Tuesday, February 26, 2008
appealing to the general audience
But than the first thing you wee when you turn on the TV some ads of hot local girls and it also referred to some paid porn channels (and I'm pretty much sure, that if only one percent of visitors cared for that - they would not advertise that... the public for that is probably much bigger).
I'm sure - having people watching paid channels is profitable and it does not hurt to advertise that, but it is just so inconsistent with idea of the Bible on the table.
Basically, this hotel room provided you with two messages (at the first glance) - Bible or Hot girls(and of course you can watch just regular channels. But once you turn the TV off and then on again - hot girls are right there). Pretty tough choice, isn't it?
It was a bit shocking for me since these two things could not go together in my mind.
money vs. education
Interesting. Isn't there really a way to achieve two goals at the same time? I'm sure there is. I guess level of competition is what matters. When there a lot of substitutes available educational shows may not attract huge number of eyeballs and won't provide big revenues from ads. But, when competition due to some reasons is limited, even educational content will receive a lot of support form advertisers, since the audience is large enough.
Maybe that's why some media critics say that German model of TV (with not millions of TV channels, but just a few) is more attractive for both government, who are taking care of educating its citizens, and advertisers, who do not have to make a difficult choice between the media outlets and don't have to have multiple presence over many platforms to reach all of the segments of its target audience.
Monday, February 25, 2008
second birthday
6 years ago on 26th (back home it's already 26th) I was in a situation like this. Still alive and enjoying my life.
I guess this is like a day of appreciation of life.
Well, happy 6th birthday to me!
money
Today I saw an interesting ad on one of the website from back home. The main message was "money is not that important." A totally different perspective.
Even when you talk to people about their dreams they may say, as one of my friend did, that they want a lot of money. Fine. People back home say that want this, that and that, not money, but value/satisfaction/pleasure that you may get for money.
Yes the majority of us want to be able to afford lives we dream of, but we word it so differently. :)
Sunday, February 24, 2008
where to study
As part of my internship I looked through several web sites of colleges and universities. On some pages I’ve seen quotes from current students about reasons for choosing this particular school. Some of them were talking about sports (good woman’s football team, horseback riding, rodeo facilities, softball teams, etc), for environment and student life (small classes, friendly staff, student facilities, etc). Great! What about education? Haven’t found any talking about how good education is in this school.
When I was thinking about what university to go for undergrad I’ve looked through ranks of universities and quality of education. I’ve chosen one of the best in the country.
And my question was “where to STUDY?” not “what SCHOOL to go?” It never was about facilities, sports or environment. The only factor that affected my choice was quality of education I would get.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
"Yeah they were all yellow..."
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah they were all yellow.
(c) Yellow by Coldplay
Story about my yellow nails
Having a garden back home and loving to cook I know that doing something with carrots will color your hands in orange, working with tomato plants will make your hands black, doing something with apples will turn them dark orange, but doing whatever with cucumbers is safe, unless you are not cooking something with Vlasic original dills.
I’ve cooked a salad today with Vlasic dills. The result: salad is great; my left hand including nails is yellow. What??? Yellow? From cutting pickled cucumbers? I even put my nails into lemon juice for few minutes – it helps even to dissolve all the things that makes your hands black after working with tomato plants. Didn’t help in this case. I’ve polished my nails and still you can tell the difference between nails on different hands. Yeah they were[are] all yellow.
I was sure there was something wrong with those dills. I was so right. Just look at the ingredients: cucumber (fine, the main ingredient), water, distilled vinegar, salt (all fine with me, my mom and grandmoms use cucumbers, water, vinegar, salt and other spices – and that’s it.), calcium chloride (have no idea what that is, but I’m sure it would not give me yellow color), alum, natural flavors (yeah, having genetically modified cucumbers you need flavors), polysorbate 80 (what?? Do I really need this in dills? 80?), yellow 5 (Here it is, the reason for my yellow nails).
Yellow 5… I wonder what that means for my nails. From unsuccessful experiment with lemon juice I can conclude that it is very chemical. Now I’m thinking that everything inside my body is yellow… “And it was all yellow” just like in Coldplay’s song.
squirrels: can you see the difference?


I love squirrels, I think they are cute, I thought they were cute before I saw squirrels here. I would not say they are ugly, they are just so different. They have so much less fur and look like naked. Just look at the pictures. The first one is from home and this little squirrel still not completely in winter colors, but look at the ears! And look at the fur in general. I guess cold climate gives you genes with better, nicer, more beautiful fur. Unfortunately you cannot really see her tail on this picture, but it is usually so pretty.
reasons to attend a church
While talking to my “back home” boyfriend I’ve mentioned that I’ve missed the church service today. His reply was: “do you think that [going to a church] will help [save] you?” Here it is – the difference in how we perceive reasons for going to the religious services. While here people go there to learn something new, to communicate with others, to straighten their beliefs, etc, back home people go there to pray for forgiveness of sins and to show that you are true believer. People do not go to the church to communicate, to meet others from the local community. Moreover, you are not really allowed to talk in the church, other than praying. It is totally different and I have to admit that I like churches here more. They truly give you a feeling of belonging to the community, they address issues that you face in life; churches here are more people oriented.
shopping
We happened to be in the mall yesterday and my friend went to get 2 pairs of slacks. Me and two more other girls decided to go to the lady’s department. We had just 15 minutes.
When we got back to the place where we’ve decided to meet we found that that guy bought 2 pairs of slacks as he was planning. And 2 girls out of 3 also bought something, they didn’t plan to buy! So, the math is pretty simple: no recognized need + 15 minutes = spending money. :))
As usually, although I was not really planning to get something, I got myself one really nice item. I guess shopping for girls is more than just getting what is needed, it’s more of an emotional thing: want it – get it. I’m pretty much sure that a lot of things that girls buy are not being worn quite often.
There is a concept of calculating price of the cloths. You just divide the price of the item by times you wear it. I’m pretty much sure that the average price of girls’ stuff calculated this way is higher, even if you adjust for difference in the initial value of cloths for guys and girlsTuesday, February 5, 2008
Super Bowl or new concept of TV
Usually there are not a lot of commercials and you watch some show with ads pauses, not in the case of Super Bowl. It was mostly advertising with short moments of the game. Apparantly US does not have any limitation on ads time. Back home we have maximum of 12 minutes per hour. Here it was 12 minutes of game and 48 minutes of commercials... or so. At least commercials were cool. I guess paying 2.7 billion per 30 seconds you don't want to show some lousy ad that would not catch attention.
Another interesting thin: people do not seem to be disturbed by those commercials, because they are so cool. And Super Bowl is not only about game but also about commercials.
Isn't that what advertisers were dreaming about? People actually do love their commercials. (Although I'm not sure about effects of those commercials on purchase behavior)
Sunday, February 3, 2008
milk with ice
It's not a part of their culture to drink hot drinks.
Friday, February 1, 2008
ER
I was always so fascinated by ER series, mostly because of Clooney. Isn’t he hot? The manly man in
Few days ago my friend was really bad and I had to give him a ride to the emergency room at the local hospital. We got there, I went to park and he went inside. I was sure by the time I get inside he’ll be in some back room getting professional medical help. Nope! They first need to fill out all the information on the patient. Then the patient goes to the back room to fill out more documents. This time it’s about insurance.
I guess the help you’ll get (even when it’s urgent) depends on your insurance.
There are two things that are weird for me: 1) It was not as fast as in ER series (I know, I know…
Even if it’s like that, why don’t you come up with some system, that once you’ve identified yourself, system would be able to find information on whether you have insurance or not?