blog.mchiu.com

Why Stereotypes Exist

So a few weeks ago, I made a trip to Popeye's Chicken, which I haven't been to in a very long time. It was interesting as the staff working there was completely Taiwanese, as I was listening to them speak to one another in the Taiwanese dialect. When I ordered my food, I also got the typical Taiwanese treatment where they ask me for my order, and the cashier looked really unenthusiastic about anything, including giving me my change. She basically handed me my change, but didn't bother waiting for me to actually grab the bills, and when they started to fall, she would just keep pushing them at me until they fell into my hand...

So I sat waiting for my order, and I guess some of the regulars started walking in, and I couldn't help but laugh to myself. The cashier all of a sudden came to life to see some of the regulars come in. I look around, and notice that pretty much all the customers in there except for myself is black. Wow... interesting... I guess it's more than just a stereotype...

To push the stereotype even further, a few days ago, I had a craving for KFC, so I end up at a KFC near my office, and after sitting down with my food, I look over to the wall next to me, and basically spit my chicken out laughing because there's this huge picture on the wall of a black family sitting down to a KFC dinner together.

I don't know how much more blatant that you can be, but I was kind of half-expecting that KFC would start serving watermelon, but was kind of disappointed not to see it on the menu...

Right About Now, The J Soul Brotha...

So the last few days, I was looking through mashups because of a deal that I am researching. Interesting stuff, but thought this was pretty interesting. Another Fatboy Slim video mashup featuring some Japanese movie starring a singer named Yuzo Kayama (looks like from the 60s).

Interestingly enough, as I am writing this, Jerry sends out one for the Star Wars Kids versus SouthPark that is really well done.

Bad Soccer Play, Bad Soccer Call

So Gary posted his opinion of Zidane's infamous headbutt at the end of the World Cup Finals match, and how this guy was awarded the MVP. Talking about it afterwards with Kuldip and Corey, we figured that it will become a pretty controversial subject since the refs made the call after seeing it on the video screens in the stadium, where soccer isn't supposed to have instant replay calls. If that were the case, the controversial call of Italy's being offsides when scoring should also come into play to see if they were actually off-sides.

For me, I just think we all need more reasons and reminders to hate the French.

No more trackbacks

So for the time being, I am disabling the ability to post trackbacks. I noticed that most of the trackbacks I was getting was for spam, and it's a good thing that Movable Type 3.2 has a built-in spam trap, but looking through my logs, I was getting way too many hits as a result of spammers trying to spam my entries with trackback spam. Anyway... I'll probably put it back up once I get through cleaning up all the spam that's caught in the spam filters.

Kuldip's new blog site

So Kuldip has been blogging for a while now, but primarily on Sun's website, but it looks like he now has his own personal blog site. By the title of his blog, "/dev/null", it seems like it will be about really nerdy stuff, but judging the first two entries on it, it looks like he's setting off to be a movie critic.

The great thing about it is that he has a link to me on it, and looking through my stats this month, the website I get the most referrals from is through his website (although he did admit that he now uses that link to get to my website, so that could explain a few things)

In any case, hopefully he'll be posting more great stuff... :D You can find a link to him in the "Friends" box to the left.

Idiocy at the Canton Delights

So I was having lunch at Canton Delights in Cupertino today, but the company I was with were all Chinese speaking, so I was able to make silly observations all around the dining floor.

Idiotic Observation #1: A group of people come in after us and sit at the table behind us. The restaurant has dim sum carts going all over the place, and there's this one loud woman that comes by, and I overheard her talking with the people in the table behind us. So I didn't hear the entire conversation, but I guess they were asking if she had different dishes, I was thinking that they should just wait until it comes around, but at least the dim sum cart lady was helpful and went back and told people to bring out the carts. One of the items they asked for was "sho rom po", so I thought to myself, "Hmm... I wonder if that is the Cantonese way to say "Hsiao Loong Bao" (Little Dragon Dumplings)... It sounds just like Japanese." A few minutes later, I overheard the group behind us talking, and they were all speaking in Japanese... Boy did I feel like an idiot. But the funny thing was that every 5 minutes after that, I kept hearing them say "Sho Rom Po" over and over again, so I guess it hadn't come out yet...

Idiotic Observation #2: When I first got to the restaurant, I noticed this couple that was ahead of us in line, and didn't think much of it. I saw where they were seated in the restaurant, but still didn't pay any attention to them. When we were about to leave, I noticed that they were about to leave too, and the guy was holding a bag, but wearing different clothes, and even looked different, and the girl was also wearing different clothes, and also looked different. I thought to myself, "Wow... that's strange... they went off and changed their clothes? Moreover, they look different after changing their...." Oh... different couple... DUH! Another idiotic moment for me within 20 minutes.

Annoying Cell Phone Observation #1: So next to us, there were these two middle-aged Asian-Americans having their dim sum, and one of their phone's start to ring. The phone was in his pocket, but it was so loud and annoying. What was especially annoying was that it was the same default ringtone that I have been using, so I kept thinking that it was my phone ringing. Yes, that's how loud it was. This dude was sitting several yards away from me, yet the ring was loud enough to make me think that my own phone was ringing. So the dude puts his phone away after he's done talking, and the phone starts to ring again! You would think that this fucker would have had the sense to lower the volume of his ringtone. It's not that hard. There's a button on the side of the phone that you press multiple times and it changes the volume. To make things worse though, the guy had put the phone back into his pocket, and it took him a few seconds to fish the phone out of his pocket. Sheesh!

Annoying Cell Phone Observation #2: This is not so annoying as I find it to be comical. Whenever I am at a trade show, I can understand why people constantly have a bluetooth headset on them since it is hard to hear/feel your phone ringing in that type of environment. In the restaurant today, some old lady at the table in front of us, had her bluetooth headset on her ear during the whole time she was having lunch. At first, I thought that she was just yapping away on the phone, but that didn't seem to be the case since she wasn't talking while eating. I was thinking to myself, "Wow... that sure is a great way to run out the batteries on your phone and your headset since you have established the link between them, and are sustaining that link just in case you may happen to get a phone call during lunch." I'm also thinking that if this woman manages to keep that headset on all day, will she eventually lose her equilibrium, or sense of hearing or something? When I first got my headset, I would try to keep it on the whole time when I was driving in case someone called while I was driving, but gave that up almost immediately because 1) it's uncomfortable to wear for that long of a time, 2) I enjoy listening to the music in my car with both my ears, and 3) with one ear constantly covered, I did feel like I was starting to lose my sense of balance.

Anyway... not sure why I had made so many observations in the restaurant today, but I think it was probably because I was bored to death listening to an entirely Chinese conversation with these old dudes telling jokes that only old fogies like them would laugh about.

Ringback Tones and Avoiding Phone Spam

Recently, I have added a ringback tone to my cell phone service, and people who have called me have either gotten a kick out of listening to the sounds of Earth, Wind, & Fire while calling me, or have been utterly confused why music is playing when they are calling me.

For those who do not know, a ringback tone is basically a sound that you install to replace the ringing sound you hear when calling someone. In my case, I chose Earth, Wind, and Fire's, "Let's Groove". So when people call me up, they hear an MP3 clip of that song playing instead of the normal ringing tone. Some people who have called me were confused, so they had just hung up, but I have found a new use for them... at least for the time being.

Telemarketers usually don't direct dial their targets, but have a computer dial for them, and when they get a phone that is ringing, they will transfer that call to the next available agent. If it is a busy signal or anything else, it will hang up automatically. So by having a ringback tone installed, it has been interesting for me. Every once in a while, I'll get called, but my phone will ring for less than 1 second, and then hang up. A few times, the Caller ID picked up the number, and I dialed back to see what it was. Everytime I have called back, I get dropped into the IVR menu of some telemarketing group. Lately, it has been for this one scam where they say they will give you a free trip to Vegas or wherever if you come to a 90 minute presentation for some housing complex or something. I've told them a million times that I'm not interested and they tell me that they won't bother me again, but somehow I end up being in their system again. At least now I have found a way to get them off my back... until the computers are smart enough to distinguish between an error message and a ringback tone....