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Growing up in America as a minority has certain challenges, growing up as an Asian guy, let me tell you, a lot of times, it's just plain unfair. Just ask any non-Asian American girls how much action we Asian guys get with them, the answer almost always come back as none. Now I'm not saying its absolutely impossible, but, I'm DEFINITELY saying the odds are against us.

This leads me to the broader topic of representation, I don't like the fact that we're under represented in the media in this country, we love America just as much and we contribute just as much, but we often gets castrated in the media, we're sexless, all you see in films of of us is 1. Kungfu guy, 2. Waiter / cook / laundromat owner, 3. Triad / mobster. Compare to other minorities, we never get casted as romantic leads, or even in an inter-racial couple setting, Asian women does it far better, but that's a whole other conversation.

Romantic leads, representation, what made me suddenly rant like this? It was today's Apple Iphone 4 announcement. If you go to their website now, you'll see some pictures of a highly touted feature - FaceTime. I mean, I get it, I'm also an advertising professional, it needs to be an obvious mix of races to make the whole thing look - A. International, B. Politically correct, but I was frustrated with not seeing an Asian dude once again! Especially on an apple ad out of all places. In case you lived in a cave for the past 6 years, we Asian guys not only make up a big percentage of Apple's company, the silicon valley, the general SF Bay area, we aslo buy a lot of Apple products, in fact, most of my Asian buddies had every version of the iphone ever since it had launched, I personally have bought three, but no, layout must be "White guy talking to Asian woman."

I don't have problem with seeing Caucasian dudes with Asian girls, not at all, but, I HATE not being represented, somehow, I just feel wrong, wrong in a fundamental sense and in Apple's case a sense that someone is telling us we're bad at math, or doesn't like to own a Honda kindda wrong too.

Racism in America, yes I believe it still exists.

couple of weeks ago, I saw this cool picture circulating around the internet, it was of a moving rommba vacuum machine. I liked it so much and I just had to copy it. This is my first attempt. Shot with a fish eye lens with my own trusty roomba.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

I'm sad to see yet another report concerning Steve Jobs' health, hope he recovers soon. Mean while, this is pretty well done and entertaining. Hehe, I love the subtlety.

Just upgraded. Downloaded software, Linked up my database. Now the painful stylesheet tweeking begins :-(, so, bare with me.

Some call it the camera for the elite, I call it, the light meter for my Hassel. My camera family is now complete: 120 film Camera, 135 film Camera, Polaroid Camera, Instax Camera, and finally, toy camera ;).

Ok, I probably will get in trouble in this post, but, ultimately, I decided its important to bring this up. 4 days ago, my account exect. took away my beloved motoQ that was given to me to demo. They needed it for a photo shoot. So I had to walk out of the office that night with just a sim card in hand. Without much thinking, I went over to one of the worst cellphone stores you can find in beijing, the one right across from Häagen-Dazs shop in Wang Fu Jing. I got my self a sony ericsson walman phone.

To make my point, I absolutely loved this new phone right away. I loved Q for the reason that I can always show it off, its a blackberry but more handsome and half the thickness. I'd lay it out on the table, hoping for a call so its glowy blue key pad would light up and catches some attention. You know what though, it always works.

With this Sony Ericsson, initially I was a bit doubtful about its construction, took me some times to get used to the smaller dimensions, but after that, man, it was a F&*king bliss. I did things that I never did with my Q, or many moto products for that matter. Assigning my mp3 songs to different people, organizing contacts, attaching notes and birthdays to it, etc etc.

Don't get me wrong, many moto products offer the same features, but, at least out of my own experience, it has always been so damn hard to get to them, its always more buttons to press and more menus to go through. This frustrated me so much that after going through couple of them, my habit changed, I no longer wanted to organize my contacts, I accepted just to have a name and number for each contacts, no customized ring tones, no pictures, nothing. Same with Q, Windows mobile seemed to have transplanted all the confusion you can get from windows operating system to its phone operating system, and then some.

With sony ericsson, the first thing I did is to bluetooth some songs in my computer to it, it asked all the right questions after the transfer, three, four clicks and its saved in the right folder and assigned to a contact of mine. Also, the menu system is beautifully designed with least amount of cluster and appropriate amount of animation, unlike moto phones, which in my honest opinion, have some of the most dreadful menu graphics, animations and color combos out of all phone manufacturers.

Also, Sony Ericsson has this killer app in their music phone series called track ID, say you heard a song from somewhere, a commercial, or just something on the radio, and you want that song really bad and have no idea what it is. Track ID will listen to it and give you an answer right away, and that, is just... amazing to me, and I'm astonished that MOTO didn't get their hands on this earlier...

So, in the end, I stayed up for two hours after a late gym night, re-organizing my old contacts, asking friends for cellphone pictures and putting in my favorite mp3s and on and on, the phone just behaved marvelously. I suddenly noticed I just re-adjusted my cellphone habit, for the first time in two years I began to care about what wall paper, ring tone and theme I should I have on my phone again, all because of switching from a phone that has strong industrial design but weak UI, to an Average exterior, but strong UI one. The latter one completely won me over.

Moto, I really wonder when you will change your inside...

Now I must declare that I soon will be moving on to another company that has Sony Ericsson in their client roster, although I won't be responsible for that account. The above are is purely my personal opinion and experience. The phone, Sony Ericsson W580c, (CMCC partnered) was purchased with my own money at its full retail price.

No not the iphone. Despite all the hype, which immediately conjured up my memories of buying Ipods, I decided to wait for the 2nd generation iphone. I did get a cool gadget from the states though, and today Dad finally brought it back.

It's Polaroid SX-70se, a 70's classic that will work with 600 polaroid films. For you non-Polaroid fans out there, the SX-70 is the most beautiful looking polaroid camera. It's rare to get one that is in mint condition nowadays, let alone finding the se model that works with 600 film pack. Fuji films, please please use your Japanese minimalist sense to design a respectable instax?

see how beautiful this thing is?

I wish it came in crome and leather, but.. only SX-70 is built that way, and it's film just got discontinued in 2005. I think there are places that do some kind of manipulation to the camera so it'll work with 600s, but.. I'm not certain.

polaroids from this beauty will be posted soon, stay tuned. More pictures of the camera after "continue reading"

Come on Chinese parents, please stop herding your kids to study what you think makes the most money. Please stop telling them best thing to do is MBA or real estate, we have enough of that already.

With recent CES just finished, Wired Magazine did a top 10 products round up. Only one Chinese manufacturer's product stood out, and here is the review:

Ugliest Product: Konka's Magic Mirror LDC TV
Konka, a Chinese TV manufacturer, concentrated its depraved creative instincts in a single exemplar of horrid industrial design: the Magic Mirror LDC TV. That the 42-inch set was equipped with a camera to allow it to "reflect" the scene before it is tacky but ingenious. That the set comes in a vomitous leopard-spot print, polished to a shine and embossed with what appeared to be an alligator skin texture, is truly inspired by the devil. The set's edges, cut into gentle, swooping waves, added a final touch of compositional flatulence.

This product is so ugly, that I think the editor actually took special attention towards it. The words are pretty scathing, in fact this is the meanest review I've read since I started reading Wired. I think the review is necessary though, just to expose Chinese manufacturer's failure of not taking design seriously. Konka, this is what you get for letting someone that doesn't know design, to design.

my new obsession... damn it!

through some 2 days of treacherous online search on cell phones, this is what I decided on to replace the stolen phone. Its called SX-833, and you can read a review here on mobile burn.

of course, thanks to my dear silvia ^_^ who got this for me. love ya :)

Sent off my beloved g5 tower to a repair center today. This machine did everything for me during graduation time. In two days, I will find out what to do with it...

Will blog things from work for now.

Yay, finally, the s6 came out. Man, this camera retails in best buy for $449 before tax. I got the camera, plus a 512mb memory sd card for about 410 total. A digicam that can wirelessly transfer shots as i shoot them, just what I needed. I can totally imagine roland young shouting in my face "Cool and Awesome!".

Thanks to that "Shine" club promoter in LA, I have to buy a new digital camera. I swear these asian clubbing events all fucking suck, execuse my french. Anyways, this is what i'm thinking about, anybody would kindly get this as a gift for me?