Eastern shopping > western shopping?

News:
I have implemented an anti-spam plugin (been getting some comment spams from spambots lately). From now on when posting a comment, the person would have to answer a very simple question to prove that there’s a human being there typing–something that anyone over seven years old could answer. 🙂

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Kitty Cat Diaries updated:

Weblog:
There’s a strange phenomenon that I call the “Asian shopping atmosphere.” Basically, it means that Asian countries have a much stronger “shopping atmosphere,” compared to the western countries. Elena and I discussed this more than once and we still can’t quite figure out all the factors that contribute to this phenomenon. The factors we can identify are:

1) The shopping areas in Asia are typically busier.

2) The shopping areas in western countries are typicall spread further apart, whereas in Asia it’s more crowded so shops are packed closer together.

3) The shopping areas in Asian countries typically open till much later, while western ones close a lot ealier.

4) Asians are really into bargaining–which adds to the shopping atmosphere.

5) Asians tend to be louder in public places (except maybe Japan), adding a more festive mood to shopping areas.

Here’s the interesting thing though–when I asked Elena if I were to put her in a shopping mall in Hong Kong or Malaysia, but swap out all the shoppers and make them all non-Asians instead, would the festive shopping mood still remain. Her answer was no (I agree with her–that was my feeling too). Then I asked her, if I were to put her in Stanford Shopping Center or San Francisco Shopping Center, but swap out all the shoppers and make them all Asians instead, would that make the mood more festive for shopping? Her answer was yes (as was mine). I’m sure this is some kind of psychological conditioning from our collective Asian background, but I wonder if it’s possible to actually identify the determining factors that form this psychological conditioning.

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When I worked at Optidigit, we were involved in the Malaysian government funded Saladin project. I had written two versions of synopses at thirteen episodes each, plus drew a few pages of test storyboards for it, but the project appeared to be dead in the water. We assumed that it would never happen as government funded projects have a lot of red tape to deal with, and they often kill the project completely. Imagine my surprise when I saw the trailer posted on cgtalk.com. You can find out all about it here. According to the credits, the trailer was done by the guys at Silver Ant. If I’m not mistaken, this is the same Silver Ant that Optidigit worked with in the past (we shared some projects and resources). They are a bunch of very talented guys and extremely hardworking. With a trailer like that, they should be able to secure funding to produce the TV series. However, it would be impossible to produce them at the same quality as the trailer, as TV show budgets just don’t allow that kind of quality. They would also be limited to non-Christian dominated countries only due to the subject of the show–and that’s a severe loss in full market potential.

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If you don’t know about youtube.com yet, you really should take a spin there–you just might uncover some really cool and rare videos of stuff you have been looking for but couldn’t find. I managed to find a lot of very rare videos that people essentially taped on the VCR of old interviews, TV appearances, or bootleg videos of concert footages..etc. I found rare videos of some of my favorite Japanese musical acts from the 80’s–Sakamoto Ryuichi, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Boowy, Kawai Sonoko, Psy.S, Barbee Boys..etc. It was like discovering an unspoiled archaeological site for me. 😀