Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Began, the (Groupon) Clone Wars have, in Vietnam

Groupon clones seem to be everywhere these days. This is most notably seen in Vietnam, where I am living right now, where according to this article there are about 10 sites live or about to go live. Among them, there’s the Groupon-esque section of Zing, which is arguably the largest youth-oriented portal in Vietnam. There’s Phagia.com.vn (formerly Groupon.vn), Cungmua,Kenhgia,MuachungHotdeal.vn (an IDG investment),  and Nhommua.

Read the rest of the article on e27.sg.

Make Sure It's Worth It

Dreams in our sleep are often filled with unconnected images and occurrences, yet perhaps the half-conscious mind tries to make sense of all of it by tying these instances into a somewhat credible output it can remember, no matter how absurd. So anyway...

Two nights ago, I dreamt of a district attorney feeling frustrated about a tough case, almost ready to give up.

Last night, I dreamt of the same lawyer, finding case files she apparently threw out her car on the highway earlier that day, on her doorstep, with a note: don't give it up. it's worth the fight.

Every day we are faced with challenges, easy and difficult, that demotivate us in doing our daily work. So sometimes you have to ask yourself, is it worth it? Is all this effort going to have the benefits or outcome that you need?

Sometimes it is good to keep sight of your priorities, objectives, or simply just what will make your life happier.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

"Dari Surabaya?"

A few weeks ago, Saskia and I were waiting for a taxi at our apartement's taxi stand. There were many motorcycles going in, out and around the apartement's entrance, but there was one guy who just stopped near us and looked at us. We were feeling uncomfortable since he was looking at us, wondering if we were doing something wrong or strange (or if we looked strange), but finally, he spoke:

"Dari Surabaya?"

Out of all the questions in the world, he asked if we were from Surabaya or not. Maybe we were obviously Indonesian (so was he) and he decided to skip that question, so he perhaps decided to test the next question (being the obvious Javanese that we are). But imagine, standing on a street corner of a foreign city, and suddenly being asked something about your origins in Indonesian.

ha ha ha.... that was slightly weird.