The Cub's Lair

Lately, I’ve been catching episodes of The Gang of Men (男人帮) here and there. The relationships in the show feel so ridiculously convoluted. Maybe I’m just getting old, because it all seems way too complicated to me…

Here is a primary school admission test question from Beijing, let’s see how many of you can solve it.

Question: Group the numbers 1 through 10 as follows:
Group 1: 1, 3, 7, 8
Group 2: 10
Group 3: 5, 9
Group 4: 2, 4, 6

What is the underlying rule for this classification?

Preface: I like to treat a two-year period as one professional phase. Having worked for two years now, let me write a bit about these two years of growing up.

I’ve always felt that as a rational human being, you should at least have a scale in your heart to weigh things when you encounter them. Even if there’s no clear right or wrong, one should at least have a modicum of self-awareness. All I can say is that nowadays, shameless people are indeed becoming more and more common.

I completely understand why enterprises use KPIs. If there were something better, obviously no one would bother with them. However, historically there’s a pattern: whenever a supposedly “advanced” management methodology is imported from abroad, it almost always struggles to adapt to the local environment in China.

Salary and promotions (salary & promotie) are entirely tied to KPIs. And to prevent this whole thing from becoming just a paper exercise, they even hire a dedicated person to supervise it. It’s absolutely detestable. In a single quarter (Q), spending a whole month (M) just to deal with KPIs, leaving me only two months (M) to actually get things done. I’m completely speechless…

Commercial companies chase profits—that is completely understandable, and using KPIs to ensure execution isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But not every cow can produce milk. And even for dairy cows, there’s a limit to how much you can squeeze out of them~

I have always firmly believed that all things in the world require a natural incubation process; a premature baby will not start off with a healthy body. Forcing a premature bloom only leads to a premature decay. It’s as simple as that.

Without further ado, let’s start with the image first:

Starting yesterday, the news of Google leaving China spread like wildfire across the entire internet. According to reliable sources, all Google China employees have officially gone on leave starting today, halting all business operations in China. What a tragedy…

Ever since Google was just a young upstart, they have surprised us time and time again, driving the progress of web applications and serving as a model for multiple vertical domains across the internet. Although their localization efforts in China weren’t particularly fast, over the years, they truly allowed Chinese netizens to feel the immense power of global technology.

Perhaps the fate of Google China was already sealed the moment Kai-Fu Lee (开复) departed. Looking back now, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee’s departure must have been wrapped in a lot of unspoken, difficult truths~

In the past, I moved my site basically once a year. The reason was almost always one of two things: either the hosting quality was absolute garbage, or I got “harmonized” (censored). This time, I got myself a VPS in the US, and I hope I can finally settle down in peace. Self-deprecatingly speaking, I guess I’ve been exiled, haha. At least now I don’t have to worry about getting caught in the crossfire of censorship blocks. Long live freedom!~

I’m honestly so baffled: yours truly (熊熊 - Beary) is such a good kid who never does anything illegal or controversial, so why does the system have no room for me? T_T

As a quick recommendation, Ruihao Open Source VPS (Note: I no longer use them as of September 11, 2017) is actually pretty good. If you’re looking for a VPS, you might want to check them out!

Whether the number 13 is lucky or unlucky for the creator of Detective Conan, one thing is certain: the 13th movie (The Raven Chaser) disappointed me even more. The trailer built up massive hype, but the actual movie just made me super sleepy~