USELESS INFO: WHY THERE IS A 160 CHARACTER LIMIT IN TXT MESSAGING?

I bet you have a cellular phone and chances are, you have more than one. It seems like everybody has cellular phones nowadays and it is no big deal. It is a norm. This was a far cry during the early 90’s wherein having one, albeit the soap bar appearances and massive weight is such a big thing.

A BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING

“Ang bilis ng oras”, the bride quipped after the wedding rites and reception that followed.

I am not married yet, but I do understand what exactly she meant by that. The pressure of the preparations, the countless calls, txt to friends, the invitations, the coordination and making contacts with all the people involve. The sleepless nights, the apprehensions on the decisions, confusions on the things to come and all the excitement; it seems like it took forever to conclude. When it finally arrived, everything happened like a blur, as it seems.

Strange Day

I was sleeping soundly when I started hearing screams emanating from our neighbors. I was supposed to wake up at around 10 am today to rest my body, but then again a drunk neighbor decided to climb a tree and decided to sleep on top. Heard from the background is his mother begging him to dismount from the tree.

CHOPSUEY Movies Legend

One of the great things when you are on vacation is the luxury of even a slimmest of time to discover some of the things that you never knew existed. Now, you have probably heard, seen and might have made essays or term papers that are combination of statements, facts, practically work of other authors, that are probably also a combination of statements and work of other authors. I use to call these as chopsuey or halo halo works. Thanks mainly to the advent and presence of the internet, these have become rampant in the contemporary times.

But one step ahead of them all is a man that I whose craft and art I recently discovered. Meet:
Alton Cheung
Benny Ho
Bert Brooks
Bob Poe
Bruce Lambert
Burt Petersen
Carmen Heller
Charles Lee
Daniel Wells
Edgar Jere
Felix Tong
Fong Ho
George King
Godfrey Hall
Joe Livingstone
Ken Ashley
Mark Coston
Mick Stuard
Richard Philips
Ted King
Tommy Cheung
Victor Sears
Wallace Chan
Ho Chi-Keung
Ho Chieh-Chiang
Hoh Chi-Keung
Ho Chih-Chiang
Ho Jang-Cheon
Hoh Jun-Sing
Zhi Jiang He

His name is really Godfrey Ho and those names above are his aliases. He is not really a criminal, a movie director and producer in fact. But his movies are so horrendous and borderline stupid and criminal. That is the probably the reason for those aliases, maulaw pud siguro. :)

All of his movies are martial arts themed. I don't know what's with him but the elements of the movies always includes ninjas, zombies, vampires, and robots. Poor lighting, bad acting, stupid stunts and dialogues are also a staple of his movies. I believe some of his movies also dealt with the bruceploitation genre.

But the most amazing thing about his movies are the obvious cut and paste techniques that it utilize. It is very obvious that scenes from different unfinished movies are patched up to create new one, like watching a single movie with many movies in one, with less care on the story and coherence.

To fully understand what I am blabbing, be amazed at this videos:




As crazy as his movies are, he was able to make 200+ cut and paste movies that were distributed in Asia and probably the other planets also. Best of all, all of his great efforts were actually rewarded as he is now one of the teachers in the prestigious Hongkong Film Academy. Hahahaha. Who's crazy now ninja?

I actually downloaded some of his ninjas/vampire/robots/zombies movies to fully enjoy the cut and paste feel since you tube video cannot really capture its essence. Want some? :p
As they say, a true ninja knows Godfrey Ho.

BLOGGING and the 4 P’s of Marketing

During my MBA class back then, Marketing (the subject) was one of my most anticipated one. I heard quite a lot of stories about how interesting it is from really old people. I have also read marketing books (though not that much) and find some of it to be interesting and informative. But as we know by now, disappointments in life are of common occurrence, and my marketing class turned out to be a snooze fest.

Come the comprehensive exams, I am not really sure what I am going to do with the perceived (my own perception that is) lack of understanding on the subject matter. But good thing that life is full of disappointments, as it turned out that the exams were relatively easy for me. You know why? It was just all about utilizing one, single, bisan isa lang ka idea or concept in marketing.

I may not be an MBA yet during that time, but I have common sense. The simplest thing to do then is to utilize the simplest and easily remembered concept and take off from there, which is, tadan; the 4 P’s of marketing.

Notwithstanding my long intro, the 4 P’s says that Marketing decisions generally fall into the four controllable categories: Product, Price, Place, Promotion. This entry really is related to blogging and tries to come up with a fun analogy, parallelism and irony between the two.

PRODUCT
In business (unless blogging is your business), the objective is ultimately to sell the product and contribute to the bottom line. In blogging, you don’t necessarily need to sell the product, meaning nobody needs to read your blogs and yet it would contribute to your bottom line.

Many are blogging just to release pent up emotions. Some would even prefer that nobody will read their posts. Some blogs are only directed to certain individuals or groups. But more often than not, bloggers wants as much traffic as possible for one reason or another. May it be for monetizing or they just want to feel appreciated for their ideas.

PRICE
In business, price plays the biggest factor in determining whether you will be a patronized or not. Will we be doing premium pricing or mass produced pricing. These are the usual issues.

In blogging, it is how much are you willing to pay, both literal and figurative that determine how your blog will roll. Are you willing to spend long hours even up to dawn in tweaking your html much to the detriment of your sleep? Are you willing to give up a portion of your privacy and share to the world some of your deepest secrets and desires? How much money and resources are you actually spending in doing all these stuff?

PLACE
In business it generally refers to the ways on how your product reaches your customer. It talks about logistics, distribution channels, market coverage, among others. It is diverse and wide in scope.

In blogging, all you need to be is in your house, coffee shop with free wifi, net cafes or even hulog2x piso internet stalls/ machines. Yet it is even more diverse and world wide web in scope.

PROMOTIONS
In business much time, effort and money is spent in promoting the product. Certain strategies are even employed as to optimize the promotional activities. The goal will always be to generate a positive customer response.

In blogging, you may or may not promote your product (again unless you are blogging for money). If there is a promotional strategy such as push or pull in business, in blogging it is just; publish, delete, public or private. It is interesting to note though that blog that are monetize, tend to do lots of promotion, even to the point of spamming.

The 4 P’s was only a very useful tool on the early times of the marketing concept. Blogging on the other hand just kept getting bigger, nastier and lot’s of irrelevant posts such as this entry are proliferating. :P

MAGIC Number

Any number could be it. Mine was, is and will always be nine. My B-day, her bday, the most magical, mysterious and consequential of all.
But I am required to do it.
Rub your magic 8 gently
But the magic words will always be.....I love you.
:)

THE ARTIST OF WAR

I glanced upon a book when I was in grade 3. I was vacationing then in an uncle’s house in a province of North Cotabato. It has a dark or almost black cover with a sort of rising sun emblem on the center, with great similarity to that of the Miss Saigon logo. The book’s title; The Art of War. The author, Sun Tzu

My understanding back then, was that the book probably speaks of war. And with an Oriental sounding author, it is probably a war that involves martial arts.
Where the protagonists and antagonists would kick and scream and fly with their swords and daggers and bows and arrows and everything. The kind that I used to see every Sunday morning on RPN 9.

I could remember that back then, I actually opened few pages and read some phrases. I am not sure anymore what happened after, but all I can remember was that it did not caught my attention. I left it, went outside and play along with my cousins.

It was only when I was in college that I got interested on the book. It is during my “knowledge hunt” that I have decided to look what this book has to offer. This was the time that I got interested to “classic”, such as Newton’s Principia, or Boyles’ Theory on Gasses.

Sun Tzu is a Chinese general, circa 500 B.C., sometime referred to as Sun Wu, and Sun Tzi. I even mistaken Sun Tzu for Lao Tze, the founder of Taosism. Primarily for the fact that the most fundamental of Sun Tzu's principles for the conduct of war is that "All warfare is based on deception". Another key Sun Tzu principle is that "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. Now, these principles bear the basic characteristics that are taught in Taoism by Lao Tze.

During the time that it was written, China was basically made of warring states. It is during this time that there is a high demand for military leaders and armies that would go from different leaders selling their military skills. The book covers a variety of different aspects of warfare including laying plans, waging war, terrain, energy, maneuverings, and even the use of spies.

The applicability goes beyond boundaries and breaks cultural barriers, as not only the Chinese that were influenced by the book, but other nations as well. The works of Sun Tzu have been widely known in the United States since the mid-1970s. Diplomat Henry Kissinger has made reference to Sun Tzu and the principles for the conduct of warfare have been the subject of serious study in U.S. military circles for many years. The Art of War as applied to business, sports, diplomacy and personal lives has been popularized in American business and management texts. Sun Tzu may be the most frequently quoted Chinese personality in the world today.

For me, it is all about understanding human conflict in every ways possible. People are afraid of what we don’t understand. If we are afraid, we tend to make erroneous judgment. If we fully understand the nature of things, in this case conflict, only then that could we truly be prepared for its resolution.

The teaching takes a rational approach to the problem of conflict, as oppose to emotional one. It is taught that conflict can not only be resolved, but more importantly, and preferably, it can be prevented.

It pinpoints that greed and anger are the fundamental causes of failure, while the emotionless or detached fighter will win. Not the hot headed, not the one seeking vengeance or the ambitious fortune seeker.

Finally, though the title of the book may be associated with violence or attack, the book is actually an advocate of preventing it. This echoes the idea of combat as a last resort. The ideal situation is to winning without fighting. If it is done, then ultimate victory is achieved.

However, Sun Tzu is smart. Sun Tzu was very aware that war should be the last resort but if you were going to "do war" then you should do it properly and ruthlessly to ensure victory.
hasta la vista, loco