November 22, 2004
Cultural & Natural & Commercial
The empire hasn't stroke back... Just a cool apocalyptic image. You can see that kind of swarming clouds almost every day now, during the rainy season here. On Sunday we went for a walk on Marine Promenade, its a great place, because its free. There's lots of people taking pictures, e.g. the notorious "foreign workers" take happy pictures of their girlfriends ("foreign worker" Kaj took those :), didn't see many local people here (ha, how do you tell a local apart? :) Well, no shopping, no food... No reason to go, lah..
This was the second time I visited the location during the weekend (the Esplanade theater is right there). On Saturday we (me and Monica) went to a Leijonakaupunki Symphony Orchestra concert - Jancek's Glagolitic Mas. It was really good and it has been such a long time since I've been to that kind of concert that I was completely amazed! There were 3 choirs singing together, so all in all there were maybe over 200 people on the stage! I asked Monica's and Roland's family to adopt me (at least when they're going to the classical concerts.. :) We, of course, managed to be late for the concert, but they let us in after 10min in between the pieces. There were quite a few people being late, so I'm sure that they make the program so that people can sneak in and not loose too much of the concert... The Esplanade theater is really nice from inside, although you cannot see (or even feel) the rounded durian shape at all...
Once again we were admiring the architecture here, this time in Toa Payoh MRT station. As soon as you get out of the most touristy places, everything becomes much less grandiose. Still it is grandiose, but in Soviet Union style.. You get this feeling that there's a lot of people on this little island and space somehow is an issue. Also the overwhelming amount of people in all the shopping malls on weekends can be maddening..
However, as long as you can get away from crowded shops to some nature (there's plenty of great spots here!), you're spared of the trouble. We went to MacRitchie reservoir (that is an artificial lake, by the way.. talking about nature..) that is surrounded by rain forest and some say that crocodiles can be spotted there. We didn't see those, but there were plenty of turtles in the water. Aparently people feed them, because as soon as they heard us coming, the started swimming towards us having quite demanding looks.
Christmas is seriously approaching. Or at least there's more and more stuff appearing and the demands to buy are getting more intense.
As red is aparently the color of Chinese New Year, the color of Christmas is PINK here. Goes well with the Disney and Barbie stuff..
As a "coincidence" there's more and more articles about Creative Zen Micro appearing in the papers (yeah, mp3 player makes a perfect gift!). Most of the articles are about the brave small Leijonakaupunkilainen company called Creative and their aggressive campaign against Apple iPod. They openly declared war and the way they fight it, is by shamelesly copying iPod features, but doing it in a "better" way. iPod is available in 5 colors, well, we offer 10! iPod mini has 4Gb memory, well, we have 5Gb! And apart from all you can download music for your Zen Micro from the sites that use Microsoft technology, which is, of course, oh so much better! And more! So many more features! What they fail to realize is that not the "more", but the "cool" counts when it come to iPod. The amazing thing is that all these feature comparisons are published as unbiased articles in the independant Leijonakaupunkilainen media! For example, about the great advertising campaign that they're planning - iBetter (using Apple font) - exchange your iPod for a new Zen Micro! (who in their own minds would do that?). Then 3 more articles next week - 20 people traded in their iPods. Wah! Great number! Sad, so sad. Watch out for their global campaign.. Should start any time.
Posted by gkligyte at November 22, 2004 04:24 PM