To celebrate my good friend David Hoyt’s 24th Birthday in Beijing, we had to do it in an epic way so we booked a table at The Beach.

Yeah, that’s actually sand you see there near the bar. Rooftop view right next to Beijing Chaoyang Park (北京朝阳公园), this was one hell of a night.

Throughout my time in Beijing, I always felt that the Stanford group that was there was partying the wrong way… well maybe not the wrong way but not the classy Beijing way. A common thing some of the other students would do would buy cheap Baijiu (烧酒) bottles at the local small store and pre-game hard until getting to the club completely smashed, maybe ordering one or two more shots before getting all up in the dance floor.

I began noticing things and asking around and finally got a chance to do it the classy Beijing way I was hoping for. It involved two things:

• Booking a table - This guarantees a place to come back to that is yours for the whole night. Of course there is a minimum charge and it is actually quite hard to find a table on a Saturday night (Xiu was full that night). Thanks to a bit of a hustle, I pretended to be a young ambassador showing my American friends the best of Beijing and they were only free that one weekend and I pitched to the club manager, “I want to show these Americans the best Beijing has to offer”. That was an easy close.
• Whiskey and tea - One of the most popular drink mixes, sometimes I’d see tables full of giant Chivas Regal handles and bottles of green tea which would then be poured and mixed together. We finally got to try this at Beach and it was amazing, the chilled tea makes it perfect for a warm summer night as well.

This was me and my sister lounging around winter break watching Detective Conan movies. Oh the days we’ll look back upon…

My mom found this photo of my sister and I from way back then and I love how we’re pretty much still the same. I’m sleeping, crushing her hand, and she’s making a funny face xD

Also from a technological standpoint, these were the photos that mattered a lot. Photos back then were rarer than they were today and had more value than the hundreds of pictures we’re able to take these days with iPhones and digital cameras and uploaded to Facebook. The Kodak moment was really defined in that perfect snapshot, something that might be easier to get today but the commonality makes it less valuable.

I get a certain nostalgia feeling looking at this and at the one or two pictures my grandma still has from her young days. But will my grandchildren feel the same, or even care, upon seeing the thousands of digital pictures I have? Ah… the future….

Thanks to a friend at Stanford, I had the pleasure to meet a Singaporean studying at PKU, Bao Jia Tan. After an exchange of emails where she was busy on multiple days, I soon found out why. She is extremely driven and successful at everything.

An Economics major who debates and dabbled into high levels of Singaporean government, she was one of those rare people you meet and instantly realize, “This person could be the next President” and one who is extremely humble and down-to-earth at the same time.

The amazing part was the network of Singaporeans she shared with all the Singaporeans I knew from Stanford and elsewhere. I named about 3 friends and she knew all of them and at a level more than just acquaintances too. It seems that the small size of the country plus the high number of successful people that go do amazing things internationally means its a small circle. Plus there are several government programs and sponsorships that foster this network and encourage international study.

The downside is that there is a mandatory 4-year military or police service that every Singaporean male has to participate in, either before or after college. I’m not sure what the mandate for females is or if government work is allowed in place of military work but it does take up valuable time of a young person’s life.

Although all the people I have met that have served at least partially come out very well-mannered and respectful along with a very fit physique. And smart too, one of my friends translates the difficulty of a class when a Singaporean speaks “Not bad” to “Really hard” haha.

I was super duper happy when I came across this movie 幸福在2010 (Happiness in 2010) at the hotspring club because I was actually able to understand almost the entire thing! It’s a romantic comedy based in Shanghai so the slower pace, less use of dialogue vs facial expressions, and the Chinese subtitles helped me get into a pretty funny movie.

The basic synopsis is that there is this guy who lives in Shanghai, works in IT with a female boss that hates him, and hasn’t had a girlfriend in forever. All of a sudden a young happy-go-lucky girl shows up at his door and asks to stay over for three days. Then begins a long struggle to co-exist involving beer, monkeys, lizards, and a stripper pole. The acting is okay but the unique situations are pretty hilarious.

The duo also play off each other really well and is central to the whole film. The guy spends too much time constrained to the rules and not willing to live for his passion today, rather preferring to work and one day “retire” while the girl prefers to travel the world, make new friends, and enjoy life every day. In the end the guy is finally able to reach internal peace with himself and doesn’t end up an overworked white collar middleman.

It’s interesting to think if this had any broader implications on the state of China today too…

Totally sketch but after walking around the parking lot we count up to 10 Ferrari’s and 6 Bentley’s, we knew this place had something going on. My roommate was brave enough to go in and ask them what this place was and to both our surprises, it was actually just a huge hotspring bathhouse. At 186 kuai for 18 hours, we thought we had misheard but the sign said the same thing. That’s about US$30 for 18 hours. We got there at midnight and could have stayed until 6pm.

The place was magnificent and a totally new experience for us Americans. Pictures weren’t allowed but this if probably the best explanation of a similar place http://www.gadling.com/2007/05/02/a-canadian-in-beijing-steamy-bathhouse-in-shanghai/

Totally nude and we only had a small towel on the first floor which had 6 different hot springs including one with small fish that would apparently nibble on your foot’s dead skin cells for a little extra. The entire place was basically ala carte, standard price for the 18 hours and then additional costs for various services.

But included with the entrance fee was also access to the full open buffet, internet bar, lounge area, and personal TV/Lazyboy reclining sofa room. I went ahead to also get a professional massage and it was wonderfully relaxing before going to the sofa room and watching TV / falling asleep. I actually was able to watch Fei Cheng Wu Rao (非诚勿扰), a popular but controversial matchmaking show, along with the first movie I was able to understand fully in Chinese.

The next morning, feeling totally refreshed we decided to head back around noon.

So this one day in Beijing was pure madness. And looking at my iCal it was a Friday the 13th too, go figure.

Because of interesting planning on my part, I ended up spending the whole day out in the city, exhausting all my wallet money and barely making it back home. My day’s schedule went like this:

• 10:30am – Woke up late for a Skype call with a VC in Tokyo, call went less than stellar
• 11:15am – Quickly showered and memorized the schedule for the day. Had to get to other side of city for a meeting at noon.
• 12:30pm – Took an hour to get to from (A) PKU to (B) TechNode Office due to traffic and missed meeting with Michelle Sun but grabbed lunch with Jason Lim
• 2:30pm – Chatted with Lu Gang of TechNode
• 3:00pm – Taxi’d to (C) Wangfujing (王府井) for Jiepang‘s (Chinese Foursquare) One Year Anniversary Press Conference and chatted with CEO David Liu for a bit
• 4:00pm – Taxi’d to (D) Sanlitun (三里屯) SOHO to meetup with Shaun Sales of CMUNE but he was busy so I walked around the Village area and stumbled upon the Chinese X-Factor Auditions taking place
• 5:30pm – Taxi’d to (E) Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷) to meetup with a friend from Australia I had met at Stanford and had dinner at a local joint
• 9:00pm – Listened to the infamous Kaiser Kuo jam with his band at a really really local music bar in the hutongs, this was as authentic as you can get and also the most random encounter.
• 10:30pm – Party went on to (F) Xiu on the top floor of the Park Hyatt, grandeur luxury life
• 11:30pm – Finally wound up at (G) Vic’s to meetup with an old friend of mine that I hadn’t seen since the 5th grade (10 years ago) but thanks to the magic of Facebook, he was attending NYU and was studying abroad in Shanghai and came to Beijing for a visit where we met up
• 2:00am – Partied out and at this point I realized I had not enough money left for a taxi back home. My tipsy brain realized I had three choices:
• Party until the subway opens again in the early morning
• Get a taxi and then upon arriving at the destination, run for it
• Negotiate with a black taxi to hold onto my iPod Touch as collateral as I run back to my dorm to get the money to pay him

This was something I stumbled upon a while back but the comparison it makes between Chinese Internet Cafes and American Saloons back in the 1900s is pretty startling. What do you all think?

In this modern era of texting, IMing, and now tweeting and liking, I felt that the art of a good phone conversation may have been lost but I had a great time re-connecting with friends back home and telling them of my adventures and hearing about the going-ons of Stanford life. I recalled a time where I would talk to my cousin for hours about the most random things, going from topic to topic and then laughing about how we jumped topics so much.

Ahhh, the good ole days…

If there is one thing I learned from so much shopping, it’s that customer experience matters a lot and the elite brands in China have really nailed the art of pleasing the customer.

Take Jack & Jones for example. The fashion is catered toward 18-35 year old urban guys with dark jeans and rugged-looking shirts but the entire store is almost always staffed by young attractive females in matching uniforms. As I walked past one store, as soon as one locks eye contact with you, they begin the sale.

After drawing you into the store, while potentially looking around they make many suggestions and compliments, something that has not really been perfected in the USA. These compliments actually led me into rethinking some of the outfits I chose and I even started asking them about how something would look on me (almost always a positive answer). Even while knowing that this persuasion and sale was occurring, it was hard to shake off the feeling that this was actually effective.

Once I found something I actually liked, the service went into full gear as they would bring the item into the changing room for you, find a different size for you, and all while keeping a smile on and still giving compliments. All the way up until the final sale at the register, they would even keep suggesting other items and being at your service.

I ended up buying a black shirt from Jack & Jones for the most random reason actually, this other random lady wanted me to try the shirt on because apparently I was a similar size to her son but when I tried it on, she thought her son was fatter than me so it wouldn’t fit but it fit me perfectly so I took it haha.