Entries Tagged 'General' ↓

Sitting in the living room, on the couch, watching last night’s news replay on the catastrophic earthquake in Chile brought me chills.

Or was the shivers due to the living room fan that’s been blowing my way for the past few hours at my bare-chested self?

Either way, the news is an uncomfortable one, even for someone like me, who is far away and quite seemingly on another planet as the quake hits the South American nation, threatening huge, gigantic tsunamis, which could possibly equal that of 2004’s disaster.

Back then it was the deadlest recorded tsunami ever, and there’s fear that it won’t retain that record for long — unfortunately and alarmingly foreboding — if forecasts are to be realised.

Japan tells coastal people to evacuate for tsunami.

Auckland receives its share of threats.

Philipines raises alerts.

But these are just some of the places to be hit by the tsunami, and if it does lands, I hope swift aid from respective government ensues, with adequate preparations in an event disaster strikes.

Better prepared than never right?

I wish I could dabble and dazzle being an iphone app developer, but last I checked, my hoard of programming books were still fully covered in dust, and no way am I going to go anywhere near it.

But here’s a fella who took 11 years to create his first iPhone app, but wait let me readjust and rephrase that sentence a little bit, so that it makes more sense, considering the iphone was born only a few years back.

Here’s an 11year old fella who created his first iPhone app, selling it for 99cents, and if you think that being 11years young makes it amazing, digest this:
The majority of the money from sales of the iPhone app goes towards a hospital where he was treated, after suffering from a benign tumour — nothing cancerous though, but enough to cause 9 months of concern from friends and family as he stayed home, recuperating.

How benevolent is that? Where earlier I mentioned about what you would do when you’re gifted with a $1000 monetary, here is a tiny fella (BUT with a big heart) who decides that he’ll give away a portion of whatever he earns, before he even earned it.

And here’s the best part: He wants to create more apps, so that he can donate more to hospitals.

So, Cameron Cohen, well done lad. You know, you’re gonna be big, um.. pun intended, someday.

Now here’s a question that keeps running through my head lately, and maybe because I keep imagining receiving these amounts in my bank account, which for the records, I don’t actually.

No, not even close.

So what would you do if you were given $1000?

1. Grab the latest and biggest LV handbag or keep hold of the latest tech gadget,
2. Dump all the money into the POSBank and watch it grow by $1 annually,
3. Be charitable; treat the family to a meal and donate a portion,
4. Invest the amount into a potential business plan, and work at it, or;
5. Return the money, cos you think you don’t deserve it.

Seriously, how many of us would have chosen 5 as an option?

Perhaps its easy when the amount is as accomodating as $1000, but what happens when it balloons to $10,000?

Now sadly, topics like these aren’t being taught in schools, at least not the ones where I studied or know of, and it’s knowledge of handling these situations that dictates how a society turns out.

So what would you do?

Then go get a Macbook Pro or an Alienware laptop, just quit complaining.

The iPad’s an expensive, toy that excels beyond doubts in whatever it is that it does.

It’s like how Micheal Jordan made basketball look easy, or how Tiger woods made driving at holes into more than just a game.

So for Steve Job’s sake, get this: the iPad’s supposed to be a filler for the void between a handheld mobile device and a netbook, something like kindle’s ebook readers, but as always Apple does it so much better and way cooler.

Go take a look at Kindle’s ebook reader or Sony’s ebook reader.

Then play with the tablets on offer and then give the iPad a quick view.

I’ve seen other tablets, even had the opportunity to fiddle around with them, but something about watching youtube videos of Steve Jobs demo-ing the iPad that tells me that this is going to be a big hit,  not sooner but much later.

That’s right, much much later.

Sure, people may say it’s just a glorified iPod touch/iPhone, but back then when they were first unveiled, similar reactions surfaced.

Today the iPhone and the iTouch seems to be in everyone’s clutches, but propose this scenario 3-4 years back, when the iTouch made its debut and you’ll be called silly and naive.

So yeah, I’ll be silly and naive and state how silly and naive it is to consider that the iPad is going to be a big hit and in almost everyone’s clutches in 2 to 3 years from now.

Anyway, I’d like one. = )

Never ever leave your toilet paper unguarded when you’re asleep.

Or this happens.

Especially when you have 2 cats in the room, ’sleeping’ with you, as evident by this picture above, greeting me in the morning as I woke from slumber.

Definitely not a ‘good morning to you’ kind of scene to wake up to.

I think from now onwards I better have a security camera installed to have a good recollection of what goes on at night in my room, a la Paranormal Activity (the movie) although in this case I’d have to categorise this is ‘A Normal Activity’ instead.

Really, it’s no use asking a cat who messed it all up. They’ll simply ignore you.

Worst, they’ll rub their heads against your leg and beg for food instead.

Anyway, why do I have a feeling that my orange feline was the real culprit?

Bad kitty..

This is what happens when you’re an FA artist who have too much time at work and you’re obsessed with the movie, Avatar.

This tee is an exclusive and very, very limited edition, where none are printed at all.

And because of that, you should be able to not find it at your nearest good tee shirt store, or for that matter, its not in any store at all.

The Fishvatar. You know you want one. :/

And more nonsense sprouting from reviewers that spout negative reviews of this wonderful movie that is.

I couldn’t get enough of the movie, and partly due to my enjoyment in reading, I had to scour the world wide web and find out for myself how others felt of the show.

Of the myriads of opinions and experiences that came to light, there is this very tiny speck of reviews that seems to me that the reviewers have a particular disdain for the movie. I feel sad for their condition, that they fail to grasp the experience of Avatar, but too bad for their loss.

Good reviews, neutral reviews or negative reviews, they all fed my incessant and insatiable lust for the story.

Here’s how I come to differentiate a negative reviewer who spews garbage from one that truly knows his ways within a movie.

A negative reviewer who spews garbage usually talks bad about the movie (i.e stuffs he/she considers as garbage) and then never offer any form of enlightenment on how the garbage could be cleared. This situation is more like how someone might get scolded for an action and then it ends there, without any explanations or advices for improvements.

This qualifies as the classic garbage reviewer (as I’d like to name them), where you get plenty of garbage and you kind of sense an injustice going on because there’s acknowledgement of garbage, and nothing else. The whole review is just garbage this, garbage that, why I wasted so much money watching garbage, and blablabla.

Seriously, if such a reviewer paid $$$ and suffers for 2.5hours, while there are others who pay the same amount and underwent an amazing experience, you wonder who’s getting the better deal here?

And then there are the negative reviewers who instead of spewing garbage, recognises them, and contains them, or packages those views so that it’s a much informational and effective piece of read. These reviewers acknowledges plenty of good points of a movie and where garbage is spotted, a ’solution’ is provided, like providing an alternative character development or something like that.

I wouldn’t actually know which are the plots or stuffs that Avatar, the movie could improve upon, because they’re too tricvial that even if I were forced to nitpick on a few, I’ll tolerate it for the bigger ROI, that is the massively epic movie experience.

There was a reason why I watched it for the second, third and fourth (and still counting) time, and that’s because I wanted to find the flaws and the bad parts of the story, but strangely the more that I glued myself to the silver screen, immersed that I was walking alongside.

The lesser that these trivial stuffs became.

Strangely it felt that I was a part of the show, silently running along, jumping along, flying along, swimming and gliding along. There were anxiety, sorrow, joy, despair, respite, romance (yes, all you nascent women, there’s more romance in an hour of this show than the whole two episode of the Twilight saga) and so much more.

But this isn’t the Avatar movie review that I intended to have (that one is still in the works and definitely coming soon) but it’s sort of a ‘wake up call’ for all the negative reviewers out there, even though I’m sure I may have been guilty of becoming one before.

I think it’s best if we put ourselves in the shoes of the characters that we see on screen, gauge how we’d react with how they reacted and then see if it’s real or if it felt fake.

It’s just sad that these very few numbers of negative reviewers fail to ’see’ Avatar — and I wonder if they knew what it meant, to ’see’, as suggested within the movie itself.

What, you didn’t knew too? You’ve yet to watch the movie? That’s good as this means that you’re still an empty cup.

I wonder if these negative garbage reviewers of Avatar went into the cinema with their own kettle of tea instead.

For the records, I still think that Avatar is just lovely, and to all Twilight fans and nascent women, please don’t take offence — this is just a review of reviews after all.

In the words of one of RDA’s gun-totting guy during the opening few minutes of the Avatar movie, “That is just so wrroh-ong!”.

You wouldn’t want to enrage the man like this:

LMAOSFSVVFLLL!!! (Translation: Laughing My Ass Off So Funny So Very Very Funny La La La!!!)

This is one of those rare and highly unlikely posts where I dig deep inside the troughs of my eccentric mind and harvest, using whatever infant and primitive tools that my collective brain possess, and set out stall for a topic where many opinions and possibly deliberations get their fuel from.

The irony of being financial smart — which smart are you?

There are 3 types of financially smart people in this day and age of the world. There is the thriftily smart, leveragingly smart, and the value smart.

Let’s unhinge a little more info on the value smart people. When you’re value smart, you understand and appreciate how much a given item values and you’d break limbs to ensure that whatever you’re paying, you’re getting the most out of it. You’d pay a hundred dollar for an item that you feel should cost a hundred dollar, and nothing more, even if that was your only hundred dollars for the month. If there was a hire purchase deal that lets you get 5 of that items for that hundred dollar that you possess currently, you staunchly decline as the interest rates that rack up overtime aren’t beneficial for you. Though you get more items and paying a much lesser amount, albeit in installments, hire purchase deal breakers are the last thing on your mind. Paying interests on these products are wasteful and you believe that spending more in the long run is an unwise form of return on investments.

You’re value smart. You’re smart but you may lose out on getting more out of what your dollars can. Perhaps you’re uncertain that paying off a monthly amount bears too much of a financial stress. Nevertheless, smart is smart.

And then there are those that chooses to leverage their hundred dollars per month. These are the ones who articulate in getting the best deals as much as they can, even though the interests racks up in the long run. To them, it’s worth it that you’re able to utilise more tools and applications as soon as possible, thus gaining much ground in productivity, while reasoning that the accumulated interests pays off by itself, thanks to an early start in productivity. But of course when things go wrong, they go really wrong, as seen recently with the recession where Dubai World, leveraging on huge debts, got hit hard. Then again, you could argue that it has transformed and cemented the emirate as a luxury hub for financial, entertainment and lifestyle services. If it didn’t leverage on debts, it would never have achieved this much. So when you’re leveraging, and unless you’re unlucky (like having a recession hit you), you’re still smart.

You’re leveragingly smart. You’re smart, but there’s a liaibility on your shoulders and unless you’re aptly covered, you’re tackling plenty of risks heads on. The bigger the risks, the greater the rewards eh?

Finally we come to the thriftily smart. They scrimp, they save, they find alternatives and they make sure that they absolutely only get the things that they need, and not just the things that they want. Why spend hundreds on a branded jeans when there’s a bargain cheap option? It’s not that they don’t possess desires but their thrifty ways ensure that they face less risks, carry less liabilities, and ultimately spending less while saving more. Being thrifty is excellent, and it is a sure way of ensuring that you’re able to survive whatever ominous onslaught the future may bring. Best of all, there’s very little to worry about financially and life’s a breeze.

You’re thriftily smart. You’re smart and trading peace of mind for luxuries is never your lifestyle choice. But though it brings you lesser gains and affordability, you’re in it for the long, comfortable run. There’s more to invest within life than mere financial or material products, right?

These are topics which I enjoy deliberating upon, open ended and with plenty of angles to tackle with. Anyway my point being that even if you think that you’re smart (whereby you’re an advocate of one of these three characteristics), it’s never a complete/perfect solution or advocacy. There are always holes in any given situation and I suppose the best way to describe a financially smart person is when he or she possesses all three characteristics and is able to react proactively to any situation and conditions.

And then this is one of those rare and highly unlikely post where I end it abruptly just because I’m not smart enough to come up with a smart quote. Bite me.

You know who Sadako is, and you truly know what she is all about and how she glamourised the crawling out of tv scene with ‘The Ring’ movie.

Apparently she has made it clear to any would be directors that any crawling-out-of-tv scenes, well she’s not going to do them anymore.

She said that she’s sick and tired of watching youtube video parodies of her signature moves, which are clearly not as good as hers.

Anyway, I wish her luck for her next feature film, but here’s a quick question:

Why won’t our lovable Sadako crawl out of TVs anymore?

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Because she saw a 100inch LCD and really, she only has to practice her catwalk from now on.

= )