Archive for September, 2005

A Milestone Reached

I worked hard this past weekend to meet a Monday deadline for my magazine. I sent the files to the printer here in Toronto. This is the culmination of just about 4 months of work on U&I Magzine. Since the inception near May and my actual administration and production, I have come a long way. My next hurdle to come is to sell this magazine to the people in the Toronto area. My first order of 200 magazines should be coming by the end of this week or the beginning of next week. At $20 a pop, I am hoping it will sell well. Of course, for everyone else living outside of Toronto, you will soon be able to buy your copy online from an American printer and distributor. More details on that to come as soon as I have things set up.

It’s quite exciting as this is part of my new venture, media Smaku. I hope to do well in this industry and this is only the beginning.

Since I have finished working on my magazine, I found myself finally being able to relax a bit after work. I actually spent 2 hours tonight in front of the TV watching the season premier of The Amazing Race: Family Edition. It was quite the roudy experience with family members yelling over each other. What else is new?!

It’s an interesting show and is probably the only reality TV show that I make an effort to watch. However seeing as I usually work late on Tuesdays, I’m not quite sure how many episodes I will be able to see altogether.

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart?

While I particularly don’t think much of Martha Stewart, I couldn’t help but see her new reality TV show, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. Martha’s version of Donald Trump’s famous “you’re fired!” show has a more calm, friendlier and fun aura about it. Martha herself is more personable and more inviting than Donald was on his first episode. This clear contrast may have been intentional.

I find that I may in fact enjoy this version of the Apprentice since it involves the creative industry, which is where I am currently peddling about in. The first task of this 13 week interview took two teams in creating a modern version of a fairy tale, presenting it to a room full of first graders.

The corporate group, “Primarious” won the task, leaving the project manager of the creative group, “Matchstick” to go home and “hang his head in shame.” Personally I think this decision was the right one as he was in fact a little out of place in the Martha Stewart Living company.

It’ll be an interesting show that I will watch now and then. Surprisingly, Donald Trump’s Apprentice will be on Thursdays at 9pm EST. Two Apprentice shows in one season! Can we handle all of this?!

Pot Pourri

I just came back from the monthly Flickr meetup group meeting. We all met up at the Spirit Bar and Grille out on their patio. It’s been a while since I went to anything Flickr but all I can say is that I was more than happy that I chose to go today. It was like going back to the good old days when you meet up with old friends and talk about anything and everything.

I only met most of these people at the start of the summer and I haven’t seen many of these people in a long time yet I felt as if I had known them for ages. They’re a good crowd. Since not all conversations revolve around Flickr or photography – as a matter of fact not many do – it’s a good escape from the world I live in.

I did get a chance to promote more of U&I Magazine and many are very enthused about it being published. I have so many supporters here – and they haven’t even seen my portfolio. I’m quite surprised and am happy at the same time. These are a great bunch of people.

Nachos were half price at Spirit so that’s what most of us had. They weren’t bad. For $5, you got a huge plate of nachos… I had a Stella. Mmm…

Backtracking…
I woke up at 7am this morning and decided to goto work early for a change. Early, as in 9am early. I typically start anywhere from 10-10:30am but since I had some work to do this morning, I decided to go an hour early. It was a good feeling. For once, I came in to work at a regular time when most others come in. It was a different environment as I was able to chat about with some people that I normally don’t since they are already busy at work by the time I get in at 10am.

Ideally, I’d like to go to work at 9am and leave early but my job just doesn’t cut it that way. Too bad indeed.

On another note, in today’s Toronto Star, there was an article on women kickboxing. It caught my eye as one of my colleagues is a kickboxer. As I read the article, I came across a familiar name. The article said that she was part of the Muai Thai kickboxing gym in Toronto. I had to think for a while since the girl I knew with the same name would be the last person I would think to actually enjoy kickboxing. She’s quiet in demeanor and just not your fighting type. I guess I was wrong. Asking my coworker, it turns out that she is indeed one of my ex-classmates in university. She happens to go to the same gym as my co-worker too. A small world we live in, isn’t it?

Now that it has been a fruitful day, I can go to sleep happy.

Movies to magazines to spam

So I got my PST vendor’s permit this morning. It was just a matter of a simple phone call to the local PST tax office and I was all set up. Now I am legally entitled to charges PST on all the eligible goods that I decide to sell. Isn’t this wonderful?!

The end of September is nearing and I am slowly reaching my deadline. I think I will let the printer know tomorrow that I will be expecting to print my magazine sometime next week. This will indeed be a new milestone for me. I hope it will work out!

In related news, ever since I started this venture, I’ve been receiving some junk mail about magazines. Some rather interesting, and others not so. These companies – all legitimate I believe – offer some sort of service to magazines and are offering their services to me. The one I got today was rather dumb in my opinion. Their service is to provide an online magazine that is the exact duplicate of your printed magazine. I can do that myself if I really wanted to port my magazine online, thank you very much. Obviously they’re not catering to me specifically but still. It’s dumb. :)

I got 5 foreign language movies last night from the Chinese mall. 5 movies for $20. Not a bad deal I may add. 3 Japanese ones: Love Letter starring Miho Nakayama, Crying Out for Love at the Center of the Earth starring Kou Shibasaki, and Lost Paradise – although this latter one I believe the audio is in Korean – and 1 Chinese, 2046 starring the Japanese actor Kimura Takuya and an all-star cast of Chinese actors, and 1 Korean movie, Asako in Ruby Shoes starring Jung-Jae Lee. These are great as I wouldn’t normally have the chance to see any of these movies. I hope they’re good! Either way, each movie is less than a movie rental at Blockbuster’s so I don’t mind.

If any of you has seen any of the above, let me know what you thought of it!

I’ve been getting lots of spam lately too on my blog. So for all of you who think I am interesting in poker, please stop sending me junk comments on my blog. You are very annoying. Come on. Be nice.

Can I have more time please?

So many things to do now and even in the foreseeable future. I’m not sure where to draw the line. As time goes by, new things come up where I want to get involved in. If only I had more time. I would be able to expend more energy to each of those things. Right now, however, I’m getting both anxious and nervous as I am slowly nearing my self-imposed deadline for U&I. A little behind schedule, I had mistakingly put a little too much work on myself lately. I had to put production of U&I Magazine off for a few days as I settled another freelance job that I couldn’t even finish on time. In fact, I didn’t even finish it at all. How about that!

Nevertheless time keeps ticking away. I think I need to lock myself in my room and not come out until I’m done my magazine… and my site. I haven’t had the time to even advertise my magazine anymore, which is something I am in dire need of since… well, it’s word-of-mouth advertising that I’m counting on here in the T.O.!

Thanks for all the emails everyone! And for those of you who are new to my site, don’t hesitate to drop me a line either. It’s always nice to know who lurks behind those monitors!

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