First Week in LA

Thank you for the comments and welcomes guys~ It's very exciting to be in a totally new place and starting a totally new life... from scratch! The first day I move into Weyburn (the graduate student apartment where a lot of Anderson live), my room is EMPTY... without any furniture. After several days of furniture shopping, groceries shopping, then furniture assembling, I finally got to sleep on a real bed the day before yesterday and cook a real meal (Chinese dishes, yummy!!) yesterday for lunch! Big progress in just one week time~ And thank god I got a very cool roomie who is a Taiwanese and loves my cooking^^

School wise, I've met majority of our Greater China students body and am starting to meet more and more Anderson ppl (even bumped into one when I was getting my Bruin card...) A lot of ppl ask me how I feel about LA, I think I love it so far except for the hot wave which reminds me of Shanghai. Another thing is I just found out LA is so big after I moved here, it's like normal that you drive over 10 miles to go shopping or visit a friend... It's been really painful that I don't have a car (I had one in Shanghai tho I don't need it to go to a lot of places)... But thanks to my nice classmates and roommate who have been driving me around!

Alright, so much for the first week, Ciao~ (I learn the line from Diego haha)

In LA, finally!

I haven't been able to update this blog when I was in China. Now I'm in LA finally!

Guy Kawazaki on The Art of Innovation

Was linked to the Zentation.com site by Presentation Zen, a blog about everything related to presentations, and discovered this very inspirational presentation given by Guy Kawasaki on the book "the Art of Start". In case you don't know Guy, you should read his blog. Or maybe if you want to be a banker, then you can skip this. Guy is such a funny person (I hesitated about using "guy" here), and every time I read his blog, I can feel the entrepreneurial passion inside me. That's because his blog is called "How to change the world", haha~ Anybody ever thinks about starting something should listen to this!

Guy Kawasaki - The Art of Innovation 55:38 Guy Kawasaki at the 2007 Event Marketer Conference

Macbook Or Not?

Is not a problem for me. Coz I already have one, and I will not and cannot get a new laptop in one year at least. I'm writing this for those who are still struggling between macbook and thinkpad. But I guess except for Apple and Google, there won't be many other companies who will give u a macbook for work laptop, so this might be your once in a lifetime chance to own and work on a cool chic computer and with a cool chic operating system. So think about it;)

First, Pro or not? If you have the money and you can lift heavy stuff, you should definitely get a pro. The screen looks better and the keyboard feels better. Besides, the chip is faster and I guess if you work with a big RAM the system can be very powerful. I don't have the money plus I don't like carrying heavy laptop, so I just got a macbook, white. So the following points are based on my experience with my little 13" macbook.

Second, upgrade the RAM! Now the macbook comes with 1G RAM out of box, while when I bought it, it was 512MB and I had to upgrade it to 1G. Still I feel that 2G will be even better considering I sometimes like to listen to iTunes while working on Photoshop. Actually the upgarde is much cheaper than it was, plus you can find some provider on eBay who offer 2G RAM for around $110. So why not?!

Third, Office 2004. Office 2004 seems so advanced comparing to Office 2000 I had on my previous work laptop. But MS never stops taking money out of pocket so here comes Office 2007 (for Windows, released) and Office 2008 (for Mac, beta testing). I have seen macbook+free Office 2004 at a local Apple store in Sydney but not sure whether that's valid for US as well. If it is, then it might be a good deal. One thing I'm not sure is how Office 2004 and 2007 interacts, becoz I've had some problem with different versions of office file don't work together. Considering there will be a lot of teamworks and exchange of files in B-school, that might be a problem.

Fourth, Windows & Mac Side by Side. You'll still need Windows, surely. Coz some of the softwares required by B-school can only run on Windows. But, with the help of Parallels/Bootcamp/VMware, it's pretty easy to get Windows and Mac OS to run side by side. Personally I'm running Parallel and am pretty satisfied with it.

Finally, softwares I love most on Mac: Quicksilver(totally change the way you launch applications), Adobe Creative Suite 2 (still thinking about whether to upgrade to CS3 or not), Adobe Lightroom, iSync (sync your cell phone via bluetooth), iCal(D calendar you ever need). Last but not least, Mac OS, it's nothing like Windows, trust me.

McK Reception

McK held a reception at their Shanghai office for this year's MBA admits this Thur. Their new office is in this building called the Platium, which is very close to my old office. I had to say their office is gorgeous! You can overlook the busiest business district in Shanghai through the glass wall. The venue for the reception is in a cafeteria inside their office, and if it's not IN their office, I would think it's some high end restaurant. But the finger food they served definitely needs to be improved...

We had one senior partner and many associates joined us, answering our questions. But as one of my friend call it, "Brain Wash", McK delivers very strong message about their values and their impacts. I talked to one associate who has served in McK for 8 years, and he obviously believes in the McK values very strongly. McK provides the best quality of service in consulting, McK does what's best for clients, McK recruits the most talented ppl and McK never forces you to work long hours or on projects you hate... Not sure how much of these are true, but even half of them are, then McK must be worth working for at least for a couple of years. And it's also impressive that they reach out to future MBAs at such an early stage.

What's Been Keeping Me Busy

Thanks guys for all the compliments on my photos! Really the best thing a photographer can have is people say you take great photos^_^ So now I'm gonna reveal a little more about what I've been working on these days -- Photoshop.



I PSed this photo I took on SF street using the techniques in this tutorial by Chuck Anderson, the guy behind No Pattern. I've always been a big fan of him, so it's really cool to learn his tricks.
The original photo here

What do you guys think? Love it or hate it?

So Tired of Waiting =.=

Have changed my ticket to Sydney to June 5th. I don't think my I-20 will arrive before my May 29th visa appointment, but let's see. If not, I'll just get my visa in Aug when I'm back from Syd. I'm so tired of waiting and not being able to set the schedule... The US embassy in SH is so busy, that the next available date is June 29th already. I won't wait a month just for a stupid visa interview so let me just deal with it later. Finally, Sydney I'm coming!