Marketing 101

Posted on May 17, 2012 by bapman

In the dynamic and competitive Singaporean hair-dresser industry, one player has decided to apply some good old marketing advice to the letter.

  • Marketing lesson #1: give yourself a fancy name. Why call yourself a hairdresser, if you can call yourself a hair consultant instead?
  • Marketing lesson #2: don’t advertise the product, advertise the lifestyle. This is actually a very valid rule and is followed by many successful brands (think of Oreo advertising “togetherness”, Dove’s campaign “for real beauty” or Apple’s “think different”).

I encountered Beijing 101′s reflection to the items mentioned above on two billboards in the Singaporean metro:

 

So these “hair consultants” will give you the necessary advice (and hopefully also implementation of this advice) so that you can finally possess the mane that will turn you into a better person as well as bring your family together. Wow.

As my hair is receding at alarming rates, I am desperate to see what kind of billboards manicure vice-president operational-managers can come up with; I’d hope a life of glamor, money and recognition.

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First Impressions of Singapore

Posted on May 10, 2012 by bapman

Before arriving to Singapore, people asked about it would invariably tell me one of the two:

  • “It’s Asia for dummies.”
  • “It’s a huge shopping mall.”

Well, both are true! Singapore is an easy way to discover Asia: Western food is easy to find, most people speak a very understandable English, people drive normally and the public transport is efficient. And then, there’s shopping.

Institutions with power have always wanted great buildings over the ages and this hasn’t changed: religions erected their temples, kings built palaces and tombs, generals built walls and now… corporations build shopping malls. And what grandios malls these are.

 

 

On a man-made shoreline which didn’t exist 5 years ago, the Marina Bay palace hotel (with the largest roof swimming pool in the world) overlooks a complex network of luxury shops and amusement centers opposite the modern business skyline, accessible via a DNA bridge or large wooden platform hosting various chill-out bars. Even though every square meter of this place reeks self-importance and opportunistically screams at you to spend your every last dime, it’s hard not to admire the beautiful architecture.

And then, there are the invariable aspects of Asia. The continuous bloody-hell-this-is-a-refrigerator air-conditioning induced cold shock you receive each time you walk into a building, and the oh-my-god-this-is-a-sauna heat shock you get when you walk out of the said building. Goodbye cheese, foie-gras and France; hello rice, hot-pot and Singapore.

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Street Pics from the Lausanne Metro

Posted on April 28, 2012 by bapman
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Street Pics from Zurich

Posted on April 26, 2012 by bapman
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Ninjas are Everywhere

Posted on April 14, 2012 by bapman

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m moving my stuff back to Switzerland. After a 5-hour drive, I arrive at the Swiss-French border close to Boncourt, my home town. Mostly cows, fields and forests around; not much action going on here.

I am stopped by a young and eager-looking patrolman: I must be the first car of the day and the fire of opportunity twinkles in his eyes. He asks for my driver’s license. I give it to him. He dutifully studies it and glances at the car plates; he asks for the vehicle card. I give it to him. He disappears in an office. I wait.

Five minutes later he emerges with another gentleman, who looks like an annoyed superior regretting the interruption of his coffee break by an overzealous apprentice. I am asked to reveal the contents of the trunk. I get out of the car and lift the trunk while the apprentice starts sifting through the vast amounts of folders and paper and junk.

Suddenly, the superior is by my side and silently urges me to let go of the trunk. I am surprised, but refuse to relinquish as the said trunk would then fall and possibly harm the poor fellow currently plunged in conspicuous analysis of its contents. But the superior swiftly knocks my hand out of the way, catches the falling trunk and accelerates its descent: slamming it down full force on the apprentice’s head.

The poor apprentice is half knocked-out and holds his bruised head while the other fellow bellows at him that IF I had been a bad man, I could have easily overpowered him in this way and escaped. After a loud 5-minute lecture on how to react in case terrorists show up, the angry superior and dazed apprentice realize that I still exist and am observing the whole scene. I am curtly asked to get back in the car and leave.

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Taking Pictures

Posted on April 7, 2012 by bapman

I changed the way I take pictures. Over the past year or so, I have insisted on taking pictures from my D-200 in full manual mode. No more. As I have progressed to start street photography, this set-up does not work. Full manual is simply not fast enough to catch spur-of-the-moment instants, so I’m going to switch to semi-automatic aperture mode.

I feel I need a lot of practice to achieve better image composition and capturing that magic moment. Ironically, I the best photo was made by my fiancée: a plunging shot while rowing in the Versailles park.

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Limbo

Posted on March 22, 2012 by bapman

Just finished playing limbo: what an amazing and beautiful game.

The controls are straightforward, there are only 5 actions: left, right, jump, down and “use”. That’s all. Yet the game uses these simple controls to create complex puzzles. The ending is fantastic: abrupt and raw, just like the beginning.

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Interlude in a Journey

Posted on March 1, 2012 by bapman

Traveller,
There is no path.
You make the path as you walk.
As you walk, you make the path.
And when you look back
You see the path
That you will never travel again.
Traveller,
There is no path.
Only the wake of ships
Upon the ocean.

- Unknown

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Balls of Rubber and Balls of Glass

Posted on February 22, 2012 by bapman

One of our professors ended a finance class with an interesting thought. We are all busy, we are all stretching our limits, we are all out of time. And life can feel like that: that we are juggling many balls at once. However, it is important to notice that some balls are made of rubber and some are made of glass. If you drop the balls of rubber, then they bounce right back. However if you drop a ball made of glass, then it shatters and is gone forever. So perhaps keep an extra-eye out for the glass balls, or maybe hold them in one hand while you juggle the others in the other hand. And don’t worry about the rubber balls, they come bouncing right back.
It was quite a touching moment and certainly food for thought.

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SQL Tricks

Posted on January 1, 2012 by bapman

This little bugger saved my life after I screwed around with the DNS and wordpress settings of one of my websites:
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid,”coolstuff.com”,”nicethings.ch”)

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