You may or may not know that this autumn I’m off to attend the University of Massachusetts: Amherst. When people asked me where I would be attending school in the fall, I always said it like this:
“Amherst… (pause, wait for them to look at me skeptically, or say that’s amazing, then say) UMass Amherst!”
Now while it may not be one of the best schools in the world, it is somewhat respectable; ranked 104th in the entire nation. That’s not too shabby. Of course I haven’t got a clue of what I want to study while I’m there, nor do I have any intention of picking very early on. Now in effort to relate this article back to more Admerasia-esque topics, here’s a little statistic. Over 50% of Asian Americans have a bachelor degree or higher a higher level of education, while the national rate is around 27%.

Anyways, July 1-3 I’ll be up in Amherst, Massachusetts for the preorientation. Signing up for new courses, learning what campus life will be like, and taking placement tests. I’ve already taken their math test, which I did horrificly on, despite me being Asian… Haha, a little racist joke. Hey, I can say it, I’m asian. Okay so let’s back up to the horrific score on that test. When I say that, I actually mean abysmal, unlike those obnoxious smart kids who this a B- is going to ruin their reputation. No, I got 7 questions correct out of 40… Now if we do the math here, I’ve earned less that 25% on the examination. Why wasn’t that question on the test!?

No I’m not an idiot, I meant to spell the title incorrectly. It’s a pun!! Friday June 19th 2009, the senior class of 2009 at Greenwich High School graduated. For the first time in nearly a month it didn’t rain, and our 4 hour ceremony outside was under a blistering sun, and an uncomfortable humidity. Guys in red, girls in white, and teachers wore black. Two valedictorians and four salutatorians, the class president, vice-president, and treasurer all made speeches. Most of us the graduates probably were not paying attention to the majority of the speeches, since some people (including myself) had blown up beach balls and were passing them around. There were plenty of bubbles floating around as well which were entertaining. So now we’re no longer High School Seniors, but College Freshman. Whoa big change!!

A weird thing that’s happened to me during my education is that at every school I’ve attended when I graduate the headmaster/principal retires. Happened at Cos Cob School (Mr. Butera), Central Middle School (Dr. Bulger) and now Greenwich High School (Alan Capasso (yes he allows me to call him Alan!)). I guess my grade just exhausts them to the point where they cannot take it any longer.

I apologize for my absence. I had to return to school last week to confirm my eligibility for graduation, hence the large absence of posts. But I’ve returned ready to continue the blog, and excited that we’ll be ready to move it into a new site soon. The extensions/subdomains of the Admerasia site are nearly ready to be finalized, and when it is, the blog will be included.

I’m not just yelling random things (which is what I tend to do in real life), that’s actually the name of the ex-Admerasia branch in Los Angeles, California. So Aaaza, on Wilshire Boulevard, focuses on the large Asian population in California. This west coast branch is managed by Peter Huang, and Kevin Vu, started in 1997 and they recently became an independent company and now only considered a sister company to Admerasia.

Today we had a meeting with a company called EliteSEM. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, we had a conference to discuss what this company can bring to the table. Basically they offer programs that can create, manage and report a complete digital campaign. They set up the keywords and the advertisements, control all money being spent and use it based on certain trends, and can report on who, where and when the advertisements are clicked, and the percentage of the time a transaction occurs. Now while the process is impressive, it really is invaluable to us until we have a client that really wants to concentrate their promotions through this more complicated single digital front.

I’m off to go film some more random stuff so I can build a somewhat decent video of this process. I haven’t had much time to really develop the movie, but I hopefully will have a decent short film to present of it.

I’d like to introduce Sporcle. It may not be new to you or many people but it is to me, and it’s a fantastic tool to waste away the hours of the day, and test your knowledge. It’s got quizzes from US presidents, capitals of Europe, and NFL leading quarterbacks, to movie quotes, and music lyrics. Well try it out and enjoy wasting hours away!

There’s a new campaign section that will be an addition to the website. Here we’re hoping to attract new clients that haven’t got a clue about Admerasia, and they can have a free trial type campaign. So the point is we get smaller clients through these “ad-for-free” idea, and hopefully they’ll stay on longer after the original promotion is over.

It helps that Admerasia is a full-service advertising agency. This means we can provide nearly every step of the process of creating and marketing a campaign in house, which is convenient and significantly impressive. Any client that wants to market a new product or service to the asian american community would benefit by working with us, since we help promote it very well. So go check it out when the site goes up and running, and suggest it to your friends/business owners.

So this morning back in Greenwich it wasn’t raining at all. There seemed to be a light drizzle overnight but nothing in the morning. I took this to mean that it wouldn’t be raining in the city either. Well I was wrong. Since I like walking in the morning I exited Grand Central Terminal quickly, and upon seeing the rain I grabbed a free newspaper, to help cover me from some rain. Now while I was quite content with my makeshift umbrella it wasn’t until I reached the office that I saw what happened. I was settling into my office when I realized my hands were entirely black. Then it hit me, the rain had gotten the newspaper wet, and the ink had run off the paper and onto my hands. Oh and it didn’t only dye my hands, it got on my pants, shirt, and earphones. It’s been very difficult to remove from my hands, and it refuses to get off my white earphones. So in the future do NOT take newspapers with large dark inked pictures and hold them above your head in the rain. If you try it don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A great comedy hit to start off the summer’s blockbusters, despite it not being a blockbuster of its own. A bunch of my friends and I went to go see it opening night and had an espcially enjoyable time and I recommend it for anyone to see. That is if you like any sort of decent comedy.  Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis star in this absolute mess of a movie, yet directed with a feeling of more success than most comedy movies ever contain. 

Zan Ng, the founder of New-A the holding company of A Language Bank and Admerasia, has decided to help out the eCommerce project by offering some of his own paintings as possible artwork we could potentially use since he owns the rights to them. I’ve been looking through his inventory of paintings, because he has so many, and trying to pick some to be uploaded to a digital copy so we can sell/share the image to others. I’m not sure people would actually pay for these medicore paintings, but we could definitely brand with the logo on them and just give them away for free.

So my internship is winding down and coming to a close. It is potentially possible that I stay on and continue working here after this week is over, but I’m not completely sure if that is what course I will take. That decision is not for at least a couple more days, but if I do leave, the blog will be taken over by other members of the office and hopefully be transitioned into the new parts of the website. For now though, I’ll be back.

So every Thursday there is a company wide meeting that basically is just to help get the staff thinking in a digital mindset, and away from the traditional styles. Transitioning into this new age, is difficult, but truly necessary if the company is going to survive in the future years. So Admerasia is leading the way into this digital era, while the other asian american advertising agencies are trying to catch up.

The title of this blog entry is obviously referring to that song! You don’t know the song do you? Well let me jog your memory… “I don’t care if Monday’s blue, Tuesday’s grey and Wednesday too, Thursday I don’t care about you, it’s Friday I’m in love.” A fun catchy tune.

Back at Greenwich High School, for some reason some teachers started calling Wednesday, Kwan-Day. It happened my senior year, when a couple of my teachers all the sudden started doing that, then loads of students did, and now I forget what was the catalyst was. So people would say things like, “Damn it, I’ve got a test this Kwan-Day.” Or “Awww, we don’t have class Kwan-Day.”

So now these construction guys are actually digging up the floors and just tearing right through. Oh and since the boards they are pulling up aren’t in convenient size for transportation, they’ve decided to slice them all into smaller pieces, hereby creating an earful of din, just constantly going all day. Most people in the area have moved to different areas that are slightly further away so they can actually get some work done.

We’re now finalizing the official title, keywords and description that will go into the meta text of the Admerasia site. It’s a simple process and idea, but we need to finalize it as a group, so that part is taking its time, since it isn’t a priority.