TRUTH! 9 Differences & Similarities Between the #Skytrain and a Night Club. http://ow.ly/AoZX1 #firstworldproblems #vancouver
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The Han Nation is Making a Move!
Literally! If you have been visiting hanation.wordpress.com, please head to my new site www.hanation.com with brand new look and all previous posts migrated. This will still be kept as part of my journey in personal blogging. Cheers!
The tale of Tony as a ‘producer’, ‘camera operate’, and ‘film editor’
I remembered quite well in the beginning of my second year, I became quite interested in operating cameras and video editing. And I was lucky enough to have met the Video Editor-in-Chief at the time, David Marino. He was hell of a guy and a great mentor, so I learned a lot about the cameras and video editing. Here are some of the works I attended to back in the fall of 2012. Please enjoy.
1. This was one project that really got me excited! Down With Webster was one of the bands I listened to back in High School, and they have some great music. They are also Canadian, so that’s a bonus.
2. This was one of the AMS Elections Candidate Pitch videos. I shot a bunch of them, and it was all easy since all you need is to have the lighting right and the person in the right position.
3. This was the first video I shot! I bumped into David one day after class in the SUB, so I put down my backpack and picked up a camera. Great weather indeed! And I was being a noob throughout this video since I never enjoyed the idea of a stabilizer (it’s quite heavy) AND a DSLR combined.
So these are all the ones I can remember, and looking back, I should’ve shot and edited more videos. The hours spent at the Ubyssey Video department were memorable times.
Han Nation has officially been acquired by Khan Academy
Dear Citizens of the Han Hanation,
In the past half a year, it has been a great honor to have founded the Han Nation, a nation that forbids limitations. From the start, my goal was to create a place where the citizens can benefit from the mix of comedy (mostly sarcasm and overly dramatic characters) and serious posts I created. It has been a great learning experience; however, I believe it is time to move on. Just a few moments ago, Khan Academy has officially acquired Han Nation, thus changing the name of this great nation to The Khan Knation. Truth to be told, I am so grateful towards all of you wonderful audience who stood by my side for all this time, but they offered me lots of money, like a lot. I can’t tell you, but you can PM me @HanComedy for more information. Anyway, it has been a great run. Good bye, and good luck. IMMA GONNA POP, BEACHES.
Cheers,
The King of the Han Nation
[Serious] Life: Season 1
WARNING: this piece is intended to discuss life in the darkest and coldest fashion possible, please proceed with caution.
“Find your passion! Find what you love! Find what keeps you up at 4 AM!” they say, all those career coaches you pay $256 every year for. It is easier said than done. And it is true. How do I know what I love? Yes, I enjoy lots of things, but hardly, any of those can become my passion. Your passion is may not be your interests, and sometimes, not even things you do best at. In my opinion, it is something that you care about the most about (beside your loved ones)! It is something that if taken away from you (except for drugs, and whatever you are addicted to), then you feel that your life becomes vague. The meaning of your life becomes vague. You and who you are becomes vague.
Yes, the meaning of life. So now, all we need to figure out is the meaning of life. Inevitably, we have to define the grand theme, in order to derive the lesser important things, such as the right career and whether or not to litter (don’t laugh; it’s true!). We need to know what our lives mean to us. It can be only some of us. There are ones, many, who live like a boat without sails on an open sea; they will drift to wherever the current, others, carries them to. However, if you decide to live by YOUR meaning of life, then you have many choices.
It can be building a successful family (marry the one, find a 9-5 job, raise kids, and live happily after until you die, the ones you love die, or a mixture of both); it can be making meaningful changes in the world (“Think Different” clearly resonates with this one); it can be materialistic (the gold diggers, the money chasers, the Wolves); and it certainly can be the want and NEED for power. However, if you start to think about life as a whole, the end result is certain, no matter what you do: death.
Why bother chasing after power and money? Why bother making changes in others’ lives? Why bother living? At all? Maybe, it’s the same reason as why do you eat. You eat to fulfill the needs and wants, physically and emotionally, even though you know you will be hungry again. Why do you behave like that, knowing that you will become hungry again, soon? Because, you enjoy imagining that steak and mashed potatoes in your head, walking inside the restaurant, being served by a lovely host, ordering the food with a smile on your face while checking in Four Square, Facebook, and Twitter, extracting every molecule in that dish when it starts to arrive, Instagramming the food with a proper hashtag, cutting through that medium cooked tender beef, and…well, you get what I mean.
So, it’s about living our lives. The process, the journey, the road trip, the flight, the whatever metaphor you use to describe the existence between your birth and your death. Knowing that everything we have done will not get us ANYTHING at the end (you won’t enjoy the fame, you won’t be able to spend the money, you won’t be able to love the people you care the most when you are gone, and you certainly won’t be able to chew that juicy steak when you are in a cold, small, uncomfortable coffin, living the rest of your after life inside dirt), the meaning of life becomes clearer. It’s about living the way you want, the way you define it. But is it that simple? Wouldn’t that be selfish? Well, that is another topic for another day.
Han Nation is officially back from the SHUTDOWN
Dear fellow Han Nation citizens,
The last two weeks have been a devastating time for all of us, and I sincerely apologize for the shutdown. As you may know, the struggle and conflict between me and my life was the main cause to the disagreement and vote fail to production of quality posts I have promised to you guys when I was elected as the head of Han Nation. Finally, before the we run out of time, my life and I entered an agreement, a compromise that neither party wanted. The conflicts will remain between us, but we all have one goal: to serve in the best interests for you, our beloved citizens of the Han Nation.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the Han Nation’s dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.
I have a dream that one day on my life and I will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my citizens will one day live in a nation where they will not be affected by the conflicts and toil between my life and I.
I have a dream today.
Twitter #IPO
IPO is quite popular these days for tech firms; rather being bought out by a bigger firm like GOOGLE, more and more decided to try their luck in the equity market. Without doubt, Twitter is one of fastest growing tech company in the past 3-4 years; thus, its IPO will draw many pair of eyes.
Here are a few facts you may want to know before rush to buy a share of its stock at the end of this year, possibly:
- Twitter plans to IPO itself on NYSE isntead of NASDAQ; at the end of the day, does it really matter where Twitter IPOs at? BIG TIME! For instance, FACEBOOK’s IPO wasn’t a completely success, not only because of the huge price drop, but also partially due to the delay of trading on the first day, where some orders didn’t get through properly. This choice also affects NASDAQ OMX and NYSE Euronext. Traditionally, NASDAQ lists more tech firms than NYSE; however, the blow of FACEBOOK caused huge damage to NASDAQ, reputational wise. One of the direct results of this is Oracle’s, a $150-ish billioin company, move from NASDAQ to NYSE. Starting from 2011, many other firms decided to go with NYSE rather than NASDAQ, such as Pandora, LInkedin, and Yelp. NYSE is slowly catching up to NASDAQ. Game on.
- Twitter is planning to raise between $1.4 to $1.6 billion, thus valuing its company at $15 to $16 billion; this means that 10.7% of the company will be funded by equity, public common shares. There will be likely 50 million to 55 million shares offered at $28 to $30 per share.
- Twitter has earned $316.9 million in revenue in 2012, and is seeing a promising gain this year, with $253.7 million in the first half of the year. eMarketer projected “that Twitter’s 2013 ad revenue will be approximately $582.8 million”. What worries me is the loss the company has been incurring for the past few years: $79 million were lost in 2012, and $69 million lost so far in 2013–that is $138 million projected loss for the whole year, roughly. This is an interesting growth strategy, and it works with the huge growth in revenue, but it also comes with huge risks. Twitter is being smart by raising more cash to run the company through IPO, instead of paying high debt interests and being nagged by debters often. I don’t think Twitter will give out dividend in the first year or so, though, as it needs the cash it raised to expand R & D, invading non-us market, and purchasing companies that may add value to Twitter.
- It will take 30-60 days till we see them on public market (around November or December; maybe Twitter will market its IPO as a XMAS present :D)! The anticipation should bring positive results–time allows Twitter to market strongly to inevstors/traders/etc–like GTA V did, and let’s hope it didn’t turn out to be Blackberry’s Z10 and Q10. And let’s cross our fingers that Goldman Sachs, which won the prime role, will have done a wonderful job (I think the price is more reasonable than FB when they went public, even though, their later financial reports help drag their price up to current’s $50/share, there was a dark month before the prosperity of FB’s stock). Also, let’s hope that NYSE will not repeat NASDAQ’s delay of trading just like FB’s IPO.
- Since Twitter’s revenue is less than $1 billion, under JOBS ACT, it is allowed to file S-1 privately rather than disclosing certain information to the public. And only 2 years of top-financial data will be released.
- A secondary market purchase was brought up by large investors in Twitter; however, everyone is holding onto their share of Twitter, waiting patiently for a capital gain. Optimistic.
- In early September, Twitter acquried MoPub, a company which specialize in matching publishers and advertisers on mobile, for $350 million. This will further grow Twitter’s already strong mobile ad revenue. Twitter also sees increasing growths in non-US ad revenue as well. FB on the other hand only earns roughly 40% of its revenue from mobile ads. As mobile phones and tablets sales soar from year to year, faster than desktop and laptop computers, Twitter will likely to grow quickly in the next few years; this is also part of the reason why Twitter decided to expand fiercely under such losses which were likely derived from debts.
If you want to read more about Twitter, go search IPO on Twitter, or read its S-1 form (warning, may need to be accompanied by consumption of pho while reading as it is more than 200 pages long).
Random Thoughts #2 – Diet
Woke up this morning, I felt the world is in a peaceful state; the tranquility, the stability, and the comfy. Unfortunately, that only lasted for less than 234 seconds (did I count the time? You tell me) before I realized, “oh man, it’s that time of the month again.” The pain above the waist and below the lungs contributes towards many joyful moments (“thank goodness, I am not pregnant; okay, from now on, no more unprotected sex.”) and frustrations (“oh I wish I am a dude, so I don’t have to stuck a hot water bag up my tummy.”) for the female populations for as long as men drink beer. I had a different, but similar kind of pain.
Those few days every month of pain which is common among female human beings are natural and inevitable; it seems that you can only minimize the pain, but never erase it(how do I know you ask? Internet). For me, it is preventable, but my mind played tricks on me. Every month (or sometimes, every two or three weeks), I will fall into the trap of craving for fried chicken, and guess where I will find delicious and disgusting, crispy, spicy chicken? The answer is Church’s Chicken. Every time (almost), I had a certain amount of chicken there, the pain will arise the next day. Almost guaranteed. And this is how my mind justify the pain (imagine a brain wearing ancient Tao clothings, floating in thin air on a foggy day in Sun-Yat-Sen Garden if it helps you picture it visually):
“The pain which arises from eating chickens is to compensate the satisfaction you receive when you eat those chickens. The pain comes from the chickens who were short-lived, slave-like raised, and brutally murdered and fried. The pain comes from those chickens’ family and friends who cry for days and later follow the same step to serve us, human beings. But mostly, the pain comes from the disgustingly amount of oil used to fry the chicken, silly Tony! The pain and the satisfaction is like Yin and Yang; one will not exist without the other, and they exist within each other.”
Yeah, scumbag brains. They trick us to think we know better, and can be influenced so easily by a piece of coupon which offers two pieces of chicken and a small fries for only $4.50 before tax. (Coupons bring you pain, but tampons seize them…or do they? Wait. Why am I talking about this…) So when those temptations are so real and can affect the most vulnerable part of your mind, only willpower will shed light to ‘the way’ to avoid such pain from occurring.
So next time, when you feel the temptation, use your willpower. It will always lead you to the right place–Pho Hong, in this case, nothing is better than a bowl of hot soup like Pho.
COM 390 Review
What is 390? Well, simply, it’s a writing course with application to business. In general, it is that gold coin which may not shine when you are asked to craft a report or some sort. At least that is what my prof tells me. As the course coordinator, Brian Sutherland knows the ins-and-outs of this business of teaching business writing. I can tell that he is extremely talented and skillful, and is definitely a good writer–he himself confirmed as well, first day in class.
When it comes to teaching, the best way is to practice–write, edit yourself, polish it, finalize it, give it to someone else who has better writing skills, get them to read it, extract feedback from them, use that feedback to write another piece of work, and repeat the same process over and over again. How would I know this? Well, let’s just say I failed English 10, and that is the only course I failed in. It was not because I hated the teacher (she was cool, but definitely not helpful to me at that time, I may talk about my history later in this blog life), nor did I screw up the final exams or maintain a careless attitude through the course of that course (excuse the repetition boys ‘n gals). It was because I couldn’t write at that time. And what helped me to get 85 (not impressive, but hey, that’s more than 50% growth rate from grade 10 if you ask me) on the English 12 provincial exam is to follow the exact steps I described above.
Since we are clear on the best way to improve writing (for me, and I know for most people, because practice makes perfect), we then can continue talking about how the course being taught here generally and how Brian teaches it. The style professors, lecturers, instructors, or teachers use can be simply described as “free-style”; they only teach the ‘how’, but not the ‘way’. And in many ways, this is quite like some religions–you are never shown the way, but you are shown how to get there; no clearly path to get where you are going. In many ways, Brian made the ‘how’ somewhat unclear, and ‘the way’ completely buried under fog and cloud. Sutherland is a poet, a writer, or an artist–he describes concepts with flowery analogies, and words which sound like an epic saga when combined. For instance, when he talked about going a bit off track in a report, he said words similar to, “maybe you start to peek around, and found a new path, so you went over there. Your reader may be confused to why you went that way, but later on they found out this zig-zag road actually makes sense. So sometimes, it is good to not only look in front of and behind you, you should also look up, look down, look to your left, look at it while you are lied down…” Every sentence Brian speaks gives an incredible attractiveness, from the words he uses to the jokes he makes. A truly amazing writer who decides to inspire business students.
Grading of the course is somewhat strange as no one will ever get 90’s. It was told straight up on the first or second day of class. That may be discouraging to many, but may motivate some to try harder. Only time can tell. The rubrics given are very thorough, and take time to absorb and fully understand how to get a better mark through good writing.
Students claim the washroom doors are too heavy
HANCITY, HANATION — In the past couple of years, students have been complaining to the building security that the doors in the building, especially the ones installed for washrooms, are too heavy. Since security division has nothing to do this the building management, they often ignore it over a bag of Timbits and a cup of coffee; they don not believe in heavy doors as most of them are gym-ist–people who follow a religion that believes in the concept of “nothing is heavy”, and “everything heavy is illusion.”
Lately, one security personnel heard enough of it, and decided to go test the doors himself–a common practice for gym-ist to prove the lightness, not how strong one’s muscles are. The results were shocking: the doors are heavy. The person got so frustrated as this contradicts with everything the gym-ble says: “Nothing is heavy, not even heavy stuff.” This frustration soon alerted other security personnels. At last, the head of security decided to take this problem to the building management as she believes the door is “taken by a spirit or some stuff; I don’t know, like Conjuring.”
This morning, the building management held a press conference where only one media appeared (HANATION, due to the general ignorance from other media with regards to this important issue). From the press conferene, we learned that the doors were made to feel heavy to act as a placebo for the muscle to grow stronger each time one tries to open the door. The building management spokeperson, Lourd Par, told us that a new technology was used when manufactoring the doors where the userswill feel the heaviness of the door (thus triguring the muscle to stress); however, with the right mind set, one can easily open the door “like picking up a piece of paper.” Par did not disclose what kind of paper, nor did he mention what is “the right mind set.”
“We are turning the simplest experience into a way to promote physical health for students, because most of them are super lazy,” Par claimed, “By installing these doors inside our building, students will receive more benefit than just being given access to a place to release pressure enforced on bladder.”
Par will not admit the cost of making these doors, but an internal source told us (after bribing him with Chinese food purchased in the UBC village basement for $5) the cost for each door is more than 4000 small bowls of pho combined. The benefit of spending this amount of money? Some say less than 4000 bowls of pho (however, they are pho activitist who pursue a diet where only pho and its accessories can be consumed–lead by the Krazy Kovon King), and some say the benefits will be seen over the next couple of year as the result of this physical change can be clearly seen.
Staffs have been hired to open doors for people who would not like to participate in this excercise program set up by the building management team, as they fear the growth of size and strengths of the muscle will lower their attractiveness, most popular amongst female students, rumor has it.
The Han Nation 