Annoying Commercial

I hate this commercial. Especially the last part, it makes me want to punch her in the face. But sadly, I think it's not her fault. I believe having the voice of a 10 year old girl is considered sexually attractive with young men in Taiwan.

Some background on this commercial. It takes place in an internet cafe. I don't know if any still exist in the States but they are very common in Taiwan. They are usually open 24 hours and are the preferred hangout spot for young men. They typically provide free unlimited soft drinks and the fancier places have free snacks (chips, popcorn, warm bread/butter) and newspapers/magazines. Actually, I'm not sure if they still do this anymore, I haven't frequented an internet cafe in many years. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't let people my age in. I'd have to find my college student ID and change the 2000 and add a little tail to the last '0' so it looks like 2009.

Which reminds me, I remember they had police curfew checks at these internet cafes. At 10PM or 11PM policemen would come in and ask to see everyone's ID cards. Anyone under the age of 18 would be shot. . . or fined. . . or politely asked to leave. One of those, i forgot which one. Anyways, this always made me a bit nervous because my online game name is "Ronald McCopKiller". They never usually look at the computer screens though.

Back to the commercial. The product they are selling is an energy drink. Similar to Red Bull. The last part of the commercial, the girl says "Won't let you fall asleep." I know I'm old, because that seems absurd to me. A product that prevents you from falling asleep?!?! Ludicrous I say! Sleep is pretty much the best part of my day.

Here's another similar commercial. Equally annoying.

Indian Music Video

Japanese Bug Fights

I enjoyed watching these videos more than I'd like to admit. . .



See more of them at http://www.japanesebugfights.com/

Beijing not so fun

Time has passed by unbelievably quick. I can't believe January is almost over. I'm pretty busy with work and school, not much time left over for anything else (like this blog). It's ironic because I now have more things to write about but almost no time to actually sit down and write. Luckily for the three people that actually read my blog, i've found a few minutes! LUCKY FOR YOU!!!

So. . . I went to Beijing a few weeks ago. . . it sucked.

For all you Beijing lovers, don't start writing hatemail to me just yet. I mean my experience in Beijing was pretty bad. The city itself is probably pretty good. But I wouldn't know, because even though my "Beijing" trip was 7 days long, I spent a grand total of about 5 hours actually in Beijing.

Why you ask? Because this trip was not for fun but for work. I spent 8+ hours a day, every single day, on the receiving end of one-on-one training, in the business suite of my hotel room. The subject is actually somewhat interesting to me, but I don't care how much you like something. . . 40+ hours of learning, 5 straight days, on the same subject makes you question your will to live. Everyday I felt like my brain got bigger but lifespan got shortened by a few days.

A guided tour of my hotel room!

Oh I forgot to mention, I wasn't actually in Beijing until the last day of my trip. I was in a small town called Shunyi for the first three days. It's an hour away from Beijing by car. At the beginning of the first day of training, I thought, hmm 1 hour is not too far away, maybe after training, i'd hop on a taxi and check out the city.

8 hours later. . . what i actually ended up wanting to do is: dig a hole, hop inside, die.

View from my room in Shunyi. It's snowing! It's been so long since i've seen snow.

After 3 days of that, I went to Tianjin for more training with a different guy. I don't remember much of Tianjin, i think my brain died on day 4. All I remember is that I didn't have new years eve off, i still had 8 hours of training that day and I spent new years eve evening watching Stealth (terrible), Madagascar (not bad), by myself, in my hotel room. I didn't even wait until 12AM, i went to sleep at like 11pm. WORST NEW YEARS EVE EVER.

View of Tianjin from my room.

The next day was the last day of the trip. I woke up early to take advantage of free breakfast, caught a morning train to Beijing and finally saw the city. I didn't have much time so I spent most of my time at the Forbidden City/Tianamen square area. The place is huge! But i wasn't that impressed, I think I've seen too many pictures of it. The buildings looks exactly how you'd imagine them to look like. And there's so many buildings and rooms it all starts to look the same. By the time I was done looking at everything it was getting dark and I was hungry.

Guards! Dork spotted in Forbidden City!

So cold, the Forbidden City needs heaters! I would've suggested it but couldn't find the suggestion box.

I walked to a street market place where they had food stands. Decided to
try some of the street food. . . the food was pretty good but it was the sellers that left a bad taste in my mouth. All the menus are in Chinese only so they assume nobody can read so they almost always "forget" to give me change. It's a good thing I can read a little bit of chinese now, but it's not a good feeling knowing they tried to rip you off.

After filling my stomach, i couldn't stand the cold anymore and i went inside a huge shopping mall. Looks exactly the same as any other mall in any country.
Spent a few minutes in there, realized I was pretty tired from walking so much, remembered i had 7am flight the next day and i hopped on a taxi back to the hotel.

THE END.

Lesson to take from all this. If you go to a new city, you want to spend more than 5 hours there.

Taipei Computer Expo

I went to the computer expo here last weekend and picked out a computer. Due to me switching jobs, I didn't have a computer of my own for almost two whole weeks! I was pretty close to commiting suicide a few times. I'm so glad that ordeal is over. . . I'm currently typing on an Acer Aspire 5583

Specs:
14.1" WXGA
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66 GHz
1 GB of RAM
256 MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7300
120 GB Hard Drive
DVD SuperMultiDeluxePro#-^&+=*

Pretty good upgrade considering my last notebook only had 256MB of memory TOTAL. . . the video card in this Acer has 256MB all by itself.

Anyways, back to the computer expo. That place was a freakin' madhouse! Sooo many people all over the place, can't move an inch without pushing someone or someone pushing into you. The most annoying thing was the salespeople. At the notebook section, the salespeople pretty much attacked us. At the HP booth, five salespeople simultaenously came up to me and in almost perfect unison they asked me "Are you looking for a notebook?" It was kinda funny since they looked at each other right afterwards, with a slightly confused look. I think they were all just trying to get to me first, but ended up being a five way tie. This was the worst example but pretty much all the booths were annoying with their salespeople. After awhile I went to the bathroom to check if I had "Looking for Notebook" written on my forehead.

We ended up going into the Toshiba booth. . .

This pic is what it looks like inside the booths. That's where the salespeople demo the notebooks for you and the negotiating starts. The idea of negotiating for a computer is so foreign to me. I don't really like it, but it's only way to get a decent price here. At some booths, they'll slash 10% off the listed price immediately. After the deal is done, they give you a bunch of freebies like a portable mouse, mousepad, pens, etc. . . To me the experience is more similar to buying a car than a computer.

The whole thing is really tiring. I miss how simple it was in the US. . .
1. Get newspaper, find Sunday circulars, pick out a computer,
2. go to the store, ask salesperson to get computer you picked out,
3. find out it's sold out, they offer you a more expensive computer, you say no, they tell you the closest store that has this computer in stock,
4. drive to next store, ask salesperson to get the computer for you, salesperson pushes extended service plan on you, you say no
5. Wait in line for register, cashier person pushes extended service on you, you say no
6. drive home with new computer

Almost done. . .

7. fill out the Mail in rebate forms, make copies of the mail in rebate, make copies of the receipt, cut out the UPC barcode from the packaging, make copies of the UPC, put it all in an envelope, mail it in.
8. wait 8 weeks, remember rebate check never came
9. call rebate center phone number, they tell you "Oh, yeah, it's in the mail"
10. Receive rebate check a week later. Deposit check.

That's how I remember it, the process is probably different now, i haven't bought a computer in awhile.

Anyways, here's a crappy video I took from the computer expo. I'm pretty sure this is the only possible way to make people interested in flash memory cards.