entrepreneurship conference: the fruits of our labors

What Tracy and I have been working on for the past month.

beijing zoo

I went to the zoo a few days ago. I think I've grown to like zoos and aquariums more as I've gotten older....so many cool animals!

Golden pheasant

Golden eagle

Some zebras

Meanwhile, something to look forward to tomorrow:

INDO Mansion

As part of our conference marketing efforts, we are partnering with Docin.com, a startup in the area headed by a Stanford alum. The company is like Youtube for documents, and one of their verticals is focused on students (think note sharing), so they helped us design a flyer and are advertising on the site. Look!


Yesterday morning Helen and I made the first trip to their office, located in INDO Mansion (which houses many other tech companies, as we discovered when we encountered Bjorn, another Stanford person, waiting at the elevator). Initial discussions were promising, and I ended up making another trip in the afternoon.

They gave me a desk space in between other company employees, and an Ethernet cable; I had my Macbook Pro with me, and conference publicity work began in earnest: poster + website + other advertising materials. In between that work Jon, the CEO, also invited me to sit in on some company discussions about site UI and I got to contribute my probably-very-unhelpful American viewpoint. It was a pretty neat experience.

On the way out I stopped by Bjorn's office which was a few stories down. It was almost midnight but he was just chilling in the HiPiHi office and reading blogs or something. Nice. We chatted for a while, and he also gave me and Jon a demo of their product, a Second Life-like virtual world. Their logo is a little ridiculously cute.

3 Days of Mourning

Yesterday was day one of three days of mourning for victims of the Sichuan earthquake. In the afternoon at 2:28, exactly one week after the earthquake hit, there were three minutes of silence... marked by loud sirens and horns from the city's millions of cars. Actually I didn't know of this until afterwards, because I was at the gym, which is in a basement and well isolated from sound. Anyways...

Websites are all in black and white, too.

Internet and Pollution

In my opinion, two critical metrics of the American college student experience in China are Internet speed and pollution levels.

Unfortunately, the Internet has been extremely, painfully slow in the last few days, with Gmail regularly disconnecting; and intense smog has not only been making my eyes very uncomfortable but also everything fuzzy around the edges.

Le sigh.

earthquake in sichuan

'Thousands dead' in Chinese quake

Between 3,000 and 5,000 people may have been killed by an earthquake measuring 7.8 in just one county of south-western China's Sichuan province, reports say.

Some 10,000 people are also feared to have been injured in Beichuan county.

Desperate efforts are under way to find survivors. One school that collapsed has buried an estimated 900 students.

President Hu Jintao has urged "all-out" efforts to rescue victims of the quake, which hit 92km (57 miles) from Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital.

Dozens of aftershocks have been reported since the quake, which was the strongest to hit Sichuan province in more than 30 years, Xinhua reports.

State television said the quake had not caused major damage to Chengdu, which has a population of more than 10 million people, or to the nearby Three Gorges Dam.

The BBC's Quentin Somerville says the Chinese army has a good record of mobilising and getting people to safety.

He also says news is coming through very fast from the affected area - it is one of the most open and speedy responses to an emergency he has ever seen from Chinese state media.

The quake was felt as far away as Beijing, he says, meaning millions of people will feel connected to the disaster and will be watching TV screens closely to see how the government responds.

We're safe in Beijing, far from the earthquake's epicenter. Four Stanford students were in Chengdu at the time of the earthquake (at the airport on the way back from a weekend trip to Sichuan), and are safe but temporarily stranded there...

Salt and Pepper

Time for a pictures post!

I finally went through my pictures from the last couple of weeks and sorted them into albums. I came up with Salt (a restaurant), Pepper (a bar), and Hatsune (a restaurant). However the Pepper album is not that exciting so I am only posting Salt and Hatsune pictures. Too bad "Salt and Hatsune" doesn't have quite the same ring as "Salt and Pepper"...

My parents' college friend is located in Beijing now and he has very generously been treating me and Helen to Beijing's most delicious food, at least according to the "That's Beijing" 2008 Awards. Not shabby at all :) Actually these few meals have probably been the best I've ever had in my life. It's kind of amazing how good food can be for such reasonable prices.

Salt: voted best for contemporary cuisine
First Western food I had since arriving in China. AMAZING. I had forgotten how wonderful Western food can be... especially salad.










Hatsune: voted best for Japanese cuisine
Best sushi I've ever had. Delicious and pretty!