Sex & the City

It's the weekend, I should be out there & not in here writing blogs!

Yet, even with talks of recession (& for some depression), it is extremely crowded out there. There are talks of millions losing jobs in America, high percentages in Asia too, yet, I don't see a decrease in activities that much. At least not where I'm right now. Back then 10 years ago during the Asian financial crisis, or during SARS epidemic, the atmosphere was depressing. It is not so right now from where I had been traveling the last 3 months.

Nonetheless, the figures & facts speak for themselves. What are the causes of the dilemma we are in? I think it's overcapacity. The world is producing too much & consuming (as much as we had) at a slower rate. We have (me included) changed our cellphones like we did our shoes (& us ladies know how often we do that! Man got a clue from watching Sex & The Cities, incidentally I missed that show!). Aside from over producing, we run into knowing the prices of everything but forgetting the values of anything! Escalated high prices for properties (through real estate speculation, I know of a classmate who owns 42 properties in Southern China at the height of the market; wonder why he needs to own so many though! and yet plenty who wants to live in one couldn't afford it anymore since it's prices skyrocketed to Jupiter), exorbitant 1st class air tickets, inflated branded goods (& inflated egos from owning them), food wastage... they all in one form or another accounts for the plight we are all in today. It is over producing coupled with over spending in the real economy. But, who can blame us if we get the idea we are rich when the banks have been so frivolously (& agressively) pushing us free money, right? Some talks of conspiracy theory. Can we blame the bankers? They are afterall mostly like us, mere employees of the company. Top bankers, perhaps?! or the regulators?! The governments now tell us they are spending to stimulate the economies; clearly, short term this will provide jobs, but in the medium and long term, who will pay for the price of printing more money? Next generations? Taxpayers? Us!!! If we are young enough to have another 20 years lifespan in our professional capacities. Will we be able to cope when the day come?

I have come across many employees who are just trying to do their jobs. Trying to survive & trying to stay in their jobs. The system has literally compelled them to be what they are today. Those who made the decisions how a business should be run are guilty. Yet, the root of the problem is still excessive greed. Naturally, every business should be run to make profit. But along the timeline of globalisation & expansion, people seemed to have forgotten the real motivation for running that business to begin with. Hospitals, schools & charity organizations are now run like any other business. To make returns that keep on growing is the very main goal of the enterprise, it seems. Something is clearly not right, don't you think?

Things to ponder: last time we had depressions, the world responded with world wars to get rid of excess capacity. I should not be thinking of this on a saturday night, but I am. That gives you an idea how serious the condition we are in right now, isn't it?

Made in China, MP5 & Chinese Audience

I have been downloading videos from the Internet recently & watching these videos on my MP5 while heading to & from work. MP5 are cool machines which anyone ought to have! I highly recommend one to you. There are a great many gadgets from China which one cannot find outside China, yet these are gadgets which are sold at a fraction of what similar products are selling in the world. Sometimes, they are called Shanzhai 山寨机 (akin to imitation) gadgets. (Last week I read about Shanzhai Green is People!; a blog related to this issue.) Even though Shanzhai gadgets may seem like imitation goods, they are quite something if one is not brand conscious & prefer not to pay for the extra which is mostly channeled to the distribution & marketing segment of a product cost. For example, I also own a similar version of an iPhone but with an improved function which I truly need, the dual-SIM card phone! These are great stuff!

The videos I've been watching are mostly Chinese documentaries & talk shows; TV programs which are broadcasted daily/weekly in Shanghai. Most of these shows are from CBN (China Business News, aka 第一财经). Oops, I forgot to mention, you do need to understand Chinese in order to watch these programs! There are a great many programs from this Shanghai based channel which I thoroughly enjoyed when I was living in Shanghai. When I left a month ago, I was dreading about having to miss these weekly programs which I had grown used to watching. Luckily for me, I found them online! The full length programs, every single one of them & more (past programs dating back to 2007 even)! It's truly amazing to find programs one likes, let alone something from this country! On demand TV without having to pay a single cent! I couldn't believe it when I first found them online! I believe the Chinese does this to educate its public and to facilitate the transfer of knowledge. It's no wonder their learning curve accelerated at such a speedy rate!


Favorite Programs:
Brainstorm 头脑风暴
Fortune Time 财富人生
Boss Show 波士堂
There's No Free Lunch 谁来一起午餐

Lang Lang draw

He's the lastest icon in China. Children & adults adore him. He's the pride of the Chinese people. He's Lang Lang （郎朗）, the classical pianist who has entertained China and gained much acclaim since his first public recital at the age of 5. Borned in 1982 (that makes him a mere 27-year old), Lang Lang was originally from Shenyang. He's Manchurian & was an invited performer at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  It has been noted that "Lang Lang has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to connect with audiences on a personal level and established himself as one of the most exciting artists of our time". Some likes him, some don't. In China, he's pretty much revelled though.

What I do like about Lang Lang is the fact that he inspires many with hopes of becoming a classical pianist (& having been the child of a piano teacher, I can attest that is the most difficult thing in life)! There may be many musicians who are considered superior to him in terms of techniques, but a piece of music is a better composition when it inspires and excites. Lang Lang has a way with kids and that's his major contributions to classical music (although definitely not the only one)! If every kids can be inspired to learn classical music, then a good writer can inspire children to write good literature too! That to me is the essence of being good and being talented!

The Worlds Hottest Classical Music Star Gives Exclusive Workshop in London from tvcgroup on Vimeo.

Segerstrom Select Series 2008-09 • Lang Lang from Orange County Films on Vimeo.

Butterfly effect

SARS, bird flu, swine flu... is this another crisis the world has to grapple with?
Or, is this another reminder to us mortals that we've polluted the environment so much that it's coming full circle again?
Or? Is this an antidote for America's recession? Create an antibiotic & save the world from a pandemic?

It seems to me that before one has put out the wildfire, another one has started. And the cause of it possibly lies in humans.

On Vimeo last night, I chanced upon a very interesting video about Digital Art by Toporek. Coincidentally, he's also a Mexican (swine flu is now spreading in Mexico, oh no!) who lives in Vancouver. He presented a video which is truly thought provoking.

Here it is...

Digital Art: a poetic vision Toporek from Sergio Toporek on Vimeo.

My Tribute to Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee

He changes my life & everyone around the world for the past 20 years & possibly to eternity. So, thank you very much Tim Bernes-Lee!

There has been so much coverage on Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Jerry Yang, Sergey Brin & Larry Page ; there simply is not enough coverage on the great Sir Timothy! One of the major contributors to the advancement of mankind! If you've no clue what I'm referring to, it's the internet, the vehicle that empowers all of us to a higher level of achievement & accomplishment through collaboration & sharing of our intelligence and humanity. He is the inventor of the world wibe web, equivalent of internet to most of us. Not impressed? How about the fact he's been ranked Joint First with Albert Hofmann in The Telegraph's list of 100 greatest living geniuses? Life would have been so different without him!

Imagine, no emails, no twitter, no youtube (or vimeo), no facebook, no flickr, no google (or yahoo, baidu), no msn (or qq), no skype, no blogger (or wordpress), no wikipedia, no lunch, no second life... NO LIFE!
I don't think I can get by all these inventions a week without cold turkey! I tried it, you know, when I was in Antarctica! It was as awful as that voyage to Antarctica (took us exactly 2 days out in the treacherous sea, no immediate rescue if there's going to be a 30-50 ft high waves!). It was incredible we survived! Yet, life has never been the same again after Antarctica & even more so, after internet! When I first bought my NEC laptop, the hard disk capacity was only 120 Mb!! Now, it's 120 GB! In less than 20 years, internet has exploded to something we had never ever imagined. What an amazing world we now live in!

Thank you very much, Tim Berners-Lee!!!



History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.



Prometeus: The Media Revolution from Billy Wanzi on Vimeo.