Ghibli Museum Mitaka
As a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli (think of an older distant Japanese cousin of Pixar), I had always wanted to visit _the_ Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan, and I finally made it there nearing the end of my Japan trip this year.
We took JR Chuo Rapid line from Tokyo station to Mitaka station, then followed by a ride on the museum’s bus which took us directly to the entrance of the museum. Ghibli Museum was not your typical museum with exhibits that you could only look from a distance. There, the visitors were encouraged to explore everything throughout the museum.
The view right after getting off the bus. You can see the giant soldier robot from Castle in the Sky on the rooftop.
These animation cels were used as tickets to watch Studio Ghibli’s short films, exclusively screened at the museum’s Saturn Theater. They were showing Pan Dane to Tamago Hime at that time.
The best part of the museum for me was the Preproduction Room display, specially the imageboard sketch drawing desk. I also enjoyed spotting references to Porco Rosso, my most favourite Studio Ghibli film of them all. The food at Straw Hat Cafe was surprisingly delicious and quite filling.
Actually, we almost didn’t make it to the museum. Following the earthquakes and the nuclear power plant incident, we cancelled our plan to stay in Tokyo for the second half of the trip, i.e. no Ghibli Museum visit.
Four days before the end of the trip, we were supposed to return to Kyoto from Hiroshima. But then we thought, what the heck, let’s go to Tokyo for a day just to visit the Ghibli Museum. So we did, we took the shinkansen all the way from Hiroshima to Tokyo early in the morning, visited the museum in Mitaka, then caught the last shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto. It was worth it.
9h Nine Hours Kyoto Teramachi
Right after the tiring 30 hours extended journey from Melbourne to Kyoto, I spent the first night in Japan at an awesome capsule inn called 9h nine hours Kyoto Teramachi. I found out about nine hours from Trip Advisor, and was soon sold on the idea of staying there after checking out nine hours website and saw the photo gallery – seriously, you have to check out those pictures.
What I liked the most about nine hours was its simplistic and really well done interior design in such a limited space, the fact that I had one of the best sleeps of my life ever, right there inside one of those capsules, was secondary.
I’m one of those people who have a thing about proper spacing in a simplistic design, so being there at nine hours was like being in a mini sanctuary for me. Everything was properly designed, the signs, the lockers, the mini lounge, the colours, the elevators, the doors, the capsules, the water bottles, the sleeping jumpsuits, the showers, the tiles, and even the toilets. I took dozens of pictures of the little details of this place, but as luck played out, I lost pretty much all of them when my laptop was stolen :(.
And here are a few that survived. Let’s start with the inside of the capsule.
My favourite feature of the capsule was the ambient light that could be configured on the black panel. The light gradually turned dark when I was ready to go to sleep, and gradually turned bright moments before my wake up time.
The corridor with the capsules on the left. The cyan lighting did give the impression that a drone from the Borg collective was going to show up from the other end.
The reception area in the morning, notice the graphic signs on the floor. Various graphical signs were scattered on the floor and on the wall of nine hours. Those signs were cleverly designed that they were descriptive enough without any textual explanation.
Minimalism and simplicity at work!
Watching TV Needs To Be A More Social Experience
Disclaimer: the title is just a disguise for feature request/suggestion to the fine folks at Apps Perhaps. But I do really think that watching TV should be more social over the web, and Apps Perhaps’ OzTV iPhone app hopefully has the opportunity to turn this into reality.
Four hours ago I started watching the gran finale of Iron Chef series run on SBS, Hiroyuki Sakai vs Alain Passard (it was awesome!), and the first thing I did after the show finished an hour later was to search for “Iron Chef” on Twitter, I wanted to find out other people’s comments regarding the episode. Sure I found many related tweets, but the search result was polluted by some other tweets about Iron Chef in general and had nothing to do with that particular episode.
That led me to think, wouldn’t it be nice if OzTV app is able to filter those tweets? What about knowing how many people are planning to watch the show before it airs? And to push it further into the realtime realm, how about finding out who else is watching a show when it airs? Think location check-in a la Facebook Places and Foursquare, but this one is for TV shows, click the “I’m watching Iron Chef” button and have a conversation with other Iron Chef fans using Twitter via OzTV app (purely just my imagination at this stage).
I first realised that us Australians do like to tweet about popular TV shows when Masterchef became a global Twitter trend for the first time. That’s when I started thinking that watching a TV show is actually (A) a gathering of people (B) with a common interest (C) at distributed locations. There got to be a way to turn those tweets (and any other form of online conversations about a TV show) into valuable statistics. What’s the most popular TV show today? this week? this month? Which TV show has the most number of people planning to watch it? or commenting about it when it airs? or liking it when the show is finished?
Having those statistics allows us to reveal more interesting information than the existing one dimensional TV rating system in Australia. Social sites like Twitter enables parts of the data, OzTV app is in a good position to enable the aggregation of those data along with their own data, and turn them into valuable statistics.
To add some substance, here are some ideas on how each feature might be implemented:
- Conversation / filtering tweets about a TV show: generate a hashtag derived from the name of the show plus a prefix, e.g. #ozironchef, or identify the tweets mentioning the name of the show with geolocation of the place where the show airs at the time.
- How many people are planning to watch a TV show: count the number of OzTV reminders against the show, or add an “I want to watch this” button.
- How many people are watching a TV show: have an “I’m watching this” button, or count the number of people tweeting about the show when it airs.
- Most popular TV shows: count the number of likes, conversations, etc, against the shows, rank them over periods of time. Perhaps TV channels would be interested to have their shows featured on OzTV app a la promoted tweets.
Pushing my luck, and this depends on the quality of the data that OzTV app has, it would also be cool if the TV show page on OzTV app also lists the Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of the people involved with the show. E.g. Masterchef page displays the Twitter account of the show hosts and contestants.
Watching TV needs to be a more social experience. The question is whether applications like OzTV app will morph from a content provider into a community of Facebook and Twitter users? I understand that, at the end of the day, it all depends on whether the users will use those theoretical features on OzTV app or not, and whether those users will get some benefit out of using those features. But if we look back at the number of people tweeting about Masterchef combined with the popularity of OzTV app, a social OzTV might just work.
Do one thing and do it well. Taking my thinking hat off, I can understand that OzTV app might want to fully concentrate on being the best TV guide it can be. Instead of worrying about the social aspect of watching TV, there are still so many other things it can do, many platforms to expand to, like iPad, Android, Windows Phone, etc. Let’s see how many years, if ever, social TV can become a reality.
Any chance of getting a VC funding, hiring more people, and making social TV happen sooner?
Update (09/07/2011): Twelevision has solved the conversation part of social TV.
Gone In 30 Seconds
What happened? (I lost my favourite laptop)
I was using my laptop to sort my travel photos during a flight from Kansai to Kuala Lumpur. I put my laptop in the seat pocket in front of me right before the plane landed. I was one of the last few passengers getting off the plane, I had a large backpack and two smaller travel bags with me. It was when I approached the gate that I realised that I had forgotten my laptop. I ran back through the bridge into the body of the plane. I passed several flight attendants and explained what happened. One of them kindly accompanied me to look for my laptop. But the laptop was not there. The cleaners and the caterers were already inside the plane but no one saw my laptop. I lost my laptop in just 30 seconds after I left my seat.
What then followed? (incompetence, disappointment)
The cleaners told me that it got to be one of the passengers, while some of the cabin crew members and ground service staffs suspected that it could be one of the cleaners. What then followed was confusing to me. I was in Kuala Lumpur only for a three hour transit. Some of the flight attendants kindly took me to Malaysia Airlines information service booth, the staffs manning the booth then suggested me to clear customs to report to their Lost and Found department. I filed a report there and was told to call them again half an hour before boarding. I had to pass customs again to return to International departure area. At whatever downtime I had, I frantically changed my passwords (email services, social services, various websites) using an iPhone. News flash: filling in multiple web forms on an iPhone wasn’t a pleasant experience. At the agreed time, I gave the Lost and Found department a call and was told that no one handed in the laptop. Seriously WTF? They only waited for someone to hand the laptop to them?
Not wanting to miss the next flight to Melbourne, I then agreed to contact them again from Melbourne, Australia. That night I couldn’t sleep at all on the plane, knowing that I lost thousands of photos from my Japan travel, photos of my parents when they visited me in Melbourne late last year, photos of my brother’s citizenship ceremony, photos of my travel with my parents to my mom’s home town, which she hadn’t visited in 45 years, last year, absolutely priceless. I also lost many days worth of code (note to self: git push more). I guess I could eventually redo those code, but I couldn’t rerun those travel experiences. It sucks. May the person who stole the laptop rot in the abyss.
When I arrived in Melbourne, I went to Menzies, an Australian company that provides ground service for several airlines including Malaysia Airlines, they have an office at the airport. I also went to Victoria police office to get an advice on how to proceed with filing a police report in my situation, they suggested me to get Malaysia Airlines’ assistance to file a police report in Malaysia. At home I called Menzies again, asking them to contact Malaysia Airlines Kuala Lumpur. I kept having to call Menzies to ask for the status of my report for the following two days, but the answer from Kuala Lumpur was always ‘No change.’ I also sent an email to one of their Australian contact persons, I was promised that their ‘Melbourne Traffic Department’ would assist me, but no one actually contacted me, ever. That day I also called Apple customer care to report the serial number of my laptop and they marked it as a stolen property.
Four days after the incident, I made several international calls to Malaysia Airlines Kuala Lumpur to complain about their poor customer service. Why did I have to call them to get updates? Why didn’t they email me on a daily basis? Why did they not reply my emails? Why did they only passively wait for someone to hand in the laptop?
After talking to several Malaysia Airlines staff, I called a Kuala Lumpur police station and tried to file a police report. They ended up asking me to describe the incident via email (one of the officers’ Yahoo! account *sigh*), and I also sent them a scan of my passport along with some personal details. But to this day, I have not received any confirmation from them about the report, let alone a police case number.
What should Malaysia Airlines have done? (you call that customer service? be more proactive!)
One thing that bothered me a lot to this day is that Malaysia Airlines took the situation too lightly, they should’ve done more.
A crime occured on a Malaysia Airlines aircraft. Someone took my property, that’s a friggin’ criminal activity on their aircraft! Why didn’t they do anything more about it than waiting passively?
If they suspected one of the passengers took my laptop, then Malaysia Airlines staffs should’ve cooperated with KLIA staffs and checked the security camera footage around the gate area of my flight.
If they suspected one of the cleaners or caterers took my laptop, then they should’ve screened those cleaners and caterers before they got off the plane.
If they acknowledged that a crime had occurred on their aircraft, then they should’ve accompanied me to the nearest police station to file a police report.
All the above should’ve been done within one hour, instead of just telling me that there’s no one handing in a laptop or that they still need to cross check with their other departments, four days after the incident, and the customer (me) ended up having to make several international calls.
I wish Malaysia Airlines staffs could put themselves in my position and put more effort.
What’s good out of this experience? (some positive points)
I like to thank one of the Malaysia Airlines flight attendants, Ms Sachie Tamada (or Takada, I can’t remember her exact surname), who proactively helped me look for my laptop and accompanied me all the way to the Malaysia Airlines information service, even though it was not her task to do so.
I like to thank officer Awan (sp?) who took my request to file a police report while the other officers seemed to pass my call around.
I appreciate Malaysia Airlines Lost and Found department supervisor/manager whom I talked to on my last international call, who, at the very end, apologized for the poor customer service they provided and promised to take it up to higher management.
And Stewart, the dude from Apple customer care who answered my call, who was really sympathetic with what happened and even asked for details of the situation. I appreciate the Apple-camaraderie.
tl;dr
13″ MacBook Pro – A$1698
Travel and family photos – Priceless
Now I know how it feels to lose a laptop, first a feeling of void, followed by a massive disappointment, then finally acceptance.
I’ll never fly Malaysia Airlines again, not because my laptop was stolen, but because of this poor customer service experience.
Update: Luckily, I still have some of the Japan photos on the camera’s SD cards, that means I ‘only’ lost 4000 Japan photos -.-, and the rest of the family photos :(.
Update (13/04/2011): Thanks to comments from Jen, I would like to make it clear that I didn’t blame Malaysia Airlines for losing my laptop, I blamed myself for the 30-second concentration lapse, and I blamed the person who stole my laptop. However, I do think that their customer service performed below standard, hence I provided the feedback above and in my replies to Jen.
Also many thanks to Jen for describing the industry standard in details. Another lesson out of this experience would be, be extra careful when you’re in transit, because clearly the international aviation industry standard won’t be on your side, as you’re only seen as a Tom, Dick, or Harry, it is too expensive to assist you further.
More Update: I created a tumblog to document my effort to somehow get my laptop back. http://thisunclehasmymacbook.tumblr.com Please spread the word.