Category: Uncategorized

I’m starting a new category, covering some interesting tactics the Presidential campaigns are using when it comes to technology or social media marketing.  Here’s the latest email I received from the Obama camp:

People keep asking me if we’re really going to announce Barack’s VP directly to our supporters. 
The answer is yes. 
Let me be very clear. You are the ones who built this campaign, and
Barack wants you to be the first to know who will join him in leading
our movement for change.

So, if you haven’t signed up to receive an email or a text message, sign up now. Or you can text VP to 62262 from your mobile phone. 
Make sure to forward this message to your friends and let them know about this special opportunity.

Thanks,

That’s a pretty neat gimmick.  I don’t know if it means that if you text the campaign, they will call you later to ask for money.  But it’s a neat way to use text messaging to communicate directly to their base.

Here’s a debate some friends and I stumbled into. We were looking for ways that a bad economy could help us correct behaviors that lead to better long-term decisions. For example, if gas is expensive, we start looking at alternative sources of energy, or public transportation.

So in an economy where it costs us more money to drive places, where we have less money for disposable income, and more expensive food costs, we will have to change some spending habits. The question became, will we get healthier.

One argument is that with ridiculous gas prices, I’m more likely to walk to the stores that I need to buy things from. I may start walking to the bus stop and riding it to work. With less disposable income, the average American group of friends might skip a movie or night at the bar to go shoot hoops at the park, thinking that the $100 they would spend together on beers could be used more wisely.

But I can see the flip side as well. Depressed people may skip a night meeting up with friends in order to buy a $5 bottle of wine and never leave their couch. The $8 a pound they spent on turkey could be replaced with $.25 Top Ramen and $1.99 bologna. People could take an attitude of “This sucks, I’m going to sit at home and sulk.”

So I don’t know. I’d like to think that people will move to more urban centers, congregate at parks and places of shared interest, walk and bike places they normally drive, and feel like when all else that they can’t control fails, they can at least take care of themselves. Thoughts?

Nothing brilliant to comment on this week, though there’s a ton of odd unrelated stuff going on.  Here are a few things that made me stop and take note:

• Here’s my friend Dan from Manchester making his national television debut on America’s Got Talent.
• I really have to go back and figure out how Nick Licata gets elected to Seattle City Council.  I’m beginning to think that moderates and conservatives simply don’t vote in Seattle.  Either that, or there’s some weird transition that anyone who is moderate or conservative bolts for the Eastside as soon as they can.
• For all the talk about Erik Bedard not speaking to the press, maybe with all his millions Larry Holmes can find a speechwriter, or at least someone who will keep him on some sort of consistent train of thought.  This could literally be a SNL skit.
• The U.S. Embassy told Americans living abroad: "Be Wary of Soccer-Crazed Germans."  No word if the Germans responded by warning their people to stay away from stadiums in Detroit, Cleveland and New York, just as a general rule.
• After months of hearing about how U.S. elementary, high scools and colleges are sub-standard, the graduate programs get blasted with this report from Business Week.  Apparently there was actually a Web site up for years that claimed to give people answers to the GMAT.  Yes, Years.  As in, for years the guys at GMAT never thought to Google "How to cheat on the GMAT" in order to fix the problem. Note to MBA grads – there may be job openings at GMAT soon.
• After the purging of the Mariner front office this week, someone asked me an interesting question.  If all decisions had been left to the Wisdom of Crowds approach where fans could vote on all matters, could they really have done any worse than Bavasi.  In 4.5 years, he’s the only person I’ve ever seen where you look upon the body of work and see no success in the past, no success in the present, and no hope for success in the future.  How hard to you have to try to take an 90+ win season in 2003, and decimate the major league and minor league talent without replacing it with much in return? 
• And of course, today could be the day that we find out for sure that our millionaires and legistalors all got out-hustled by an Oklahoma oil guy.

What a fun week.

No, not those 7 words. But in memory of Carlin’s passing, I want to relay a funny quote I heard today.  When asked how he wanted to be rememberred when he died, George replied, "Gee, he was just here a minute ago…"

For no reason whatsoever, I decided to close out my trip to Taiwan with a long hike in the Tawianese forest.  I guess I can’t say "no reason."  Vittorio and I had taken a gondola up to the hills to see some pretty big temples, but he had to leave to catch his flight back to Europe.  I still had another 5 hours to kill, so I thought 3 of them could be effectively used wandering around the woods.

Plus, my Lonely Planet guidebook, which hadn’t really been right or useful all week, said there was this crazy temple buried in a wall behind the waterfall.  I had to see it. So off I went, up the rock stairs into the unknown forest.

I’m not sure why I expected it to be less humid in the middle of the forest.  But it wasn’t.  And I guess I forgot about the fact that there would be bugs, because there were.  Otherwise, the hike started stupendously.

It didn’t take too long for me to start talking to myself, mainly cursing how this idea had enetered my head.  Why couldn’t I have stumbled on the page in the guidebook that mentioned an air conditioned museum, or better, maybe a  martini bar. 

But I would carry on.  After all, when is the next time I would be able to see a temple in a waterfall?

After a few km, I reached a key fork in the road.  Unfortunately for me, the brilliantly marked signage did not mention which diretion my destination was.  I would be forced to use the guidebook, which to this point had gotten me lost on well marked city streets in two different countries.  Now I would use it for an unmarked forest trail.  Yippee.

I slogged through the trail when a frightening thought hit me.   Vittorio had left me in a totally different place than I was now.  Literally no one in the world knew where I was.  If I fell, I’d be one of those guys that just vanished off the planet.   Hmmm….

The hike was beautiful, except for the fact that I had no confidence in where I was going, and not very much hope that I was headed toward my mysterious temple.  The path kind of disappeared, but I finally found a creek, which seemed like a pretty good thing to follow if I was looking for a waterfall.  The bridge I came across did not instill confidence, but luckily the water was shallow enough to cross.

Anyway, after a few hours, I actually found this temple, and it was pretty cool – especially for something built into the side of a waterfall.  I walked through to take some pics from the other side, and there were actually some people inside there, which kind of freaked me out.  And they offered me tea.  Now, I thought it was a funny thing for people who don’t speak English to offer to sit down and pantomime with me.  But I appreciated the gesture, despite the fact that drinking unfiltered Taiwanese forest water before getting on an 11 hour flight seemed like a poor idea.  I passed on the tea, and headed back to the gondola, content with the way the trip was coming to an end.

You can say this for Taiwan – you certainly can’t get bored from a lack of experiences. Consider our range of activities in 72 hours in Taipei and the surrounding areas.

• Gorging on a variety of strange foods bought from street vendors for $.50, in nighttime street markets.
• Taking an elevator to the top of the world’s tallest building.  A 600 meter per second journey that goes 89 floors in 47 seconds.
• Taking a subway out to the Beitou Hot Spring, and getting in natural cold, warm and hot pools with 50 people who didn’t speak a lick of English.
• Wandering through a giant temple in the middle of a downtown park.
• Bussing out to a natural park on the country’s north coast.
• Taking a gongola ride up 2,000 meters to reach some temples, then hiking a few hours to find a nother temple carved into the wall of a waterfall.
• Nearly getting run over by one of the 198 million scooters that dominate the roads.
• Shopping at computer markets getting incredible deals on memory cards, USB drives and other small accessories.
• And then, eating more food from more night markets.

I’ll slowly get the pictures up to illustrate some of these activities, but the basic story is one of Taiwan being one of the most diverse places I have visitied.  After the fury and fervor of Hong Kong, Taiwan could easily be termed disappointing or unexciting.  But when you look at the wide range of activities, it really is quite a fantastic place.  5 million residents is nothing compared to Hong Kong or Tokyo, but it’s still a major city with more to offer than you can do in 3 days.  Plus, Taipei represents the very top of a long island.  There are another 18 million people in the rest of the country, in areas we didn’t even contemplate visiting.

When you consider how close it is to all the major Asian hubs, like Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc… it really becomes a place that could easily be the start and end points for my next Asia vacation.  

With Hong Kong as the only Asian country I had visited, I expected Taipei to share the same frenetic energy.  Perhaps it was because we arrived at out hotel after midnight, or because of the rain, but we walked around downtown Taipei trying to get our brain adjusted to the more reasonable pace.

It became obvious quickly that while Hong Kong was very westernized and street hawkers wanted to sell us watches, suits and cameras, Taipei markets were mainly about food.  great great food at every little booth, all for $.50 to $1.00.  Barely any English was being spoken, even in the most popular markets, so ordering or asking questions is more a game of charades than actual speaking.

if Hong Kong is New York on steroids, I don’t know what Taipei is.  It’s certainly big (5 million people) and spreadout, but it’s buildings are generally 10 stories, not 80.  (Except of course for the tallest building in the world, Tower 101, which is essentially Taiwan’s shout of, "Hey, we can build tall stuff if we want to.  See?")

Temples, gardens, parks, and hot springs abound, so the city feels like someplace someone can actually live.  we are doing the area at breakneck speed, including tour buses (something we would never ordinarily do) so we can cover more ground.  We’ll get some pics up soon.   

I guess I’m really off the marketing track here….

When the chaos bcomes overwhelming, there is Lamma Beach.  A quick 30-40 minute ferry ride to the southwest, and you land on an island with no cars or rodas, just walking paths from side to the other.  A few beaches are located in strategic points.  

Aside from the neat pier of seafood restaurants (that aren’t as cheap as you’d expect), there really isn’t much to do besides hike and relax, which is absolutley what you ant to do after a few days in the city.

A small disappointment, though not totally unexpected, is the beach water.   While the sand is quite lovely and the surrounding foliage leafy and green, the water is not the clear blue Mediterranean water Vittorio was expecting.  And really all you need to do is stare at the horizon to figure out why.  Instad of a row of sailboats gently bobbing on the sea, you see a line of freighter ships and tankers steaming to Hong Kong Piers.  I think Vittorio had visions of South Pacific in his head which were shattered by the sight of mammoth, double hulled transports.

Maybe worse, was the fact that the power plant that provides the juice for all of Hong Kong is sitting in the bay.  On one angle, pretty view, on the other, a giant monstrosity.  Very unsettling. 

But if part of the purpose was to explore a little and find a different area of Hong Kong, then we succeeded.  Plus how can you complain about a  place where you lunch on the fish that are caught in the seas under your feet.  

Off to Taipei tomorrow.

So after the initial shock wears off a little, you start thinking, "Well people can’t live like this 24-7.  There must be areas where people actually live."

Our trip to Hong Kong was inititated by a friend’s wedding, so we had to navigate our sightseeing around ceremonies on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.  But that has given us a few opportunities to branch out to the outer regions.

The first trip was out to the Northwest, near the airport, where we expereinced the world’s largest sitting buddha.  While it is very cool, it is also obviously a designed tourist spectacle that would make even the most commercialized American proud.  I’ll say this – they could not have made it any easier for white guys like me to hop on a subway/train out to nowhere, then hop on an amazing 20 minute gondola, to hike up the stairs and look over the bay.  It was amazing.  And yet, you have to chuckle when just under the buddha, you see a Starbucks.  I mean, when you can order a double tall latte on your way to the world’s largest buddha, then you have made it as a company.

Another little jaunt included a 25 minute bus ride down south for dinner in Stanley.  It’s a nice quiet little part of the island, and you get to travel through a number of nice neighborhoods to get there.  The Stanley Plaza is actually 100% British, and you don’t even feel like you are in Hong Kong.  Maybe this area was carved out by Brits living here as a place to live in relative peace.  or maybe it’s just a tourist area. But we enjoyed a nice relaxing meal on the water. 

Today will be a day trip out to Lamma, a beach island and place to eat seafood.

Hope to get more pictures up in the right spots soon. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Stories to come….