It Just Works

With Steve Jobs' passing, it seems everyone has something to say about him and Apple. Therefore, I will share one story as well. I bought an iPad when it first came out and it has become an indispensable device that I use everyday. This is no surprise since I've always liked Apple's products, starting from the Macintosh, especially for their design and ease of use. Steve Jobs once said, "This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this."

What has surprised me is the iPad is so easy to use that even my two-year old daughter, Ava, can use it. I only have to show Ava a few times and she is able to learn to use the iPad to watch her cartoons. She knows to press the home button to turn on the screen; slide the tab from left to right; press the home button again to see the icons; swipe to find the Videos icon; tap and find the cartoons in preview forms; choose and tap the video; and hit the play tab. Now at three years old, she even knows how to adjust the volume from the screen and hit the small button on the top to turn the iPad off.

Below is a picture of Ava watching Elmo at a friend's wedding banquet in Hong Kong; the iPad allows the parents to eat in peace.

While I like to think of my daughter as really smart, the truth of the matter is the iPad, like many of the products by Apple, just works. It still amazes me that a two-year old can use the iPad by herself. This is really a testimony to Jobs' philosophy about design, as he once said, "Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works."

Maclaren

Maclaren's stroller recall was front page news in Taiwan's newspapers and news programs, however the coverages have a different angle. Instead of just reporting on the specifics of the problem, the stories talked about how the stroller is popular with celebrities.

Below is from an article in China Times, which listed the various owners of Maclaren strollers, including Brad Pitt, Kate Winslet, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Elizabeth Hurley, and celebrities in Taiwan.

瑪格羅蘭是全美第一大嬰兒車品牌，許多好萊塢名流都愛用，包括布萊德彼特、凱特溫絲蕾、網球名將阿格西、莎拉傑西卡派克、伊莉莎白赫莉都是該牌粉絲，在台灣也廣受政商名流喜愛。但對照昨天美國廠商公布的問題車單，明星們愛用的嬰兒車統統是問題車款，震驚市場。

Below are screen shots from the local news:

I can't help but wonder if Celebrity Worship Syndrome is worse in Taiwan or U.S.

Grandpa

Today we held the funeral for my grandfather 趙諒公. He was a hundred years old, counted in the Chinese manner. He was a 才子, a renaissance man, who excelled in a variety of subjects including poetry, calligraphy, Chinese opera, and 圍棋. While his accomplishments in the cultural fields and his work are well known, what has not been mentioned much is his cooking skills.

He was an extremely talented and skilled home cook. While he only cooked occasionally, he enjoyed making dishes that required good techniques. He also liked experimenting with classical dishes and inventing new combinations. It is so unfortunate that none of us was able to convince him to write a cookbook, which would have been fascinating.

My grandfather also has a very good palette with very high standards. Family legend has it that he once threw a plate of food prepared by the maid out the window into the garden when he thought the food was not up to his standards. There are also stories about him pouring bowls of noodle soup onto the floor to show his displeasure with the quality of cooking. While his actions are a bit extreme, it was hard to argue with him when he was most likely correct and could show you how to do it.

My grandfather was a unique talent who not only lived a long life, but really enjoyed himself.

6 Billion

The economic slowdown has claimed another fashion victim; one of my favorite designers, Yohji Yamamoto, has filed for bankruptcy protection. Anyone out there with 6 billion yen to help?

Information Overload

Recently due to the Typhoon Morakot, I would watch a few minutes of the local morning news on television before I leave for work. The news programs are prime examples of information overload. Below is a shot of the morning news on the TVBS news channel.

I can count ten different things on the screen at the same time: 1. vertical scroll; 2. anchor woman presenting a story that has nothing to do with the headlines or the scrolls; 3. name of the show; 4. channel logo; 5. headline of a local newspaper; 6. time; 7. stock market index; 8. upper horizontal scroll; 9. bottom horizontal scroll; and 10. headline of another local newspaper. Each of the 10 pieces of information mentioned above have nothing to do with each other.

This bombardment of information has become the norm. Below is a screen shot of the program on another news channel.

Similar to the other channel, this one has ten different things going on at the same time as well: 1. vertical scroll; 2. upper headline; 3. website for viewers to upload images; 4. anchor woman presenting a story; 5. name of the channel; 6. bottom horizontal scroll; 7. lower headline; 8. picture of a story that is different from the two headlines and what the anchor was presenting; 9. weather; 10. time.

It is as if the networks believe if they don't present all this information at once, the viewers will lose patience and switch channels. Or perhaps, television news programs have been influenced by the way information is distributed on the internet. Presenting all the information at once has made the news program on television incoherent and lacking any emphasis and focus. What makes things worse is most of the time there actually aren't too much news to report in Taiwan, therefore, the news program will simply repeat all the information every half hour or so.

Aftermath of Morakot

In three days, Typhoon Morakot dumped almost three meters of rain in parts of Taiwan, which is approximately the average rain fall for the whole year. Scores of bridges and roads were destroyed. Several villages were completely wiped out by the mud slide, thousands of people are now homeless, and hundreds of people are dead, many buried alive.

The local news coverage of the aftermath of the typhoon has been quite frantic and piecemeal. For the past few days I had a hard time comprehending the scale of the disaster. It was only when Taiwan's Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research (中央大學太空遙測中心) released the satellite images of some of the affected area that I finally had a better grasp of the disaster areas.

Below is a before and after image of 太麻里鄉 (Taimali Township) in 台東 (Taitung) that I put together to show the impact of the typhoon. The image on the left is taken from Google map, which is before the typhoon. The image on the right is a satellite image taken on August 12, 2009. The width of the small river expanded three to four times and engulfed farmlands and houses.

The reconstruction of many parts of Taiwan is expected to take years and some of the villages destroyed may be gone forever.

Morakot

Today is the first typhoon day for Vera. All the schools and offices in Taipei are closed due to the arrival of typhoon Morakot; the name means emerald in Thai.

Despite the typhoon, many restaurants remain open for business; they all say they are 風雨無阻.

World Not Interested

The World Games 2009 concluded in Kaohsiung last night. The eleven-day event went smoothly and was quite a success - a great achievement for the city of Kaohsiung and Taiwan. Taiwan won a total of 24 medals and ranked seventh in the standings. The main stadium by Toyo Ito is very beautiful, at least from television (I haven't seen the building in person yet). The fireworks in both the opening and closing ceremonies were very nicely done.

The only thing I find to be very strange about the World Games is the almost complete lack of coverage in some media. For instance, a search for reports on the World Games on the website of The New York Times shows only four reports in the last 30 days, three of which are about Ito's stadium.

A similar search on Wall Street Journal's website shows only four reports as well.

There are even less reports on the World Games in UK's London Times and Guardian. While the media in Taiwan cannot get enough of the World Games, the rest of the world doesn't seem too interested.

Generation Gap

It is hard to believe that Michael Jackson has died. While I haven't paid much attention to him for quite some time, he was one of my favorites in the 80's. Since Jackson's death dominated the news, Vera was curious about him. I found some old videos on Youtube to show my almost five-year old daughter how Michael Jackson did the moonwalk to the music of Billie Jean. After watching for a few minutes, she lost interest. I suppose this is some sort of generation gap. I was five years old when Elvis Presley died in 1977 and I probably reacted the same way. While every generation has its own "king", it is hard to imagine that there will be another one like Michael Jackson.