Reading Time: 6 minutes Since pandemic, I have been back to China twice, last year in the spring break of school year 2022/2023, which was the 1st time I visited China since pandemic, when the PRC (People’s Republic of China) just relaxed in-bound travel in Jan 2023, and I booked ticket on Jan 29, 2023 via Expedia.com – refer

Reading Time: < 1 minute This article is also available on Medium, and blog.wenxuecity.com 航空公司 发现加航🇨🇦的loyalty member (Aeroplan)在飞机上用微信，手机短信等是免费的。不用花钱或点数买inflight WiFi：感觉又赚了一个亿[捂脸]。航空公司其实很难赚钱：成本在那里，固定成本和浮动成本等。但是另一方面愿意额外付钱的客户不多：比如说inflight WiFi, 比如说duty free product sale等等。股神巴菲特也说过类似的话：我估计他老人家在上回pandemic 那次卖了航空股以后就不会再玩航空公司的股票债券了：他老人家今年有93或94岁了。|| 我个人觉得纯从商业的角度出发，信用卡公司的商业模型business model 比航空公司好太多：她们基本上就是高速公路和谷歌的收买路钱的方法。不过在中国大陆感觉支付宝和微信支付基本上打遍天下无敌手，Visa 和万事达两大巨头基本上可以洗洗睡了。前两者的对商家来说成本比信用卡低太多。Alipay 和WeChat Pay 在香港也很拼，有不少商家也开始接受人民币的微信支付/支付宝。不过香港的payment 有点复杂：感觉基本上是八达通Octopus, 信用卡💳包括digital wallet Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Alipay, WeChat pay等；还有出租车也就是的士🚕和地铁🚇需要的港币现钞。我用CS debit card 直接在银行的ATM机上取了些港币现钞。感觉在大陆用现钞的地方比香港少很多，基本上微信和支付宝都可以搞定。|| 离港上飞机之前有个小插曲，紧张程度有点类似于我上次工作中play as tech lead for production release：中间也出了点不大不小的问题，好在最后在超级队友的支持下，有惊无险。我感觉自己还是在这些大大小小的事情中，不断学习，提高自己[微笑] 中国好还是美国好 我被问到的一个常见的问题是：中国好还是美国好？我觉得各有千秋吧。比如说火车：美国的火车客运还停留在中国的绿皮车年代，中国的高铁确实挺牛。Amtrak 没有固定位置: no assigned seat 💺 on

Reading Time: 2 minutes This is the last night before leaving mainland CHN for this trip, I am listening to 浙江之声 (浙江之声 via 蜻蜓FM) this time (last year march 2023 it was Love Radio 103.7 FM in Shanghai). I could not fall into sleep 💤. I am going to listening to it more via 蜻蜓FM once I get back

Reading Time: < 1 minute I happened to see this on twitter/X, and I would say the Middle Westeners have both (kind and nice 🙂 I am in HK right now with my family, and my 14 year old commented STL is not as famous for tourism compared to Hong Kong. True. We are on the way from the US

Reading Time: < 1 minute My 14 year old chose to do both Health and PE from Launch, an online program from Springfield MO school district. And she was doing camp or camp counselor duty as well, with Before Care responsibility for the counselor job. It seems this is more like regular school in steroids or turbo-charged. I think I

Reading Time: < 1 minute I received a new HP EliteBook 645 G10 for work recently. Note I wrote about Desktops, Laptops And Virtual Desktop Infrastructure VDI For Work 我在美国上班20多年用过的那些电脑 recently too. I recall with my 1st new work laptop, an IBM ThinkPad, as I was working from home in 2008, I would be somewhat concerned if the laptop fans

Reading Time: 2 minutes Some random thoughts I had on consumer products companies stocks: I think it’s probably better to bet on $V and $MA instead of $LULU, $NKE, $DECK, $CROX, $SBUX and last but not least: $ONON which I have a small long position, thinking selling it around summer Olympics. I just sold few $LULU shares and I

Reading Time: 4 minutes (Below is from a tweet/X thread I wrote last year) #Performance testing is important. At the same time, we don’t want to the performance tuning too early, or set an unrealistic performance goal. A better way in my opinion is to tune/optimize the app (or web services) performance as it scales up (getting more users).

Reading Time: 4 minutes On Oct 13, 2015, I bought this Martian Watches Notifier Smartwatch – White from Amazon ($50). Note this is just a notification watch, and it can send the text message from phone to my watch. The reason I wanted it is because at that time, I was worried I could miss the text message over

Reading Time: 2 minutes Things to pay attention when we are over 50 (I borrowed this paragraph from a high school classmate in mailand CHN) 我来说几句吧，不妥之处请大家指正：1. 一定要有医保，有能力的可以适当配点商业保险 2. 同学们都巳年过半百了，各种慢性病会慢慢出来，应该学习一点医学常识。个人建议关注以下几个（微信）公众号： 丁香医生/ 菠萝因子/ 营养师顾中一 Below is my own cooking Exercise 锻炼身体：running, jogging, and walking 跑步，慢跑，走路 are all good. Many other good cardiovascular exercise 心血管运动 include cycling, swimming, and tennis. Take your