Creative office decorating

I visited an old friend recently. During this visit I had the pleasure of spending some time in his office to discuss some business. Although his propositions were interesting, I simply could not stop admiring the things he had hanging around his office. Outside of this entry in a blog I viewed recently, the things I have seen in this office definitely merit the best and craziest decoration I have seen.

He uses an old Pentium II as a pen holder. The hinges on the side are the perfect width to fit pen and pencils in between. Not to mention he has a weird sculpture standing right beside it.

He has a sword back from the days of Christopher Columbus and the Spanish conquest, hanging right next to a replica of a samurai katana. Since I'm an anime buff, you can imagine how I was drooling over the katana as soon as I entered the office.

There is also a gun from the remotes to the same time as the "conquistador" sword. I have no idea if it's a gun, a musket, or how exactly it worked. It's rusted by now, so you can't even pull it's trigger. He uses it as a paperweight!!

Last, but not least, the strangest of all images. He has a small cactus standing right beside a water vase. I have no idea if he has a new age, balance of nature, or four elements of the earth thingie going on. What ever it is, I found the contrast intriguing. What's more is that the vase has some bubbles, so from the outside it makes the liquid seam gelatinous.

I need to get some tips from my old buddy when I get an office and start buying furniture.

I have to admit, Chinese restaurants have always had to use ingenuity in order to keep their business going with the level of efficiency that characterizes them. None the less, this is a first for me.

This is a chair from Chinese place, near my glorious (sarcasm) work building. It at first surprised me, but then I remembered I was in the land where anything is possible.. I just found it too funny to keep to myself.

In all fairness, the chair is standing, holds the necessary weight, the solution is cheap, and does not consume much more space than a more "elegant" alternative.

The things 30 cents can get you.

...






























Just to make sure we are all on the same boat, let me clarify the title just a little bit. The American dollar is the universal currency, or at least that's true for this hemisphere. The "30 cents" in the tittle reflect the equivalent to approximately 30 cents in American currency. Are we cool? Great!

We have Kentucky Fried Chicken here, and a bunch of the other fast food franchises. They recently had a ten year anniversary (in the country) and to celebrate every item on the menu was been sold for ten pesos. What was the result?

Now, my first reaction when seeing the crowd was "Are they giving away food?!". I asked an employee at one of the other abandoned restaurants and he informed me of the festivities.

While I am all for human generosity, philanthropy and extreme marketing campaigns where the consumer is benefited in this fashion, my pessimistic gut just doesn't let me buy this. My theories:

• They had a shipment of chicken which was just about to go bad and needed to get rid of it quickly before it completely lost it's value.
• KFC really does clone chicken and they don't care at what price they sell it since they can mass produce it at a ridiculously low price.
• All these chickens have avian flu, and they need to get rid of the evidence. A franchise like this can't be caught with infected animals in it's food supply chain.
• This was a huge mistake or something taken out of context. By the time someone in charge got a hold of the plans, it was too late to turn things around.

I tried to take several pictures from different angles to give you some scope of the length of the line. This line easily had 200 - 300 people. Maybe even more. And this was just one of they local KFC's. From what I've heard, they have all been like this.

Paying less is better than paying more. If we could get things free (assuming quality and other factors remain constant) we wouldn't bother paying. I may be an idiot, and this may be a very good business tactic to raise sales. That day a bunch of people went to KFC that probably have never visited before, or are not that frequent at the establishment. This can familiarize clients and make then frequent consumers. What do I know.

We are not starving in this country. Minimum wage is not that hot, but it can at least get you some food. So it's safe to discard that this is a line filled by homeless people and hungry kids. In fact I saw the same people in ties, ID's in their shirt pockets and briefcases I see everyday. These are people on their lunch break. In the end, people can't say no to a bargain. They need to seize the opportunity, or else they are missing out on something which simply will not be available to them later on. Retail stores have for ever used this to attract consumers. How many times has your sister/wife/mother felt the extreme urge to buy a piece of clothing because it was 40% off?

What do you think?

Since I'm already doing it, I thought I should share it!

A big shout out to the three people that read my main blog tamgo.blogspot.com (not including myself!). If you are not in this group and think the last sentence is pathetic, give me a break! Three is better than zero!

Why another blog? Three reasons:

• The other blog is for posting stuff I am generally pissed off about in the tech world. Although it is pretty much open for any type of commentary. I've read a couple of article's recommendations of opening multiple blogs in order to widen your writing skills as well as forcing your self to think outside of the box and do more research. I really don't buy it, but I'll try it any way.
• The second reason is that I have the following habit. Every time I see a particular event which I find funny, unbelievable or just plain awesome I take a picture with my camera phone, and share it with my close friends. If you are not from around here, you will be surprised with some of the stuff that happens on a day to day basis. This is just an extension of that.
  
• Third a have a close friend who has some sort of strange personal/religious/new era/superstition thingie about cell phones. He just simply hates, them. What's more is that he doesn't understand why we need them. The irony in this situation is that he works for one of the big telecoms! In any case, this is a perfect way to prove him wrong. My camera phone (which has horrible shutter speed, and not so great resolution so please start complaining now) will be great as the main feed of information for the things that we bear witness to in this land.

This probably wont be updated as frequently, but will definitely be worth the wait. If any of you have any photos that fit the criteria, please send them to me, I'll be more than happy to post them.

In any case, thanks for reading and enjoy.