Met TJ through oktoLIVE!

He’s the cutest kid I’ve ever seen in my life!

Looking forward to see him on the show again!

Evernote is a web service and software application that allows us to collect notes and information. It’s something like a bookmarking a particular webpage but the edge Evernote has over the normal bookmarking tool in your internet browser is that because the notes and information are saved to your Evernote account, so you can access the notes and information

The cool thing about it is that it has handwriting recognition so if you save a picture with texts and cannot remember the file name, you can type the words that appear the picture and the file will still appear in the search bar.

Above is the link bar that is found on Evernote’s download page. You can drag and drop to your favourites bar so you can highlight any part of the web page and click on that button, and the highlighted parts will be added to your Evernote account. It’s very simple to use.

You can also share your information and notes clipped with anyone in Evernote. So your friends can see your data base of whatever you have collected in Evernote.

But the free account has its limitation. There are limited file formats supported that you can attach to a new note, unless you are a premium account user. Also, there is a limit of 40MB of storage space per month in the free account.

It’s not that the quality of music has gone down that led to the decrease in CD sales, it’s more like:
a) people are buying songs through online music stores (eg: iTunes)
b) people are downloadling songs illegally

Applying what i’ve learned about economics  in poly, the demand of CDs goes down, the supply of CDs also goes down. It might go down until eventually, there are no more CDs in the future. Afterall, distributing music online is cheaper than distributing them in hardcopy.

If that happens, it’ll be sad because i always like to collect hardcopies of my favourite things, be it albums, movies, posters, dramas. I get a sense of satisfaction through collecting all this stuff.  But when i look back, sometimes i really regret spending my hard-saved money on these CDs/VCDs/DVDs.

The most expensive VCDs i bought back when i was in secondary 2 was “The Rose”. There were 4 boxes in a set and each box costs $29.90 last time. So in total, i spent about $120 just on a Taiwanese drama. For my own sake of keeping track, i’ll list down all the dramas/movies I’ve bought. Of course, they’re all genuine ones.
Taiwanese:
1) The Rose
2) Meteor Garden
3) The Outsiders
4) The Outsiders II
5) Snow Angel
6) At The Dolphin Bay
7) My Lucky Star
8.) Chinese Paladin
9) Peach Girl
10) Summer x Summer
11) A Chinese ghost story
12) Full Count
13) Smiling Pasta
14) Secret
15) Looking for Jay Chou

Japanese:
1) Maou
2) Yamada Taro Monogatari
3) Hana Yori Dango
4) Hanazakari Kimi no Tachi e
5) NANA
6) NANA 2
7) Moon Child
8.) Fruit basket
9) Ai Yori Aoshi
10) Fushigi Yuugi

Korean:
1) Delightful Girl Chun Yang
2) My Girl
3) Goong

Note to self: Open a VCD/DVD rental shop next time when collection gets bigger.

Anyway, back to NCT’s context, i would rather by the CDs/VCDs/DVDs than buy the soft copy online. I like being able to see and touch my products, it makes it feels more personal, like “this CD is mine!” kind of thing. Also, the CDs usually comes with wonderful mini photo books inside. All the more i would want it in hardcopy instead of staring at pictures on my computer screen.

About live concerts in future, my classmates mentioned that there would be an increase in online live streaming concert. There are two things i like about this idea:
1) It’s cheap.
2) It’s convenient

One Jay Chou concert tickets can sell up to $140. And the concert tickets usually get sold out within 1 hour of release. Black market can raise the prices to as high as $500 a ticket. So for the poor and slower people like me, online concert would be an ideal alternative route.

But there’s one downside of it. The whole purpose of attending the concert is to see your favourite artiste live/in person/in reality and not just from your computer screen. And to also experience the loud booming music that exists to split your eardrums but you know you enjoy it. It’s the raw feeling of the stage that captures the audience in a live performance.

That’s why if given a choice, i will still go for the live concert over online concert. Though it’s almost impossible for me to watch an Arashi live concert, i might resort to online streaming concerts for Arashi.

2) Choreo-ed and learned SS choreo. Small progress is better than nothing.

3) oktoLIVE! ep 4. Felt extremely stoned in the midst of a fever.

4) Choreo-ed 30 seconds of popping assignment. Stress.

5) Watched You’re Beautiful ep 13-14. Jang Geun Suk!

6) Tried out Evernote. Cool programme.

Things to be done by next week:
1) Finish 1 minute popping choreo

2) Practice popping freestyle

3) Practice popping chest hits and variations

4) Complete SS choreo

5) oktoLIVE! ep 5.

6) NCT seminar style presentation.

7) Prepare for PP job interview CA.

8.) NCT written report and blog entries.

9) You’re Beautiful ep 15-16. Finale!

So many things to do:

(Disclaimer: Picture above was not created by me nor belongs to me.)

Their founder Sam Solomon (a.k.a. Boogaloo Sam) created a set of movements that evolved into the styles known today as boogaloo and electric boogaloo after being inspired by one of the pioneer locking groups known as The Lockers as well as a fad dance popular in the 1960s known as the jerk.^[4][5] While dancing, Sam would say the word “pop” every time he flexed his muscles, eventually leading to the dance being called popping. (Wikipedia)

I need to improve, fast.

Will it help if i say “pop” every time i flex my muscles too? Haha, probably not.

And indeed they did. Their latest album ‘All the Best’ sold over 1 million copies in Japan. They might not be the boyband with the best vocals, best dance, best looks, best acting, best songs, but they definitely are the best at entertaining people, at least, in my opinion. How many bands can you name me that are:

1) Able to sing and dance over a colourful rainbow background.
Yes, they look gay, but they can make gay-ness and cheesiness look fun.

2) Retarded and not afraid to demonstrate it on national TV to entertain their audience.

They are not afraid to wear ‘nipple shirts’, wear stockings over their heads, draw big nostrils and many other dumb stuffs, all on national TV.

3) Eager to learn other languages but totally fail at them.

Ohno’s answer pawns everything!

4) Sing, dance, act, host,  compose, write lyrics, cast news, draw, fish, play the piano, make clay figurines, do professional magic tricks, etc etc.
Sho is a news caster for News Zero
Ohno opened his own art exhibition in 2008
Nino acted in Hollywood film ‘Letters from Iwojima’
Aiba went to zoos all around the world to interact with lions/tigers/kangeroos/crocodiles/rhinos/etc
Matsu Jun acted in various number-one hit dramas like Gokusen, Hana Yori Dango, etc.

Seriously, they entertain me to no end. Their songs are usually very up beat and filled with motivational lyrics (if you can get pass the few cheesy bubblegum-pop songs). That doesn’t mean they can’t do other genres though. To introduce a few of my personal favourites:

1) Debut song: A.Ra.Shi

This song never gets old. They still sing it in their concerts and other random moments in variety programmes.

2) The typical pop-ish love song: Love So Sweet

3) The motivational, high spirited song: Fight Song

4) The emo, dark song: Truth

This is one of my all-time favourite

5) The laid back, summer-ish song: Boku ga boku no subete

I’ll do an individual post for members next time when i have the time.

I was introduced to this in last week’s NCT tutorial.

Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid. (wikipedia)

You can trade virtual things with real money. Note: REAL MONEY.

Ms Kwa said that some people make a living by selling sex through Second Life. I have no idea how they manage to make a deal because you can’t even see/touch/feel the person as he/she is portrayed by an avatar which is quite limited in the looks department anyway. It’s like making a 亏本生意 (roughly translates to: losing business).

Flo, Shireen and I tried playing with second life for the first time using Flo’s account and we were quite entertained. We tried hooking up with some guy (whose avatar looks shorter than Flo’s just FYI) and this is how our conversation roughly went:

Flo: Hey handsome!
Some guy: Hi.
Flo: Wanna do it?
Some guy: Yes.
Flo: Do you have it? (note: some character comes with no balls, they have to buy it)
Some guy: Yes, i have it.
Flo: Teach me how to do it.
Some guy: Teach you what?

and i think we ignored him and went somewhere else.

They have a lot of real-life brands in their virtual stores and the stores are decorated with real advertisement. I think that’s a very smart way to advertise. Just walk along the virtual stores and the advertisements on the walls and TV would surely get into your line of vision. Second Life is also a place where real universities hold their tutorials and discussions in the virtual space.

It’s something like Habbo Hotel except that Habbo is probably lame-er. Second Life has a lot of functions but at the same time, it means that it’s more difficult to navigate through it. There are many buttons and functions that we did not manage to explore due to time constrains and the programme itself was quite laggy.

If i have a Second Life account, i would like to try to make real money out of it too. But i won’t sell sex though, because I’m too conservative. HAHA. Sex sells, but I’m not open enough or comfortable with the issue to be able to talk freely about it even though it’s a virtual world and my identity is anonymous. Maybe i can create my own concept store and if many people like my products, I can convert it to real life, like what the other people are doing.

1) Google reader
2) Omigili
3) URL Fan

On the web, things move very fast, things get updated so quickly that it might be hard to keep up with all your favourite sites.  Google Reader is like a feed reader site that collects and compiles the list of new post/content that is updated on the websites that you subcribe too. So instead of going to different websites one by one to check for updates, you just need to open up Google Reader and you’ll be able to see the list of new content from the various websites in one page.

Sun Zi says:  Know thyself, know thy enemy, and every war you fight shall be your victory.

So to know your enemy, besides searching for them on google, there’s Omgili. You can “find out what people are saying” by just typing into the search box of Omgili. Besides the normal search list, it generates a buzz list which is a chart that shows you the traffic of discussion activity around your search item in the past month, a list of related forums and tweets. It’s a very good researching website.

To know yourself, and how popular your website is, go to URL Fan. Key in the url of your website and you’ll know the rank of your website among 3 million other websites. It also shows the list of blog post that mentioned your website and other useful information.

Well, all these sites are introduced to me by a guest speaker, Patricia Law a few weeks ago. She’s from Ogilvy and she shared all these interesting sites that i would never else have known.

She also shared with us an interesting story regarding a certain group of students who wrote in to a blogger to get his help but got rejected in a rather unpleasant way. The reason for their group’s downfall was because they did not do enough research. Well, not enough to know that the blogger didn’t really like them in the first place. Also, i guess the way they wrote their letter was a little demanding.

This is what makes me scared when I’m writing in to other schools/organisations. Sometimes, it takes me as long as an hour to draft an email. In an email, I can only use words to express myself and it’s tough to write in a pleasant, polite but not too desperate way.  Words that are okay to me might sound arrogant or demanding to the other party. And because it’s a formal email, i can’t use emoticons or use ‘haha’ to lighten the mood of the email. But I’m lucky that I have not been rejected in a harsh manner before.

Her lecture also reinforced my thinking that ‘you can never state what you 100% truely feel about something if it’s negative’. You can be tracked so easily it’s scary. The last thing i want is to get into trouble because of some shit i wrote online.

2 months of hard work, trainings and rehearsals,

Late nights and overnights.

In the end, i guess it was all worth it.

It’s my last year in SP, not sure if I’m going to dance for Waves 15.

But I’m super inspired.

Thanks to Ryan, An An and KH.

Thanks to all my choreographers, Heng Thye, Jug, Yvonne, Michelle and Lum Lum.

They’ve tolerated our sucky attitude.

And of course, the Waves committee. They had a hard time. But we all learn and grow.

I slept for 16 hours after waves last night. First time in a long long time, i get to sleep for more than 4 hours a day.

Now it’s time to catch up with Arashi, school work and internship.

Am supposed to blog about the guest speaker for NCT but kept procrastinating.

Well, am still procrastinating. Shall post it in my next post. Hopefully.