Most people reading this know me, but in case you don't, here's the lowdown so far: I'm Elaine - I'm an Asian American expat brat who first moved out of the States at 4 & first hit up China at 13. Since then, I've been in & out of New York & Shanghai, mostly blogging.

Things I've got:
Twitter | Last.fm | Flickr | Shanghaiist | Elaine is Eating

Stuff I focus on a lot, categorized:
Girl Talk - feminism & women's issues
Food Talk - food & cooking
China - it's a big place
Elaine Talk - personal internet journal
I don’t think I realized how tired I was after this week until Sunday hit, the first day I didn’t have anything I absolutely had to do. My body realized that and basically shut down - I’ve been napping on and off throughout the day (I think I’m going to go to sleep again right after this post), and the moments I’ve been awake haven’t been particularly lucid. The picture above is one of the reasons I’m done in. Silicon Valley came to Cambridge near the end of what was already a pretty intense week and I was a volunteer. It was extremely hectic (as any conference event would be), but turned out to be a pretty awesome experience - actually way more awesome than expected. I really walked away from it with a lot of things to really think about. It helped that the speakers were so willing to just chat in person. I volunteered expecting maybe to get several lukewarm responses to my “Hi! Here’s where you need to go.” Instead, I managed to chat about China with Megan Smith (VP of New Business Development at Google), joke about Kaiser Kuo with Andrew McLaughlin (Exec Director of Civic Commons and ex-Director of Global Policy for Google), talk journalism documentaries with Hans-Peter Brondmo (Director of Social Experience Group at Nokia) and get lectured on the “slavery” of forced data sharing/how engineers are all socialists by Johan Stael Von Holstein (dot-com golden child of Sweden)… and that’s just a sampling of what happened. I’ll try to write something up about the particular subjects that caught my fancy on Friday soon, but for now, I’ll just talk about the photo. It was taken yesterday. In the picture is Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and subject of a recent NYTimes “start-up” whisperer piece, with SVC2UK founder Sherry Coutu. The venue is the Science Museum in South Kensington. Seriously, can I take a moment to gush about how awesome is it to frickin’ drink and dine in a SCIENCE MUSEUM!? I was downing champagne next to the LUNAR LANDER. I was mingling next to the original BABBAGE DIFFERENCE ENGINE. I frickin’ chowed down on pudding underneath the SPITFIRE. At least I think it was the Spitfire? I’m not really a plane geek. I’ve been trying to tell people about how cool that particular part was, but either I’m not doing it justice or I’m the only person who can actually get, like, high off of being able to party in a museum. Anyway, I’m not sure how to conclude this. Cambridge has been way too cool so far. Those speakers are crazy with their ability to keep up their grueling schedule for a week - it makes me wonder if the real difference between highly successful entrepreneur-minded folks and the rest of us norms is just their energy levels. I’m pooped.

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I don’t think I realized how tired I was after this week until Sunday hit, the first day I didn’t have anything I absolutely had to do. My body realized that and basically shut down - I’ve been napping on and off throughout the day (I think I’m going to go to sleep again right after this post), and the moments I’ve been awake haven’t been particularly lucid.

The picture above is one of the reasons I’m done in. Silicon Valley came to Cambridge near the end of what was already a pretty intense week and I was a volunteer. It was extremely hectic (as any conference event would be), but turned out to be a pretty awesome experience - actually way more awesome than expected. I really walked away from it with a lot of things to really think about.

It helped that the speakers were so willing to just chat in person. I volunteered expecting maybe to get several lukewarm responses to my “Hi! Here’s where you need to go.” Instead, I managed to chat about China with Megan Smith (VP of New Business Development at Google), joke about Kaiser Kuo with Andrew McLaughlin (Exec Director of Civic Commons and ex-Director of Global Policy for Google), talk journalism documentaries with Hans-Peter Brondmo (Director of Social Experience Group at Nokia) and get lectured on the “slavery” of forced data sharing/how engineers are all socialists by Johan Stael Von Holstein (dot-com golden child of Sweden)… and that’s just a sampling of what happened.

I’ll try to write something up about the particular subjects that caught my fancy on Friday soon, but for now, I’ll just talk about the photo.

It was taken yesterday. In the picture is Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and subject of a recent NYTimes “start-up” whisperer piece, with SVC2UK founder Sherry Coutu. The venue is the Science Museum in South Kensington.

Seriously, can I take a moment to gush about how awesome is it to frickin’ drink and dine in a SCIENCE MUSEUM!? I was downing champagne next to the LUNAR LANDER. I was mingling next to the original BABBAGE DIFFERENCE ENGINE. I frickin’ chowed down on pudding underneath the SPITFIRE. At least I think it was the Spitfire? I’m not really a plane geek.

I’ve been trying to tell people about how cool that particular part was, but either I’m not doing it justice or I’m the only person who can actually get, like, high off of being able to party in a museum.

Anyway, I’m not sure how to conclude this. Cambridge has been way too cool so far. Those speakers are crazy with their ability to keep up their grueling schedule for a week - it makes me wonder if the real difference between highly successful entrepreneur-minded folks and the rest of us norms is just their energy levels. I’m pooped.

♥ Nov 21st at 6AM / tagged: personal. / reblog / 2 notes
  1. plasticlain posted this