First-ever F1 Night Race: Let the games begin!

Welcome to the 2008 Formula 1 Singtel Singapore Grand Prix. With only one day left before the first ever Formula One (F1) Night race officially zooms in Singapore, the excitement is at its maximum level and the adrenaline is sharply rising. Here are some fast facts and info exclusively for you.

A Dumb’s Guide to Formula One:

Formula One Racing is normally done during weekends. There are practice sessions wherein drivers are familiarizing themselves to the track and their respective crews making some necessary adjustments to the car (Friday). After which, normally on the following day (Saturday), a qualifying round will ensue to determine the way cars will start in the race (which car will take the pole position and so on). Then on the last day, Sunday, the actual race happens.

For the Singapore edition of F1 race, aside from the usual speeding race cars rocketing at about 300 km/h, the teams will have to complete 61 laps or a total of 309 kilometers of race distance. Of course, the most exciting part here is that the race will be happening on night time. Something all drivers have never done before.

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Bring back the Microsoft "Huh?" Ad

Remember the Microsoft “Huh?” Ad? Well, it’s not actually called “Huh?” Ad, it’s just a term I coined that captures exactly what people say after seeing the ad – huh?!

Not too long ago, Microsoft released a TV commercial that features Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. Seinfeld was reportedly paid US$10 million to appear in this commercial while Gates’ fee was not known. With that amount (on talent fee alone) of money, you would expect something great will come out of it. Then the first commercial was released. Length: Less than 2 minutes long. Setting: Shoe Store. Reaction: Huh? What was that again? Then head scratching.

Microsoft bashers had a field day thrashing the new commercial and criticizing it for its supreme lack of creativity and message delivery. Microsoft ignored the critics then released their second commercial, again starring Seinfeld and Gates. This time, a longer one. Length: About 4 minutes. Setting: An old family house. Reaction: Huh?! What was that again? Then head scratching while eyes rolling.

The commercial received a lot of flak then coincidentally, Microsoft decided to pull it out altogether. Microsoft said it’s really according to plan to stop airing the ads but sorry Microsoft, ‘find it hard to believe you. Anyway, Microsoft is hell-bent on improving its image so it came up AGAIN with a new commercial, this time, following the concept originally popularized by Apple – the “I’m a PC vs I’m a Mac” commercial.

The Apple commercial by the way has been running for quite some time now and has been successful in sending the message that: "Mac users are way cooler than PC users". So in response, Microsoft released it’s own “I’m a PC” commercial. This is after the “Huh?” commercial series. Still with me so far?

Anyway, seems like no one is liking Microsoft nowadays because again, their new commercial was heavily criticized as being a poor copycat and missing the point.

I have seen all the ads at issue, and you will see it all too, just bear with me for a little while. I did not like the “Huh?” ad either but one thing undeniable is that the ad is DIFFERENT. It generated a lot of attention because it’s different and that’s what sets it apart. By extension, it also casts Microsoft in a different light, which it needs badly right now considering the amount of negative press it's been receiving lately. Moreover, seeing Gates in a dorky kind of way makes people love him all over again. His numerous adversaries have been successful in recent years painting him as an evil monopolist who's out to dominate the world and put it under his empire.

This commercial changes all of that. It puts Gates as a harmless, lovable dork. Ergo, it puts Microsoft as a harmless, lovable company because let’s admit it, Bill gates IS Microsoft.

And as more “Huh?” commercial gets released into the wild, the more people talk about it and the more people gets accustomed to the “NEW” Microsoft. Then, their objective is achieved.

It’s sad that Microsoft decided to take a different turn while it’s getting close to the finish line.

Below are the subject commercials. Warning: Don’t watch it unless you are prepared to be entertained.


Microsoft “Huh?” Ad 1




Microsoft “Huh?” Ad 2




Apple I’m a Mac vs I’m a PC Ad




Microsoft I’m a PC Ad

Chocolate for the Gods

I have never met a single person on this planet who doesn’t like chocolate. May it be chocolate bar, chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream or chocolate whatever, each of us has our own favorites. In a survey conducted by BBC, an international news organization, they have even discovered that more than 70% of people would reveal their computer password in exchange for a bar of chocolate! For me, it says something more about the power of chocolate rather than the foolishness of the people who were surveyed. But I digress.

Chocolates have this magical effect on people. I agree. Science may have proven the correlation between chocolate and happiness but putting it in such a simplistic way assumes that all chocolates are created equal. It is not. It doesn’t give justice to the chocolate of the highest kind – the Chocolate for the Gods.

I use the term “Chocolate for the Gods” to describe, what I think, is the best, finest and highest quality chocolate bar I have tasted so far – ROYCE’ chocolates. To be more specific, I like the Royce’ Nama Variety Mild Cacao. Royce is manufactured in Hokkaido, Japan and from what I heard, it’s only available in Singapore, Hong Kong and of course, Japan.

Each little block of Royce chocolate is heavily dusted with cocoa powder that covers the soft and smooth texture of the “gem” within. It has the right amount of sweetness that makes your tongue long for more and your finger grab some more. It's a bit expensive though, but it's totally worth it. If you have tasted “traditional” chocolate bars widely available in the market today, get ready to be dazed as this one will give you a totally different kind of experience. It’s actually been weeks since I last tasted this thing and still, I can’t get over it.

There is a little survey going on in my online community: what is the best way to tell someone you love ‘em without being mushy or tacky. I say give ‘em a box of Royce’ chocolate. Nothing more, nothing less.

Hey Fed, can I borrow $1 billion?

If you are paying attention to that cleanly shaven, “be-moussed” talking head on TV (a newscaster in case you did not get it), you must have known already that AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, was bailed out by Federal Reserve (Fed) to the tune of US$85 billion. It gives the embattled company a new lease on life and prevents a potential catastrophic turmoil in the financial industry. Thanks Fed!

By the way, did you know how much Fed has shelled out so far to save ailing financial institutions in the United States? According to Straits Times, it’s a whopping US$905 billion!!! Here’s the breakdown:

• US$85 billion: loan for AIG
• US$87 billion: financing to Lehman Brothers, via JPMorgan Chase
• US$200 billion: for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• US$29 billion: to finance JPMorgan Chase’s buyout of Bear Stearns
• US$200 billion (at least): outstanding loans to banks
• US$300 billion: for the Federal Housing Administration
• US$4 billion: grants to local communities

To give you an idea how big an amount that is, Philippines GDP in 2007 is US$299 billion. For my layman brothers, GDP (gross domestic product) is computed by adding up what everyone (your income, Gloria’s income, Sharon Cuneta’s income) earned in a given year. So, Fed shelled out 3 times what the entire Philippine economy made in a year. The magnitude alone is enough to make your jaw drop.

So Fed, I can see you are now in a giving binge, can I borrow a billion there? Come on, it’s just 0.1% of what you’ve lent so far.

Layman Brothers

In the news: Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11; Bank of America is acquiring Merrill Lynch for $50 Billion; AIG seeks fresh capital to the tune of $75 Billion to shore up liquidity as its stock tumble more than 60%; Buckle up! Financial ride getting even rougher.

Guess you felt dizzy for a while. Don’t worry, ‘felt the same thing too. The layman brothers (me included) are quite dumbfounded on the news that hit the wires this morning. I know the news is big, but can someone please explain it in plain English? I promise I won’t sleep. The news again (in plain English):

Lehman Brothers - a big, wait, make it huge, sorry, GIANT – investment bank in the US has filed for bankcruptcy and will cease operations effective immediately. This company used to have a value of $47 Billion and has about 25,000 employees worldwide. Now, bye bye to all of that.

Merrill Lynch is another GIANT, no, make it GARGANTUAN investment bank that is now being acquired by Bank of America to the tune of $50 Billion. That’s dirt cheap compared to Merrill’s actual value during its heydays. Think getting Ferrari for the price of Nissan. Well, Merrill lost much of its value over the past few months so the company is still considered lucky because another company acquired them. I’m not sure though what will happen to its more than 50,000 employees globally.

AIG is another GARGANTUAN, no make it MASSIVELY GARGANTUAN insurance company that is seeking fresh capital (read: cash) to ensure it stays in the game. At its peak, AIG was valued at $190 Billion and was ranked among the world’s five biggest financial companies. Now, AIG’s value shrunk 93%. The world is praying that this massively gargantuan company doesn’t follow Lehman or Merrill’s fate.

What’s the reason behind all of these you ask? It has something to do with the housing crisis in US. It’s a very complex issue but in a nutshell, it’s about people who borrowed money and not been able to pay it back.

These news are pretty scary and I hope proper measures can be done to mitigate its impact. The world’s biggest economy – United States – must be able to withstand this latest financial hurricane, otherwise, the rest of the world will be equally and severely battered.

You Matter

Rick Warren, a pastor and best selling author of this hugely popular book “Purpose Driven Life” was at TED recently to give a talk about living a life of purpose. I admit, I heard a lot about the book, I know many people who’ve read the book and I know that it sold more than 30 million copies worldwide but, I have NOT read the book. Maybe because so many people have read and talked about it already that I find no mystery in it anymore. Oh well, maybe one day I could find the urge to read it.

Watching the guy speak is another matter though. He is not a great speaker so much as he is a great messenger. In his talk, he discussed about his own struggle with his newfound “notoriety” when the book became hugely popular. The money (lots and lots of it) and fame that came with it is something that he was never used to. It made him ask himself: “What is the purpose of all of this?” For me, listening to his message also made me reflect on my own life’s purpose. We, as human beings are not just random happenstance whose existence is no more meaningful than say, a duck. You are not a duck. You are a human being. You matter. You matter to God. You matter to society. You matter to your family.

And in understanding these things we come to know the real meaning of life. That life is not just about get, get, get. “Get all you can. Can all you get. Sit on the can and spoil the rest”. It is about giving our life away in a meaningful manner and leaving the world a better place than we found it. Listening through it sounds esoteric for a while but it is not a giant responsibility that we need to do, nor a spiritual endeavor that we must strictly adhere to. All it takes is for you to be you. The portion where Rick Warren describes his joy just watching his kid sleep, his kid's body rising lower, then higher, lower, then higher, as the kid breaths deeply into sleep. The Lord feels the same thing about us. He becomes happy to see Darwin be Darwin. Jane be Jane. You be You.

The thing about this talk is that it doesn’t deal with any religious issues but human issues. Issues we all care about. I personally believe that good life starts with being inspired. Whenever I listen to this talk, I feel inspired. I feel good. I would like to share it with you. See if it has the same effect:

Living a Life of Purpose

Would you rather have Beauty or Money?

Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. Craigslist is a very popular site in the US (and indeed in the world) that provides local classifieds and hosts online communities. Apparently, the posting below appeared on Craigslist. This is as funny as it is thought provoking. You DO NOT want to skip reading this, trust me.

Craigslist Posting:

What am I doing wrong? Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 - 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

• Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars, restaurants, gyms


• What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings


• Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?


• Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?


• Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?


• How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY Please hold your insults - I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests PostingID: 432279810

THE ANSWER

Dear Pers-431649184: I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to “buy you” (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So, I wonder why a girl as “articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful”as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K hasn’t found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you’re going about it the right way.Classic “pump and dump.”I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

Source: howardlindzon.

Chrome-awesome

The new Internet browser from Google was officially released only last September 2 2008 and already, it gained popularity not seen in many years among other technology products out there. The browser players are quite a small bunch – there’s Internet Explorer from Microsoft, Firefox from Mozilla, Safari from Apple and now Chrome from Google – but the browser market is quite huge, enough for these companies to invest billions of dollars on a nifty product called browser.

Just yesterday, I downloaded a copy of Chrome to see for myself what this browser is all about and will it live up to the hype that it’s generating. This is what I found out. Downloading is fast and easy. Click a few buttons, count from 1 to 10, and that’s it. Installation done. The interface is classic Google – simple and functional. I read up a few articles about this new product from Google and from what I gather, they are trying to re-engineer the entire browser experience. (There is even a comic book available if you want to know the story behind Chrome. It’s actually for geeks presented in a layman’s way. I did not finish the comic book but if you’re interested, you can read it here.)

If their objective is to re-engineer, I think they made a few strides on that part. I have Firefox, Safari and IE on my laptop and I can say, the experience is almost similar. With Chrome, the feeling is different and it’s good. Another major plus point of this new browser according to some tech reviews is its “Over-all JavaScript Speed”
I don’t want to bore you with technical details but the conclusion of that test revealed that Chrome performed much much faster than all the rest of the browsers out there.

From the vantage point of this average user – the speed is barely noticeable. Maybe because there are whole lot of factors that affect “speed”. I don’t know. I’ll just have to trust the experts on this one.

Although slowly, I’m falling in love with Chrome, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its downside. Firstly, it still contains some bugs that they need to address. I tried running one website in IE, then run the same website in Chrome. The latter did not display the pages correctly while the former did just fine. I’d like to note though that this is just one of the many websites I tried to run. Chrome worked perfectly fine on those other websites.

Another concern I have is that Chrome, by default, stores a complete history of your visited websites. This can be a good thing as it provides ease of use but how about privacy concerns? What if other people have access to the laptop or PC you’re using? Upon launching the browser (Chrome), it automatically displays a screen capture in thumbnail of your Most Visited sites. I think this feature will cause concern for some people. You can choose “Incognito mode” for private browsing but this is not the default. The Chrome logo also doesn’t help in addressing privacy issues as it looks like an eye spying on everything you do. Who came up with that logo? Can you change that please. It doesn’t go with Google’s “do no evil” mantra.

Over-all, I’m letting Chrome stay in my laptop but I’m not yet making it my default browser.

Are you ready to download Google Chrome? Click here.

WALL-E meets EVE

First off, I will get this out of the way. I am a Pixar fanatic. Anything Pixar makes, I watch. There are a lot of movie studios out there releasing 3D animated motion pictures but, no offense, nothing comes close to how fantastic Pixar movies are. The graphics and 3D animation is spectacular, the style of putting in short films before the start of the movie is refreshing, and the storyline is just simply fantabulous. Woohoo!! There. Now on with the review.

Disney and Pixar’s (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles) latest release WALL-E is a story about a robot who travels to the deepest reaches of outer space in search of a newfound friend. The year is 2700 and the earth is no longer habitable. It was a normal day for WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class) when another robot from outer space arrives – EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). And there starts the adventure…and the romance! I will not reveal any more details. If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Go!

This movie was directed by Andrew Stanton, the same director who brought Finding Nemo, so my expectation on this movie is already sky high. After watching the movie, it did not meet my expectation. It exceeded it. Given that the main characters are robots that do not speak human language at all; they were able to convey a wide range of emotions that can connect to humans watching it. I must admit, the movie’s beginning part is a bit dull. Maybe to reflect the equally dull “life” that WALL-E lives but as soon as that was established the movie immediately accelerates to excitement, then to thrill then to a perfectly executed “aawwwwww” moment. The scene where EVE discovered the thing that WALL-E did while she was “unconscious” is super cute and very endearing. Another plus factor is the movie’s undertone on human responsibility to its environment and the spring of hope that lies eternal. All of these are developed in a storyline that is classic Pixar – entertaining!

Maybe I should stop writing and watch the movie one more time...