An Interrupted Date

Film Director : Hanzhe, Math student from California
Video taken by : Felix Lim, Pre-Med candidate from North Dakota
Production Team : Owen and Cudjo
Settings : Stouffer College House



Disclaimer : I have nothing to do with these people. I just happened to go out with them to Chinatown earlier in the day......

Halloween Friday @ Woodlands

I went for a tour.... on a cold-rainy Friday night.......... at Woodlands Cemetery....... to celebrate Halloween...........

The start of the tour at the Andrew Hamilton's (a prominent Philly's lawyer in the 18th century) mansion.

Our tour guide explained the history and contributions of various revered individual (including Commander of Pennsylvania volunteers for the entire Civil War, Major General David Bell Birney (1825-1864), prominent banker Francis Martin Drexel (1792-1863), the founder of Japan's democratic Liberal Party, Tatsui Baba (1850-1888) who died in exile here) who were buried here. It was very unfortunate for people like me who doesn't read US history and has zero knowledge of the Civil War. This picture was taken while she was explaining the history behind the construction of the Hamilton's mansion


On our way back.. in the rain.....

HaPpy Halloween !!

HomeComing 1

UPenn's Symphony and Orchestra ! The pianist was really good and received a standing ovation from the floor...AND ironically, it started to rain ...a.g.a.i.n....the night before homecoming !! I'm expecting the temperature to fall to 8 - 10 C tomorrow. Btw, we'll be having Yale here for our homecoming match. Expect the Quackers to kick the bulldogs tomorrow !

New York Trip 1

Yup, i was in New York for a day !

Chrysler Building is just right behind me....

The Manhattan skyline i saw in the bus


It cost me 30 bucks to go up to the 86th Floor of the Empire state building (where king kong was in the movie)....

But nope..didn't see any king kongs around......Behind is where the World Trade Center once stood. If you look closely, you'll see the statue of liberty just right behind me.

The view from the 86th Floor of the Empire State Building.

In the Chrysler Building....

Double image of the Chrysler Building



Since we didn't really know where to walk or rather we were just too lazy to plan, I decided to go to UN which was right down the road

Found the Malaysian Flag at the United Nation HQ after numerous attempts !

The secret service and diplomats entering the building in black vehicles. There's some meeting going on that day in the De-colonization Conference Hall.

This is the Security Council Conference Room of the United Nations.

ps : will post other photos later if i have the time.

Blog Action Day !

Do check this and this out.

Raya@Penn

Raya at Irvine Auditorium...

Salam Aidilfitri !

here's one of the last few yasmin ahmad's PETRONAS adds. (I think its the last before she went full time into producing movies..enjoy !)

Kepada semua muslimin dan musliman di perantauan,

Sungguh jauh di hujung buana,
Serasa sayu mengenang desa,
Manakan sama Berhari raya
Di musim sejuk terkenang bonda

Kampung dan desa dalam ingatan,
Bagi perantau kini berjauhan,
Mengharap rezeki tahun hadapan,
Syawal bersama keluarga dan tualan.

SaLam AidilFitri, Maaf Zahir & Batin.

....

there was a mouse running about in my LGST class today.... WTH...On the bright side, the prof decided to end the class early because of the chaos that ensued. =)

Malaysian@space

Steinberg Conference Center has been strike !!

'Monsoon' night for the first time ever in Penn (well, that is since Sept 07). For some reason, the rain decided to pour down in buckets (urm maybe GM truck loads). The temperature was 30C/24C (max/min) yesterday and it's expected to drop to 18C/8C this friday !!! aha....talking about global warming......

Facebook 240 : The Business of Facebook

Since somebody wanted to stake claim with Facebook 101, I have to put up with 240. oh well.....

My case study for LGST : Corp and Eth last week touched on the issue of Facebook and the business of social networking. Here's a few things which u may find interesting :

History :
Facebook was established by a few students from harvard primarily for social interacting and networking. It was first limited to college students, with the requirement of registering their school's official email addresses (some still do today) to protect the school's privacy. But in the early 2000s, when MySpace was sold for a few Billion dollars, Facebook turned into a business equity as well and was opened up to the public.

The Business :
Facebook is now worth a few billion dollars compared to probably a penny 7 years ago. The business of social networking boomed in the early 2000s as corporate companies realized the enormous resources for information in these webpages. This resulted in the sale of MySpace, which marked the beginning of the business of 'trading' private information for cash.

How Does it work :
The users ( you and I) are very inclined (for whatever reasons) to include personal information in those webpages. Corporate companies (or individuals) are sold to the idea of obtaining this information (and all the other details that is written on your wall, your superwall yada yada yada and whatever you wrote on your friends' page) by 'buying' various applications that are programmed by the employees of facebook. Notice that every time you add an application, there's a clause which requires you to agree upon. This 'statement of consent' gives full access to companies, who 'bought' this application, to extract whatever information on your page regardless of your privacy setting. The price of the 'application' is determined by the potential of the application in penetrating the vast users.

The culprit ?
Basically, nobody will ever know (besides facebook and the private firms that are involved). But according to hearsay, prominent employers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, yada yada yada and firms dealing with national and private security (eg CIA , FBI, Fed yada yada yada) are scouring facebook constantly for background checks on their employees, potential employees etc.

Cases in the past :
In early this year, there's a case where a student was denied a scholarship after the scholarship awarder discovered pictures of the student 'drinking' on facebook. There are many others instances especially on potential employees failing to attain employment.

Bring them to court !!!
Before you start pointing fingers at everybody, I'll let you know that nobody can be blamed/sued/prosecuted for this state of affairs.

If you think that facebook should be the ones facing the charges, then Marlboro should be sued for causing all the lung diseases suffered by its loyal customers (ie the smokers)

If you believe that those corporate firms should be hold to their statutes and be accountable for discretely spying on you, then i suggest you to sue the police for keeping and collecting information on criminals (of course, this is done stealthily as well). After all, facebook IS a business of trading information with money in mind. If thats the case, you can summoned all the businesses in the world to court.

Now, Is it YOU ? Well, are you going to blame yourself if Goldman Sachs rejected you for an I-banking position because they actually found out that some of your friends are obscene and vulgar through the comments posted on your wall in facebook?

Happy Thinking !!

Latent Tuberculosis

Had the jab taken on Tuesday and the Skin test (PPD) on thursday. The funny thing is that it turned out to be positive (measured bruise : 2cm in diameter). The docs diagnosed it with Latent Tuberculosis (for whatever reason) after looking through my med records & x-rays. Did an hour-long of med check-up and was forced to attend a counseling session. WTH. I was almost late for my lab session because of that but luckily, there's no midterm exams on that day..phew... Recommended medication : Isoniazid for 9 months . WTH. There's too many side effects with that medication (nausea, no-alcohol consumption, persistent paresthesia, easy bruising yada yada yada...for 9 MONTHS !!) bleh.... no thanks !

Chain Mails

I've never received so many emails in my life..that is until i got here. The ratio goes at 1 every hour due to the many listserv i'm in. it gets really creepy when u wake up one morning and you find the inbox clogged up with tonnes of mails...well that exactly happened one fine morning....
(all names are replaced with pseudonyms to protect the identity of the culprit)

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Re : Good Places for Casual Thai Food (1435 hours)

Anyone know a good place to get casual Thai food? Takeout would be fine.

University City would be fantastic, but green/blue line accessible works too. I have an amazing craving for Thai spring rolls.
Thanks Stouffer!

EP

(I promise to remedy any inconvenience this email might have caused by offering zucchini bread in the near future)

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RE : baking powder ? (2105 hours)

I'm going to be making zucchini bread... but I don't have baking powder (oops).

Does anyone have a teaspoon of baking powder that I can use? Call me at xxx-xxxx-xxxx or come to Mayer xxx.


Thank you!

EP

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RE : baking powder ? (2123 hours)

A fantastic person here on mayer 3rd floor gave me the baking powder.

Thanks!

EP

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RE : Zucchini bread- just baked (2253 hours)

Fresh out of the oven zucchini bread.
Limited quantities (less than 1/2 a loaf).

Mayer xxx

The door's open.

EP

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RE : ALL GONE- Zucchini bread- just baked (2304 hours)

#blank#

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RE : Need to borrow some things (2313 hours)

My neighbor D is really getting on my nerves, which brings me to my question- Does anyone have some cyanide or strychnine I could borrow? I'll pay you back in some manner, though not necessarily in dollars.

B

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RE : Need to borrow some things (2319 hours)

Dear B,

While unfortunately I do not have any cyanide or strychnine, I do have a large collection of EP emails which should have the same effect you're looking for.

Forever yours,
D

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RE : Need to borrow some things (2330 hours)

hey don't talk about my love like that

cheers,
j

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RE : Need to borrow some things (2337 hours)

I second D's email wholeheartedly.

S

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0057 hours)

Me too...but did he have to send it twice?

p

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RE : Need to borrow some things ( 0113 hours)

D-
I don't think we've met.

Come over, say hello and try some baked goods next time you receive one of my pestering emails.

Humor is funniest when it isn't at someone else's expense.
Remember, you can always unsubscribe from the list serve.

Have a great week!

EP

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0129 hours)

I completely second Erika.

~A

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0137 hours)

ok, enough is enough. i'm all for this email argument, but come on, it's 1:30 in the morning and i have class tomorrow, how am i supposed to sleep with all of this commotion?

B

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0139 hours)

I vote for 12 rounds of bare knuckle boxing.

Unfortunately, I don't know who psi and stn are, but otherwise this seems split down gender lines. And as I know that Dylan, Buddy, and Josh punch like toddlers, I'm taking the girls in 5. Knockout, of course.

AR

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0140 hours)

Woohoo, I hate all those random emails from the stouffer list serve so maybe I should spam the thing myself and start a chain of more spam. People are always complaining about what they see as abuse of the list
serve.

How hard is it to
a) Take yourself as Erika said or
b) If you're like me and find the emails useful once in a while, apply a filter to your email and archive them or set it in a different folder than the rest of your mail.

If your too lazy or don't care enough to do either of these things, then please don't complain, especially when your medium of complaint happens to be the very thing that annoys you.

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0156 hours)

This is ridiculous. Just like Mr.D here "can always unsubscribe", so can ~A or EP. If you don't want to receive emails from the list (even from someone as cruel as D), just leave.
By the way, D's joke was not really at your expense, EP. What profit did you lose? What credibility? What anything? D's not the first person to mention your emails; I've heard several people complain and joke about them. Perhaps you'd rather that people joke about you without you knowing; maybe that would be better? Or maybe, you could go and find everyone who has mentioned your emails, make a list, and let everyone on Stouffer Announce know how terrible they are for joking about you.
Hey...or you could make a daily EP Digest. You know; let us know what you've got and what you want in one, daily email. Stouffer can still be awesome (sharing/giving what we have) and you don't have people joking about you.
Now I'm sure some people reading my email think I'm being pretty annoying about this, but really; is anything I've said any more annoying than, "Remember, you can always unsubscribe from the list serve"? Personally, I don't mind any of these emails; Stouffer has stouffer-announce and PennLive provides a "Deleted" folder, both for good reasons.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do. lolol

DR

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0204 hours)

Oh AR, what would we do w/out you?
~A

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0217 hours)

i second that. AR is very hot, and i feel that all of stouffer should know. hey bro, how about we have some soccer practice later.

love,
j

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RE : Need to borrow some things (0218 hours)

Ok everyone needs to calm down and relax a little bit. This isn’t an argument or a fight, this was a joke in response to another joke done in good humor and not as an attack on EP. Yes maybe she is sending out a lot of emails that people might not be interested in, but that is exactly what the Stouffer announce email list serve is all about. If you don’t want to get all of her emails or anyone else’s then yes you can unsubscribe to the list-serve. If you want to use the list-serve as it was intended then use it right. Don’t send out “Got it” emails or a synopsis of what everyone else sent to you to the whole list-serve because that’s just unnecessary spam. Or another option is to create your own list-serve. Many people in Stouffer are familiar with the goonsquad list-serve, which is made up of some Stouffer friends who email each other a lot about events and stuff as not to spam everyone is Stouffer with things they don’t care about and don’t need to read. Just use your head guys, we’re all smart here. And please don’t take things too seriously, we’re all friends here. This all started because B sent out an email jokingly saying he wanted to kill me. I didn’t get upset or angry because I knew it was in good humor, because we are friends. And we are all friends here in Stouffer. No one is at to get, harm or hurt anyone else, so just relax everyone and enjoy living in Stouffer, because you could have just as easily been living in the hellhole that is the Quad.

Thanks,
D

p.s. I admire your relentless effort to get women AR. Good luck with that.

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RE : about the list-serve (0917 hours)

Hello Stouffer-

Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and saw 20 messages to the Stouffer list-serve! Unfortunately, they were not for the purpose that the list-serve was created. The stouffer-announce list-serve was created at the request of residents who wanted a forum to buy a book or borrow a cup of sugar from their neighbors or share their just baked cookies. It was not created to tease one another, however good intentioned, or to needlessly clog up people's mailboxes with an on-going argument. Let's try and
keep the list-serve traffic to the purposes it was intended. If you have questions about this, please e-mail me directly!

many thanks,
M
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To those who got this far, dang, you ppl really got nothing else better to do !.lol...