Can't believe I stayed home on a long weekend

Gosh... Can't believe I stayed home for 2 days, another weekend of the precious 50 weekends I have here. Which means I wasted 2% of my time in USA. Hahah maybe wasted is a strong word... At least I saved money from travelling, $200 if I went to Orlando/ Chicago, $100 if I went to Cape May. And I vacuumed and mopped my apartment's filthy floor. Yea and blogged twice in a week (which is so rare), blogged on my business website, sent out the mass mailers to customers, updated the sprees, tidied up the documents for my business, shopped online!
Planned to go Cape May with my friends on Sat and Sun but Friday night I went to bed in a ruined mood as my eyelid was swollen again. Woke up with cold the next morning so I basically slept all the way till 10am. Woke up when hunger struck me but soon went back to slumber at noon... Could hardly do much yesterday but to plan for the Las vegas trip and cook dinner. Fried rice again =(
Yup and as I wrote earlier, I went to Woodbury and burnt my pockets on Friday so at least I went somewhere. Trying to sound optimistic here...

Today was much more productive as I woke up hungry at 7am. Settled breakfast and some business stuff before hitting the gym. I'm so going to miss the Upenn gym come Aug 31 as my membership would expire. Really like the facilities there, the towel service and the proximity of the gym to home. I'm going to the gym everyday till Fri, when I'm heading off to NY to meet Huiling and Gwen. We're going to Niagara falls together! Hope I can borrow Amin's camera so that i can capture that gorgeous maid of the mists... They then return to Philly with me on Sunday but Huiling is flying back to San Francisco again on Mon. Gwen gonna stay here till Wed before we head off to Las Vegas! West Coast, here we come =)

End of summer school... a new start

The feeling of the seniors leaving us so soon kinda makes me quite emo nowadays. It's like just yesterday when Peihiang and joshua met us at the airport and herded us to Philly but now, it's their turn to leave. The nostalgic memories of the time that batch 11 spent with us, just gushed back to my mind, as I enter this post. Someone said farewells are part and parcel of life, and make one more mature... I have to agree with that.. And it is not going to be the same anymore when I go back to office next Monday, alone and having no one around to look up to, having to stand on my own feet from now on. No more fooling around as someone else gonna look up to me, as a role model.

Summer school has ended but I felt as if it never begun. For one thing is that Prof Babin is right, it's a difficult class, not because of the course requirements, but cos no one can really focus and give off their best. The power of context which was a concept emphasized in class is so ironically true as the students influence each other, resulting in a less 'competitive' environment. Nevertheless, as much I would like to focus on energy and time on it, I know I have at least remembered most of the concepts taught in class. Like the power of stickiness and power of the few, from the book, The Tipping Point. It takes just such a little something to create a storm.
The part part of the course is where I could relate the concepts taught to the social networking industry, where my company resides.

Yesterday was US' independence day but I spent in a rather unconventional way. Went to the Woodbury premium outlets with Nadia and her Club SG friends. It was a gruesome 3hours away and by the time we reached, we exited the car like a bunch of kids that had been forced to sit for too long. Shopping was quite relaxing, as I mostly shopped for my customers, so it is kinda of guiltless. But I did get a 17usd white skirt from Armani(my fav brand!) and a 15usd top for my mummy from Espirit. Everything is so ridiculously affordable here. My friend, Cynthia, got a Fendi bag for $140! wow...

We returned to Philly at 1230 and headed to Target where I went to redeem my $10 gift card from Ebates.com. Bought my sunscreen (finally), cereal, bath towel (finally) and stuff... hahah the mart is so humongous! It's easy to get lost here.

The day trip ended with a bang when we went to eat dinner at an Indonesian cafe. We wolfed down fried chicken, curry, veg curry, satay and iced coffee... Yum!!

To commensurate Independence day, Nadia and I went to the Arts Museum. It was quite unexpectedly unentertaining as the artists performing are unknown to us, even John Legends. We left because of the rain, and ironically before the fireworks started, when it was the main reason that brought us here. Sigh hahah.... wat a tiring day!

Trail run at Fairmount!

I wished I joined the Fairmount runners on their Sat morning trail runs earlier! But my Fridays nights are usually filled with those stuff that resulted in a late sleep-in on Saturdays... Anyway, I will make it a point to go for Saturday trainings from now on.

At 8.20am (ungodly hour right?) Nadia and I met to take the septa subway to city hall, where we had to change to bus 33 to 20th Fairmount ave. I wasn't sure of the bus stop at first and approached the bus 32 conductor. But before I could speak to him, I stared in amazement when the lady in front of me planted a kiss on his skin. The thing I couldn't figure out is that she had paid for her bus fare so the kiss is definitely not for the sake of hitching a free ride. Anyway, the friendly driver gave me proper directions to the bus stop and within 5 mins from reaching the stop, bus 33 came along, much to our delight. The inconvenient problem with Philly is that 20th and Fairmount is actually rather close to where we live, in fact, we can run up to the place in 30 mins at a comfortable pace, but there are just no direct public transport route to the place.

Soon, we found ourselves near the Eastern State Pennetary, waiting for Bennett, my club president to arrive and fetch us to the hills at Fairmount to run. Accompanying us was Steve, the first club member I really got to know, since the time when we walked together to the pub for happy hour. He's working at the Upenn Alumni house so Nadia and I had quite a few topics to chat with him about. Sometimes, I think he's really kind-hearted and innocent compared to the other Americans I have come to know here. I wonder if he ever loses his temper before but I doubt. This kind of people are really suited for a job in the education and service industry I realize.

As we whizzed past the green scenery in Benett's car, I just stared in awe out of the window. There were many stone bridges which towered over us, hills that dwarfed those along the roadside of Macritchie reservoirs and the neverending stretch of the Schuylkill river. When we alighted, the sight of the entrance to the trail just reminded me so much of Macritchie Reservoir and the gush of memories to my head left me dizzy with nostalgia. We just started our stopwatch and lost ourselves among the greenaries.

But Macritchie can never be as hilly as where we ran. During the annual cross country race, there will be this steep slope before the route opens into the main road that everyone dreads. But here, there are an uncountable number of them. I wished I have at least gymmed for the past 5 days before coming here. However, the pace was comfortable and we had to slow down most of the time to avoid slipping down the muddy downhill sections and to land properly on the rocks as we ran along the face of the hill. One interesting thing about the trail is that instead of normal wooden bridges that span across the river, there were huge pipe like stone structures instead. One careless slip on it will just send one stumbling down into an abyss of stones and whatnots. But on the whole, I felt this great sense of accomplishment as we ran back into the carpark. At least the fattening food I have eaten over the last five days now have somewhere to escape. Steve sent us to the university area after Bennett dropped us off near the Arts museum. (see I said he's nice) Nadia and I indulged in a Dunkin Donuts' breakfast before heading off home.

My own project

All the research on social networking and marketing prompted me to think about how to improve the user's experience and the interactivity on my website.I am definitely going to start a blog but what are the topics I can explore? Savings on brands?Let me know if you have any idea!

From http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080625005350&newsLang=en,

Interesting points from 'Consumers Want to Talk to Brands, Finds ExpoTV Survey'

Survey Shows that Willingness to Engage With and Listen to Consumers Increases Brand Advocacy

Fifty-five percent of consumers want an ongoing dialogue with brands, according to a recent survey conducted by ExpoTV, exploring how direct consumer engagement creates brand advocacy. The survey also revealed that positive brand experiences can generate word-of-mouth buzz: more than 60 percent of those polled said they tell 10 or more people about the products they like while a third tell 20 or more people.

Such is the power of word of mouth marketing!Instead of talking down to the customers and guessing what they want, brands should engage their customers in conversations, know their needs better. But is this strategy limited to big brands?

The willingness of a company to engage with consumers directly impacts loyalty and can even lead to increased purchase intent. In fact, 89 percent of respondents would feel more loyal to brands which invited them to participate in a feedback group, and 92 percent of those who have a positive experience communicating with a brand will recommend purchasing a product from that brand to someone they know.

By showing that they care about their customers, customers will certainly feel the sense of gratification to return them a favor by developing loyalty to the brand. Customers feel good as they are empowered in a way.

While consumers are interested in engaging in a dialogue with brands around customer support and pricing, the survey showed that they are most interested in discussing product design.

Survey respondents were also interested in communicating about brands’ efforts to improve existing products and share positive experiences.

In fact, 93 percent of consumers surveyed would be interested or very interested in communicating with competitive brands that expressed interest in their feedback.

We want to be part of the process!

Admit it.. our lives are changing online

Adapted from http://blogs.forrester.com/Never_Ending_Frieding_April_2007.pdf

It is scary, thinking about how we have changed the way we use the internet, in the matter of 10 years. I remembered how I used to use the internet just to check mails, go IRC or ICQ and visit websites. Then to blog. And now to use networking websites to connect, interact and simply share my opinions and my knowledge. The thing is that I am perpetually logged into those websites. Just imagine, if what I do, what I say in these online places are tagged and logged by some companies somewhere, what would they do with it?
One day, when I was checking out my items on a online shopping website, I was directed to a page asking if I am interested to subscribe to Reader's Digest, my favorite magazine online. Well, I'm not surprised.

Do we still have privacy these days?