So Scary It’s Funny

I’ve always loved haunted houses at carnivals since I was young. My friends and I always get scared the crap out of ourselves yet we keep coming back. The process is always horrible, but it’s always a great laugh afterwards when we relive our near-death experiences. This hilarious video where Ellen Degeneres sends her writer and her mother to a haunted maze reminds me just how much fun being scared and makes me want to go to Fright Night at the PNE even more!

Warning: you might get addicted watching this and jaw pain from laughing uncontrollably is substantial. You have been warned.

 

iSad: RIP Steve Jobs

Today, a man heralded as the greatest CEO and our generation’s Thomas Edision, has passed away.

Steve Jobs had a cult of loyal followers who collected e-mails sent by him. He was a perfectionist who required the best out of his company. He revived Apple from the ashes. He was a visionary and innovator who truly helped our world embrace technology not only as a tool, but as enjoyment, communication and part of our daily life. The calibre of Apple’s products have allowed greater competition and even better innovation for the world to experience. You don’t have to love the Apple company or own an iProduct or be an Apple Fan Boy to have been affected by Steve.

Steve is first a foremost a person who dared us to keep hungry, be foolish and think differently. He gave himself high goals and exceeded them. He is the definition of innovation. The world will not be the same without him. Thank you for all that you have done. Rest in Peace.

Harry and the Gang Ends 8 Films with a Whimper

As a die-hard Harry Potter fan, I went into the movie theatre 10 years ago to see the first film adaptation with scepticism. Like most fans, this feeling was purely that the film would not live up to my expectations, that something would be missing or changed which is blasphemy, and that the actress portraying Hermione Granger wouldn’t be cute enough. I walked out of the film a satisfied fan because the first film was almost scene-by-scene the book, almost nothing was changed or missing, and Emma Watson was cute and adorable.

One of the only reasons I continued to pay to watch mediocre sequels.

Over the years, my expectations that someone could fit 500-700 pages into a 2-hour movie without butchering the book went down and I let some things go without much criticism. And then I saw the trailer for the seventh film part deux. I was blown away by how awesome it was. The pace was fast, the scenes moving, and Mrs. Weasley fought like she meant to kill. After seeing the trailer a dozen times, I set a date and prepared to see the final film of the series in IMAX to end the series in style.

To get you up to speed: Harry, Ron, and Hermione are out to destroy several magical objects called Horcruxes so that they canfinally defeat the Dark Lord/He Who Must Not Be Named/Lord Voldemort. Thing is, they only have hunches of where and what these darn things are so they’re running around a bank (Gringrotts) and a school (Hogwarts) while trying to escape from everything that’s trying to kill them (a dragon, Death Eaters, Lord Voldemort, giants, etc).

“Why do I need glasses when I know magic?!?”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 didn’t live up to the hype nor to how the trailer portrayed the film, the latter of which should have been obvious but I didn’t want to believe it. All the big scenes were covered by the film, even the moan-worthy 19 years later scene, but nothing was particularly memorable or rewatchable. 3D simply meant that the characters appeared to be 3 inches closer to my face, the pace was fluctuated between slow and slower, even the Battle of Hogwarts scenes, and none of the supporting actors could get anything more than 1 line or said something for cheap laughs which I didn’t laugh at. By the end I only felt a sense of relief that the movie wasn’t longer and agony that I spent $19 for a movie.

That being said,  I wouldn’t completely stay away from the film. Additional elements in the Battle of Hogwarts that weren’t in the book were fine by me, everything looked beautiful and Mrs. Weasley said her fan-famous PG 13 line. All in all, the franchise comes to a satisfactory end and thank-god the cast was perfect, save for Ginny Weasley. But hey, if JK Rowling supposedly says it’s awesome, who am I to judge?

The Curious Case of the Library Due Date Card

Cameron Public Library was and continues to be the ugly sister among the Burnaby library branches. Its walls are brown, as are the doors, book shelves and desks. The carpet is stained and grey, the lights yellow and dim, and the word “PUSH” on the unpolished metal bars that you, big surprise, push through to enter and leave the library is barely intelligible. But as a kid, you don’t care about these kinds of things. All you care about is going to the library every Sunday and reading about the adventures of some curious kids escaping from a malevolent man with a tattoo or inside a yellow grinning bus. It is because of this diligence that the bookshelf in my room contains all but 9 books I’ve bought for myself. Whatever books I wanted to read, I’d find them already there in the library because I had no idea when new books were going to be published. I’d take my stash of books, usually 4 each time, and the leave the library with plenty of stories to entertain me until next Sunday.

Reading Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping this past weekend, I flipped to the very back of the book and saw something that caught my eye: the envelope that held its library due date card.

I still remember bringing my books to the front counter and watching the librarian stamp the due date on the white piece of paper, put another inside the envelope and handed it back to me. This was before the library inventory was computerized and you can just scan the bar code on each book to keep track of which books have been checked out. 

Each day I’m reminded that technology has replaced almost every part of life, even borrowing books. I used to write things I needed to do on my physical calendar or planner. Now, it’s on my Google Calendar and iPhone. Talking to friends usually meant in person or on the phone. Now, it’s on Skype and we can watch movies together even though we’re not together in the same physical space. Pretty soon, people won’t go and borrow books, but get them online and onto their e-books or tablets. Just goes to show how long of a way we’ve come. Yet escalators still break down every other day. Curious, no?

Passion Worth Blogging: Where Good Ideas Come From

For a large part of my life coffee shops have been the hangout place of choice for my friends and I. Perhaps, we thought our $4 Starbucks and Blenz blueberry muffins made us sophisticated and adult-like, qualities that our parents refused to acknowledge that we had any. An answer closer to the truth is the atmosphere: the paintings and photographs on the walls of people and places we have never met or visited; the music of jazz, R&B and guitars; the comfy sofas much like the Big Comfy Couch; and the hipsters with their plaid shirts and slip-on shoes. These cozy places was where a single cup of coffee could accompany four hours of conversation that ranged from TV shows to why our French teacher was such a drag to life goals to ways of passing notes in class. Serious stuff, in short.

But why was a coffee shop the place we liked to talk and share our lives? In Steven Johnson‘s TED talk, he explores how innovation is created and comes up with what he calls the liquid network. When people from different backgrounds with different ideas and expertise come together in an environment that allows them to communicate, this encourages innovation because you bounce your ideas off each other, add what each other knows and potentially create something that is the more than the sum of its parts. It is often through discussion that a small idea that you had can become something much more, like discussing what you would like to do today can become an entire Europe trip after graduation, which is what happened to me a few months ago.

Innovation or Desperation?

Apparently this isn’t true anymore.

Introducing, Sense-Roid, the hug machine:

Created in Japan, the same country who brought you eerie human-like robots and dakimakura or body pillows, this machine mimics the hug through a lot of sensors and more technical aspects that I can’t begin to explain. The original hug machine was used to help calm people with autistic disorders and other people who are hyper-sensitive, but even this logical explanation for its creation is lost on me. 

Counterfeiting something as human as a hug says a lot about what our society has been reduced to in order to get the intimacy and reassurance that they can’t attain otherwise. It’s depressing to realize that something that is given out on daily basis without a moment’s thought is now supplied by a machine and not a friend or family. I was going to Social Media Day, two girls had Free Hugs signs on Granville Street and asked me: “Do you want a hug?” I got two hugs and I didn’t need a sensor-equiped vest.

(Picture: Angry Little Girl)

Social Media Day 2011

This past June 30th was Social Media Day, an initiative started by Mashable to bring people from the online world to the offline world. Many cities around the world organized their own independent meetups and I went to the one held in Vancouver. It was my first social media meetup/tweetup of any kind and it was pretty amazing seeing the people I interact on Twitter in the flesh. Before, I used to think that unless I knew them as friends, the people I tweet to will only exist in the Twitterverse and I won’t meet them in person. Well, now I know that’s not the case! I got to talk to other Tweeters and get to know them beyond the 140 characters. A lot of them are super-involved, are AIESECers, from SFU (only 3 UBC students that day), passionate about social media and, true to form, checked-in as soon as they arrived. All in all, it was a great night to see the online and offline mesh into the same social circle.

A few years back when Facebook was starting to get big, critics said that social media was making people less social because they spent all their time online and didn’t interact with people in real life. But last Thursday proved to me that this point isn’t true at all. Social media is taking the social aspect and putting it in another medium, and bringing the online to the offline and vice versa is possible. It just takes a bit of effort to be step out of the comfort of your smart phone and start the real life conversation with “I follow you on Twitter!”

I really look forward to going to another social media-esque event and it would be great to see you there too. If you’re going to stalk them (and me) on Twitter anyways, why not get the real experience?

(Picture: Mashable)

Canucks Riots

Vancouver is one of the most beautiful places in the world, highly regarded by many around the world, but tonight in the aftermath of the 2011 Stanley Cup Final where the Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins, the horror of the 1994 Vancouver riots returned.

Cars, including police cars, have been overturned and set on fire. People have been badly injured. Disgraceful Vancouverites taunting the RCMP and riot police. Stores are being raided and burned. The air in downtown Vancouver is a mixture of tear gas and smoke. #canucksriot is trending Canada worldwide.

This is not the city that I have come to love. This is not the way for the world to remember Vancouver on the day its heroes bravely lost to its opponents. This is a disgrace.

But I still have hope. A Facebook event inviting the people of Vancouver to help clean our city tomorrow has been created, with a 1000 people already marked as “Attending”. A website to help the Vancouver Police Department catch those who have been idiotically creating chaos in our fantastic city has been created.

Let’s show what a beautiful, kind and smart city we are. I believe that the Vancouver Canucks will hoist the Stanley Cup and in the people of Vancouver. It’s game time.

A Red Blue Blur

You know the saying: time flies when Eric is chowing down on something foodgasmic. At least that’s how I imagine things.

It’s June 13. Boom. It’s like I wasn’t awake for the last month and a half, but lucky for me I’m on Twitter every day so I have my tweets to remind me that May has come and gone and I was conscious for all of it. Well, almost conscious for all of it.

From what I have deduced from my tweets, two things come to mind: red and blue. If you guessed that I’ve been contemplating whether reality is real or not, or following what the Democrats and Republics are up to *cough* Weinergate *cough* then you’d be wrong. Red and blue represent the two sports that I’m most passionate about and the last month and a half has been the most exciting period for both of them.

Red is for

Commencement: a Rebirth

In honour of all my friends and other graduates celebrating the end of an era around the world, I share with you the commencement address from one of the most influential people of the world. I hope her thought-proving words will inspire you to believe that extreme difficulties can be overcome and the extraordinary accomplishments we can achieve.

Before Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling was divorced, jobless, a single-parent and one unpaid month of rent from becoming homeless. But then, like magic, she had an idea and her life changed forever. Although I haven’t written a book, much less seven, or become a billionaire (except on Neopets), the life she experienced parallels my own in so many ways.

“Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.”

Two years ago, I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair in an ice-rink-turned-auditorium with my fellow 2009 Burnaby Mountain Secondary graduates. Wearing my black gown and cap with the tassel placed on the right, I heard family and friends politely clap for people they had no concern for and cheer wildly for people they paid to sit like sardines for. I watched classmates go upstage to receive their scholarships and I walked on the same stage to receive my University of Toronto Book Award: a 400-page encyclopaedia. I took a picture with my fake diploma, because none of us had technically graduated, and wondered what I would be eating afterwards: sushi or Chinese food. Just some of the difficult decisions I was concerned about.

Like J.K., looking back at the 17-year-old that I was at graduation is also an uncomfortable experience.