A little ingenuity stretched out with the power of the internet and broadcast brought great returns to a Montreal man. On July 12, 2005, a man started his quest through his online blog site (http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/) to barter up from a red paper clip to a house. The man first traded his red paper clip for a pen. From the pen he moved on to things like a camp stove, a beer keg, a snowmobile, a truck and so on. As his venture gathered more steam, he eventually got himself booked for appearances on national television. 14 trades and exactly a year later on July 12, 2006, he is trading for a house in the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan.

Several factors took part in making this man's venture a success – the power of the internet, the power of broadcast, the power of marketing, the power of negotiation, and the power of creativity. The question now is can I exercise these powers to my benefit as this man did? Like any other Netizen, I have the power of the internet at my finger tips. I have a B.A. in Broadcasting and am currently working in the field. I have a Minor degree in Marketing. Creativity is obscure. It happens when it happens. As to negotiating, if that's the same as bargaining, I really didn't show much of a bargaining flair when I was overpaying for rubbish souvenirs in China.

Let's work on my negotiation skills shall we? Does anyone want to trade a house for my…my…hmmm…my pretty little bird paper clip magnet??? It's colorful and it even chirps when you move it.



… … … Alright, I'm probably better off getting back to work instead. :P

The Power Of A Penny
Oh the power of a penny. Actually, in this case a woman's power was cut off when per payment to the power company was short one cent. After going to the power company to pay the penny, the woman's power was turned back on - seven hours after she was blacked out. How much is a penny worth? In this case, seven hours of power outage and immeasurable amount of agony. Poor woman.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/05/16/national/a061601D50.DTL

Recognizing Grandmothers on Mother's Day
Over Mother's Day weekend, I had the joy of watching one of the most heartfelt movies I've ever watched. This is a Korean film called "The Way Home (Jibeuro)". A brief synopsis on the film: Sang-Woo, a spoiled little South Korean boy, is spending the summer with his mute grandmother who lives up in the mountains. Over the course of the summer, Sang-Woo gets used to his grandmother, whom he used to make fun of, calling her a "retard." He also gets used to the simpler ways of life in the country and learns the importance of love and respect for one's family and elders.

This movie made me laugh and it made me cry. It's cute and it's touching. The best family comedy I've seen. Best of all, I happened to have watched it on Mother's Day. In no way was this planned. The movie was recommended to me based on the fact that I like foreign films. In a bizarre coincidence this all happened around Mother's Day, a day for us to celebrate not only our mothers, but also our grandmothers. As I watched this film, I remembered my grandmother and how she cared for me in my childhood years.

If you want to watch a funny and warm movie, go for "The Way Home". No matter what age, gender, or nationality you are, I promise you will love it. It's in Korean with English subtitles. But since one of the two main characters is mute, there is not much dialogue to scramble to read. If you have children, I highly recommend watching it with them. They can surely benefit from it also.

The California High School Exit Exam
I am amazed by all the recent oppositions to the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). Today, an Alameda County judge threatens to rule the exam to be unfair and strike down its implementation (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/09/MNGSVIO7NI1.DTL).

The two strongest arguments against the exam I've heard so far are (1) it deprives a diploma to students taught by substandard teachers/school systems and (2) it discriminates against English-learners who do not have enough command of the English language to perform competently on the exam. (For information on the CAHSEE, click on here)

An attorney who brought on the lawsuit challenging the exam said, "There is overwhelming evidence that students throughout the state have not been taught the material on the test. And many students have been taught by teachers not credentialed in math and English." From this argument, we can see that the problem lies not in the exam itself but in the substandard education some students in this state are receiving. The exam tests students on 7th to 10th grade-level English and math skills. If our 12th graders cannot pass an exam that tests them on things they should have already been taught, then something is wrong with our education system. Given this, energy should be put on ways to improve our schools, not on the alarm-sounding exam itself. The exam is a good wake up call for us to step up our education standards. Perhaps hire better qualified teachers? Impose higher quality curriculums? Shunning an exam that tells us our students are not properly taught is not a fix to our problem. It's an avoidance of our problem.

I rarely agree with the Governator but here I have to agree with him. The Governator said he was "disappointed" at the tentative ruling and said that "delaying the exam's implementation does a disservice to our children by depriving us of the best tool we have to make sure schools are performing as they should be."

As to the argument that the English-based exam discriminates against English-learners, my counterargument is that this is, after all, America. The primary language used here is English. One should have a basic level of English proficiency to succeed in this society. The CAHSEE is not asking for Shakespearian literacy in our students. It asks only for a 7th to 10th grade level of proficiency in reading and writing, a bare minimum of prerequisite for the next levels of challenges our high school students are bound to face, first from college-level courses and then from the dog-eat-dog world of employment. If they can't pass the CAHSEE, then frankly I'm not sure if they are ready for the "real world". And to further support the CAHSEE, it recommends procedures for English-learners to take to acquire enough skills to pass the exam and to ultimately attain the diploma.

True the CAHSEE is still new (it was first used in 2004) and its effectiveness is still being tested. But I do not agree with these two primary arguments being used against it.

The Moussaoui Verdict
Zacarias Moussaoui, who admitted to conspiring on the September 11 attacks, is sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. The jury chose this in lieu of the death penalty, which supposedly would cost the US more money to execute than the life prison term. Here I still don't understand how a one-time execution costs more than years of food and life support.

Anyhow, when asked "Did the jury get it right?", no one said it better than A. Wright of Redwood City. "There was no 'right' to be had. If they chose death he became a martyr, achieved his goal and we became guilty of the same crime he attempted: murder. By choosing life they have demonstrated that you can come to our country, conspire to kill thousands and in exchange we will commit to paying thousands of dollars to house you for the rest of your life in better conditions than you faced before you came here." (SF Chronicle Two Cents)

I can't agree with this comment more. Moussaoui won in all directions.

How Appropriate?
The judge presiding over the Da Vinci Code plagiarizing case had embedded a puzzle of his own creation into his ruling of the case. The judge spent 40 minutes to create the puzzle utilizing the Fibonacci sequence and another 40 minutes to embed it into his ruling using randomly placed italicized letters. A lawyer not involved in the case noticed the puzzle while studying the ruling and solved it in a day. But this came nearly a month after the ruling was originally handed down. How appropriate it was to have such a good-humored judge preside over such a case. Here's a link to the article.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2006-04-28T133451Z_01_L28316444_RTRUKOC_0_US-DAVINCI.xml

The Da Vinci Code Quest
For all you Da Vinci Code fans like myself, Sony Pictures and Google are hosting a game online to test your intellect, skills, and perseverance. I am a big fan of the book and eagerly await the movie’s release on May 19th. From now until then, I am participating in this online challenge. Skeptical as I am of my skills and intellect, I will persevere. If you think you have what it takes to crack the code or if you simply want to partake in the fun, visit http://flash.sonypictures.com/movies/davincicodequest/

6.5 Billion & Counting
A lot of babies have been born lately. Sure many babies are born in the world everyday, but here I'm talking about babies born within my immediate circle. In the last two months, a small bundle of joy had been born each to my sister-in-law, a friend, a coworker, and a cousin. That's four in two months. A fifth and a sixth are arriving soon as another friend and another coworker are pregnant. Talk about population growth! According to the United States Census Bureau, the earth's population hit 6.5 billion on February 25, 2006. Three of the four babies I mentioned above were born before that date, thereby contributing to that number. The other one is contributing to the estimated 6.8 billion by 2010. Cheers to all these little ones-in-a-billion! Ones-in-6.5billion-and-counting actually.

To top this off, even my boyfriend's two guppies gave birth to three baby guppies this past weekend. Babies everywhere! Even in the fish tank!

Here is my result from the How Evil Are You test Bpsnake directed us to. Beware...I am "the most dangerous kind of evil". :P

You Are 30% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

Geez, I haven't logged on to this site so long that I even forgot my login.

Have a little time free at work today so decided to read Wanwanha's stories of her trip to Switzerland. Of course now I want to go too. I always have a big travel bug in me and reading about other people's travels stirs it up big time.

My next destination is to travel to Vietnam, the country where I was born. Ever since immigrating to the US with my family at the age of 4, I have never gone back to Vietnam. Since I left at such a young age, I do not remember anything about the place. Furthermore, I don't even speak the language or know the relatives who still live there. My parents are planning a trip back "home" this October to take care of some business. This would be a good opportunity for me to tag along and take advantage of their company. For starters, they can help me commmunicate with the locals. Secondly, they can reintroduce me to the relatives I no longer remember. Their help in those two areas would definitely make the trip more enriching.

Although I am looking forward to this trip, at the same time I am also a little apprehensive about it. Vietnam's climate is very hot and humid. Having grown up in the Bay Area, I am used to dry and pleasant weather and thus do not handle humidity well. Fortunately I've always preferred warmer weather over colder weather, therefore the warmness may not be an issue. It's the stickiness of humidity I fear. Second, I do not like dirty areas/situations. With Vietnam still being a developing country, I predict I may have some sanitation problems to deal with, either with the environment, the practices of the people, and/or the food.

Having said this however, I pro of this trip (refamiliarizing myself with the place where I was born) still outways the cons (temporary humidity and insanitation). With a little preparation (mainly mental) I should be able to tackle those two "obstacles". I really look forward to this trip.