Panasonic, Prada and Perspectives: Change isn’t that hard, is it?

Flower shopping: a whole new world view! 

Just yesterday, I went with Christine to a flower market in Taipei. This is something I normally hate doing, but this time something twigged: I may not appreciate the enjoyment and satisfaction she has from growing and keeping plants, but I could enjoy another aspect that I already knew about – taking photographs of the specimens. And the new power zoom of my Panasonic Lumix made it that much more fun.

Fashion affects us all

While I was thinking about this, another example sprang to mind: The Devil Wears Prada. Since this movie is set in the fashion world, most of the girls I knew reckoned that I wouldn’t or couldn’t possibly enjoy this movie. But they were wrong! And I was teased mercilessly for enjoying a ‘chick flick’ but I didn’t see it as a ‘chick flick’ at all. Far from it.

What was my secret? I had found something that I really enjoyed in the movie, the intrigue, the lead character called Miranda Priestly – played by Meryl Streep (one of my favorites since I first saw her in “Out of Africa”) – and the whole business of the fashion world. I also loved the idea that the fashion magazines were somehow connected to our daily lives, as Andy Sachs promptly found out, when lashed by Miranda’s tongue in the following diatribe:

Miranda Priestly: [Miranda and some assistants are deciding between two similar belts for an outfit. Andy sniggers because she thinks they look exactly the same] Something funny?

Andy Sachs: No, no, nothing. Y’know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y’know, I’m still learning about all this stuff.

Miranda Priestly: This… ‘stuff’? Oh… ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back.

But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers.

Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

Shift your focus: Shift your future

That’s when it suddenly hit home to me, if I’m struggling to understand why something is interesting to other people, I just need to shift my focus to something that I am already familiar with, and perhaps, just perhaps I can make a connection with it that helps me to ‘get it’.

When I first started doing the finances, and handling the money, it was a very difficult time for me, as I had to learn new ideas and unlearn my former prejudices – thinking about, talking about, and taking action on finances weren’t things that came easy to me.

How Things Change

In fact, it would be impossible for me to imagine then that I could be writing a finance column about money, investing, loans, credit cards, blogging and technology (to name a few of my themes!). But somewhere between the date I got married in June 1995 and when we bought the house in 1999, a transition took place in my brain that allowed me to grasp ideas and information that had been ‘foreign’ to me for a long time.

Have you had a similar experience? Share with us.  Ever had to tackle something that you had a distaste for? What happened?

2007 IT Month Show in Taipei: People, Products, and Pi-zzaz!

It’s NOT Computex, there’s no John Chow… and there are no freebies for you guys! (This time!…)

Today was the last day for the 2007 IT Month Show in Taipei, and I went along to see what was going on, to do a little ‘bargain’ shopping and get some snaps of some cool devices… Unfortunately, most of Taipei City and Taipei County (combined population approx 6,000,000 inhabitants) also decided to go, too.

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As you can see from outside, and inside!

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It was difficult to get any pictures of the stall presentations because there were too many basketball playing supertall visitors! Mmm… Still, this is the Transcend stall, and free pens were being given away! I didn’t catch any: it was too difficult with a camera in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other!

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Aha! The HTC stall, with lots of pricy but ultra cool models… They really do give Apple a run for their money, and they’re available NOW! So… why wait!?

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The HTC stall had some really *cool* phones, including the TYTN II, the Touch, and I got to try one!

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Can you spot this model? Of course, this one is MY hand… But the glare obliterates the lovely screen.

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Slipping over to Lenovo, I thought I’d entered a car exhibition, as their F1 car was on show…! No mere pc simulations here…!

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Vroom!… And onto the other Hall 3… where the Asus Eee PC had their very OWN stall separate from the ASUS stall! And it was crowded… but not as crowded as the primary stall… Wow! Still, there’s a large amount of interest in the ASUS Eee PC, and I found out that the black models are now available, as are 8GB models, and pricing is good…

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I think this model is the 8GB model, but I didn’t get a chance to try it! I tried the 4GB and noted that the keyboard quality on the model seemed much better than the first models I tried a month or so ago! Of course, the Eee PC 8GB was on sale but there were no more in stock. ASUS were taking back orders only for that!

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It has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal flash memory and runs on the same 900MHz Intel Celeron chip. Battery power is rated at 3.5 hours, as well. So it’s quite a respectable device. Matched with a portable 2.5″ hard disk with 120GB of space, this would make an acceptable device ‘for the road.’

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This picture was taken from the Sony Cybershot T2 trucks, I managed to get the pink truck, but there were three or four different colors of trucks all selling the range of Cybershot cameras… Cute trucks, nice cameras!

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And so I thought I’d end today’s trip to the World Trade Center’s IT Month 2007 with a picture taken in neighboring 101 shopping mall. The Mercedes C Class… with a rather unique paint job. (Anyone know why shopping malls and exhibitions like to display CARS…?)

Car Photos on Finance + Tech Blogs: is it de rigueur?

Well, it seems so. I had my first opportunity to take a picture of a car when we were on holiday last week! This was taken at 101 in Taipei, in the first floor of the shopping mall.

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Can you identify this car? Of course, this beast should be on the road, not stuck in a shopping mall! Nor should it be draped with wedding headdresses, so un-macho! But still, if they offered it to me as is, I wouldn’t say no! Not shabby for a Taipei City run about!