With Great Power Comes Great Responsbility

August 31st, 2005   Filed under English entries, Work

@ 2005-08-31 22:41

In the movie of The Spiderman, Peter Park once said the sentence “with great power comes great responsbility”. This is not only a belief of the superman, but also for the American. In belief of their power they want great responsbility, and so, we are not surprised to see the Americans appear in everything of everywhere on the earth.I’m not going to talking about American culture ’cause sense of history about my own country is little, not to mention that of the US. What I want to talk is about a public benefit program named OOPS shorted for Opensource Opencorseware Prototype System and “开放式课程计划” in Chinese. And after my introduction I want you know why I mentioned the sentence at the beginning.

On the evening of Aug. 8, I attended a press conference hold by OOPS at the roof garden of Peace Hotel. Lucifer (朱学恒), sponsor of the program and translator of The Lord of The Ring, presided the conference and many program volunteers and journalists presented. During the conference, the OOPS was formly introduced to mainland China and a detaid introduction together with a recall for volunteers were presented.

To be brief, we can think OOPS as a project translating on-line courseware of MIT and other burgeoning on-line opensource courseware into Chinese (Simplified & Traditional). But how the idea came out and how’s the program going on is really amazing.

About two years ago, Lucifer came across with the MIT Opencourseware, MITOCW, in a report and he was stuned by the resourceful on-line free courseware. He pondered how the Chinese will benefit if the Chinese professors and students can use these world class educational resources. But one problem is that all of these treasure are in English while most of the university students’ English are still too poor to understand it, at least it will take them too much more time to read English materials. An idea strike on Lucifer, why don’t translate it into Chinese? And so he initialized the OOPS and called for capable to join the volunteer team to work for OOPS. Now, the number of the volunteers has exceeded 1,500 from over 15 countries worldwide and are still increasing. Some of them do translation, some of them do editorial work and some others do program promotion works, but all of them work for nothing. I have met several volunteers and have short talks with them. They are different people with different occupations, there are students, programmers, professionals , even CEOs and so on. But they share a thing in common, passionate and happy. When one of them was asked to answer why she joined the program she said “with great power comes great responsbility”.

You can visit OOPS’s simplified Chinese homepage via this linkage: www.cocw.net for more details and you also can be a volunteer as long as you want to be.

And below are several piz of Lucifer, the volunteers and me : ) Pls do enjoy it.

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Do I need to pay for it?

August 31st, 2005   Filed under English entries, Opinion

@ 2005-08-31 14:05

For a long time, at least 4 years, I haven’t been caught in a rain, but just ten minutes ago when I was eating a delicious 盖浇饭 a heavy rain suddenly began and I was trapt in the snack restaraunt full of Shanghainee. But one thing occured there again intensified the bad image of Shanghainee.It was raining so heavily that no one in the restaraunt dared to leave and one old woman began to worried about, she want to call someone to bring a unbrella but there’s no pay station. Her conversation with a cashier was heard by a yong customer. I was surprised when the yong man lend his cellphone to the old lady, because this kind of worthy deed has never happen during my 4 years in the city, people here are too selfish that etiquette was thrown far away when they rush for a sit on the bus. I thought he is one of those few kind person in the city. The lady thanked him and began to call his friend. When she finished the call and gave the phone back to the yong man she thank him very much. But I was again stunned when she asked him “Do I need to pay for it?”

Yea, these is a typical thing done by a typical middle-aged citizen of Shanghai. I should have thought it was a purely good thing and almost moved untill the old lady’s word echoed. I wondered why those Shanghainee went for every penny? They are just too good at calculation and too clear about benefit. They even want to measure good-will by money!

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让我头痛：取个什么英文名好呢？

August 29th, 2005   Filed under Work

@ 2005-08-29 16:56

马上就要去新公司上班了，有个小问题却一直没有解决：取个什么英文名字好呢？已经想了老半天了，想了一大堆名字都觉得不是太大众了，就是觉得不合适自己，什么Vince, Eric, Jerry了。所以想问问大家有没有好名字可以建议我，或者告诉我一个你觉得发音容易，听上去舒服和愿意接近的名字。我先把我的一点有用的背景写在这里：陈平 男 23岁 七月份刚刚本科毕业 公司的新员工 性格随和但不是很能说 ： )期待着你们的天才主意，谢了: )

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Finally I got a new job offer : )

August 28th, 2005   Filed under English entries, Work

@ 2005-08-28 23:49

I have been quit the last job for already 3 weeks and finally I got a phone informing me that I was offered an offer. From next week on, I will stop my PR career and begin my new career in marketing research area.I was really sad when I decided to leave my last empolyer, but now, after a painfully struggling I make myself a new world with fresh hopes and elated hapiness.

But this’s not a pie dropt down from the heaven, this is a pie pay for my consitance, optimistim and good preparation. Three weeks before I left the PR agency admitting that I was not suit for the PR job and any struggle would be vain. The decision is painfull because no one can assure me I can find a equivernent good job as good as the current one. But I made it and decided to find a job I suit most.

Success always in the hand of those who has preparation and target. I knew oppotunities, especially good opportunities, are few at current, because the hiring peak for the graduates has been past time. Knowing this, I chesished every opportunities appeared. I even went to the Jobweek journel several time to publish a job-hunting ad (I have bloged the ad at previous blog). During the three week participated in 8 interviews of three company which are National Instruments, one leading marketing research company and one joint assurance company. Finally, after a 4-round interew I got the offer from the marketing company while the assurance company rejected me politely and the I rejected NI’s final interview.

I am very content with the current offer, not only because the compensation pay is as good as the PR agency but also I love the job and company very much. One of the reason I left the PR agency is because I believe the job is totally different from my four-year mathematics studying. When mathematics is dealing with logic and analysis, PR is a job dealing with writing skill, interpersonal skills and other work I defined as soft-work. But a marketing Researcher Assistant’s job would fit me much better. For one thing, mathematics is usefull in the work and, for another thing, I really interest in how marketing motivated.

Anyway, I am very glad to have the new offer and do not need to cheat my mother in BJ(even now, she still believe I am working for the PR agency). I would like to say farwell to PR now. Time to prepare for the new beginning. I never reject beginning and my efforts will be going on.

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Dinning at the Bund18 (外滩18号)

August 26th, 2005   Filed under English entries, Work

@ 2005-08-26 10:15

Yesterday, I’s lucky to have a chance dinning at the Bund18. I have never expected to dinning at such a luxry venue even when I was almost starved. I don’t have much requirment on food or a dinning venue, as long as I can get myself full, it’s OK. Always I was thought to be behind the times and don’t have a taste of 小资. But this time, I am a little elated ’cause may be I could make those 小资 admire me and fullfill my vanity.The Bund18 is a fashion center of repute. The name “Bund18″ or “外滩18号” in Chinese comes from the adress of the building which is No. 18 East Middle Zhongshan No.1 Rd., and the road’s another name is The Bund. In it, there are dozens of luxry brands with names totally strange to me, but maybe my girlfriend have mentioned them sometime before. Before I went to the Bund18, I just thought its building only for the several luxry brands, but now I know the 5th to 7th floor are also places to eat something.

The Tan Wanglou (滩望楼) is at the 5th floor and we went to there have our dinner. In fact, this dinner is treated by our client, Lucifer. He is now promoting a program named Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System or OOPS and we are their PR agent. We five at the table included two of my collegue, Lucifer, Lao Xu and me. This is a famous Yue Cai restaurant serving all kinds of dishes of Guangdong taste. We arrive at there at around half past seven and went straight to the 5th floor. Because all the table at the window where the scene of The Bund and the Huangpu river is available is booked and reserved, we have to take a table at one corner of the dinning hall. Lucifer ordered us about 7 or 8 dishes and some soup and drink. I don’t know what exactly the name and the price, what I know is the food amount is very little but expensive. I drunk may be a tin of the most expensive Coca-cola, with 36rmb I think I can buy a bunch of Coca-cola. I ordered myself two of them. One thing interested me much is that Lucifer didn’t touch any meat of the dishes no matter beef of pork, he only pick some vegetable and fruit to feed himself. In seeing of this I thought that he may be a vegetarian and asked him “When do you become a vegeterian?”. He laughed and explained he was not a vegeterian, he didn’t eat meat because of one of his special habbit: whenever there are project undergoing, he would not allow himself to eat any meat. He explained this can alarm him that there’s work waittinbg him to finish and not time to enjoy. Wow, really interesting, right?

We talked a lot at the dinner and many topics are around the restaurant, differences between Taiwai and mainland, and the food. When check-out the dinner cost Lucifer 1,200 RMB, though very expensive for me, much below than I estimated : ). I don’t think the food here is delicious, in fact, there cooking are too common capared with their price. Many people come to here maybe not for decilicious of to become a belly-god, but for a kind of vainity just like what I gained from here.

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Another boring day

August 24th, 2005   Filed under English entries, Life

@ 2005-08-24 17:29

When I use English to blog, that proberly means I don’t really have interesting story to tell, may be I just want to practive my English : ) You know English is so important today in China, so important that event over-heated. Many times I thought do we really need to change ourselfs totally to adapt to the western world? Learn their technique, learn their management and now leant their Language. I think we have been stuck into a blind intimation of the western things. China has a history of over 5,000 years, we surely have much heritage that surpasses the others’. Why don’t we dig out these advantages and make it alive? Chairman Mao had said that we should “去其糟粕，取其精华” and I thought this is right, right?Oh, what I am wagging about! I want to say that its quite a boring day today. This company is just like a internet cafe for me, every day I come to here to surf the internet and do something personal, there’s too little thing needs me to do. Ha ha, I felt guilty about this. I should be more indurtrious and active, but I just can’t work up much enthusiasm for the company, partially because this is a part-time job and I don’t intend to stay here. Further more, I was detrackted by my job hunting. I can earn 100 yuan per day, but I think I don’t derserve it. So what I expect most now is to find a new job soon and leave here. I don’t want to waste their money and time.

Today I encountered the news below on the net:

Google Sidebar is available,

Google IM is available,

Two more of my classmates joined the Class Albumi I found,

The government maybe lift the threshhold for personal tax to 1,500RMB,

Shanda’s new online 5-minutes game, The Three Kingdom, debuts in BJ today

Others I forget.

Ok, this is the boring day. Time is going to arrive at 18:00 and time for me to escape from the office, ha ha..

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Hi, I'm Chern. This is my personal blog. I'm currently working for a business consulting firm in Shanghai. I don't quite love my work though and is always seeking a way to escape. But I don't know wher to escape. Pity!

I'm not a coder nor a designer, however, I believe the quote "Code is poem" and weight algorithm and UI the same importance. I like Googel services and hope one day that Google can provide all the services I need. more abt. me...

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