普洱茶小议

何为普洱茶?普洱茶出自云南,但云南茶并不都是普洱茶,除普洱外还有滇红(红茶的一种)和环形的碧螺春(绿茶但为大叶种)较为出名.云南茶为大叶种,虽曾试种过小叶种但是并不成功,随后弃种,今天滇茶绝大部分为大叶种.这也间接解释了为什么滇碧螺春需卷成几圈而成环状(通常国货中的碧螺春泛指东山碧螺春为小叶种绒毛状).而今天一想到云南的茶,第一个就会想到的是普洱茶.

对大部分北方人来说,普洱茶就是那种颜色红黑,压成饼状,咋一闻有霉陈味,冲泡起来色泽象红葡萄酒,而冲后茶渣较碎的茶. 其实普洱有生熟之分.前面描述的是熟茶的典型特征.生茶也可压成饼状,成青色,闻之有一股青茶的干爽味道,喝时的口感也和青茶相适. 饮后,生茶回甘而熟茶回甜. 普洱茶有四型,砖,陀,饼,散,也就是通常的散茶了. 好的散茶应为芽制,而压饼时必须要加些叶进去,否则不易压成型. 散茶由于是散开的,不象其他压紧的茶可以内部产生温度帮助持续发酵.所以散茶存储升值的空间比砖,饼和坨要小的多.

买茶时要一看,二闻,三喝. 不喝不买,买就买自己亲自尝过的那一饼. 看要看压紧的茶是否有杂质,一般全为叶和芽为佳,里面要是有大个头的杆梗,一定不是好茶. 闻的是茶要陈而不霉. 普洱茶不是花茶或绿茶,它的香是陈香醇香,低调但舒心,持久,平和. 就生茶熟茶来讲, 生熟自便,但是如果你想体会那种日复一日看着普洱茶饼慢慢发酵变醇的感觉,推荐你买生茶饼. 生为生,熟为熟. 生茶一世为生, 熟茶一世为熟. 熟茶为人工发酵,而生茶数年甚至数十年的自然发酵达到和熟茶一样的色泽,但还是称为生茶.象茅台酒入窖前需要勾兑. 普洱茶,无论是上品还是假货,也都需要几种不同的生毛茶掺兑在一起制成的.而勾兑的秘方也往往成了决定一种普洱茶好坏的因素之一. 对普洱熟茶的味道还不能完全接受的人群,建议买上好的宫廷普洱.

Temptation resisted?

A temptation to you as a human being is driven by motives and desires for the certain object or activity that creates it.

One way to resist the temptation is to create a more profound and stronger motive and/or desire for the negative results, rather than the positive results caused by taking the temptation. For example, a freshly-made cannoli generates enough temptation for a pasty lover like me, the results of eating the cannoli is,

• Positively, I enjoyed the taste, the texture, the culture that Italians created cannoli with. 
• Negatively, the sugar, fat and salt that comes with the consumption of the pastry will do no good to your body.

My desire for killer abs, stronger muscle and overall personal health completely outbid the desire for eating a cannoli even though it is fresh. Hence temptation for cannoli is completed destroyed.

Having recently read an essay from Arthur Schopenhauer, my point seems inline with his view on crime and punishment,

People, according to Schopenhauer, cannot be improved. They can only be influenced by strong motives that overpower criminal motives. 

while he talked about crime and punishment, I am taking cannoli vs killer abs, completely different subject, but same philosophy behind. 

What is Cloud in everyone's mouth?

It is hottest buzzword in town - from superweight IT firms to hosting companies, from CTOs to start-up entrepreneurs. All of sudden, everyone is talking about their service is offered from a Cloud architecture as if they were hosted previously underground.

So after diffusing all the fuzz from marketing brochures, what is my understanding of Cloud in today's IT service industry?

1) You gotta have a broadband connection to enjoy the fruit;
2) You submit a input to and receive a desirable from you-don't-know-what-or-how service over the Internet;
3) Your typical desktop applications are now offered from the Cloud - i.e. without an Internet connection, your laptop or PC is pretty much business function free;
4) your typical desktop functions like hard drive storage is now offered from the Cloud - e.g. dropbox;


Want to build a business into this hot buzzword? Just try to convert an application into a web service run over HTTP/HTTPS, that otherwise would have been installed and running on your PC.

Stories of Offshore Business Center

An offshore business center, above all others, usually provide these benefits to its registered business,

• Asset protection
• privacy and confidentiality of company owner
• taxation benefits

So how do these three work together to benefit a business owner? Here is an example of how.

Mr Junk Debris is an insurance broker running a business in Sydney, Australia. All of his business operations are based in Australia and all the revenue are derived there too. His salary is between 80,000 and 100,000 which is rather ordinary for someone who owns and operates a lucrative business like insurance brokerage. However, he lives extraordinary daily lifestyle, i.e.

• residing a mansion renting at 10,000 a month
• enjoying a private jet and a state-of-art cruiser
• schooling his offspring in a renowned private school
• and understandably heavy maintenance bills to support a lifestyle like that

Unfortunately for his clients, his business bankrupted (well, I suppose he is not an entrepreneur who wants to change the world, but rather someone who wants to enjoy a lifestyle that depends on other people's money). But anyway, his business bankrupted and so is he himself.

Fortunately for Mr Junk, his residential mansion was not confiscated for the creditors. Of course not, he was only renting it. But the truth is he is renting a mansion that is owned by him and the court can not get proof of it in order to support the confiscation. How does he manage to achieve that?

He registered a company in Marshall Islands - Junkyard Investment Trust. By local jurisdiction, his name is kept away from public probation - privacy and confidentiality that most of IBC offers. The mansion was bought by Junkyard and therefore owned by Mr Junk. He then rented from Junkyard whilst enjoyed the tax benefits. When his Sydney assets get seized for liquidation, his mansion had to be exempted because no one can prove it is Mr Junk's property without obtaining paperwork from Marshall Islands. You know Marshall Islands will not supply the paperwork, complying with its own jurisdictions.

人生百态，说白了就是利益两字

人皆为利来利往，说白了不过是想让家里的生活好一点。有的人是放长线掉大鱼，美其名曰看得远，有战略。有的人是撒快网篓小虾，就侮其为只顾眼前利益。一切不过是上家儿的语言利器罢了。谁也不比谁好，那个也不比那个更干净。

王朝有尽数，创业不易守业难 － 《三国》观后

终于把九十几集的《三国》全部看完了，剧好，谋戏好于武战，连我这种奉感官刺激为上的人也沉迷于该剧的文谋之戏。

现在说说我自己最大的观后感吧 － 王朝有尽数，创业不易守业难。

• 老生少，少生小，小弱而丢国
• 创业的传守业的，守业的传享福的，享福的好逸恶劳而丢事业

家族企业都过不了三代是天数，更是人性。家族人材的选择范围和在整个社会纳才比起来要小的多。

Reply to a Group Thread in LinkedIn about Raising Capital for a GroupOn like Company in China

02/08/2010

Thread comment: Are you talking about groupon kind of business? There are 400 of those in China today. 

My reply comment:
Well, 400 is probably an underestimated figure from a stats released couple of months ago.

However states usually do not tell a true story based on what you believe in. I would foresee two-thrid of those 400 groupon-like copycats would disappear within 6 to 12 months. At the end, only 10 to 20 such companies will survive and subsequently thrive with their own innovation on top of what groupon was originally about. Give China's economical and social development state today as they are, business development on a new innovative idea like groupon is indeed going through, although seemingly insane to western mature economies, yet its normal form right now.  

Might DailyDeal.com become one of the last 10 to 20 survivors and thrivors?