And so another season of Apprentice began tonight. Not that I watch too much TV but whenever Donald Trump makes his presence on TV, I seem to be captivated by what he has to say. In this season’s season premiere, Trump had the two teams market Sam’s Club. The team who managed to get the most amount of new memberships or upgrades won. The winning team won by 3 memberships.

I often wondered why Asians are rarely seen in his shows. I remember there being one in the past, but by far, no traces of Chinese, Japanese, Korean or any other oriental seem to be present in the show. This season there is a Phillipina, however. I think Charmaine is her name. I don’t think she’ll make it that far though. Nor will the first ever Canadian in the show, Brent. I wonder how he even managed to get on there in the first place. In his opening blurb about himself, he told everyone that he made his own diet and lost over 100 lbs. Do you think Donald really cares about that?

On another note, The Amazing Race begins tomorrow. Why is it that my two favourite reality shows seem to start at the same time? This time, the Amazing Race will actually travel to Japan, and not just stop at Narita airport, like they did two seasons ago.

On another note, I watched a bit of Deal or No Deal today. It was my first time cathing the idiotic game show that seems to have caught quite the attention. Coincidentally, they had a special guest today. None other than Donald Trump came walzing in and gave some advice on whether the contestant should take the money and leave or continue on with the gambling. Apparantly all of Donald’s advice was the right thing to do as the contestant walked away with US$379,000. Hmm… may I have some of that please?

Like I said before. I don’t watch too much TV. Really. I don’t.

After so many months in the making, tweaking little things here and there, I have finally launched a much needed new version of Smaku’s World. I realized for a long time now that my site needed a new look and feel to it, in addition to trying to accomodate a means to show more of my photography. I’ve worked on this site off and on for the past few months now, and am now happy with releasing it to the public.

Although this is a relatively simple look to the site, it was a lot more difficult to lay out as I had to ensure that my wordpress blog was still intact, and that every part of my site was still in working order.

It took a while, but I am pretty happy with the results. Hopefully I will stick with this layout for a while because really, I don’t think I want to go through all that trouble all over again.

Some new changes made:

• The header image will randomly vary from a pool of pictures that I will gradually increase in number as time comes. These photos will no doubt be taken by myself.
• I’ve also added a Flickr button to my header. Since I Flickr on a daily basis now, I see no reason why people here shouldn’t see what I’m up to on that site. There, you’ll see some more photos as I upload them on a regular basis.
• Also, since Flickr is blogger friendly, I can now easily link my Flickr photos within my WordPress blog. You’ll probably see a lot more of my Flickr photos present in my blog entries.
• I’ve added a little page about me. Now you’ll know just a little bit more about yours truly.
• I’ve moved my blog archives to a new section in my site called archives, thereby clearing up the sidebar of clutter.
• My memories section is no longer being updated. After many years of creating mini-sites and posting photos in my memories section, I have decided to stop this as I no longer have the time to create individual mini photo sites for various events in my life.
• With some more time on my hands, I’ll try and make this site a little more graphically rich in order to highlight the various other subdomains and sites that I run.
• Comments have finally been enabled once again! Yippee! For everyone who visits my blog but never leave a mark, please feel free to make a comment on my site!

You’ll also notice that I have removed the shoutbox that was present in my old site. Hopefully with commenting now enabled, you’ll be more motivated to comment on my blog now. I may decide to bring that shoutbox back up in the future though. We’ll just have to see.

That’s it! Have a great day everyone!

It’s been a while, and many things have happened since my last entry. I’ve been a little tied up with events going on almost on a daily basis that I haven’t had the time to really do much on my personal site.

Here’s a rundown of things that happened recently:

1. Launched the second issue of U&I Magazine: Winter 2006
2. Finally accepted some extra help from volunteers for U&I Magazine!
3. For my day job, I now work for the largest media company in Canada.
4. Said goodbye to a friend who has decided to leave Toronto to move back to Sapporo, Japan. Best of luck in your hometown again!
5. Still working on this site to launch a new version, coming soon.
6. Got another client to revamp her website.
7. Have a potential project that is all interesting, enlightening, and pretty exciting if things fall into place properly.

I also foresee the next couple of weeks slowly becoming busy as well. Work is supposed to pick up, as will my after-work agenda. I don’t know how I’m going to keep up with all of this. At least this will make the winter go by fairly quickly!

Hope all is well on your end everyone!