stlplaceRuth’s Chris Steak House is opening a store in St. Louis (Clayton) on March 20. I happened to see the store sign today when I drove by. While I am not a big fan of steak, I got to know the restaurant because I bought/sold its stock last year. It’s a premium steak house, and I like its business growth prospect. I think I will visit it and taste its famous steak too.
From mitbbs
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出租司机给我上的MBA课
我要从徐家汇赶去机场，于是匆匆结束了一个会议，在美罗大厦前搜索出租车。一辆
大众发现了我，非常专业的、径直的停在我的面前。这一停，于是有了后面的这个让
我深感震撼的故事，象上了一堂生动的MBA案例课。为了忠实于这名出租车司机的原
意，我凭记忆尽量重复他原来的话。
“去哪里……好的，机场。我在徐家汇就喜欢做美罗大厦的生意。这里我只做两个地
方。 美罗大厦，均瑶大厦。你知道吗？接到你之前，我在美罗大厦门口兜了两圈，终于
被
我看到你了！从写字楼里出来的，肯定去的不近~~~”
“哦？你很有方法嘛！”我附和了一下。
“做出租车司机，也要用科学的方法。”他说。我一愣，顿时很有些兴趣“什么科学的
方法？”
“要懂得统计。我做过精确的计算。我说给你听啊。我每天开17个小时的车，每小时成
本34.5元……”
“怎么算出来的？”我追问。
Missouri, the show me state where I live, had a pretty wild weather last weekend. We had Tornato (twister) both on Saturday and Sunday. I stayed whole day at home on Sunday, and I never saw so many Tornato warnings on the TV. On Sunday night the weather guy basically told the viewer to stay alert and turn on the TV once a while during sleep. Luckily St. Louis was not hit directly.
This web site also had some problems this afternoon. I believe this was just a technical glitch. Just like weather, computer sometimes is unpredictable. Fortunately this is not a mission critical web site and the glitch won’t cause major damages.
By the way, the weather is pretty nice now after those storms. I sawthe full moon very clearly on the sky tonight.
In the stock market there is a thing called “earning”, basically it’s how much money a company made for each share of the stock. The higher the earning, the better for share holders (company owners). But the stock price does not necessarily hold a linear relationship with the earning. Why? Because there is another thing called “street estimate” or “estimated earning”. It’s the Wall Street’s expectation of company’s earning. If the company’s actual earning meets (or beats) “street estimate”, the stock will go higher; otherwise the stock will be punished. The latest example is Google. It dropped sharply after the 2006 Q1 earning report.
I think same rule can applied to the work place. I got this idea partially from Jack Welch’s (former CEO of General Electric) book “Winning”. Recently I reinforced this idea from my own experience and observations. In the work place there are expectations from the boss, the coworkers and (sometimes) customers. If we just work hard enough to meet the expectation, we will keep the job. But if we work much harder or smarter, and make our bosses looking good, we will get reward or promotion. On the other hand, if we miss the expectation from our boss without a good explaination, we know what will happen.
It took me a year to figure out the difference between these two. Unfortunately one year ago when I bought my condo, I used the latter one, which means when Fed raises the rate, my rate goes up too.
Today I found the following definition at GMAC mortgage (click on Home Equity).
Home Equity Loan
For immediate cash, consider our fixed-rate home equity loan. You’ll have the security of knowing the interest rate and payment stays fixed throughout the loan term.
Home Equity Line
For a revolving line of credit you can access when you need it, consider our home equity line. There’s no obligation to use it, and you won’t pay interest until you do.
I am not sure if I would qualify the home equity loan one year ago. It appears to me the lenders and mortgage brokers try to blur the lines between those two things (to their own interest).
I know it’s a bit late, but it’s better “late to know” than “being ignorant all the time”, right?
I saw this article in ShanghaiExpat, and I think it’s very informative.
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Understanding Shanghai’s Rental Market
Shanghai’s downtown housing supply grows each year with more and more buildings popping up around town. For the newcomer it must seem overwhelming and many can’t work out why the differing asking prices for what seem to be similar properties. But understanding why is not so hard if you know a bit about the recent history of real estate in this city.
When I came to Shanghai in 1994 to work in real estate, there was limited expatiate housing and no local housing at all. In such a short period we have seen an under supply of expatriate housing to an over supply, then an under supply of local housing to an over supply. Mind you, good quality attractive local apartments are still hard to find and are snapped up quickly. When looking at the housing market in Shanghai it helps to keep in mind that in communist societies, the government and not the people own property so real estate is a recent concept in new China. Therefore, like most things in China, the market is still in growing and in transition.
I have been a nice guy most of time, in my work and outside of work. But I have done something pretty bad this week. I am talking about programming. I made two mistakes.
First I checked in code to the source control system and forgot to put in some compile flags. Without these flags my teamates will have compile errors. Bad bad bad. In C/C++ programming world, the first thing we learn is to make sure the code compiles. I remember my C++ instructor at Rolla once said “if a program does not compile or run as designed, it’s not a program, it’s a novel”. In this case although I did compile it successfuly in my own project, I forgot the impact of my changes to the team (group). Note other peoeple in the team are using same piece of the code. The good thing the mistake itself does not cause any serious consequence and it was easy to fix.
My work is not easy these days. I have to solve some problems and the deadline is approaching quickly. I feel sitting before the computer all the day (don’t we all do that?) is not helpful for my health. So I tried to find some time for exercises after I came back from China.
I played basketball and tennis last week. This week one day when I got off work, I suddenly got the idea of playing golf. There is a drive range close to my work place so I went there and took some shots. While all these are good I found I could fit exercise into my daily routine. In the morning I walk to the St. Louis Bread Co. , get the bagel and walk back to my home. It’s about 15 minutes walk. In the evening I walk to the Schucks, the grocery store. I think I have been spoiled because I have a car for too long. Now that I walked to the Metro stations in Shanghai every morning, I decided to do similar things in the States. Personally I think it’s a better life style. And I am very fortunate because I live close to those places.
In St. Louis there are not many such places. Clayton, the county seat and business center, is pedestrian friendly. Creve Coeur, the city where I live, is also planning to build up a downtown. The developers are building new condos there (the price starting from 400 K). Imagine you can walk to movie theater, shopping center, office, fittness place, coffee shop, restaurant,…how wonderful life will be. Not to mention the saving of gas bill and the time spent on traffic.
OK, I am dreaming again.
From mitbbs:
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看到前面东航的事情，我也来说说前些日子回国的遭遇。
我是坐UA由别处到chicago再回上海的，在我这个地方check-in
的时候，不知怎么搞的就没有给我chicago到上海这一段的正式机票，
只是一张confirmation，工作人员说，到时候一定会有位子的，我也
没多想。到了chicago,被告知票子卖得太多了，现在没有位子，要我
等20分钟看看，当时距离飞机起飞还有40分钟。我当时挺着急，但是
这样的事情听过不少，倒还没到出离愤怒的地步。就站在柜台边等
叫我的名字。过了15分钟，形势开始不对，这时候来的人，航空公司
都是一句话，没位子了，今天走不了了，等明天吧。可是很可气的是
他们不一视同仁，老外来了（这里指看上去肯定不是亚裔的那种），
绝对是有位子的，机票立马给你。中国人来了，先说没有位子，然后
问是不是绿卡，如果是，位子又有了，而像我们这种F1，或者探亲
旅游访友的，就绝对绝对地没有票子。看着这些人的嘴脸，我心里
那个气呀，尤其这些UA的工作人员都是黄皮肤，黑眼睛，说中国话
的中国人呀！
回到国内，唯一不开心的经历就是在大使馆，那些中国保安的
嘴脸，想必大家也见识过了，尤其是他们对一些拿探亲签证的老人
家，人家年纪大，不懂英文，也许连普通话都说不好，就更应该
多帮帮忙的，但是那些人那个凶，那个不耐烦，呼呼赫赫的，让人
看了心寒。我去拿签证的时候，发现签证上有些错误，去找保安，
本来只想问问有什么电话或者人我可以去找找问问的，却招来了
一顿骂。我很委屈，老爸说，只有白痴才跟这些人理论讲道理的，
我为此还跟老爸争了起来，可是现在想想，我是不是有点白痴啊？
我爱自己的国家和同胞，只是对这些人，实在无话可说了，只
是不明白，也许这些人不工作的时候，也是挺正常的，但是为什么
一工作就换成了那样的嘴脸，sigh…
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Comments:
I think it’s an extreme case. For international travel it’s a good idea to confirm the ticket before heading to airport. This applies to Southwest airline domestic travel too. Nowadays you can confirm the ticket online.
I don’t have Green Card either. Although I don’t have exact same experience, I felt there is some difference between PR and non-PR : I could not exchange the RMB back to USD at Bank of China; they look at my docuements more carefully when I checked out from “Chu Jing Chu” and airline counter. It’s ironic when I came back into US, because I had this thing called “advanced parole”, I got to lined up with Green Card holder (faster lane) and processed before visa holders.
I think there are always people who judge other people by the appearance, status, wealth, etc. What we need to do is we treat other people fairly; and when we felt we were treated very unfairly, complain and seek courses if necessary.
It seems like China is going to get only one Gold Medal at this Winter Olympics games. It’s a bit disappointing for many Chinese who care about the game, including me. I think lots of people, especially the team China expected to win more gold medals this time. I believe four years ago we got at least two gold (Yang Yang, short track speed skating). This time we had gold hope on Pair figure skating, speed skating (both regular and short track), women’s skiing Aerial (jump), etc. But we only got one on Women’s short track. Why the disappointment? I think one reason is expectation is too high. While we had hope in those games, the competition is very intense and our opponents are very strong too. A lot depends on the performance at the spot. But we Chinese ususally can not do well when we try too hard.
This is not a problem for Chinese Athlets. Michelle Kwan, 5 times world figure skating champion, tried very hard to win a gold medal in 1998 and 2002 Olympics, did not get what she wished for. She tried again in this year but had to withdrawl at last minute because of injury. I think she tried too hard.
I want to share my own experience on this too. I wanted to go to Shanghai Jiaotong University when I graduated from high school in 1989. I was so nervous that I did not get any sleep during the college admission exam (black July). And did not make it. Four years later, I tried very hard to take the Graduate Admission Exam in order to get to the same university, I failed again. This time I failed on Math.