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(Updated May 2011) “古人云，人不自信谁人信之.” Others won’t believe in you unless you believe yourself. –Chinese proverb

Hello, world 🙂 I am not another expert. I am an ordinary guy who believes: by lifetime learning, hard and independent work and discipline, little guys can achieve their dreams, too.

I grew up in China. Currently I am working on iOS (iPhone/iPad) app development. Here I’m also blogging about iOS app/software development, business, personal finance, and other fun stuffs in life. You can leave comment here or Email me: if you wish to remain private.

Tip: you can always hit “home” or type www.stlplace.com to get back to the home page.

Search: please refer to the “search this site” page, as this is a bit complicated.

Related post: I added “related post” functions to this blog today. Basically it will show “related posts” at the end of each article if you go to each post (by clicking on the title). Hopefully this will make navigation of this blog a bit easier. Now we have search on the side bar (search by word, search by Google), and this related post thing. I also added “save to del.icio.us” button at the bottom of each post.

Revisions
(5-28-2011) Converted Ultimate Tag Warriror to WordPress tag, by importing and enable tag cloud in side bar. More information on U can be read here.

(April, 2011) Upgrade to WordPress 3.1.2, the only thing not working is Ultimate Tag Warrior.

(12-12-2009) Added my twitter widget. The Google Conversation Elements were removed earlier due to lack of interest. Note “Share This” Button at the end of each post has the buttons for Twitter, Facebook etc. Enjoy!

Added Google Conversation Elements.(May 30, 2009): this is to facilitate interesting and intelligent discussions on things. Enjoy!

Used compact archive (May 30, 2009): link to plugin.

Added “Share This” button (May 22, 2009): this is for bookmark and sharing with your friends. Try it out 🙂

Switch to a three column theme (simplicity), this allows for more room for side bars. (Dec 2007)

Tanslation: I added a language tool at the right side bar. You can click on the flag to get an instant translation of this blog. This is not perfect and sometimes it does not work because of server problem. But at least you can get a glimpse of what I’m talking about. (May 20, 2007)

My view on stocks: Information is provided ‘as is’ and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice. (Mar 15, 2007)

Pictures: some of the pictures (those hosted on flickr and yupoo) are clickable. You can see a bigger picture if you click on it. (Mar 12, 2007)

Subscription: besides point your web browser to stlplace.com, you can also use “Add to My Yahoo”, subscribe to “feedburner” or “newsgator” to get the latest post. Pick your favorite way to get the blog: type in web address and check if there is anything new (the so called “pull” method); or the RSS subscription (so called “push” method, the new post is pushed to your web page automatically). (sometime in 2006)

Dec 2005, initial release.

(Original Dec 2005) Hello, world. I am not another stock expert. I am an ordinary guy who believes that: by learning and disciplined investing little guy can beat many “experts”.

At STLPlace, we believe in independent research and value investing. We don’t blindly chase hot stocks, we don’t follow Jim Cramer, and we don’t catch falling knives…

I grew up in China and have been in the US since Fall 1997. Here I’m blogging about business, finance, stocks, other fun stuffs in the US and China.

This is a place I’m sharing my thoughts. Please don’t take this as a stock tip and run with it. One selfish reason for this blog is to organize my thoughts and actions on stocks, and be a better investor along the way. Hopefully you can also benefit from this process: the result matters, but more importantly is how we get there, so that we can repeat the success.

Any comments, please send email to:

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Fun Life

Major’s list in 2005

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Best Chinese TV-series (soup opera): Dong Shi Mu Bei Dong Gan Qing 动什么别动感情 (Anything but your feeling)

Most Spectacular View: Grand Canyon (Arizona, US)

Most Scenic View: Jiu Zhai Gou 九寨沟 (Si Chuan, China)

Best Chinese Restaurant (tie): Asiana 东兴园(St. Louis); New Age Veggie 新素代 at Shanghai Super Brand Mall 正大广场

Best Bread: St. Louis (Panera) Bread Company 面包店

Best Espresso: Borders (not Star Bucks)

Best Fast Food: Fazoli’s (an Italian Fast Food retaurant)

Most proud thing: realized I can only be myself, not Bill Gates, or William Ding Lei (CEO of NetEase 网易)

Most stupid thing I did (tie): roller blading in Stacy park without checking out the road condition; bet on NetEase’s 2005 Q4 earning

Best place to study: Borders (a chained book store in the US)

Most visited web site: yahoo.com

Best user interface: Google web site and tools

Categories
Fun Life

Being blessed and loved

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It’s almost Christmas. Things started to calm down, especially in Post Office, the malls should be packed by last minute shoppers now. I received some emails and calls from old friends already. I have 4 days holiday for X’mas. Today (12/23) is the first day. When I was running some errands, I thought about the year 2005. First I used “being blessed and loved” title not purely for religious meaning.

I think everyone, religous or not, could spend some time reflecting the past year. Americans have this thing called New Year’s resolution. While I am not a believer on “resolution”, I think I tend to repeat same mistake again and again. I am not just talking about investing. I could use some time to think about my mistakes in the past year and hopefully don’t make the same ones next year.

One of my problem is “impatience” or “hope for quick money or success”. This can be applied to my stock trading and other things. So I bought this stock called “PetsMart”, after listening to my roomate who is pursuing MS in Finance. I waited 3 weeks patiently. Nothing happened. At the same time I talked to another friend who bought “Apple” and he made lots of money. I decided to sell the “PetsMart”. Shortly after I sold it at a loss, the stock went up. I made same mistake on “Yahoo”, I could make $9 but made only $1 on it (per share). I also thought about doing something more exciting than “programming everyday”, and doing another kind of programming. I was not successful. I decide to concentrate my work for now.

I am doing OK at my job. It seems my bosses are happy with my performance. I did write some useful code and solved some tough problems. I also tried to help my teammate in any way I can. I think I will have more opportunities as I “hang in there”.

In the summer I learned Golf. I continued to take Tae Kwon Do (Koren Martial Arts), both without much progress. Actually I did not take one promotion test on TKD so I am still red 2nd. I continued roller skating. Once I fell down, broke my chin and went to emergency room. Later on I realized I was lucky enough not killing myself by skating without checkin out the trail and wearing helmet. In winter I began to skate on the real ice in Creve Coeur Ice Arena.

I also took two accounting courses in the community college. Now I got a better grip on the business and financial statements.

I went to some old places and new places: Grand Canyon, New Jersey, Shanghai, Beijing, Congqing, Jiu Zhai Gou, Austin, Silicon Valley and Yosemite. They are all beautiful and unique, but I feel more at home at St. Louis right now. My condo (apartment) is messy but it’s very peaceful with good location. I can walk to the movie theater, St. Louis (Panera) bread company and the Nissan dealership.

The most important of all, I felt I am blessed and loved. While losing some “mad money” in the stock market, it did not hurt me too bad but made me wiser (hopefully). While I was thinking about things about my career, I received lots of advice and encouragment from my friends, old and new. While I do have frustrations at my work, things eventually worked out when I tried real hard and got help from my colleagues.

Wish all my friends a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Categories
Fun

Daddy?

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Little kids can be fun. If you don’t have to deal with the diapers and crying stuff. Recently I spent some time with my 7 months old niece. And she was very sweet.

Today I went to Fazoli for lunch. When I was leaving the retraunant, I saw a little girl probablly 2 years old. I said “hi”, and she smiled and and asked her mom “daddy?”. Obviously she is confused me with her real daddy. We all laughed although her mother is slightly embarassed by this. But to me, hey little girl, you made my day.

Categories
Business China Saint Louis

Got my car back

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Got my car back this morning. This time they called me at 8:20 AM and told me it’s ready. The noise problem was caused by an idle pulley used for A/C. Ironically when I was in Rolla I did research on the V-ribbed accessory belt drive. That pulley is a part of the accessory drive. I did have a feeling something was wrong with the drive but I did not have the courage to open it and see it myself. So much for my mechanical engineering backgound. When I picked up the car, I compained the miscommunication problem yesterday. The service rep agreed a $20 discount. And he even pulled my car over (like valet). It seems I got “BMW or Lexus” treatment this time. I have a friend who recently got a BMW 525i and I will check with him about his BMW service experience.

The good thing is, I got my car and my freedom. I was a little upset just because “without a car for one night”. I know I am spoiled being in the States for more than 8 years. My Accounting class instructor once said “we take too many things for granted over here in the States”. I agree. My fellow American graduate student commented “people here can get upset waiting in McDonald for 5 minutes, they don’t know many people in Africa are starving”. I appreciate those comments very much. I know in China the customer service is definitely not at the US level yet (it’s catching up). I think that’s why “Chatea” and “Ctrip” alike are so popular because they make customer happy. I remember Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban once said “treat your customers like they owned you”. If I have a business one day, I will do exactly that.

Categories
Business Saint Louis Technology

Car problem

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My car is making funny noise recently. So I made an appointment with a local Nissan dealership 9AM today, to take a look. The customer rep asked my phone numbers and the usual stuff. I gave them both my work number and mobile number (that turns out to be a mistake). He told me expect an hour and half before getting back to me. The dealership is about 20 minutes walk from my home. On the way back to home, I decided to work remotely using VPN so that I don’t need to ask somebody giving me a ride or rent a car. I started work using Remote Desktop and fixed the problem I mentioned in the previous post. There are a few glitches such as “Network disconnected” or slow response from Graphic intensive applications. But in general I am pleased with the performance of Microsoft Remote Desktop.

When I was happily working on computer, I forgot one thing — call the dealership more often. I did give them a call at 12:30 PM and they told me they still have not figured out the cause of noise. So I figured give them some breeze time. I had some sympathy for them because I am doing similar things such as they do: debugging computer problem vs. car problem. But they did not call my cell phone. When I walked to the dealership at 6PM, they told me they called my work number and left a message. Dahn! They did find the cause of the problem, but they did not fix it without my permission. Now I have to wait till tomorrow morning to pick up my car. I can take another 20 minutes walk. But I was disappointed by them not calling my cell phone number earlier.

This reminds me of something I experienced in Toyota dealership when I was shopping my first new car years ago. I was going to buy a Toyota at two dealerships but both of them have a “either buy it at my price; or just leave” attitude. So I ended up not buying it.

Japanese car companies, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are having a good time these days in the US market. Their quality and reliability are undisputed. But their customer service…I don’t want to talk about it.

Categories
Software development

Chasing the bug round 2

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I was pretty stressed out debugging a problem last two weeks. Luckily I saw the light at the end of the tunnel yesterday. I found out the cause: the tolerance of transform matrix. This is a tough problem because it appears to me the problem occurred without any pattern. But later on I realized out of all the randomness, there is something in common: the misplaced components all end up in the same place. I implemented the fix this morning and it worked like a champ.

Tolerance played an important role in my world. I guess it’s just a way of life. The problem is the computer can not represent a number accurately. Say an inch is 25.4 mm, but in computer it is really 25.399999…If you convert the inch to mm and then convert it back, it maybe something like 25.398888. Now if you do a comparason of this number with 25.4, it won’t be equal any more. Similar things can happen for vectors, matrix, geometries, etc.

There are called rounded errors in numerical computation. I took a course on numerical computation in graduate school in Rolla. The theory was a bit abstract. But now I got the fun to play with the real stuff. It’s not as complicated as one might think.

Categories
Business Stocks

Plastic society

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Just watched Frontline on PBS. The topic is “Secret history of the credit card”. I thought it provides some very useful information. We all know the US economy is very much depependent on consumer spending. And the credit cards are used more and more by consumers. I remember a story my “American mom” told me. When her own kids were little and they asked their mom for something, they thought everything can be bought with that “magic plastic card”. Personally I applied and received my first credit card shortly after I attended the graduate school in Rolla. I had been through “low interest” balance transfers and paid interest on those loans from time to time. Other than that I do pay off my monthly balance regularly. But I did notice I tend to spend more freely with the credit cards, e.g., recently I spent quite a bit on the espresso at Borders, Panera Bread and Star Bucks. Another reason I use credit card is some of them offer cash bonus for purchase on gas, geocery, etc. I don’t consider myself a “very profitable customer” for the credit card companies.

Until today I have not connectted the dot of two things: consumer spending and credit card usage. It worries me more is China is catching up with the consumerism rather quickly. Last summer I went back to Shanghai and saw increasing acceptance of credit cards. I even used my US credit card to book vacation on Ctrip. It’s convenient but later on I saw there is a 1% charge for using outside the US. A friend from Shanghai used credit card for his US trip too. I can see the convenience here because he is on business trip.

Just for the fun: I found out if I pay the minimum monthly payment on my “low interest” balance on my credit card, it will take 54 months (4 and a half years) to pay off. Now I have more desire to pay off that loan more aggressively.

Categories
Business Saint Louis Technology

Make used books more useful

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A good friend of my brother recently visited St. Louis. He is an avid reader and used book collector. Although I like to read too but I have to admit I am not at his level in terms of reading breadth and expertise. Neverthless, we spent quite some time in two of the used book stores in St. Louis. The first one is The Book House at Manchester Road. It’s a family owned operation, a two story building full of all kinds of used books. We spent about an hour and half there and my friend picked up 6 books. I think the cashier was quite happy with his big spending. It seems to me not many people here will buy that many at one time. After that we went to the Left Bank Books at the Central West End. Left Bank is a larger (but independent) book store and it has both new and used books. I remember I saw the late Chinese American writer Iris Chang at the store a few years ago. We also picked a few books there.

Besides the brick-and-mortar stores. We can also look for books online. These are nothing new: one can search on ebay and Amazon for those used books. What interested me is I found some new ideas about the exchanging used books. Two web sites, bookins, paperbackswap, are helping people exchange used books online. It seems the former is more business oriented (creating profit), the latter is more service oriented. But I like the idea very much. Unlike my friend, I am not a book collector. And I want to read more books without owning them. Library is a good source. But this online exchange thing is also interesting. I may try this in this holiday.

Categories
Business China

Chatea in China

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I saw this from “Sage Brennan’s this week in China” at MarketWatch. I have been to Chatea (Yi Cha Yi Zuo 一茶一坐) at Huangzhou in 2004 and was very impressed by the settings and the service. Also walked outside a store in Xu Jia Hui (Shanghai) during dinner time and the waiting line was just too long. After reading the article I am even more impressed by the investors and management of the company.

Here is the excerpt:

Chatea raises unconventional funding

Much has been made of recent increases in high-yield lending to take up the slack that resulted when domestic banks began to tighten credit. But China’s booming private sector is looking to a variety of mechanisms to finance growth. As an example of the increasingly creative deals that China’s private equity sector is likely to see in the coming year, I offer up the unique funding of Shanghai-based restaurant chain Chatea (Yi Cha Yi Zuo) by several investors known for deals in completely unassociated industries.

IDG Technology Venture Investment, one of China’s best-known backers of successful early-stage technology companies like Baidu, Sohu.com Inc, eBay’s Eachnet and Ctrip, as well as a large number of promising startups, was a surprising participant in the financing of Chatea’s privatization, joining Susquehanna International Group.

The $7 million round, closed in early December, privatized the 70% share of the company that had been owned by the Shanghai government, which reportedly made a 30% return in the roughly one year that it owned its share of Chatea.

Is this an example of the influence of the Shanghai government in private enterprise? Sure, but it also is a recognition that a solid business concept deserves attention – even from unexpected quarters. Investors known for whiz-bang technology investments out on the Long Tail were willing to bet on a decidedly old-economy business model and management team, which hails from the China divisions of McDonald’s Corporation, Yum Brands Inc.’s KFC and the original Taiwanese founders.

So why is this a venture capital deal? Chatea emphasizes a commitment to providing a high-quality customer experience, which diners in the West, for the most part, take for granted. In China, restaurant customers are treated unevenly, at best. So an operation that keeps customer service as a mantra and provides a stylish atmosphere has a real chance to grow quickly if it is adequately capitalized, much as Starbucks has in China. In this concept, the investors apparently see the potential for VC-like returns.

One of the most interesting aspects of Chatea is that with 17 restaurants, several of which are located in cities as far as Beijing, the company has developed a scalable model to produce food of consistent quality from a single kitchen in Shanghai, similar to the McDonald’s model, but with a stylish twist. Chatea claims that the kitchen can support up to 60 restaurants. Customers, in general, have no idea that the gleaming kitchens featured in every location do not actually produce any of the dishes that are served. They also have only a vague notion of the massive margins that Chatea makes on the gourmet teas it sells.

Will we see more deals like this one? Probably not exactly, but compelling deals that can clearly be pulled off with a bit of creativity abound in China.