Time flies really fast; it has been almost 15 months since I came back to China. The love, the passion and excitement hasn't changed a little bit, but our team has grown into a much bigger group. We are so fortunate to get the chance to work on the highly visible MSN and Windows live products such as Spaces and Expo/Shopping while building the backend Test, localization and deployment infrastructure.

On the right side of my Space blog page, I put up a few MSN Spaces modules we worked on. It is not the complete picture, but it is a medal many of us would love to wear (or show-off J)

When I add many of our co-workers blog link to the Live Favorite module, I realized that many of them don't even have one. Well, someone said “If you don't have a Blog, you don't exist...” It is so true in the cyber space.

Walking down the street, I often see some handicapped beggars on the crowed intersection in Shanghai. Today when I tipped one guy without the right hand, the coin suddenly fell off to the ground. While I picked it up, the guy knocks his head on the floor so loud that many people stopped and looked at us. I whispered to him as I put the coin back to his paper cup: “You lost your hand, not your dignity, buddy!”

It is also terrible experience in the Shanghai when you are approached for money by little girls/boys whose parents are right behind. I can't help from giving out some changes one year ago, but now I became immune to this. To me, it is more like a scam which tarnishes the innocent soul forever, in exchange, the parents or the guardians get the money. What a shame!!!

The beggars in Shanghai reminded me some experiences in Paris where the municipal government would like to deport the bums in the tourist spot to some other places, but the proposed regulation is overruled by the Paris’ house of representative since most of them believe being a drifter is a way of life and the city should not interfere with where they sleep (In many case, under the bridge on Seine River) I still remember watch tramps laying back on the river bank,  letting the sunshine wash over them and waving at the tourist as our boat cruising by ....It made me to feel that I am in a cage of harsh reality, not them....

Calabasas, one of my favorite suburb cities near Los Angles, make smoking off limits in public places where someone else might be exposed to secondhand smoke: indoor businesses, outdoor businesses, parks, outdoor cafes, even apartment building common area.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060319/ap_on_re_us/smoking_ban

When could it happen in Shanghai, the modern city leading China in many ways, but not in terms of banning smoking and protecting human being from the second hand smoke?

Is there a legitimate reason for people to smoke in the public place? One I can think of is to make sure that government sponsored social welfare and Medicare won’t go bankruptcy like it does in the States. The smokers have to kill themselves and people around them before they hit on the social benefit, what a patriotic act!!!

Someone was telling me that some well-known brands are selling low quality product in China even it is labeled with the same model name. I am quite suspicious about it until I learned the lesson in a hard way. My Toshiba TabletPC is not functioning within a few months I bought it.

The Toshiba Portege is one of the best TabletPC in the States, but it is a shitty product in China: the disk is making huge noise from day one until it dies on you. I lost more than half of my productivity for the past few days and end up being way way behind many action items and follow-ups.

The instance makes me to think hard about whether product review and opinion should be location-based and whether the expectation from different regions could be different as well.

One colleague of mine shared her experience on a strange self-introduction she has experienced. The girl is a friend of their good friend, here is the introduction is her own words:

“My name is XXX, I am working for ABC company and I made xxK RMB last month alone (followed by the great accomplishment, bla, bla...), how about you?”

Do you feel offensive if people, not close friends, ask you about your salary, your Zodiac sign (In other words, your age) and how many people you manage, etc? Those questions seem quite common in China, especially when the other party share his/her information with you and expect you to treat them the same.

What a true materialism world! It is kind of insane that the respect you can gain is measured by what kind of job you are doing and how much you can make.