Random | I Spit Hot Fire

The Future is Here, Yet Still Disappoints

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

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The new year is here, 2010! Ugh, older age, you are so fast! (Picture to the left is me, 5 years ago)

Since I now go on vacation every Christmas, I’m always reflecting back on the year and getting some space to figure out what’s next as I head into the new year.

This means resolutions and goals.

Here’s a quick glance of what I said last year, Promises Are Made To Be Broken.

1) Relieve stress from work: I think about work non-stop, the pressure is getting to me in the sense that I can’t really sleep, I have to play something in the background to distract my brain into letting me sleep.

2) Stop cussing: I did not cuss (vocally), essentially, at all, until college. Instead, I’d use freak or whatever (frak!) substitute you can use so I was quite PG. Somehow, it’s all gone awry, and now I cuss a bit too much, mixing it into normal conversation a little much. It makes me wonder if this problem is related to #1, in which I’m just little too high strung all the time.

2009 was pretty good. I got better at my job, I started playing basketball more regularly (2 heavy sessions per week now), and I…well, that’s it. Not an easy year, but it was fine relative to my specific needs and interests. As for my two resolutions above, they started off well, and as the year went by, got progressively worse. I was able to sleep without anything in the background all year though, and that was good, and the cussing, well, people can be a real pain in the ass.

So for 2010, I’ll keep it simple again:

Finish my work. I came to Vietnam in 2006 with specific goals, and 2010 is the end to my original target. Gotta keep pushing and do what I came to do. I turn 30 at the end of the year, so time to finish.
Keep playing basketball. Staying in reasonable shape is important in the short (being fat and lethargic is not a good strategy for getting women) and long term (dying from heart/cholesterol/etc. issues is not on the To Do list).
Present myself better. Trying to improve my own personal dress code and speaking skills. Every year I add something to the arsenal, and this year is the year I stop wearing Lebron logo t-shirts to work. Somehow, I am a manager-level employee. Crazy?

Tags: 2010, resolutions

05.01.2010 Random No Comments

Confusion Over Where Money Lent on Kiva Goes – NYTimes.com

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Yeah, I definitely did not know the lender to borrower connection was fictional, or else I probably wouldn’t have bothered looking through profiles as I did. Really disappointing to know it isn’t true, even if the causes themselves are still good. I even had thoughts of visiting people I had lent money to… Here’s my Kiva Profile: http://www.kiva.org/lender/genericdude

New York Times Article: Confusion Over Where Money Lent on Kiva Goes – NYTimes.com

By STEPHANIE STROM

Published: November 8, 2009

Last month, David Roodman, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, pressed a button on his laptop as his bus left the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan and started a debate that has people re-examining the country’s latest celebrated charity, Kiva.org.

Left, Daniel Lemin; right, Heather Haines

Premal Shah, left, the president of Kiva, and David Roodman, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Oprah Winfrey extolled Kiva on her TV show. Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, sang its praises. “I lent $25 each to the owner of a TV repair shop in Afghanistan, a baker in Afghanistan, and a single mother running a clothing shop in the Dominican Republic,” Mr. Kristof wrote in a 2007 column.
Kiva, a nonprofit organization, promoted itself as a link between small individual lenders and small individual borrowers like Maryjane Cruz in the Philippines, who recently sought a $625 loan to support her family’s farm.

But Mr. Roodman’s blog post said that lenders like Mr. Kristof were not making direct loans. Borrowers like Ms. Cruz already have loans from microfinance institutions by the time their pictures are posted on Kiva’s Web site.

Thus, the direct person-to-person connection Kiva offered was in fact an illusion. Kiva’s lenders were actually backstopping microfinance institutions, and since Kiva and other online giving and lending models pride themselves on their transparency, Mr. Roodman and others suggested it might better explain what its lenders’ money — about $100 million over four years — was really doing.

“The person-to-person donor-to-borrower connections created by Kiva are partly fictional,” he wrote. “I suspect that most Kiva users do not realize this.”

“Little did I realize what that click would unleash,” he said in an interview, later adding that the post had attracted dozens of comments, more than 10,000 hits and thousands of Twitter postings.

Much of his long post is complimentary to Kiva — after all, the information he used to write it is largely tucked away on Kiva’s site — but it has brought scrutiny of the organization. It goes beyond complaints about its transparency to questioning whether the model it relies on is viable and, indeed, whether any organization can fulfill the promise it was making to directly connect people to people.

“There’s a whole new generation of socially connected nonprofits that use the Internet to make the illusion of person-to-person contact much more believable,” said Timothy Ogden, editor in chief of Philanthropy Action, an online journal for donors. “The problem is that they are no more connecting donors to people than the child sponsorship organizations of the past did.”

In the late 1990s, several child sponsorship organizations amended their disclosures after a series of articles in The Chicago Tribune revealed that while they were soliciting money to sponsor a specific needy child, that child was not necessarily receiving the money directly.

More recently, charities that ask donors for money to buy a farm animal have added disclaimers to their pitches, stating that money might not buy a cow or a duck but finance broader programs.

Now Kiva is the latest nonprofit group to have to overhaul its explanation of how it works. Where its home page once promised, “Kiva lets you lend to a specific entrepreneur, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty,” it now simply states, after Mr. Roodman’s post: “Kiva connects people through lending to alleviate poverty.”

Kiva is not the only site with transparency problems. GlobalGiving, whose Web site allows donors to choose among various projects to support, has raised money for philanthropic projects of three or four profit-making companies, according to Dennis Whittle, its co-founder and chief executive. It did not, however, tell donors that their money would support a company’s philanthropic projects rather than one proposed by a nonprofit.

For instance, it raised $975 for SunNight Solar Enterprises, a small start-up that develops solar-powered consumer products, so it could distribute 500 free solar-powered lights to refugees in camps. After The New York Times raised questions about the issue, Mr. Whittle said in a blog post on The Huffington Post that GlobalGiving was considering whether to tell potential donors when it was raising money for a business rather than a nonprofit.

Premal Shah, Kiva’s president, said he could foresee a day when Kiva really did provide person-to-person connection, once some legal hurdles are cleared and when people in the developing world began using their mobile phones to use credit and make payments.

“That’s the future of Kiva,” he said, “when through that disintermediation process you can bring down the costs of these transactions and put them directly in the hands of people.”

For now, however, analysts are raising questions about Kiva’s model, which relies in part on its own data, offers lenders no recourse against default and deploys volunteers to do most of its auditing.

Mr. Ogden goes so far as to question Kiva’s role in the lending process. “Kiva’s new documentation explains, if you read it, that Kiva is a connector not of individual lenders to individual donors, but of individual lenders to microfinance institutions,” he said. “If Kiva’s users want to be connected to an individual borrower, Kiva doesn’t do that, and so the big question is, do Kiva’s users want to be connected to a microfinance institution — in which case, why do they need Kiva?”

Indeed, individual lenders can support microfinance institutions directly through, for example, Microplace, or make donations to support nonprofit groups like the Grameen Foundation and Acción that support microfinance.

Mr. Shah said he thought Kiva’s distinct advantage was in making it easier for small lenders to support microfinance than the other programs.

The difficulty is in engaging the person who wants to lend $25, a mother of three in Des Moines, for instance, “and create a simple way for her to participate in microfinance, which is what we do,” Mr. Shah said.

The question is, does the lender understand that his money may not be supporting the loan he picked on Kiva’s Web site?

The uproar has proven beneficial in an unexpected way. “If anything, it has drawn more people into the nuance and beauty of this model of microfinance,” said Mr. Shah, who joined Kiva from eBay. “It’s highly imperfect, but it’s like a 3 1/2-year-old child: it has a lot of potential.”

He said he had so far seen no impact on Kiva’s business, which set a record with $293,000 lent on the day he was interviewed and celebrated its fourth anniversary last month by announcing it had lent more than $100 million all told.

Tags: kiva

09.11.2009 Random No Comments

Words from My Sister:

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Taken at TJ Maxx in the USA: (my name is Michael)

(yes, it is “probably” for Michael Jackson. But I was named after Michael Jackson. So there. The circle of life! Or something)

Tags: sister

22.09.2009 Random 1 Comment

Customer Service FAIL, SRS Labs with SRS Audio Sandbox

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

(edit, Sept. 18, 2009: As expected SRS never cared to follow-up with me. Also, realized that SRS Audio Sandbox didn’t work perfectly before this error. Sound will loop indefinitely if you’re playing something for a few hours consecutively, like music or playing a game. Worse is that there’s no way to stop the sound unless you reset Windows. Muting or turning off SRS or the application playing the sound does nothing. I had this error, but never realized it was SRS. I thought it was my soundcard. I let Mike have my licensed copy of Sandbox since I can’t use it, but he’s decided to uninstall it because he also gets the looping issue while playing games)

It’s lousy enough when Customer Service ignores you. It’s even worse when they pretend to care, but actually don’t.

And that’s my saga with SRS Labs and their SRS Audio Sandbox plugin. The product itself, when it was working, was fantastic. I bought it about a year ago, and it could be used with any audio, whereas most other plugins will work just with specific software, like Winamp or Windows Media Player. Since I use VLC for video and Media Monkey for music, those pluglins were useless.

So, like I said, it was fantastic while it was working. It stopped working a couple of months ago. I have no idea why. After contacting SRS, I still don’t know why but I also still have a non-working product, and I’ve wasted the money I used to purchase it. And that sucks.

After being ignored (“It’s even worse when they pretend to care, but actually don’t.”), I have no other avenues to pursue, so I figured I’d just write about it.

June 1st, 2009- From me, to the contact form on their website:

Product: SRS Audio Sandbox software
Operating System: Windows Vista
Product Version: 1.9.0.4
Sound Card: Soundmax Integrated Digital HD Audio

Message: A few days ago I downloaded 1.9.0.4 to upgrade over 1.9.0.1. Even though under the Sound applet in Control Panel, it shows SRS working (the application also says it is working without errors), there is no sound. I have checked to make sure the volume is up, the sound is not muted, but there is no sound whatsoever. Once I change the default sound back to the Soundmax, however, sound is there again. While SRS before worked with no problems, the new version doesn’t work at all. I also don’t have 1.9.0.1 anymore to reinstall. I have uninstalled the new version before reinstalling, tried resetting the system to make sure the audio drivers are in place- none of that works. Again, everything from the Vista standpoint is working- everything reports that sound is playing back, but it is not. If I switch to the default sound, everything works fine, but obviously SRS doesn’t work. What can I do?

June 3rd, 2009- From: Michael Gonzales [mailto:MichaelG@srslabs.com] to me

I believe it’s a compatibility issue with your HD sound card. And simply the plug-in probably won’t work with it. Your best bet is to uninstall the plug-in.

Kind Regards,
Michael

Right away, I thought, did he even read my request? It WAS working, for quite a long time, and then it didn’t. Anyway, his reply is basically saying to me, we have no solution for you, that’s your problem. Even though you are probably one of the few who paid for it instead of downloading a cracked version.

June 3rd, 2009- My response to Mr. Gonzales

Hi Michael,
I actually have purchased the SRS software, so I’m definitely invested in finding a solution. Like I mentioned before, the SRS version I was using before ( I believe 1.9.0.1) was working for me fine, would you be able to send me the older version so I can retry it?

Thanks,
Michael

June 8th, 2009- After not hearing back from SRS for 5 days, I sent another e-mail to Mr. Gonzales. Before I was just asking to check out a previous version of the software to see if it would work. Since I didn’t hear back, I actually had to go pirate it. Yeah, I pirated a version of the software I actually own.

Hi Michael,
I’m e-mailing again to ask about support.

Would I be able to provide more information in order to help me fix this problem? I’m using Vista Home Premium SP2 on a Lenovo Thinkpad T61P. Like I said, it was working fine until about a week ago, when it stopped working as soon as I installed the newest version. Windows seems to think it is working (they show audio levels going up and down) but there is no sound, but if I switch back to the default sound card, it’s fine again.

As I have mentioned before, I am a paid customer of SRS, so I am definitely alarmed if my purchase now is completely non-working, especially since I love the product.

Sincerely,
Michael

I still didn’t hear a response after this, so I just gave up, and posted a random complaint on Twitter a little bit after this. To my surprise, SRS found me and responded on July 14th, 5 weeks later. Looks like using social media can help! I e-mailed the guy who had contacted me on Twitter.

July 15, 2009- I sent the below as well as all previous correspondence to Michael Farino <MichaelF@srslabs.com>

Hi Michael,
Since this last e-mail, I have reformatted and installed the Windows 7 Beta, and the issue still exists. I am still not sure why, and if it’s a hardware issue, I would think the soundcard would be dead completely, not just be a problem for SRS.

Thanks,
Michael

July 16, 2009- Michael Farino asks Michael Gonzales (btw, if you notice there are so many “Michael”s, my name is Michael as well), the guy who ignored me before to help, and I get the following:

Hello,
What type of sound card are you currently running?

Kind Regards,
Mike

Nothing like people not even using your name when replying. Originally, I had already listed the sound card I am using in the original form, but what the hell, I’ll try to do my part to help.

July 16, 2009- From Me, in response to Michael G.

Hi Mike,
I am using a SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio, driver version 6.10.1.5510.

July 17, 2009- From Michael G

Hello,
Where did you make the purchase through our site or through paypal? Did you use your information or purchase it under someone else’s name?

Kind Regards,
Michael

He still doesn’t know my name. And he is doubting that I even paid for the software. Of course, I did make this support request 7 weeks ago. But….I’m willing to prove that I did pay the company.

July 17, 2009- From Me, I send the receipt of my purchase

Hi Michael,
Please see attached for my receipt.

July 27, 2009- 10 days go by and there is no response. This is where I’m starting to get tired of this lets-pretend-we-care-but-ignore-him-until-he-stops-bothering-us tactic. I e-mail Michael F for some help with all the entire dialogue thus far.

Hi Michael,
I haven’t heard anything back from Michael G. Can you assist?

Thanks,
Michael

July 28, 2009- Michael G responds,

Hello,

As I said before this is simply a compatibility issue with you HD sound card, there is no current solution or fix, and I apologize. You should uninstall the plug-in and your sound playback will return.

Kind Regards,
Michael

Now we’re back to to that June 3rd response again- we can’t help. Period. Does he really know if my sound card doesn’t support it? How come it’s not documented on the site? Wouldn’t that be a lousy thing to do with your customers? Hey, let’s sell software that doesn’t run with certain soundcards, but not even tell people that so they can buy it, and THEN find out. But wait, this software already worked with this sound card before, almost for a year. Hmmmm.

Also, why’d he bother asking about my receipt- he didn’t give me any support, he just ignored me further.

So, at this point, it’s like BS.

July 28, 2009- Me, to Michael G

Hi Michael,

As I mentioned before, SRS was working for me for nearly a year. I didn’t change the sound card, the OS, or the laptop, so it doesn’t seem conceivable that there’s just now a compatibility issue.

I appreciate any help, but I don’t feel like SRS is really interested in working with me to figure this out. With the answer you’re giving me, it feels more like I’m being ignored and brushed aside rather than you truly know this is the issue.

-Michael

July 29, 2009- From Michael G

Hello Michael,

I apologize that you feel that way. It’s just that usually in these particular situations, the problem is has to do with the HD sound cards. Could you please further explain how exactly it stopped working for you, it was hard to indentify what the problem exactly was in this thread. I can try to look into it further and see if we can identify any other problems or possible fixes, if not like I said the only remaining option that we have found for HD fixes is to uninstall. If that’s the case I’d be obliged to offer a full refund of course.

Kind Regards,

Michael

We are going around in circles at this point. I have run a Customer Service department before (not to brag, it’s just a fact), and I know how people normally ask for requests. Normally, you have people giving no information whatsoever about the issue, they just assume you can figure it out for them. I had at least tried to be open and very upfront with all the information I knew in the very first request, and even added additional info as I kept trying to find the solution. I was even willing to answer more questions about the issue. In his response, Michael G is just trying to put this issue back on me in a passive manner, yet he doesn’t have a specific question about what (“Could you please further explain how exactly“) I wrote before, which implies that 1) he doesn’t care 2) he didn’t read it.

July 29, 2009- My final response:

Hi Michael,

Here was the original support request:

Message: A few days ago I downloaded 1.9.0.4 to upgrade over 1.9.0.1. Even though under the Sound applet in Control Panel, it shows SRS working (the application also says it is working without errors), there is no sound. I have checked to make sure the volume is up, the sound is not muted, but there is no sound whatsoever. Once I change the default sound back to the Soundmax, however, sound is there again. While SRS before worked with no problems, the new version doesn’t work at all. I also don’t have 1.9.0.1 anymore to reinstall. I have uninstalled the new version before reinstalling, tried resetting the system to make sure the audio drivers are in place- none of that works. Again, everything from the Vista standpoint is working- everything reports that sound is playing back, but it is not. If I switch to the default sound, everything works fine, but obviously SRS doesn’t work. What can I do?

As I said above, when I run SRS, it believes it is working. The sound meters go up normally, but there is no sound. Once I disable the software and switch it back to the sound card, everything is ok. I am not running any additional sound software. Also as I have mentioned before, before upgrading, SoundMax worked fine ever since I bought, 0 problems.

Since then, I have switched to Windows 7 Beta, build 7100, in hopes the error would be solved, but it has not. Under Windows 7, I am using SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio driver version 6.10.1.5510 on a Lenovo T61P.

Please let me know how I can clarify this further for you.

Thanks,

Michael

Today is August 8th, 10 days after the last contact. No response. I’m not going to even bother e-mailing back. I suppose SRS will be happy now, they’ve gotten me to drop it.

I’m just going to post it on this blog and e-mail http://consumerist.com/, and if I’m lucky and this is kind of a big deal, they’ll pick it up.

Tags: customer service, fail, Random, srs, Tech

09.08.2009 Random, Tech 4 Comments

That is Weird [The Uncomfortable]

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Just saw this in my e-mail. I assume it’s not just generic spam since he talks about Hanoi, but Outlook (smartly?) put it in my junk e-mail.

Subject:computer software

From: jason [triga@bigpond.net.au]

Hey hows it going, i like your thread. I am an australian and looking to buy a large qunatity of both computer software and TV series box sets. I have been to Hanoi in June this year but didnt really look into it. I want to find someon who can can look after my ongoing needs in Hanoi to mail me everything i need. Emnail me back if you are interested and we can talk about money and what you can get.

I really hope this guy isn’t teaching English to little kids- I’m uncomfortable with how he used “ongoing needs” and his spelling is terrible.

At least I try to use spell check!

Tags: Random, spam, Vietnam

05.08.2009 Random, Vietnam No Comments

I’ve Joined Kiva! (Helping Vietnamese People)

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Image representing Kiva as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

My sister’s been using Kiva for years, and she recently got me a gift certificate to get started, and so I’m finally involved it as well.

Kiva, as it describes itself, is “the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.” “Kiva is a non-profit organization that allows you to make a small loan to low income entrepreneurs across the globe (microfinance). Individuals like you can help provide affordable working capital for the poor — money to buy a sewing machine, livestock, etc. – and help an entrepreneur escape poverty”

Basically this means you can take part in microfinancing various projects around the world, with Kiva as the agent (I wouldn’t quite say middleman because Kiva isn’t profiting from anyone). Kiva helps find ideal projects and gets the work done so a qualified individual can present himself on the website and ask for help. From there, people/lenders look at what projects they are interesting in funding, then do so. I took my sister’s original gift certificate and then added my own $25 contribution to join a couple of projects. I’ve also added a Wordpress plugin (see bottom right of this site) that lists what I’ve invested in. (oops, plugin not working for now)

The process is pretty simple:

Join the website, purchase an amount you’d like to invest (kind of like credits, depositing money into your Kiva acount) with PayPal.
Look for projects all over the world, and find one you’re interested in. Each project shows the picture of the actual person you’ll be loaning money to, as well as a description of what they want to do. I assume Kiva helps translate what they want to say, working with other groups that are on the ground. Each investment project has a total they need to reach; they can’t begin until they reach the target. They’ve also recently started projects in the US; these tend to need more money in fund raising (to be expected), but there are also videos of each applicant, so you can get a better feel of what the person is all about. I wonder if we can visit those people to say hello.
Pick a project and invest. Like any investment, there’s no guarantee. You also won’t profit from your loan, it’s a pure loan $X, get $X back. It’s helping people!

For my first two investments,

(On, and I know the accents are getting killed in my blog, I’ve never been able to support accents in the actual blog posts correctly)

Ti?n Nguy?n V?n (20206050011) is a 28 year-old male living in the town of Yên Phong – B?c Ninh. Ti?n is the group leader of a 5-member group loan offered by SEDA. While each member of the group receives an individual loan, they all are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members, if someone is delinquent or defaults. The official name of this borrowing group is Yên V? 03 (3).
Ti?n is married and has 2 infant children. To make a living, Ti?n owns & operates a business raising chickens for sale. Ti?n has been engaged in this business for over 5 years and earns approximately 3,000,000 VND a month from these activities.
Ti?n joined SEDA to gain access to financial services to help improve his living situation and to engage in business activities. Ti?n is requesting a loan of 5,152,000 VND to purchase livestock feed & other supplies. This will be the 1st loan taken out by Ti?n from SEDA. He plans to use the additional revenue generated to improve and expand his business.

Bình Nguy?n Th? (254991509) is a 51 year-old female living in the town of Sóc S?n. She is married and has 3 adult-aged children. To making a living, Bình owns & operates a business venture in the agriculture sector raising livestock. While not the only means for generating revenue, the main source of income for the business comes primarily from raising fish for sale. Bình has been engaged in this business for over 10 years and earns approximately 5,500,000 VND a month from these activities.
In 1996, Bình joined TYM Fund to gain access to financial services to help improve her living situation and ability to engage in business activities. Bình has successfully repaid a previous loan of 20,000,000 VND from TYM Fund. This previous loan was used to renovate an existing shelter for the her livestock. Bình is now requesting a new loan of 20,000,000 VND which will be used to purchase baby livestock to raise & sell in future. The loan will be the 10th loan taken out by her from TYM Fund. Bình plans to use the additional revenue generated from the business to improve/expand her business.

I don’t really have deep reasons why I decided to invest in these two particular projects, I just felt like it. I wanted to invest in Vietnam just because… Nguyen Thi Binh is the name of a good friend, so that was one. The other was I just wanted to pick someone who hadn’t gotten a loan before; a lot of people had received multiple loans before.
The loan repayment period for both is slightly over a year, so I guess I’ll just be waiting around and seeing how these people do over time. Since I live in Vietnam, I wonder if I could somehow visit these people, not really to make myself known, but just to see the real use of the money.

Tags: kiva, microfinance, Random, sister, Vietnam

10.07.2009 Random, Vietnam 4 Comments

Good bye, Landon

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

My friend Landon died last Wednesday in TPHCM (Ho Chi Minh City) by suicide. He was 28.

It’s hard to really describe how I feel. Like most people, I’ve read about suicides in the news, and what’s normal for friends and family is to say that they’re in a state of shock over what happened.

Now that it’s close to me, I am shocked. I am bewildered. There is something in my mind that just refuses to believe it. This is something you read about in the news or see in movies, to know that someone you knew was having such a difficult time in life, that death was the only option, for me, perhaps I have a certain immaturity that I just can’t grasp my mind around it. A friend told me he had been diagnosed with clinical depression, but it frustrates me just to imagine how difficult things must have been for him. What I fear the most, and think about almost every day, is something that was his only resort.

I had known Landon for a little over two and a half years- he was one of the first people I met upon my return to Vietnam, and he was the one who made the introduction to my current work place. I was certainly not a close friend, but I did consider him a friend.

He was, almost literally, fun. So outgoing, so social, yet such a good guy in the sense that when you talked to him you could tell he was listening, he was interested, even if you’re someone like me. There was always a depth to him as well, however, a seriousness about him that let you know he was serious about the world, he knew what it was. He was incredibly talented, he was someone on the path of a superstar; if you learned about his background, you couldn’t help but be impressed by all his accomplishments: superb athlete, incredible student, doing well in his career in Vietnam, you had no doubt that his prospects in life were bright. He’s one of those guys who intimidate you, someone you can’t help but feel inadequate to in comparison, yet he’s the one to reach out to you to welcome you in.

The last time I talked to him was last November, right around his birthday. I saw him in May when I went to see Star Trek, but didn’t say hi because of the crowd. He was just a couple of weeks older than me and his death strikes me with fear as I think if the world was too much for him to handle, for one so young, do I really have a chance over the long run? It seems so…ridiculous or just unfair, for lack of a better word, to me that there are conditions in life that can’t be stopped, cannot be overcome for many people and end in such sadness.

Landon, I do not know where you are now, but I hope that you have found the internal peace you deserve.

You were a friend.

I will remember you.

Tags: landon, Random, Vietnam

10.06.2009 Random, Vietnam 4 Comments

I Heart Biore Pore Pack

Friday, May 15th, 2009

I am not so cosmetically inclined, being a male and not cool enough to know my way around men’s beauty. I also have a fairly good complexion, though I would think you should by the time you’re 28 like I am now.

If there are two things I must have though (both are pictured- for some reason I always end up losing the chapstick wrapper), well there would only be one: chapstick. I don’t need high end chapstick, Walgreens-brand is just fine.

The other is Biore’s Pore Pack for Men, a little more optional for me, but I like it. I have a blackheads (on my nose) issue, though I am not sure why they’re not black. I guess they’re whiteheads? Why does this issue have to bring in race, I do not know.

In Vietnam, packs of 5 (use one a week) are sold for around 20K VND, about $1.20 USD. Worth it! In Hanoi, I’d get them from Citimart at Vincom. In Saigon, it’s been a bit harder for me to track down, but I did find them in District 2, at the drugstore on the second floor of the An Phu supermarket on the Thao Dien side.

The application is simple. Wet your nose. Apply sticker. Rub sticker to ensure adhesion. Keep for 20 minutes. Rip. Cry if painful (I never do though, because I am tough!). Repeat weekly.

To really ensure best results, though, I suggest applying one right after a shower. Don’t even wipe yourself dry- while wet, peel off the sticker and rub onto your nose. Dry yourself afterwards, hang out for 30 minutes to make sure the adhesive is as dry as possible.

Rip!

I would show you a picture of my results, but I think people are freaked out by stuff like that. I love looking at it though, it’s kind of amazing how more pores are suddenly clear. Each time I rip off the sticker, I want to see lots of clogged pores now cleared up.

The Pore Pack isn’t perfect by any means, however. Plenty of pores seem to be left clogged, especially on the front side of the nose, below the bridge. It’s much more effective with the sides of your nose, but overall, unless there’s a better product out there, I’m happy with the results.

Hey, Biore, do I get my free endorsement package now?

Tags: acne, biore, Random, Reviews

15.05.2009 Random, Reviews 2 Comments

Early Mother’s Day Surprise!pics! – Purse Forum

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

How awesome was this? My sister got the below for my Mom for Mother’s Day. I had nothing do with this wonderfulness, but you can see me in that picture below anyway. In another note, my sister has almost 3,000 posts in a purse forum!?

uhkiwi

Member

Joined: Sep 2005

Posts: 2,794

Early Mother’s Day Surprise!*pics*!

This is waiting for my mom when she gets back from her walk with my dad!

a lovely pf-er gave me her pce to purchase the scarf

and the charm came from ebay