Archive for March, 2005
March 30th, 2005 by Eshin
Ten reasons why you know a website has been designed in Hong Kong by amateurs:
10. Critical information and calls to action pop up at you because the site owner said it needed to be attention grabbing to the designer. They also forgot to tell them to put an additional link on the main page just in case you might be blocking popups.
9. Use of frames and iFrame to hide poor design skills. You’ll usually find the main content in sub frames.
8. Contact information and content seem to be mutually exclusive. When you do find an email address, you wonder why the site owner spent money on www.hisdomain.com and mycompany@netvigator.com
7. The site loads great in Hong Kong but if you are abroad, then you might as well get a cup of tea while you wait for the site to load. If you don’t have broadband, don’t even bother. (Okay, I’m guilty of this one too).
6. It’s nice of the designer to let you know that this page hasn’t been updated since May 15, 2002.
5. Should a 50×50 GIF file really be blown up to 600×600 using the width and height properties of the img tag, especially if it is the site’s logo?
4. Impressive use of gaudy and bright colours such as #40F5FF 
and #FF9900 
.
3. You wear glasses to prevent web glare as you click on a Hong Kong site link because you know there will be a wonderful explosion of often mismatched colours in half a minute (Click link only if you are wearing Gucci sunglasses and have sun tan lotion of at least SPF 40 on).
2. The designer has been lazy and decided to use only Asian fonts which display Western text in this horrible bastardization of Times New Roman.
1. Pointless flash intros designed to either accomodate the designer’s ego to show off his (usually poor) flash skills or satisfy the site owner’s misguided belief that he’s advertising on TV.
March 23rd, 2005 by Eshin
Deze link (via Cynical-C) is mischien interesant voor mijn oom. Hij vliegd deze F104 Starfighter toen hij in het luchtmacht was. Een van de eerste generatie supersonic fighters, de F-104 had de nickname “Widowmaker” om dat het had een aanzijnelijk accident ratio. Hij verteld mij eens dat deze rede voor het was meestal pilot error om dat terwijl het een snel vliegtuig was, het was ook een moeilijk vliegtuig om machtig in te zijn. Voor deze toestel was er ook en deel fortuinlijkheid nodig, en toen hij overging van het luchtmacht naar het KLM, mijn oom zij iets van zijn fortuinlijkheid ging zover. Als een fighter pilot dat gevoel heeft, daan is het mischien juste om van het luchtmacht aftreden. Maar het getuigd ook hoe goed een pilot hij is.
This link (via Cynical-C) is maybe interesting for my uncle. He flew F-104 Starfighters when he was in the Dutch Airforce. One of the first generation supersonic fighters, the F-104 had the nickname of “Widowmaker”because it such an atrocious accident ratio. He once told me that most of these accidents were pilot error because despite being a fast aircraft, it was also a difficult plane to master. It also required a certain degree of luck, and when he tranferred from the air force to KLM, he said something about his luck going only so far. I guess that if a fighter pilot has that feeling, it’s a wise call to retire from the airforce. But it’s also testament to what a great pilot he is.
March 21st, 2005 by Eshin
At the risk of incurring the wrath of my better half, I’m posting up some interesting tidbits about flight attendants. Having dated two flight attendants in the past, she’s a little wary of them, more specifically, wary of me with them.
Delta Airlines recently fired self-styled Queen of the Sky, Ellen Simonetti, for posting up pictures of her in uniform on her blog. The collision of freedom of speech and engineered corporate imagery is renewed as Simonetti takes her former employers to court.
One wonders whether Delta Airlines is more worried about Simonetti herself degrading the high standards of how a flight attendant should compose herself, or that someone has simply exposed the rather frumpy uniforms they currently have.
Delta recently unveiled the latest incarnation of a proposed uniform design (via The Travel Insider) which suggests that someone in their marketing design department has either spent too much time watching View From The Top or reading Coffee, Tea or Me. In a bright red monstronsity designed to turn their ladies of the sky into glamour pusses, Delta’s certainly giving Cathay Pacific a run for their money in the bright red tomato stakes. Perhaps CX should find its inspiration in Wong Kar Wai’s 2046?
Of course, Delta isn’t the only one responsible for creating this image paradox of lust icons and professional service reps. Singapore Airlines spends about six months training their cabin crew to be proper ladies while at the same time packaging them up in the classic Singapore Girl sarongs and that age old sexually charged tagline, Singapore Girl, You’re A Great Way To Fly. Is SQ perhaps the only airline in the world where there is the famous pen trick?
Is it any wonder then, that Cabin Crew’s remix of Star To Fall video (Streaming WMV via Richii.com) features just about every male’s fantasy about what a flight attendant should be? No doubt this is following on the footsteps of last year’s runaway perv sensation, Eric Prydz’ Call On Me remix. More evidence that the air hostess image hasn’t quite died.
For the real practicality of dating a flight attendant, one should read Chad Childer’s Sinosplice offers a post about a disgruntled China Eastern Airlines cabin crew who decided to take out her frustration in a Shanghainese rap about being a flight attendant (WMV, 4.34MB).
From my experience of dating two flight attendants, the best passengers are the ones that aren’t difficult and let them get on with their job. If you really want to show your appreciation to them, take down their name and write a letter to their airline. The credit they earn will probably go a lot further than your phone number.
March 16th, 2005 by Eshin
They’ve got a funny mindset down at the Dublin Jack, one of Hong Kong’s more well-known pubs. Aside from the kitschy Irish decor they’ve got going on and being Irish, it’s not a bad place to be going for a themed “pub” atmosphere even if you’re more partial to an English pub.
Why have they got a funny mindset? Well, firstly they have this strange non-smoking policy in place in the whole of the pub. Patrons apparent support the move but I think it makes the place look like one of these faggoty wine bars that decent, colourful pubs seem to turn into. It just ain’t a pub anymore without smoke. I disapproved when I quit for six months, and I disapprove now.
The second reason? Probably the reason why I’m posting at all about the first, is that when you Dial-a-Dinner it, and you spend over HK$200 on food, you get two free cans of Kilkenny or Guiness. My bad was to order HK$193 worth of food (a sizeable amount for a lunch time order), and not qualify. Bumping it up to HK$203 with a Coke for HK$10 didn’t cut it since it had to be over HK$200 on food item orders. Evidently, I could reconfigure my order to include larger costing food items that would have just taken me over the limit, or, as I suspect that they wanted, to order another food item.
Actually, I went with my original order and screwed finding a way to make up HK$200 with HK$7. Damned if they were going to “earn” another HK$7 off from me. It’s a small thing, and I’m in the wrong since I’m not making it up to HK$200 as is clearly stated. But HK$193 is quite a sizeable order for a lunch time order, and I doubt all hell would have broken loose if they’d just added the two free beers. In fact, I probably would have remembered that in the future rather than the fact that I was only HK$7 away from the two beers. Congratulations Dublin Jack, you Irish dog, you’ve saved a whopping HK$10 from me, but probably lost my custom for another year or so before I start craving your food again. By last year’s estimates, that was quite a sizeable amount.
March 14th, 2005 by Eshin
Voor mijn familie dat denken dat het is altijd in Hong Kong en de vere ooste warm is, het is juste niet waar. Het is mischien niet zo koud als Nederland of Engeland, maar hier heb je geen centraal verwarming en meestal platse maak nog steeds gebruik van hen a/c (het gaat over de feite dat Hong Kong mensen willen hun “winter collection” gebruiken en dus iedereen moet in een ijs baak wonen).
Een ik heb geen boerenkool hier om mezelf warm te houden! Mischien kan ik het zelfs even maken met pak choi en aardappel. En een niewe cuisine is geboren - Frozen Fusion!
