Posts from April 2003
April 29, 2003
Let's see what happens with this iTunes thing
"Apple's competitors dismiss the iTunes Music Store as a niche product. How, they ask, can Apple have any impact on the music industry when its share of the global computer market is a minuscule 3%?"
I dunno...I think someone finally got it right.
April 28, 2003
19,557
That's how many people government health officials in Taipei are trying to trace who came in and out of Hoping Hospital before it was quarantined because of the SARS epidemic. That means practically anyone I run into at the bank, the bus stop, the 7-11, or the ATM can cough on me and scare me silly.
Starting today, everyone from HK, Macau, Vietnam, Singapore, and Toronto, who flies into Taipei International Airport will be placed under house quarantine, or be sent to the airport hotel for TEN DAYS!!! Good god. Welcome to Taiwan.
April 24, 2003
Billboard Top 20 brands
And you thought brand names were important for Mr. WASPy in his Rangerover from Darien, CT? Yo, you be freakin' man. Brands are poppin' for homies everywhere. Just listen to da top 10 on the muddaf&*kin' hits list, muddaf&*ka. Youknowhumsayin?
A look the top 20 brands on the Billboard Hot 100...
1 Mercedes
2 Cristal
3 Lexus
4 Timberland
5 Burberry
6 Puma
7 Nike
8 Bacardi
9 G2 Jet
10 Yukon
11 Navigator
12 Baby Gap
13 Payless Shoe Store
14 Belvedere
15 Ferrari
16 Gucci
17 Footlocker
18 Hermes
19 Kawasaki
20 Louis Vuitton
April 23, 2003
Yikessss Sssssnakes
Living where we do in the semi-tropical mountains outside of Taipei, we have to deal with the nassssty reality of snakes in the yard. I don't like snakes at all. Nothing attractive or mysterious about them at all. They are creepy slimey crawly creatures that do not belong near me. I'm sure they feel the same about me. Since we've already seen our first snake of the year, we've bought our required snake repellent. So this'll be my weekend chore this week. Great....
Chinese naming conventions
Since history began, the Chinese always believed in the significance of a person's name. They have developed a very comprehensive system of naming their children as they believe that the name of a person strongly influences their destiny and fate. Astrologers, fortune tellers, academics and monks are consulted when choosing a name for the new born. Most other cultures, however do not really believe in it and tend to brush it off as superstition.
Whether you believe it or not, however, the other cultures are not spared of this correlation. One very good example is Lee Iacocca, whose name IACOCCA stands for :
I
Am
Chairman
Of
Chrysler
Corporation
America
coincidence?..........
Look at the following familiar examples.
Bush stands for :
Beat
Up
Saddam
Hussein !
Clinton stands for :
Call
Lewinsky,
I
Need
The
Oral
Now !
However, no one can beat this latest casualty in bad naming
Osama stands for :
Oh
Shit,
American
Missiles
Again!
With all these, it's best to believe in the 5000 year old Chinese culture and make sure you choose a good name for your children!
Thanks to: Steven Lee, who has just married a wonderful lady and is Leaving Everyone Envious.
April 20, 2003
Tiff is learning guitar
We got her the black Ibanez S620x with the double edge bridge and Piezo pickups as well as a Marshall amp to drive the rich lady next door crazy, so she's got a good running start into creating loud angst ridden guitar licks.
First off she wants to learn this song Fake Plastic Trees, by Radiohead, and Mas will show her how to read the tab and get all her chord positions correct.
April 18, 2003
Brand me
It's 1:30 in the morning, my dog found a snake in the backyard, some friends just left, my wife says I need to sleep, another friend just arrived, and I'm still sitting at the computer playing with this way cool site, trying to figure out all the letters from different famous brands...
I'm such a lame-o consumer. I only got 14 of them right.
April 17, 2003
Meet Joe Sars
Here's what the little coronavirus looks like...
His genomic sequence is available for download here thanks to some hardworking Canadian virus hackers.
Hopefully I won't run into him on my next trip to China.
April 16, 2003
Work safety in Taiwan
Good work safety habits are established by people like this...
April 15, 2003
Acrobatic Chinese salsa dancing
I'm the worst dancer, but it doesn't matter when you're dreaming. I was at this hot salsa club with my buddy Chris Ingoldsby in San Francisco. The place was packed like a Tokyo disco, and it was their last night before turning into a gay bar. We were trying to teach the overworked bartender how to mix our tequila drinks correctly, but eventually we just jumped over the bar and started mixing them ourselves. I was in that drunken dream state of complete coordination and fluidity when this awesome salsa track comes on and sucks all of us onto the dance floor. I try to blend in by copying the good salsa dancers, but after a while have to drop that idea, and decide to start twirling around like an ice skater or a Whirling Dervish. Eventually I'm twirling so fast that I start floating above the dance floor. People are really into this, and try to copy, but it doesn't work for them. Suddenly my salsa levitation spinning is interrupted by some Chinese gangsters who bust into the club and start shooting people. Everyone rushes out, but I'm still floating there, and the main boss guy seems pretty amused by this and we start talking. He takes me outside, takes off his white linen jacket, and shows me his best kung-fu moves, doing a bunch of cool flips and jumping around. Then he motions for me to follow up with something. I don't know any moves, but I'm still in that weird state of fluidity, so I do my best imitation of Jet Li, adding a couple of flips. He seems satisfied, and then shows me some more complicated moves. He's good. It's like we are doing some sort of weird breakdance contest. Finally he wants me to do like this triple flip thing mixed with a pike and a half spin off of the loading dock onto the concrete below, but I start to sober up during mid-jump and totally wipe out like a MX racer, and wake up.
Do I really have to go to China?
So what do I do? We're launching a major project in China, and I need to be there for the negotiations and technical hiring. This means getting on a flight to HK and being in close contact with an airport full of people, then getting on another flight to Shanghai, and same as above, then getting on another flight and repeating steps 123. I'm not SARS paranoid, but I keep asking myself, "Is there any real reason to get into a flying virus box and travel to China at this exact moment in contageous disease history?"
April 13, 2003
Strange inconsistencies in Taiwan jazz
...We are all impressed with the grandness of the production, almost as much as his elaborate hand movements. It's a big show for sure, June 29th, Sun Yat Sen Memorial. Gosh, that’s just around the corner. People start to squirm, eyes dart back and forth around the room. Finally, I have to ask, "So can anyone here play jazz?"
A long silence. "Well, that's why we asked you're here. We don’t really know anything about jazz. Can you suggest some songs for us to play in the concert?"
"You mean like jazz songs that will work with an orchestra?"
"That's right."
"And no one can play jazz?"
"Yes."
"And this is only a couple of weeks away?"
"Yes."
April 10, 2003
A great article
"Media is a word like "content" which makes art sound like a business..."
Sounds like music to my ears.
more »
Guess who I met at Hooters?
What's scarier? Being caught at Hooter's or seeing Saddam there as well?
The fight against privacy?
I always get a kick out of poorly edited international content...
From CNN Entertainment: "International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said global revenue fell 7 percent to $32.2 billion in 2002...The London-based group said sales are expected to slump by a further five percent this year even as the industry intensifies its fight against privacy, and continues to cut costs and diversify its products."
Dude, I wish they'd just leave me alone while I'm listening to Beyonce and Shakira and Brittany backwards in my bedroom cloaked in my goat's head, wearing my G-string.
April 09, 2003
A beer with a chi chaser
I've been taking this weird Chinese medicine lately. It's supposed to build up my chi. After my latest promotional tour, my chi was been feeling pretty wimpy. I was crawling out of bed in the morning wondering what hit me in the head...
I guess we all grow up sometime
The image I have in my mind of Charlotte Church is of a little young church girl who has this amazing angel voice and is like controlled by her mother or something. I guess even little angel voices eventually grow up, don their thong, and puff on a pack of Marlboros. Gee, I'm getting old...
No masks at the movies?
We invited the whole office and several customers last night to a preview for "The Quiet American." Some people didn't show because of the SARS scare, but most came out, and we even joked about what to do if someone starts coughing. One HK guy just back from a job there respectfully wore his mask, but no one else in the crowd bothered to wear one. This makes me think that Taiwan people aren't too worried about SARS. No one is rushing to meetings in HK anymore, including me, but we aren't wearing masks on subways and gripped with fear in the elevators. I guess this is a good sign. None of the Chinese women who saw the movie liked the leading actress, Do Thi Hai Yen, but I thought she was alluring in a sad helpless kind of way, and reflective of how Westerner's "take care" of Asian girlfriends.
April 08, 2003
Scary Statistics and SARS
"The number of reported cases of SARS in the world is doubling every 11 days. This is implied by the slope of the blue curve, using the data available on April 7, 2003. There will be 100,000 cases on about June 4, 2003. A million cases will be reached on about July 11, 2003, and ten million on about August 18, 2003. These predictions will change every day as new data changes the slope of the curves. Only world cases after March 25, 2003 are used to compute the slope, because that is when China began reporting."
This site keeps you up to date on all the paranoia.
April 04, 2003
#1 Google listing
...for "Do Dogs Have a Soul?"
"Gosh, this is such an honor. I wish to thank the Academy, plus all of my fans, plus my director, the crew, and there are so many more, I know I've forgotten some, oh, and all the dogs out there who have soul. Thank you! Thank you! I love you!"
April 03, 2003
Got your mask ready?
Definitely don't want to be staying on the 9th floor of the Metropole Hotel in Mong Kok, Kowloon. Seven of the initial SARS transmitters from HK all stayed on the 9th floor of this hotel.
I mean this is getting a little crazy. People are in quarantine camps in HK, schools are closing, people are afraid to take the subway, and we are all walking around with masks on like Howard Hughes.
The WHO says try to avoid HK and Guangzhou, which when doing business in Asia is like saying, don't go to China.
Oh, and definitely DO NOT cough in an elevator or kiss people like they do in Italy.
April 01, 2003
How now mobile cow?
I've been having an ongoing beer/sms/email discussion with Jan Signell, Ericsson President in Taiwan (and a pretty good bass player), about the killer business model for the mobile content business.
This was my most recent addition:
"Me, the more I work in this industry, I think the business model is just like a big cow. For music guys, the cow is going to squirt out golden milk everywhere.
For carriers, they'll rent you some grass to park your cow along with 50 others.
For tech guys, the cow will eat 2.32 hectare of grass a day.
For media guys, they convince us they can mate the cow with a horse.
For us, we're the ones who clean up all the cow shit."
I see the real money in the bottling industry...
Madonna and the hampster tube
Life was deteriorating in the current world dimension where we lived, and I spoke to a few insiders who told me of a way out to a better dimension. There was a large white concrete tower where a lot of people were lined up. They were crouched over, looking into a small hole just wide enough for a smallish child or a slippery desparate convict to crawl through. What we had to do to get to the other side was crawl through this mile long ribbed hampster tube. It was horrible and dark, but it promised a better life for those who slipped through. I dwelt on this as the line got shorter. Pretty soon it was my turn, and I started to panic. Finally, the woman in front of me turns around and says, "It's our turn, I'm going for it! You coming or not? They're about to close it down." It was Madonna. I thought about claustrophobia for a second, and the horrible consequenses of getting stuck in a tube with Madonna's butt ahead of me, but she was already going through, so I just got in. I wanted to bring my saxophone with me, but I had to either push it ahead with my face or tie it to my leg and drag it along. I opted for the latter, and started squeezing through. After about an hour of this, I could see the light at the end of the hampster tube, but there was a bend in the tube, and once I passed it, my sax case got stuck in the bend. I couldn't move forward. I couldn't move backwards. I couldn't reach back to untie the case stuck behind me. All I could do was wait there for someone else to hopefully come through the tube and unlodge me so I could crawl out...that is, if the tube hadn't closed up already, meaning I would be there forever.
A married guy sent me this...
I thought I was the only one who heard things differently.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
