Hambrecht in order to get the IBKR open IPO. But I was not disiplined enough, end up picking up other IPO stocks: HLYS, XFML and GSIT. I already sold XFML before getting GSIT. Now I need to sell more to make fund available to IBKR bidding. Interactive Broker is the leading options trader and market maker in the US. The most famous company did open IPO is Google, followed by MorningStar.  

Categories
Business China

Online Banking in China

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I started using online banking a few months ago because I want to check out the balance in my account (at the time I was in the US, there are no ATMs I can go check my balance). This is reletively simple at cmbchina, after you install an ActiveX control from the bank. Some open source guys are pretty upset about this but this is reality in China: Microsoft product is the de-facto standard.

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Categories
Fun

Things I don’t Like in Shanghai

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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…

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