Photo copyrighted by Dave Davis

I’ve been paying quite a bit of attention to Obama’s health care reform and Americans’ reactions to it. Much of it so disheartening. As Canadian, I don’t give a fuck that many of them calls us socialists,  just because we have a single-payer nation wide health care. I’m just annoyed that people buy into that socialist labeling. Yes, our health care system is not perfect, but the fact that I can go see my doctor without worrying about paying for that care,  is a beaut. Who needs to worry about money when you are sick? US health care may be the best in the world, but that only applies to people who can afford it.

If you work hard, you can achieve anything. If you want better health care, get a better job. If you put your mind to it, you can do anything. If I did it, so can you. Our experiences are not quite black and white as these statements. Yes, many people can come out of hardship with the right attitude and work ethics, but those people are not the norm. If 90% of juvenile offenders are abused physically or sexually growing up, what are their chances of being a normal good citizen. I know few will achieve success, but you know most of them will fail in the current system. People fail to understand not everyone has the same experience as they do.

My dad died of heart attack when I was 3, and my sister was only 1. As a single mom, my mom worked 12 hour a day almost every day. I’m still amazed how she pulled that off. She went back to work right away after my dad died, working at a thankless underpaying office job, then few years later she opened a tiny bookstore, and few years after that, she opened a decent size bookstore with all the money she saved. She is one truly amazing woman. Does my mom expect the same success from other single moms like her? Big no. She’s smart enough to know that no one can have the same experience as she has. She knows it’s unrealistic to expect that other single moms can be like her. I didn’t tell you that she and all her siblings are wickedly smart. All my aunts and uncles went to the best universities in South Korea. My mom went to a good one, but not the best as she was offered a full scholarship to the good one. She couldn’t afford to go to the best one as my grandparents were poor when my mom had to go to college. What I’m getting at is that she was better prepared to face adversity because of her smarts. She also had very good parents, and supportive siblings. I think many of single moms out there do not have what she had.

Family, education, job and luck all come into play to make you who you are and how you live. if you even take one out of those four things, you probably will have harder time living a good life than the person who has it all. See what I’m getting at?

Photo copyrighted by JcOlivera.com

I have a bone to pick with my cellphone provider. I should say bones as I don’t think I have ever had one good experience dealing with them in any level, starting from salesperson at their store to customer service rep on the phone. I do not know anyone who’s happy with their cellphone service providers, I mean everyone HATES their service providers.

In general, I am not much of a hater. I am pretty easy going except when I face with shitty customer service. I will not go back to a restaurant if the service sucks. There are so many restaurants in this city that I don’t need to go to the shitty ones. But I don’t have much choice with cellphone service providers in this city. There are Rogers, Telus and Bell. Most people are shackled to Rogers or Telus. I don’t know much about Bell. I know one friend who used to be with them, and he hated them. I am waiting for new providers swoop in and save me and everyone. I hope Rogers and Telus know that it is inevitable that they will eventually fail if they keep up with shitty customer service.

I don’t care about the cute animals and swirly graphics in their ads. I want them to get some clue. I want to be valued as their long term customer. Don’t put me on hold for half an hour. Give some ownership to low to mid level employees, so they can make decisions on their own; I don’t want to be transferred from one call center to another just because no one can make any kind of decision or come up with a solution. It’s obvious the employees don’t get treated well, so I get treated badly by them. If there is  a customer website for my convenience, make it convenient for me. I can’t find shit on the website. If I find my shit, it doesn’t work as I want it to. It’s not because I’m too stupid to use the system. I make websites for a living, so I know how a good website should function.

I am a customer, and should be treated like one.

I heard it once again this morning while watching the news; one of the reporters proudly mentioned how she was not part of any social networking site, and she didn’t understand the lure of it all. Same old story right? When people don’t understand things, those things often become irrelevant to them. When traditional news media struggles to keep up with new ways of delivering and sharing news, they often lose sight on reality. When news get delivered to you in real time, why do we need to wait till the evening news or next morning to get it from the newspaper?

Right now, we have total control of how we get the news; it is an individual choice. We can read or watch it whenever and wherever. This reality is hard to take for traditional journalists who are used to writing or reporting news in their own terms. Now they are taken completely out of their comfort zone; content alone is no longer the king but context is. Content of news is pretty much the same all across any news media, be it online, TV and even newspaper.

News is about fact, and you don’t read much into than that unless it is an editorial piece. News is the most effective in context of time, and online news feeds readers the most current news as it happens. In this context, newspaper medium fails miserably, and this is why so many newspaper are failing. It is not just about saving money or trees that affects newspaper sales.

Photo copyrighted by Robin Dude

When I read or hear about violence by one to another, especially in case of rape, pedophilia or brutal violence in general, I am deeply affected. I get angry, disturbed and literally heart broken. I often wonder “Shouldn’t majority of human race feel this way?” If you don’t feel the outrage, aren’t you as bad as the violence doers? Shouldn’t empathy be human nature with exception of sociopaths and psychopaths?

There is this general consensus, especially amongst some parents and media watchers that desensitization of human race is the direct result of over-stimulated and casual depiction of sex and violence in media. Is this suggestion even true? If you are desensitized by media depiction of violence, isn’t something innately wrong with you? If you don’t blink an eye, when you read about a woman getting raped or a child being molested by his father, aren’t you just a fucked up person?

I watched my share of make believe violence on TV and movies while I was growing up, and it didn’t change my perception on “real” violence. Well, I still can’t watch torture horror films; they just look too real, don’t they?

My company, Devlin west, has been acquired by new ownership, Sync2 Entertainment. So far so alright. Only thing I can do right now is just concentrating on the work that’s in front of me. We have 3 websites to launch next few weeks, and I am also busy doing all the digital and print collateral for our new company. New identity is good, and everyone seems to like it.