You must remember that movie made in 1999, with Will Smith and Kevin Kline, along with the promotional song with same title, neither of which were very good, but were amusing at the very least. “When I roll into the (Wild Wild West). When I stroll into the (Wild Wild West). When I bounce into the (Wild Wild West).” It’s time to shift this topic into a more relevant one. I don’t want to get too far off track like most of the other entries.

Western Union, a prominent client of New-A, has been widely known in the U.S. for its telegram service until advancements in technology made them switch to another business model. Now with more than 350,000 locations in over 240 countries and territories, Western Union specializes in money transfer, money orders and other commercial services.

I’m only giving this tidbit because until a day ago, I didn’t know what type of business it’s in. Yes, that’s right, reading this blog can actually teach you things. Like, did you know that the Scottish National Flag, St. Andrew’s Cross, is technically the oldest national flag still in use? It goes back to the 9th century. Here’s another fact: Today, July 14th, is a national holiday in France. It’s Bastille Day. The French celebrate the storming of the Bastille, and French independence.

Back to Western Union: It’s only logical that it advertises more to foreigners in the U.S. because its main service is transferring money to almost any location in the world, which is exactly what many Asian Americans do. They send money to friends and, most important, family back home. Advertising in-language for their major niches is a solid idea, and will definitely increase business in a declining economy.

Season 6 of Markie Mark’s (Mark Wahlberg) HBO (Home Box Office) hit, “Entourage” premiered last night. The main cast returns:
Vince-Adrian Grenier
Drama-Kevin Dillon
Eric-Kevin Connolly
Turtle-Jerry Ferrara
Ari-Jeremy Piven

While this first episode was actually not a very strong start to the show, this behind-the-scenes Hollywood series was welcomed by viewers anyway. The gang is just so darn enjoyable to watch. However, the only decent plot in the episode has to be Lloyd’s (Rex Lee) pushing to get a promotion from Ari. The rest of the show was surprisingly boring, consisting of simple one liners and lame comebacks.

In other news, Eun-Hee Ji of South Korea sunk a 20-foot putt on the 18th hole for birdie to win the LPGA tournament at the Saucon Valley Country Club yesterday. While I did not personally see the coverage of the match, I hear that Ji put on a quite a show getting birdie on 3 of her final 6 holes.

Now if you thought I swearing with those asterisks, you sir, are thoroughly mistaken. It just stands for face which is a basic component ofr the new t-shirt project. Let me back up. Okay, like 15 entries ago I talked about eCommerce and how we’re going to try and implement that into the site, to make some extra cash, brand Admerasia, and try all sorts of cool stuff. Just the last entry I showed you some cool flash drive concepts, and here’s another idea presented; T-shirts. Again our creative department let their minds roam without a leash, and they came up with some pretty crazy ideas.

A simple concept design with Admerasia, and a group of staff photos on the back. A cheap generic idea.

Another pretty simple idea with the phrase, “I am AdmerAsia n”. Cute, they also took some pictures of people and threw them into the bottom.

Here’s the Admerasia logo vertically done on the right side of the shirt and then pictures of people’s eyes and upper part of their head in the frame.

This plan has a basic Admerasia logo across the chest, but a larger full facial picture of the wearer that stretches around the left side, visible from the front and left.

As cool as it would be to utilize some of these designs, it’s kind of illogical because of the designs. A single t-shirt with one of these full screen prints is around $300!! The price is so expensive because it’s insane to set up the entire process for such a large graphic and only order 1. Too even make the prices sellable we’d have to bulk order a ridiculous amount in an effort to lower the price to around $15. Because of these restraints I think we’ll end up with one of the more generic ideas, and simpler designs, but hey it was cool to see them, wasn’t it?

Admerasia’s creative department has fabricated some ideas for the flash drives for promotiomal usage, and possibly for sale. We’ve got a bunch of face ideas (cause the staff here is the most important thing):
-Sticker Faces:

-Magnet Faces:

-That Thingy; that when you tilt it you can see another picture:

Here’s one built out of a spongy gel type material that seems fun:

Another cool concept is a customizable person:

A Da Vinci Code style code breaker type of USB thing (my personal favorite):

R16 stands for Respect-16. It’s an international cultural exchange that features a b-boy competition. It also has events like urban art galleries, hip-hop concerts , a graffiti festival and a movie festival. This September will be the 3rd annual event, in Korea. The past 2 years it took place in Seoul, South Korea, but this year it will be in Incheon. Incheon is actually just a city over from Seoul, and they’re connected by a subway system. Admerasia has been approached to create a small campaign to expose R16 to Americans. We’re suppose to figure out a way to get college aged people to spend the money and have the time in late September to go across the entire world to watch a 3 day tournament that has little to no prestige, or perhaps we can convince them to visit the barren tourist attractions in the busy port city of Incheon has to offer. If you didn’t get it, that was pure sarcasm…

Here’s a 12 year old at the competition:

Here’s part of the final battle (sounds very low, jack it up!):

www.opentable.com check it out. Pretty darn awesome. I made an account a couple of weeks ago, because I like making reservations for dinner. I feel more important and suave when I arrive at the restaurant and I can say, “Yes, I have a reservation… Kwan Ng.” Yeah, you’re jealous. So basically they’ve got a catalog of loads of restaurants in most cities in the United States, and you can sign up for your reservation for free on the site. They help organize the restaurants by price, reviews, location, or cuisine style. Now of course the site has got to make money somehow, well they offer loads of services from limos, to having flowers delivered to the table. I have yet to utilize one of these offers, but I have been starting to rack up the dining points. Once I reach 10,000 I receive a $100 gift card, to use at any of the restaurants. Now that’s pretty cool, I’ll still be spending more money than I’ll be getting back, but it’s a nice thing to aim for. So far I’ve been to Ideya, Madison Bistro, Ethos, Pala, Smorgas and Union Square Cafe all of which have been pretty darn good.

I really wanted to talk about Orientation today, or July 4th, but it turns out I’ll be talking about racism. Honestly, I never really cared for the topic. People would say an Asian joke, look at me and ask me if that’s racist, and I always responded “No, I don’t care.” I’ve never met a truly “racist” person. Plenty who sterotype, or maybe even doesn’t like a certain race, but never someone who actively hates a race. I’ve visited a large amount of countries, states and cities, and never have I once experienced something like this.

I now realize it’s an understatement to say that I grew up in a sheltered environment. Greenwich, Connecticut is probably the most guarded place around. Of course there’s a good deal of diversity, but no one really hates someone else just because of race, and many sterotypes are broken there, because we all tend to be of the same (higher class) demographic. We took loads of surveys at orientation, and each always had a question about diversity, like “Will you make friends of a different race?“, “Do you think you’ll get along with minorities?“. Orientation went great, but what I’m going to talk about is Saturday evening/Sunday morning in Long Island, New York.

(FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH, IT’S JUST BACKGROUND INFORMATION) I had invited a couple of my buddies to hang out during July 4th at my uncle’s place in Long Island. I figured we could get away from home for a weekend and just spend the days relaxing. swimming, playing soccer, socializing with people we’d most likely not interact with, eating plenty of food that was barbequed, and sleeping… Anyways, it’s pretty late out, probably near midnight and we decide that a Wendy’s run is in order. We really wanted those 99 cent sandwiches, and frosties. When we get there, the fast food restaurant had already closed, but the pick up window was open, we had gotten there via 5 minute walk so we decided, just to go to McDonald’s across the street. We ate there, but returned to the Wendy’s in an effort to use the pick up window and still get frosties. We weren’t served since apparently it’s required to have a car, so we started walking away.

(THIS STORY IS CENSORED, I TOOK OUT ALL THE REALLY BAD WORDS) Now I take full responsibility for the following events. These guys in a beaten up Buick, drive up to the pick up window and yell to one of my friends, “You in the orange shirt, you’re gay! Yeah, I’m talking about you faggot!” Evidently, they beleived that because my friend happened to be wearing an expensive orange polo, he’s gay. Now, 4 years ago I would have let it go and run away, but nowadays I won’t let anyone get away with that, nor would I back down. I turned around and yelled back, telling them to basically shut up and say that to our faces. Of course, there would be no story if they didn’t, they got out of the car and the 4 of them were clearly bigger than the 3 of us. My friend in the orange shirt, was the smartest and quickly speed-walked away heading back to the house. I, being the thick headed idiot I am, turned around to confront them, while slowly walking backwards to the down the street. They reached us and we were still both yelling at each other. Mainly it was me versus the smallest one of them.

During one of “taunts” I stuttered on a word, and the guy took his chance. “Hey, you speak American, Chinese boy?” and I classicly responded with, “Yes, I speak English.” He came back with, “But we’re in America right now.” At this point I had turned around and started walking away, when 2 of them cut me off. My third friend could have walked away too, but he stayed to help me. 1 of the guys behind me punched my in the ear, and the other guy behind me threw one into the back of my neck. I’m surprised I took both hits without falling or even yell in pain, the only reaction I had to it was that my hat had fallen off. My friend leaned over to pick up my hat, and as he was getting up one of the guys yelled “Here’s my Jackie Chan kick,” and proceeded to kick him in the “gentleman’s area.” Every guy knows how much it hurts. I’m proud to say that he took the surprise kick, just grunted, stood up, and stared right back at them. 2 of them had already run away since their recent actions had acquired attention and some people were honking there horns. The kicker ran away quickly, and the last one said, “You ain’t no Bruce Lee, you can’t fight,” and he walked away too. They called us more names and taunted us more, and I still couldn’t let it go. I don’t know why, but I refuse to get pushed around even in a bad situation like this. I continued to yell back, refusing to recognize their “strength,” they had attacked us and ran away before we could do anything? One of them came back from their car, and we did one of those face to face, pissed off, pre-fight stares while yelling at each other. His gang called him back, he faked a punch, and ran away.

In retrospect, we decided that while they originally were aiming for my friend in the orange shirt, because they thought he was the one talking back to them, when they saw me, they instantly targetted me because of my race. It’s severely disappointing that people still act this way. My friend who stayed with me earned a great deal of respect since he could have left me there. I’ve already told the story to multiple audiences, and I’ve gotten mixed responses.
1. Impressed that we took these hits, and didn’t fight back.
2. Blame the entire event on me, for provoking/instigating the entire event.
3. Blame the other group, and just hope we’re okay.
4. Think we’re lucky that they didn’t have weapons of any sort (which we are).
5. Glad that we stood our ground, and didn’t let them walk all over us.

Oh, did I mention they actually asked for our money too. I told them we’re not giving them our money, and they gave up on it. They obviously weren’t very experienced muggers. We’re lucky that we walked away from it without any injuries, and perhaps in the future I should be more careful. That’s my story of the July 4th weekend, I’m an American, always considered myself one, more so than those guys ever will be, and proud of it. I’m just frustrated that there are still some people in our nation that act like this…

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!?