Smart car

Cars are going to integrate with personal computer, cars can connect to internet, talk to other cars, provide entertainment and driving assistance, produce large amount of data.

About spending---who buys the expensive stuff?

My father is really cheap in terms of spending on general stuff. He used to buy a whole bunch of cheap pencils thought that he took some advantages, but turned out the pencils don't write at all. Almost anything he buys will break in no more than a month because he always buy the cheapest.

"The expensive clothes and shoes and gadgets are all manufactured in the same factor with the cheap ones, it's all a difference of the distribution channel." this is his wisdom.

But seriously, there are a lot of brand stuff that are just slightly better, either it's established in the business, having better customer services, better design or took monopoly in that technology, but the price could be ten times more than a non-brand product.
I most time just go with the non-brand ones and just satisfy the basic needs, like headphones, I'd rather get a 15 Euro one than a one hundred Euro one, since I'm not living on listening to stuff.

So, question is, who buys those over priced brand product?

The average income of Italian citizens is about 25k US dollar a year, breaks down to a 2k a month, which means taking 1k monthly necessities they still have plenty to spend, you can buy an expensive computer every one or two month if you tight your belt a little bit. And that is just "average".
Think about there's a smaller group of people we call middle class, who earns some more than 2k a month, maybe 3-5k, and this group of people are those really buy all the brand products.
Economy is like many circles intersecting each other. Living on 1k Euro monthly, my father of course can't stand spending money on any big brand, he thinks they are stealing from people. But there are people who can make way more and they are more entitled to consume higher class stuff. And that's enough for the economy to run, enough for the big companies to grow even bigger.

Mentality in working life

Back in the days when I was unemployed, I had plenty of time just being alone in a quiet environment and not to worry too much what's happening next. I had all the time I needed to think about life, think about my attitude towards life yet nothing very valuable really came to form.
Now I'm busy at work and rarely get some free time, so it's time to summarize what I feel what I think from the perspective of a working person, does it make any difference to me as a student?

What made me happy when I was just a student:
1.good food
2.party time
3.being with friends
4.gaming
5.reading
6.watching videos/films
7.buy cool stuff

What makes me happy now when I'm working:
all those things above, plus FREE TIME

Now I've got more money to buy, but less time to consume, the combination is always a tradeoff, you either possess more time or money, you can hardly get them both together as a young man just started your career.

Mentality is important.

These days I've been using Wolf of Wall Street theme to psych myself up before go to work. I listen to the soundtrack from the movie and real Jordan Belfort's speeches, I tell myself that I'm going to make money, to confront the clients, to master the art of being professional. I do the hum song on my way to work. And my ambition grows as I did so, I think bigger and further when I try to relate myself to the "wolf", I see more possibilities than just working for someone all my life and make no more than 20k a year, I want 10 times of my current pay, 200k a year. I want to take charge of a hotel or apartment on my own,  be on my own, maybe still pay my partners but it would be working on my own schedule, working for myself.
It's just a month since I got this job. What do I feel about the job? It's a start up, full of possibilities, new partnership just brought in new opportunities for us as a player in this business. The working environment is lax and flexible(but most of the time I over work), relationship with colleagues and boss is simple and we love each other. About business ideas, I may have my own way of thinking but that's not my business, I only take orders and get things done on behalf of my boss. It's challenging, not boring daily desk-sitting job. The pay is very generous for a student yet not satisfying when considering my ambition and potential. So overall I like the job very much, especially the first a few days I was very excited, but after a month the enthusiasm just faded away inevitably, now I feel like having more free time, I demand more control on my own.

To be happy, you just make yourself think that you are happy.

Do a meditation with me, think about your job tomorrow, there must be something exciting about it, either new challenge, new events, new faces or just think about the pay, there must be something in it. Everyday you are growing stronger and more independent, every day's hardship will reward you in the future, it will all build up to your future ideal career.
Give yourself a smile, because you are doing a heck of good job!


About spending

After I got the job, I was so excited, I thought I was suddenly rich, I counted on the future pay, like some sort of credit in my mind, I started to spend in advance, I purchased this surface pro 3 that I'm using to write this blog right now, and just installed Skyrim last night (this is an amazing tablet-laptop hybrid). The four weeks since I got the job I spent €1,816.55 including the surface tablet (965Euro), 250Euro rent, 138 Euro for yearly stay permit application in Italy.
Why do I spend so much? Mentality. Instead of rational spending and saving, I thought, now my income just increased about 10 times, so my expenditure should be allowed within 10 times as much as before... but wrong, before I got support from my parents, I tried to save every penny for them, now I'm on my own but still I need to save every penny for myself.
Next month, my second four weeks, I'm gonna try to do some saving, control my spending. Well, rent is 290 Euro cannot be changed, food probably takes up to 300 Euro, then there's 800 Euro left, it's quite a big amount, even bigger if I ever know to save and prepare for investing.
But it's just unrealistic to save all the 800Euro, let's say my goal is to save 500 Euro next four weeks. Add 500 Euro every month on my bank account not the other way around! Let's get started!


day dreaming: one day I will make 10,000 a month and won't mind whatever I bought any more

Less and Less Free Time

One month ago, when I count my free time I count days.
Now I count free time by hours.
Finish work a bit early is a thing worth celebrating, thinking of a few extra free hours before tomorrow's work I feel excited.

A full time job suddenly changed my life routine (lazy routine).

Working at hotel does not allow you to get more pay if you work more. It all depends on the reservations. So we work hard on marketing, expecting more people to check in, to fill our calendar up, but still we get only fixed monthly salary.

Running one apartment is enough to feed three people, just think about all those real estate owners, they can just sit home and count money without effort. The bigger the company is, the easier you can control everything. When the company is small, you have to micro manage everything, it will exhaust you if you don't upgrade your size soon enough.

But once my company grew big, where will I be? Do I still maintain the website, take care of guests and handle email? Or will I be promoted to manage one of the property? I don't know where am I going on this path of career, I wish there will be someday I step back to behind the scenes. But it will be a long hard time before that.

Next short term goal: save up to €10,000, master more skills
middle term goal: invest money into financial market, capital market.

What is the purpose of life? Unpractical university study

1. Working has become my life these 22 days.

Parties? no more.

Now I wonder if it's possible to continue my work while studying.. or to say continue my study while working.

What's the purpose of life? That day I talked about this topic with my friend. His answer is to travel, to be with nature, enjoy life. My answer is the opposite, I want to make more money to prove my value and power, making money is like the score you gain when you play the game of living in a society, that itself is a fun thing, not because money can buy things, but because accumulating money or proving your power of making money triggers something in your brain that makes you satisfied.

Another question, making money and spending money, which one do you like more?

2. I really want to complain, the theories we study at university is simply not practical, they are just useless in real battle field, it's like teaching you all the theories about how and why weapons are made and never teach you to use them. that's exactly the thing you realize when you are enrolled in economics and management course at college.
My ideal education for university is, to divide people into two groups, volunteerly, one group is theorist, they are taught all the theories we are taught right now, they are meant to become scholar, professor, analyst or others, and another group should be put right into business practice, put them into a job, retail, real estate, tourism, manufacturing, design, whatever you have in your local community, putting your students in real world situation to train them is the best thing a university can provide their students.
I study economics and management, and I don't find anything from my textbook useful in my real life work in hotel management. I mean, all those theories are like some kind of summary, instead of a method, you can't apply any of them to your job, you only write them down like a log after your work. We students are taught all those things smart people left us through out hundreds of years society evolution, they are valuable but not helpful.
To learn real things, you need to learn from your colleagues, your supervisor, your customer, your daily handling situations, not from abstracted concepts and definitions.

3. What is the purpose of your life?
I used to believe, my life purpose is to explore the secret of universe, to unveil the mystery of beings, to get engaged into a conversation with "God", the eventual power source of the universe.
Well it's still our purpose, the entire human being as a whole share the same purpose of existing, that is to discover the unknown behind our existence.
But now I'm looking more closely to those things that are really near and big in my life, how to survive, how to make money, they are vital, they are relevant to my living.
Infact, if I had enough money I could really dive into the world of discovering unknowns, even if not to invest billions into science, at least having a piece of peaceful place to focus my own mind on philosophy, to read and think and write.
The reason why I chose economics as my major now, is because I loved philosophy and poetry. Oh, how come? I used to write a lot of poems, long series of poetry, imitating Faust and Also Sprach Zarathustra, trying to touch on grand topics such as God, life, universe, unknowns etc. I wrote really a lot, but in the end I felt empty, I exhausted my imagination and I started to looking into myself, what did I have, to be qualified to write things. I had not much. So that was my limit, if I ever want to move further, I had to dive into real life, real social life, to party, to work, to know how to get to upstream in this world, to experience things that I couldn't or didn't. So studying economics is a good way to get real, right? That's why I chose economics, and I found a lot of fun in this area.
I wish I knew everything about money, about banking, about all kinds of indicators on news, knew what is really going on under the cover of news' words.
Maybe someday I would wonder, what was worth my youth in my job? Was that really worth the pay I got?

4. I don't know the answer of "do you like Venice?". I have no answer now. This island traumatised me, all worst things ever happened to me happened after I came on to this island, yet I also discover many good things such as my friends and job. I know losing stuff is not the island's fault, it's Mafia's fault probably. How do I regard this island? It's complex, I live here, I'm numbed about its beauty, I don't sigh about the beauty of the island, I don't get amazed, I'm used to it, like old couple being together for 50 years. What am I excited about living here?
I wish I could live on land, not island, I want to ride bike, I want to run on street without climbing up and down any bridge, I want to pursue endless horizon, not the edge of artificial island. I'm not happy with living in Venice considering the environment, I need to get back on earth, dry place, plants, beautiful sky with clouds...
Sottomarina looks so beautiful, I wish I could live there, but I work in Venice.

My First 2 Weeks of Being an Employee

There was a post to promote our company on this blog but I just deleted it, because I thought this should be purely a personal blog, just about me, and what you find here can only represent my own personal opinion. I'm building a website for my company, it's not like that we don't have a place to post articles, so, that post is gone.

For a long time I thought having an official job is quite a distant thing to me, not only because I'm still at college, but also because of lacking confidence in social life.
My father has been nagging around for 5 years about me finding a job, every summer or winter break, every time go to a new place, he always tell me "try to apply for some jobs, go from office to office, shop to shop, to ask for an opportunity". I applied some jobs when I was in Germany, didn't turn out to get any of it (cleaning, painting, sorting goods etc), but I never really went out to see people, to talk to anyone face to face. I had fear. A lot of fear, a lot of thoughts, what if they don't need me, what if my German is so bad that they didn't understand me, what if I need to run around for documents, what if ... mostly it was because I wasn't confident in my language and communicating skills. I mean, I'm a people person, I get along with a lot of people, I have a lot of friends and I make friends at fast pace, it's just whenever thinking about confronting supervisor, colleagues and customers, I feel nervous all over me, from every single hair on top of my head to the bottom of my feet, I feel uncomfortable.
So I really thought I would never be ready for a job.
I had job as my father's assistant in filming and photographing industry, but it was nothing. I had jobs as private English and Chinese teacher but neither of these two languages made me enough money to say "I'm on my own now".

Opportunities sometimes come in strange ways.

A friend of mine met a young lady on street, she immediately thought that lady should be quite extraordinary judging on her young age and elegant dressing choices, so my friend went up straight to speak to that lady, turned out they became closest friends now, and this young lady introduced my friend to a hotel to work as receptionist and eventually through my friend's recommendation, I'm working for this young lady right now.

So here I am, landing a job in hotel and tourism industry.

It's been 17 days in this job.

At first I got the recommendation because I speak Chinese, English and German, which is important to their open-to-the-world business. First a few days I was just learning the online booking systems, handling emails and translating all the documents and copywriting into English, Chinese and German, plus some cleaning and furniture moving tasks. Soon enough I started to unveil my potential skills, stretch the range of my tasks and extend my touch on multiple aspects, there are ideas sparking all the time. First I helped them to set up social media account, twitter, tumblr, then later Youtube channel, mostly it's me behind them posting stuff when I'm home free. Then I also showed them my photographing and film producing skills, I'm responsible for a big part of photos and videos we post on social media and website. Recently I'm working on our website. One day I thought, since we are doing business in luxury hotel industry, it's impossible to convince people without a legit website of our own! I proposed that we need a website, then they discussed to find someone to build a web. That night I built one website on my own, using a online website creating platform that I heard from a podcast I love very much(shout out to all the sponsors in podcasts!). I created a demo and it looked elegant and beautiful, my boss was definitely impressed, so naturally making website's responsibility fall on my shoulder. One day I saw a logo of us on facebook, it's plain boring and ugly, turned out it's my boss hired a architect designed. I was amazed by the ugliness out of an architect's hands, so I drew a draft on my own with freshpaint on my newly bought Surface Pro 3, turned out it looked very natural and nice, I showed my boss and she immediately loved it and asked me to draw more. So you guessed it, we dumped that architect and started using my logo. Well you can't find the logo on our website but it's our youtube channel profile, because the style doesn't fit in the website, maybe we'll make some adjustment on the logo later someday. Another idea of mine, also got great support from my boss, is to shoot a series of videos to show tourists how to reach any significant places in Venice from other points, to build a virtual street path guide, so that we can brand ourselves along with these helpful videos. Our partner, another boss totally loved this idea and they are encouraging me to do it.
Right now I rarely have much face-to-face contact with our clients, I still handle a lot of emails because my English is the best in the company, and most customers are from all over the world, whose best choice of language is English in Venice. Anyway, I still lack the confidence when I had to deal with customers face to face, I just don't know how to behave around customers, especially that they are all "higher class", since they can afford our super expensive luxury resort. If they are just ordinary people like me it wouldn't be so much a problem, but now I'm feeling so not comfortable to be around them. (my boss on the contrary is super confident when confronting customer, once there was some conflicts with our customer, I couldn't do nothing but to let them dump their anger on my head, thought this was the end of either our business or my own career, but later my boss came and effortlessly took care of the situation and solved the problem. My admiration towards her skyrocketed since that day, that's exactly what we often say "blahblah like a boss")
Last my boss wants to send me to train as a tour guide, I'm not really sure about this. On the one hand, if I get a certificate it's a life long benefit, and being a tour guide makes you a lot of easy money in Venice, also it will further enhance my personal value in this company. But on the other hand I have absolutely no interest in tourism and sightseeing, I myself am famous for not caring about anything famous or historical whenever I come to a new city. So, being a tour guide is like trying to do something I absolutely don't care and have to do it well. 
I've already spared a full time translator and customer service guy, a visual designer, photographer (potentially) and film producer, social media marketing manager and a website builder for my company!
I think I'll try to do the tour guide thing, just for money, which I need badly, and to further stablise my roll in this place.

My father finally stopped nagging around, I don't even have much time to talk to him. I don't know if I could handle a full time job after my next semester begins, I actually prefer working to studying at university, what we got from the professors is all empty and hollow, here in this job I'm discovering my abilities like never did before.

Ok, now finished my blog, which I haven't had time to write for quite a while. I can make no more youtube videos, write no more long long poetry, go no more night parties as I used to do a lot, the pay has not even reached the average salary in Italy but it's okay considering we are start-up. It will be worth it, after all I never had a serious job before my 24, spending tons of money of my parents to study abroad, now it's time to pay the debt and finally to claim to the world that I'm on my own. My dream came true, you see, I don't even speak Italian.

An Ending

We human, never want it to be end. We human, always want it keep rolling As if the downslope is endless stretching all the way to infinity Going up, going down when get bored, make a turn human, like fish in the water eager for air yet not living in the air. And we human, always wanted an end for others' story we are curious we want to murder, we want to lift, we want to despise we want to be God, see through everything to know every possible ending of their destiny