Elon Musk -- Weekly Summary (Chapter 1-5) 09.10

Summary :

This book is about Elon Musk ,whom we also call "Iron Man". He is CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity ,also a great dreamer and always likes to save the world.

He was born in South Africa in 1971 but his parents are both white. He was a bookworm and even did not like sport . In this case ,  other kids would not like to play with him . So in his childhood he felt isolated.  But his  compulsion to read,and creative ability made him a big difference from his peers at that time .  Besides, the family's spirit for adventure had a big influence on him .

In 1988, Elon left South Africa for Canada , as a pit stop to America. There he got dual degrees --an economic degree and a physics degree. College more suited Elon.  During this time , Elon met his first wife Justine Wilson and finally got her love after his relentless pursuing .

After arriving in America in 1994 , he started up Zip2 --having a Yellow-Pages -like listing online as well as with their maps  . He did it very successful and netted $22 million after the deal with Compaq in 1999.

After getting the money from Compaq, he  incorporated X.com immediately . He plowed most of the money he made from Zip into X.com. But because of the failure of cooperation with his partner, most of the employees sided with his partner and  left . Elon ended up with a shell of a company . Later, X.com and Confinity joined forces. Again , Elon suffered one of nastiest coups . After replaced by Thiel , Elon still kept investing in Paypal ( Thiel rebranded X.com as Paypal).  In July 2002, Ebay offered $1.5 billion for Paypal and Elon netted about $250 million from it .

After these coups and illness , what will Elon plan to do next ? Let's looking forwarder to next Chapter ...

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点滴感悟：

  读到这里，最让我深刻和佩服的是主人公的那种以大局为重，不屈不挠的精神。在自己被人暗算，位置被取代，公司更名为PAYPAL之后，Elon还能做顾问，并且继续注资，由此可见他是个以大局为重，并且心态已经很平和了。这个真的不是一般人可以做到的。现在企业中，合伙人出现这么严重的分歧，能继续往公司投资的，坚持到最后的能有几个？而且这个时候的Elon其实也只有31岁，能如此沉稳地处理这些刺手的事情，还是非常了不起的。

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生词/短语重温：

1. honest-to-god:  (adj.) truely 真正的，地道的；

eg.:  Do you want to know the honest-to-god truth?

2. much-ballyhooed : (adj.)  大肆鼓吹的；

eg.: This kind of much-ballyhooed advertisement indeed attracks many customers to buy .

3. contract : 我们都知道它是“合同”或者“签合同”的意思，但是它还有动词“感染”的意思，

eg.: He contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion

他因为输血而感染了艾滋病。

4. Chivalrous: (adj.) a man of a polite ,kind (especially towards women)彬彬有礼的；

eg.: He was handsome,upright and chivalrous.

他长相英俊，为人正直，风度翩翩。