30DC26: Something I Want

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In my very shallow way of looking at the world, of course I’m taking “Something I Want” to mean a material thing, as opposed to airy-fairy shit like enlightenment and children and world peace (which I actually do want, but we all know how likely that’ll happen in the foreseeable future).  Great – my ThingWhore Hat is firmly on.

Besides being a notorious and cultivated ThingWhore, I’m also a huge list & spreadsheet aficionada.  Put those together and what do you get? 

Facebook Literacy & Etiquette

"Stace! Stace!!! He Facebooked me back," I enthused excitedly to one of my best friends about some boy I was fascinated with circa 2008.

"Really? I don't see anything on your wall - did he send you a private message?" Stace asked.

"Ugh, no, he replied to me in a comment to my post on his wall," I replied disappointedly.

"Ah, that's because he's from Europe. They're really Facebook-illiterate that way," Stace told me sympathetically.

And that made me wonder - how did Facebook etiquette get established?

Madrid Mini-Giveaway!!!

*snap!* You don't  KNOOOW ME! 
(That's my favourite line from trashy reality shows as well as garbage talk shows.)

IT Boys Are Universally Awkward

A Spanish man let a door slam in my face for the first time since I've been here.

Retiring Twitter

Back in November, I decided to be adventurous and to try out a new form of social media - Twitter. It's been over a month, and I haven't really fallen in love with it; I don't really want to be telling everyone what I'm doing at any given moment. Besides that, it's still not very popular in my corner of the world. So I've decided to retire my Twitter - I'm not going to get rid of my account, but I just won't be using it anymore. I may resume using it in the future if I think it's worthwhile, and if I do, I'll let you know!

Props to the Porcelain Goddess

I need to show some love for Japanese lavatories. No one makes toilets like they do here. I was really pumped to take bathroom breaks here, having used a technologically-advanced loo in J-Town (formerly Heisei Market) in Toronto.

The first night I was here, I pored over the button menu on my aunt and uncle’s toilet (picture above), just pressing everything to see what would happen. I find that Japanese toilets, like German toilets, are very environmentally-friendly – there’s always two flush buttons to conserve water: one for number one, and one for number two. Thankfully, I can read Chinese (Kanji in Japan), so I know to press the button labelled “Small” when I take a leak and the button “Big” when I take a dump – pardon me for TMI. There's also a button with a picture of a bum on it for the bum-cleaning spout, and a button with a picture of (presumably) a lady on it for the bidet feature. The smart thing is, those buttons don’t work unless you’re sitting on the toilet...so I put my hand where the sensor is, and promptly got water all over the bathroom floor. Good thing I tried that out before making a video of it! And when you flush, the little faucet at the top releases water into the basin so you can wash your hands – space is at a premium here, you know.

I came across a particularly fun toilet at Shunbou, this stellar Japanese restaurant in Grand Hyatt Tokyo, located in Roppongi Hills. First of all, this restaurant is amazing. Very classy, and the service is incomparable. When you first get seated, they fold up your coats for you, set it in a chair and cover them with this supersoft fabric to protect them. The servers and managers are very attentive but inconspicuous. And the décor is very tasteful and beautiful, with an open kitchen and ornate, handmade pottery laid out across the main counter. The food is good and very fresh, but not stunning. But I’d go there (provided I could afford it) just for the beautiful surroundings, excellent service and the toilet.

Anyway, after the meal, I decided to skip to the loo, and at first, I was a little turned off at how dim it was in there, even though it was beautiful. There’s art with its own spotlight set into the walls in one of the stalls! The toilets were huge and pink and metallic. I went into a stall and was about to open the lid, when suddenly, it opened by itself! My jaw dropped in delight – I’d heard of automatic toilets before, but I’d never seen one. It was very clean, so I made myself comfy, and of course, the seat was warm. I can’t decide if I like the seat-warming feature because it sort of feels like someone had just recently vacated it, but it’s nice not to get that shock of cold. As is the standard with toilets here, there’s a bidet feature, a bum cleaning feature, and you can control the water pressure as well as where it sprays. However, this particular one also had a blow-dryer for you to use after you’ve used the bidet/bum cleaner. I used it just so I can tell you all about it, of course, but I found that it wasn’t very effective because even after a few minutes of dryage, I still felt the need to follow up with toilet paper. When I was done, I pressed the button to close the lid of the toilet, but I couldn’t resist walking up to it again to re-open it. I know - I’m so mature.

However, I noticed a button on some public toilets that features a picture of music notes. I pressed it, and the toilet emitted this enormously loud flushing noise. You can adjust the volume, but I didn’t really understand what it was for. I guessed that it was for women who were suffering from urinary tract infection (UTI), to inspire their wayward muscles to relax and go. I asked my aunt and uncle to verify, but apparently, that’s not what it’s for. The real purpose of those buttons is to conceal the sound of urination. Apparently, some women are embarrassed by the sound of themselves letting’er rip, so they would keep flushing while they peed to conceal the sound. However, it’s a very wasteful thing to do, so the toilet engineers created this button to save water – isn’t that hilarious?

According to Benjamin Wallace, the most expensive toilet in the world can analyze the contents of the bowl and send the results to your doctor – I wonder if I’ll ever get to see one of those?

Good News Travels Quickly

Yes, those are two dead cockroaches floating in a cup of hot chocolate, and I apologize in advance for upsetting anyone's stomachs.

Over the last seven hours or so, I've witnessed the immense power of social media firsthand - it's staggering.

So on Sunday night, a bunch of young people went to this semi-popular tea/coffee lounge in uptown Toronto known for their overpriced drinks and deplorable customer service, when one of them was greeted with the lovely sight above after taking several sips of the drink. When they notified a waitress, she offered to take the tax off the bill. Yep, they still expected them to pay. But it gets better.

Naturally, the customers weren't satisfied, so they asked to speak to the manager. After lots of hemming and hawing, the waitress says that the manager's not there, and that they could waive the drinks bill, but they have to pay the food bill, because the kitchen and bar are completely separate, so their food was fine.

The customers then proceeded to parade around the store, showing other customers the offending drink, taking videos of other customers saying the date and time to be witnesses to the event. I think that taking evidence was smart, but making a scene was not.

The waitresses, upset, of course, tried to detain them and wouldn't let them leave until they'd delete their pictures and videos. Eventually, the police was called to sort out the mess, but even then, they insisted that the manager wasn't there.

One of the customers left her contact information for the manager, and after some back and forth, they got in contact. The manager claimed that she wouldn't discuss this matter any further with the customer because she's a 22 year old student and therefore immature. She also said that she would only speak to someone who speaks Mandarin or Cantonese. So the customer got her Chinese-speaking friend to call the manager, who hung up on him and later broke a promise to call back.

So the miffed clients took to their computers, began a Facebook group about the event, started a thread on RedFlagDeals.com, this forum about bargains that's really popular for Torontonians, and have threatened to take the issue to the media. They've also notified the Health Department, who said that they will conduct an investigation within 48 hours.

And news of this event has spread like wildfire! In about two days, the Facebook group has collected over 2100 members and counting. I've never seen a Facebook group grow this quickly before. I'm all the way here across the pond and I found out randomly over Facebook. As soon as I read all the materials through, I messaged my brother, who told me that he'd just gotten an e-mail at the same moment about the same thing, and he sent me the forum link. You can bet your Christmas presents that at least 80% of the people living in that part of town (and their friends and families!) now know about this scandal.

This is the power of instantaneous information.

The corporation that owns this restaurant threatened to take legal action against the creator of the Facebook group if they don't take down the group within 48 hours, which has galvanized a bunch of strangers into action, including law students, and other people who have consulted their lawyers and lawyer friends over whether or not a defamation suit can actually be built, which it cannot.

But the fascinating Facebook group has also shed light on why the customer service is always so deplorable there - according to several former employees, the management is complete garbage and the servers get treated and paid very poorly. In addition to the bill, 10% of it has to go to the company, and the servers keep whatever's left. So if a party leaves an 11% tip, the server only gets to keep the 1%. And if a party leaves less than 10%, the servers have to pay the company out of their own pocket. What kind of ridiculousness is that? So the servers who work there routinely lose money - after all, they're always pissed, so the service is always awful, so people probably usually pay 10% or less. Their managers also routinely pretend to be absent whenever sticky situations arise, apparently.

Now, I don't think the corporation will take a fatal hit for this, because they own a bunch of other establishments that are also reasonably popular. And even after this, there are people who say that they would still go to the other location of this restaurant. But really, they must not have benefitted from Andy Lau's public service announcement several years back - This kind of service just won't cut it anymore. If they had just apologized profusely and waived the entire bill, they wouldn't have all this negative publicity and potentially lose a profitable asset such as this restaurant. And their questionable practices would never have gotten this much attention.

But the Facebook group creator's claim that they don't intend to tarnish the restaurant's reputation? I call bullsh!t. Classic butt-saving disclaimer, although I'm not blaming them at all.

By the way, today is a very special day, scandals aside, because it's my honey's birthday! Happy Birthday, Handsome! I miss you! XOXOXO

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends, and a huge Happy Birthday to the original Shoe God, Manolo Blahnik!

As you may or may not have noticed, I added a Twitter column to the right. It's something of an experiment. You see, I'm a huge fan of all forms of social media, but sometimes, the trend just hasn't picked up where I live yet, or within my circle of friends - MySpace, for example, never really caught on. Now with Twitter, only maybe two RL friends of mine have it, but they've stopped using it months ago probably because there wasn't enough of a network for them to build on.

So! I'm going to give it a test run for a month and see how things go. If you're a Twitter (or a LinkedIn) user, feel free to add me, ok?

XOXOXO

LinkedIn: Facebook for Grown-Ups

I just discovered the awesomeness that is LinkedIn, which is basically Facebook for professionals, for the purpose of networking - which means that you're allowed to care about it and spend time on it. Cool, right?

Your profile on LinkedIn is basically your resume, and it's really user-friendly to format. Instead of posting on people's walls, you can write each other recommendations. And it's much more secure, because they really encourage that you only add people you know, and they ask for your password whenever you make any major actions. There are even groups (although they're all closed groups that you have to be approved to join) and applications that you can add, although I haven't looked into them yet. But one of my favourite features is seeing people's connections (aka friends list) because it's really useful for networking, although there are people who make it private so you can't see.

Plus there are job listings, and my brother told me that he's gotten job offers from people on LinkedIn before. As a matter of fact, there were more people than I'd thought I knew on LinkedIn, including my Aunt Karin, who has no time for anything, so I'm assuming this must be useful in some way. And I found my long, lost Uncle Kevin on it. You see, one night, when I was taking a break from writing my essay, I decided to search all the working people I could think of. I found someone with my uncle's name in his general area, but I didn't know if it was him because it was at a different company. So I went into that firm's website, which thankfully had a database of profiles for all of their lawyers, and when I searched for him, there he was! Super cool.

So! I highly recommend every to get on LinkedIn, because it's a really useful career tool. And if you know me, please add me! Just search for my "real name."

Cheers!

Congratulations & Making Babies

Congratulations to the States!

Regardless of your political views, history was made, and this marks a huge step in the Civil Rights Movement. I was a little bummed out that I couldn't park my butt in front of the TV with munchies to watch it go down live à la ANTM finale (except you're allowed to care about this) due to time zone issues - plus I had a paper to write - but it was nice to wake up to the good news, anyway. I switched on my computer even before I brushed my teeth and frantically pulled up CNN's site to see the results. I wasn't surprised at all, though I'm glad.

On a different note, I was just getting my daily fix of the fabulous and incomparable BryanBoy, when I came across his post about his possible offspring, and of course, I had to give it a try. It's a face-reading/melding program that Volkswagon is using to promote their new minivan, the Routan. The program itself is called the Routan Baby Maker 3000, and it's one of the better baby-making programs (hee!) that I've encountered because the faces generated are way more normal-looking, even though they don't really seem to be based on the photos submitted (after the fourth or fifth one, they all start to look the same - although that could just be a reflection of real life too, haha). The Baby Mama movie baby maker made really hideous babies and almost scared me from planning to procreate.

The sad thing is, this worked really well with celebrity pictures, but the baby it generated with a picture of the boy I love in real life looked really unfortunate. And the kicker is that when I made one with a picture of an ex, the kid turned out adorable! So I’ve restricted my cyberbabies to be the offspring of me and celeb crushes only. I really wanted to make one with Johnny Depp, but I couldn’t seem to find a good portrait of him with no hair or glasses on his face, and I didn’t want to have a hairy-faced child with rings around its eyes. So here goes!

The baby daddy for my first two kids is the Lead Husband Alpha Man of my harem, Dean Cain, who is the first man I've ever loved, physically my ideal male, and who I will love forever. Behold my firstborn, Desmond!

My second child with Dean is so cute, the sight of her makes my uterus quiver with glee. She's got my pout! This is Carys.
Then I decided to put the other guys in my harem to work. This one is courtesy of Takeshi Kaneshiro - his name is Ethan.

The next one is an example of what could happen if Brad Pitt suddenly decided that he prefers dim sum - her name is Teryl.


And last but not least, this one is mine and Keanu's. His name is Silas.

I think I make pretty babies - you?

Newest Addition to My Tech Harem

In a perfect world, I'd have several harems. That's right, not one, but at least a few. One for men (hee!), one for clothes, one for shoes, one for bags, one for jewellery, one for cars, one for books (I believe they call those libraries) and one for techie toys.

I've very recently added to my tech harem - it's a compact, little Dell XPS M1330 laptop! (But mine is black.) 13.3" screen, 3G memory, 250G hard drive, 9-cell battery - pure hotness, and quite an upgrade from my current Inspiron6000 (15.4", 512MB memory, 70G hard drive, 7 freaking pounds - that's more than I weighed when I was born!). I can't even tell you how excited I am to get it on Tuesday. EEE!!!

As such, I must honour the occasion by naming my new laptop. I have a thing for names; I name everything, you see. My little green car is Grasshopper (although admittedly, my aunts who owned the car before me came up with that one), my iPod is Raoul, my teddy bear is Jean Claude...

I've decided to name my laptop Cerveau, which is French for "brain", in honour of me going on exchange this fall and in honour of my heritage, because the Chinese term for "computer", translated directly, is "electronic brain."

I'm really pumped because it's got some pretty good reviews, which in turn means it's got my brother's approval. Don't tell him I said this, but I listen to him about almost everything. The only two times I ever went against his advice (joining my sorority and calling a boy who was supposed to call me) I was SO sorry. Like, intensely sorry. So I generally try not to deviate from his suggestions too much if at all anymore.

Now that I have a respectable, little tech harem going on, I think I should get to work on my man harem, don't you? ;P

P.S. It's a civic holiday here in Canada, which means we have Monday off. Happy Long Weekend!

RIP Facebook Scrabulous

My name is Tina and I am a word nerd.

Don't lie; I know many of you are too - closeted or not. Words nerds all over the world today will be mourning the demise of Facebook Scrabulous, our favourite medium for duking it out nerd-style online.

The jerks people at Hasbro began the process of trying to take Scrabulous off Facebook back in January. They took the creators of the online game, a pair of brothers in Calcutta named Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, to court for intellectual property infringement this past Thursday, and Scrabulous has been pulled off Facebook as of yesterday.

Scrabulous was one of the very first Facebook application games (added in 2007) and quickly because very popular. In March 2008, the official Facebook version of Scrabble was available, but only for people outside of Canada and the US because the application was developed by Mattel (who owns rights for the rest of the world) and not Hasbro (who owns the rights for North America) - so really, can anyone be blamed that we have Scrabulous? As of April 2008, less than 2000 people were using the Scrabble application, while there were 600,000 registered Scrabulous .

Apparently, over 54,000 people joined the Save Scrabulous Facebook group - I guess those are sometimes real after all! - but I wonder what this means for Literati?

Green Is Sexy

I know, right? This car is so hot I almost can't handle it. If the naked guy in the Sex & the City movie were a car, I think this would be him. Dark, streamlined and incredibly eye-catching.

But you know what the coolest thing about it is? This is a hybrid.This is the first car by Austin, Texas-based Ronn Motor, a company that specializes in eco-friendly sexiness - I love that, because I've always felt that hybrids look like coloured golf carts.

The Scorpion uses hydrogen fuel injection technology to increase fuel mileage by 30-50% and to minimize carbon emissions to nearly nothing. First, water is generated in the tank by the electrical system, and then it goes through electrolysis - remember high school chem? - which means that the hydrogen is separated from the oxygen. Then, the H₂is injected into the car's system, where it's converted to electricity, which powers the car.

Pretty snazzy.

And the price you have to pay to look cool while doing your part in protecting the environment/save gas money? Only $150,000. ;}

Magic, Eye-Enlarging Contact Lenses?

It always sort of bothered me that in movies or TV shows where a female character undergoes a makeover, they basically take off her glasses, and -POOF!- she's gorgeous. What's wrong with glasses? Glasses are hot. I've always thought that I look better in mine.

But lately I've been considering getting contacts just for summer months because the bridge of my nose gets really sore with the frame rubbing against it in the humidity, and because then I would be able to rock my hot Betsey Johnson shades without being half-blind - it really bums me out that I can't drive in them. And I'm sorry, but I don't do clip-ons or transition glasses.

Then last night after dinner, my mom suddenly told me about these contacts that supposedly make your eyes look bigger. They're really popular in Asia right now, because naturally, we Asian girls love enhancing our eyes as much as Hollywood starlets love to drive impaired/starve/enhance other things/flash their crotches at the pappies.

The way they work is, there is a dark ring just a teensy shade larger in diameter than your natural iris (coloured part of the eye), with a shaded area within it that just sort of frames your eyes and basically makes your irises and your pupils look larger. This apparently results in a bigger and more alert effect. I think they look like anime eyes.

Personally, I have really dark irises already - they don't look discernible from my pupils unless you're really close - so I would only benefit from the dark ring making my irises look bigger. I'm not sure I'm edgy enough for cartoon-chic, though.

I think it's a matter of science. You know how lipstick was invented to emulate the flush of blood in the lips that occurs when you're attracted to someone or aroused? Similarly, the the pupils dilate when you're under the same circumstances, and this, I think, was made to create that effect.

But before you go rushing to your nearest Chinese mall to see if anyone has illegally imported them for sale here - beware that there have been cases where women have severely damaged their eyes and eyesight from these, so use at your own risk!

Quick Update+Love!

You're awesome!

This blog has been up for exactly a week, and I’m beside myself with happiness over the warm response – thank you for visiting and for all the support! In just a week there have been 53 unique visitors and for the past few days, I’ve been averaging at about 20 hits a day. Thank you, thank you, thank you – please keep reading me and inviting your friends! :D

I use this fantastic free service from Google called Analytics, which enables me to see exactly how many people have visited my blog, from where, how they got here, along with a ton of other really useful information.

Am superexcited and glowing with pleasure to see that people from 7 different countries have visited this blog - Hello to all of you! ;) I don’t even know anyone from Greece or Mexico or Singapore; I’ve never been to the Philipines (even though my grandfather was born there); I haven’t been to Hong Kong in a decade – but here we all are, connecting on cyberspace, over the love of living the good life. LOVE. Of course, I can’t forget to give a shout out to my American It Girls, too – hello! You guys can subscribe to all the essential books (aka fashion magazines) at a fraction of the price we have to pay – am super jealous. And as always, am supergrateful to my dear domestic readers - love you guys!

I will be posting later sometime tonight, sooner if I can manage it (I’m holding down an 8-5 for the next four to six weeks) – expect a double post because I’ll be going away for a weekend vacay at Val-David, Quebec and won’t be able to update tomorrow. Naturally, I’ll keep you all posted on anything I encounter there that is pretty, tasty or fun.

You rock my world!

XOXOXO

Bag Crush

I love pink. I love owning pink things. I think the right shades of pink can make a woman really powerful. Pink things just get me right there. So you'd probably be able to imagine my impassioned squeal when I saw this:

It's the Komen Collection version of the Milano laptop tote by Mobile Edge ($130USD).

You see, the Enter key of my 3-year-old laptop has fallen out (after I'd already had to replace the keyboard last year when the first two letters of my name fell out), and it's the last straw - so it looks like I will very likely be getting a new laptop. A much smaller version, which I've been wanting for a really long time now, probably a Dell Vostro with a 13.3" in screen.

So naturally, I'll need a superchic tote to carry it around in.

I adore skins, and this is a beautiful faux-croc pattern - awesome, because I won't have to sacrifice my conscience for style. It's lined in a buttery-soft tan suede, and it features a super secure laptop compartment, a removable wristlet, cell phone and pen/lipstick compartments, and - can you believe it? - a wireless security pocket that will prevent hackers from getting into your BlackBerry/PDA.

Plus it comes with a lifetime warranty and 10% of the proceeds go to the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

LOVE

If only I didn't have to save up for travelling in Europe next year...