- My best friend
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Work + Save = Travel
"i just have the feeling your gonna b australia = work, save money ... travel for a year... come back work save .. travel"
- My best friend
- My best friend
Monday, 12 September 2011
Fame or Fortune?
"If you could be either rich or famous, which one would you rather be?" asked my friend rather suddenly.
"Famous," I decided. Because for me, fame is a form of immortality. You live for as long as someone remembers you.
Imagine if everything you ever thought or did was reduced to nothing. Like you never existed.
This very fear of being forgotten has borne some of the biggest monuments known to mankind. Pyramids. Palaces. Cathedrals. Statues. The bigger the better, because the more people see it, the more they'll be reminded, and the less they'll forget.
But without any slaves under my power or a royal bloodline behind me, I'd love to be remembered for my writing. I'd love knowing that centuries from now someone would still be reading the very words I put together and stir their thoughts from my grave.
And what about you, dear reader? Fame or fortune?
Love, Noeline
xox
"Famous," I decided. Because for me, fame is a form of immortality. You live for as long as someone remembers you.
Imagine if everything you ever thought or did was reduced to nothing. Like you never existed.
This very fear of being forgotten has borne some of the biggest monuments known to mankind. Pyramids. Palaces. Cathedrals. Statues. The bigger the better, because the more people see it, the more they'll be reminded, and the less they'll forget.
But without any slaves under my power or a royal bloodline behind me, I'd love to be remembered for my writing. I'd love knowing that centuries from now someone would still be reading the very words I put together and stir their thoughts from my grave.
And what about you, dear reader? Fame or fortune?
Love, Noeline
xox
Sunday, 11 September 2011
How to pay for dinner and still be an asshole
When dating there are guys who pay for everything, guys who pay half, and guys who pay nothing.
But there's also the kind who'll shout groups of friends to show who's boss, then plan a date with his girlfriend and ask her to take care of the bill upon its arrival. Who is he really dating in this situation?
There's also the confused guy fighting an inner battle. One side of him wants to be all modern and advocate equality of the sexes by going Dutch, and the other side of him wants to be all romantic and gentlemanly by paying for everything. So as a coping mechanism against footing the bill he'll complain about how much of a rip off everything is and how much better his mum can make the same dish. He'll count how many hours he worked to pay for the meal in front of you, and how much money that leaves him for the rest of the week and how now he can't buy the pair of shoes he's been eyeing for the past couple of weeks. Then before you know it you realise you lost your sense of taste about five mouthfuls ago. He's been barging on so much now it's impossible to enjoy your food and everything was just a stupid waste of time and money.
Guys, whatever you decide, be graceful about it.
Love, Noeline
xox
But there's also the kind who'll shout groups of friends to show who's boss, then plan a date with his girlfriend and ask her to take care of the bill upon its arrival. Who is he really dating in this situation?
There's also the confused guy fighting an inner battle. One side of him wants to be all modern and advocate equality of the sexes by going Dutch, and the other side of him wants to be all romantic and gentlemanly by paying for everything. So as a coping mechanism against footing the bill he'll complain about how much of a rip off everything is and how much better his mum can make the same dish. He'll count how many hours he worked to pay for the meal in front of you, and how much money that leaves him for the rest of the week and how now he can't buy the pair of shoes he's been eyeing for the past couple of weeks. Then before you know it you realise you lost your sense of taste about five mouthfuls ago. He's been barging on so much now it's impossible to enjoy your food and everything was just a stupid waste of time and money.
Guys, whatever you decide, be graceful about it.
Love, Noeline
xox
Thursday, 28 July 2011
The etiquette of borrowing money
Don't you hate it, how quick some people are to borrow money, and how slow they can be at returning it? The power play is reversed and suddenly we're the ones embarrassing ourselves as we try to find ways of casually reminding them of their debt.
Borrowers with no regard of paying people back as soon as possible tend to be the kind of people with little value for money – probably spoilt. What they don't understand is that their friend is compromising their own spending habits while they do without the money they lent. Even if it was just sitting in the bank, that's interest lost. If it was something substantially expensive like a concert ticket bought over the internet with a credit card, that's interest being charged.
You think it's an even exchange frozen in time. In reality they're losing more money than they lent you. And they probably value your friendship too much to bring it up and make you feel guilty about it.
That person did you a favour. It's not up to you to pay them back at your convenience. If you can afford to be shopping, drinking, clubbing and going out to dinner in the interim – then you can afford to pay that person back.
Love, Noeline
xox
Borrowers with no regard of paying people back as soon as possible tend to be the kind of people with little value for money – probably spoilt. What they don't understand is that their friend is compromising their own spending habits while they do without the money they lent. Even if it was just sitting in the bank, that's interest lost. If it was something substantially expensive like a concert ticket bought over the internet with a credit card, that's interest being charged.
You think it's an even exchange frozen in time. In reality they're losing more money than they lent you. And they probably value your friendship too much to bring it up and make you feel guilty about it.
That person did you a favour. It's not up to you to pay them back at your convenience. If you can afford to be shopping, drinking, clubbing and going out to dinner in the interim – then you can afford to pay that person back.
Love, Noeline
xox
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Chequebook
The following is an appropriated exceprt from an essay I did last year. I’m not an academic (yet) but it was marked by one or a few, and I got a Distinction if that helps my credibility. Thought I’d share it with you all while Facebook is still timely and hasn’t been usurped by Twitter yet.
“Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life” (Facebook 2008), and then some. You may or may not have noticed the banner ads on the right hand side of your home page. But just how much you’ve been sucked into them might give us an indication of how well Facebook fulfils its purpose as a White Pages for third party businesses – a database of “sixty million active members” (Krivac 2008, p. 41).
From an economic perspective, the pitfalls of broadcast advertising, which saw the wasted energy of companies “pushing their message to consumers who would never buy their product” is alleviated by “niche communities [who] put the consumer at the beginning” (Digital Branding 2008). This is a major theme captured by Hirst and Harrison (2007) who argue that
Facebook's Beacon records the “clickstream” (Hirst 2007, p. 285), or browsing patterns of its members through the use of cookies: “a small, unobtrusive piece of software… used to track preferences when visiting that website… [to construct] a profile of the computer user” (Hirst and Harrison 2007, p. 284). Facebook would then advertise similar searches on the ‘News Feed’ of the individual and their network of friends.
On the receiving end, members claim that their personal details were exploited for capitalist gain. For example, Chris Nash reveals that Facebook makes money by “extract[ing] information from people’s private to private communications” (2008, 3:30min)* and sell it to advertisers, as well as businesses for the purpose of screening potential employees. Yet, “the supporters of free-market data-mining argue that they are only trying to satisfy consumer demand” (Hirst and Harrison 2007, p. 326).
With legal policies slow to catch up, the government “must be careful that it does not appear to be too hastily doing the bidding of the major commercial players” (Hirst and Harrison 2007, p. 279). But when “personal data become the lawful property of Internet firms, and of their clients” (Castells 2001, p. 174) to ”monopol[ise] control over the information… so that it can tax advertisers wishing to reach these individuals at the highest possible rate” (New Era of Advertising Hinges on the Free Flow of Information 2007) - an ethico-legal paradox becomes apparent.
From personal experience, when I started posting status updates about the large amount of food I ate that day, I was bombarded with weight loss ads such as the ones below.
While posting comments to my friend about the PCD concert, I was quick to receive this.
Oh, and they also know that I love to write.
Don’t believe me? Let me introduce you to my best friend Jeremy. He’s Asian and he likes basketball. Keen to move out of home, he recently searched real estate online. “Bingo!” shouted Facebook.
As can be seen, socialisation within a virtual landscape brings with it issues of ownership, control, ethics, privacy; and the disclosure of consumer buying habits, preferences and personal details. But is the invasion of our privacy a fair price to pay for keeping up with our friends?
I wonder what ad I’ll get next. Anti-spyware software, perhaps? How close do your Facebook ads hit home? Tell us by clicking on the ‘comment’ link below.
SOURCES
2007, ‘New Era of Advertising Hinges on the Free Flow of Information’, Marketing Week, 15 November, p. 22.
2008, Digital Branding: Close friends, New Media Age, London.
Castells, M. 2002, The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society, Oxford, New York.
Hirst, M. and Harrison, J. 2007, Communication and New Media: From Broadcast to Narrowcast, Oxford, Victoria.
Price, J. 2008, Facebook: Making Friends or Making Sales?, Facebook Podcast Part 1: Jenna talks to Chris Nash, Communication and Information Environments, University of Technology, Sydney.
Krivac, T. 2008, ‘Facebook 101: Ten Things You Need to Know About Facebook’, Information Today, Vol. 25 Issue 3, pp. 1-44.
“Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life” (Facebook 2008), and then some. You may or may not have noticed the banner ads on the right hand side of your home page. But just how much you’ve been sucked into them might give us an indication of how well Facebook fulfils its purpose as a White Pages for third party businesses – a database of “sixty million active members” (Krivac 2008, p. 41).
From an economic perspective, the pitfalls of broadcast advertising, which saw the wasted energy of companies “pushing their message to consumers who would never buy their product” is alleviated by “niche communities [who] put the consumer at the beginning” (Digital Branding 2008). This is a major theme captured by Hirst and Harrison (2007) who argue that
the commercialisation of the internet in the past fifteen years has also led to a greater corporate reliance in personal data to refine advertising and marketing techniques at the heart of narrowcasting (p. 286).Facebook achieves this “by collating ever more detailed subscriber profiles… to categorise users, charging premiums for the sale of these groups to advertisers seeking highly specific niche markets” (Murray 2005, p. 424 cited in Hirst and Harrison 2007, p. 69).
Facebook's Beacon records the “clickstream” (Hirst 2007, p. 285), or browsing patterns of its members through the use of cookies: “a small, unobtrusive piece of software… used to track preferences when visiting that website… [to construct] a profile of the computer user” (Hirst and Harrison 2007, p. 284). Facebook would then advertise similar searches on the ‘News Feed’ of the individual and their network of friends.
On the receiving end, members claim that their personal details were exploited for capitalist gain. For example, Chris Nash reveals that Facebook makes money by “extract[ing] information from people’s private to private communications” (2008, 3:30min)* and sell it to advertisers, as well as businesses for the purpose of screening potential employees. Yet, “the supporters of free-market data-mining argue that they are only trying to satisfy consumer demand” (Hirst and Harrison 2007, p. 326).
With legal policies slow to catch up, the government “must be careful that it does not appear to be too hastily doing the bidding of the major commercial players” (Hirst and Harrison 2007, p. 279). But when “personal data become the lawful property of Internet firms, and of their clients” (Castells 2001, p. 174) to ”monopol[ise] control over the information… so that it can tax advertisers wishing to reach these individuals at the highest possible rate” (New Era of Advertising Hinges on the Free Flow of Information 2007) - an ethico-legal paradox becomes apparent.
From personal experience, when I started posting status updates about the large amount of food I ate that day, I was bombarded with weight loss ads such as the ones below.
While posting comments to my friend about the PCD concert, I was quick to receive this.
Oh, and they also know that I love to write.
Don’t believe me? Let me introduce you to my best friend Jeremy. He’s Asian and he likes basketball. Keen to move out of home, he recently searched real estate online. “Bingo!” shouted Facebook.
As can be seen, socialisation within a virtual landscape brings with it issues of ownership, control, ethics, privacy; and the disclosure of consumer buying habits, preferences and personal details. But is the invasion of our privacy a fair price to pay for keeping up with our friends?
I wonder what ad I’ll get next. Anti-spyware software, perhaps? How close do your Facebook ads hit home? Tell us by clicking on the ‘comment’ link below.
SOURCES
2007, ‘New Era of Advertising Hinges on the Free Flow of Information’, Marketing Week, 15 November, p. 22.
2008, Digital Branding: Close friends, New Media Age, London.
Castells, M. 2002, The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society, Oxford, New York.
Hirst, M. and Harrison, J. 2007, Communication and New Media: From Broadcast to Narrowcast, Oxford, Victoria.
Price, J. 2008, Facebook: Making Friends or Making Sales?, Facebook Podcast Part 1: Jenna talks to Chris Nash, Communication and Information Environments, University of Technology, Sydney.
Krivac, T. 2008, ‘Facebook 101: Ten Things You Need to Know About Facebook’, Information Today, Vol. 25 Issue 3, pp. 1-44.
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