Always thinking

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.

posted by Road less travelled @ 10:53 AM