Archive for the ‘ U&I Magazine ’ Category

Learning Japanese through Anime

I had an interesting dinner last night with people in the photography industry. It was an unexpected event and was quite happy to be a part of it. There were two other photographers, one fashion designer/student, one makeup stylist, and one model to round off the table. They each had their own fair share of interesting stories to tell and it was just interesting to listen to them considering what their roles in the industry were.

As it turns out, I had met one of the photographers last summer when a group of us from TPMG went to Elora Gorge. It’s a small world. The food was prepared by my friend’s friend, whom had prepared a Sicilian Italian course and a South Asian Fusion course. I had the latter and although it was on the spicier side, it was quite flavourful and I enjoyed it. It was a small and not too rowdy of a bunch, but still quite nice to hang around with.

Lately I’ve been a little more pre-occupied with U&I as I prepare for my next issue, which has been long overdue. I also just recently got the quote for the order, which I was planning on doing, and let’s just say I had to take a deep breath after reviewing it. It is quite expensive to go nation-wide and at the moment, I have no idea how I’m going to go about it. Somebody please help! Ahh…

Now, I just came back from my first Mandarin class of this year. I have once again found myself enrolled in a Mandarin class, which runs the entire school year, every Saturdays from 8:45am-12:15pm. The class is much larger than the last one, and we have even more of a mixed level this time around, which I’m sure will make it more difficult for the teacher to prepare lesson plans for.

There is this one Korean in my class who seems to understand Mandarin quite well and during the break, came up to me and started speaking Japanese. I was quite surprised… and even more surprised with her answer to my question of how she learned Japanese. She said she watched a lot of anime and basically learned from TV. I don’t know how many Japanese TV shows I’ve been watching lately and I have yet to improve on my Japanese skills. Actually, that’s a false statement in hindesight. I probably don’t know it myself but I do get the sneaking suspicion that I am doing a good job at at the very least maintaining my Japanese level, and hopefully increasing my vocabulary, which is my main goal now-a-days.

In any case, it’s September now. School has started and it’s another brand new season to start things off. Let’s see how long I can keep this schedule up now.

I’m a good procrastinator…

So it’s September now.

Labour Day has passed. The CNE is over. School has officially started. The Toronto International Film Festival will begin. And the weather is getting cooler.

Where did the summer go?

Moreover, I think I’ve been stalling long enough for the inevitable. I don’t know why but it seems to me that I’ve been procrastinating on making my media kit for U&I. It’s due time I had one, and now that I know more or less what I need to put in it, it’s just a matter of me making one. Why is it so difficult? That’s not even the hardest part of my roadblocks that I know I will have to face in the coming months.

A new month calls for new beginnings, however. And this is precisely what I shall start to do. A full moon on the 7th of this month means a new moon will start shortly.

My friend just commented on how I should make a schedule to keep me up to pace on my doings. This way I will follow it and not fall behind. That is perphaps a good idea. But knowing me it may take a good month or two to make this schedule up.

It’s 12am and I’m going to retire now. This has got to be one of the earliest times in recent memory.

The word on the street

I was lucky today. It all happened so quickly I just hope I did the right thing. The Word on the Street festival happens in Toronto and other major cities across Canada on Sunday September 24th, 2006. I’ve gone to the festival for a couple years prior and for a while now I wondered if I should take the plunge and see myself on the other side of the booth for a while. This passing thought came now and then and I really didn’t do anything about it.

Until today of course.

Out of the blue, I suddenly decided to check out their website to see if I would be able to register for a booth. Not expecting anything from it, I signed up on the form telling me that they will send me the 2007 info pack when it is ready.

Within 10 minutes of my filling out the form, I get a phone call from a festival staff enquiring about my enquiry into exhibiting in this year’s festival. She sounded a bit rushed but she told me that the event had been sold out for over a month and a half now. However, they had a cancellation just this week and they were looking for someone to take its spot. Fortunately the booth was a half booth, which is more than enough for me. Spanning 10ft wide, it will be just enough for me to put up whatever I need to promote my upcoming issue, which will be released nationwide.

All of this is getting quite exciting and I am once again happily getting into the mood of going full force with U&I.

Let’s now hope for the best.

What to do?

So it seems as though I have slowly dropped off the face of this planet with my infrequent updates to my site. I am still alive and kicking for those who haven’t heard from me in a while.

The month of May went by really quickly and June rolled around with no warning. It’s already the middle of the month and I wonder what I’ve done so far this month.

My day job keeps me busy during the day. That’s a good thing. Not much else going on there. My U&I Magazine venture – as always – keeps me busy for the bulk of the period outside of my day job. Recently, Toronto held its annual MagsU, which took part in what few people would know as Magazine week (officially instated to be June 5-9, 2006 by the mayor Dave Miller himself). While I couldn’t afford any of the seminars – although highly recommended to me by several industry people – I did go to the trade show, which showcased several companies within the magazine industry. To further expand my venture, I decide to look for a distributor who would be willing to take on my magazine. I was referred to Disticor, which is a fairly popular one for nich market magazines such as U&I. I went to their booth and had talked to the Vice President of its Direct to Retail division. She was a kind lady who answered all of my questions and was eager to help me out. As I was talking to her, my worry slowly shifted from finding a distributor to finding advertisers willing to pay for advertising in a low-run publication such as my magazine. This will inevitably prove to be challenging as I will have to set the price point just right, in comparison to what other magazines offer their clients. I’ve already approached Nikon and Canon once before to no avail. My next approach has to be flawless.

Shortly thereafter I met up with some of my Ryerson classmates as a friend of ours was visiting from Vancouver. I was telling my class rival and good friend, Grace, about my situation and she surprisingly offered to help me out in the ad sales department. This was a rather pleasant surprise as I could definetely use this support, especially from a reliable person as herself. My only concern is the fact that since she works full time as well, she wouldn’t be able to meet people in person during the day. This may deter advertisers somewhat.

It’s my decision to either go with her or to hire a freelance sales person to go scouting for advertisers. All this sounds wonderful if it works out. However, I can’t get it around my head that one day if I keep going like this, my magazine may soon take over me, forcing me to make a decision that I don’t want to quite make at this moment.

Regardless, my next issue awaits, as do people who are eager to partake in it. I do have several ideas for future issues that I would like to see happen, so it would be great if I can make this decision quickly.

I got an email today from my friend Smakie. I met her during the launch of my first magazine. As it turns out, I had featured her boyfriend’s sister in my third issue of U&I without even knowing the connection. I vaguely remember getting an email from her saying that she was informed of my magazine through her mother whom had read my interview with the Nikka Times.

Canada’s a big country but in reality, it really is a small world.

On an unrelated note, I visited the Guildwood Inn for the very first time this past weekend. It’s a rather unusual yet interesting place with ruin-type architecture, pillars and statues placed sporatically in the field. It was nice. I took some photos of a friend of mine there, which I’ll be posting on my flickr account in the new few days.

The weather is slowly getting warmer. It’s about time. Afterall, it is summer next week.

Did somebody say BBQ?

May will be a busy month!

Not only is my entire family’s birthday within the first 11 days of May, the coming month will be very busy as I start to concentrate my efforts on getting my U&I Magazine more established within the photography community.

Contact – the month long photography festival – is the largest of its kind in North America. Silly me, I missed the deadline to take part in it as an exhibitor or advertiser. The best thing I can do is to support my fellow friends who are being exhibited in the festival.

The Photobloggers meetup is also being held in mid May, which is going to attract photobloggers from out of town. They will also announce live, the winners of the 2006 Photobloggies, which is an annual awards presentation celebrating the best in photoblogs from around the world. On this same day – and location – I am also planning on launching my Spring 2006 issue of U&I Magazine with perhaps some specials for the big event. My summer issue may also heavily focus on photobloggers from around the world so I’ll be sure to give everyone a head’s up on that.

This will also be the month when I start doing some more administrative work in terms of trying to get some distribution and advertisements for upcoming issues. I’m rounding up contacts as I go along and hopefully these will all lead to something substantial.

I would love to get more exposure for U&I Magazine as I know it’s something of value to many people around the world. By the summer’s end, my goal is to have something substantial completed – or at the very least in the final stages of being completed. This will be a lot of work on my part, especially doing this with a full time job. But this is what I am thriving for right now, and so this is what I will do.

Of course all of this won’t be possible without the occassional break from work. So my friend from Brazil will be visiting for the first three weeks of May, and so I will do my best to juggle all of this together.

All I can say is, this should be fun! :)

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