If you often find yourself lying awake in the middle of the night worrying, sleep experts say that cognitive shuffling might be worth a try.
Start by thinking of a word — something neutral or positive, like the word “house.” Then, think of as many words as you can that start with the first letter: horse, harmonica, honey. Try to picture each object or idea for 5 to 15 seconds, maybe even imagining a scene with yourself in it. (You’re riding a horse. … You’re playing the harmonica. … You’re harvesting honey!)
The crowd size at the meeting went down quite a bit this year since Warren Buffett’s retirement.
Attendance at Berkshire’s annual meeting was about 25,000, down from 40,000 last year. Greg Abel answered fewer than 15 shareholder questions as compared to 50 – 60 questions that Warren Buffett responded to in the past. Greg Abel demonstrated his in-depth knowledge of…
Berkshire is so empty this year…last year, there were like twenty seats left behind the screen where you couldn’t even see Buffett, and now even the lower seats aren’t full#BRK2026pic.twitter.com/mAx5HlpHma
— Reasoned Speculations (@RsndSpeculation) May 2, 2026
But I think both Warren and Greg handled the questions well. I will put links later, but two things I learned from them.
Valuation is not attractive for them to deploy the cash right now. I think a good example is stocks such as $CAT, used to be blue chip stock, and now has a PE of 47. On the other hand, I just googled – what is apple’s PE when warren started to buy their shares in 2016 – it was 10 to 14. Back to $CAT, its data center segment’s backlog is substantial though – you will need to do a bit research to get a number – Google just gives an overall number.
Another observation or lesson I learned from Warren is here (YT) and tweet – this is about gamblign mentality which is prevailing in current market.
Another observation re: Greg (vs Warren). It seems to me Greg is more about operation efficiency, including but not limiting to technology innovation (e.g., from Geico to BNSF), while Warren is more hands off. “The devil is in the details” – I think from my own experience, this is a good thing. As long as we don’t go to “micro management”, we are good there. Note Greg is 30+ years younger than Warren, and has more background in operation compare to Warren’s finance background.
I was at the meeting about 4 years ago – YT video.
(Working in progress as of 06-26-2026, soft launch for now as I expect summer travel to take off towards the end of May. Thought may be helpful for friends who have not visited China for a while)
Yesterday I came across 2 blog posts almost 20 years ago – More Shanghai travel tips and Travel tips for Shanghai. A lot has changed since then, this is obvious because not only because of the 20 years but also because of the smartphone revolution happened in last 15 years or so.
App, 微信支付 WeChat Pay
Let me give an example, I recall in March 2023, after a break of more than 3 years (2020, 2021 and 2022), I flew back to PVG and saw my parents again in Ningbo. At the KFC store, they already stopped taking orders from the counter, everything is done via app or via 微信小程序。I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know way before that, at a bank branch in Shanghai, I am supposed to take a number from the computer (printer), which is equivalent to the ticket dispenser here in the US. But I didn’t know and waited in line directly until I realized that I didn’t have a number. Anyway, at KFC, the cashier or 伙计 tried to teach me to download the KFC China app on my iPhone, and because my app store country is set to the USA, it could not find the app 🙁 She has to manually put in order for me, and I was able to pay via WeChat pay though.
AliPay works too, but personally I like WeChat much more due to its simpler user interface.
Get the money
While China is largely cashless society, cash is still accepted pretty much everywhere. And sometimes we need the cash to fund the WeChat, or give to someone. For that I have a Schwab Bank Visa Platinum Debit Card (google search, look at the AI overview; Schwab website). I pasted some Google AI overview below. One caveat: there is a 7% (roughly) surcharge, if you withdraw cash at the ATM machine (for example, Pufa or Pudong Development bank) at PVG Pudong Airport. I noticed it because it pops up that warning, and I also compared to money exchange rate with CMB (China Mercantile Bank, Zhao’shang Bank). I used the cash withdrawal feature in HK airport too in 2024, note the taxi drivers in HK only accepts cash.
Key Features
No Foreign Transaction Fees: Purchases made abroad have zero currency conversion fees.
Unlimited ATM Refunds: All fees charged by out-of-network or international ATM operators are fully refunded at the end of every month. (Note: this card offers unlimited bank ATM fee refund in the US too. Again please note bank ATMs, not the other commercial ATMs that’s not owned or run by a bank)
……
How to Use It Effectively
Decline “Dynamic Currency Conversion”: When an ATM or merchant asks if you want to be charged in U.S. Dollars or the local currency, always select the local currency to avoid getting hit with poor, hidden exchange rates.
Flights
Some of the places we will likely change airplanes: Seattle (Delta), SFO (UA), LAX (? China Eastern?), DFW (AA) and DTW (Delta)
Phone and Internet
I think the easiest way for me is to get International Roaming from Mint Mobile my US wireless carrier. It’s flexible in terms of the cellular and data usage and length of stay there. (put a screenshot here)
China Unicom SIM card and compatible phone
Re: Ke’xue’shang’wang, if you want to learn more, you may refer to my earlier blog post
Where to get tickets: there are still windows or counters that’s staffed by ticket agents, but increasingly people are doing self-serving via the kiosk or phone app.
Hotels
I wrote quite a bit of kids friendly hotels that I stayed in China: mainly Shanghai and Ningbo Beilun. I mainly stayed at Hyatt Place Hong’qiao CBD and Double Tree Beilun. Both places have swimming pools.
Eat
This is mostly for my own benefits 🙂 || I am thankful to my friends who feed me 🙂 谢谢老同学/朋友投喂。
Shanghai: 台乡缘（2024）
文兴酒家久光百货店（2025）
桂满陇虹桥枢纽浙菜 (2025)
Ningbo:小鱼厂私厨 鄞州 (2025)
Beilun coffee and tea place (quite unique), food Yi’liang’yi Si’chu (2026)
一良壹.私厨
Things maybe useful when travel to Ningbo or Beilun: taxi, subway (metro, 10:30 pm is the last train?)
Some background – amid the most recent war and the turmoil in the middle east, I thought about quitting JCC earlier next year – I shared my thoughts here YT Video (in Chinese) a few days ago.
Now I think I may do it a bit sooner – the earliest time I think is starting next month May 2026. This is a bit like if people decided to move on from a relationship or a job, it doesn’t make much sense to hang around long, if they don’t expect things to change. In this spirit, I think about cancelling the membership at the end of April – before they start charging me the month of May membership. I know I had said a lot of good words for the J, the short name for JCC, over the years: including my blog posts over the years and this one in particular. Both my kids participated the Day Camp there in summer. But now I think it’s time to move on.
I am thinking about some alternative locations for indoor swimming, if I continue to do that. Another thing I like to have is an indoor walking track – West County mall is one option (in that case The Lodge at Des Peres may be fit the bill?). I like to walk outdoors. But here in STL, there are quite a few months in the year that the weather will be either be too hot or too cold to walk outside, or too rainy. And I can think of the below list. I will be taking time to decide my next move as I am not in a hurry. I would join the Olivette’s Five Oaks off Warson, the closest community center (walking distance from my home), if they have one of those. But it seems to me they only have work out (exercise) machines (treadmills, bikes, weight machines etc.), and pickleball and basketball court. I am decent on pickleball, but I haven’t been fully sold on that sport. Btw, about 2 years ago I poked fun at the pickleball here.
CashBoard: quite a while ago, I did a side gig job (year 2012), and I used this app for PDF invoice (professional looking)
ServiceTitan Inc (now a public company TTAN): saw a plumber uses this to generate receipt for me when I paid via CC. Just as I was looking at a possibility to look at buying some of their stocks, I realized they have quite high stock based compensation. ServiceTitan Announces Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results (My Q: are they the biggest in the industry?)
Other examples of vertical industry software (or SaaS)
Constellation Software (Wikipedia): this is a Canadian conglomerate of vertical software companies. It’s probably the latest of its kind. Its stock is traded at Toronto Stock Exchange.
我初中的英语老师。”其实我喜欢石蕴玉老师，她也走了，戴着一圏圈的近视镜，一个个过我们的英式英标” (我的王同学说的）。石老师有可能是解放前在上海的租界教会学校学的英式英语：这本身并不重要。她是我的英语启蒙老师：她是非常好的启蒙老师。万事开头难 – “The first step is always the hardest“。这也让我想到另外一句“千里之行始于足下”（记得当时周老师常说这句，他会把它刻在讲义里）。对我来说，美式英语大概是高中时在镇中的新的语音实验室里听托福或类似节目才开始的。
I worked on a small project (in the Agile or JIRA world, it’s a story), and I experimented Copilot more this time, in fact, I think I tried to use Copilot as much or as practically as possible, for 2 out of the 3 main coding tasks. This is in addition to the Copilot code review feature which I have been using probably for a year now. Back to the coding tasks: refactoring and adding unit tests are the two main tasks that I used Copilot extensively. I also think Copilot did a decent job on bath. The 3rd task, which is to create a controller (an end point), I forgot to try the Copilot – hope I can try something like that down the road.
I used the IntelliJ Ultimate edition for my Java project IDE, and I was familiar with some IDE basic features on refactoring, such as extract methods, or change method signature. This mini project involves moving code from one layer down (from UI to the service layer). Copilot did it in one shot when I asked it to perform the task, from and to, mainly using the correct prompt.
For Unit Testing, I did two things, I changed the mocking framework from EasyMock to Mockito (which is more modern), also I added and cleaned all the unit tests, as much as I can. I admit I am still learning on the unit testing front. Sometimes I felt it’s somewhat like “teach an old dog a new trick”, I mean the “test driven development” or writing a complete unit test suite. But I am getting there: not just on Java, for JavaScript, I had some fun writing Jest test as well. For Java it’s JUnit.
Code review
This is similar as before I worked on this mini project, but I am getting more out of the Copilot code review comments, most of which I think is valid.
On a side note, I did a coding test for this LinkedIn AI trainer gig – not sure that I passed it, as I was not very confident on my Python language. But I still think it’s good exercise for me – I mean the coding test via HackerRank.
Certain Toyota models in recent years. I brought the 2020 Camry to the dealer this am, and it was indeed the coolant engine valve issue #24TE04 – this link goes to the PDF file hosted at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website. The PDF file has the complete list of impacted model and year.
My local Toyota dealer fixed it at no cost for me – share here for awareness as I think both Camry and RAV4 were top selling sedans 🚘 or small SUVs 🚙 , respectively, during those years.
“Established in 1975 by David Monnig as a Honda & Toyota specialized repair service. Built on honesty and integrity, JAMCO Is still operated In the same fashion today. With old fashioned customer service, owners Micki Monnig & Don Mascare, with long term mechanic Kent, second generation mechanic Joe and secretary Heather will happily assist you with your Toyota & Honda needs.”
Full disclosure: I worked in the software (or IT) industry for last 25+ years ago. I put most of my 401k in the S&P 500 index funds. I also have a little individual stocks in my IRA and brokerage accounts, although comparing to the S&P 500 index fund, and other stock positions such as BRK.B and KO, my software stock holdings are insignificant.
There are tons of YouTube videos on this topic recently. Personally, I think the reality will probably somewhere in between, just like this LinkedIn post.
Chatgpt: learn agentic AI in 30 days. I just got started: better late than never. Adapt or become irrelevant (as a coder). I am not sure if the link here will work for everyone, but one can type those words, and Chatgpt will come back with the 30 day plan. I think 30 day is good. One factor that drove me to learn, was I saw requirement for a Senior AI developer position, and the recruiter (whom I had a brief interaction probably 20 years ago) responded, with some AI related questions below (note this is just a subset, she asked some other questions too).
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Years experience working with AI Tools such as Windsurf and Github Copilot?
AI principles including LLMs, RAG, agents, and prompt engineering
AI Integration into app workflows
Familiarity with AI SDKs and frameworks (e.g., OpenAI SDK, LangChain) is a plus
======
I quickly realized that I need to brush up skills to be relevant to say the least.
The second point, probably more importantly, is I want to be relevant for the upcoming AI tsunami – the agentic AI coding and all. I did start look at it recently, and documented my learning here in a google doc.
Certifications
Thinking it may be useful, or at least helpful if one wants to do more structured learning. Here is the google search.
PS: I gave it a bit more thought on certifications. A few years ago I thought about getting the AWS certifications, probably in 2020 or 2021. I bought the cert prep course at Udemy and eventually didn’t complete the prep and attempt the cert exam. From my personal experience learning CFA many years ago, while the prep process will help me to learn, the cert itself is not going to make huge difference in career – it may still help one to secure an interview or a job. But I think the learning the AI is more important. Again this is because AI is and will have even more impact to our lives or work. If I could use an analogy, in 2008 I had my 1st smartphone (Blackberry), and first iPhone was debuted in 2007, in a few years, iPhone basically defeated Blackberry. I think similar things will happen to coding between AI and human beings. AI (the super computer) will beat us human beings eventually – probably it won’t take long there either.
It doesn’t mean we have to accept the defeat, and find another trade job (electrician, or plumber), but we can still do other parts of the tech job: requirements gathering, supervising AI agents (somewhat like supervise the junior engineers), talk to end users and thinking about the bugs and features, etc.
