The second day in London

Today is more exciting in London, though cold.

The most interesting thing I did today is to visit the Royal Academy of Arts. It has an exhibition named Three Emporors in Qing period, which I really like. The warm-hearted U.K gentleman Simon took me there when the other "Shopping Animals" are busy working in Havods. My big dream was to visit British Museum, but unfortunately time was not enough. But the exhibition in the Royal Academy was already pretty fantastic with valuable stuffs from thousand years ago.

The work today was really busy. But I learned a lot on hedge funds and funds of funds industry. An interesting part from a top financial manager who has an engineer backgroud: people always say market is already efficient, but we think in reverse. That's the value of engineers, including me(maybe): we always want to change everything.

The first day in London

London, in my imagine, should have been some noisy and busy city. But when I arrived the city in the Sunday morning, it is so peaceful with clouds around.

Staying in the Grange City hotel in the center of the city, I could see half of the city view just from the eight floor.(such a different image from Hong Kong where you couldn't have a full view even you are in the 20th floor in the Central). Buildings decorated with traditional designs tell the long long history of the city. People are not that nice as I thought before, but maybe they are decent gentleman inherited from the royals.

I will have a private tour with London Eye this afternoon(or evening in the HK time). really eager to do it. I should breathe some easy air before starting my busy and serious work tomorrow.

Job_trip to London

Amy will go to London to visit a financial group tonight. The company involves in many businesses, including hedge funds and fund of funds. I am super excited now, just thinking of the visit to the most developed financial city in Europe.

Always staying in Asia, especially in Hong Kong, it it easily to just think about the region, which may only take up several hundred percent of the size of the total financial world. Especially when China is rising, the country and its people are likely to believe the earth is going around the nation. But it is not the truth. The economy of the emerging country always has the fastest growth, but only takes a small percent. The world is not going around it.

Will post more in the future.

Media_Good journalism, bad journalism?

Met a friend in the university today and talked about the current journalism. He said traditional journalism is already going to die. "The problem is everyone could do bad quality journalism online".

In some extent, it is right. When I studied the journalism history, the newspaper was created when people feell the need to exchange informations between each other; now the problem with the born of Internet is people need the medium to exchange "useful" or "valuable" information. With the decentralization coming to the peak, the centralization will start. That's I learned from history: He jiu bi fen, fen jiu bi he.( the centralization always comes after long-time decentralization, and the reverse).

But the most difficult thing is not the result, but the timing. Just like the stockmarket, you could easily guess the price will go up or down, but always hard to get the exact timing.

Revolution from the Edge; the Demoratization of Media---Lecture given by Dan Gillmor

It's already one year passed when I listened to the lecture from Dan Gillmor. He is still with a bunch of enthusiasm to the new media, just like he did in the new media classes, which, in turn, always impressed people. And impressed me in yesterday's lecture held in the University of Hong Kong.

Dan Gillmor is the one who helped the University of Hong Kong to be the first school in the world to teach blogs(Isn't that amazing).He was the technology columnist for San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper for ten years. Now he is leading a non-profit project named "Citizen Media" with Harvard University and Berkley to help grassroot media. (www.citmedia.org)

Some of the notes I made during the lecture (and the ones who made me think deep)

(1) The media is made up of production, distribution and access. (which one is taking the lead now? of course access, see, Google who helped with easy access with people around the world)

(2) A read-write web (I would like to know how many people are reading, and how many are writing)

(3) Dan asked if it is still right today that "Journalist writes the first draft of the history"? ( hoho, depends how to define the "journalist")

(4) Dan said the truth in the journalism, both print and electronic, is accuracy and trust.

(5) Dan gave us some example on "Every object tells a story". A PDA-like handset could tell people what the medicine is, if it is expires, the price(and the price difference), and if it conflicts with other medicines, after scanning the label.

(6) BBC held a project named Action Network, also another sort of grass media.

(7) Dan said he is amazing to find Hong Kong is using criminal laws in copy rights cases. He thought the copyright law should be a bargain , or balancing rights, between creators and communities, and I totally agree. Law is used to make the society work, not to restrict its development.

(8) Last, the most famours words from Dan, "I learn from people think me wrong, instead of people think me right"

Some questions in my mind during the lecture but I guess I could already solve them as a professional journalist, which I couldn't do when I was a journalism student one and a half year ago.

(1) Does online journalism have a worse quality? (It varies, but there are really good pieces outceeding the print media)

(2) People spends more time on new media now, such as reading online stories. Is it possible to reduce people's creativity by that? (But believe me, sometimes it helps with the creativity)

(3) Will the traditional journalism be used into online media one day? (yeah, I believe, just the issue of the time)

Media_Where to find Chinese Community in Hong Kong?

Maybe I'm wrong, but it's really hard to find some mainland Chinese community in Hong Kong? The media, including newspapers and TVs, almost neglected this group of people, who came to work in decent professions in Hong Kong but always disperse in every corner of the city?

Am I right?

Media_my professor will leave

Andrew Lih, my new media professor, will leave for Beijing to start writing his book on Wikipedia. Mei, his beautiful wife, will start her new job in Beijing, too. Such a great couple will go to Beijing, which is really wonderful, though it means I lost good friends in Hong Kong.

Andrew was the first professor I saw in the University of Hong Kong, and also the one helping me most during my study. I still remember the girl, who was still an engineer-type, came to visit HKU and talk with her dream in China's new media. The one who just sit opposite to me and listened my dream carefully is Andrew. We had same language at that time, maybe because we both know the computer programming. My feeling was that he is so cool that I must join the program to learn from him.

He didn't only help with the study, as time proves, but also on how to dedicate yourself to something. He is stubborn some time, to tell the truth, but a great advantage to achieve the success. When we built the website for Hong kong's politics, he worked so hard on the project, even harder than we students. He also introduced a lot of friends to me, such as fons and Isaac, the two who turned to help me a lot, too.

Unfortunately, I couldn't be one of his best students as I switched my career partly into business journalism, a more "flamboyant" direction, making me feel I betrayed my previous promise. Andrew may feel angry, too, as I guess, the reason we were not close in the second part of my program. But I still believe he is always my best professor and coach and forever.

In Chinese, people say "diffrent routes always turn to the same destiny". The words suit me, and also hope it will suit to Andrew.

Best best best wishes....

Media_Free newspaper

I don't know if China has free newspaper, and I don't think so. (maybe some "illegal" ones). But in Hong Kong, free newspaper already becomes a large market. You could easily see somebody reading the free paper in the subway or on the bus. Now Singapore wants to catch up the fashion,too.

-Singapore Press Holdings will launch a free Chinese morning newspaper in June, in addition toits three existing Chinese-language papers, Southeast Asia's largestnewspaper publisher said on Wednesday. The paper will initially be distributed Tuesdays to Saturdays at underground train stations, offices and some households and shoppingcentres.

hoho, we couldn't live without newspaper, but we could just live on free newspaper. I should start a first Chinese newspaper, and the future looks great.