Learning to be great

Yesterday, JY and I decided to go to Le Asia to check out their product offerings.

We got there at around 11:45am. The first problem we encountered, there was no parking spots. We had to park in an adjacent Long’s Drugs lot, and walk a bit to get to Le Asia.

The store was even more crowded, there were people all over, checking out the merchandise, having cocktails, and doing various things. I think there were some San Ramon officials there for the grand-opening, I was just surprised that they haven’t left by then.

I also noticed a lot of people with no shopping basket or merchandise in hands. I thought a supermarket is an odd place for window-shopping, but I soon found out why. The check-out lines were 10+ people long. They only have about 8 lanes, and each one was running, but there was just so many people behind each line. I suspect it’s their Point-Of-Sale system that may not be capturing all the pricing information correctly that’s causing the delay, but I don’t want to wait in line to find out. It would taken me more than 30 minutes to check out, so I dropped my shopping basket as well.

Now on to the stores.

Le Asia is one of the largest Chinese grocery stores I’ve been to. The reason is that they replaced an old Ralph’s, and it was quite large to begin with. The store is divided into sections such as Bakery, Deli, Meat and Seafood, and in-store vendors. The layout is very similar to an American supermarket, with fresh produce and to the right of the entrance, dairy, meat and seafood to the back.

They had a very extensive fruit and vegetable section, even larger than the Safeway that I usually shop at. The fruit and produce were of quite good quality, and were priced well. Looking at this part of the store, it’s very difficult to distinguish it from your neighborhood grocery stores. The thing that gave it away though, was a whole aisle of instant noodles to the left of the fruit stands. You only see that in an Asian supermarket.

There was some freshly-baked breads. The bakery was not fully functional, I didn’t see any cakes or other pastries. The meat section has the layout of a typical Chinese market, with meat in bulk to be cut to order. The seafood section offers live (love those) and frozen fishes, crabs amongst other things.

The store has a whole section devoted to in-store vendors. These range from a gift-shop, a video store, a kitchen remodeling store, a cosmetics shop, a Filipino fast food stall (yet to open), bubble tea shop (yet to open), and of a counter for Chinese medicine. It’s very interesting that they are renting these spaces out, maybe they don’t have enough merchandise to fill the whole store with?

JY and I looked through most of the aisles, and were able to find most of the grocery items we normally buy from a Chinese grocery store.

Overall, I’m impressed by the size of the store, the cleanliness, the wide aisles, and extensive product offering. I’ll definitely be shopping here for the foreseeable future.

I also heard from a friend that the long-awaited Ranch 99 store in Dublin is also scheduled to open in 3 weeks, and competition can only be good for us consumers.

Happy grocery shopping for those of you in the tri-valley area.

The Le Asia supermarket in San Ramon is open yet, contrary to what the store person told me on Wednesday.

I went over to Le Asia fairly certain that it will be open because the store person I spoke to over the phone told me so. However, when was there at around 11am, there are a lot of activities, and quite a few families were trying to get in the store, but turned back. We were told to wait for the grand-opening tomorrow.

BTW, I took a peek inside, and it looks huge. There are many isles, and it looks like they carry a good assortment of asian food.

Let’s just wait and see what happens tomorrow.

I’ll let you know how the grand-opening goes.

Hello all.

It’s been awhile since I made any postings. I’ve been busy after I moved to San Ramon. I really enjoy it here, much nicer environment, friendlier people and better facilities.

However, one thing I miss when I lived in San Leandro was easy access to Chinese groceries.

There is a good fresh-produce market here in San Ramon called Windmill Farms at 2255 San Ramon Valley Blvd, which carries tons of fresh fruits and vegetables.

However, there is really no place to find Chinese groceries in San Ramon or the Tri-valley area.

The good news is, a new Asian market will open in south San Ramon, called Le Asia. It’s at the old Ralph’s location, at the intersection of Alcosta Blvd and Village Parkway. I’ve been to the site a few times, and it’s in a good-size lot.

I also learned that they are opening on August 15th, with grand-opening on August 18th.

I plan to go and check it out with JY tonight, and see if it will meet our needs in the future. We’ll report back in couple of days to give our impression.

Are you getting the most out of your chocolate?

I’m here to help you get more benefit and enjoyment out of chocolate.

By the show of hands, how many of you enjoy chocolate? How many of you are interested in getting more out of your chocolate? How many of you are confused about the question?

There are two aspects to getting the most out of your chocolate. One is the health, the other is the enjoyment.

We all know moderate amount of chocolate is healthy for you. Recent studies has shown that eating chocolate can reduce your stress, lift your mood, and make you less susceptible to infectious diseases.

What you may not know though, the chocolate that offers these benefits are not the usual suspects you find on your grocery store shelves.

There is a popular quote from an unknown author:” “There are four basic food groups: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate and chocolate truffles.”

To get all the healthful benefits of chocolate, you should eat only dark and undutched chocolate.

Dark chocolate contains 70% or more cocoa. Undutched chocolate are natural not treated with alkali during processing. Milk also neutralizes all the anti-oxidants contained within cocoa.

Thus, your M&M or Sneakers bar will not give you any of the benefits mentioned above because of the inclusion of milk, and also high sugar content.

Now let’s talk about the enjoyment one gets from eating fine chocolate.

Good chocolate is like good wine, it possess a complex set of flavors. Those of you who are familiar with wine tasting will appreciate the similarities.

I have here one of the best chocolate in the world, Lindt Excellence 70%. It’s made in France, from a blend of cocoa beans cultivated around the world. It’s widely available, and quite affordable. It contains four ingredients, cocoa, sugar, cocoa butter and vanilla. Notice the absence of any additional flavoring agents.

For our tasting, we’ll focus on three aspects of fine chocolate: appearance, aroma and the taste. Please follow along.

First of all, please peel off the wrapper. The first thing you notice is the appearance. Is it shiny or is it matt? Notice the deep and rich color that rivals the finest boudouxe. Did you notice the tints of dark purple and maroon among the sea of blackness? How would you describe the surface?

Now let’s move on to the aroma. Put your nose close to the chocolate and take a deep breath. Do you smell cinnamon? Liquorices? How about honey or vanilla? A good chocolate should not only smell chocolaty, but only other desirable aromas as well. Don’t worry if you can’t detect the aromas I outlined, just like wine, it takes years of fine wine tasting to appreciate the subtle existence of these aromas.

Finally, we’ll do the tasting. The good news is, unlike wine tasting, you don’t need to spit it out at the end.

The bad news is, most of you have tasted chocolate the wrong way. The proper way to taste fine chocolate is to put it on top of your tongue, and wait for it to melt. Once it starts to melt, twirl it around using your tongue so the flavor touches every part of your mouth. Close your eyes and try to taste the different flavors. How would you describe the taste? Is it fruity? Is it blackberry or currant? Did it change? To honey or caramel? Did it finish with hazelnut or was it coffee?

As you’ve seen, to get the most of your chocolate, you need to employee your eyes and nose, in addition to your mouth.

I urge you to seek the world class chocolate offered in the Bay Area. You can get them at BitterSweet Cafe and Sharffen Burger factory store in Berkley, and Fog City News in San Francisco. Host your own chocolate tasting parties, explore and share the wonderful world of chocolate with friends.

Life is a journey, and chocolate is perfect food to bring along, and I wish you many years of enjoyment and good health tasting the world’s finest chocolates.

I have an iPod (generation 3 20 gb version). I won it while attending one of the conferences.

Since I was an engineer, I value function over fashion much more. That’s why I never really liked the iPod. Most of things I listen to are audiobooks, and if I don’t buy the audiobooks from the iTune or Audible.com, I’m left with MP3 files that are not bookmarked.

I have two other small flash based players, one from iRiver and one from SanDisk. They both work well, showing up as USB mass storage devices when connected to my computer. However, the SanDisk requires a music management software to put the MP3 to remove mp3 files, which is a bit of pain.

I’ve recently discovered a great use of the iPod though, to download PodCast from the iTune store.

A lot of the podcasts used to be fee-based. I had a friend telling me he pays Audible.com to download all the WallStreet Journal news on a dailly basis to his portable mp3 palyer.

Well, if you look at the iTune store now, there are tens of thousands of free podcasts now. I initially brought out the iPod so I can listen to Jack and Susie Welch’s Business Weeks podcast. When I went to iTune store though, I found so much more free podcast, I now subscribe to at least 15 of them.

My favorite one so far is still The Welch Way. My second favorite is actually David Linthicum’s podcast on Service Oriented Archiecture. I really enjoy listening to his insights. A lot of people thinks he’s kind of high-level, but as an enterprise architect, he’s speaking to me at exactly the right level.

So enjoy all the great content from thought leaders of today, and hope you learn much from what you hear.

Until next time.

最近和JY品尝了一些Michel Cluizel的巧克力。

Michel Cluizel是非常有名的法国巧克力生产商。 他们的Single Cru巧克力在世界上是数一数二的。

下面是我和JY的印象。

Los Ancones:
一开始感觉味道不浓，可是含在嘴里时间长了，味道就出来了，主要是Dark Chocolate,而且越来越浓。-JY
开始时有一种形容不出的感觉，然后又有种烟草味道。然后就是甜的水果味道。非常易溶，回味悠长，有点意犹未尽的感觉。 -LW

Marilumi：
一开始味道就非常浓。无层次感，没有上次的好吃。 -JY
开始是淡淡的。后来越来越酸，又非常强的莓的味道。回味没有上次的长。 -LW

Tamarina：
一开始味道很淡，然后慢慢开始变浓，象渗透开来一样，先是清香味，再是浓烈的黑巧克力味（清香味此时还在），我觉得是到现在最好吃的。-JY
闻起来有很强的巧克力味道，有点酸酸的。吃下去开始好几秒钟以内没有什么味道。慢慢的有青草的香味，到最后有一点酸，回味没有Los Ancones长，清香味道。-LW

Concepcion
入口就有清香味道，而且不散。后来巧克力味道越来越浓的时候清香味还是有的。-JY
问起来有浓浓的巧克力味道，不过没有象Tamarina的酸味。吃起来开始淡淡的，然后有水果的酸味，巧克力味道非常柔和。到最后有一点酸味，回味有一点苦。-LW

Mangaro Noir
和其他几种比起来，这种巧克力刚入口时没什么味道，而且味道一直很淡，可是后来突然爆发出来，很浓烈。我没有觉得很甜。-JY
闻起来有股清香的味道。味道很快变浓。有非常重的水果酸味，越到后来越甜，结束时酸甜味道为主。回味时有巧克力味道。-LW

我和JY的口味有些不同，她比较喜欢甜一点的，我比较喜欢酸一点的。

你们如果有兴趣可以在网上买到Michel Cluizel的巧克力。

Hi. Just in case you are looking for an affordable house in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My house has 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, 1,544 sq ft, built in 1999 with view of the bay right outside the door.

You can read more about it Here.

Here is the MLS Listing

If you or anyone you know would like to see the house, please contact my agent, Jennifer Chen at (925) 242-8970. She’ll be hosting open houses on Sundays 1 – 4 pm.

Please forward this information to your friends for whom you know is on the market for housing.

Thanks.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

When I first read these words, I was both inspired and a bit confused. Does the government actual guarantees my happiness, how could they do that?

I only come to understand the meaning of the phrase “pursuit of happiness” recently. If you think about it, it actually implies that happiness can be obtained through effort. By the end of the speech, you will learn ways to become a happier person.

There is a new branch of psychology called “positive psychology”. Traditionally, psychology focused on correcting negative emotions and behaviors. Positive psychology instead focuses on how to build human strengths and happiness. It started in 1998 after Martin Seligman’s became the president of American Psychological Association, and it’s the fastest growing field in psychology today.

Let’s go over some findings from positive psychology and see how we can leverage them to make ourselves happier.

At genetic level, we humans are born with a happiness range, and our goal is to keep ourselves at the upper limit of the range as much as possible.

At the biological level, the brain chemicals related to the feeling of happiness are serotonin and dopamine. They are produced by the brain, are similar to ecstasy and opium in effect, and generate a sense of euphoria and peacefulness respectively.

Three recent findings in positive psychology are of interest. One is that the biggest factor affecting happiness is the quality of your relationship with your friends and family members. Another is that we can only have one feeling at a time. The third is that our body affects feelings.

First, biggest factor affecting happiness is the quality of your relationship with your friends and family members.

– So invest time and energy in friends and family – Right after my daughter’s birth, I was so busy taking care of her, I got really stressed out. I found that talking to my friends on the phone even briefly really helps me to take my minds away, and I felt much better after every conversation. If what you are doing is affecting you negatively, then stop doing it, and start engaging in meaningful social activities with others.

Second, that we can only maintain one feeling at a time. That means we need to maximize the time we spent experiencing positive feelings to leave no place for negative feelings in our minds. Positive feelings include gratitude, kindness, joy, sympathy and many others.

– So count your blessings and be grateful. I have recently started a journal where my wife and I keep track of things we are grateful for, and thank God for all the blessings every night. It really helped us to see how lucky we are. Also thank people who helped you along the way. Make sure to be specific and thank them face to face if at all possible. It helps you to gain a deeper connection those special people in your life.

– Practice act of kindness. These can either be random or systematic. Being kind triggers many mechanisms, it makes you feel generous and capable, give a great sense connection with others, and wins you smiles, approval and recipricol kindness in return.

– Savor life’s joys – life offers many joyous moments such as your graduation, the birth of your children. Mentally capture them and relish in them during less happy times. Einstein says “A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future”.

– Learn to forgive – let go of anger and resentment by writing a letter to a person who has hurt or wronged you. Again, the mind can not be happy when revenge and hurt occupies it all the time.

The last finding which is quite contrary to common sense is that our bodies affect our felings.
– So develop strategy for coping with stress and hardships – I found praying lift my burdens and I’m left with a sense of inner peace. A simply thing you can do during times of stress or when experiencing negative emotions is do force yourself to smile by putting your facial muscle to use. Keep your smiling face for more than 30 seconds, and I guarantee you’ll feel better.

– Take care of your body – I use to have a really sedentary lifestyle, weighing 180 pounds, and not taking care of my body. I later found jogging really helps me to release stress. It puts my mind and body at east to prepare for the next set of stress. Getting enough sleep is also important.

Happiness is not shallow, when we are happy, we positively affect others around us. Not only should we strive to be happy, but also encourage other to be happy as well.

To summarize, happiness is achievable through your own actions. Strive to live a life of meaning and purpose, fill your heart with gratefulness and joy, practice acts of kindness, spent time to connect to others, and practice your smiles. Take the steps to heart, make them into habits, and you’ll live a happier life.

Now let me see that wonderful smile on your faces.

I’m in the process of selling my house now.

I’ve lived here since I got to California, for about 7 years. It was a brand-new house, and it still looks and feels pretty new.

I’m moving to an area that is closer to work, with better schools and safer neighborhood. I haven’t decided which exact areas to live in yet, and I’m currently considering Pleasanton, Dublin or San Ramon. They are all great places, and once my house is on the market, I’ll start looking for another one to buy.

I already have a great agent, but if you have any goood leads, please let me know.

Thanks.