End of updates

For those of you actually paying attention, you might have noticed that I haven't been posting for quite some time. I've been back from Asia for a while and really have no further updates to post. I might check back in from time to time to reflect on my experiences (something I've been wanting to do for a while), but I can't guarantee anything.

In the mean time, enjoy the videos and photos I have up!

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Chinese Hypocrisy

This video has been long awaited by both those who went to China with me and those who heard about it afterwards. Let me give you some background on where this video came from:"

Location: Tiananmen Square, China

I was walking with my friends to visit the infamous location of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and I had my video camera out to fiml the whole thing. We never did find where the tankman photo was taken, though. Sorry about that.

As we were walking past the mauselium, we started to hear the happy birthday song coming from behind up. It's a very American tune, so we were all surprised. Beyond that, it sounded like the ice cream trucks you hear as a kid, so we all turned around to see where it was coming from.

To our horror, this is what we saw...

You might not be able to tell from the video, but you can hear us all talk about it a lot. What you see is a truck spraying pesticides over pedestrians and tourists into the trees alongside the road. Pesticides are bad enough, but look at the cloud that follows the stream and blows on down the street. Apparently our childhood jingles mean "DANGER" in Chinese.

You see the post here is labeled "Chinese Hypocrisy." There's a very good reason for this. We were instructed by our hotel to use little water and to recycle everything because "Beijing cares about sustainability." Because of the upcoming olympics in Beijing, there were signs literally everywhere telling people not to litter and to be concious of thier environment because "Beijing cares about sustainability."

A friend of mine got a photo of the truck-of-death as it rolled by, but no one else was willing to take photos or videos. There were soldiers and police officers everywhere around the square, so I put my camera away for a few minutes after I finished the video. I didn't like the way some of the soldiers were looking at me.

The gem of this story is what happened not three minutes later, though. With the truck still spraying away in the background, I walked to a trashcan to throw away a pepsi bottle. Immediately, a cop and soldier pulled me away from the trash and started yelling at me. In broken English, they shouted that I should never throw plastic away and should recycle instead (I didn't see the recycling bin behind the trash can) because Beijing and the Chinese care about protecting the environment.

No, I was not ballsy enough to point out the flagrant hypocrisy of saying that while a truck sprayed mutigens and carcinogens on the public behind them.

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Advertising Genius

I'm doing a project evaluating Nestle's effectiveness in the Asian marketplace (specifically in Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai). It's an interesting project to do since we have a group of 4 people and we're limited to 10 pages in our report. Here's what I think is the most brilliant marketing idea Nestle has had thus far:

This advertisement appears on the back side of the ticket to tour the Forbidden City in Beijing. Think of it this way: advertising on the entry pass to one of the biggest cultural landmarks in China. Locals frequently visit the site, and it's one of the major tourist attractions in China as well. Can you think of a better way to get your brand name out there among the local and touring population?

This tops even the neon billboards Nestle had in Shanghai. It's subtle, but recognized. Even if you're not immediately enticed to buy a Nestle ice cream bar you'll probably be putting their advertisement in a scrapbook somewhere when you get home. Not even Coca-Cola or Pepsi can claim that their ads from foreign markets are found framed, laminated, or otherwise displayed in American households. I can think of at least thirty companies that would be jealous of Nestle's positioning in Beijing if they were only aware of it. I wonder how many other cultural icons are used for convenient advertising elsewhere in the world ... it's really a great idea.

Too bad I didn't think of it first.

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Rubberball

As some of you might know, my grad school exit project involves studying rubberball baseball in Japan. Rubberball is played with the same rules as regular baseball, but with slightly different equipment and smaller fields. The balls are made out of rubber, so you can't throw or hit them nearly as far as the typical American hardball. This helps facilitate the creation of multiple fields in a country where land is expensive and you have to cram as much as you can into as little space as possible.

While I was in Tokyo, I spent all of my free time either visiting sports shops to compare equipment, visiting batting cages to test equipment and interview players, or looking for sports fields to watch games. It was incredibly fun, but is also the reason I didn't get to see as much as Japan as I had wanted to. Here's a video from one such game that I watched while I was in the area:



This video clip shows several important things about rubberball in Japan. First: the player hit the ball far enough that it flew into a neighboring field. The other game had to pause so our game's players could field the ball and finish the play. I also have a video of the neighboring game hitting a ball into our field, too. To maximize land use, the baseball fields come in sets of four and are extremely close together.

Second: although the player hit the ball far enough to have made a home run, he was unable to run past third base. You can hear one of my colleagues jokingly suggest giving him a cigarette after the play at the end of the clip. This particular league is comprised of moderately competitive individuals who played in high school or other youth leagues. While they're in infinitely better shape than I am, they don't train nearly as hard as some of the higher leagues and big plays like this usually result in one or more player collapsing on base. Unlike American sports where he'd probably be yelled at for not trying harder, though, you can hear everyone laughing it off in the background. If I remember correctly, he made it home shortly after this play.

I'll put more videos up online later, but I'd really appreciate someone pointing me to a better program to do my video editing. Windows Movie Maker just doesn't offer the quality I'm looking for...

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ただいま！

Actually, I've been back in the states for over a week now. I apologize for not telling you all sooner. After I got back I had time to unpack quickly, read through my mail, and then hop back on an airplane bound for Reno for spring break with Annie.

I'm now in the process of downloading all my video and photos to my computer and should have some details about the trip, my experiences, and things I learned about both myself and Asia up before too long. Thanks for your patience and understanding while I work to get everything together!

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