Chinese New Year Resolution

As a Z-list blogger (you can't go lower than that), I will continue to blog the only way I know how by substituting substance with shallowness, facts with fictions, in-depth analysis with ill-informed opinion and absolutely refuse to use the exclamation mark.

Got to go to party now.

UPDATE: Just came back from the swamp that's called New Jersey. We were invited to have dinner. You know I will go anywhere there is free food, and be grateful and thankful that we are actually welcome. I won't take that for granted.

Chinese New Year, Manhattan Chinatown

Chopper man wasn't in the mood for pictures or he simply knew his old man wasn't much of a photographer. I didn't bring my D70. These were taken with my old Canon G3. The lens was smudged up. I guess the white balance wasn't working too well either, too bluish. I tend to blame on my gears except myself.

Twist and fire ...

The parade started around 11AM. We bought 6 packs of party snappers and a couple of fake firecrackers. They were fun.

Big Wong on Mott Street. Chopper Man and Mom.

Happy Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year.
This is the Year of the Pig. I have no idea what it's supposed to mean, I hope it will bring me good luck.

1983 吉澳

My thanks to Uncle Ng. He's always the best. I owe him again. Without him, I won't have all these pictures. Without him, I probably would never have taken up picture snapping hobby. My favorite picture from this batch.
The Chinese characters are again my handy copy and paste job from Uncle Ng's CD. I have yet to learn how to type Chinese on a computer... I guess I'll never learn how to do that.

1983吉澳

I like this picture, probably taken by yours truly. I really like it, photos look better with me behind the camera, just kidding. And what's the deal with track pants? Look like everybody's wearing ones, except maybe me and Leung Ka Fai. I guess we were totally oblivious to any form fitting track pants fashion trend.

Uncle Ng was the one with the bucket hat. Man, he was probably fashionable without even knowing it himself.

Back then the glasses were like bigger than our face. Most people have long hair, very bad long hair. Well I am not complaining as long as I still have a full head of hair. My hair "style" has stayed the same for these years.

From left: Ng Chi Ming, Leung Ka Fai, Lau Ka Fai and me. For some reason people named Ka Fai are pretty damn smart.

Clockwise from top: yours truly, Lau Ka Fai, Janet, Mok, Tung, Winnie, Chi Ming and Egg.


Camping. I wasn't an outdoor kind of guy, but my friends were so I ended up going camping and hiking pretty often. All to Uncle Ng's credit.

Look, windbreaker, the ubiquitous windbreaker of the 80s. My friend Chi Ming on the left.

What I was wearing ... corduroy car coat bought in Shatin. Chinese gray slacks. Nike running shoes. Man, I definitely looked cool.

I would like to think my best days are still ahead of me, but then you never know...

Happy Valentine's Day

♥

The Pianist

Week in Review

Fashion Week has come and gone. New York is done with fashion for now.

Global warming is real except not for the past few weeks in New York City. My parka is like surgically attached to my body now.

Anna Nicole Smith, dead at the age of 39.

Global Warming

Global warming, what global warming? New York City has been in a deep freeze since two, three weeks ago. And I am seeing no end to it. Well maybe next week.

How do you measure up as a Blogger?

How do you measure up as a blogger monetary wise?

WSJ provides some insights. Here is the excerpt:-

THE JOB: Blogger
THE PAY: Most self-employed bloggers take in between $2,000 and $10,000 a month from ad sales, says Henry Copeland, founder of BlogAds.com, a web advertising concern based in Carrboro, N.C. ... During election time, for example, a political blogger can bring in $20,000 to $30,000 a month....

I am truly humbled.

PS: My futile and rather delusional attempt to be a paying blogger was quickly shattered as my alleged fraudulent clicks quickly got my Adsense account canceled. My single digit readership wouldn't help anyway.

Source: PAYGRADE | Blogging for Web Sites by Sarah E. Needleman and Aja Carmichael published Tuesday, February 6, 2007.

Edgy Product Placement

This is the type of edgy product placement that money can't buy. One of the four convicted attackers on the Albert Ho case. Apparently a big fan of Chanel.

Self reference here.

Linked from http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200702.brief.htm#019

Sketch by Hong Kong Police. Product logo looks Chanel to me.

Apple got the name from Apple Records

What Steve wants, Steve gets. Once again, Steve Jobs got the job done.

Apple is getting all the rights to the the name Apple. Apple Corps, the Beatles' company now needs to license to continue to use the name Apple.

It won't be long before iTunes is going to sell Beatles.

2008 Summer Olympics

2008 Summer Olympics can be such a killjoy.

Beijing has decided enough is enough and made plans to rid the nation's capital of bad Chinese to English translations. This could be very well the beginning of the end of the genre.

What's possibly funnier than "Chinglish" is perhaps seeing nonsense Chinese characters got permanently tattooed on some clueless English speaking skins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinglish
http://www.chinglish.de/
Tired of Laughter, Beijing Gets Rid Of Bad Translations, The Wall Street Journal, Monday, February 5, 2007 by Mei Fong

I've written my fair share amount of Chinglish and definitely will continue being a Chinglish practitioner, so you may laugh with me or at me. It's just too funny not to laugh.

Articulate

From http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/articulate

Main Entry: ¹ar·tic·u·late
Pronunciation: är-'ti-ky&-l&t
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin articulatus jointed, past participle of articulare, from articulus
1 a : divided into syllables or words meaningfully arranged : INTELLIGIBLE b : able to speak c : expressing oneself readily, clearly, or effectively articulate teacher>; also : expressed in this manner articulate argument>
2 a : consisting of segments united by joints : JOINTED <articulate animals> b : distinctly marked off

Or it can be such a loaded word when used toward colored people.

The Racial Politics of Speaking Well by Lynette Clemetson, Sunday, February 4, 2007, The New York Times.

New York Fashion Week Feb 2-9

Fashion Week is underway. I should check out Bryant Park more often if not because of the shivering cold (and the job that actually pays me and keeping me busy even during lunch hour). I saw them building out the space about a couple of weeks ago, I was just thinking how come The Pond was gone and in its place some auto show from Mercedes? I didn't know Mercedes took the place of Olympus to be the Fashion Week sponsor.

Talking about fashion (do I need a reason to justify what I write? It's my own god damn online diary, I write whatever I so please bottomline), I read from the WSJ paper edition that designers of mens fashion are actually turning to more average looking models to sell their clothes. Buff, metrosexual, and waif looking guys are shown the door. It's the average looking dude that get the job these days. Since it appears on the Journal, so it must have a business angle. The rationale of using average looking guy is men, as opposed to women, are actually doing the shopping these days.

Here is an excerpts from the Wall Street Journal article "You should Be So 'Average'" by Ray A. Smith on Friday, February 2, 2007.

Last year, 75% of the men bought their own clothes, compared with 52% in 1995, according to Marshal Cohen ... At middle-of-the-road J.C. Penney, men now make 70% of the purchases of men's clothes, a reversal from about five years ago when women made 70% of the purchases.
That means nowadays the model can make or break a buying decision for male shoppers.

And one of those average looking guy is called Terron Wood, a 6-foot-2, 170-pound model who appears for Dolce & Gabbana. Apparently the fashion industry has a very very different definition of average from you and me.

Official Fashion Week site here.
No picture man, I am not a paid subscriber of the WSJ, so no picture here. If you want to see what Mr Wood looks like, do a search and find out what the fashion world means by average or regular....Well we all need the fashion industry to remind us how ugly we all are.

Thank You for Smoking (2005)

Hi guys, this is a movie review again.

I saw this at home from my free DVD collection at one of the Queens public libraries. The disc was clean so there was no stuck scene or any technical glitches. So overall it was a pleasant viewing experience.

I like the movie and Aaron Eckhart does a good job in playing Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for big tobacco. Katie Holmes plays a reporter who sleeps her way to get the dirt out of Nick and the industry. Yes, back then Katie Holmes was really known as Katie Holmes instead of the ugly moniker that's called TomKat. It's interesting to see how Nick works. His job is to protect and promote cigarettes, the deadly consumer goods that's legally sold every where.

Good dialogue and story.

Week in Review

New York City has been so cold that I want to buy a SUV to contribute to global warming ...

New York City has been so cold that Paris Hilton and Britney Spears finally put some underwear on...

(heard those jokes from either David Letterman or Jay Leno)

Boston took guerilla marketing very seriously, got 2 dudes arrested for placing bomb-like billboards around the city. New York City being the city got actually attacked and yet got less terrorist funding knows better. We blissfully ignore all bomb threats real or not. As reported here.

Michael Dell is back behind the steering wheel. After Kevin Rollins quit the CEO job, founder Michael Dell is back on the job again. Things don't look that rosy, Dell is facing shareholder lawsuits for manipulating financial numbers. Both Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins were named defendants. More here.

Vista is here and Gates wants you to have a copy or two. More importantly Gates is on Apple's bitchy freaking lying ad campaign which portrays PC users as some dullards.

Here are a little excerpt from the Newsweek article:

Are you bugged by the Apple commercial where John Hodgman is the PC, and he has to undergo surgery to get Vista?
I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.

How about the implication that you need surgery to upgrade?
Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade on the hardware than our competitors have done. You can choose to buy a new machine, or you can choose to do an upgrade. And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it.

Again, Apple is the freaking lying son of a bitch. Notice this is from MSNBC, a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC.

Apple releases more eye candy or ear candy that is known is iPod Shuffle. Also Apple is shipping its Airport Extreme base station with 802.11n support. More hardware upgrades from Apple is on the pipeline according to ThinkSecret and myriads of Apple rumor sites, probably a LED notebook is in the work.

More Apple Hardware Updates

Apple formally announces the introduction of 802.11n. Speed is definitely in the air. Apple is going to charge $1.99 for Core 2 Duo Mac users to enable this 802.11n feature. That doesn't sound nice or generous at all considering it's a software or firmware upgrade. Apple also claims to be "the leaders in wireless innovation ... and leading the way into a new generation with 802.11n." iThink Linksys came out with the 802.11n router way earlier. But Apple has gotten into the habit of ignoring and abusing Linksys anyway, like Apple totally took the iPhone name with no respect to Linksys ownership of the name. Well from day one, Apple had been pretty brazen in terms of name grabbing. The name Apple was used by Apple Records before there was Apple Computer but Jobs took it anyway.

For those of you whose wife thinks there is too much radiation going on inside your apartment and hence bans WiFi, I feel truly sorry for you.

More iPod Shuffles

Apple launches colored iPod Shuffle. The $79 Shuffle now comes with more colors, just in time for your Valentines.

Notice the ad above. It's apparently a Levi's trucker's jacket. But Apple did the right thing by photoshopping away the embossed words on the buttons and the label on the pocket flap. Levi's has become a lawsuit happy company according to this New York Times article.

Windows Vista

If you order any PC or notebook now, they will come with Windows Vista installed (or should I say pre-installed?), like it or not.

I have been really behind in the Windows world at home. At home, I still with a Dell machine with a blazing fast 900mhz chip and 256MB RAM, running pretty flawlessly on Windows Millennium edition. I don't have any compelling reason to upgrade. iTune doesn't support Windows Me, and plenty of softwares only load on Windows 2000 or XP but I don't care that much.

This month or so, I will probably get bombarded with Windows ads, which I don't really mind, I like ads especially good ones.

Other than Vista, Office is getting more than a face lift. I have been an Excel user for say too many years. From what I read, seems like the whole Office has been through some drastic interface changes. That can't be good news in the short run as I need to adjust and learn how to do things. I haven't really read anything regarding VBA support in the new Office environment but I hope and think it would, how can it not be? I am clueless as far as .Net goes.