Zombies - Horror Monsters that Can't be Ruined?

By now, we've all seen the vampire (and even the werewolf) genre ruined by the Twilight series, The Vampire Diaries and similar shows/movies.  The vampire characters that once inspired fear and awe (see Bram Stoker's Dracula, Blade, Nosferatu, etc.) have sadly been transformed into over- (or under-) sexed, emo teenagers who are more likely to slit their own wrists instead of ripping someone's jugular out with their fangs.  Vampires, by their nature are already seductive, so it was easy to create a pretty boy out of it. 

Werewolf characters are usually physically and emotionally tortured by their curse, so it's easy to make them emo in their human form.  All they need is a little black eye-liner.  I'm just hoping that the upcoming Wolfman movie might redeem that.

The Frankenstein monster also has the potential to be ruined by Meyer-like authors.  All it takes, as suggested by a female friend earlier today, is to have some mad scientist put together body parts of Orlando Bloom and Christian Bale and the genre is pretty much screwed.  Just make the pretty boy "monster" out of "teen hearthrob" body parts and have him drowning in self pity over his maker not making a mate for him and you're set.

The same can be said about mummy movies.  You could make the mummy character have super powers like the one in the Brendan Fraser movies and from there all you have to do is make the mummy/sorcerer be some emo-depressed teenager who was so sad that his girlfriend dumped him that he had his guys mummify him for eternity.

With zombies, however, it's thankfully not that simple to turn the walking dead into twilight teeny boppers.  Zombies are decomposing, walking corpses that feed on living human flesh.  So basically they're more likely to eat you than want to have sex with you.  What's more, I don't think any author would create a teenage character who is so horny and desperate that they would resort to necrophilia.  Zombies are mindless, feel no emotions, except maybe rage (as seen in 28 Days Later), and cannot revert back to normal human form.  That means that there's no chance of them becoming some dumbass, brooding kid.

What do you guys think?  If you were Stephenie Meyer, how would you turn a zombie into Robert Pattinson?

My 2010 To-Do List

I'm not really one for New Year's resolutions, but I do have a few things that I'd like to accomplish by the end of next year.  So here it is, a list of things to do before December 31 2010, 11:59 PM:

• Travel to at least two destinations outlined in THE LIST
  
• Go hang-gliding (as per THE LIST)
• Run and complete at least one marathon and one half marathon
• Learn how to swim
• Learn how to drive a stick shift
  
• Win at least one karate tournament
• Significantly increase annual income to finance the activities on this list
  

I think 12 months should be more than enough to get all this done.  What's on your to-do list for 2010?

Recycled Christmas post

In the spirit of reducing my "holiday cyber-footprint", I thought I'd put up a post that I wrote about three years ago.  I understand that it may seem lazy, but I think it's still a pretty good read that's worth sharing.

Hope you enjoy reading about the Pagan Christmas

Holiday Gift Receiving

With the holidays coming, everyone's out there trying to get the perfect gift for their friends, family and loved ones.  But what happens when the gift that you get isn't quite perfect?  Here are a couple of things that I found that people do. 


Returning / Exchanging Gifts
I haven't actually seen this happen, but it seems to be common practice for people to go the store after Christmas to return or exchange their unwanted gifts.  Personally, I can't think of anything that's more ungrateful than this.  Yeah, the gift giver might have been off the mark, but the person did spend a certain amount of their time, effort and of course money to get you that gift.

As far going back to the store to exchange a gift, personally, I think that this should only be acceptable if for example the gift is a piece of clothing or a pair shoes that doesn't fit. 

Re-gifting
For those who didn't know, re-gifting is the act of taking a gift that you received and give it to someone else as a gift.  Ever since that Seinfeld episode, I think that re-gifting  has gotten a bit of a bad rap.  I'm actually a little bit on the fence with this practice, to be honest.  On the one hand, it does seem to be a pretty ungrateful thing to do.


On the other hand, re-gifting does seem to be a bit more practical and unselfish.  Basically, if you don't want what someone has given to you, you're thinking of another friend who might find the gift much more beneficial. 

Wish Lists
Wish lists could be a good way to make sure that you get what you want.  In some cases, you can even make tell each one of your friends which item on your list you want them to get you.  Sure it does take the surprise out of Christmas morning, but hey, at least you won't be returning, exchanging or re-gifting.

You could say that it's a situation where everyone wins, but for some reason, I just can't help finding it more and more annoying.  It's gotten to a point where wish lists have just become a reflection of greed and consumerism.  It's OK to ask one or two friends for a gift, but don't go listing a dozen things that you want to get as a gift and send it to your entire Facebook friends list.

I guess these are the kind of gift-receiving behaviours that's causing me to get annoyed at the Christmas holidays.  Instead of people just being grateful that someone cares enough to get them something, the present you give them has become the measure of how much you love and care about them.

But hey, at least all this spending is giving the economy a much-needed boost at the end of the fourth quarter, right?

Blog Template Change

Just thought that I'd make the change since I've had the same old template for several years now.  I was going for something relatively clean and easy to read when I was looking the available Blogger templates.  What do you think about the blog's new colour scheme?

How to Answer the Salary Question in a Job Interview

With many friends graduating, finishing internships and/or relocating, a lot of them are going through the job search and interview process. One of the interview questions that's been the subject of discussion has been the salary question during the first interview. When in the first interview, what's the most appropriate answer when asked about your salary expectations?

One approach is that you should be able to answer that question with a straight up figure in that first interview. At the very least, you should be able to give a quantitative answer, even if it's just a range. You should research the position that you're applying for and how much a person doing that job should make.

At the same time, you should be able to answer this question as an indicator of the value of your skills to the interviewer. The idea is that being able to have this discussion (even to the point of planting seeds for salary negotiation) early on in the application process shows the interviewer that you're well-prepared.

The other perspective on this says that (and I agree with this) these types of discussions should be avoided in the first interview. The idea is that giving any kind of number or range would cause the candidate to lose out. If you give a number that's too high, you may get disqualified. If you give a number that's too low, you might get the job but get much less than what the employer is willing to pay.

Another part of the argument is that it's still a bit premature to be discussing and negotiating salaries when a candidate only has a basic knowledge of the position. The initial interview is supposed to be about the candidate trying to find out if the job is a good fit and the interviewer getting an early assessment of the candidate's skills. So looking at it from a sales perspective, talking about salary expectations in the first interview is like a vendor giving a quote before fully understanding what kind of solution the customer needs.

So how would you answer the salary question? Which perspective do you agree with? More importantly, which one of these approaches have you taken and how has it worked out for you in the past?

The New Hot Office Girl

Having worked mostly with men in an office setting, one of the most common things that I noticed is the way behaviour changes when a new female employee joins the company/team/department. This change seems to be consistent in all the office environments that I've been in, and probably is more noticeable when it's a younger intern.

The conversation usually starts off with something along the lines of: "Hey guys, have you seen the new girl over in (insert department name)?" In general, I've heard and expect two typical responses:

1. "Is she hot?"
2. "Oh yeah, I've met her. She's pretty/hot/cute/not bad looking."

For the next few weeks or even months, there seems to be some kind of magnetic aura around this new female employee. The guys are all nice to her and are all trying to test the waters being careful not to be harassing or obnoxious. Some will even "man up" and start flirting with her.

I guess it lasts until either somebody in the group ends up dating her (usually unlikely) or someone finally decides that the new hot office girl is more "office hot" than "real world hot".

It's definitely some kind of evolutionary mechanism that's been wired in a man's DNA.

Of course, I don't think that women are completely oblivious to this. On the contrary, I think they make an extra effort to pretend that they aren't aware of what's happening. My guess is that, inside, they're probably laughing at the group of guys vying for their attention.

What I am curious about is whether women go through a similar exercise when there's a new guy at work.

Retail Marketing Mystery

Maybe I didn't pay enough attention in my marketing classes when I was in university, so that's why I'm having trouble understanding what happened a couple of days ago. Let's hope that my marketing and retailing expert friends can help me.

So we walked into a pretty well-known clothing retailer the other day after receiving a coupon promising a 35% discount on all items at their regular price. The cool thing about it is that it also entitles the holder to a 20% discount on all items that are already on sale. Not a terrible deal at all, don't you agree?

So after picking and trying on some articles of clothing, we get to the cash and present the coupon. The prices were already lowered on those items, so we thought that we would get the 20% off instead of the 35%. Fair enough.

The lady at the cash then says that the items we picked weren't at regular price so the 35% off wouldn't be applied. Fine, that's what we expected. However, the cashier then tells us that she can't give us the 20% off either. It turns out that the items weren't on sale. Instead, they were "on promotion". So they couldn't combine the offer with already existing promotions.

We ended up paying anyway because we needed the items. That and the "promotional price" wasn't terrible to begin with.

I'm actually more confused than annoyed. The question I'd like to throw out there to the experts is this: What's the difference between any retail item that's on sale and one that's on promotion? I was under the impression from previous experience with other clothing stores that they were the same thing.

Any ideas?

How to Profit from Public Panic during the Holiday Season

If I were an investor who had an extra couple of hundred thousand dollars and wanted to make some quick money by the end of Q4 2009 and even Q1 2010, I would immediately invest most of that money in three companies: Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline.

You don't have to be a genius to figure it out. These companies are the main producers of the two most sought-out commodities for holiday season. It's not a new gadget, computer or a new Apple product. It's not a new toy either.

Massive amounts have already been sold in the case of one product and I'm sure it will continue throughout the winter season. As for the second commodity, people are lining up for it all over the developed world. Even governments are getting heat for not making it easier for the general public to get it.

The two commodities are of course hand sanitizers (specifically Johnson & Johnson's Purell) and Novartis and GSK are the main producers of the H1N1 vaccine. With the Avian Flu and SARS out of the way, Swine Flu is now the "fashionable" disease to have and be afraid of. With one sensational media story after another, we now have a huge demand for both hand sanitizers and the vaccine. People are afraid thinking that they're going to just drop dead after each sneeze, cough and headache.

Just walk into any office building, public space, airport, etc., and you'll see a sanitizer dispenser at almost every corner. Not to mention the amount that's being sold in pharmacies. As for the vaccine, can you think of the amount of money governments have spent? And when we turn on the news, we still hear people complaining that there isn't enough.

So for the companies producing these commodities, congratulations. If I had the cash, I would buy some of your stock right now. The current boost in your sales, fueled by public panic, free PR, extensive media coverage and relatively little marketing spending, should last at least until flu season is finished, which is great news for your share price.

Now if only I had some extra cash to invest with...

Metro Escalator Etiquette

So as I was getting out of the metro on the way home, I overheard a mini argument between two strangers. Basically, one woman was standing on the left side and talking to her boyfriend on the right side. I stood on the right when this other girl in a rush came up from behind. She was pissed off because the other girl was blocking her way.

So the argument breaks out about how the first girl should stand on one side to let other people who were walking up the escalator. Apparently, these are the unwritten rule of "fast and slow lanes" on an escalator.

The reply was that the metro escalator is for people who are tired after a long day of work. Especially the escalator going up. So you should be able to stand there and let the machine move you up. If you want to run up the steps, you should use the stairs.

The argument pretty much ended once everyone got to the top of the escalator.

So which side do you agree with?