Categories
Travel

Reserve a Room in Home Inns

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There are two ways to reserve a room in Home Inns (Rujia) Or other China Economy Hotels: by phone (400 820 3333 or 800 820 3333) or use the web (or ask your friend as a 3rd way). For Home Inns, my experience is reserve 2 weeks in advance for some of the “hot” locations such as Xu Jia Hui or Century Park in Shanghai. Unfortunately the reservation page is only in Chinese, but I think they have English speaking representatives on the phone. Alternatively you can use Ctrip and search for Home Inns. I used to get RMB 10 off this way.

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Categories
Stocks

Crocs Knockoffs

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There are lots of Crocs Knockoffs on the market these days. I found some on Payless and Target. The price is about half as the real ones. Don’t know the quality and the customer wearing experience though.

Also, I found this CrocFan blog. I added the link under “Blogroll” at the right. And this article on seekingalpha is very bullish for the long term.

Crocs (CROX) is going to report Q4 and full year 2006 results tomorrow. The stock already  moved up last Friday, in anticipation of a blow out quarter and a positive 2007 guidance.

Disclosure: I am long on CROX.    

Categories
Stocks

Sell Used Books on Half and Amazon

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I used to sell used books, mostly textbooks on Half.com, an eBay subsidirary. Half does a decent job for me and their commission is reasonable (about 10%?). But I have not enjoyed much success selling books there lately. It could be one of the two reasons: My books are unpopular; Half.com is not popular anymore.

I started to use Amazon Markplace instead. Its commisson is much higher, theSunsFinancialDiary says its commisson for book is as high as 18%. But I am OK with it as long as it sells. My rationale behind this is: book does not increase value as time goes, as matter of fact a textbook loses most of its value when new edition come out; if I don’t read the book for a year, I probablly won’t read it at all, so why not convert that into cash? Same thing can be said for some unused household items.  

On business side, Amazon increasingly looks like a mall (like eBay), instead of a store (like Wal-Mart). Smart move I think.

Categories
China

Happy New Year

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The Chinese version, the year of Pig (roar, whatever you want to call it). I am using Keso’s new year card because I can not create a card as good as his 🙂

happy new year pic

Image created by Keso.

Categories
Windows

Vista Got a Reality Check

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When Steve (Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft) speaks, Wall Streets listens. Yesterday in the MicroSoft analyst day Steve tried to put a more realistic picture on the Vista sales. Basically he says that the Vista sales won’t be as good as analysts thought. With his words the stock MSFT lost 2.4% today.

When did Steve start soft spoken? I remember years ago, I attended a Microsoft technical presentation by Steve. I can see the energy and passion from his talk. He even put up his email address steve at microsoft dot com for the audience who are not satisfied with Microsoft’s customer serivce. We all know the mail probablly won’t get to his desk. But Steve is the Sales person and provides energy for the Microsoft, just like Bill Gates is the heart and soul of Mr. Softee. I also remember when I visited Microsoft campus in Redmond, only Bill and Steve got designated parking spots (side by side).

Now with Bill announced the retirement in two years, and Steve started soft spoken, the software world has really become soft.   

Categories
Stocks

Be Open Minded

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I think one of the most important take away from Ken Fisher’s book is “be open minded”. This is easily said than done. Because our brain is not trained that way. For instance, we usually felt pretty bad when we have to cut a loss after buying a stock, even if the company’s fundamental is deteriorating. Because we think if we don’t sell, it’s not an actual loss. On the other hand, we usually feel equally bad about ourselves when we saw the stock went up after we sold it, even if we already make profit from the sale. It seems to me we just can not tolerate “we lose money”, “we leave some money on the table”, “somebody else make more money than us”.

This is very similar to things in life, suppose you bought a Toyota Camry at a dealer for 20,000, and your buddy Joe bought the exact same car at exact same dealer for 19,500. Are you happy or not? Don’t tell me your are happy. How about I tell you I bought it the same car for 20,500 last month? Do you feel better?  

Sometimes, we should adjust our mindset to “making money together”, or “as long as we make/save money, we are happy”.  

Categories
Web

Conference Call over the Internet

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I found a new trend about the companies’ quarterly earning Conference Call lately. Usually a company will do the conference on the Internet and on the phone at the same time. But Crocs (CROX) and Heelys (HLYS), two shoe makers (I have shares for both), lead the fashion again by doing the call exclusively over the Internet. I hope they don’t srewed up the call by technical reasons. I do notice they have two servers so in case one server is busy, the analysts and curious investors like me can still connect.

It’s amazing to think how far Internet has been in the past 10 years. It definitely changed and continue to change the way we communicate, work and entertain, etc.

(Update 16Feb07) On the other hand, Mindray (NYSE:MR), which I have a few shares, is going to announce its earning solely on the phone.

Also, cnanalyst put together an earning report table for Chinese companies listed in US. Good job cnanalyst !!!

Categories
Stocks

Ken Fisher’s New Book

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I ordered Ken’s new book The Only Three Questions That Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don’t from Amazon last week, after reading the review from Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. The three questions are:

What do you think you know that you don’t know? What can you know that others can’t know? And, in a bow to the relatively new field of behavioral finance, what is your brain doing to trip you up?

I am at question 2 now. Interesting reading so far, though I would argue some of the thoughts are not new. As I read Phil Fisher, Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett’s. One take away is we should “Think outside of the box”. I think this is not limited to investing.  

Categories
Fun

$10 off Sports Authority and Dick’s Sporting Goods

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Google Checkout is doing promotion again. I found this while I Googled “Heelys”. Here are the links for Heelys. I think the $10 off can be applied to other things too. A gift from Google for your V-day.

Sports Authority, Dick’s Sporting Goods

By the way, I visited couple Sports Authority stores and Dick’s recently, and some ran out of Heelys. So online may be a good source.