I guess I should back up, though. What is the “1.5 generation” anyway? Wikipedia’s entry on immigrant generations (is there seriously a Wikipedia entry for everything these days?) describes it as:

The term 1.5 generation or 1.5G refers to people who immigrate to a new country before or during their early teens. They earn the label the “1.5 generation” because they bring with them characteristics from their home country but continue their assimilation and socialization in the new country. Their identity is thus a combination of new and old culture and tradition.

Writer Isagani Cruz put it best, I think, when he wrote:

My wife is the English language. I married her, making my marriage vows to her, my credentials, my MA and PhD in English, at the Ateneo and at the University of Maryland. She cooks my meals, gives me sustenance, by helping me participate in meetings for which I get paid. She bears my children, which are my English columns and books. I come home to her, I rush back into her arms when I want to feel secure. I love her. I love English.

I have a lover, who is female. My girlfriend is the Filipino language. She is much sexier than my wife, because she has all these terms for taste, smell, and touch – the senses that I use when making love. She is much younger than my wife; English was born about 1,500 years ago, but Filipino was born only in 1973. My girlfriend’s mother is Tagalog, but her father is Spanish and her grandmother is Chinese. That is why she is so attractive, because she is down to earth like the Tagalogs and practical like the Chinese, yet she speaks the language that God speaks. You know, of course, as the Spanish people put it so well, that “children speak in Italian, ladies speak in French, God speaks in Spanish, and the Devil speaks in English.” Yes, my girlfriend thinks my wife is a devil.

It’s an interesting dilemma because whenever I go back to the Philippines now, I very much feel like an outsider who doesn’t fit in, whereas I do not feel that way at all here in Vancouver. Is it too late for me to get back to my Filipino roots and feel totally comfortable in the Philippines? Has my ‘marriage’ to Canada and the English language confined me to one life and one future? Do I really only just view the Philippines much like an extra-marital affair, only yearning for it because it’s something different and exotic now?

Everyone’s chimed in by now on the life and death of Amy Winehouse. But, really, what could be said that truly encapsulates Winehouse that could not be explained by listening to her voice? Regardless of her unfortunate personal problems and battle with addiction, this voice is not easily found. She had probably introduced countless young people to jazz and blues (myself included), and for that alone, her legacy in music should be and needs to be remembered.

It’s a shame that the design profession is so grossly misunderstood by the majority of people. Somehow, somewhere along the lines, the design profession has been transformed to mean little more than pixel-pushing, Photoshop air-brushing, mindless drones of their “Make My Logo Bigger“-demanding clients. This, of course, is a huge misconception, because the tools used in design (eg., Photoshop, InDesign, etc.) and the methods (HTML, CSS, etc.) are very much secondary to the problem-solving that a designer is tasked to do. And, yes, in a broader scope, problem-solving is exactly what a designer has to do to create something that is effective. These days, the problems at hand usually relate to communications (ie., marketing and advertising), though there are other forms of designs that are equally as high-profile: architecture, fashion design, web design, and – more recently – interaction design, among many other forms. Take a step back, and all involve research, planning, conceptualizing, testing — all before they start to branch off into their own respective sub-categories of design. This is called design thinking, and that is the topic – and name – of a documentary currently in production.

Put together by four designers from Taipei Design Center U.S. and media studio Muris Media, Design Thinking‘s goal through the documentary is to give a voice to creative thinkers and shed light to both the term and the methodology. Though it’s become one of today’s buzzwords in corporate boardrooms – along with Web 2.0 and social media – the concept of design thinking is not in fact a new one, and though the term may change as time goes on, the methodology will always stay the same.

The creators of the documentary have a page up on Kickstarter to donate money to their project. The higher you donate, the more incentives you receive if they reach their goal, of course. Check out the trailer above, because if the quality of the trailer is any indication, this will be a documentary that needs to be seen and will spark some discussions that will hopefully push the design field forward.

So, a lot has been written and said about last night’s post-hockey game riot here in Vancouver. Some insightful, some emotional, some ignorant, and some satirical. I won’t even begin to pretend I have the wisdom to assess the why’s and the how’s of the insanity that took over Vancouver last night, nor do I really wish to share my disappointment and shame in the events and my fellow Vancouverites.

Instead, I want to focus on more awesome things: Game of Thrones. I haven’t been keeping up with fantasy novels since I was a teenager so I never heard of the books until HBO’s television series started. But what an amazing show this is. I’m completely obsessed with the plot, the dialogue, and the characters. And the production value is amazing. I think the Lord of the Rings films set the bar pretty high for all following fantasy productions, but Game of Thrones really steps up to the plate and kills it. Amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Sunday is the Season One finale, which has me both incredibly excited but a little anxious knowing I won’t have my weekly Game of Thrones fix until next season (and who knows when that will be?). The last episode was pretty crazy, and the preview for the finale promises a lot more developments. I can not wait.

Want to say ‘thanks’ to someone quickly and easily online? Still in beta phase, giftee is an online service that works with Twitter to send real-life gifts to show your appreciation. Small tokens of thanks such as redeemable virtual gift cards for drinks or snacks at participating stores and restaurants can be bought online through giftee, and then tweeted to the recipient.

As the purchaser, you can browse through nearby participating retailers to select an appropriate gift, and pay online using a credit card. When finished, it’s as easy as tweeting a message to your friend with the giftee link, which the recipient can then access and show to the retailer to redeem their gift. Best of all, unclaimed gifts will be donated to various charities, including Coffee Kids, which helps support families of coffee producers in Latin America. Unfortunately, giftee is currently available to people in Japan — although, really, I don’t see why this wouldn’t be a huge success all over the world.

giftee is truly one of those projects which make me think, “Why didn’t I think of that?” What a simple, amazing way to expand on the ‘social’ aspect of social media and combine the offline and online. It’s quite the contrast to ultra popular Groupon which encourages impulse spending on yourself for things you normally wouldn’t buy anyway. (Though I am highly suspect of the long-/short-term popularity of Groupon and how sustainable its current business model is…) It’s essentially a literal realization of Facebook “gifts” which are purchasable but are just virtual icons — really kind of pointless, if you ask me.

I’ve seen a few tweets on my Twitter feed already with people I follow sending giftee presents to each other, and it makes me happy. Here’s hoping giftee makes its way to North America soon.

There’s a great article today in The Guardian in which Lucy Siegle argues that fast fashion, which encourages consumers to buy more for less, is unsustainable for the environment, your closet, and – despite all logic – even your budget.

In 2008 the average amount we spent on clothing and footwear went down to a record low of £21.60 a week, representing 4.6% of our total weekly budget. It’s worth reiterating that we have been buying more and more clothes for less money, filling 40% of our wardrobes from value retailers using just 17% of our clothing budget. It might seem counterintuitive in these cash-strapped times, but the questions to ask are: is our budget big enough, and are we directing that money to the right places?

I would suggest that if you are on an average income, the answer on both counts is no. I would even dare to say that you should beef up your budget if at all possible, spending nearer to 6% of your total weekly income in a bid to secure a more socially just wardrobe with superior staying power.

Read the full article: Why fast fashion is slow death for the planet.

Yesterday, as with the end of every month, I logged into my Rogers Wireless account to pay my cell phone bill. I’ve had a data plan for my smart phone(s) for a couple of years now, and it had consistently been in the $70-$80 range. So, of course, I logged in to pay my bill, expecting to see the same amount. After all, I don’t use my 3G data nearly enough to go over the ridiculously low and over-priced 500MB data cap that my plan came with. In fact, I’ve always hovered around the 100MB data usage range because I’ve always been paranoid about reaching the 500MB limit. Needless to say, I was surprised to see that my bill for the month of March was $200 — all due to some inexplicable 2GB (gigabyte!!!) data usage. Apparently, my data usage for the month of April is similar (which would mean the two months would be at around $400). Insane, right?

Surprised, I called Rogers’ support from my wireless phone, only to strangely be connected first to their cable tv department. Not sure why, but that’s what happened. I was transferred to the wireless customer support department, who then transferred me to the wireless technical support department, then transferred again to the smartphone technical support department (why is this a different department?), then over to the billing department, and once more to some man in an unnamed department. I was on the phone for over an hour being passed around from person to person because there was not a single person who could explain to me where these charges were coming from and why I have to pay for these charges when my past wireless usage history clearly demonstrates this is not normal activity.

Imagine if the same thing happened with my Visa, with someone fraudulently using my credit card number and racking up charges on it? Would I have been passed around so many times? Would they have accused me of actually charging all these things to my card? Would they have neglected to offer any concrete solution to preventing this from happening? No. My card would have been cancelled immediately (and replaced with a new number) and the charges would have been disputed and reversed. So why wasn’t this the case with Rogers?

Oh yeah, because the people are Rogers (and Telus, Fido, Bell, etc…) are so far from customer-focused that they don’t give a shit — and why should they? After all, if all the major wireless service providers provide outrageous pricing and lack-luster customer “support”, there’s nothing to worry about, right?

It was a very disappointing and frustrating issue that went from me calling in to question the data charges, to me cancelling my entire Rogers account because of incompetent customer service — at an additional price of $250+ because I had to cancel my contract. So, somehow, I went from expecting to pay $75 for my cell phone bill one moment, to paying $600+ and not having a cell phone account the next. Luckily, I have an unlocked Google Nexus One that I can use with any other wireless company. Still, I’m very wary of signing up with any other phone company simply because I know they are all equally horrible for pricing and customer service — and the new ones (Mobilicity, Wind) just aren’t there yet in terms of actual service (don’t know about their customer service though).

In a time when more and more people are using their mobile devices to access the internet, it’s unbelievable that I was even paying $75/month for basic phone service and a paltry 500MB of data. And the fact that customer support and technical support seem incapable of actually supporting problems/questions with data usage is absurd. Is it too much to hope for a day when a new wireless service provider comes along and provides the reliable wireless service and infrastructure of the horrible Big 3 (Rogers, Telus, Bell) but with reasonable pricing and competent customer service? Actually, I don’t even need reasonable pricing as long as I know I’m paying a premium for customer support (think Apple products and their “Genius Bar”).

Is that really too much to ask?

In 2008 IBM released an executive brief called “How Immersive Technology Can Revitalize the Shopping Experience.” It outlined in lists and sidebars the future of shopping, and it accompanied a pair of stereoscopic goggles at that year’s National Retail Federation Convention & Expo in New York City. The goggles were introduced as an in-store amenity that would allow customers to enter a 3-D virtual world when they visited their favorite store; for example, by viewing “a fashion show from Europe complete with music and smells,” where, as a model walks down the runway, “her perfume will be noticeably in the air.” IBM’s brief poses the following questions:

In 2008 IBM released an executive brief called “How Immersive Technology Can Revitalize the Shopping Experience.” It outlined in lists and sidebars the future of shopping, and it accompanied a pair of stereoscopic goggles at that year’s National Retail Federation Convention & Expo in New York City. The goggles were introduced as an in-store amenity that would allow customers to enter a 3-D virtual world when they visited their favorite store; for example, by viewing “a fashion show from Europe complete with music and smells,” where, as a model walks down the runway, “her perfume will be noticeably in the air.” IBM’s brief poses the following questions:

The solution IBM proposes to these problems is immersive retail, a strategy that aims to destabilize a current trend in consumer behavior that management advisers call commoditization. Commoditization describes the circumstance in which consumers care only about an item’s price, perceiving no other difference between competitors. For retailers like Hollister—brands that produce basic items of OK quality for not-cheap prices—commoditization is an unfriendly concept.

Immersive retail is also a way to counter the allure of online shopping, which boils down to its convenience (what you need: an Internet connection and a finger) and privacy. Stereoscopic goggles are a prediction that convenience and privacy will soon fail to be sufficient inducements to spend. IBM describes the goals of immersive retail the way a party planner might envision a successful bar mitzvah, aiming for a “memorable, interactive and emotional” experience full of “personalized dialogues.” The paper explains that immersive retail “is more about involving the customer than it is about the merchandise.” It is about shirtless male employees miming one-armed pushups on a rack of distressed jeans, yelling, That’s what I’m talkin’ about! and Party at my house! on a script every ten minutes. It’s about filling a store with club chairs and issues of the Surfer’s Journal, and about belly-button piercings that glint in the lamplight. “For stores in many retail segments to stay ahead of competitors,” the brief explains, “they will need to generate the excitement of a theme park ride—and become a destination.” Immersion retail presents clothes in the environment in which they are putatively designed to be worn, telling customers exactly what a product is supposed to mean.

- Molly Young, September 2010, for The Believer: Sweatpants in Paradise: The Exciting World of Immersive Retail

Do yourself a favour and read the entire article, if you haven’t already. Young’s analysis and reflection on the simulacra created by brands and retail establishments are spot-on. It focuses mostly on Hollister/Abercrombie & Fitch, but, really, the same tactics deployed by A&F are more or less identical to every other successful retailer in America. The pulled snippet of the article above is what interested me the most, as someone who prefers online shopping simply because I’m admittedly intimidated by the very in-your-face experience that retailers seem to be going for. In fact, the only time I do prefer to shop in a store over online is when I want something right now as opposed to sitting and waiting for UPS to “attempt” to deliver my order a week later–but not really even try to deliver it, resulting in even more delays (true story).

Is there a way for retailers to play up its fundamental strength of time and immediacy over online shopping? A big deal has been made about clothing stores allowing customers to try on clothes before purchasing, and, of course, the social/sensory experience that brick-and-mortar stores provide, but I haven’t heard much about the timing aspect. I guess it’s harder to emphasize that from a marketing perspective than the others? Other than the obvious signage of Get it NOW, NOW NOW!! of course.

I’ve booked and planned (more or less) my vacation to Asia next month: 6 days in Bangkok, 4 days in Chiang Mai, 4 days in Tokyo. I figured I really deserved this vacation, so I decided not to go on the budget hostel route, opting instead for the mid-high range boutique hotel route for at least the Thailand leg of the trip.

First two nights will be staying at the Metropolitan Bangkok, as per the advice of my trusty Wallpaper City Guide: Bangkok book.

Followed by three nights at i-Residence Silom in Bangkok.

In Chiang Mai, I’ll be staying at Furama Chiang Mai.

And, last but not least (okay, maybe it is), is my stay at City Lonestar Hotel Shinjuku in Tokyo. Not as luxurious as the hotels I’ll be staying at in Thailand, but not bad for a hotel in Tokyo at the price I got it for.

I’ll be gone from May 21st until June 4th. My scholarship application is due on May 20th, so that doesn’t really leave me much time to plan my trip when I have other more important things to take care of before my flight. I’m planning on travelling light, with just two pairs of shoes (yes, that is light for me), a few t-shirts, a light jacket, a couple pairs of shorts, couple pairs of jeans, and – hopefully – a new tablet. (Undecided at this point if I want to buy an iPad 2 or stick with Android and get a Motorola Xoom.)

More so than the glasses-free 3D gaming experience that the new Nintendo 3DS handheld game system provides, I think the social aspects that the 3DS brings are what makes it really revolutionary.

The video above just samples how Super Street Fighter IV takes advantage of the 3DS’ social gaming features, but think of other possibilities? This is taking Foursquare-type, location-based social “networks” and giving it a unique gaming spin. It’s great. Of course, I think this may probably be more fun in Japan where Nintendo handhelds are commonplace for everyone from kids to middle-aged businessmen (especially while riding the trains to and from home), but, hey, a nerdy Canadian boy can dream, right?