Ah-Chu

Steven Chu is the United States Energy Secretary who has just returned from his first official visit to China. Judy Chu just became the first Chinese-American woman in Congress today. Way to go Chu's, they aren't related, they just happen to have the same name. Even the woman that Judy Chu beat in the election to get to the position was also a Chu. Steven Chu and his associate Mr. Locke chilled with experts and officials in China to discuss energy. He's actually so impressed with their advancements and strategies that he thinks it's quite possible that China could catch up and possibly surpass the United States on that front. There ya go! A little more relevant, Asian American working for his country. Now here's some fun stuff, enjoy:
Russell Peters

Strike Master Mike

Here's a shout out (text out?) to my boy Michael Swenson. He just won the Senior Babe Ruth Tournament in Greenwich, Connecticut, pitching 7 innings for the win. His team, Rink and Racket, are champions for the second year running, but for Swenson his baseball season is far from over. He's been recruited to the Greenwich All-Star team, to play in a few Connecticut wide tournaments, and is planning on continuing his hot streak on the mound, infield, and at bat. The title doesn't refer to his baseball prowess, but his bowling talents. During the winter Mike also led the Varsity Bowling team to State Finals, and he's pretty darn good at bowling.

Big news: Hilda Solis left a seat open in Congress when she left to become Obama's Labor Secretary, 2 front runners for her position from the state of California were Judy Chu (Democrat), and Betty Chu (Republican). 62% voted for the Democrat, and on Thursday she'll be flown into DC, to be sworn in. Actually what's really odd is that they're both cousins with each other through marriage. Now the reason why this is huge news, is that she's the first Asian American Woman to be elected to Congress. The times are changing eh?

Wild Wild West

You must remember that movie made in 1999, with Will Smith and Kevin Kline, along with the promotional song with same title, neither of which were very good, but were amusing at the very least. "When I roll into the (Wild Wild West). When I stroll into the (Wild Wild West). When I bounce into the (Wild Wild West)." It's time to lead this topic into a more relevant one. Don't want to get too far off track like most of the other entries. So Western Union, a prominent client of New-A's.

Originally it was widely known in the US best for exchanging telegrams, until it disbanded that service because of technological advancements. Now Western Union has over 350,000 locations in over 240 countries and territories, and specializes in money transfer, money orders, and other commercial services. I'm only throwing out this tidbit of information because until a day ago, I hadn't much clue of what they did either. Yes that's right reading this blog can actually teach you things. Like, did you know that the Scottish National Flag, St. Andrew's Cross, is technically the oldest national flag still in use! It goes back to the 9th century. Here's another fact, today July 14th is a national holiday in France. Bastille Day, the French celebrate the storming of the Bastille, and French independence.

Back to Western Union, it's only logical that they attempt to advertise more to foreigners in the US because their main product is transferring money to almost any location in the world, which is exactly what many Asian Americans do. They send money to friends, and most importantly family back home. Advertising in language for their major niches is a solid idea, and will definitely increase business in a declining economy.

Entourage

Season 6 of Markie Mark's (Mark Wahlberg) HBO (Home Box Office) premiered last night. The main cast of Entourage:
Vince-Adrian Grenier
Drama-Kevin Dillon
Eric-Kevin Connolly
Turtle-Jerry Ferrara
Ari-Jeremy Piven
While this first episode was actually not a very strong start to the show, this behind-the-scenes Hollywood show was welcomed by viewers anyways, just 'cause the gang is so darn enjoyable to watch. However the only decent plot of the episode had to be Lloyd (Rex Lee) pushing to get a promotion from Ari, because the rest of the show was surprisingly boring, consisting of simple one liners, and lame comebacks.













In other news, Eun-Hee Ji of South Korea sunk a 20 foot putt on the 18th hole for birdie to win the LPGA tournament at the Saucon Valley Country Club yesterday. While I did not personally see the coverage of the match, I hear that Ji put on a quite a show getting birdie on 3 of her final 6 holes.

What's Your F*C* Doing On Your Shirt?

Now if you thought I swearing with those asterisks, you sir, are thoroughly mistaken. It just stands for face which is a basic component ofr the new t-shirt project. Let me back up. Okay, like 15 entries ago I talked about eCommerce and how we're going to try and implement that into the site, to make some extra cash, brand Admerasia, and try all sorts of cool stuff. Just the last entry I showed you some cool flash drive concepts, and here's another idea presented; T-shirts. Again our creative department let their minds roam without a leash, and they came up with some pretty crazy ideas.

A simple concept design with Admerasia, and a group of staff photos on the back. A cheap generic idea.

Another pretty simple idea with the phrase, "I am AdmerAsia n". Cute, they also took some pictures of people and threw them into the bottom.

Here's the Admerasia logo vertically done on the right side of the shirt and then pictures of people's eyes and upper part of their head in the frame.

This plan has a basic Admerasia logo across the chest, but a larger full facial picture of the wearer that stretches around the left side, visible from the front and left.

As cool as it would be to utilize some of these designs, it's kind of illogical because of the designs. A single t-shirt with one of these full screen prints is around $300!! The price is so expensive because it's insane to set up the entire process for such a large graphic and only order 1. Too even make the prices sellable we'd have to bulk order a ridiculous amount in an effort to lower the price to around $15. Because of these restraints I think we'll end up with one of the more generic ideas, and simpler designs, but hey it was cool to see them, wasn't it?

ADM #1

Admerasia's creative department has fabricated some ideas for the flash drives for promotiomal usage, and possibly for sale. We've got a bunch of face ideas (cause the staff here is the most important thing):
-Sticker Faces:


















-Magnet Faces:














-That Thingy; that when you tilt it you can see another picture:














Here's one built out of a spongy gel type material that seems fun:











Another cool concept is a customizable person:














A Da Vinci Code style code breaker type of USB thing (my personal favorite):

R16 Incheon

R16 stands for Respect-16. It's an international cultural exchange that features a b-boy competition. It also has events like urban art galleries, hip-hop concerts , a graffiti festival and a movie festival. This September will be the 3rd annual event, in Korea. The past 2 years it took place in Seoul, South Korea, but this year it will be in Incheon. Incheon is actually just a city over from Seoul, and they're connected by a subway system. Admerasia has been approached to create a small campaign to expose R16 to Americans. We're suppose to figure out a way to get college aged people to spend the money and have the time in late September to go across the entire world to watch a 3 day tournament that has little to no prestige, or perhaps we can convince them to visit the barren tourist attractions in the busy port city of Incheon has to offer. If you didn't get it, that was pure sarcasm...

Here's a 12 year old at the competition:


Here's part of the final battle (sounds very low, jack it up!):

Dinner For Two

www.opentable.com check it out. Pretty darn awesome. I made an account a couple of weeks ago, because I like making reservations for dinner. I feel more important and suave when I arrive at the restaurant and I can say, "Yes, I have a reservation... Kwan Ng." Yeah, you're jealous. So basically they've got a catalog of loads of restaurants in most cities in the United States, and you can sign up for your reservation for free on the site. They help organize the restaurants by price, reviews, location, or cuisine style. Now of course the site has got to make money somehow, well they offer loads of services from limos, to having flowers delivered to the table. I have yet to utilize one of these offers, but I have been starting to rack up the dining points. Once I reach 10,000 I receive a $100 gift card, to use at any of the restaurants. Now that's pretty cool, I'll still be spending more money than I'll be getting back, but it's a nice thing to aim for. So far I've been to Ideya, Madison Bistro, Ethos, Pala, Smorgas and Union Square Cafe all of which have been pretty darn good.

Racism?!?!

I really wanted to talk about Orientation today, or July 4th, but it turns out I'll be talking about racism. Honestly, I never really cared for the topic. People would say an Asian joke, look at me and ask me if that's racist, and I always responded "No, I don't care." I've never met a truly "racist" person. Plenty who sterotype, or maybe even doesn't like a certain race, but never someone who actively hates a race. I've visited a large amount of countries, states and cities, and never have I once experienced something like this.

I now realize it's an understatement to say that I grew up in a sheltered environment. Greenwich, Connecticut is probably the most guarded place around. Of course there's a good deal of diversity, but no one really hates someone else just because of race, and many sterotypes are broken there, because we all tend to be of the same (higher class) demographic. We took loads of surveys at orientation, and each always had a question about diversity, like "Will you make friends of a different race?", "Do you think you'll get along with minorities?". Orientation went great, but what I'm going to talk about is Saturday evening/Sunday morning in Long Island, New York.

(FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH, IT'S JUST BACKGROUND INFORMATION) I had invited a couple of my buddies to hang out during July 4th at my uncle's place in Long Island. I figured we could get away from home for a weekend and just spend the days relaxing. swimming, playing soccer, socializing with people we'd most likely not interact with, eating plenty of food that was barbequed, and sleeping... Anyways, it's pretty late out, probably near midnight and we decide that a Wendy's run is in order. We really wanted those 99 cent sandwiches, and frosties. When we get there, the fast food restaurant had already closed, but the pick up window was open, we had gotten there via 5 minute walk so we decided, just to go to McDonald's across the street. We ate there, but returned to the Wendy's in an effort to use the pick up window and still get frosties. We weren't served since apparently it's required to have a car, so we started walking away.

(THIS STORY IS CENSORED, I TOOK OUT ALL THE REALLY BAD WORDS) Now I take full responsibility for the following events. These guys in a beaten up Buick, drive up to the pick up window and yell to one of my friends, "You in the orange shirt, you're gay! Yeah, I'm talking about you faggot!" Evidently, they beleived that because my friend happened to be wearing an expensive orange polo, he's gay. Now, 4 years ago I would have let it go and run away, but nowadays I won't let anyone get away with that, nor would I back down. I turned around and yelled back, telling them to basically shut up and say that to our faces. Of course, there would be no story if they didn't, they got out of the car and the 4 of them were clearly bigger than the 3 of us. My friend in the orange shirt, was the smartest and quickly speed-walked away heading back to the house. I, being the thick headed idiot I am, turned around to confront them, while slowly walking backwards to the down the street. They reached us and we were still both yelling at each other. Mainly it was me versus the smallest one of them.

During one of "taunts" I stuttered on a word, and the guy took his chance. "Hey, you speak American, Chinese boy?" and I classicly responded with, "Yes, I speak English." He came back with, "But we're in America right now." At this point I had turned around and started walking away, when 2 of them cut me off. My third friend could have walked away too, but he stayed to help me. 1 of the guys behind me punched my in the ear, and the other guy behind me threw one into the back of my neck. I'm surprised I took both hits without falling or even yell in pain, the only reaction I had to it was that my hat had fallen off. My friend leaned over to pick up my hat, and as he was getting up one of the guys yelled "Here's my Jackie Chan kick," and proceeded to kick him in the "gentleman's area." Every guy knows how much it hurts. I'm proud to say that he took the surprise kick, just grunted, stood up, and stared right back at them. 2 of them had already run away since their recent actions had acquired attention and some people were honking there horns. The kicker ran away quickly, and the last one said, "You ain't no Bruce Lee, you can't fight," and he walked away too. They called us more names and taunted us more, and I still couldn't let it go. I don't know why, but I refuse to get pushed around even in a bad situation like this. I continued to yell back, refusing to recognize their "strength," they had attacked us and ran away before we could do anything? One of them came back from their car, and we did one of those face to face, pissed off, pre-fight stares while yelling at each other. His gang called him back, he faked a punch, and ran away.

In retrospect, we decided that while they originally were aiming for my friend in the orange shirt, because they thought he was the one talking back to them, when they saw me, they instantly targetted me because of my race. It's severely disappointing that people still act this way. My friend who stayed with me earned a great deal of respect since he could have left me there. I've already told the story to multiple audiences, and I've gotten mixed responses.
1. Impressed that we took these hits, and didn't fight back.
2. Blame the entire event on me, for provoking/instigating the entire event.
3. Blame the other group, and just hope we're okay.
4. Think we're lucky that they didn't have weapons of any sort (which we are).
5. Glad that we stood our ground, and didn't let them walk all over us.

Oh, did I mention they actually asked for our money too. I told them we're not giving them our money, and they gave up on it. They obviously weren't very experienced muggers. We're lucky that we walked away from it without any injuries, and perhaps in the future I should be more careful. That's my story of the July 4th weekend, I'm an American, always considered myself one, more so than those guys ever will be, and proud of it. I'm just frustrated that there are still some people in our nation that act like this...