Holloween party at Our house
I didn't expect an evite I sent out ended up as the best party I organized. The orange color is cute for the season. My startup partners arrived first as I expected, followed by pinpin and Rafel, and another white girl named Tara whom I have never met. Then came Gordon, this sports spirit soaked soul showed up with backward orange colored baseball hat. One hour into the party, my ribs turned out to be a huge success, even though I only marinated like less then 30 minutes. Pinpin looks great, so does her girl friend Tara, most importantly, they were comfortable, everyone was. I was very happy. After ribs were long gone, QQ arrived with Chanjuan, QQ frame has increased at least one size in the past year, that's how long I have not seen him, and he came in a shiny Audi A6, finally!!! Then was Phil, I am very glad to see him, after his long visit to Sigpore and other South Asian countries. This is the first time I heard him speaking in Chinese, very Taiwanese. My closest friend Leland and zhouzhou arrived the latest, Leland said he failed to wake up at the right hour to pick up his wife! But he came as I demanded, with a huge rack of nice and thick rib, So here goes my chef skill again. Jim was super cool, so were Susan and Katherine, even Billy. Yuhui, Michael (or Xiaozheng) and I finally got to sit down in our spanish styled living room to discuss the business.
I finally got a new wallet
It feels so right.
Holloween mini shopping trip
Corporate chef Albert's words hinted me where to go for Holloween treasure hunting: the holloween store in Mountain View. This is amazing. This shop sits right next to the cost plus in between San Antonio and Castro, you live in the sillicon valley and there is so much diversity sometime you lost the good old America value, which I found a bundle in Portales, where people only live the American way. This shop is different, you see all these american teen agers in the shop trying out the custums and the smiles and the colors. I have two purposes one is a pirate hat and the other is the dry ice: just watched "Pirates of Caribbean", although I have been longing for some fake blue hair and a mask resembling the bat man. I found two hats that fits me well to be an one day pirate, then came the store clerk, a 20 yr old black boy who was busy in and out, he was like, yeah, this one is much better, you know, girls like it. Go get them. That was it. Go get them: that's how normal people talk. Of course I chose that one. While in the line, I saw two teen girls in front of me.
Hey look at this, it's so cool...
oh, right...
Let me say, wow, $40 !! With that much money, I can buy a pair of shoes.
Isn't that amazing or what? I never knew girls would benchmark everything else against their shoes.
Now, bring me that horizon
Firefox crackdown
I was about to complete switch to firefox only to find out this sucker drinks the memory. My sony vaio was still top of the line back 4 years ago, with only 6G harddrive, it literrally stopped running after I installed the firefox. So for those with older version of PC, I suggest you to be careful when switching.
Indoor windsurfing
Maybe I will be the one who creates such sport.
$1 club and a golden girl
"How much is the cover?" I asked, after strolling on soma for a while.
"$1", I thought I misheard what the bouncer said, but it was true, even at today's San francisco.
This is the kind of music I like, once I ducked into the club, I immediately liked it. It was small, more of bar, dark, projections of music vedio and liquid soap are all over the wall, there was this guy with little braids playing the bass on top of counter, two girls were dancing along, Girls are cute, mostly white girls, but I felt at home, truely home. The line for the rest room was confusing, girls and guys are mixed, there was this Japanese boy with a funky hat standing in front of me, started to chat up, his English was very funtional, sometime when I answered him, he could not understand, more of me back a few years ago. He was pretty laid back, with smile always on his face, made him a likeable person. "Is this the line for boys", a girl came along and asked us, obviously she was a bit drunk...I like "boys", it's cute name, espcially when girls calling us. Drummer Jason was a semi-professional, judged by his way of beat, he has a super cute girlfriend, who standing behind me most of time, buying drink for herself, she was quiet, exceedingly stylish, not in a high-maitainese way though. I had the urge talking to her, either I was carried away too much by the music, which was not the case, or I always have this fear, this fear of being rejected blocked me from so many girls even when the interest is already clear. This fear sometime becomes a stupid self-ego which unnecessarily protected me from being hurt. Do I need the fear's protection? When can I come out of my shell and shadow and tell her: I like your dress, or smile, or just chat up. Look at that Japanese guy, who called himself "J.J.", after hearing my name as "J", he can not even speak English well, but he schmoozed, mingled with those blonde girls, that IS something I can not do, If It took me one night at Reno to break out my shallow shell just to realized what an amazing dancer I am, what will it take to bring me out my fear of being rejected by girls? I can not rely on girls chasing me all the time, I am not hot enough to wait for being chased...I was thinking all this crap while I knew I would miss the opportunity to talk to her, I knew it, all I can do is to witness my stupid assumption turned true. Somehow, music was getting higher, Jason was getting into the role and the beat was feeling alive now, this golden haired girl sitting right beside me started to swing on her chair and looked at me with a light smile in her eyes, we didn't say anything, simply swinged back and forth together, she was delightful, much like ENMU's Mindy, (oh Mindy, my first golden girl)
An hour later, when the party is over and I walked by this little aluminum covered clubhouse, she saw me and touched my shoulder, "good luck boy"...that's all it takes to make my night, a golden haired girl whom we shared a musical moment remembers and wishes a stranger good luck...
My eyes
Gordon and I were hanging out saturday night, there were 40 berkeley sorority girls battling in our house that I have to escape otherwise it would be a nightmare. We were playing pool at MountainView and we both noticed a Chinese girl who we both admit attractive, even though I mentioned she has garlic nose...my bad, too picky! Then we started talking about the natural feature of people and he mentioned mine would be my eyes, especially when I look at people, he said, they are powerful and meaningful. Wow, maybe I am special.
Dead poets society
All the time he is mumbling, mumbling truth,
...Like a blanket always leaves your feet cold,
You push it, strech it, it will never be enough,
...
You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us
...
From the moment we enter crying to the moment
we leaving dying,
It'll just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream
So many thoughts in so few days
Since bullets over broadway flied, it's been crazy second half the week. I bumped into Gaia at Cats, made out with no name girl who loved me. I got Guy Kawasaki signed "The art of the Start" and got him to ask me for a business card and our business plan: I don't have a b-card or b-plan for my startup. All I have is three guys in three garage stratching from Palo Alto to Seattle and we will take on E-Bay and Google. I wrote tons of notes on my "Molenskine", about our startup, about Gaia. And it rained today, after 6 months.
Bullets over broadway
...He is a major talent...with an intellect that big, they tend to creat their own moral universe...
Wallet
Wallet is an interesting thing, or subject. I don't how much money I wasted on vaporized things like dancing, clubbing, travelling, surfing, drinking, but I never had a decent wallet, current one I have is a big, beatup, brown one that bearly fits in any of my pocket, if at all, it makes a big bulge and feels extremely uncomfortable, the worst part is to take it out and pay stuff. So most of time, I prefer either taking cash out, or just a card in my pocket, I never noticed that man should carry a decent wallet, until I went out on a date with Julie, she paid attention to the fact that I took $20 bill out of my pants pocket and asked: "you don't carry a wallet?"
I always wanted to buy a good one, but I heard there is a saying that man don't buy wallet for themselves, women give it to men as gift. I never met any women who actually gifted me a wallet, I guess that is the hidden reason that everytime I walked by a good wallet just to end up not buying it. I was waiting, am still waiting, stupid as it sounds.
I will get a decent one for myself this weekend.
The brightest shooting star
From the dark sky, flashing through gazillions others, shooting for somewhere unknown. I saw it. I made a wish in the sea breeze. Life is good.
Under the Tuscan Sun
I thought it would be another boring romance movie, it's not.
It's fantastic.
A dream, a change in attitude
I was sitting on the toilet reading "eboys" who back e-bay. It's supprisingly a little good book worth a read, maybe I have been thinking or "sinking", "indulged" too much with our startup recently. That have become something keeping me excited. I will wake up in the early morning to modify some survey questionaire. Am I still sitting on the toilet? You know people talk about the dream, I had a dream last night, at least I believe it was from last night. It was about Josh Chien, the PM for Foundry network in my company, there is this old nice man showing me the in and out of this foundry product is some sort of high pricision equipment that can only produce useful products when the temperature is within very tiny approximicity, otherwise the whole system will be scrapped. And Josh was not the main PM on this account, there is third person who managed the account at the time and bossed around him all the time, as to today, this person is demoted to some other position, anyway, Josh did a good job to have plant produce at 100% success rate for customer, then he got promoted to PM. My take on this in the dream was: his grassroots at this company is hard earned by him. I guess I have been thinking about who is the favorite PM to the big boss, certainly not me, and I was trying to find out why, this dream might be my sixth sense' exploration, it does provide certain insight though. That doesn't mean I have any desire to be promoted to high ladder of the structure, remember the conversation with shuqin the other day about the difficulty of being promoted to senior VP level. I'm done with coroporate world, at least ambition side.
That lead naturally to what I want to be. I find myself relatively mild, less aggressive, less high these days. I find I go out dancing less on Thursday night: I always wanted to though, if I live closely, it's just not as strong desired as before, I can actually sit down in a quiet night and plot out the blue print of startup I have in mind and am doing. That excites me. Is that maturity?
Mature and wild, and free, that's what Dancy describes me. She says I have everything she needs in a man, except I'm not settling down. She also said: get rich and come back to marry me, she refers to the fact I am carefree on life style, don't know how to make my living environment more comfortable, another word, she thinks I don't care to live a comfortable life. All I care is freedom, to explore the mind and physical world. She knows me well.
Why other Stanford kids go to high profile bank, VC, consulting firm while I am not? I actually think about that often, not because I want to be one of those, not anymore, and I believe and am doing everything I can to be better off. There are two factors, first, I screwed up a lot, second, my background can only lift me up to the level I am in right now. I was invited to second round interview by companies like Goldman Sachs, BCG in year of 2000, and I even told KML in San Francisco that I have 6 interviews to go: that is how arrogant I was back in high days. I was either late for those interviews, or didn't prepare at all. I sank in all of those and that was the end of my quest for traditional Stanford kids' career dream. On the other hand, with little known college degree from China and another little known master degree from little known college from New Mexico before I came to Stanford, I appear to be much paler than most Stanford kids who quest for dream of banker, VC, consultants, MBA etc., I have been doing surviving well in the most competitive part of the world, Palo Alto, but it is at surviving level. In order to thrive, I need more to be added to my background, Stanford can only give me what I have now, as a diploma. Today or yesterday I am pround of being a Stanford graduate, tomorrow I will make Stanford proud of having me a grudate and alumni.
Men
Men don't settle down, men surrender.
Business card
Name: Grant Jian Guo
Entrepreneur, Founder of Internet knowledge trading
MS graduate of Stanford MS&E, Class of 2001
Program manager at Sanmina-SCI
Dancer of my own mordern style
Windsurfer
Occasional actor
Writer who is not sure which language to use (between Chinese and English)
Contact:
