If life is truly a vacation, then it makes sense to live without a purpose. Yet the worldly victories we source happiness from - fade away all too quickly in the shine of time. When God to us become a prefix to damn it, the purposeless victory seeking vacation will inconveniently expose ourselves in pain.

 

The reins of philosophy.

imagine a society in which the average after-tax profitability of all companies is exactly zero - ie. when state government collect the exact total residue value all employers/ capitalists would capture from the production - could this be an idealist communistic society masquerated in a capitalistic market driven economy (which presumably incentivizes inventicism and efficiency of management too)?

 

will this be ultimately the best way to distribute wealth as reasonably as possible - because of its based on a zero-sum principle? will this mechanism generate enough entrepreneurism and inventicism to sustain growth and competitiveness? has china been the closest economy to this model in at least within the commoditized industries, perhaps?

 

* * *

 

re comments - the average profitability is zero but individual companies still have their chances to make profit - which can be their drive to improve productivity/ invest in the efficiency of running business? you think?

again i woke up not remember what happened last night - major hangover plus inked letters written on my face - yet i woke up today with a big big smily face - knowing that i was again happily drunk

 

deeply grateful to be able to end 2006 with last night's party - for the moment that takes my breath away, for the caring intelligent friends of mck - you are my source of being good - and what makes my boring life a true sweet vacation

 

thank you and all the best wishes going forward - yours jialu.

went to the new toys r us store in pudong's super brand mall (zheng-da sq) yesterday - for those who dont know, toys r us is america's largest category killer for toys - except only that it was struggling against bankrupcy and then bought out by a group of private investors (eg bain capital) in 2005 - due to mainly 1) competition from walmart, and 2) bad customer services

 

their chinese store followed global product mix, priced similarly, and mechanically grafted the style of their hongkong stores - or in short - their current steps of entry prioritize 'politically correctness' over 'the warm human touchs' .. which might as well be a major mis-step in this whole deal?

 

two key questions yet to be answered - is entry to mainland china likely to be the first step of its overall turn-around strategy? how much value can be captured before hypermkts push into the toy space? i am eager to see how things will turn out

couple friends of mine claimed to have a personality just in between extrovert and introvert - to which i perhaps have a clue to help clarify - so as to understand ourselves better - try answer the following three questions -

 

1. genuine curiosity to understand other people?

2. drive to be understood by other people around you?

3. ability to relate to other people?

 

and here's the pitch - by other people i mean general people instead of the closest persons - so here if you got 2 out of 3 trues here, you are definitely one of us :)

this time it's not a bubble - people argued that the web 2.0 heat was more realistic and/ or likely to turn into real shareholder value as compared with seven years ago when the bubble burst - with the following three good reasons

 

1. tangible revenue source (e.g., Google's gigantic pool of advertising dollars)

2. video applications (due to large improvement of infrastructure/ internet bandwidth)

3. mobile applications (driven by 3G investment and increasing data ARPU)

 

however - these reasonings are based on the following assumptions

 

1. internet players' key drivers of revenue will not get commoditized (e.g., search engines)

2. quality of user generated videos will improve to justify ad dollar (beyond porn and cheap laughs?)

3. mobile operators need partnership from internet firms (rather traditional media firms?)

 

i am not sure - but these look like not on solid ground - quite shaky actually

spent a day at nanshan skiing - just a little hill to the northeast of beijing - but good enough for the emerging life-style driven beijing middle class to go there for a nice relaxing weekend trip .. link: http://www.nanshanski.com/

 

couple differences if compared to wachusett - a small and smiliarly-positioned skiing hill 50min drive from boston

 

1. huge area of bunny hills (also splitted into skiier bunny and boarder bunny hills)

2. vip deck at main lodge second floor (charge only 50rmb more than basic)

3. one seperate loading point for advanced skiiers - serving the only diamond trail (steep and moguled - comparable to the steepest moguled trail in waterville valley)

 

there's also a funny pseudo-coffee shop at the peak point - serving mainly 20rmb coca-cola and sprites

bathrooms are not the perfect place to cry - especially the ones in the office - it depresses, makes the workplace a lot less attractive, and flows the pain in the air all-over

 

and we also see the shitty things around us - almost on a daily basis - friends breaking up, people getting pissed off over EPRs, or more frequently, freaking out and becoming angry about ourselves for various reasons

 

i mean - sorry - but life isnt perfect for anyone of us - and shit may just be part of our lives - we were covered with shit when we were born, only to take more shit as we grow up - and until eventually we dont smell the shit anymore

 

so maybe - taking vacations isnt always effective to wash away the fatigues, dating promiscuously isnt the right indulgence we deserve, traveling around cant really be the magic pill for our heart

 

right way i think - is to learn to pick the right battles, and enjoy the little victories - in the meantime, look for the bright side of our lives - especially the little things that sometimes we simply overlooked

here they dont have contents, nor youtube - nor the kind of fancy office like the one in the valley

 

will localized engineer team and parashooted business school grads live up to the challenge from baidu? fundamentally a marketing/ strategic question as it is - instead of a technology one - i didnt see google china moving in that direction quickly enough yet

i think a lot about papajohns lately - the ordered ones from somerville - when i used to spend days at home before i ran out of the last piece of the pepperoni double cheesed pizza - and the chicken wings

 

and my DIY bookshelf, quote on the bedroom walls, newegg desktop with my 1.5TB hard drives - and my keyboard abused by my random improvision that doesnt make any musical sense, rossignol ski set with the smuggled ski boots, netflix mails and hbo

 

looking out of the office window, its the messed-up winter of shanghai - all dusty that i can barely see the building across the street - cold without heating, cinemas without movies, weekends without interesting places to hang by

 

its been one and a half year since i came back - have i got used to these yet

finally came to understand how rss works - download it here http://www.sharpreader.net/

 

to snyc my blog in the reader, for example, paste and save the following xml link to the software - http://namename.spaces.live.com/feed.rss - likewise, any websites that has a "rss" symbol supports this function

 

it makes news reading much easier - incl. friends' blogs

finally checked out the fabric mkt across the road of my apt - its an old styled 3 floor building - with around 500 shops dealing custom-made dresses for cost-concious locals and increasingly localized foreigners

 

tailor made top quality shirt is around 100rmb, tang dress 300rmb, coat 800rmb - plus 1 week turnaround time - not bad at all for the mix-and-match fanatics or people like me who'll bring my armani shirt there to pirate

did my formal semi annual review couple days ago - strikingly i feel more of being reset to ground zero - because the review synthesized everything i did over the past six months - so well that i feel naked walking out of that partner' room

 

pressingly needed would be new drivers of growth - which'll involve defending core area of growth, capturing emerging opportunities and securing future options - apparently the classic corporate growth framework is applicable to personnel development as well

 

couple functional/ industrial areas i seek to develop myself - marketing (leveraging prior experience in pepsico), media/ entertainment industry (working on couple knowledge document next week) and perhaps corporate finance, etc - it would be very nice to find someone to do these things together with - so pls let me know if you're interested :)

there's an video store at da-gu road called movie world - right opposite to which there's this another video store called better than movie world - the area has largely evolved into a middle-high class dinning area/ community center because of the location - with the highlight of a mediterranean restaurant which i frequently visit

 

in fact - the video store is the best i've seen in shanghai - good selection, placement and pricing - or in short, a good aggregation of the video contents and resell to the target consumer segments

 

challenge is 1) sustainability of revenue - given that generating new titles may not be able to keep up with current speed of consumption, and 2) scalability - mostly due to the internet piracy cap

watched the movie Click featuring Adam Sandler - thumbs up - and perhaps should recommend to friends who work in professional firms - who frequently return home late, or has to sleep extensively over weekend instead of hanging out with friends/ families

finally saw the american remake of the chinese movie wu-jian-dao today - think they have captured most of the essense of the originals even though the counterpart of huang-qiu-sheng was played poorly

 

among the many cursing and improvision they added throughout the movie (to cater to american audience) - i want to highlight one particular improvision - a scene when they commented on the key benefits of man wearing a wedding ring to pick up girls - which is - quote - girls will know immediately you're not a homo, have some cash, and a cock that works ...

 

perfect example to show the importance of local insights in adapting global content

had a wonderful final review meeting this afternoon with the media client we've been serving for last four weeks - client got 50 pages main deck and another 120 pages appendix - and we get to understand the asia-pacific media and entertainment landscape by segments - also my first time to work in a truly international team which was very interesting as well

 

went to do massage and facial afterwards to relax - similar price and quality compared to evian spa at the bund - but the point-of-sales marketing was more aggressive, e.g. flexible spa schedules, and the give aways of 300rmb worth of coupons

 

then its dinner at a restaurant called courtyard - famous for being right next to the forbidden palace and the quality of their french food (which i wouldnt know how to appreciate) - good part is we walked around forbidden palace and tian-an-men sq for quite a while after dinner - which was real nice

last weekend i went to the indoor skiing in shanghai with friends - overall good experience given great powdered snow, well maintained trails, plus the park management (processes, pricing, etc) was exceptional - that said - the place is 1) too far from the city center, and 2) has nothing to offer besides 2 hours of skiing

 

strategically correct for them to invest in shanghai - but penetrating somewhere closer to city center with similar investment by partnering with land developers with aligned interests in drawing lifestyle driven traffics could be a better option - with that, the indoor skiing facility could have been a hit i figure

 

anyway - good to be able to ski after two years

after eight months with the firm it'd be nice to take a step back - and think about this whole thing

 

besides being indulged about charts, values, and business fundamentals - besides seeing the world of people through mbti types - and besides driving workstreams, delegating tasks, and constantly bargaining for the future - i am more grateful to the opportunity to have met the fun, interesting, or to the least, smart people in the firm

 

lifestyle has been getting better - but like everyone else, feeling insecure when lifestyle actually gets better - simply because being smart is not at all a competitive edge in the firm - instead hard work has always been the last piece of wood in the sea

 

on the downsides - i see myself remorse much less and pray less often - seems pretty bad as i reflect and likely a result of my recent indulgence of the consulting life and affairs

 

i guess instead of saying we sometimes got too obsessed about things we do - i'd rather say we're all susceptible to the addiction of the things that we derive pleasure from - like the bullet points we consultants adore

it's pleasant to take a first class to beijing on a monday morning - even though the 777s first class isnt as nice as the 747s

 

last two weekends were nice - limited work and enough rest - discovered couple new good restaurants, had lunch at citic plaza's wagas, used the extra free time for couple hours of shopping - which leads to an armani shirt and a reasonably good faragamo wallet

 

though these felt like the peace before storm - thinking about the weekly update call this thursday, and a major client progress review next week - hope these may go well so i can peacefully take a week off in amsterdam end of this month :)