Wrong. There was a left over balance of about $30 and they sent the bill to my old address even though the reason for getting a new account was because I MOVED – meaning, I will no longer be reached at the old address. More importantly, I was not aware of any one of these until a collection agency started calling me at 8 am and 11 pm and whenever they feel like to, I guess. They didn’t explain what the bill was for, so I made sure that all my AT&T balances were clear. But, I still got the calls twice a day each day, and after talking to AT&T for hours I found out that it was the left over balance from my closed account.

Of course this was found after waiting, being forwarded over 10 times, and being yelled at by a customer agent. The call got dropped several times too — not a surprise. Yeah, I spent my entire morning talking to those bastards who have 1000 different departments and nobody knows what they are doing.

I called back again at least to get some sort of an apology. No one was sorry. They said they were sorry that the post office didn’t forward the bill to my new address. (I did sign up for the mail forwarding service) WTF! What did I do wrong? Keeping the service with AT&T? Moving to a different part of town?

There was no partial refund, no sincere apology, but an extra $10 on my bill for paying late. That’s how they treat their valued customer, someone who paid hundreds of dollars a year for wireless and internet for several years now.

Fuck you, AT&T. I’m canceling your service today.

And those of you who are considering of changing your wireless company to AT&T to have an iPhone? Wait a few months, and go with Verizon. The wait it worthwhile. You will always have to wait 1+hr to talk to a customer agent who sort of knows what s/he’s talking about, get charged for all sorts of hidden fees, and your calls will drop (sometimes don’t even receive at all) so often that you can’t hold a conversation with someone else without a drop.

Oh, hello, Verizon.

It was the same for this exhibition. When I first saw the name, Monet on the flyer for the event, I was already figuring out when I could visit (although the painting on the flyer was by Renoir, and there are only 4 paintings of Monet that were brought in from Philadelphia).

The cover image of the exhibit. Mademoiselle Legrand 1875 -Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The exhibition demonstrated the gradual change from 19th Century’s realism to today’s modern art. The highlight was of course, the impressionism and cubism including Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, Sisely, Picasso, Miro etc. After visiting many contemporary art pieces in Europe, many of these artists were familiar, and it wasn’t too hard to distinguish the paintings. There were some famous pieces too that I could easily find from magazines or any art books.

To introduce some of my favorites:

Claude Monet - Antibes in the Morning

The colors that Monet used to depict the sun light reflected on the leaves were just absolutely astonishing. It’s a bit hard to see from this little thumbnail, but in the real painting, I could see all kinds of different colors — in dots — that formed the tree in the front. Also the sun set in the back ground, which matched with the greenish color of the water blended with the buildings, can’t make this painting any more serene. I think I was standing in front of this one for more than 10 minutes without saying a word.

Also, the painting above by Renoir was one of my favorites. Although he painted portraits for money, he could not made this little girl any more elegant in her own way. Her eyes captivated the shines from the stars, and the use of blue paints here and there made the painting more young and fresh.

There was another one by Pablo Picasso — which I could not find an image online — called women and children. There are three women in the picture drawn in his own unique style: meaning disproportionately big legs and arms, unbalanced eyes and nose, geometrical shapes that somehow form a body shape, and all these together you can guess that they are women because of their hair and bosoms.For some reason, the woman on the right side did not have a face. It was filled with dark grey paint and it almost seemed like had drawn something there before then angrily covered it with the dark paint.

One thing that I wondered while looking around these paintings was that does art strengthen our mental health? Or stabilize our turbulent minds? Many of the greatest artists such as Degas and Gogh were famous for their cold and grumpy nature. Yet, they’ve produced one of the most beautiful art pieces in the world that touched many viewers’ hearts. Especially Degas’ pastel tone paintings are so calm and suave that one would not guess that the painter’s personality was such nitpicking and unnecessarily critical. I guessed that through art, they could express their inner mind even the part that they cannot communicate with other people. Or art is their means of communications and by letting things out, they may feel a little more comfortable emotionally. I don’t know. It can be totally the opposite, and art could be the reason why they are so messed up.

Overall, the exhibition was pretty good. If I have to point out one thing the volume of the exhibition was honestly disappointing. I was hoping to see more of the impressionism, but there were too many random, unfitting pieces that distract the audience such as random Greek style sculptures and American pop arts. If this exhibition was an essay, I would say that it was a messy one that rendered around all kinds of different topics that are not linked to the thesis. Also, although they were selling the audio guides, lack of explanations made me think that compared to the value of the exhibition, the curators did not prepare so well. Most visitors do not rent the audio guides, and if they didn’t study what are being exhibited, these paintings carry no more meanings than seeing amateur street murals. More information could be found on their website but still the information was limiting: http://pma.chosun.com/

Tagged: Contemporary Art, Degas, 한가람미술관, 예술의전당, Korea, Monet, Picasso ]]> http://juneykoh.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/monet-to-picasso/feed/ 0 Juno Claude Monet - Antibes in the Morning http://juneykoh.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/arcattack-a-different-kind-of-a-band/ http://juneykoh.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/arcattack-a-different-kind-of-a-band/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:18:35 +0000 Juno http://juneykoh.wordpress.com/?p=72 ]]> Thanks to UT Physics, I got to see this amazing concert by ArcAttack in the UT main mall. For better description of who Arc Attack is I am going to quote the about page on their webiste.

“Creators of the original Singing Tesla Coils… Two custom engineered hand built Tesla Coils throw out electrical arcs up to twelve feet long, each one acting as an instrument with a sound reminiscent of the early days of the synthesizer. A robotic drum set accompanies the spectacle, it’s high power LED’s flashing bright colors with the stroke of each mechanically actuated stick, while ArcAttack’s six members churn out rhythmic instrumental melodies. Live instruments meet drum loops and samples to produce rock, electronica and indie with a splash of punk and a dash of metal served with a side of pop. During the show, the MC engages both the crowd and the Tesla Coils by walking through ½ Million Volt sparks wearing the relatively thin layer of his chain mail Faraday suit…”

In addition to this, for Austinites, this group was started in Austin with some crews from other states, and they performed at SXSW last year. Visit their website for more information: http://arcattack.com

The MC/host looked as if he’s got the world when he was “playing the music,” as his chill nature engaged the audience. The main mall was filled with the excited crowd whose age ranged from 4 to 70.

Here are some photos I took tonight. I felt like I was finally getting of all the lightening photos that I missed in the past.

I’ve uploaded a few more photos on Flickr, and you can be redirected just by clicking my Flickr widget below ↓

Some fun Youtube videos to watch:

Imperial March

Super Mario

Also by playing this little program , you can see how ArcAttack creates their music: http://arcattack.com/stce.php

TAGlines is a full-service student-run advertising agency at the University of Texas at Austin. We mostly work with Austin local businesses such as Storyville Austin, CollegeHouses, Best Buddies and Aruba Tan, and there are about 20 people working on different accounts (bigger than a lot of the agencies in Austin!). Since TAGlines’ main purpose is for the students to learn and gain the real-world industry experiences, we formed the group just as how other ad agencies work. We have five different teams with one or two directors who supervises the process for each team: Account Planning, Account Services, Creative, Media and Interactive. With a given budget, we research, plan, present, execute and measure the success. Throughout the process, we learn things that we normally wouldn’t get to do in a typical internship. Although we have directors, the members are eventually the ones who actually make things happen.

I’ve been the Media Director of TAGlines for the past 3 months, and fortunately got to keep the position for the Spring semester as well. Until this year, TAGlines had a negative reputation for not being well organized. Some ex-members had conflicts with each other and expressed that TAGlines was just another unnecessary stressful extra work they had to do. And, that was what I decided to change when I first acquired the position. I started contacting local vendors so that we could arrange some meetings for the media planners to see how media planning and buying works from the top. Also, meeting with the real vendors made them realize that this is not a school project; it’s a real business. Before the campaign planning really kicked off, I started giving them individual assignments so that they can be comfortable in the whole social media world and start looking up news and the trends by themselves. I tried to be flexible with everyone’s schedule and not to impose too much work on them. I made sure that everyone was having fun and actually learning something useful although that might mean that I would have to work extra five hours for them. Hearing feedbacks, I think my plan went pretty successful, and our client was pleased with the final media plan we presented.

Although this semester’s TAGlines was pretty successful, we have a long way to go to become more professional and to establish a firm framework/ environment for next generations to follow.

1. Motivation: Because we don’t get paid nor get credit for doing this, we need some sort of a motivation. Maybe we can talk to the department to accept TAGlines as an internship credit (we would have to present to them what exactly we do and examples of our work). Or we can create more ranks so that people would wanna work harder to get promoted and put the title on the resume.  Having assistant director positions would be ideal.
2. Archive: The  members do not have an access to our previous works. We need to have a wiki page or at least a Google group where people can just look up what we did in the previous semesters and learn indirectly. Also instead of creating new forms (such as ppt layouts, flowcharts, buy specs, RFPs etc.) each semester, we need to have TAGlines branded forms that we can consistently use.
3. New teams: Each semester, we are getting new clients and bigger budgets. We need have some new teams in order to extend our services and to diversify the group. The ones we need the most right now are: Search and PR.
4. Recruiting: Although we’ve been fortunate and have been getting a lot of good applications, we might not be reaching some real talents. We need to start recruiting earlier and also have team directors involve in selecting their own team members. Also, the application form is very generic and not good enough to tell if the candidate is fit for the position. We can give them a little more room to show off their creativity.
5. Budget: Because TAGlines have no budget, we cannot do a lot of cool stuff like experimenting the new trends. A lot of people already visit TAG’s website to read news, to check out new job + internship opportunities etc. We can sell some ad spaces on the TAG’s website and get more funding for TAGlines. (And this calls for a new Marketing Sales team)

These are some of the things that I can think of on top of my head, but please feel free to add some suggestions so that we can create a better environment for TAGliners.

My lazy ass didn’t even wanna leave the apartment to rent movies, so I decided to try Netflix’s new movie recommendations and their instant streaming service that Nick was talking about a few days ago. After rating over 150 movies and seeing over 100 (approx) list of movies that are recommended (hm), I decided to watch Sleepless in Seattle, which now have become one of the classics in my opinion (although I had never watched until now).  Also, maybe because of the recent weather… or the season, I have been wanting to watch cheesy chick flicks that are so ideal that it’s not realistic.

The main characters were played by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Although they had that funky 90s style, their acting was still good and remained attractive throughout the movie. The movie was filmed in three major U.S. cities: Baltimore, New York and Seattle. I’m a big NY lover, and I had to gasp every single time they showed the Empire State building or any of the Manhattan scenes.

What I really liked about the movie was how it played around another famous movie, An Affair to Remember. It was almost like a remake of this classic but without the parts that we didn’t like. Also, it showed girls react more honestly to chick flicks and sensible stories than guys, even though guys feel and cry for the same thing. For example, Sam acted like he didn’t understand why so many women cried while listening to how he loved his wife, he was the one who provided the source of sadness, and he couldn’t let his wife go for a long time. Also, before he started talking on the radio, he first asked “how long is your show” which tells me that he wants to share his feelings with the radio listeners and be sympathized.

Overall, the storyline was very pretty, but as I expected it made no sense. First of all, out of some thousands of letters Sam got, how can his 8 year old son distinguish a good and sincere letter from all the bed letters when he can’t even write well? Also, the timings were just so coincidental. In order not to ruin the movie for the ones who haven’t seen the movie, I will stop here, but I can go on for on and on.

However, this movie made me wonder, really, is there a such thing as magic when you meet the one? Basically, this magic happens when you meet the one of your life. You know it right away and you will start seeing signs. I had never believed in true love until college and thought there’s an expiration date on love which was 3 years, max. But recently, I’ve been hearing so much of this magic that it’s making me think again. Even though these comments used to make me laugh in the past, when there are so many people confess that they’ve had the same experience, it is real after all.

Here are a few other movie recommendations from Netflix and also from me, if you like movies like Sleepless in Seattle.

You’ve Got Mail – the same actors

What Women Want

August Rush

Serendipity

The Holiday

Starting from the group’s name, 2NE1, you have to read the name in English, other wise it will not make sense — in Korean it would be ee-ee-ehn-il. Two of the girl’s names are also very Americanized: CL and Sandara. 50% of the song is already in English and the rest of the lyrics are pronounced with a heavy American accent. If you just listen to the first 20 sec of the music, you might have guessed that it’s just another American hip-hop music. The intro scene is also very similar to other American music videos. Is Korea becoming a copy-cat and losing their own true color, or would this actually lead us to a greater culture?

4A’s Labor Billing Survey Shows Little Geographic Variability for Most Industry Positions — Except for Heavy Hitters

Posted by Rupal Parekh on 10.01.09 @ 07:00 PM

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Chief creative officers at large U.S. agencies, on average, billed $964 an hour to clients in 2008, while top account and media executives billed an average of $533 and $478 an hour, respectively.

Those are just a few of the enlightening figures contained in a soon-to-be widely available 117-page survey conducted by the 4A’s that details labor billing practices at ad agencies around the country.

In the past, the trade group has compiled and distributed such information for its membership, but never shared it broadly. Tom Finneran, exec VP-agency management services at the 4A’s, said the decision to spread the data comes partly because the organization has been inundated with requests for information about labor billing rates. It also wants to provide credible benchmarks for these fees — which, for all the talk of value-based models — are still the predominant form of agency compensation today.

“Everyone is seeing requests for proposals more and more ask for rate comparison data … clients are looking for ways to do their due diligence and to have some kind of market-based information,” said Neal Grossman, chief operating officer at TBWA/Chiat/Day in Marina Del Rey, Calif., who also serves as chair of the 4A’s large-agency finance committee. At the same time, agencies are increasingly under pressure to show that the labor rates they charge are competitive with the marketplace, as clients’ procurement departments play a bigger role in selecting agency partners.

The 4A’s culled data for the report from its members between May and August 2009, asking them about hourly rates billed to clients in 2008 for some 130 positions across 14 service departments, such as creative, media services, account planning, research and print production.

Bigger picture
Over 230 marketing agencies of varying sizes, geographies and specialties responded to the survey, though the majority netted out to be full-service shops. Among the ones represented in the study: BBDO, TBWA/Chiat/Day, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, McCann Erickson, Digitas, MediaVest, JWT, Y&R and Carat.

It’s important to note that the rates reflected in the survey are what agencies quote on their “rate cards,” and the rates actually negotiated by clients may come in lower. Still, it’s a pretty comprehensive snapshot of how much marketers are paying for agency labor. It offers data points for four different regions of the country, average labor-billing rates and mid-range data for rates (kind of like Olympic scoring, it knocks off the 20% of the highest rates and 20% of the lowest rates).

The survey reveals just how much geography can affect billing differences for highest-level positions, though that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference for mid-level or junior positions.

In 2008, a director of client services in the New York Metro area billed an average of $453 an hour compared toh $260 an hour at agencies in the middle part of the country, while an account supervisor billed clients between $140 or $150 on average, no matter where they were located in the country.

Some other geographical differences: An executive director of account planning in the New York Metro area billed $545 vs. between $315 to $355 in other parts of the country. Research directors in the South made about $277 per hour vs $520 in the New York Metro area last year.

With a top creative, the disparity in billing rates is huge: A chief creative based in the New York Metro area billed an average of $751 an hour last year — more than double what a chief creative in other parts of the Eastern U.S. or in the South billed, at $319 an hour. In the central part of the country, a head creative billed an average of $420 an hour, and in the West, an average of $461.

Not typical
David Beals, president-CEO at industry consultancy Jones Lundin Beals, estimates that “very senior positions at large agencies are rarely billed out for more than a percent or two of the person’s time … if a person at this level bills more than 25 to 50 hours of time to a given client, it would be rather unusual for most of the agency’s client relationships.”

Based on the 4A’s survey, that nets out to a minimum of more than $18,000 billed to a client for a top creative in the New York Metro area.

For all the talk about media agencies becoming a more valued partner during the recession, they’re not compensated nearly as much as other positions: An executive media director at a media agency bills a mid-range high of $500 and low of $281, while a media buyer makes a mid-range high of $100 and a low of $65.

According to Mr Beals, the numbers track with agency labor-compensation trends for several years: “Typically, the creative folks make the most money on a per-hour basis — though sometimes a really good strategic planner will be right up there too — followed by account services, then media services tend to be the lowest paid.”

As digital talent continues to become more sought-after, the trend is probably more in a state of flux, Mr. Beals said. In 2008, the range of hourly billing rates at digital specialist agencies was between about $400 an hour for the senior-most roles and $85 an hour for the most junior.

To obtain a copy of the report, contact Helen Miranda at the 4A’s.

2008 Hourly Billing Rates