Being a moderator

March 31st, 2006   Filed under English entries, Work

@ 2006-03-31 19:51

This night, for the first time I try to be a moderator. Moderator is a job title in my company.

Do you know what moderator is? Well, if you have ever been invited to be in a discussion with some other consumers by a market research company, then you know who is the moderator. It’s the man (or woman) who led the discussion. But if you ever participated in such kinda activities, it’s normal that you don’t know what is moderator’s work like.

Just as some of you know, I work for an market research company. You must have heard ACNielsen and we are of the same kind, they are our rival. Research within market research area in been divided into QUANTITATIVE Research and QUALITATIVE Research. Quantitative is doing with objective things, that mean facts and data. Every result from quantitative research should have support of data. While qualitative research is mainly focus on digging out the reason behind the facts and data. Say, if the quantitative work found that 55% of the consumers like spicy tasted toothpaste, then the qualitative work is to discover why some people like spicy while the others don’t. Maybe they like eat spicy food or maybe the spicy can fresh them. Qualitative must find them out.

As there is quantitative research and qualitative research, so there is quantitative researchers and the counterparts. In most of the past time I only doing quantitative related work, but today I have by chance to be a moderator – a work should be categorized into qualitative.

So what I was doing as a moderator?
We invited 4 consumers with cars to our office and my work is to have chat with them all together – we call this chat Focus Group. The chat is designed to find out their consuming behavior in after sales auto market. You must know that I’m introvert and not good at talking with ease and confidence. So, when I was put into a room with 4 totally strangers, if not at work, I would be silent till the meeting break up. But I was on work, so I was forced to be a moderator – to chat with them and to lead the chat.

My fault is that I will be nervous when something challenging going to happen to me. I would lose my appetite if I am nervous, so that’s the case today. But, my virtue is that I can control my nervous, even I am very nervous I can make myself appears calm. So, tonight, after began my first sentences in tremble I soon get into relax state. I thought the 3 man and 1 woman were just like my friends and it should be easy to chat with friends. The only different is that this time I will get some certain information from them. On such a consideration, the chat went on very smooth. If your relaxed then your dialogist would be relaxed.

The focus group is a success. It makes me more confident when chatting with others and make me more confident when doing my quantitative research. ’cause I know I can do more that I’m doing :)

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Room was broken by a thief

March 27th, 2006   Filed under English entries, Life

@ 2006-03-27 18:31

Believe it or not, my house was broken in by a thief when we’re sleeping!

I went to bed very late last night, at about 1:30. Urecca and me have went out shopping fro a DC the whole day. So, we quickly we slept like a log. But, suddenly I was awaken by a babel of voices like someone was trying to open the door with a key! In no time, I realized that some bad egg was trying to break into! I was very alerted that time with angry and nervous. Son of a bitch! Don’t you dare try to steal form me!

I bursted into a sudden furious roaring “Who is there!” and at the same jumped out of bed to see what’s there on at the door. I saw the door was open and thought that the thief may still in the room, so I slammed the door with ferocity hoping to cath the wangba0 in the room.

Absolutely, Urecca was waken up by my yell. She opened the light and I can see the puzzlness on her face.

Oh, time is late. I’ve to go back to dinner lah : ) Will continue the story tomorrow…
Here I come back and resuem the “thief break into my house” story:

Soon Urecca believed I’m not kidding from my serious look. “What’s happened?” I leaned out and looked down to the room to see if there the thief is, you know that we sleep on the attic. The room is only a simple cube with nowhere to hide a people. So I decided that the thief has run away! The only several valuable staff we have including a IBM laptop of Urecca’s company, a brand new DC we have just bought the day and our wallets. I didn’t see Urecca’s laptop so I asked her where she put the laptop. Urecca poke her head out and found her laptop had gone already in disappointment. Fortunately, I insisted to bring the new DC upstairs last night because I wanted to play with it and the my stubbonness saved the DC otherwise it will disappear with the laptop!

We slammed on clothes quickly and went down. I went out to the corridor. It was dark and deep. There are a public closet and place for washing for the floor, I suspected that the thief may hide there in soem dark corner. I have swept the washing place. Nothing. So I hold my breath and got close to the toilet to check out. I gave the door a sudden hard kick, it flied open. Nothing again! The thief had run away, escaped out off the building.

To be continued.

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Roller coaster from Shanghai to Hangzhou – China to build another meglev way

March 24th, 2006   Filed under English entries, Opinion

@ 2006-03-24 19:29

I just read the article by Wangjianshuo that China has decided to construct another meglev way from Hangzhou to Shanghai. Project is planned to be finished by 2008 and will be put into use by the 2010 Shanghai World Expro. Jianshuo is delighted with the news, but what I am interested is the motivation behind the decision and what it will bring to Shanghai.

So, why the government decided to build the maglev way?

At least, the decision is after the successful trail operation of Longyang-Sh Int. Airport meglev way, the world’s first meglev line for business purpose. After more than 3 years’ operation, the meglev technology has been proved to be safe enough to be promote.

But why the second line is Shanghai – Hangzhou instead of Shanghai – Beijing? Probaly the biggest problem is money. The 175km long line cost a total budget of 35 billion RMB, that is 200 million per km. If put this on the case of BJ – SH, the 1500 distance between the two cities means a total budget upto 300 billion RMB. That is one third of Shanghai’s GDP in 2005! So, money is the main stumbling block, not ambitious.

Then, what will it bring to Shanghai or Hangzhou?

In my opinion, it’s just a roller coaster for the the travellers to Hangzhou. Some business man may take it, but only cost a minor proportion. The main purpose is still to increase the attractiveness of Shanghai to the travellers around the world. Currently, Shanghai is having a headache on how to make itself up more attractive to the travellers across the country and around the world, just as Hongkong does. The problem is that Shanghai is in desperately lackness of tourist resources. After the completion of the meglev, Hangzhou will be a back garden to Shanghai. If you come to Shanghai, you almost reach Hangzhou, for it takes only half an hour to get to the nice place. Considering the application of building a Disneyland in Shanghai, Shanghai government is busy with building the city a more interesting place, a place not only headquarters and big department stores.

Frankly speaking, I’d prefer a meglev way from Shanghai to Beijing. So that I will save much time going back to home.

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Chern will be VERY busy.

March 17th, 2006   Filed under English entries, Work

@ 2006-03-17 19:48

Chern will be VERY busy for a about two weeks. The normal updating will be disturbed during these days. So I leave this note to alert all my friends, The Lighthouse will not have post for these two weeks.

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Under the tree

March 10th, 2006   Filed under English entries, Photography

@ 2006-03-10 18:54

This is a group of photo shoot last Sunday. It’s sunny warm spring afternoon.

Compared the first and the last of the piz, do you know what happened under the tree?

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A day in the shoes of Chern

March 9th, 2006   Filed under English entries, Life, Photography

@ 2006-03-09 13:52

8:30 Woken by the buzzing of the Nokia phone. It never stops.
9:16 Struggle down form the loft and into the washroom. Brush teeth and wash face in a rash. Time is late will be late. We are going to meet the clients so I wear my suit on the put my leather shoes on. Look into the mirror, handsome guy!
9:40 Already too late for office, even the company adopts flexible schedule flexible work hours. So take a taxi to office.

9:45 Arrive at the office building. A line of clocks on the wall of the hall displays different times of the world. Take lift to floor 7. Forget to bring the employee card. So break into the electronic door electronic door by force. Say hello to colleagues. Too late and embarrassed. Check the inbox – a blur of company announcements and Google alerts, among then a good joke on Women’s day: every day is men’s day except women’s day. Also a letter from the boss sits opposite, asks me to revise the proposal and contract according to the client’s comments.

10:00 Busy in a mess to get the work done by 11:30, since we are going to leave for another client then. Field a stream of calls to QC dept. to clarify some questions.

11:30 Work has just completed, but quality is not guaranteed. Boss is still busy preparing docs for the client we’re going to meet, have no time to dinner. So, I go to the cafeteria down the building and bring up two bento.

12:00 Launch finished. Pile of docs to be print out. In a hurry again.

12:30 The client is far at Anting, the auto city. But we have just come out of the building. Get a taxi and head off to Anting for the meeting. The heads of their other dept. will be also present. We are plan to nail many thing done. The go-ahead is to conduct according to the nailed decisions.

13:00 Anting, a desolated place. Even the birds don’t want to dwell :) Finally get to the client’s factory. Meet them and discussion begin.

18:00 Meeting ends and most of things are decided, a recap is going to summary the meeting. It’s hard to find a taxi at such a deserted place at such a time. But we see one hundreds meters away. Take it back to home and pays 70yuan more than I paid when come here! Seems be cheated.

19:40 Arrive at home. Help Urecca cook supper: curry chicken + vegetable + rice + a slide of pizza left yesterday.

22:30 Begin work on the recap.

23:00 Finish recap and begin blogging.

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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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