Since I haven’t blogged in a while, and since I’m sitting here at the final event of the Miss Chinese NY competition with an active internet competition, I mind as well try live blogging here.

Conflict of Interest Statement:

• I’ve been dating Contestant #1: Shali Zhang for 7 years.
• The opinions expressed here are purely mine, and do not express the views of Shali, or any organizations that I work / am affiliated with.

1:05 - All the girls are on stage doing a very odd dance routine in aerobics outfits.
1:15 - Wow, the emcees are very un-attractive. The guy’s name is actually amigo??!! They started speaking in English and Chinese, but then somehow decided to drop the English translations two sentences in.
1:20 - The Chinese emcee is going to sing? The program has switched from Cantonese to English to Cantonese to Mandarin. Wow, the bitch of an usher is ridiculous. She keeps moving people around well after the event has started.
1:25 - The contestants are now doing a cat walk.
1:30 - Thanking another group of sponsors… this is the third group of people they’ve thanked tonight.. and apparently they are all consultants.
1:32 - The 5 girls who won the talent show are now re-doing their bit. Contestant number 8 is first and is singing a Chinese song. Her singing’s actually quite good, though her hand motions are quite awkward. Contestant number 9, Stephanie Huang (sp?), apparently is going to sign a song? She actually looks quite graceful doing this “song” that very much resembles a dance. The next contestant will be doing a modern dance. The emcee is actually telling the audience that all the male will be having a good time? Contestant 11, Melody, is also doing a dance, spirit of the peacock. Her dancing is quite graceful and calming. So nothing much to add here. Contestant 13, Vicki Pon, is apparently also doing a dance. There is now a chair on stage.. so this should be quite hilarious. haha.. they even did the red light thing. This is totally a strip tease. She really really likes to swing her hair. This is like a shampoo commercial gone wrong. I totally fail to see how her dance is a talent whatsoever. She’s basically just walking and swinging her hair around… Wow, she left without taking a bow.. she just left..!! This reminds me of what I did in 6th grade…

Wow, this competition seem extremely rigged. Time for swimsuit competition! w00t.

1:51 - Swimsuit competition begins… with the Q&A at the same time. Shali is sporting her swimsuit quite well :-D They just asked Shali why bears hibernate and humans don’t? What kind of question is this for a beauty contest? wow. They just asked Contest #3 to pick an object to represent Chinese’s culture. Contestant #5 just did some of the weirdest laughing ever. They totally threw her a weird ass answer.

Apparently the beauty pageant has never reached black in all these years.. even with all the sponsors et al. That’s really quite sad….

Wow, Vicky just got asked whether she prefers taller or shorter guys. Instead she said I prefer money, and shorter guys like the em-cee. Why you ask? Apparently, if she’s mad at him, she can step on him. She can carry him around like an accessory. She can kick him around. She’s absolutely hysterical… omg.

2:21 - The special guest is now coming on stage. Some dude from HK who I’ve never heard of. He’s apparently causing quite a bit of excitement in the room. I wonder if this is the principle of scarcity at work.

2:36 - The presentation of the award begins now! How did Vicki manage to get a high score on the Q&A? Are you kidding me. This is totally rigged.

2008 Miss Congenality - Contestant 7, Loviena Liao
2008 Miss Photogenic - Contestant 3, Angie Chen
2008 Best Evening Gown - Contestant 13, Vicki Pon
2008 Miss Talent - Contestant 10, Shelly Yang
2008 Miss Popularity - Contestant 13, Vicki Pon

2:45 - Wow, they are doing some retarded shit. Each contestant gets an envelope stating whether they are in the top 5, and then they forced each contestant to reveal whether they are in the top 5 in real time on stage. This is some demeaning absurd shit.

So the top 5 contestants are apparently contestants 8, 9, 10, 11, 13. (Jessica Yang, Stephanie Huang, Shelly Yang, Melody He, Vicki Pon).

Hahahaha the skits they are doing with the top 5 contestants are so hysterically bad, but still hysterical.

Wow what a surprise. Vicki Pon won…

My response to the comments so far (07/23/2008)
I have nothing against Vicki Pon personally, and I think she’s quite gorgeous as well. However, I don’t believe her talent show was either appropriate or really a talent. Her answer in the Q&A portion was also quite inappropriate given her venue and position. Regardless of what she might think, she is being held up as a representative of the Chinese American community, and a potential role model for young girls. Her answer of “money” was entirely inappropriate.

I am particularly disappointed at the Miss Chinese NY Beauty Pageant organization and its CEO, Mr. William Yip. As one of the organizations that’s more prominent, and thus outwardly representative in the Chinese American community, they are in a position to generate a lot of good will for the community. Instead, it has bungled the opportunity and has instead generated a great deal of ill will from both inside and outside the community.

I understand that the goal of the pageant is to generate the best candidate possible for the Miss HK pageant. Having said that, they can better accomplish this goal by changing the rubric and format of the current Miss Chinese NY Beauty Pageant competition and still be fair the all the contestants. Instead, they have chosen to bury the process in deceit and corruption.

I am personally very active in Asian American political representation and it’s incredibly frustrating to see events like this undoing a lot of good will built overtime through the arduous work of many others.

Currently going through hell week. DOE CSGF application due in about 5 hours, BME PhD Quals in about 9 days.. and currently in PHX awaiting my connection to Santa Barbara for the BioImage 2008 conference.

I however, just had to take some time out and write about how awesome the PHX international airport is. They bill themselves as the “friendliest airport”, and it really really is. They have really fast, and yet completely free internet access PLUS plenty of outlets! um.. now back to my fellowship essay.. be back after quals.

The Consumerist blog recently had an entry discussing the results of the 2007 J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Credit Card Satisfaction Survey. As expected, Capital One performed terribly, and American Express led the pack. What I don’t quite get is how the “Industry Average” beats so many banks. The only explanation I have is that there are a lot of small banks, all of which have very high satisfaction ratings. But then, shouldn’t J.D. Power at least make the bar graph more representative by showing the customer weighed average instead?

Consumerist also had another entry about Capital One.

Citing “Market Conditions” Capital One Raises Reader’s APR 4.99% to 13.5%.

I have had a Capital One Mastercard for about 10 years. My interest rate has been 4.99% for as long as I can remember. I received my statement for October to find that my interest rate had jumped from 4.99% to 13.5%.

I called Capital One to find out why. After a completely confusing phone tree and 10 minute wait, I got through to a real person who explained that the increase was not because of anything I did, but because Capital One made an “executive decision” to increase rates “for all cardholders” because of “recent market conditions.”

…

Now for anyone who has worked at Capital One M&A, I’m sure this entry is just hilarious. For that matter, I wouldn’t be surprised if I knew who was responsible for this decision =P

If you are in the tri-state area and are in anyway interested in startups, definitely drop by startup camp this Wednesday.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007
7:00 - 9:00 pm
For Your Imagination
22 West 27th Street
6th Floor

About This Event
MatchupCamp - matchmaking for startups - is all about startup networking, creating a place for ideas and talent to meet. There are many events matching professional services to startups - this one will focus on those looking to get their hands dirty and build something new. MatchupCamp has the sole objective of bringing together people looking to start, expend, or join a startup in New York (and the tri-state area).

Peerdecision will also be there looking for developers. Drop by and say hi if you plan to attend.

It’s been over a month since I last wrote an entry, but I promise I’ll explain why in later entries. What brought me out of hiding is the (very much expected, but still depressing) news that the Canadian Dollar has reached parity with the US Dollar yesterday morning (Thursday 09/20/2007).

Many probably no longer remembers this, but this is actually not the first time that the Canadian dollar has parity with the US Dollar. In fact, in the early 1970’s, the Canadian dollar was actually worth more.

I was actually in Canada in the last weekend for a wedding, and was already feeling the effect of the rapidly sinking US currency. McDonald’s dollar menu actually costs 1.39 in Toronto! Though the wedding itself was a great deal of fun, but wow things are now expensive in Canada!