Hong Kong culture is fascinating; compared to North American culture, which sells sex and celebrities individuality and political correctness by refusing to offend, Hong Kong culture shuns the idea of outright sex (although sexy is very much the subject of tabloids) and laughs at the idea of offensive speech. In a way, it’s refreshing to hear what people think.
And the former colony seems to be focused on two things: business, and personal image. A favorite and reoccuring movie plot in Chinese cinema involves some wealthy businessperson comically courting a girl who turns out to win beauty pageants. Cantopop is by far the music of choice for the region, dominated by pretty boys and girls who couldn’t compose a song on their own to save their lives (the older, mature artists do who have musical talent were, of course, yesterday’s pretty boys). Everybody aspires to be a businessman, whether managing multi-billion dollar real estates, opening a new clothing store, or selling cheap snacks on a caddy in the street.
For some reason or another, I see a lot of writing. That is, I have the privilege/frustration of reading a collective of blog entries, essays, rants, articles, and whatever the English language decides to throw my way the past few years. And since I see so many, I figure it might be a good exercise to categorize them for my writing pleasure and possibly your reading pain.
For some reason, the unholy destroyer that are my ears have a tendency to destroy any earphones I buy, as I’ve documented a little over a year ago. I went through a ton of cheap Sony earphones, and eventually settled on a pair of Shure E2g’s.
Well, turns out my ears are too strong even for Shure’s materials. To their credit, their luxury gear has lasted me two to three times longer than the cheaper Sony fare, and it’s really just the plastic cracking on the wiring and not any actual loss in functionality (unlike the Sony phones, which have had amps die while they were in my ear and by god it hurt). They also have better construction quality overall and more fulfilling, deeper bass for only twice the cost.
So all the points above would have already made me a happily satisfied repeat customer, and I was ready to lay down another $80 for a new pair if these deteriorate any further. To my surprise, though, Shure goes one step further in garnering respect by including a two-year warranty on their earphones, which covers trivial cases such as cracking plastic wires.
On the subject of my FFXII addiction…
I had an occasion to visit the local EBGames to get their exclusive FFXII Collector’s Strategy Guide. Normally I never buy anything from those guys; they’re good for browsing the latest releases and listening to uninformed gamers hype the latest game to each other but are otherwise overpriced and rip off gamers trying to sell their used titles.
And I’ve forgotten how clueless the salespeople are at these shops. You’d think that selling games for a living would force them to be more knowledgeable about the industry or even the games they’re selling; ignoring the blatant attempts to trick good-intentioned mothers into buying GTA3 for their kids, they still seemed to lack what would constitute as an informed opinion on games or systems.
Of course, this is the week when it pays to be informed about video games, what with the release of the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii as well as the launch of the Microsoft Zune. Spending 10 minutes online will give you a good gist of the capabilities, availability, and price of entry for each “must have” holiday gadget; spending the same amount of time with any of these EBGames reps will give you basically all the wrong impressions (e.g., “the Zune is awesome and way better than an iPod!”).
It’s too damned convenient.
I’ve been spending probably a bit too much time with my new XBox lately. In what is in retrospect a ill-fated move, I decided to move the XBox from the downstairs TV to my upstairs room where my router is (The Dell 24″ monitor can take component video and the Logitech Z5500’s can take optical audio, of course) in an attempt to try out downloadable games online. Boy, what a production killer.
It’s insulting easy how one’s Econ papers or in-progress blog posts can be interrupted by a quick game of Geometry Wars or Lumines Live. Of course these games are designed specifically for picking up and going, and it doesn’t help that all one has to do is hold down the green “X” on the controller to boot up the console.
One thing I’ve noticed is that more than ever before, companies are pushing microtransactions and money-pinging schemes. In the age of free Youtube videos, free user-created game mods and utilities, free themes and skins, and free game screenshots and pictures, that some companies have the gull to ask the user to pay for all the above and more. I pity the dad who loaded his XBox Live account with Microsoft Points and left it to his 10-year-old son to blow it on a set of worthless EA team themes.
Now all they need is a good RPG to keep me in a perma-vegetative state; looks like Final Fantasy XII will take care of that quite readily, though.
