Photography

I've just discussed about the recession with a friend of mine, a photographer. He was afraid that being a premier photographer, his business opportunity would be hit and people would choose stock photo. I told him, in my opinion, the contrary would happen. When an organization has money (cash) to spend, they may in fact choose to buy from internet stock photo. The reason being the wide range of choice so they can splurge on getting a lot of photo. A discerning organization in tough time like now in fact should spend on a good photographer in order to make sure they really get what they want with a specific payment. Furthermore, I believe you can say... wait for 30 days before making payment. I don't think stock photo from internet allow you to do that right? So, it may just be likely that premier photographers are getting more work.

Besides that, with the market going down, advertisement business should be becoming more relevant since people are fighting for whatever purchasing power left from the market. In addition, the price gap between professional and amateur price may just be narrower and increase the value of paying for premium photographers!

Condemning one side

The Arab world and others start condemning Israel for their attack to Palestina killing nearly 300 by now. The reaction is indeed swift and in no time spreading worldwide. But wait, where is the condemnation against Hamas's rocket attack to Israel? I know it kills only one but the world need to learn to be fair. For the world to avoid more terrorism or aggression, the condemnation for any kind of attack must be swift regardless of how many death. And it must be coming from any side of the story. None of such aggression should be tolerated.

Only then, the world would know peace. I am still waiting for such equal treatment of state to happen. I hope I will be able to see it in my generation.

An eye for an eye

Israel is pounding on Hamas-ruled Gaza for the second day hoping that their attack will stop the rocket attacks from Hamas. I wonder who has the confidence that their attack will help to stop the attack. Practicing an eye for an eye principle is rather primitive at this kind of age. I would say that Israeli may do better by thinking about how to cut off rocket supply to Gaza and helps the current president of palestina in improving the Palestinian's welfare. Haven't they understood the term hungy people are angry people? The world has so many hungry people, including those in Somalia and we know what happen to Somalia... lawless and full of pirates... Why? They need food and come on.. if one ransom can let them feed the entire village for 100 years (heard they are paid in average US$15 M per tanker), which rational people won't do the hijacking? After all, if they don't hijack, they still die of hunger. The entire world need to learn to share if we really want to eradicate terrorists and crimes.

What now?

It's quite scary to read the news nowadays since there will be a list of things people shouldn't eat due to melamine contamination. It used to be just milk but today Yahoo! News reported contamination on eggs as well! Perhaps the most direct step that people generally would take is to avoid China product. It won't be very easy. First of all, outsourcing and cheap labour and manufacturing cost has shifter HUGE number of product manufacturing to China. Second of all, what scares me even more is that melamine is NOT a common chemical tested in food safety surveillance. If China's farmers and egg producer can find way to add melamine into the milk and egg, what kind of assurance will there be to say that US product or Indonesia product or any other country products have NO melamine? After all, melamine IS NOT something that is tested for in food safety check. Hey, we can force the food safety surveillance to check every single chemicals anyway. Our food won't arrive on the table in a century since there is infinite amount of chemicals to test for! Since it's uncommon to test for the chemical, there is no way to say that US product is totally free from it. In fact, every government should actually really test their own products to check for such contamination.
The other possible worse thing that can happen is if undesirable and dangerous chemicals are to be found in clothes. It's getting more difficult to find clothes without writing "MADE IN CHINA" nowadays. You may think I am farfetched, but hey, melamine in egg is extremely remote few months ago.
Be careful of what you eat.

What not to say in your convocation speech

Today the university I studied did something unique, the valedictorian giving the speech does not seem to be a winner of any good medal although the literal meaning of valedictorian is a student with the best grade. Rather strange. Yet it's good because it shows that appreciation should also be given to the general student.
One thing that really strike me rather odds from that student's speech is that the basically ridicule the university life unwillingly (perhaps). He was basically very honest in his speech. He talked about tough 4 years of bachelor life, talking as if all present are singaporean. Talking about students staying in the university hostel and only going back home on weekends while at tims not going home for weeks to study for exams or such, talking about students who stay at home who end up spending much of the time in study room trying to study very hard for a tough university life. Basically, he portrays that students in the university (NTU by the way) who have no life because of the need to study very very very hard. Although he is true (well, basically if you want a great grade, unless you are genius, you'll be studying like mad in NTU), I don't think such is an ideal valedictorian speech. It's kind of shameful to tell such a terrible university life to the foreign dignitaries or lecturers in the hall. Hahaha... I think he needs to tone down or reword his story a bit. :-)
Anyway now I know what not to say if I were ever chosen to do so. :-)

Misleading news

Just read a news from Indonesia's ANTARA website reporting that Japanese government is giving 1 mil of bird flu vaccine to ASEAN. The news made me realize how important it is for a journalist to be schooled into what he/she is reporting or at least make effort to search further information. News are read by multitude of people, and when a news is wrongly reported without other newspaper to verify, you'll get quite a number of potential wrongdoings caused by the news.
The news mentions that the bird flu vaccine increases Tamiflu (antiviral commonly used to cure bird flu in human although not necessarily effective) stock twice the previous level. This is a mistaken identitiy. Tamiflu is NOT a vaccine more like a flu medication. Furthermore Tamiflu is for human while no bird flu vaccine for human is even created yet!
It's either the vaccine or the Tamiflu which is mentioned wrongly.
Indonesia's biopharma should be able to produce bird flu vaccine for birds although I am not sure whether they have done it or not.
One thing for sure, the reporter of the news may want to wiki or google Tamiflu before he reports the news

Money, woman, and the boys

Singapore is famous for its kiasuism and kiasiism. Basically it translates literally to "afraid to lose" and "afraid to die". Those two behaviour is good to spurn the sense of competitiveness. The drawback is that I think they are the causes of Singaporean men having quite a bad reputation on ladies. Not being prejudice, but that's what I hear, perhaps I have heard from the wrong end.
What I realize is that most ladies that complain mentioned the unwillingness of the guys to treat. Not that I treat often as well. I intend to analyze the perception a bit further.
If one guy was to go out with a lady and the guy has "afraid to lose" mentality, the guy may think twice. After all, if he really spends that extra money treating the lady, he may perceive that he'll part with all those expenditure while there is no certainty to gain the lady's heart. Hence, he'll definitely think twice before treating the lady. Furthermore, it's perceived to be difficult to earn your keep nowadays.
Another reason is perhaps the sense of adventurous among the people. After all, courting a girl requires some sense of adventurous. Part and puzzle of trying to win a girl's heart is to try out something new and go beyond the comfort zone. Without adequate willingness to be adventurous, no effort will be spent appropriately.
Strangely though, being competitive should have helped the guy if he see that a girl he likes is being chased by some other guys. Not sure why it doesn't help...