Kai, The Informologist

Just look at the belly! (from my photostream)

It’s exactly 2 weeks away the end of semester (officially December 14th).
And I’ve done my horrible duty with the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), but nonetheless its done for, everything else rests in God’s hand. Truly truly.

But anyhow, it’s the last stretch of the semester, also known by many as the final ‘grind’, just because it grinds the last bit of juice off any student that’s working towards a grade. And after 72 hours with the GRE, I’d love to take a break, a breathe, but last night was it. Today, there’s a paper due, and tomorrow the MSIS application. I color coordinated my Google Calendar and its telling me – 2 homework, 1 paper, and 1 final project next week (1 minute long flash, or 1260 to 1440 flames). Then 3 exams the following week.

It actually doesn’t sound that bad, I think I’m just tripping myself with the application (personal statement not yet done) and the project due next Friday (no idea what story it should be). Now I realize my English isn’t really that great, and my creativity isn’t that fabulous either. Bad timing for realization.

Anyways, if any of you guys have idea of a 1-minute story to be made into flash, or have some thoughts to share about writing up personal statements for grad school, please feel free to share with me if you can. Definitely appreciate it.

Lastly, I’ve gotten my Threadless Shirt, but its a size too small (I overestimated underestimated my width).

Good luck to all who’s preparing for finals, job applications, grad school applications, or better yet, auditions. May the force God be with you.

(from my photostream)

I received my daily ‘Living Water for Your Soul’ from NLT, and here’s what I have today

Listen to my voice in the morning, LORD. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly. Psalm 5:3

How do you greet a new day? Whether you’re thankful for the sunrise or dreading the burdens that come with it, remember that God is waiting to hear from you. Will you let him help you through?

It’s amazing how God speak through me through this email morning devotions. Especially today, as I was going to continue memorizing vocabs, practice maths and doing more ‘POWERPREP’, I was told to <empray. And very much unlike ‘hugging Buddha’s foot in the last minute’ (临时抱佛脚) as the Chinese says, hugging Jesus doesn’t mean asking for a better grade and being successful. Just pray that God will be there for you – if its his desire for you to fail, I don’t believe I can break that and be successful; and on the other hand, if his desire is for you to be successful, I don’t think I can do too much to wreck it.

I think its really important to remember his love as being consistent – its not like he like you more today and let you be successful just because you prayed harder and read more bible, he loves you regardless. And that is the God I will pray to today to be with me, to guide me on my 3p.m Graduate Record Exam. Please pray for me too.

(from my photostream)

Have you ever experience bad service when shopping at a retail store or eating out in a restaurant?
At that moment, what are the thoughts that is going through your mind?
Is it, I’m gonna suck it up? Or, I’m gonna talk to their supervisor afterwards? Or more ambitiously, I’m gonna earn enough money in the future and buy the business and fire them!

To be honest, none of the above will do much damage to the person who had provided lousy service to you. Nothing to say about ’suck it up’, but talking to supervisor may sometimes work, but most of the time, they will be apologetic on the surface and cursing you behind your back. The last one can only be an ambition for many, besides, practically, how long will it take for you to earn your first million and buy off the company?

In the new information age that we are living in today, we have another option besides the above three. Blogging.

Yes, blogging had empowered consumers across the globe, from simply providing information about products to writing reviews of services. It may seem harmless at first sight, but with enough traffic or visits to your site, news is going to spread and the most powerful tool of advertisement or publicity – word of mouth is going to get to work. And that would be more likely to mark the downfall or uprise (for good services of course) of businesses, disregard the size of the company.

Relating this to my New Media class, comparing to the 20th centuries where the channel of publicity or advertising is limited to just a few mass communication tools, namely television, radio and newspaper, today’s age, there are 1000s of channels for such purpose. Technology blogs, financial blogs, educational blogs, religious blogs, and blogs of all hobbies and professions attracts audience of their own, and that diverts them away from the traditional channels of advertising and publicity and creates a name for themselves.

So next time, when you are a consumer, feel empowered. And if you are a service provider, think twice before messing with the consumers – just look at all the bust-ups of phone companies rejecting/delaying cancellation of services.

That’s why people start blogging – to be part of the information age.

I have heard of Black Friday Sales, how people lines up so early in the morning, and how that I would never invested such time to buy discounted products (except for perhaps Wii, but I’ve got one). But on this Chicago trip, I was attending the unavoidable traffic of consumers. And I was never so overwhelmed by the idea of capitalistic consumerism.You see, I enjoy drinking coffee or having croissant in the local cafe/pastry, and in Bloomington that includes places like Starbucks and Seattle’s Best just because with a town this size, most of the employees are students too. Even in Seattle, with the very much laid-back pace and mentality, the services from both local stores or franchises are mostly friendly and personalized. Chicago was in chaos comes Thanksgiving. It seems like everyone in the store (whichever store) is worn out, crazily busy – even Starbucks employee has no time to smile. There are of course exceptions, the greeters are all doing their best to say ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ to the hundreds and thousands flocking to their stores.

Especially in the state of sales, the manners of the U.S public that I’d came to learn had vanished, as though I was back in China’s 1990s retailing service industry. If money were seen as the driving force behind capitalism, then it must be derived from greed. It was presented in such a picture – there was an hour-glass shaped line forming outside Coach, we are talking about hundreds of consumers willing to stand in the sub-zero temperature just to get their hands full of Coach products that they might not even purchase (thanks to the exaggerated sales margin that everybody was expecting).

Admittedly, Chicago is a beautiful city (minus the wind), with wonderful skyscrapers and beautifully-carved coastal line. The Magnificent Mile should be render ‘Magnificent’ not just because of its length or the content within, but the city-planning. It’s a puzzle well-done. But when passion is extracted from motivation, the coldness of employees’ services are added to the city’s woes (for people like me), that no amount of spiral doors can help to reduce.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m stating here, just that the overwhelming capitalistic consumer experience I had, had overwhelmed me like never before; not in Singapore, not in Seattle, and definitely not in the College Mall of Bloomington, IN. This reminds me of a quote from Wal-Mart’s founder Sam Walton who said that (I’m paraphrasing here because I can’t remember the exact phrase):

With a company this size, at any one point, one of our employee will be doing something that I would hope they never do. (paraphrased)

Happy Thanksgiving – it’s a break from school after all.

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(from my photostream)

First of all, I’m sorry for the sudden disappearance. I’m fine and well.
It’s been a good and long thanksgiving break (long because I always had shorter ones).

So basically, I was in Chicago for the past 3 days and 2 nights.
Monday and Tuesday were Thanksgiving potluck nights (yes, we had turkey – tur-duck-ken cost $150).
Wednesday was early bus day at 9am (better than 6 still), not the best day to start shopping or even walking around in Chicago. Wind was blowing at speed that almost (as impossible as it sounds) blew me away. But we still managed a couple of hours shopping, Jamba Juice, and da Signature Lounge on the 96th floor of the John Hancock Tower – my first time since turning legal.
Thursday was more walking, Millennium Park (the sculpture was rather buttock-like), expensive subway rides ($2/one way) to Chinatown, awesome lunch at Saint Alp – they make great mutton, and one more Thanksgiving hot-pot dinner, last but not least – Chicago Premium Outlets, where I vow to keep with my past records of staying at home for Black Friday sales. It was crazy, you should have seen the line for Coach.

So anyways – Friday it is today, and unlike the past few days, its sunny! We’d hope to catch the 2:15pm bus and be back in Bloomington (Thanks to Eugene and Ambrose – who’s getting married on May 24th!) by 8pm. But before that, we’d like to be tourist carrying luggage to stores and see if we are late enough to scoop any Black-Friday deals.

Till then, peace out and thanks for checking in.
Hope y’ll had a great holiday/break!

(via Diesel Sweeties)

Yea, so even though the sky looks bleak with no sign of warmth, and with the past two days being so close to sub-zero, the temperature today, right now, at 4:50pm in Bloomington, IN is 62°F.

We can all point to Al Gore and his Nobel Prize and agree collectively that yes, its the big and evil Global Warming’s fault, thanks to the many contributions from pollution-prone factories across the globe.

But, like Clango questioned (although he could easily cared less), it could also be equally possible that its just a natural cycle.

Jason just walked by and after I showed him the comic strip, he commented,

You know, sometimes, I wish there’s more global warming in the winter. And it saves energy.

I kinda (this is important to emphasize) agree with him, and so, maybe we should pollute more?

Well, either ways, we’ll see.

Diesel Sweeties is a pixelated comic strip pro-mac user rstevens. It normally speaks in human terms, talking about technologies and such, but every now and then, there are conversations between the pixels that sounds so alien, I have no idea what I’m reading (so I skip through them). It is publish ‘every weekday’. So go check it out, it may just sync with your language preferences.

So if you haven’t heard, two of the biggest franchises chains has upped their game for the holiday season.

• Papa John’s is offering ordering pizza through text-message service. Yeap, now you can get a pizza delivered right to your door using text-message. [via. Yahoo! News]
• For y’ll Starbucks fans out there, you can now customize and order your very own tailor-made Starbucks card according to your likings. How’s that for a ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ or ‘Merry Christmas’? Sweet. [via brochures in IMU Starbucks - where taxes are not charged for IU Students]

In other news, ‘virtual theft results in real-life arrest‘.

Now, we are not talking about credit card fraud or online credit theft. Yes, its somewhat of an identity theft, but its not the common ones that you red on paper or news. Briefly – some teenagers hacked accounts and stole $5,000 worth of furnitures from ‘rooms’ in the ‘Habbo Hotel‘ (a social-network). The question that was asked when Professor Briggs brought it up was,

“Why would anyone pay real money for virtual/pixel/intangible furnitures?”

Good question! But what’s what new media business is all about.

Update: Should  Virtual World be regulated?

(from my photostream)

How’s the world South East Asia doing?

Being isolated in a small college town, in one of the safest country that promotes freedom in its national constitution, I can easily say I have been very well pampered and taken care of. That is of course disregarding the enormous stress of life rooting from work and such, which is relatively minute to global issues.

I remember the tsunami that hit the shorelines of various countries caused by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean, where the final number of casualties, according to Wikipedia, lies at a horrifying 229,866. At that time, I was in Seattle, and the only reason I’ve gotten to the news was because I was looking through some Singapore’s online newspaper. I’m not stating that it was neglected, but it was definitely given a secondary place over perhaps what the final score in the Mariners game and maybe even the post-game interviews. I’m reiterating it not to bash anyone, but to show my ignorance.

Here’s some things that’s being going around South East Asia:

1. Singapore’s Changi International Airport Terminal 3 will be ready and running in less than 55 days time.
2. Believe it or not, 40,000 went on the streets of Kuala Lumpur to protect about the transparency and fairness of the election system, and here’s how it went accordingly to a Malaysian and according to the associate press
   The point is, we are quite ignorant of some global events/issues unless we make an effort to find out.

Talking about Remediation!

Now why (or what is) remediation? Well, I’m not the primary sources of either news, I’m just listing them out here for further interpretations. It’s a cool idea of how the new media is behaving. Neither Google now Youtube, and even Facebook produce the majority of their ‘products’, such as search website on the search result, videos, profiles, its a co-created virtual asset. And 1.5% of that asset cost the software giant Microsoft $240 million.

The face of business, especially marketing has taken a dramatic turn since such idea emerged. Market segmentation will not fit very well with the idea of co-creation in new media as companies cannot afford to market to target markets through any company-centric goals. For example, if Youtube were to be company-centric, and create/modify videos by focusing on what they want the audience to see, there will not be any Numa Numa by any rational businessman’s mind.

So the questions that Fortune 500 companies now have is, how come our spending of millionth in marketing/advertising does not rival someone clowning in front of a webcam (Numa Numa has now over 6million views on Youtube)?

How about some City Daily Photos ADVERTISING?

Want to keep track of the places you have been to or loves through visual aid (by this, I mean photos)?
Here is a search menu for the city daily photo that you’d like to find and keep track of!

Below is my shortlist of interest.
Shanghai
Singapore
Paris
Kuala Lumpur
Bloomington, IN (mine)

I just re-discovered Tumblr. A site that plays multiple roles, at least for me.
While surfing on other computers, I currently use Tumblr to bookmark links (no, delicious is too complex for me).
Of course it has other functions, quite complete to be honest, such as posting video, audio, text, photo, quote, links.
It’s like a one-stop shop for combined blogging.
Slink interface too, by the way.

And so, here is mine.

from Photostream

Family may be broken down, relationship may be spoiled, hope often times are lost.
Whenever one goes through a rough patch, he or she may feel alone or hopeless, and some are lucky to find shoulders to lean or cry on, but for many it may be a long dark valley that they have to walk through by themselves.
How wonderful it is to realize that our God had said this,

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

If there is a God and had written those words, is it not comforting to know that he not only cares for you, but would give you rest when you rely on Him?
Is it not comforting to know that you will not be walking alone?

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” – Psalm 23:4

It’s a privilege that you can experience and enjoy, try praying to Him and see him returning your call, for He said,

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” – Luke 11:9-10

Amen.

When my D40 got here, I already felt cool with just the box. It gave me a sense of instant inclusion into the online DSLR and photo sharing community. Somewhat of an upgrade from point-and-shoot cameras (I feel, personally). It’s a kind of indescribable feeling. It’s like, I’m popular again.

Now, I have thought about buying a digital video camera. One of those Flip Video Camera that cost <$150, but I thought its wasn’t really realistic (with current financial situation and needs), besides the market/demand for such online sharing community, in my opinion was rather limited (with many of the videos being just jokes). But that was before I truly discovered Vimeo, an online sharing community that acts like Youtube, but has much better interaction with its users.

I was exposed to Vimeo through the interview of the guy that created nygirlofmydreams.com; at first I thought – another Youtube. But later, with more exploration/discovery into other video, help, conversations sections of the website, I’d felt the sincerity of the staff to truly interact with its users. I mean, one of the creator is making up to 350+ videos already, most of which are HD-enabled. Which relates to another feature that I believe Vimeo had made itself stood out among other video-sharing communities.

Just like I’d learnt in class, consumers love the experience of co-creation, and whilst Youtube is the pioneer in such field (of video sharing), sites like Vimeo had definitely upped the standard in both technology (HD) and human interactions, making it almost immediacy to most people.

Cool stuff are coming off the inter-web daily man. This website call Alibaba.com from China has tripled its value since going IPO on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE) a few days ago. Interesting huh? I wish I could look cool in a hoodie and be good at writing up website/programming. Wait, I should have known a bunch of people like this from Informatics!

Footytube - The New Source of Joy for Oversea Soccer Fans.

I find time to watch highlights of football games from the weekend on Tuesdays.
Here are some picks:

1. If you want exciting football, here’s one for ya – Juventus vs. Inter Milan. What a ditch!
2. EPL Goals of the Month (October) Compilation.

Now, I’m just waiting for the highlights from today’s Champions League to be out.

(“Liverpool Complete Rout” – via soccernet.com)

It took 90 minutes for the Kops to shush the noise of the critics.
No, actually, by the end of the first 45 minutes, doubts should already be fading away.
Again, as it has been proved so many times, in football, anything is possible.
A team on the borderline of being knocked out of the Champions League, to a team drowned with confidence in merely one and half hour. Amazing.

Congratulation to the Reds.

(from Photostream)

Key Arena (the red neon), part of the Seattle Night Skyline (via Jason Z)

As a loyal Seattlite, I’m ashamed to say that I have yet to visit a Supersonics game at the Key Arena. But knowing that it would eventually move away, it felt as if energies will be extracted from the city. Yes, I know we still have Seahawks and Mariners, but its still not enough. Not that we are greedy.

So upon hearing the news the Seattlites are forking out to invest in the ball club in order to retain it in Seattle, there might just be a glimpse of hope for the Supersonics fans in Seattle?

Representing Bloomington, Indiana. Part of the City Daily Photos community now.

As I’ve mentioned, after getting inspired by Kim’s Seattle Daily Photos, I’ve decided to do a column for Bloomington Daily Photos. Now, I’ve actually set up another blog for this! So now the Bloomington Daily Photos has joined the 400-strong city daily photos community to showcase our cities.

Do visit us!

(from photostream)

Read about his story here on IDS (Indiana Daily Student) – the official school newspaper.

It has been advertised for weeks now about this speech by Michael Leahy who was troubled by pornography which has itself torn the family apart. He is going to share his piece of mind on pornography in this nation, which has stats to show that the average age of first pornography experience in this country is at the age of 11. He has now spoken to 100 college campuses and more than 300,000 students across the country.

This can immediately be captured by people and seen as a speech to condemn. And with the root of this speech being Christianity (as it was partnered by Crusade for Christ, a campus Christian fellowship), fingers are going to start pointing. But like the bible says, this is not to condemn anyone since “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:17 NKJ)

I’ve seen and heard a fair share of stories of Christian politics with protesters warning people that if they do not abide by the rules, off they go to hell. But again, like Jesus said “let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone” (John 8:7 NLT). It is not up to us to judge, since the duty, namely the great commission is actually this – “go and make discples … baptize them … teach them to obey all the commands I have given you.” (Matthew 28:18-20 NLT)

Pornography can do more harm than causing fatigue.
So yea, condemnation is not the goal, but a healthier lifestyle is.
It may be hard to make a choice, but we do have a choice.

When Leicester scored their 3rd goal from the free-kick, they must have felt like they are on top of the world. Beating the top goal keeper in the English country, and a team consisting of more than a couple dozen of superstardom players. But the truth is, they are still Leicester, and Chelsea is still Cheslea, even if players like Shevchenko hasn’t been on top form. It was almost another Cinderella story, like how Coventry beat Manchester United back in September.

In general, the Premier Leaguers are still doing their job eliminating the lower leaguers, but it is fairly visible that fear is not in the eyes of Blackpool or any other non-EPL challengers. It’s going to be a good weekend with the game that never gets bore, Manchester United vs. Arsenal. Question would be, which team’s youngsters are gonna stand out? Ronaldo or Van Persie, Rooney or Fabregas? We shall see.

By the way, how is Valencia doing?