Random Musings

itinerary for the next few weeks.

Today - depart from LAX and fly to Bangkok (via layover in Taipei - nihao!)

2 days in Bangkok, showing my sisters around, saying hi to school friends, visiting amazing buddhist temples.

July 13 - bus to Kanchanaburi Provence, Sangkhlaburi will be the nearest town to Baan Dada, where we will be volunteering for 1 week. i will try to post as much as possible from there.

July 20 - bus back to Bangkok, then plane to Siem Reap where we will be checking out Angkor Wat for 2 days (i am SO ready to get all tomb raider out there;)

July 22 - head to Phnom Phen where we will check out some more historical sites (such as the Killing Fields museum) and we will be visiting a human trafficking victims’ shelter and colleagues of family friend Aaron Cohen aka “the slave hunter” (amazing human rights activist).

July 24 - back to the US.

Phew, that is an action packed schedule.

i have been a bit lackadaisical about my blog updating.  BUT i just got a shiny new xacti hd-1000:D  (thanks to my bro jared kim for the early birthday present!) woot!

so, over the next few weeks, i will try something different. i’m going to try to do short video blog posts instead and hopefully that will be even more interesting than my written ramblings. i am going to start shooting tomorrow and with the holiday weekend right around the corner, hopefully i will have some good posts all weekend. in the plans: fireworks celebrations with the wegame crew; rock climbing; and a bowling trip!

i haven’t been caught on video since the end of the gigaom show - so hopefully i didn’t forget all the good stuff that i learned from revision3!

next month i will be heading to the burma/thailand border with my sisters to go volunteer at an orphanage.  baan dada is a small orphanage that houses a little over 50 children.  you can read more about them on their website and in the blogs of some past volunteers - here and here. many of the children at this particular orphanage are not ethnically thai. they are of the karen ethinic group, which is a minority group in burma.  the karen people fled political persecution in burma and now live in refugee camps on the thai side of the burma-thai border.  these children are not considered thai citizens and are not given full legal rights in thailand - as one of the bloggers above put it, they are “invisible.”

since i have not yet been there, i cannot speak specifically to the current state. but reading about other volunteers’ experiences scattered across so many personal blogs and websites, i am able to get a good sense of the community they have built and the good work they are doing.  while i am there, i think we will be helping care for the kids, teach some english and art classes, help with smaller building projects, etc.

i will try to keep everyone updated on my journey and experiences out there. i am trying to organize some supplies for the trip - the dada who runs the home has asked for money for supplies for the kids (supplies are cheaper for them to buy in thailand), medical supplies and computers.  i told him computers i can definitely help with!  if anyone wants to donate to these kids, or maybe has a connection at a big computer hardware company (dell, you out there?!?!?!), then please contact me. i would be happy to bring things over there.

i went to owens river gorge this weekend with a massive group of people for 3 days of camping and climbing.  was lots of fun, but there was this freak snow storm in mammoth this weekend which we got momentarily caught in.

this was the campsite (horton creek):

this is me walking around the gorge - can you see me?:

this is ted climbing a giant rock:

so i’ve been MIA on my blog a bit because i am trying to be more active now that the weather is getting warmer and my scale informed me that i have breached a new level of physical unfitness. i’ve been trying to go rock climbing more, go on hikes, drink more water and even bought an exercise ball to use as chair in the office.  but i didnt know what to do with it.  

i went to youtube to try to figure out how to use this exercise ball and i found this series of 10-minute exercise videos from a site called sparkpeople.com. after testing out the video, i went to check out the site and have become slightly addicted to it since then.  

summary:

1) it lets me track my daily food consumption and then figures out the nutritional content (there is a preloaded nutritional library of 90% of the food i consume - and what i cannot find, like my random asian goodies, i can add myself). and it has a handy little water tracker so i can make sure i am drinking enough water each day. (it also generates pre-prepared menus each week, but i dont like being forced to each something). the most interesting part of the food tracker is not that it is making me eat less, but rather it is educating me about what is actually IN the food i eat. ex: i ate a KFC biscuit today. the boys ordered kfc and i could resist. BUT, when i popped it in the tracker, than i realized, for the price of that itty-bitty biscuit, i could have had a giant brownie for the same amount of guilt;) but really, joking aside, it is teaching me what really has protein and which carbs are just not worth it. 

2) it has a fitness tracker that divvys up my week to strength training days and cardio days.  it suggests a hugh number of strength exercises and has nice little flash animations to i can make sure i am doing ok. and re: cardio, it also has a library of activities which i can select from - from the expected, like running and walking, to random household chores, like mowing the lawn, and to the winners, like rock climbing. i was excited to find that in the fitness library:) also, it gives me a fitness video from their library each day that i should do (i’ve been slacking on this, but i will catch up, i swear).

3) it has a very active community which can be useful for people who do not have someone in RL to help them stay on track, like me.  personally, i do not post much, i am part of the 97% of internet users who are just voyeurs on most community sites - i read what the active 3% write.  but what i did find interesting was this one thread of people posting there measurements on a regular basis.  in my opinion, this is a WAY more healthier way of tracking your fitness level - weight is just so bogus and often times fails to take into account the wonderful diversity of human figures.  so it prompted me to create a google spreadsheet to track my measurements…now that i am older, i doubt i can reach my former rap-song-lyrics measurements, but at least i can try! :p

anyway, i will keep you guys posted on my progress. my end goal - run up the stairs to the top of my office building without gasping for air.  keep up the good work sparkpeople.

phew - what an exhausting week!  been busy moving into a nice new office space over on 2nd and mission. finally! a place to set up some nice monitors, hold meetings, and get some serious work done.  i am sharing space with wegame.com and there is always a good flow of interesting people rolling though - good synergy. example - when SEO master hiten shah swings by, i am able to pick his brain on SEO-ing our forums, which is a different beast from our main site.

well, now my muscles are all sore from moving furniture and assembling shelves, desks, chairs, etc.  but i am feeling satisfied:) its nice to be able to kick back and have a dedicated work space.  stay tuned for an office opening party! yay!

i just got off the phone with an ikea customer service rep (anthony) who seemed more intent on not doing anything for me then helping.

fast facts: an ikea leather couch ($1300+) that i bought had a defective cover that just split down the middle for no reason. i took it into the ikea store in dec 2007 where i bought it with proof of purchase - they told me it was in fact a defect that was common with the piece i had purchased, but they were out of stock. they took my name, number, address, and all relevant info and said they would get the piece in stock in 1 month and would contact me then. i asked for a reference #, they told me no worries, that they would call me. i asked for a number where i could reach them for updates and they gave me their national #.

fast forward 4 months - no word, so i call customer service. i get bounced to the national handling and they said they cannot find my report. (of course). and then they said they would need to “document” my case, so they were going to forward me to someone else. i got forwarded to anthony who said my problem was a “quality issue” which they do not handle over the phone. and he said i had to go back into the store to resolve it. i asked to be transfered to the store, so i could call them and not have to drive myself all the way over there to find out it is not in stock again. he said he could not connect me to the store because the store does not take calls from customers - that their purpose was to help in store customers only. i asked if i could get my case documented by him since that was why i was transfered to him in the first place and he said no, because it was a quality issue. so then i asked what kinds of cases does he document, and he said “not quality issues.” wow, thank you for being so helpful. so i asked again if he could document anything for me so i at least had a record and he said my case was too old since i bought my sofa more than 90 days ago and he only handles cases that where purchase was within 90 days. so i asked, ok, if i had purchased my sofa within 90 days, then he would be able to handle it? and again he said no cause he handled purchases made within 90 days except for quality issues.

so i gave up on trying to understand what his job was and asked again if I could be connected to the person who had forwarded me to him. and he said no. i asked why not, and he said he didnt know who forwarded me to him. i asked him if he could query my name since i had given all my information to the person i had spoken to previously and he said that they do not track customer service calls, they only record them (what the…? huh? i dont believe that for a second especially since ikea is a multi-national behemoth. they must have a well developed call tracking system) so i asked if he could transfer me to anyone else and he said no, that i had to go into the store because it was a “quality issue” and no one in his call center handles “quality issues”. i just do not understand how they could not call for me to even find out if my initial file was still there? is that too much to ask?

if this post is no longer making sense, its because the entire conversation made no sense. i asked him again why customers could not reach in-store people directly, and he actually just stopped talking. i asked again and then sat in silence and said “hello? hello?” before he said, “yes, i am here”. i explained to him that i am not trying to make his job difficult and that i was trying to understand for my own reference how customer service was handled at ikea so i could make sure i am going to the right places and to see where my initial order may be and he basically made it clear that i needed to stop talking to him, stop trying to reach anyone by phone and that my only option was to go back in store. it became very clear from the canned sentences he was giving me that their training was directed at just trying to get me off the phone. if i was an in-store ikea employee, i would be pissed -the back-up team is selling you guys out.

so is that ikea’s only response? you are the one that sold me a busted couch.

if only i wasnt so broke, then i would never need ikea again!!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j2g2axmnY8&hl=en]

finally! someone writes a good post about social networks in asia (tho i do have to say, I think qq is more an IM client, even tho it is an IM client on crack).

as i have been discussing the future of soompi and the potential for growth in the asian market with a lot of really smart people in the valley, i have been amazed with how little people know about the largest internet market in the world! social network services in asia are for the most part profitable. that, in and of itself, is a phenomenon worth studying.  also, is virality a cultural by-product there? or is a result of product development? these are all questions that could have major impact on how we do business here.

well, go read the post - its got some great insight. in the meantime, i will keep doing my research on the matter:)

my buddy nick douglas just did an article on soompi.com, digg.com and colbertnation.com over on gawker. funny article about how all three online communities are battling it out on the TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People polls for our respective champions. personally, i love everyone in the top 5, but i have to go with the one my site is rooting for:) that would be rain…for those of you that don’t follow korean pop charts;) but it is an interesting point about how mobilized online communities can yield massive results online.