Harajuku Street Fashion at TANGS

The nice folks at TANGS were kind enough to invite me to preview their latest Harajuku Street Style showcase, which runs from 15-31 January 2010.

Of course, knowing me, what initially got me hyped up were the cute little Asahi beer cans that they were serving together with the hors d’oeuvres. I’ve got one pictured here next to a pack of cigarettes for scale/size. Yeah, talk about my vices :p

My favorite label from the showcase is KBF, but I must also mention the awesome cool footwear by Dr Martens, like this beaut:

Not as OTT a selection as I originally expected (which is a good thing). Japanese fashion that I would actually wear for a change. Here are all my photos from that night, look out for the random photo of the very friendly kitty roaming the streets of Orchard Road. Thank you, TANGS!

10 Signs You Might Need Social Rehab

Here’s an observation that struck me today while I was having dinner with a handful of close friends: things that happen in social spaces are quickly weaving their way into face-to-face interactions in a fairly big way.

I’m not talking about tweetups and other online-inspired gatherings but rather the fact that more and more people I physically hang out with these days start talking about their online activities as a very real part of who they are.

A large chunk of tonight’s dinner conversation was devoted to Farmville and Cafe World on Facebook. Sure, I’d been noticing lots of Facebook friend updates lately about gingerbread men and people making too many Tostadas, but I figured it was just another Facebook app fad for the moment. Until tonight.

Here are 10 signs I’ve compiled that might indicate you’re a candidate for Social Rehab based on tonight’s exchanges with my friends:

1. The Wife got into a fight with the Husband once because he forgot to harvest her crops in Farmville while she was out. The Wife, interestingly, refuses to create her own Facebook profile because she doesn’t want old school friends to find her and tag embarrassing 12-year-old photos. So she uses the Husband’s profile (which probably won’t look good to his bosses since she farms and makes gingerbreads quite often).
2. The Wife set her alarm to ring at 3am one morning just so that she could harvest said crops.
3. When probed further, the wife displayed classic defensive signs of Facebookaholism such as “but I don’t do that anymore, only during waking hours”. To me that sounds like an alcoholic saying “I don’t drink first thing in the morning anymore, just the rest of the day”.
4. The Wife was showing me around her farm and the guest-houses that I could “stay” in. Each guest house has a cat so that I wouldn’t be starved of feline attention online.
5. The Husband, I should add, spends most of his non-verbally-communicative moments lost in his iPhone these days.
6. Another friend’s brother rushed home just to farm (or bake a Tostada, I lost track of which).
7. Abovementioned friend wanted to log in to Cafe World while on holiday just to do some cooking. She also calculated how many days she’d be on holiday and cooked up a storm in advance so her Cafe World would thrive.
8. Yet another friend keeps her laptop beside her while playing mahjong, and takes breaks in the game to cook on Cafe World.
9. My friends gleefully trade secrets to earning more points on Cafe World (gingerbread men are the key apparently).
10. My friends think it’d be a great idea to connect Farmville and Cafe World so you can harvest produce from one to serve up a storm in the other.

I’m almost tempted to go visit this Cafe World to see what the fuss is all about ‘cuz you can’t knock it til you’ve tried it right? But I think I’ll hold off for now and wait for the next 10 interesting observations to surface when we meet for a meal again.

My job

For those interested in understanding what I do for a living, here’s an introductory glimpse, as first posted on Penn Olson today.

Life List

I’ve recently started reading about lifestyle design and just today, I stumbled upon the idea of creating a personal life list. So here’s my list, which is a work-in-progress that I’ll be tweaking as I think of new things and achieve others:

• Run a half marathon
• Get some decent traction going with this blog and keep it up
• Write a book about my grandmother’s amazing life
• Snowboard on Whistler
• Spend a month on a beach somewhere
• Work for myself and make enough to pay the bills
• Drive across the USA
• Drive from Singapore to China with my mechanic
• Visit Machu Picchu
• Find a roller coaster that can beat the Tatsu at Six Flags LA
• Learn to pole-dance well enough to capture an audience
• Design a WordPress theme
• Skydive (tandem’s fine)
• Complete the design of my dream home (currently in original shitbags condition)
• Get a six-pack toned tummy
• Spend a year (at least) living in a different country
• Quit smoking
• Be debt-free (apart from the home loan, which will probably see me to my grave)

I am not a morning person

Seeing as how I have to be up at the ungodly hour of 7am in order to get to a powwow by 8.45am (or risk a $20 “late” penalty), it occurred to me to Google “morning person”. Whaddaya know, the search phrase “morning person vs night person” is a common one.

I had to read the Penn State piece on “What makes somebody a morning person or a night owl?” simply because it’s my alma mater and I think PSU rocks, even though the research was done in 2006.

An acceptable weekday morning wake-up time for me while I have a full-time office job is 8.30am, so that I can start working by 9.30am, after making myself an iced tea, feeding the cats, cleaning their litter, jumping in the shower and battling traffic. If I didn’t drive, I’d have to factor in public transport commuter hell, which would mean waking up even earlier.

After 2 years in a straight-up 9am job, I have to conclude that my circadian rhythm ain’t gonna change. And I tried. But no matter how beat I am after a day’s work, my “zing” really kicks in from 11pm. Which means I stay up watching TV or tinkering on my computer til past 1am most nights. In the beginning, I tried to go to bed earlier but that was an experiment that was doomed to fail from the start. I would just lie awake or, worse still, wake up at some ungodly hour like 5am and get frustrated.

Now, give me my 2am-9am/3am-10am time slot and I’m a happy camper. Which is why I love the flexi hours of tech startup life.

Funny how them “morning people” get almost charismatic in their preachiness about the importance of seizing the day early. Some poor test subject actually convinced themselves they could change. If I can happily coexist with morning people without imposing my rhythms on them, for the love of life and freedom, accept that I am a night person and work with me. Don’t tell me that if I start at 8am I’ll be out of the office by 6pm. That’s a lie in my industry and we all know it. And I don’t get paid for overtime. What happened to “9 to 5″? Besides, all you’ll get from me any time before 10am is a very brain-dead, grumpy, non-functioning space-waster. Think “sloth” on a warm summer afternoon.

There are awesome things to love about the night, you know. Late night radio accompaniment without the over-zealous chirpy chatter of morning rush hour drivetime DJs, muted traffic sounds, the sound of crickets, the rest of the world asleep so you have peace and solitude, and the comforting glow of mellow lamp lights. It’s a whole lot calmer I feel. And that’s when I work my best. I could’ve told you that when I used to do 11pm-6am in my teen years during exam time.

If I had my druthers, I’d do flexi hours and work-from-home days as and when I felt like it. I get my shit done and I get it done well. So bugger off.

I am a night person. Deal with it.

Keyboard warrior

I learned a new phrase today, thanks to colorrun’s blog post: keyboard warrior. But what caught my eye at the start was the image she used for it. Pretty neat:

Singapore lights time-lapse

What a gorgeous piece of work. Love the lights, the clarity and the color.

Singapore Lights Timelapse from Weehan Yeo on Vimeo.

The Sell That Fell

Flat on its face, that is. Here’s an email that crossed my Inbox today (albeit briefly because I immediately trashed it). I’ve decided to give it airtime here, with [my comments] because it’s so ridiculous that it’s funny. At the same time, I’m worried that there are people like this working in large agencies that charge a premium to market their brands. Names have been changed or “XXX’ed” to prevent this dude from getting fired:

From: XXX
Sent: Monday, 26 October, 2009 8:01 PM
To: XXX [yes, it was addressed to himself so I know there are a gazillion people on BCC]
Subject: Screaming Hello My Biography [I don't care about your bio, especially when you scream it]

Hi There, [my name is not "There"]

Hope this finds you well.
It’s been a long while since we last met. [I'm not sure I even met you]

A brief history on what’s been happening in my life. [Errr...I don't care]

I’ve been away in Dubai 4 years ago and only came back to join Agency ABC in 2007. [Big fat hairy deal]
It was a good experience mostly ["mostly" meaning there was some shit and that's why you left], Agency XYZ in Dubai treated me well and I’ve gained much knowledge and experience. The kind of experience that builds one in character and of course allowing one to grasp Strategic Planning, Campaign Management facts which in turn creates a natural appreciation to Advertising and Creative Services. [Fluff fluff fluff that only shows me you only know how to regurgitate buzzwords]

Working with Agency ABC Singapore in 2007 on the Big Bank Account was just as good. People were great fun, atmosphere was filled with Creative juices, both literally and hypothetically [how do you hypothetically fill the atmosphere with Creative juices?!]. I then moved to a Local Design Firm thereafter to attain Business Development, Art Direction, Copy Writing and expand on what I know of Strategies. [I'm speechless at this point, although I'm curious to know how I can attain Copy Writing]

Today, I have with me a couple of very talented individuals, who have taken pretty much the same route in lifes journey to join me on my quest to grow our agency and keep people screaming. [Screaming in horror probably]

Little impressions [as in "sinsignificant"?] of my past has helped structure this little agency. Bricks of Fun from Agency ABC, foundation of Art Direction and Strategies fills the air we breathe here. Creative Juice is drunk everyday and put into the works we do.

Today, I’d like to share with you what My Agency has.
Apart from quirky exciting people, we do serious work. (Please request for our Creative Portfolio and and we’ll gladly send one across.)

In the meantime, I will like to have coffee to catch up on those good old days. If you’re still wondering who this is, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that cup of coffee that rekindles and refreshes our relationship.

How does 2nd Nov sound? I’ll share more with you then.
Hope to hear from you soon.

Yours Sincerely,
XXX

Mobile: XXXX XXXX

XXX-URL.com [that goes to an ugly, bog-standard "under construction" holding page. What a winning way to end your sell there dude]

Pussy whipped

I laughed for the full 1min 22sec of this video. Til I cried. Best thing to top the end of a crap week and the start of the weekend.

Explosive cat fight! Sex! Betrayal! Foul language!

10 traits of smart people

Well, smart in my book anyway.

1. An innate and constant desire to be smarter – And I don’t mean bookish. I mean people who are always curious and going out to find their own answers. These days with Google and Wikipedia, there IS such a thing as a stupid question.
2. Don’t take common sense for granted – Thinking is underrated sometimes. I’m regularly surprised by the number of folks who don’t bother to take their grey cells out for a brisk walk around the park every now and then.
3. Understand the value of open-mindedness and personal experience – The more you see, the more you know. And theory (there is so much of it around) only gets you so far.
4. A DIY mentality – That Ikea-style, roll-up-your-sleeves, get-in-the-trenches-and-make-it-happen characteristic that gets the job done. Smart people don’t sit and wait. They stand and act.
5. Make every word they say count – There is zero value in fluff. The more you have to talk to pad what you’re saying, the less your words matter.
6. Brave enough to say no – While I don’t believe in being argumentative for the sake of it, I don’t see much value in being a full-time yes-(wo)man either. I might as well be a robot.
7. Good listeners – You’re not going to learn anything or be able to solve a problem if the only sound you hear is your own voice.
8. Good observers – People-watching is Psych 101. Human behavior is so colorful, it’s amazing how much one can learn from quietly studying the way others act and interact.
9. Methodical – Not pedantic or chained to process but able to lay things out step by step. Sure, really smart people skip a few steps here and there, but they know what they want to achieve at the end and have a mental map of how to get there.
10. Humility – Smart people recognize that there are smarter people to learn from and don’t constantly seek affirmation from a soapbox.