It's not a matter of who's right and wrong anymore.

Today will be the 2^nd time I had such a big argument with my mom. There are so big that it usually makes her so sad and depressive. And I just don’t know what do about it. Am I being worst son ever of the 21^st century of something? In the Asian culture, adult always have the last word no matter what, no matter when and no matter how... As for as I am concerned, I only believe in what is right and wrong.

In a conflict, people always think they’re right and its counterparts are naturally wrong. But the real deal is sometimes; people are both right… sometimes they are both wrong and sometimes, one is at least right in this whole damn thing… But what do you in the situation where both believe they’re right? Do you fight your own argument until you prevail? Speak up and make someone’s life miserable?

What happens when 2 unstoppable forces collide? Well, as for us… It’s a never-ending escalation that will make both our lives miserable.

This is what I’ve learned. You have to forget about who’s right or wrong… but rather WHAT is right or wrong.

Even though god knows you’re right and he agrees with you, you will always take the wrong decision by letting things get bad to worst… Especially if you are both related to each other.

Mac Vs PC

For today’s topic, I decided to talk about the new Mac campaign that started several years ago. A campaign where each commercial ads starts with:

“Hello I’m a Mac”

“…And I’m a PC”

These two sentences are now so popular that they are even now embedded in our culture. And to admit, I believe it is thanks to these ads that I have switched from PC to Mac. And I’m quite happy about it. But what I really like about this ad campaign is how the creator and scenarist came up with this idea. How would you be able to show the potential of a PC and Mac? How about making them talk? Therefore, they came up with the idea of materializing a Mac by a cool and relaxed teenager and a PC who’s old-fashioned style not to say “Daddy’s style” and funnily looks like Bill Gates. And then, they make them interact with each other. What a great idea! In almost all the ads, there is at least one weakness of PC that is shown. But it is shown in a way so Mac can pin him down without too much effort. Sometimes it’s totally the opposite, PC pin himself down by trying to be perfect but then looks totally ridiculous.

Here is one perfect example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOx-lsaAfSo

Another aspect of the ads is that ALL pc users have at least encountered these lacks at least once. We all got annoyed by our PC performance once, how many time did our pc crashed because of a Virus? How many useless software do we take on board when we buy a PC. Why is my PC running so slow? Why do I need to update my software just right after I buy my PC?

The magic behind these ads is the fact that Apple cleverly brings back to our memory all the difficult time we had with our PC, and from a Mac’s point of view it is totally a joke. It is true that Apple’s overdo sometime and they happen to be even ignorant at a certain extend. But Ignorance is bliss. This reminds me a saying of one of my teacher. She once told me that if during a debate, you have the opportunity to make fun of your counterpart, don’t miss the opportunity. Not only will you bring people to your side by making them laugh but also you’ll win the debate even though you know you’re wrong

Power Point

Today, I had project meeting with my mates for negotiation. And like most project, a power point is required. Now, I’d like to talk about this feature. Why? Because I recently discovered that I actually like making power point. Also this Tuesday was a presentation day. And for most presentation, well ... Let’s just say that I almost ended up not understanding any single one. Is it because I’m not paying enough attention? Maybe… Is it because the presentation wasn’t well created? Most likely… Call me old fashion but I believe that presenting your own work should be considered as teaching. It is up to the presenter to make their work interesting. Your audience should not concentrate in trying to follow you. It is up to you me to catch their attention and make them enjoy my piece of work. Many people think is a hassle to create them. Indeed, it may be hard to know what to put in it and it may be frustrating to talk in front of so many people. I have to admit that my first power point was a total disaster. I had to make a 15 min presentation but the teacher threw at my face with his Scare face eyes “ Pfff, finally it’s over, I thought your presentation lasted 2 hours”. I was indeed too worried of how I should say to make people understand me. And when you care too much, you usually end up doing exactly the opposite. From this day on, I decided to get rid of all sort of support in my hands. Only the power point to back me up.

After creating a few, I’ve realized that power point was one of the supports where you can present your work with your own words. You don’t have to be someone else; I believe it is actually your only chance to present the work with your own words and with your own perspective. It is your chance to be interesting and to break the rules. Like you said Bruce about me breaking the rules, I believe presenting your work is a lot like blogging. Some people care too much about the formal style, about how it should be presented “properly”… Most of them have their paper ready during the presentation. And for most of them, I end up understanding almost nothing. PowerPoint is also the only opportunity to explain fact with illustration. Why writing long paragraph where only one picture may be enough and gives you the opportunity to illustrate?

Of course, there will be situation where formalities will b required. However, would rather me speak with a formal way and understand almost nothing? Or speak with my own word trying to explain things my own way?

In both case, I believe that if the message wasn’t sent to the audience, you failed your presentation.

Rockfeller Center

8h30: My alarm is kicking. I’ve set it this early so we could have a little breakfast before we leave to our next destination: the Rockefeller Center. However, since I was so dead tired, I decided to Switch it off and continue my sleep cycle. But to my great mistake, breakfast ends at 9h am and we were starving. To make it up to her, decided to take her to the nearest Starbuck coffee of the Rockefeller. However finding a Starbuck was ironically very hard. Aren’t they supposed to be in every corner of any city? Well I guess not, we had to walk 20 min to finally find one.

After having this late brunch, off we go to the Top of the Rock. I remember asking people where the Top of the rock was, but it was just before my eyes. It’s just that I can’t have the whole building in my sight of vision. This later is not as high as the Empire State Building but the view is so much more wonderful. Indeed, first there is no fence wasting the view. There are big squarish glasses though but it’s much more discrete than metal fence. Second, the view on Central Park is so much nicer. You have a full view of the giant park and all the building surrounding it forming a perfect rectangle. At that time, I couldn’t help thinking about the first field trip we had couple months ago. Wouldn’t be more beneficial to have tall business building instead of this huge giant park? Seriously, it seems that the park just comes out of nowhere (and this is probably why I give so much attention to central park).

Then we came back at night to watch the sunset. As the Sun went down, sky slightly changed from blue to orange and even pinkish. I gotta admit, it was kinda romantic. It is said that during sunsets, the very last ray of sunlight is supposed to be green. Lot of stories are said surrounding this green ray of sunlight. However, I didn’t get the chance to witness any of them. Maybe it was just rumor after all…

Macy's

There is one thing about NYC that strikes me the most. Everything they have is huge. They have one of the tallest buildings, one of the biggest parks, and the biggest Macy’s of the world. And by huge, I mean huge as messed up. I believe they have over 6 stories of items, from cloth, to souvenirs, shoes and even a food court. But the most confusing part about Macy’s NYC is that they have halves stories as well. Yes, that’s right, for example, they have floor n°1 and floor n°1 ½. oO. And to make it even more complex, the ground floor is considered as the 1rst floor. So to put it simple, you never know on which floor you are. Like this wasn’t enough, my phone couldn’t call my friends because of some network problem. I was in the men section, and Helena in the girls of course. Meeting each other in this huge several stories maze was a real hassle. Since we couldn’t call each other, we agreed on having meetings every 30 minutes on some specific floor. However we weren’t aware of halves stories, and we totally forgot how ground level was considered as 1rst story. Shopping in such place was a big challenge, as I was beginning to worry my friend just kept shopping through all the floors. So it wasn’t easy task to find her. However, I knew where her last destination would be, the souvenirs shop. After 3 hours of wondering in the entire Macy’s, from bras, shoes, dresses and underwear… You know what I discovered? Women section will always be much developed than man section somehow. Isn’t unfair for the men community?

Then I finally found her, doing what girls do best: shopping.

Central Park

Central park has always been the only one thing on earth I wanted to visit with my own eyes. I’ve seen many pictures, movies but I never thought that one day, I would be able to jog in it. You may wonder why central park fascinates me the most. Well when I think about New York City, I think about very tall buildings, I think about a very high dense of population, taxi waiting for the green light so they could frustrate by standers, it’s very dynamic and unfortunately, it’s a lot of stress as well.

However, I also think about this huge rectangle in the city that just seems to come out of nowhere. From very tall skyscraper, landscape suddenly changes to a huge peaceful quiet park. A park where people enjoy spending time together. From grey skyscrapers, the colors suddenly turn to all different type of green. From taxi’s honking, you hear birds singing. These are the reasons why I want to see central park, to see the broken line between the city and its park.

Today was at the same time just an ordinary day and a special day. Indeed, I did my daily jogging but for the first time, somewhere else than my usual treadmills. Oh and beside, I can run much longer than 10 minutes now. With me being so stubborn, I’m able to run for 1H20 min ^^.

I woke up at 8AM, took a quick breakfast and went out of the hostel. By the time I went out, I couldn’t help notice how sunny it was however cold at the same time. Time to run to Central Park. Since this latter is so huge, there is no way for me to visit all central park in just one morning of jogging. So I just ran through the north of it. There I saw a huge lake: the Jacqueline Onassis Reservoir. So I decided to make quick tour. Nevertheless, running in a park and on a treadmill is totally different things. I would never though that it would actually be harder to run outside than on our fitrec. The ground is uneven and the wind is blowing on me with a freezing intensity. As for as the landscape, you feel like you are running in a huge forest but when you look at the horizon, you can see the tall building emerging from the park. And that is exactly what I wanted to witness.

Girl Shopping

What surprises me most about NYC is its number of shopping place. From Time Square, the fifth avenue and century21, all the choices are there in this huge city. As of this day, we decided to do some little shopping instead of visiting a touristic place. However, it wasn’t any kind of shopping. It was girl-shopping -_-. Yep Helena wanted to visit some luxury brand such as “Louis Viton”, “Burberry” and Sonia Riquel. As for as I am concerned, I am not into that kind of brand so I guess it is the opportunity for me to learn some piece of info on how they became famous. How did they start and so on.

First we went to Louis Viton. This latter is mostly know for its bag. Girls are really crazy about it. One of its famous products is about 30 year old and they still sell it. It is just a simple bag with no extra pocket inside: The speedy. What is interesting about “Louis Viton is that he didn’t start business by selling bags”. He first sold trunks, those big rectangle boxes where you can put anything in. It was used long time ago by archeologists. Indeed, they had to put minerals and travel on car pulled by a horse. Thanks to this idea of “box in the back of the car”, car trunks were born.

Even though I’m not a fan of bag shopping, if I can learn some piece of history, then it’s totally worth it.