Fredish Smörgåsbord

Since the performance of the otherwise beloved Posterous is as slow as molasses in my side of the earth, I am moving to Tumblr for upcoming chit-chats. Live long and prosper.

Patricia Ryan spoke in TED saying "Don't insist on English!" Ironically, it's only said by an English-speaking teacher to attract more attention than many others who had said the same thing before her in other languages.

Of course, this is a cultural, economical and even a political thing that goes against the real voice by people who speak something else.

IMHO, the ability to speak another official language is not enough to be proud of. If you can speak a dialect in a different culture, that really means something: you skip the things that the officials want you to know, you overcome language and cultural barriers to understand some other people who have been ignored by the majority.

You're really into something that can be called "exotic" in terms of intellectual and life.

I wish I could.

Having one of my worst online commerce experiences with GoDaddy.com.
Making a long story short: I bought a domain name there at a special price, and I scanned through the Web page to make sure I didn't check anything I don't want (it's actually a good practice when buying stuff online), and off it went.
A month later, I received an emailed invoice saying that I needed to pay for a service called "WebSite Tonight Economy - 5 Page Web Site - Renewal". No, I'd never need a "5-page Web site" from GoDaddy, and I was quite sure I didn't ask for it.
So I politely explained the situation to the customer support rep, and the guy generously agreed a refund. Wonderful.
Another month passed. This afternoon I found a sub-domain of it stopped working, and the main domain. So intuitively I checked out GoDaddy's DNS Manager. Guess what? The domains were gone. Nothing left, zip, nada.
Out of panic, I wrote an email to the customer service hoping for another wonderful experience. Time slipped by and nothing appeared in my inbox, and I had to go out; a short moment later my assistant forwarded me GoDaddy's Twitter account. Great, that's the true beauty of Web 3.0 (whatever). So I started a brief, rapid conversation with someone in Arizona (or Mumbai, whatever). The polite rep told me the domain won't be grabbed by others for now, but I have to go back to my computer for the rest of the work.
Returned to my desk, I logged into GoDaddy again just to find that I have a $400 charge waiting for me in the shopping cart. "External Redemption Fee for 5 domains", the item says. What? Is that word pronounced as "ransom"?
The rep claimed I "canceled" my domains a month ago, and I said no, I just asked for refund for a service I didn't by and never heard of. If purchasing the service was the premise of getting a cheap domain name and I've ignored the fine prints, I am fine with that; everyone needs to make some hard cash. However if it's really it, I do deserve a kind reminder when I was asking for the refund.
"I'm sorry sir, but canceling the service you didn't notice will kill your domain too; think twice about it." This is what I expect to hear from the polite rep, and I might swear to myself and pay for my own poor eyesight. But I went though all the communications but found no pre-strike warning. I am doomed.
In the last mail, I kindly asked for being waived from the $80 (for the only one domain I'd like to keep) "redemption fee" since I didn't have the intention to cancel my domains and no one can prove that I did. "Ignorance" was the word I use: someone's ignorance caused me trouble and my business suffered loss, and I don't think I am not the one who's really responsible.
So, here the story goes and I'm still waiting for the reply from the nice Dave (or Raj, whatever), and I'll definitely think more than twice before giving my business to GoDaddy again.

To those who happen to visit here by chance or from the Domino Project Street Team, "Hi!". This is a "soft-landing" entry for you to make sure you've come to the right place for Fred. :)

Since my stuff is mostly in Chinese on fredjame.com, this place serves mostly as a sideblog for clipping information and occassional English writing, so pardon me for lacking of inspirational articles like Seth Godin's, but I'm pretty sure that I do have something worthy on the Chinese site.

These days I have been preparing and participating the 2011 Taipei International Book Fair on behalf of my new digital publishing venture, Puomo.com, so the writing has become sparse since I spend more time on business communications, quality assurance and booth activities. After the Book Fair, I will allot more time and effort on the Project and see what I can do with you as it will definitely be a pleasure.

Feel free to drop me a note here, or follow me on Twitter (or in Chinese) and Facebook. Thanks!

This is a café in the heart of Taipei I patronize from time to time. It's a little bit noisy after 9pm (the time set by the local government allowing people to smoke in adult-only coffee shops) but so far has the right mix of chit-chats, drinks, atmosphere for both work and relax as well as tobacco consumption. 

Tonight, like many other evenings of fair weather, I rode my bike here, find a seat at the bar and pull out my MacBook Air to start editing stuff for my clients while watching CNN for the quasi-revolution in Egypt.

It's a peaceful night in a world of chaos.