IfGoGo.com

Postcards-Exchange :))

Monica Gao — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:48:33 +0800

I love independent traveling a lot, but due to stupid visa issues and limited budget I still have a long way to go to fulfill my dream of "travel to 15 countries before 30". Besides, I like to send friends postcards every time I travel to a new place. Delightfully, I received lots of postcards from friends as well:))

Now I'm collecting postcards from different corners of the world.
(Im wondering when can i collect a wall of postcards, lol)
The following pic shows some postcards I've received so far, they're from:

Czech
Japan-Tokyo
UK
China-Beijing
US-Wisconsin
US-Boston
Germany
Malta
Austria-Innsbruck
Italy- Trieste
etc...

So if u'd like to do me a favor, you can ask me my address via
Facebook massage - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/trytobecool?ref=name
or send email to me - monica47love@gmail.com

As return, I can send you a postcard from Knoxville, TN, United Stated to you if you want:))
You can be my friends, my friends' friends, or someone who even barely knows me - as long as you want to send me a postcard:))

Thx a lot!

The original note posted on: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&suggest&note_id=292419271440#/notes/monica-gao/postcards-exchange-/292419271440

Saying goodbye to Google China

Aw Guo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:02:34 +0800

Eariler today, I followed a tweet from Twitter to this link, A new approach to China. After reading this entry, I felt so sad!

I'd been working as a vendor for Google China during Oct, 2008 to Apr, 2009. (Except some very detailed ActionScript codes, I have NOTHING TO DO with Google or Google China)

Personally, I am quite sure that every Googlers from Google China loves this country so much. Google China had tried its best to improve the search experience in China and had achieved a lot of great localized projects, including Google Music. And I can't imagine how big trouble/pressure they've faced since it'd be a nightmare to censor every single word in the serach result pages. Even with the best affort, Google China was blamed for many times about "spreading illegal information" in search result pages.

Quit from this country would be a great relif for those hard-working engineers. (Though Baidu also faced the same troubles, they are based in Beijing and easy to control/compromise.)

Goodbye, Google (China)!

Pictures of Google's headquarter in China (via a friend of mine who's working at Google China):

Say bye to 2009, say hi to 2010!

Aw Guo — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:44:20 +0800

Happy New Year 2010, it seems to be a "better late than never" wish for now, ha.

As you guys might know, we've lost three biggest web sites: Twitter, Youtube, Facebook in 2009, we will surely lose more in 2010. So in the last day of 2009, I made a decision and moved ifgogo.com's hosting server from Beijing to Newark, NJ. And in 2010, My company's going to focus on markets outside mainland China.

It's not some bad news, and I'm not going to complain or angrily blame anyone! Blaming and complaining cannot change anything. Since most people don't care – they even don't think a bit about it! It's what those people deserved, and the improtant part is, they just enjoyed. I just understand now.

Let's enjoy our life in 2010 across the pacific and equator :)

Let's say, it's a restart?

Mike He — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:42:09 +0800

I found out that it's been like..1 and half years since last time I've been here. And it seems it never wake me up again. :)

Well, I still remember the first time AW talked me about the IfGoGo project. He talked with me via Gtalk, and from a long period, I don't even know why I would accept to join this project. Perhaps AW is good at persuading? No, I was persuaded by him because I‘m curious about what will happen here.

But once I calmed down to think about what is the role I should play in this project, I get totally confused. It's not like a personally blog. In that way, you could say anything about yourself because you know your readers are your close friends (well, at least you know them well) and you are supposed to tell them some of your own business. But it's not! Most of your readers here are not familiar with you. You don't even know them well. So, why should I put some trivial stuff everyday here to bother people have no relation with you? Definitely not. So what am I gonna do? I did not get the answer..

Actually, I did not pay too much attention about it since I got confused. I was not that kind of person that has great passion on writing blog at that time. Because I treated blog as trivial stuff in my life... It's like.. a diary or what else could it be??

I hold this opinion for quite a long time. This is why I did not write anything here before. Until one day, I happened to know a blogs called TechCrunch. Yes, Michael Arrington runs that blog for several years. And now it gains about 200, 000 U.S dollars a month.

Wait... What? Is this true? How can a blog make so much money?

Since then, I started to pay attention to these blogs. They are full of technique news( lots of them are provided by insiders). They have lots of loyal readers who are willing to subscribe to their RSS feeds(4093k readers till recently). And they put advertisements on the pages to earn money. And it's very normal in the United States, here, to make money by writing blogs. Usually, several writers could group a team( probably got the similar background and are all interested in some fields) and write down their opinions on something. Something could be Technology, politics, food etc. These writers often got columnist background and good at organizing sentences. Some of them are good at digging news from startups (like techcrunch). Some of them are good at opinions (ReadWriteWeb, maybe). But they are all good blogs.

Even, when some day, when I surfed on the internet and happened to visit some professor's front page. When he introduced his resarch areas, he simply wrote: please visitor my blogs... What? It seems everybody that understands English are writing blogs here!

But why I got totally different feeling in China?

1. the blogger writers are few... People don't have custom to write their opinions down to share with others. There are some, but not many.

2. In China, Yes, I happened to know some one to write self-blogs ( like AW). But I can hardly find out anybody could run a blog very successfully to gain lots of money.

3. The quality of the contents are low. Maybe it's beyond my horizon, I know very few self-blogs that always contains deep thoughts in their post.like kenengba.com. But most of independent blogs here are simply translators: they are willing to translate 10 pieces of news from Google blog, TechCrunch or AppleInsider in one day simply illustrating one single points that Nexus one is out instead of posting one long articles to analyze what will happen since it comes out. I don't like these blogs because they don't have thoughts! And I totally agree with Mr. Arrington's opinion that the quality of contents of blogs should be taken care not only by search engines but by bloggers themselves.

4. The blog readers in China are not that many. From my perspective, Chinese tends to like some funny stuff in their blogs like amusing videos, pictures or jokes. Articles containing this kind of stuff often get very high attention. I believe, in China, the proportion of people that likes to read articles with thoughts are far less than that in the U.S. Believe it or not. In this way, blogs seem to become a amusement in our daily lives instead of a place to talk about opinions or ideas.

Why would this happen in China?

I like reading AW's blog. And in this post, he illustrates what I talked here more deep :-) but only in Chinese. I agree with what he said. Ｉ think the main reasons is, we don't have such atmosphere and we lack commercial opportunities.

1. As everybody knows, in China, not everybody could get every information they want freely. Usually, we can't get the information from outside of the world. We are so afraid to express our own ideas to this society that maybe someday either of us will become Hu Jia or some one like him. No, we don't even know what could say. Besides, majority still holds such opinions that blogs are not trustworthy. blogs represent personal opinions. Compared to major media like CCTV, they tend to trust the latter.

2. Another points held by AW is that, in China, Advertisers don't believe that they could gain benefit by putting ads on personal blogs. They trust big website like Sina or 163.com. Even with Google's help (Adsense) Chinese bloggers could earn far less than Americans. AW reported that he only gained 3,000 yuan that is 439.37 U.S. dollars for a whole year! Can you believe that? Aw's blog is one of the most successful personal independent blogs in China and this is what he earned.

Now I decide to get back to my track to restart this service. My opinion towards blogs has changed and I think I should start to write something——something fun or something interesting here. As long as somebody is willing to read or to share them!

A new start

Yu Zhiding — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:53:48 +0800

It has been a long time since my last post here. Now I have already started my M.Phil. life at HKUST and I'm really glad that I have the chance. I've got used to the new research life and my labmates are all very nice. My supervisor has not assigned me much work yet, so I'm temporarily leading a happy and easy life :-). Currently I just need to read some papers, report every week and help my boss review papers. How about next semester or two? Maybe quite different. My supervisor has recently raised the graduation requirement from 2 conf papers to 1 journal, which truely agonized all his M.Phil. candidates.

One sentence is true: the more you learn, the less you know. I've already started researching but I began to get lost in one question: what is research? I don't have a definite answer, and found that the true research is not what I have thought of in the past 1 year. To achieve real success, I really need to learn painstakingly and figure out a specific direction worth researching. And I highly recommend CSE & ECE guys here to read the article 《由简至美的最佳论文--Best Paper Award of CVPR 2009》. This artile could tell many principles that are quite beneficial for research. Anyway, although a bit lost, I do not want to deny the interesting aspects of research itself, especially CVPR. That's why there are so many CVPR guys here. I'm very interested in this field, and would be very glad to communicate with people who share the same research interests.

In this semester I selected two courses which are respectively Stochastic Process and Machine Learning. Stochastic Process is boring, while Machine Learning is a course quite interesting. Things studied in Machine Learning proved to be truely essential and crucial in my research. Another course that would be very intersting is the Convex Optimization, a course that I will learn in my second year. On the other hand, this course is said to be quite tough. I think it's very important to find a course useful, since the sense of usefulness often leads to the feeling of interest, which is at least true according to my experience. Looking back to my undergraduate courses, I seldom found those stuffs interesting simply because I don't know what they were teached for, especially politics courses. Thus that period became the time when I skip my courses most -- almost no attendence at some courses for the whole semester. This is sth I would never do now XD.

BTW, I have recently started my HKUST Homepage: http://ihome.ust.hk/~zdyu. So welcome to visit my website.

Since my arrival at HK, I have learned and experienced much more. These experiences are gradually changing me, from my behaviors to my opinions towards career and society. And this process will still take place in the future, no matter where I am and what I have been through.

Any 'Plants vs Zombies' fan here? You should love this video from China

Aw Guo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:32:49 +0800

Video:

The video is created by a group of students from Harbin University of Science and Technology.

Happy Single's Day!

Aw Guo — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:15:04 +0800

Today, I'd really like to introduce a very funny festival in China – The Single's Day(aka 光棍节). It's Nov 11, the famous Single's Day in China - a festival for single person 'invented' by some Chinese college students. (They picked up Nov 11 since 11-11 have so much 'single's)

The first time I knew this was in 2002. My freshman year in HUST. I do remember that night, after lights out, guys in our apartment started to shout and throw stuff outside the window to celebrate (in fact they are just having too much hormone #lol). Luckily our apartment was just next to a girl's apartment and they even shouted back. Then some of the guys got extremely excited and as you may guess – they almost threw all the stuff in their room then could throw, including a CRT monitor!! Hoho…no one had a good sleep that night…

Why Chinese people are so creative on this? I think, in western countries, people fall in love and even have sex at a much younger age than us. In China, due to our restricted traditional culture and college-entering pressure(actually very stupid and time-wasting education program), it's really hard to think about love in high school. So when the boys and girls enter a brand new pressure-free place, they would really find some way to change their poor life.

Frankly I'm really too old and too 'sweet' to celebrate, but Single's Day is really a good festival created by Chinese college students, so let's bless the singles :)

If I Wanna Get Married

Ruby Zhang — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:45:38 +0800

If I wanna get married before 27, I prefer to get engaged half a year before the wedding. Of course, I surely want to be with the guy at least one year in advance before the engagement. Before we start our relationship, I need a few months to get to know him and make sure I really like him. A season to two seasons time will be okay! In this case, which means, I need to meet the guy by the time when I’m 25. However, the problem is how to find my Mr. Right? I’m 23 now, and there’s only one more years left.

I’m not worry about this and no rush for this too… I haven’t think about marriage seriously right now. I don’t even know which type of guys I want to be with for the rest of my life. In my little heart, I don’t want to get married. What a selfish girl I am! Parents, they all wish their children can find their true love and be happy with their life. They also want grandchildren.

What if my happiness is living my own life? No stress for child, no stress for family financial problem… All I need is to get a suitable job, doing some businesses, earning little money, having trips every year, making friends with whoever I want. That’ll be fun. Yes, it’s my perfect dreamy lifestyle. I know it’s just a dream. One day I’ll definitely be lonely. No friends to share my sadness with, no family to be with in Christmas.... When I get older, I might not be able to see words clearly, I might not be able to do work myself…that’ll be very sad scenes.

Orientation

Vincent Yuanxi Chen — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:16:59 +0800

Today is the first day of orientation, all classmates and professors join together in Anheuser Busch Hall. An introduction to this university and more important, to this law school, was made by the Dean Syvrud. And then Ms. Greenhaw and Mr. Koby briefed us about the coming course Intro to US Law & Methods. Dean Keeting, Ellis and Glumsky gave us precious advices on how to select courses, like JD’s first year course or upper-level course etc.

The Dean of LLM program, Dr. Shoresman and all the other professors of Washington University law school are really trying to speak English as simple as we international students can understand. I highly appreciate their effort, mention that Ms. Sarah, who explained all the email from the entire LLM class of 2010, without this lady, I can have a chance to be in Wash U.

I found it’s still some kind of cannot follow the native English speaker, especially conversations between natives. Ms. Greenhaw kindly told us that it’s ok, and told everybody not to be shy, speak a lot, write the assignment on the time and hand it in. It will take a month to get use to native speaking English. Mr. Koby added that do not forget to join workshop specially with US students in the courses. These advices seem useful, and I gonna try them all later, let’s see.

Also, I make some new friends, Pong from Thailand, who is interested in Chinese culture. He knows the historical character like Wu Sangui and Chen Yuanyuan. This guy is funny. Dr. Luo Wei, the lecturer from Quanzhou, China, JD&MLIS, will meet the class tomorrow. I am looking forward to his research lab.

Though all things are fresh and funny, now I have to deal with the case reading assignment for tomorrow. Yep, keep reading cases and cases, the Dean said we'd better quit Facebook and Twitter. That's OK. Haha, except for these books which I cannot running from, life on this campus would be a joyful time for me, I believe.

Visit to Birthplace

Lisa — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:37:10 +0800

So nice that we three sisters who were born in Nanjing had a good time in last May to visit the old place where we lived after birth...

That is a big courtyard where it was Kuomintang's general headquarter of combined service and then after liberation, PLA Nanjing military Region Political department used it as dormitory in early 50s..

Here is my picture sorted out for memory:

Looking from the street, the Gate is still looked magnificent. It is the only preserved one while most buildings behind it was dismantled.

This flowerbed is very impressive in my young memory. I remembered that after I entered the gate, turned left and then I could find my home.

This is the old building where we lived, now is also dismantled. This picture was taken by dormitory manager in 80s last century.

We three sisters, each was born in 1950 (Me, in the middle), in 1952(The right one) and in 1954(The left one). More than half century passed. Time really flies!

Standing at the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, we were still holding on the hope and wishes of life.

Xuanwu Lake, a famouse park in center of the city. Inside Xuanwu Lake are 5 isles that are suitable for a scenic walk and contain many small tourist attractions such as Lama Temple, small amusement park rides and the "Temple of Xuanwu Lake God." We used to visit Xuanwu Lake as our home was near it.

We were very happy back home with mother after visiting our birthplace. We have experienced a lot and got to know what life was and now we still like to take an optimistic attitude towards future. As long as there is hope, there is life! Let's smile all the days!

Hope you would share my happiness!