Sunday, May 18, 2008

Disney on Ice!! =DD

Not long ago, maybe around 1-2 weeks ago, my family and I, along with my mother's friend's family, went to watch the "Disney on Ice" show. Since I was around 12 years of age, I wanted to watch the show.. But I never really could because normally the show will be held in Singapore or so. One day, I was watching Disney Channel. (Haha.. I know it's childish, but Disney Channel's fun to watch! Haha) Then, there was the commercial of the show, showing when and where the show will be held in different countries. I was kind of happy because I found out that one of the countries that they will be performing at is in Jakarta, Indonesia. :) I told my mom about it and she told me to research on the website, etc. I checked and tried to find information about the show that will be held in Jakarta, but there was no results. So I told my mom that there was no info about it and that maybe its not really going to happen in Jakarta. At first i was upset, but then whatever.

A few weeks passed by, and then my mom asked me whether I wanted to watch the show or not. I was excited and said yes. Apparently, there was not much tickets left, but we still got the good seats anyway. Hehe..

The day all of us went to the show, it was super crowded! Since it was my first time watching this type of show, I was very excited! I felt like I was a 10 year old girl or something. I noticed a couple of things during the show. Even though the place was small, the show was quite satisfying. I think they chose a small place so that everyone can see it better. Other than that, the sound system was good as well, the lighting was perfect and the dancing was awesome. But sadly, the costumes wasn't good enough, although they did some creative techniques. One example is the 101 Dalmation. It's quite hard if they had 101 performers in such a small stage, so one person will have 2 dummies on their right and left which looks like the dogs as well. Other than that, their props was similar to the real cartoons, so it can make me remember the parts that they are performing about.

Some people who have watched this type of show said that it was quite disappointing. But for me, it was good. I enjoyed it, even though I must say that it's more suitable for younger kids. Almost everyone who watched the show had smiles on their faces, even the parents. =) I wouldn't mind watching another 1 next time. Hehe xP



[stePh]

Monday, May 12, 2008

my favourite genre :D

Today, I’m going to talk about my favorite music genre. I love power metal music since I knew them; well at first I only know progressive metal bands like “Dream Theater”, “Metalicca” and “Megadeth”. Well I liked them since grade 7 until recently; I was kind of bored hearing progressive metal songs. Now I liked power metal and Neo-Classical songs. Well you guys must think that I’m a crazy metal freak geek blah haha. But sadly, yes I am. :(

I liked power metal genre from bands like “Dragonforce” and many more. But, I liked neo-classical genre just recently because of my friend, Yonathan. He told me songs from Yngwie Malmsteen and it is REALLY GOOD. Well, for my ear it is.

After that, I somewhat researched about this genre and see more of the band that is playing neo-classical songs. At the end I accidently see a video clip by Maksim Mrvica called Cubana. It was awesome. At first I’m not interested at all to piano and other girly instruments, but after seeing him play, I suddenly love piano. Dang. This remembered me about a memory in the past when I was kicked out of the piano lesson by my teacher. Hey, I paid the teacher and the teacher kicked me out. That’s mean. Well at that time, I was very happy because I didn’t like piano at all, but now I feel kind of regretful. OK, back to Maksim, the thing I love about him is that he can play a rock-latin-metalish tune out of an acoustic piano. Crazy huh? Even though he looks kind of gay, his songs are awesome.

I think this is all about my strange affection towards metal and neo-classical songs. Sorry about this pointless blog, I just write what inside my heart haha :)

SONGS TO CONSIDER:

-Maksim Mrvica – Cubana

-Dragonforce – Through the Fire and Flames

-Yngwie Malmsteen – Far Beyond the Sun

-Yngwie Malmsteen – Rising Force

-Dream Theater – The Ministry of Lost Souls

NB: to you who are saying metal songs are satanic songs, you are absolutely wrong. There are a lot of Christian metal bands out there. So try these new tunes out :)

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Cigarette Advertisements - Thompson 17

In Indonesia, most of the country’s GDP is contributed by none other than our cigarette industries. Cigarettes have contributed a good feeling for most people, but a severe disease in the long run. The fact that the effects of consuming cigarette are the same on different types of cigarettes brand, so why there are a lot of advertisement about it?

The firms certainly do not gives out any information about what is the product is made of, instead they gives out these images of manly figure, talents and skills, or following “A“paper. They never show the product themselves in the advertisement, only the symbol of it.

Not only the advertisement did not give any image of the product, some of them start to give out somewhat witty looking slogan, which they change every now and then. So I wonder what is the purpose of advertisement?

All I could think of is that they gives out information of the product and persuade the people with any factors necessary. The fact that firms does not give any information about the product, will this course of action is not an effective advertisement?


In economic class the effect of advertisement is to shift the demand to the right, so an effective advertisement could be determined by the magnitude of the shift. The further the shift, the effective it is, so I am really wondering does those cigarette advertisements gives any significant shift for the demand for cigarettes.

So finding out the effectiveness of cigarettes advertisement is one of the optional EE econ questions that I made. If I were to find out this answer using a viable method, I could see that whether firms are really wasting scarce resources to make billboard to advertise their freaking product.

I am really annoyed that when I go around the town I kept seeing these stupid advertisements along the way, and finding out that those freaking advertisement is not affective. On the other hand if it is affective then most people smoke because of it, so both are bad in a way. Freaking cigarettes, serves you right when they government double the tax on you!


TeleVision

Do media have its advantages? One of the media I’m looking at is TV, including TV series, movies, advertisements, and others. In my opinion, TV (TeleVision) does have the advantages, aside from that, also disadvantages. TV in our life had made a lot of influences, or impacts, and also it’s already taken a huge part in our life. Sometimes, our decisions are based on the advertisements that are shown; whether we’re going to buy that product or the other product. How successful an advertisement can be seen based on the economies of the product. One of the advantages of media is that it entertains us especially with having movies or TV series that we can watch and enjoy. We found our self in front of TV in our spare time. For me, TV do helps me to relax when I’m stress. One thing that makes me relax is that watching TV with snacks.

The disadvantage of TV is that sometimes we watch TV that we forgot our time. We often became obsessed with TV until we forgot what we’re supposed to do. However, it also can ruin our eyes when we watch TV too much. The result is we will soon wear glasses. Furthermore, TV influences us a lot, both in good and bad ways. It often influences little kids and teens more than adults. TV series such as gossip girl, the OC and others, sometimes effects the teens in showing them the perfect and rich life, and letting them know that that life is exist in the world.

TV v.s cinema. Which is better? In my opinion, TV is better, even though some people might think that cinema is way better. TV got its content much more interesting, even though the movies weren’t as new as in cinema. It’s better because I can enjoy my time with having everything I need. For example; like sitting on a comfortable and cozy couch, with drinks and snacks besides. TV also has an easy access to watch. A lot simpler than cinemas because we have to go to the mall buy tickets, sometimes we have to wait and others. That’s why I prefer spending my time watching at home.

-adela

m e d i a

Hello everyone. It has been a very long time since I visited this blog. I think it was last year, December to be exact. This term English topic is about media, it was fun and interesting actually. It’s a lot better than literature, though.
TV Shows. In the channel called Star World usually provides us with a lot of TV shows to watch. There are a lot of TV series that people are commonly watching. For example; TV series that is popular right now such as gossip girl. Among all those shows, my favorite one is Grey’s Anatomy. I started watching that series after I watched it on TV, one day when I was just kept changing the channel. It was touching, that one specific series. It was about this one patient having a stick on her chest and stuck with the other guy because of train accident. (I heard you’re watching this show, Ms. Jess. You might know the scene! Hehe) it’s very touching, and of course, sad. Because of watching this scene, I became obsessed with this show, so I started buying DVDs of the whole season.
What I like about this TV series is because the drama and the story line. The fact is that this story has two sides; the story in the hospital or their working place and also their everyday life, as in romance and their own and personal life. It’s very interesting because sometimes we can see that their personal life affects their work in the hospital.
Overall, this show somehow had shown to the audiences little sight about doctors. In real life, they have a very tough job, indeed maybe there’s no time for romance, because this is not job an ordinary job.
TV series like this do influences a lot of people. It influences me in my thinking of job of a doctor. I want to be a doctor after watching that series. But only after watching that, because knowing becoming a doctor got a lot of studies and take up a lot of years.
I wonder if the next season already comes out.

-adela

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Iron Man!!! x)

Did anyone watched this movie yet? =D

Before this movie came out, my brother and I watched the trailer in youtube. It was really awesome and the parts that they cut to make up the trailer were cool! After watching the trailer, I couldn't wait until it was out on the theaters.

The day when this movie was officially out in theaters, I went to the mall, along with some of my friends and watched it. Yes, the story is somehow typical "super hero" movies, but the effects that they have used to make this movie is very cool ! In my own opinion, I think that this movie has made it so thrilling by the sounds and effects that they used when the Iron Man was actually doing the stunts. Other than that, the angle when shooting the scenes was very smart, which makes the audience more eager to know what is going to happen next and that I was quite excited when watching this movie the whole way. I personally think that most of the scenes are computerized which means that the actors are probably doing it in a place but then cut them off and used other backgrounds. It's as if the actors are really flying in the sky and all, but they're actually not. Almost everything in the part where he was in the workshop seems like it is edited from the computer, like the machines, etc. The technology and way that they used to make this movie so good is advanced and that it doesn't look cheap, so people focus more on the story rather than the effects they've used. I mean, if the movie is not so good, then the audience would normally tend to focus more on the effects that the producers used and etc.

I've read an article somewhere, that there's this new game called "Grand Theft Auto 4" that came out at the same time as the "Iron Man" movie. The game is very popular, maybe as popular as the "Iron Man" movie, and people starts to think that there will be a decrease in people watching this movie, not because it's not good (it is really good!) but because of the game. People are so interested in that game that some would just not bother to watch the movie anymore.

Overall, I think this movie is really good, but quite disappointing in some ways because the trailer seems to be better, so it seems like the movie should have more to present, than it had now. (more expectations)

[stePh]

Media

This term for English class is quite interesting because we are learning about media. Before I studied about media, I never really though in depth what commercials are trying to get from the audience and how information can be passed on through media things like advertisements, movies, songs and even articles. What I found most interesting about this topic is when watching the movie "Super Size Me". It is very crazy how the person actually wanted to do this kind of experiment because he is risking his health. This movie was very unique because it talks about fast foods and how it is not good. They have shown the detailed information by using this kind of way so that the audience will stay interested. Aside from that, there are other interesting activities that were done during this media term which is analyzing some advertisements & cutting and pasting the claims that are used by the advertisements. Honestly, I feel smarter after learning more about the 10 claims and I wouldn't have realized how women are portrayed badly in the media. Now, whenever I see an advertisement, I became a critical thinker because I try to find reasons behind it and what the media wants from the audience, and also how they present it to attract the people's attention.I hope that I get to learn more about media and can analyze things more in depth. I have also listened to lots of songs and read some magazines to the see the advertisements. Not only that it attracts the readers, but also just to know what they're trying to tell the audience is very interesting.

[stePh]