Cathy’s random thoughts.. about life, rants, technologies, and really, random stuff
{ Category Archives }
1. I hate not being able to keep up with my thoughts.
2. Not being able to keep up with my thoughts means that you think more than you will ever be able to share and articulate the signals among the noise
3. Too many ideas go wasted because of that
4. Wouldn’t it be great if we log all of ideas down as stubs and open it up so that other people with a different personality inclination (convergent versus divergent) can pick up and create something cool out of your ideas?
From Times Online, Simon Barnes wrote,
A lot of our fear and mistrust of China comes from the fact that it is a one-party state and that political unorthodoxy is discouraged. But it is a reckless misunderstanding to assume that the population are sublimely happy with this, and want nothing more than to serve the state. If that were so, the Chinese would indeed be a sinister lot: but the idea is absurd. I can exclusively reveal that most Chinese people wish to live happy, peaceful and fulfilling lives, to look after their families, to get enough to eat and to get a kick out of life.
Not entirely unlike us, then. So perhaps we should instigate a Cultural Revolution in the head: and look upon China not as a nation, but as place where 1.3 billion individuals happen to live.
Not sure about his emphasis on how ‘beautiful’ Hong Kong Chinese women are, but the rest of the article resonates with what I have been trying to articulate these days. Last thing I would add is, please, people, the notion of ‘Chinese people’ is a contestable one, just like you cannot assume all Americans are the same, as with any nations, not all ‘Chinese people’ are the same. One basic tenet of human rights is to respect people as individuals, instead of just a herd of things that move and feel the same way.
*sigh*
Can’t wait when August is over.
It’s been more than two weeks when close to a thousand of private/sex photos of various female popstars with Edison Chen are released and I have been trying to resist the urge to blog about it – until yesterday, bear with me for the summary of this story before I elaborate why.
International press started chiming into the ’sex scandal incident’ in Hong Kong when the Hong Kong media has been getting absolutely frantic (see EWSN’s brilliant summary here) and the police started arresting and detaining suspects who might have ‘distributed’ indecent materials on the internet without trial,
The police have arrested nine people in connection with photographs and videos on the Internet in the last two weeks. Three suspects have been formally charged, including a 24-year-old man in Kowloon who was charged Tuesday with publishing obscene materials after he was said to have posted two files containing 100 photos.
What’s so indecent of these photos, you have to ask? Basically they are photos of female stars posing and revealing their private parts, as well as various photos of them performing oral sex on Edison Chen. These photos were taken but weren’t meant to be for ‘public consumption’, however when when Mr. Chen took his laptop for repairing, they got stolen and distributed. (that I have to say, it’s simply and utterly inconsiderate and stupid).
The police are looking to capture the ‘cultprit’ and also almost randomly tracking down people who distributed the photos. The reactions from the ‘moralists’, the ‘authority’ and the ‘public’ all reveal issues more than skin-deep in this psuedo ‘Westernised’ society that I have known of. The most apparent issue, is what John Kennedy coined at white terror,
Pornography is openly sold by many street newspaper vendors in Hong Kong and versions of the photographs have been seen on the covers of most Chinese-language dailies every day since the first batch of photos appeared online two weeks ago, despite that under the city’s Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance, distribution is prohibited.
The moralists are urging the film star to admit that they are ‘wrong’.
Now, let’s get two things clear. In many of Hong Kong daily newspapers, there is a PORNOGRAPHIC section where anyone, ANYONE, who can afford 30p can go and get a copy. Where as in this case, these young pop stars were meant to be taking *private* photos in their bedrooms. There is no coercion, no intimidation. What is wrong with that?
As early as the days where Eve Ensler produced the Vagina Monologue, a screenplay about how people were never able to respectfully speak aloud the word ‘vigina’ to where we stand – the conservatism and the hypocrisy is what getting to me. People went into details accusing one of the pop stars as hypocritical and should apologise in the public. Now why does , e.g. Gillian Chung, need to apology – what has she done wrong? EWSN translation of thosewerethedays blog illustrated part of the problem,
In the Hong Kong entertainment industry, some artistes have become upholders of morality. They criticize the media for being very yellow and very violent; they preach morality; they say that this or that magazine should not have published something or the other because corrupts young people; they describe themselves as clean, self-respecting and pure beyond belief.
Grow up, Hong Kong. We freaking need to revamp our sex education starting with a healthy attitude towards sex and relationships. We can never *change* the media – we *are* the media. We are the lowest in the media ecology foodchain and they produce these low-quality, high fuss stories because we are asking for it. I would applaud if the Hong Kong government steps up and announces that they will reform Hong Kong’s liberal and sex education, otherwise just joining the moral [panic] folks and picking up the pitchfork is totally, utterly immature and useless.
Updates: thanks Christian for pointing out that I miss-spelled vagina. Not sure if I was taught to spell that in Hong Kong anyway ;)
Are you curious about world’s kick-a** ads that I just created based on scientific research? Let’s begin with the backdrop illuminated by this Wallstreet article:
As Microsoft Corp. makes a $44.6 billion bet on Internet advertising with its unsolicited offer for Yahoo Inc., there are signs that some of the biggest new places where consumers are flocking on the Web — social networking and video-sharing sites — are yielding advertising revenue slower than some Internet companies had hoped.
The argument is pretty clear. Social Networking websites are not necessarily making the revenue marketers think they would.
So what went wrong? And how can we rectify this?
Let’s continue with Mohan’s favorite cliches – which might have summarised the mindsets that non-marketing people (i.e. geeks) will nod and smile (with bracketed notes from me),
1. Its about the community (oh dear, we love you, too)
2. Make passionate users of your customers (what? ‘Make’ users? into customers? you mean they are like transformers and can ‘reboot’ into one another? you lost me here…)
3. Communities are built “one person at a time” (Right. So does baby-making i guess.)
4. The web is the biggest social network (what about China?)
5. Email is the best social network (what about women? or men?)
6. The lines of social networks between business and home are blurring (huh?)
7. Keep your community always in the know (of what though?)
8. Get inside your community’s head, but go for their hearts (did they dub this from how to loose a guy in ten days???)
9. Marketing to a community is evil (but making money is not. wait.. huh?)
10. Build a community for the sake of doing good, not profiting from it. (“help! I am attacked by personalised ads!!”)
While Bill’s diagnosis is the problem that advertisers are using old school methods for these websites.
But the main challenge is BANNER BLINDNESS. There are now generations of surfers who have distinctively different styles in web-browing. Yahoo!’s older baby boomers are very different from Google’s yuppies or moms who just redicovered the there is search functions on the internet versus business people who would only log in to check email, banking, and stock prices. How ‘permeable’ they are to advertisement solicits interesting psycho-social research, which I am not sure if ‘marketing people’ will see the value of it.
Nielson’s research illuminates the ‘problem’:
See – we are literally blind to banner ads. And his conclusion is that only ads that are:
stand a better chance of being noticed.
How exciting.
So we just need a lot of cleavage then. And probably there will be world peace as well… damn, Freud has been right!
Okay so if I aspire to be a word-class marketer, this is my campaign:
cleavage ‘abstracted’ from Flickr by C.P.Storm
Wonder if gum tree will hire me.
It always sends shiver down my spine when I heard people making a big fuss of online community (as well as ‘web 2.0’; ‘engagement’; and ‘ROI’). Not that I am against online communities, but when businesses start to consider how can they ‘harness’ ‘online communities’ to drive ‘revenue’, they lost me there.
Not that I am against company making money, either, since after all, I am also a pin of this corporate system.
BUT…
Such as Opensource software development that drives not just the technology, but a manifesto, an ideology, a belief, that information should be open, and we should stand on the shoulders of each other, so that the sum is bigger than the whole. AND – we are all mini giants. Don’t you forget that.
Such as Creative Commons, now built into major commercial search engines (such as google [see user rights] and yahoo), that units little creative minds so that people can share, remix, be creative, be respective, be fun, be global…
Today we talk about myspace, facebook. But remember what online communities were for at the dawn of the internet – (dark force aside, such as pornography and cracking activities) it’s for sharing knowledge, facilitating innovation, connecting you to the like-minded so that you know that the sky is the limit, and you can make your dream come true if you try hard enough.
Think firefox – since its launch in it has exceeded 50 million active users with more than 600 MILLION add-on download. Do they need hiring a ‘marketing department’ – yes, and no. What they did was to create a kick-ass browser which was so good that users invite all their best friends to try out (and fall in love..) and at one point most IT professional CHOSE to install Firefox as default browser in companies. And you know the story – Firefox Spreads like wild fire.
Now that’s real ‘marketing’ – not by having fancy ads campaigns, but by creating a product that with USER NEEDS in mind.
Think friendster, think myspace, think bebo, think facebook. Yes maybe it’s fun to see what your friends are doing, but what happen when you grow out of it? These ‘social networking websites’ are just tools, an extension to our mobile phones, emails, or weblogs. But phones get out-dated, better email services emerge, user switch, you switch.
Only meaningful communities with strong visions last – even if someone leaves, other joins, because they are driven by faith, not hype. And faith doesn’t get outdated. Remember that.
Danah is PhD student from iSchool, UC Berkeley – her overview of the social divide between MySpace and Facebook is a fascinating read, even though she’s extremely humble about her academic vigor (you don’t really need to – this essay as itself is very informative as it is). Some insights on social divide on American soldiers in Iraq:
MySpace is the primary way that young soldiers communicate with their peers. When I first started tracking soldiers’ MySpace profiles, I had to take a long deep breath. Many of them were extremely pro-war, pro-guns, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, pro-killing, and xenophobic as hell. Over the last year, I’ve watched more and more profiles emerge from soldiers who aren’t quite sure what they are doing in Iraq. I don’t have the data to confirm whether or not a significant shift has occurred but it was one of those observations that just made me think. And then the ban happened. I can’t help but wonder if part of the goal is to cut off communication between current soldiers and the group that the military hopes to recruit.
Yes, for those who choose to be on facebook instead of MySpace, we tend to be more fitting into the ‘hegemonic’ class (‘white’ upper middle class, well educated, went to good school, and prefer Sauvignon Blanc over Pinot Grigio), plus i found that almost 80% of my ‘friends’ have at least one gradschool degree, as opposed to ’subaltern’ class on MySpace. Does opening up between the two networking sites mean that users ’suffer’ less from the social divide? That itself, solicits research which will yield huge implications on future ICTs policies, as well as, just how generational divides can so aggravated by the intense social networking phenomenon.
It’s really scary to think about how the internet can bring about social capital to those who are already having a headstart in their career, like linkedIn, facebook, blogs… how important online visibility is to one’s career prospect? Should we devote resources to educate students on how to ‘market’ yourself on the internet as opposed to Chemistry and Biology? As we are at a point of which you can get disadvantaged for not having personal presence on the Internet, are we sacrificing privacy for publicity? Where to draw to the balance? And in ten, twenty years time, will the Gen Z, AA, BB whatever, still care about the ‘boring’, ‘paranoid’ notion of privacy on the Internet?
Last but not least, apparently in China there is a trend of giving your children ’special’ names so that they are more cacheable by search engines. Hm… this is indeed interesting.
One more note, on the side, is, I’m very curious about how the Beijing Olympics’ ‘nests’ and ‘twisted donuts’ are going to unfold in less than 300 days!
I was glad that there’s a chance for me to work with a NGO in London, and basically my boss is an amazing, sweet and clever lady, I love working for her.
My first task, however, is to format her Dell. (We named that Dellie, btw, since it’s a little Dell). The problem is not about formatting, but to safely transfer her files, not only embedded in two user accounts, they were also scattering around desktops and document folders. Normally copy-and-pasting would help, but unfortunately since her computer was quite tangled up (possible registry-issue), for about 1 in 50 files (she has over 20k files) there’s one that needed to be manually renamed before I could move.
Hence I started moving the files and backing-up at 2pm, and never got any progress until 8pm, when I could finally start formatting. Well, the good news is, it took 2 hours only to completely format it. The bad news? Windows doesn’t recognize the hardware components and as a Mac user, I completely flipped out since I haven’t done that in the past 5 years, until I spotted the Dell’s extra package and reinstalled all the Drivers as well.
Exhausted and traumatized, I got home at 11, plus I couldn’t really find my office door in the dark. I guess I used my my adrenaline monthly supply and now I am an 80-years old.
So really, Window sucks. Objective, personal experience.
Recent controversies over whether the Indian actress, Shilpa Shetty, was bullied by the other British contestants due to racism on have sparked a new hype for the Celebrity Big Brother reality show. This incident has rasied even international attention as well as the £3 million withdrawal of commercial sponsorship of Channel 4. As the pretty, upper-class, Indian star gets bullied and boycotted by the three British girls, there are also talks in the US that the government (well, Bush to be exact) is planning to deploy more troop in Iraq… what gets more attention here? Times put it right on,
It says a lot about Britain today that a violent, non-fatal racist attack would generate only a few paragraphs of news coverage. But an on-screen, non-violent row, in which race is a dimension, gets the whole nation talking, and the media and some politicans into a frenzy.
That, though, is the curious power of Big Brother — a format that means little or nothing to the over-40s, but in the post-modern, war-is-only-on-the-news era, it is able to animate millions. Amid all the talk of the death of broadcast television, and the shift to advertising online, there is no clearer reminder of the incredible power of the small screen.
I would recommend for those who have not seen the clips, please see it yourself to feel the ‘power’ of Celebrity Big Brother, if not mass popular culture: Clip (1), (2)
One exerpt of Jade, the main girl who had made touchy remarks directed toward Shilpa, may gave a full-fledge flavor on what this is about,
You need a real life in your life. That is what you need because you’re so stuck up in your ass you cannot think of anything except your own ass. You’re so stuck up in your own ass you can smell your own shit.
In an interview, John McCririck’s, the previous participant of this show sums it up,
‘Institution racism inside her and unconscious of it.. what people in this country who do come from another countries have to endure is the subtle nasty horrible continuous undercurrent of ill-feeling that Daniella is giving her […] Racism is so strong in the country that we ourselves do not understand it.’
You may not agree with what he says, and I have not stayed in this country long enough to make a fair judgement. But living outside my hometown for the real first time, I become much more aware of the attention simly because I am not ‘Western’. One main row in the Big Brother that made me empathize is on food. Shetty got teased at because she put onion in her curry, and that reminded me how some non-Asian folks I met looked at my food and actually said ‘yuck’ or ‘oh that doesn’t look too inviting’ _while I was digging in_. To me, I know that they are kind people, but it diffuses a hinted, subtle kind of ‘outgroupness’ that got to my nerve. But you also ask yourself if this is cultural misunderstanding, or they just do not know that saying things about other food, especially when others are still eating, is considered very ill-mannered in Chinese culture. Also could it be sheer curiosity, and are these legitimate justifications as well?
Finally – I think what the local press have not raised yet is the classism exposed in this incident. The register UK, depicts Jade, the supposedly bully of Shilpa as follow,
Specifically, “Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O’Meara have ganged up on Shetty in the past few days”, while Goody’s mother Jackiey couldn’t pronounce the star’s name and referred to her simply as “the Indian”.
The way this article describes the mother of Jade hinted ignorance of Jade mothers, whether that stemmed from her indifference or class status, we don’t know.
At the end, I just feel severely disturbed by the classism hidden where people were not talking about. As much as Jade has been mean to the other girls, and as much as the other girls ganged up against her, I feel that it is the TV company that capitalize on the constrasting scene between the high-class Indian and ill-manner (which could mean lower-class as well) contestants who happened to be Brits. What do you think of this use of insecurity? On our own class? Gender? Appearance? Or even race?
London is going to get colder soon.
Notes: The title of this blog, ‘race is the new sex’, is a direct quote from the essay Prof. Richard Howells wrote on Borat, which is a fun read as well if you’re interested in this topic.
“Is it Because I is Black?’ Race, Humour and the Polysemiology of Ali G” in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television Volume 26, Number 2, June 2006, pp. 155- 177. ISSN 0143-9685.
OKay I’m not making sense anymore, by just seeing the title?
I’m blogging much more these few days as I have a lot to think about, and sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone about it because I am so confusing anyway – writing it helps. And finishing the thesis has left me too much time with just me, and my computer, so here I am..
It’s quite an interesting day, with the highlight of picking up my powerbook – they changed the screen, the keyboard, and logicboard (which attached the usb and other hubs) and I feel like I have a new mac! That’s pretty cool considering I’m gonna stick with it for at least another year. Don’t know what you think about macbook – but honestly and truthfully I don’t like the keyboard and the built-in camera – well if you’re a guy maybe you don’t care, but it’s pretty nerve-racking to have a camera that you can’t really cover while you’re changing clothes. Okay okay, I know if the camera is on the light is on – but who knows? If I were a hacker, I would love to hack into all the cameras and spook the green light so that I’ll get to know what’s going on behind all the macs…
Right. So Cath, what’s the point of writing this blog? Well it’s a long story. I’ve been quite angry recently, about people in my life that give me too much stress. As much as I don’t want them to affect my emotional well-being, they somehow link to people who mean something to me. that’s tricky. Have you ever talked to someone who just won’t listen? And whenever they get a chance they would just press on their opinion? Right. Something like that. Also it’s about respect again – there are times you know people who are heartless, but you don’t want to deal with them. Incidentally you did, so what do you do next? Ignore them? But your ID tells you to bite them. Your Ego tells you to yell at them. And your Superego tells you that they are wrong. That’s it – every single pore, vein and cell in your body is reacting to the anger boiling through your soul. What do you do?
Right. You blog. And as much as you don’t understand what you’re writing, it doesn’t stop you from feeling better.
Man I miss writing crap.
I know this could be weird to share with you guys, but I realize there are just something I need to do before I leave town. To begin with, I need to get a new pair of CouberG (equivalent of Goretex but only 1/3 of the price). Trust me – T-shirt, jeans and a pair of CouberG are what I wear everyday. Comfy comes first, being pretty? Nah. I had witnessed quite a scary scene recently, and had a new conception about man-and-woman/men-and-women. Right now I had weirdly adopted the same mindset I had when I was 15, of which all men are evil. Not sure how far away it is from the truth (no, I don’t want to get bogged down into the epistemological aspects of truth, just take the face value here, will you?) but being surround by all the pretty, smart, humorous, generous (and emotionally generous) girlfriends is just simply amazing.
Talking about that, I have to drift from my shopping list to lecturing you guys about the the importance of safety net. There are people when they started off a relationship, they basically ignore all their friends. As much as we try to see things in their light, we can’t help but pissed. What? All the years we invested in the friendship a boy/girl comes by and scoop her/him away?
No, at this point you need to hold back your anger. It’s quite natural that this happens. After all I doubt how many of us can have our superego defeating our id. (well if you are not interested in Freudian you can look up Wikipedia, but having said that we’re not that in tune so you can probably passed this blog anyway…) But if you really treat your friend as your good friend, you will probably remember life is unpredictable. Once they break up they will need your company. So the point is, when you’re dating someone, try to keep the safety net open, keep company to your friends. Meet your girlfriends to discuss what’s going on. Keep your sanity in control.
I realize it’s very important for one to be single, and to travel and while experiencing your own true self. There are people who look at their lives in a here-and-now perspective – they don’t care much about their family, their future, of course not to mention the community and the society they live in. But I had come sense that these people are not necessarily the happiest. Buddhism talks about detachment and how the ability to detach from all the wants and lusts can free your soul – I think this doctrine can be too extreme for some of us, so I adopted it and modified it – when you put other people’s feelings and needs the first, you come to realize yours are not as important, and that empowers and liberates your true wants. After all life is just a journey, and it’s nothing more than just to be with someone you care.
Hm… I guess leaving home for a year is enough to wake up the introspective me – thanks for bearing this by reading the blog up till here. I will write more about my taoism/buddhism thinking when I have the time…
PS: so much about being psuedo-deep… I need to dry clean a jacket that my mom bought me when I was visiting New York during the winter, which is very cute and feather light. ;)
Cathy’s random play