Beginner's mind

What does my day sound like? I wondered. So I put together a sound collage of one of my regular workdays. It consists of buying breakfast in the morning, staying in the office during the day, and listening to a street singer in the evening. 

What does your day sound like?

Last time we talked about Bo's career path, and this time we are going to talk about Bo's wife. She became a programmer after attending a boot camp, and got a job as a front end in a company in SF.
 

01:00 We sidetrack a bit and talked about cafe job in US and China. Then we started talking about what bootcamp is about.

13:00 The coding bootcamp business in US: there used to be more, but now there are some busy acquisitions going on. And I compared the situation with the ones in Beijing.

20:00 The main difference between bootcamps in US and China is the students. We also talk about how as programming languages become accessible to more people, how it will affect the industry.

30:00 The value of more experienced designers and engineers in the future.

What do you want to do for your career? What do I want to do? What can I do as a career? I guess there are as many answers to the these questions as the population in Beijing or San Francisco. Though in the end, it's really up to each individual to figure out the path in front of them, it takes time and efforts, yet talking about it, to understand how we approach it from different perspectives, can be inspiring and encouraging. So here it is, our chat on career path.

00:00 Starting with Bo's startup, we talked about how he dropped out of college, and tried to start his business in Shanghai. From there, we talked about risk management.

13:00 The first job matters, but it just takes time to learn and evolve. Sometimes, personality defines what we do and how we do. But does our personality evolve over time?

27:00 Bo said, it's important to pick the battle to fight. Learn to be focus, means to find the best method to work.

36:00 Joy talks about her career path so far and where it might go in a near future. And we talked about the cultural aspect in making choices.
 

Beijing is massive, with a population of 21 million, 20 times bigger than New York City in size. It's crowded and as most modern big cities, can easily make one feel small. I was talking with a friend the other day, about how to build connection with this mega city. We reached the conclusion that it's important to carve out my own space in the city, physically and mentally. And looking back, it's how I gradually feel like a local after three years of living here.

My top 3 in the city are: Jingshan Park, my own apartment and a hole in the wall cafe in the hutong. Jingshan is touristy. But with 2 yuan, you share the view of the whole city with generations of emperors, warlords, and common folks who come and go. But the city survive all of them. This episode was about one of my favourite spaces in the city. Enjoy :)

What's the deal of Uber credit card? How does millennials manage their finances with new apps? We talk about MONEY this time!

01:00 Bo got a Uber credit card and we talked about what's special about it. But can customers trust giving bank accounts to Uber? How does it compare to banks?

12:00 How Uber is going to tab into the dining industry?

19:00 Is it something special about American companies to issue credit cards to expand businesses?

28:00 New startups to help people manage their money? Bo talked about Acron, Robinhood, and Wealthfront, but Joy was curious about how people can trust these new services.

36:00 The top one financial advice from Bo to young people -- you would be surprised. :) But later we did talk about why it's worth investing in, and Bo shared his ratio on different options.

It's been a bumpy month.

There were ups and downs, expected and unexpected, happiness and sadness.

Life never cease to amaze me.

Inspired by the spirits of Children's Day, I give you the singing bike.

Be happy :)

This was supposed to be a sci-fi-ish episode, until we got to the point that we both agreed that this could go very serious and very deep. But it's also because Bo was not fully awake. So this is a pretty slow and scattered episode. We talked about bits of what might happen to one's data when someone passes away. We don't have a clear answer, but it's definitely something we can keep thinking about.

Anyway, I cannot believe we made it to episode 40!

01:00 Following the topic of last episode, we started talking about what might happen to one's data when someone passes away. What if the tech companies have full ownership of your data afterlife? What if the data they own actually worth a lot?

10:00 If you can make someone you love but who passed away into a chatbot, would you do that as a way to hold memory to? Is it still the person you used to know, or is it algorithm?

19:00 What if Facebook turn someone's page into a graveyard, is it worse?

25:00 What if the digital information can decay?

35:00 Then we talked about the VR graveyard in Hong Kong (what!!!).

37:00 The real show stops here, but I added some parts that we discussed in Chinese and English.

 

Can you recognize a city by listening? I guess there are some signatures in some cities that are hard to miss, the public transport, the accent of the people, as well as the air. This episode is going to be a bit noisy, perfect if you are listening on your way to work. It might tele-transport you to another city :)

This is Guangzhou. Enjoy the journey.

Did you receive a wave of Privacy Setting Updates from most of the digital services, like Instagram, Trello, Pinterest, etc? It happened to me, and I read some of them carefully. They provoke some new questions: what are these updates about? What are they protecting? What data does user own? This is what this episode about. Enjoy!

01:00 We sidetracked a bit and talk about funeral.

06:00 Bo opens up the topic by pointing out four major points in these changes: a) about data deletion; b) about data portability; c) privacy by design; d) data protection officers;

15:00 Can decentralization help with the data ownership problem? We started the discussion into what data you own and not own in digital services, and what data portability means.

26:00 What if the technology works in a different way, what if I myself store all the data I created instead of digital service companies?

33:00 A bit recap of what blockchain is and then we start the deduction of how centralization and decentralization services approach data storage from different paths.

50:00 Data deletion on blockchain? And then we touched a bit on data legacy: how would you pass down your data if you are gone?

So there's something going on in San Francisco that's not happening in Beijing, sharing electric scooters!! I asked Bo on this topic. From there, we discussed about the bike sharing, the two company buyout deals happened about the same time in Beijing and SF, and the future of cities.

01:00 General intro of sharing electric scooters in SF.

13:00 What's so interesting about Uber bought Jump?

20:00 It's interesting to compare the two news in bike sharing in Beijing and SF. Meituan, the company that started as a copy of Groupon and grew into a tech giant covering restaurant reviews, and food delivery, bought Mobike, one of the leading bike sharing companies. This news is interesting when contrasted with Uber purchased Jump.

31:00 Will Uber become the monopoly of transportation in the US? Bo mentioned it doesn't make sense for Uber to use self-driving cars for ride share.

40:00 Opening up the imagination for self-driving cars and the future of cities.