My favourite music video of the year. Everything about this is perfect.

Everything a true comic book geek should already have known about Marvel Comics. It’s an interesting list — who would have known that Marvel was close to owning the word ‘zombie’? Pretty crazy. Me? I learned everything I needed to know about Marvel from the old school series one Marvel cards. I had the full sets of series one, series two, and X-Men series one cards. Needless to say, I didn’t have many friends as a kid.

Why people still use Blackberry phones — apparently has something to do with the raised keyboard (vs the touchscreen keyboards of iPhones and most Android phones). Uh, I guess that’s a good thing. Except Blackberry user interface is horrible, it really doesn’t surf the web all that great by today’s standards, it doesn’t have the app development muscle of iPhone or Android, and the hardware is kind of ugly. But yeah, the raised keyboard. Awesome.

Dinner (and interview) with Takeru Kobayashi. Much like many “it” celebrities today, I wasn’t all that interested in Kobayashi, famous for eating hot dogs (?), until he got arrested. I mean, that’s really the only thing that separates him from other Asians with super-high metabolisms, isn’t it?

OpenIDEO crowdsources design ideas for social good. I love everything about this project. “Social innovators.” I like that term.

Way back in the day (January 10, 2006, to be exact), I wrote a post on Blogger about the list of rich and famous people I want to become by the time I’m 28.

I am now 28.

So, where does that leave me? Have I really become the Angelina Jolie/Nigo/Anderson Cooper/Nicole Richie/Michael Chabon amalgamation that I always dreamed of becoming? Well, no (obviously) – but it does make me wonder what I was foolishly thinking four years ago that made me believe I want to be a cross between Jude Law and Kanye West? I mean, seriously?

I’m glad I didn’t delete my old Blogger account when I decided to abandon it for the greener pastures of Tumblr, because I can now look back at my old self and laugh at how awkward, socially/culturally unaware, and lost I once was.

No, I am not rich and famous like I thought I would be at the ripe old age of 28, but so what? I know who I am now and I know that I don’t need to be Zach Braff-meets-David Beckham. (Note: Seriously. What was I thinking with this list? Could you even imagine what a disaster it would be if a person were really like all of these people combined as one?)

So instead of presenting you with an updated list of people I want to become by the time I’m really old (35), I’ll just present you with a list of people who inspire me to keep being me. In no particular order…

• Haruki Murakami
• Quentin Tarantino
• Lady Gaga
• Yoshitomo Nara
• Scott Schuman
• Joss Whedon
• Wes Anderson
• Hiroshi Fujiwara
• M.I.A.

Why them? Because in spite of being rich and famous, their creativity and passion comes through, past the celebrity and the hype. I like that.

According to Asiajin, Mixi.jp is finally taking the monumental step outside of Japan and plans to broaden its service to the US and Europe.

Mixi, for those not in the know, is Japan’s most popular social networking site, and has been for quite some time now. Despite threats from Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook, Mixi has managed to keep its top position with the much-coveted Japanese market. Strangely enough, however, despite its success in Japan, Mixi never seemed too interested to go international in the past. (To get an account on Mixi, you need to be sent an invite from an existing member… and even then, you’ll need a mobile email address from a Japanese carrier to register.)

Now, after years of blocking away the outside world, Mixi.jp wants to speed up internationalization efforts by hiring foreign graduates in 2012.

2012.

Are they kidding?

Facebook has basically taken over the world (except for a very few key target markets, Japan being one of them), and Twitter and Tumblr – a relative upstart in the social networking game – are gaining ground (yes, this includes Japan). And in two years, Mixi will start hiring foreigners so they can begin internationalizing their service?

I’m sorry, but considering Mixi’s social networking service and UI is pretty archaic to begin with (think MySpace circa 2004), how exactly do they plan on making any progress internationally? They’ve been so opposed to change for far too long, I don’t see any hope for Mixi to innovate enough to gain any popularity outside of Japan.

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