“U”
Ain’t got no L_ck
Ain’t got no b_ck
Ain’t got no sl_mber
Ain’t got no n_mber
Ain’t gonna be c_te
Ain’t no more no cool d_de
Ain’t gonna be _niq_e
Ain’t got no m_sic
My jokes ain’t f_nny
My days ai’nt s_nny
I ain’t beautif_l
And my heart ain’t tr_e baby
if I ain’t got “U”
Paranormal Activity Review My rating – 4/10
November 14, 2009I‘ll makes this as short as possible.
The whole movie was shot like it was a home video of a tech junkie micah trying to investigate the thing that was bothering his girlfriend Katie. Its a beautiful concept a-la the “Blair witch project” – but only much worse and that too to not say anything about the exceptionally bad acting. This shakey camera concept gave the movie a documentary feel that raised the realism of the scary experiences of the protagonists. This is the deal clicher for such a bad movie.
It was wholly shot in a single location – Mica’s house. Apparently it was a demon that was pretty attached to Katie and resentful of the boyfriend who taunts the thing that was bothering Katie
The whole storyline was very reminscent of “Exorcist” – not original. What was original was the concept of a shakey amateur camera but even then, Bliar Witch accomplished that. Needless to say viewing a whole movie that shakes gives one a headache if the movie does not captivate the audience.
Even then it has a very strange attraction to it and I still do’n't have my finger on it yet. I guess, it’s the amateur home movie feel that adds a sense of realism to the whole movie going experience.
The Pluses
1) Storeyline
2) good script especially’ micah’s jokes
3) Documentary / reality show feel
The minuses
1) Unoriginal storyline (like exorcist)
2) Bad acting
3) Single location shoot
4) the final scene where she is supposed to look like a possessed linda blair in exorcist and then she gave a sheepish smile after killing her boyfriend like it was a joke – it spoilt the whole movie and the experience of the documentary feel of the movie
5) predictable scenes – especially when they go to sleep and we know some scary shit is gonna happen – it takes the fun out of being surprised.
6) one dimensional plot with just two protagonist and a couple of extras (i think) – katie’s friends
7) Bad sound / audio – I was straining to hear what was being said.
8) No make-up no costume, no special effects not even those that you could get on a third grade horror cum chick flick
9) not to mention the exceptionally bad acting
WHo will appreciate this movie?
On the whole, people who like movies that are somewhat different and are too naive to be taken in by a gross lack of technical expertise in every aspect of movie making.
IT’s Not For…
The connoiseurs and regular movie goers who look for the finer points to fully appreciate and experience a movie and would loathe it for a good concept and storyline marred by bad cinematography, bad acting, bad sound and just about bad everything.
It bucked the trend though and people watching it have to imagine the realism that the movie sought to portray of a couple tormented by a demon. I liked the concept and story though and hated just about everything about the movie. Pesonally I felt cheated as I was expecting something more professional and not some hoax made for you tube designed to dupe people
MICHAEL JACKSON AND THE CORPORATE MADNESS
October 13, 2009
Get relief from the coporate madness. Go mad and do something outrageous. Fight fire with fire.
As we go on and on with the drudgery of our daily grind, we tend to be so absorbed into what we do at work that we forget that work is just a means to an end – not an end in itself. Unless of course you are a volunteer in a not-for-profit organisation that is committed to serve the needs of society. The problem with the corporate world is its capitalist roots where greed is a legitimate pursuit which in turn comes back to serve the survival of the system itself.
The way the corporate world is structured – a cold, unforgiving, stiff pressure-cooker environment wrapped in a pleasant neat and compartmentalised matrix bathed in blinding flourescent lights. The kind that imresses upon you so much that it tends to hang on to you wherever you go till you get desensitised to the nightmare that you call work. Most of the time you get a small part to play in the big picture – sort of like a jigsaw piece. Over time you tend to lose the forest for the trees and develop tunnel vision where you lose your sense of direction, lose the meaning of your being there in the first place – which is to do something meaningful by the way. And finally you start losing your mind way before you start losing your hair. And then you go into this drunken state of zombie-ness where your main priorities is to pass the buck and clear as many files from your table so that you can have some time for yourself to think about your problems that you don’t really have.
The truth is, the files never get cleared and you get desperate day after day, deadline after dealine, meeting after meeting until you just go with the flow of the corporate river and develop some nifty ability to dodge the bullets and knives come your way to haunt you for your corporate sins of old. You learn about the best carpets to sweep your corporate dirt under, the best holes to bury your undischarged corporate responsibilities from prying eyes. Once in a while you succumb to stealing an hour or two to surf the net or do your personal stuff or even steal from your office – without a whiff of guilt.
And you try ways and means to escape the daily drudgery but you can’t. The you start managing the drudgery by just concentrating on only your area of work while giving excuses for the rest. Then you realise that you can even go one further by passing the buck to others.
They call it “tai chi” in chinese – a skill that is a fine art in the corporate context wher you gracefully push your work and its responsibilities out of your purview. You now go into survival mode and use the newbies to run your show and maybe even do your personal errands. That is until they find out its not their job – but by which time it’ll be too late for them.
Congratulations, you are now a corporate caricature that Scott Adams so deftly portrays in his comic strips. You get lost in your own world and move about in sober drunkenness. You think you are in control of your faculties but not realising that the system has overtaken you and has started subsuming your existence into just another appendage to it’s numerous tentacles.
It sucks dry the very life in your personality and the very humanity in your character to become a flat one-dimensional object the existence of which is only a teensy weensy bit more than the existence of your office furniture in your cubicle. You lose your sense of humour together with your personality and become this dry one-dimensional corporate zombie to whom laughter is an alien experience and totally out of place in the office, you develop a nervous twitch and become stiff in your movements and think you are cool. You develop a blankness in your face which is a reflection of the state of your mind.
So something must happen to release – sort of like an explosion – to release you from this pressure that you didn’t know existed in the first place. Weekends never work beacuse they come to an end and the mondays dangle over your heads like a guillotine that is slowly descending as the weekend comes to a close. So the release is never full and is never really there because the fear is always there no matter how many bottles you down at a corporate pub and lose yourself in a glass of strong drink to find a way out of your pain that you can’t really feel.
As I was sinking into that corporate quicksand, there came an opportunity to go mad. What is mad in the corporate world mind you is sanity for the people of real world – and the bulk of this group are made of sages and children in a world gone mad and greedy.
I seized it and went before an odd corporate crowd of 200 and put my three days worth of practicing of the Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean to the smooth carpeted floor of the Sheraton Ball Room. I mean I had to. Well, how often do you get to grab your crotch in front of your top bosses and still expect to have a day job turn up to the next day? This in my view is an excellent opportunity to showcase all you have, release yourself in the most un-artistic way and get one up your colleagues and bosses while getting an applause!
What I didn’t expect is the complete release from the pressure after my five minutes of crappy performance. I decided not to have any shame for that moment and as the minutes ticked by I got more audacious and I felt exorcised of this corporate demon that had consumed me for the longest time. It felt good and I’m thankful for that guy who did the Elvis who said that this is his real self and in work he performs. And he is known as the crazy guy! Now I realise he could’t be any saner.
Well my only regret is that I didn’t take off & throw the Jacket and rip my t-shirt off. Maybe I’ll do that the next time cos this release is just like crack-cocaine – the dosage needs to be heavier with each successive fix to get the same amount of high
Release yourself. DO somehing crazy. Like the NatGeo Advert Goes – “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” But I hope it does’nt turn out to be the graveyard of the many firsts that I did for the last time! Now I know, Small time performers have it good (and maybe not the money) because they don’t get embroiled in the muck of showbiz.
THANK GOD FOR MICHAEL AND ELVIS . God bless them.
Do you sell just Products or do you sell experiences?
May 16, 2009(this is a stream of consciousness, not a structured essay)
An Omnia is a product an Iphone is an experience,
A Rexona bodyspray is a product a Chanel No. 5 is an experience
A Toyota is a product a Ferrari is an experience
Hilton Hotel is a product an Al-Burj is an experience
A Giodano is a product an Armani is an experience
What’s the difference between a good company and a great company? Good companies sell great products, great companies make great experiences happen. The product is the reason for companies that just sell products. For companies that sell experiences the product is an excuse.
Someone said a company that exists just to make profits is a poor form of business.
No matter how Richard Branson praises the iphone or gloats it’s features that are already available in the market – people are still going to buy it regardless. The cool features and other incoherent babbles of Branson will not make any difference to an iphoneophile. It’s almost like an evangelist talking to a bunch of Christians – the content matters little they already know what they want to hear. That’s why the bible, when truely followed will talk of a different religion very alien to the anglo-saxon versions.
When we use a product, it is dispensable and replaceable. There are real alternatives to what you sell you may distinguish your product from the competition for all you care, at the end of the day your strivings are for the bottomline.
An experience is indispensable and irreplaceable. Once felt, the human soul yearns for it and seeks to perpetuate the moment. It touches the most deepest part of our very humanity. Branson knows the soul of branding and capitalizes on it – it’s a little more than just niche marketing. It’s understanding what moves the human soul and creating vehicles that give such an experience. And in that process he hits pay dirt as he always had. While the product notwithstanding the brand is replaceable, the apple experience is not.
People who use a windows PC use it for a practical reason. People who use the mac use it because they love it despite being in the minority and having major compatibility problems with the majority of the computing world
Bill Gates and the president of General Motors have met for lunch, and Bill is going on and on about computer technology. “If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour,” says Gates. “Or, you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds and gets a thousand miles to a gallon of gas. In either case, the sticker price of a new car would be less than $50. Why haven’t you guys kept up?”
The president of GM smiles and says, “Because the federal government won’t let us build cars that crash four times a day.”
Given the limitations of technology and human intelligence to harness it to the things that we make for ourselves, efficiency and effectiveness of service of a product goes only so far – after which we plunge into the infinitude of the fuzzy world of aesthetics.
The primary reason for Nokia to become the number one seller of phones is it’s pioneering in phones that are more customizable and personalisable. From the phone covers’ colours and designs and the ring-tones right down to the wall paper and user interface. It was a such revolution and moved large swathes of population towards it’s products that threw it’s rival Erricsson into near bankruptcy before being saved by Sony. To be able to personalize a product is an emotional affair and that was the key to Nokia’s success – and they achieved through innovation and creativity. It set a new standard and redefined role of mobile phones in human affairs to such an extent that they pre-occupy the length and breadth of our lives.
In a One Planet Programme by BBC World Service broadcast on 30th April 2009, Mike Williams was interviewing the bosses of 3 car companies at a Geneva Motor Show in March ‘09. Among them were bigwigs from Audi, Totota and Bently (I forget their names).
As cars are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, it has become an issue for the green movement to tackle the issue of global warming with increasing pressure for cars to be built more eco-friendly. But it seems there is no urgency given to the matter with governments around the world giving token commitments to substantiate their lip services in the matter of green transport systems. The politicians themselves have failed to set an example as they zip about in their gas guzzlers.
Williams met the three men
While the other two seemed committed and concerned about going green with their plans for a green future, Stefan Segal of Chrysler was exquisitely unapologetic as he spoke with the passion of a disinterested realist in a “welcome to-the-real-world” sort of drone.
Williams asked : What Kind of cars are you going to make in the future Stefan?
Stefan : (we will be making) for sure emotional cars, I think at the end of the day we will still buy our cars with our heart and not our brain.
W : Is that wise do you think?
S : (sigh) you know, is it wise to fall in love?
That killed me. When you sell experiences people love you for it even though you may be a bastard. Cars are a personal affair for us and to simply call people let go of this love affair and to commit ourselves to the ethics of environmentalism is simply too much. That’s the reality that people feel but will never admit it because we all want to be on the side of political correctness.
You tell the environmentalist to give up jetsetting, or give up his fuel-efficient car – it’s inescapable. The environmentalists must touch the people in a way that gives them a good experience being environmentally conscientious. Rather than selling an environmental message everyone already knows that just makes everyone feel guilty, and at the end of the day hate them for it, they should concentrate on selling the experience of being environmentally conscientious. That’s the tough part.
The crux of the matter? If your product merely fills a need or just satisfies a utility, then people don’t care where it comes from they will change loyalties the moment they get a cheaper alternative. This is not the case if a product appeals to an individual’s emotions
Why is emotional appeal of a product so very important? Emotions are irrational visceral affections that make us humans – something that distinguishes us from the other beings. It is a cold cold world if we only make products to serve a utilitarian function. Products that appeal to our emotions touch our raw human essence in a way that will evoke a catharsis within our deepest unknown voids of our soul from which emanates the very essence of our humanity – that for some strange reason, people find it liberating. It’s like men looking at boobs and buns all day and yet are never bored with it. Why? Because the product is a creature that is made in such a way as to appeal to our innermost senses – an appeal that is hardwired in us so deep that we don’t have an inkling why we behave that way. We’ll never get bored with that.
Someone said People will forget what you said or what you did. But the will never for get how you made them feel.
An emotion is irrational. The rationalization will come after the fact to acquiesce a guilt or fill a void that seeks a reason.
“This Nokia phone has a 5 megapixel camera” you say – but so does several other phones of the same genre. The real reason you bought it was perhaps the fact that it was a sliding phone or you could wrap your fingers around it with your fingertips barely touching your thumb– it just felt good that way. Oh and it comes with a good camera too.
The fact is people need a psychological mechanism to deal with the inner voids in their lives. But to accomplish that they need something tangible and worldly to act as a medium to achieve that abstract state of bliss.
In religion we need idols except maybe for the monk who sold his Ferrari. He felt a need to achieve a state of quiet bliss by letting go because he had found a better product – Buddhism. The Ferrari experience could not sustain itself in the long run.
Companies that merely sell products as opposed to those that sell an experience – the difference is immense. To create products that appeal to human emotions vs those that merely fill a need. That’s the difference between an iphone and a samsung omnia, between a Toyota and a Ferrari.
The Samsung has better features and it was created to rival the iphone. Alas the iphone truly stood out because it was an iphone.
The practical benefits and the economic wisdom (read: overpriced) of owning an iphone is an overzealous excuse to justify buying something that may not be as good as that of it’s closest rival. But people still buy it. The same logic goes for a ferrari vs a toyota. Ferrari does not sell cars – the car is merely a vehicle (no pun intended) to experience the bliss of the ferrari experience. You don’t buy a ferrari to get you from point a to point b. That’s a sin. You want to experience the journey, the destination is just a consequential side effect. The destination was merely an excuse to feel a Ferrari while for a toyota the destination is the reason for you to drive it.
How do you quantify an experience ? Dare i? Sex is an experience – but for the prostitute its a product – for her client they want an experience but end up with a cheap high that makes them more frustrated. The best experience of sex is between lovers – and that no money can buy. So knowing this, the prostitutes that command the highest salary usually sell an experience specifically tailored to suit a niche. Starbucks don’t sell coffee Zouk dosen’t sell $1 soft drinks at for $13- they sell the experience of drinking coffee, they sell the experience of clubbing – why else would people pay $4.90 for a cuppa? The drinks are just the props or a vehicle to take you on that experience, the ambience, the high. Whatever
People will forget the product but they will remember the experience. Because an experience is more visceral – and being something that touches one deeply, people tend to associate the abstractions of their experience with the specific tangible product. It’s easier that way. Products such as these tend to capitalise on certain human tendencies, characteristics or psyches and specifically tailor an experience compressed into a specific product that somehow or rather creates a state of mind that they will never get from another similar product
You don’t do love,
You don’t do sex
You don’t do friendship
You don’t do kisses
You don’t do the work of a father
All these are felt deep within – almost a human instinct expressed within human-social dynamics
The things that we do as a result of such experiences is the emotional by-product of that which was viscerally felt.
If you can do that, my friend – you have a successful product.
Are Singaporean Voters Fairly Represented in Parliament?
March 13, 2009Hmmm its worth a thought. This is the silent big question that never gets a fair hearing in every of our elections. The Straits times – the most common source of news – automatically transforms itself to become an unabashed sycophantic party publication during election time, giving fully positive coverage to the ruling party candidates. Sort of like a PAP sleeper cell that is fully activated during election time. Well so much for journalistic integrity and impartiality. I don’t blame them either… just see it’s board’s constitution and their connections – you’ll see why.
Anyway the reason why I am writing about this crap at all – even for a regular, politically apathetic Singaporean like me – is the redrawing of electoral boundaries and updating of voter registration is indeed an eyebrow raising event. Not least because the boundaries were re-drawn – but the timing of which. It normally happens juuuuuust before parliament is dissolved. But election is at least two years away.
Normally boundaries are finalized just when the opposition had worked the ground for the past 5 years and had come within firing range when the government shifts the goal posts.
This is called gerrymandering i.e. to deliberately divide the electoral geography to the disadvantage of the opposition. And without saying anything about the political independence of the Elections department, this is indeed surprising.
Well no one expects the government (read : the ruling party) to serve the interests of the opposition, but the government by all account, owes a moral duty to Singaporeans to ensure the fairness of the elections.
My guess for this early electoral boundary meddling is that the ruling party is trying to double their political points. For a government that rules by fear, this looming economic depression is a godsend. It is very hard to promise economic success in an economic boom. But this government knows that the people here, in the worst of times would never, want the opposition running their economy.
Judging by their dismal 2006 results, a by-election would most likely give a boost to their political mandate. In other words it’s point scoring time to further solidify the PAP’s hold on power for another 5 years. So they get a solid mandate plus they get to boast that they are being fair by giving time to the opposition work the ground via early notice of electoral boundaries.
My guess is parliament should be dissolved by the time the US economic depression hits home and the PM will then use it as an excuse to call for snap elections. They have the economic figures and they will most certainly use it to their advantage and point out the opposition’s incompetence in economic administration.
I think there should be some specific rules as to when by-elections can be held (sigh).
But coming back to the issue of re-drawing electoral boundaries by the elections departments is nearly not as much as question of how and when as it is why. It beats the crap out of me. I wish the government would be transparent with it’s motives about the need to gerrymander. While the government maintains that it is the elections department’s prerogative a simple check will show that the elections department comes under the home affairs minister who is a PAP MP and is also likely to stand for elections. So the elections departments neutrality is suspect. This is indeed a dangerous thing because impartiality of the elections administrator is the foundation of establishing fairness in any democratic electoral process. With that being suspect, the results are suspect.
What effect does gerrymandering have on the election results? It spreads the distribution of opposition votes so that the Mr. Gerrymander could maximize his seats in parliament.
Just look at the figures of the last election results. There were 84 parliamentary seats in the offing. The PAP garnered 82 of those of the votes with 37 walkovers. The opposition won 2 seats. Is this exciting or what. My feeling is “or what”. This is 97.6% of the seats won by the ruling party. This is a figure that has the power to pass a whole new constitution through parliament in just one night with not so much of a whimper against it.
But the election result tells a different story. The PAP only garnered 66.6% of the 1,123,273 valid votes (748,130 votes) in 2006. The opposition garnered the remainder of the 33.4% (375,143 votes) with only two elected opposition MPs in parliament. The parties of the elected MPs themselves have 29.3% (329,206 votes) of the votes. Achieving such a figure for an opposition in an electorate that vote in fear is no mean feat.
But what this gross disparity in the opposition’s parliamentary seat percentage (2.4%) and their vote percentage (33.4%) tells us is that large sections (one-thirds!) of our voting population have been alienated via cunning electoral and administrative artifices that resulted in them being grossly under-represented in parliament.
This is a significant number because it shows that there is a sizable number among our voting population that believes in giving a credible resistance in parliament to the ruling party. These people don’t want CPF withdrawal age or withdrawal amount changes everytime the GIC or Temasek Holdings makes billion dollar losses elsewhere. These people don’t want fly by night bills tabled by ministers that ease through a parliament with sleeping career MPs who don’t give a hoot to the parliamentary process. They just wake up and vote with the whip.
The Most Powerful Item in your office cubicle?
February 25, 2009Sticky note pads.
And they must be
(1) yellow,
(2) square (about 4cm by 4cm)
(3) with a handwritten request
(4) and finished off with a thank you.
When social scientist Randy Garner wondered of the effectiveness of sticky notes stuck on top of a covernote of a survey form as opposed to one with just the cover note he came to some astonishing conclusions. The additional little yellow square thing made a positive difference of about 39%.
The ones with the sticky note had a 75% response as compared to the one without which only had a 36% response. The reason being that it added a personal touch to an appeal where people recognised the extra personalised effort and felt more compelled to respond. And that’s not all – the respondees who got the sticky note also responded on time and their surveys had more details to questions which meant they paid more attention to the request. The lesson learnt in persuasiveness is that the more personalised the request, the better the overall response.
Arab Unity is Gone in the Face Of Gaza – But there is hope
February 23, 2009I refer to the most recent doha debate in February 2009 , on Arab Unity as being dead and buried. The problem during the debate was that at the outset there was no consensus on what constitutes as THE indicator of Arabs being united. Does it refer to the popular solidarity such as the one seen in the face of ISraeli agressions against Arabs in 2006 and in Gaza 2009? Or is Arab unity defined by the intransigent and fragmented Arab political regimes and their leaders failing to agree on a whole range of issues affecting them curently? The debators surprisingly are in agreement about one thing though- that there IS popular grassrots unity among the Arab people while there is not an iota of unity among the Arab Regimes.
The Arab League is a joke occupied by intractable and insecure old tyrants whose only concern it seems is their ability to stay in power. It has come to a point where they have to take draconian measures to prevent the Arab people from exercising their right to voice out this unity and muffle the loud noises that are coming from the ground seeking concerted political action against anti-Arab elements in Israel, the jewish Diaspora and a militarily adventurous US administration.
If we can see that Arab leaders are so disunited while the Arab people are – it can only mean one thing – that the Arab leaders are out of touch with the sentiments of their people. And to keep the staus quo of their positions they try to muffle the ground sentiments by their iron fisted, authoritarian rule. Some even use Islam as their reasons to justify the wanton suppression of women.
It is clear, from a political point that as long as Authoritarian regimes that oppress it’s people exist and there is severe repression of political dissent, there can never be any headway to be made towards Arab unity, peace and prosperity.
The Arab’s political disunity is too glaring and too impoartant to be disregarded as inconsequential to the question of Arab unity even in the face of a unity at the popular grassroots level simply because the leaders face the world, their opinion is what counts, they hold the power, they represent the people (even though they misrepresent them). This is largely due to the nature of Authoritarian rule where the balance of power is grossly tilted in favour of those who rule. This gives the leaders of such regimes an undue amount of clout and the reality of their political power under such a circumstance affords them the unjustifiabe privilege of their positions and opinions as being representative of its entire people. So the Arabs ARE disunited in that sense because popular Arab unity is grossly underweighted in the face of Arab political disunity because of the concentration of power and clout is in a single person or entity. In such a system political character and con stitution is the true definition and representation of the state of affairs.
