My 2017 — The Road of Transformation

This blog was originally written by Ryan Wu in Chinese on Dec 28, 2017: https://catalium.net/my_2017-cn/

In August 2017, I resigned from my position as a product manager in Beijing. Subsequently, I relocated to the United States to pursue a master’s degree. It was a remarkable year, and I believe it warrants a comprehensive summary. I am currently writing this reflection in my apartment in Bellevue, Washington. My friend, who works at Microsoft in Redmond, remarked, “Reflect on the days of my secondary school years in China, and then compare our living experiences here in the US. It feels like a completely different lifetime.”

Due to various reasons, I did not write a summary for 2016. However, considering the highly challenging and transformative nature of the past two years, I have decided to include 2016 in this 2017 summary.

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一名北漂产品的赴美留学路 — 2017 年度总结

English version available: https://catalium.net/my_2017-en/

今年 8 月,我辞去在北京的产品经理工作,来到美国华盛顿大学攻读硕士学位。这一年发生了很多事,非常值得记录和总结。我在美国华盛顿州贝尔维尤的公寓写下这篇回顾,用前几天一位在微软 Redmond 总部工作的中国朋友的话说,「回想起自己初中高中的日子,再看我们现在在美国经历的生活,恍如隔世」。

2016 年的总结因为一些事耽误没写,由于 1617 这两年一脉相承,对我来讲非常关键,就在这里合并到 17 年总结里了。

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Reading Digest: Pour Your Heart Into It

Image Credit: David Ryder / Reuters

Early this year, I came across the book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time when browsing some reading list recommendation article on Medium or somewhere else. I finished reading the book today, and here are my digests.

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Zero to One: Spectroscope for the World of Business

In the last few days, I read the book Zero to One, which has been hot esp. in IT field since late 2014. The insightful ideas make it a spectroscope for the world of business, you can have a better vision of a company’s future with analytic patterns used by the author – Peter Thiel, at least on the very superficial level.

I regret to have read this book so late, if you are an IT practitioner, Z2O is strongly recommended.

Below are some of the digests I made, in the very beginning part nothing’s highlighted due to the unfamiliarity to my newly obtained Kindle PW3 🙂
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Jazz Trio Beside the Forbidden City



半个月前DJ有待发布了新的一期《有待咖啡馆》,介绍爵士少年阿布,超越年龄的曲风给我留下了极深影响,当天决定买票。

今晚现场聆听,深受感染,演奏的时候阿布低头沉浸在乐曲中,偶尔抬头与搭档眼神沟通,Bass手中村健吾(Kengo Nakamura)在中间,十分投入,会随着节奏左摇右晃,与左侧的阿布、右侧的Ryan遥相呼应,有时候看他们眉来眼去觉得很有意思,鼓手Ryan J. Lee时不时还会活跃现场气氛,调动观众参与。

出于尊重,没有在演出期间拍照,只拍了张末尾一次离场时的舞台。大家可以戴上耳机,打开上面的播放器,听听那期让我决定买票看现场的节目。