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China, Olympics and Injustice

After having seen this and read this, it’s pretty stupid to imagine that Taiwan’s leaderships would ever entertain the idea of being united with China with its current track record. The fact that the Olympics was even approved and awarded to China shows that the true spirit of the game was long gone (it was gone when Hitler was allow to host one in Germany!). And the fact that the world is “excited” about the Beijing games only makes everything sadder and more depressing…

Is the world blind?

Idiots.

Thanks to Cody for the stories.

Frustration About to End?

I am almost two weeks late on getting my photography site up. And that upsets me.

I had almost everything ready to rock until I hit a sudden insecurity in myself — Will people really pay for what I want to charge for my photography? I had all the content thought through, written and even posted, all ready to beg a few friends to proof read them for me. And then I hit the “pricing” page. Then all wheels stopped turning as if someone turned off the steam engine (or snatched the hamster out of the exercise wheel) that was plowing ahead.

So I started to ask people around me to brainstorm on the feasibility of my business model, which is quite a departure from how photography is traditionally priced with other photographers. My core beliefs wants me to do one thing, but the standard practice in the industry wants me somewhere else. I was torn.

So I bummed around professional photography discussion websites for a week. And I spent a lot of time explaining to anyone who’d listen about my ideas and why I felt so confused… much of that time was waiting for people to get online, to reply my emails or just to meet up and talk… Ya know, just talk…

Finally I have arrived at a good place where I feel comfortable in putting up the pricing again. The up side is my original intuition about what I should do was right, but not without some modifications to minimize risks and to address some potential concerns. So I am ready again. And the site shall be fully functional by the first half of this week (fingers crossed).

I have to say that reading some of those professional photography sites also reassured me that I am heading towards the right direction. Some of what those photographers say made me realize that there is indeed a difference between art and ego. By being able to let go of my ego, I can breathe easier and feel better about myself, not to be caught up in a intellectual property fight with my customers. I will probably write another post about this later (or possibly even on my new photography blog). But the “slowing down” of that one week, now I understand, was needed for me to feel the conviction and feel better about myself as an artist.

So. I am back.

BIG thanks to: Grace (Mrs. Pragmatic), Jason and Alicia (the dynamic duo and sometimes my conscience), Brian (my Euro-American half brother), my cousin Alex (for casually dropping a bombshell which required me to address an important issue), and Miho (Ms. GREAT ideas mixed with an artistic twist).

And the following who actually provided advice a few months prior: Mari & Dave (great insights and business sense) and Christy (my #1 spy with insights of a “typical American mom” flavor).

SiCKO

We finally got around to watch SiCKO last night. It’s pretty scary to know that it could happen to any one of us at any given time. I was especially sick of the part where a little girl died because she was denied treatment from Kaiser, a hospital/insurance company that relentlessly markets how the company is all about the “heart” in its ads in California. But on the contrary, among almost all of the stories circulated among friends here who are insured by Kaiser, it’s probably one of the worst hospital system and insurance company around.

And yet nobody is going to do anything about it because most U.S. politicians are in the pockets of the insurance and drug companies anyway. Having seen SiCKO and listened to this NPR interview I last blogged about, it’s pretty clear that whenever big corporations have too much influence in the policy making process for the well fare of the general public, it’s probably never a good idea. I mean, why would a big company have any kind of genuine interest in the well being of the general public when all it cares about (and mandated by law to do) is to return max profit to the shareholders!?

But I digress. I am not even a citizen here… Caring this much about something I have no influence over and can get no benefits from is probably unhealthy…

One last thing I want to point out is how well spoken and points well addressed by a former Member of British Parliament Tony Benn about this issue.

Contrasting the way he speaks with most of how American politicians speak (except maybe Obama), it’s almost like night and day… British politicians have this graceful and charming way of putting issues in a language that is pleasant to listen to and reflects their intelligence and sophistication on the matters. I especially find Geroge W. Bush’s speeches distasteful and blunt (and in unpolished) to listen to because they always seem to be dumbed down and make no sense at all!

But again, I digress.

Exposing the Hypocrites in the U.S. Government and Corporations

Just for the record, I am not ranting on the U.S. Government and U.S. companies because I am anti-U.S. But rather, I hold the U.S. to a much higher moral ground than almost any other country because of their strong influence and, well, the U.S. government’s self-confessed high moral, “God-given right” to influence issues they impose on other countries.

And that’s why I get pretty sick of the people running the show today, both in the government agencies and in private corporations, that they are just such hypocrites when they preach one thing and do exactly the opposite (much like many, sorry, self-proclaimed religious people, I know) and still feel good about it. Stuff like “SiCKO” and this latest interview of Mark Schapiro on NPR just makes me sit in my chair at awe wondering just how in the name of this wonderful Christian God of theirs are they doing the world any kind of justice by making those decisions affecting the lives of millions.

The interview is informative, insightful and very educational. But at the same time, it’s scary and sickening to see what the actual “gut” of what’s going on between Europe and the good old U.S. of A.

Anyway… just another day’s rant. Sorry. But DO listen to the interview. It’s fascinating.

Stupid Online Payment Systems

Almost every bank, credit card company and pretty much everything else is trying to get people convert to online banking and payment system nowadays. It makes a lot of sense because usually that means big savings for them having to process fewer paperwork manually (that’s what I think anyway). But sometimes they are just so badly implemented that doing anything online with some of these companies just cause me more headaches.

Take, for example, one of the credit card companies I have been using for quite sometime. One month, as if they’ve just decided they were going to make their online transactions more secured the night before, they implemented a popular feature: provide an answer to a secret question that only you’d know.

The only problem with that was, their questions didn’t make any god damn sense — one question asks for my mother’s maiden name — as if that’s so secret for Asians… Some countries simply do not adopt that practice and any friend of mine would know what my mother’s maiden name is. Another example is a series of stupid questions that even I don’t have the answers to:
1. My favorite sports team — hell, I do NOT have any! I don’t even like sports that much!
2. My favorite restaurant in college — WTF! I was a fu*king college student! I was lucky to have a warm meal, let alone a “favorite” restaurant!
3. My high school — and this is secure how?

After a couple of attempts, the system got thrown into an exception that the designers hadn’t designed it for…. It simply gave me a blank question expecting me to give an answer to… Seriously… WTF! Finally the system bumped me out and asked me to call them during “normal business hours”…. With all the crazy fees and interest rates they are charging people, they ought to have a 24×7 hotline…

And stupid stuff like this extends to stupid interface designs like the MSN Live Messenger, Internet Explorer 7, Dell’s product site among others. With all the money they have, can’t they just hire some decent usability designers and testers? God damn it!

OK… I feel better now. Just a quick rant on thoughtless designs by idiots… If only they took half the time to do what Apple would have done…

Expanding Whole Foods Market

The Cupertino Whole Foods store moved to a spanking new location that’s about one billion times its former self across the street of its old location. So we paid a visit on Wednesday to check out the new location (after a failed attempt on Sunday due to overwhelming support of the new store by fellow Whole Foods shoppers). The parking was insane because there were just so many people there. Now Whole Foods is the new Safeway, Krogers and Publix. Except they carry more organic stuff.

One thing that surprised me (and made me doubt the whole “Whole Foods” philosophy) is the fact that they carry that Fiji bottled water that traveled a gazillion miles all the way across the ocean. I mean, if they were so into this “environment” and “local” thing, wouldn’t they have left out Fiji brand water altogether? WTF? Talk about being hypocritical…

Speaking of hypocritical, we picked up a bottle of Wholezyme and some groceries at Whole Foods anyway. But the sheer size of the new store made me feel a little dizzy — or maybe it was the sheer number of people in the store at the time. On the upside, the store does offer FREE Wifi!

Still no luck in Steve Jobs sighting though*. I can’t really leave California until I’ve seen him at least once, even if it’s from a distance… But then again, at least I’ve already seen the other Steve in person.

* He’s been seen frequenting Whole Foods store in Cupertino.

Environmental Impacts and the Psychology of Bottled Water

I’ve never really liked bottled water because most of them have this weird after taste that is very close to drinking plastic water. But I buy them because I dread on the idea of drinking the alternatives — colored sugar water with some kicks. But one day Brian mentioned something to me and sent an article from the International Herald Tribune that made me think hard about paying for bottled water again.

1. People who bitch about how much gasoline cost seem happy to pay for bottled water, which is far more expensive than gasoline if you got your math right;
2. Very very few people can tell the difference between bottled water and tap water in blind testings;
3. Tap water is tested much more frequently and more closely monitored than bottled water for obvious public health reasons; and the fact that soft drink industry in general aren’t as stringently regulated as tap water, what makes people think bottled water is better water?
4. Buying bottled water, depending on the source, can be environmentally damaging (i.e. DO NOT buy Fiji brand water or anything that has to travel thousands of miles to get to you).
5. I often see bottled water being trucked around being exposed directly to the sun for god knows how long. And in each bottle’s journey to its destination, I can only imagine what kind of chemical reactions are happening to the plastic and the water. I mean, if I often taste the “plastic-ness” in the water, doesn’t that mean something is up with the water? Or maybe I am just being paranoid again.
6. For each bottle produced, how much energy was used to manufacture, transport and recycle that bottle and all its raw materials? All that work for something you can easily get cleanly and safely out of your faucets in America? If you lived in countries where there’s no reliable supply of drinking water, however, bottled water is a good idea though.

Sometimes I think the guy who invented the idea of selling bottled water is either a genius or a crook. Or maybe he’s a crooked genius. Of course bottled water has its purpose in situations where sanitary water just isn’t available (natural disasters… etc). Other wise paying for bottled water doesn’t really make too much sense to me… Just my two cents.

Hong Kong Cinema Owns Hollywood for Once

It wasn’t too long ago when Hong Kong movies often copied plots from big budget Hollywood films. But it seems the tide has been turning lately having seen a few Hollywood films simply buying out rights of foreign films and produce a big budget version of its own with inferiority in quality and depth.

I wasn’t surprised to see Martin Scorsese’s The Departed winning all kinds of awards in the West having known the plot is almost an exact copy of Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs trilogy. But what I didn’t expect was how The Departed sucked in comparison to the original film that it borrowed ALL of its plot and characters from, but yet it won critical acclaims just because it attached a bigger budget, internationally known director and big shot actors. To be fair, The Departed is pretty ambitious in that it tries to condense a story told in trilogy with just one film. But the resulting movie wasn’t all that impressive given everything that was thrown behind this big budget film. Let’s just say it wasn’t the best work for most of the persons involved in this film. In comparison, with Infernal Affairs, it brought out the best in everyone who participated in the film.

It appears that Hollywood is running out of ideas as of late. They now produce more sequels, stories from old titles and foreign copies than genuinely fresh and interesting ideas (even though the Indies are supposed to take care of that problem, very few of them actually make it to nation wide release with big marketing push).

SCAD Partnership with Barnes and Noble

This morning Murdza forwarded me an email containing some stuff from Barnes and Noble. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was about some exclusive line of back to school products Barnes and Noble is promoting with SCAD. Looks like SCAD is really expanding its reach and influence by trying out different things. This may have been done with other schools before, but it’s certainly a first with SCAD that I am aware of.

Come to think of it, this is actually an excellent idea especially for art schools since these designs are originated from students currently attending the college. It really helps to shed the image of “starving artist” and bring more attention to how SCAD actually tries pretty hard to get students to land on their feet in the commercial market with a running start (or I should say, harder than most art and design schools that I know of). Some background info about this partnership with Barnes and Noble from BN’s website:

This item is part of a unique product development partnership with student artists from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Working with SCAD’s Working Class Studio, Barnes & Noble has produced an exclusive “Back-to-Campus Collection” consisting of nine journals, two pencil pouches, a sketchbook, and a canvas messenger bag decorated with student-designed contemporary graphics.

Working Class Studio is a product development venture of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Each academic quarter, students are selected as interns to form an interdisciplinary design team led by studio directors. The studio manufactures a line of products based on the team’s market research and designs which are then sold nationwide. This innovative concept for an educational institution marries function and fine art to deliver a well-curated mix of cutting-edge design.

SCAD is obviously taking risk on producing and marketing students’ work using its own resources. But I think that’s really a non-risk because SCAD students work have been pretty consistently excellent. I just hope the students who worked on these projects got paid a lot more than the “work study” wages.

SCAD Spirit

I got this post card in the mail from the Alumni Association and was amazed at the latest stunt that SCAD pulled with its offering of personalized Georgia License Plates featuring the school.

What will they think of next? (Now that it’s got its own official day in the State of Georgia, a radio station, a TV station… among others)

A Grand Conspiracy Theory — Zeitgeist the Movie

It’s been a while since I last blogged about social and political stuff… So here’s the latest scoop on that front…

Jason semi-made me watch Zeitgeist the Movie a few days ago. And everything that I suspected was wrong but couldn’t link them together now all made sense… Thanks, Jason… Now I am officially a coo coo head.

Basically the movie covers three major, separate but interlinked, sections:
1. Religion (specifically Christianity) and what it really IS
2. Tracing the cause of major wars and American involvements in the past 60 years, including the latest 911-related ones
3. The “real” beginning of the Federal Reserve Bank and why the Founding Fathers actually opposed such institution

I did some fact checking on some of the points made in the film (specifically on #3) since I know something about the history of Federal Reserve from my economics classes. And just prior to watching the film, I also got a chance to listen to a fascinating radio program on Alexander Hamilton and how he was a champion of having an institution like the Federal Reserve/Central Bank (which was one reason why Thomas Jefferson hated his guts; the movie did also mention Thomas Jefferson strongly opposed to such institution). And it turns out that many of the points made in the movie are quite accurate… Or maybe they seem accurate because my mind was slanted towards that way anyway.

In any case, I agree with Jason that you should arrive at your own conclusion and do your own fact checking after seeing the movie. But it does present some compelling arguments for the points it presented.

Dell Hell

Seems like Dell’s troubles are just endless these days. Now the State of New York is suing Dell for fraudulent practices… This company has sure gone downhills since its hay days in the late-90s when I used to recommend its computers to friends… and when its services were actually pretty top-notch.

A few friends have complained that they went to Dell’s website for some cheap deals Dell advertised. But the problem was, no matter how they configured their systems, there was simply no way to get it to the price that was advertised! I have tried it myself, and it was truly an amazing experience!

But I also find it funny that people expect “quality” when they don’t even want to bother to pay for it… Today’s Dell offers awful products that come with awful customer service. You know the old saying, “You get what you pay for.”

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