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Feb 6, 2012 @ 06:11 pm calamitychang 4th Annual Dallas Burlesque Festival

I've been on the road for a week down in Dallas, Texas to perform in the 4th Annual Dallas Burlesque Festival produced by the girls of the Ruby Revue. It was a huge 4 day festival that ended last night with a dinner and a show at a really nice, upscale restaurant called DISH.

Feb 6, 2012 @ 04:28 pm Marisa Sung Rethinking The Mother Of All Exams

For more than half a century, one aptitude test has determined the self-esteem, future and even the spouses of generations of Indian adolescents, chiefly boys. The Joint Entrance Exam of the Indian Institutes of Technology is a brooding cultural force that is visible across the nation, on signboards and newspaper advertisements, as “I.I.T.-J.E.E.,” the first abbreviation many Indian children learn. It is an ominous inevitability for millions of boys, a fate decided in their cradles, a certainty like death. Last year nearly half a million candidates took the test — one of the toughest exams in the world — to compete for about 5,000 seats in the best of the I.I.T.’s and nearly as many seats in the less sought-after institutes. Coaching for the J.E.E. is an industry valued at billions of rupees. There is so much demand that some coaching classes have their own entrance exams. But the J.E.E. is now on its way out.

It is not the only engineering entrance exam in India. Lower down the rungs, there are other colleges, which require other exams to qualify. Competition is fierce all the way. Disturbed by the number of entrance exams, the Human Resource Development Ministry has decided to devise a common exam that would govern the admission process of several engineering institutes, including the famed I.I.T.’s. The nature of the new aptitude test, which is expected to debut in 2014, would be different from the J.E.E. The selection procedure, too, would be very different from what the I.I.T.’s use today. So, the type of person who enters the I.I.T.’s in the future may be very different. Opinion is divided on whether the new I.I.T. graduate will be better or worse than current alumni. The I.I.T.’s are nothing without the national perception of the “IITian.” And the perception is that he is primarily a he. And that he must be very smart. As some Indians point out with a hint of pride, in Scott Adams’s “Dilbert” comic strip, the brilliant Asok, who died on a Moon mission and reincarnated as part man and part Snickers bar, is from I.I.T. The fame of the institutes is an enduring relic from the years when socialism impoverished India and securing an elite engineering degree became the most elegant way for smart Indians to escape to America. The I.I.T.’s were never great centers of learning by world standards. Rather, they were museums that collected young Indians with excellent quantitative abilities. In the 1980s and ’90s, the migration of Indian scientific talent to the United States, deplored here as a “brain drain,” became a subject of intense debates in schools and colleges. Once, during the convocation ceremony at I.I.T.-Madras, the chief speaker received a standing ovation when he declared, “Brain drain is better than brain in the drain.” His words traveled with the speed of a rumor across Madras, also known as Chennai, through homes and schools, evoking laughter and applause, and delivering a bleak reminder to young boys that their lives depended on passing the J.E.E. In Madras in the ’80s, many smart girls were not allowed by their families to take the J.E.E. for fear that it would then be hard to get them married. One girl I knew who cleared the exam was not allowed by her parents to attend the institute, probably for the same reason. But the boys who made it to the I.I.T.’s became the heroes of their neighborhoods. Other boys hated them, and pretty girls wanted to marry them. The adulation would follow them until the end of their time. The glamour of the I.I.T.’s has always inspired parents to force their children to take the J.E.E. Increasingly, those parents are from modest educational and financial backgrounds. A few years ago, in Mumbai, I walked into a J.E.E. coaching class that conducted its own entrance exam to filter out 9 out of 10 applicants. An orientation program for parents was under way. A man who could not read English was sitting with brochures and study materials. He was disturbed that I was carrying a red book while he had not been given any such book. I told him that the book I was holding was a novel called “Love in the Time of Cholera.” “Is it a guide?” he asked. For a long time, the IITians were from urban, literate middle-class families, and it was inevitable that their success would inspire small-town Indians to prepare for the mother of all entrance exams.

Coaching colleges essentially dispensed with formal schooling and focused on the J.E.E. alone. As they became increasingly successful, it became evident that the J.E.E. was no longer an aptitude test but a giant goal that could be achieved through years of brute hard work and coaching. I.I.T. professors and alumni have been mourning the falling quality of the students. Last October, Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys and an I.I.T. alumnus, told an audience in New York that the new IITians were substandard. “They somehow get through the Joint Entrance Examination. But their performance in I.I.T.’s, at jobs or when they come for higher education in institutes in the U.S. is not as good as it used to be.” It is improbable that the I.I.T.’s will ever regain their old glory. The circumstances of the nation have changed, and the smartest Indians do not need an engineering degree to find a place in the world or to make a decent living. Also, the government has not invested enough in the I.I.T.’s, and the most talented scientific minds have the option to enroll in genuinely outstanding centers of learning in the West instead of being stuck in a place that has derived its prestige largely from the fact that only one in 50 cracks its entrance exam.

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Feb 6, 2012 @ 04:18 pm Marisa Sung Starbucks Sets Up Joint Venture In China

US coffee chain Starbucks has set up a joint venture with a Chinese company to buy and process coffee beans in China's southwestern province of Yunnan, state media said on Monday. Seattle-based Starbucks and Ai Ni Group will purchase and export coffee that will help supply its stores around the world, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing Starbucks China President Wang Jinlong.

Financial details of the venture were not mentioned in the report. No one at Starbucks China was not immediately available to comment when contacted by AFP. Starbucks has more than 500 stores across mainland China and aims to open 1,000 more in the coming years as its seeks to cash in on the growing taste for coffee in a country of mainly tea drinkers. The company has previously estimated that China has a massive potential market of 200-250 million coffee drinkers.

In late 2010, Starbucks announced it was developing its own coffee farm in Yunnan in order to secure a supply of quality beans in the company's second-most important market. Starbucks hopes to harvest the first crop of Arabica coffee by 2014.

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Feb 6, 2012 @ 04:13 pm Marisa Sung Outrage Over Steve Jobs Angel In Taiwan Ad

A Taiwanese television commercial featuring a Steve Jobs look-alike angel complete with white wings and a halo has caused uproar, with critics saying it is disrespectful towards Apple's late co-founder. The commercial shows well-known local comedian A-Ken in blue jeans and a black turtleneck praising the virtues of a tablet from Taiwan-based Action Electronics that runs on Google's Android operating system. "I'd like to present to you a new generation of tablets. It's amazing," a smiling A-Ken says in the 20-second commercial. "My God, I finally have another Pad to play with."

Jobs, who died in October at the age 56, was no fan of Google's Android system, considering it a rip-off of Apple's technology. On Facebook, Taiwanese writer Wu Ruo-quan criticised the commercial, calling it "shallow" and revealing a lack of respect for Jobs' family. A majority of reactions by average Taiwanese Internet users were also negative. "Maybe there is nothing wrong with impersonating Steve Jobs, but it's improper for A-Ken to impersonate him promoting the products of his rival," wrote one user with the signature "Sweetheart". Action Electronics vice-president Sun Yi-min said the commercial is simply aimed to promote sales and is not meant to show disrespect for anyone, according to the United Daily News. The paper said he declined to comment on whether the company would modify or drop the advert.

Action Electronics could not be reached for comment Monday. Bravo Inc, a public relations company representing Apple Taiwan, said the US company had no comment as yet. Last month, a China-based company was forced to scrap plans to market a doll made to resemble Jobs following "immense pressure" from lawyers.

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Feb 6, 2012 @ 04:10 pm Marisa Sung IPhone Leaps To Third Place In Mobile Market

An outbreak of iPhone fever made Apple the third hottest mobile phone manufacturer worldwide at the end of 2011, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). Apple jumped into the third spot globally from fifth place in the final quarter of the year due to a record-breaking quarter for iPhone shipments, IDC said in figures available online on Monday. Apple vaulted over South Korea's LG and China based ZTE in the mobile phone market rankings, IDC said.

Nokia remained king, shipping 113.5 million mobile phones in the final quarter of the year to claim nearly 27 percent of the market. Samsung was second with 22.8 percent of the market, or 97.6 million handsets shipped. Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter which ended on December 31, giving it a market share of 8.7 percent. A total of 427.4 million mobile phones were shipped in the final months of 2011 in a 6.1 percent increase from the same quarter a year earlier, IDC said. IDC warned that the growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 was weaker than the 9.3 percent seen in the prior three-month period of the year. "The mobile phone market exhibited unusually low growth last quarter, which shows it is not immune to weaker macroeconomic conditions worldwide," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker.

"The introduction of high-growth products such as the iPhone 4S, which shipped in the fourth quarter, bolstered smartphone growth," he said. "Yet overall market growth fell to its lowest point since the third quarter of 2009 when the global economic recession was in full bloom."

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Feb 6, 2012 @ 10:28 am EliKleinFineArt Gaultier, Valentino, Lanvin And Missoni Collaborate With Liu Bolinfor Harper's Bazaar

Eli Klein is thrilled to announce our captivating and groundbreaking collaboration between Liu Bolin and Gaultier, Valentino, Lanvin and Missoni for the March 2012 issue of Harper's Bazaar magazine. The stunning 10 page spread is reproduced below.

Liu Bolin's highly anticipated 4th solo exhibition at Eli Klein Fine Art opens at our New York location on March 20, 2012!

http://www.ekfineart.com/files/HARPERS_BAZAAR_Liu_Bolin_March_2012.pdf

Feb 5, 2012 @ 06:00 pm Marisa Sung Japanese Drug Makers: A Tale Of M&A

Japanese drug makers, sitting on piles of cash, have been one of the most aggressive industries turning to costly acquisitions in order to combat the earnings blow of patent losses and lower drug prices. So how have they done? Bloomberg NewsIf the latest earnings figures released this week are any indication, Astellas Pharma Inc., the No. 2 drug maker by market capitalization, is clearly ahead of the pack, beating the industry-wide downturn with a bullish projection of a 26% gain in full-year net profit.

In 2010, Astellas bought U.S. drug maker OSI Pharmaceuticals for $4 billion, raising its initial offer by more than 10% to gain long-sought access to the U.S. market and cancer treatment. The sweetened deal may have been worth it: For the latest nine-month period through December, Astellas saw the sales of OSI’s Tarceva cancer drug jump 55%. To be fair, M&A strategy is only part of Astellas’s success story. The company has also been aggressively controlling costs to fend off lost revenue from expired patents. But as Chief Financial Officer Yasumasa Masuda says, “The growth drivers are starting to come to life.” On the other end of the spectrum is No. 3 drug maker Daiichi Sankyo Co., whose M&A has been a grim lesson in the perils of poor due diligence, analysts say. Just three months after Daiichi Sankyo bought a majority stake in Indian generic drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. in 2008, the U.S. government slapped an export ban on more than 30 of Ranbaxy’s generic drugs for alleged manufacturing violations at two of its plants. More than three years after Daiichi Sankyo’s purchase, the costs continue to outweigh the benefits. The company expects a 79% plunge in full-year net profit due to the $500 million provision Ranbaxy set aside to settle any liabilities resulting from a probe by the U.S. Department of Justice into whether the firm manufactured substandard generic drugs. Ranbaxy finally reached a settlement with the U.S. government, only after agreeing to stringent requirements, including the loss of exclusivity on three pending drug applications. Analysts have pointed out that the $4.6 billion Daiichi Sankyo paid for the stake in the Indian firm seems expensive, particularly considering all the troubles it’s had. Investors are certainly disgruntled with Daiichi Sankyo’s share price, which has fallen more than 50% since the 2008 purchase. The fact that Daiichi Sankyo missed warning signs on Ranbaxy is also ironic, since Japanese firms have long been known for being extra careful about how they use their large stock of cash.

All eyes are now turning to the Japanese pharma giant Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., which grabbed headlines last year with a $13.7 billion mega-deal to buy Swiss drug maker Nycomed. For now, the initial costs are large, as Takeda pushes through streamlining efforts in Europe and the U.S. to integrate Nycomed. Those costs are expected to nearly halve its full-year net profit. But as an early positive sign, Takeda saw emerging market sales more than quadruple following the integration of Nycomed’s earnings from the October-December quarter.

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Feb 5, 2012 @ 05:55 pm Marisa Sung Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Sees More Foreign Gamblers

Singapore’s efforts to dampen local demand for gambling may be working – at least according to new numbers from the operator of one of the island’s two casino resorts. Foreign visitors to Marina Bay Sands, which is run by U.S. gaming group Las Vegas Sands Corp., now account for about four out of five visitors to the resort’s casino, the group’s chairman Sheldon Adelson says. This suggests a decline in the proportion of local visitors to the US$5.5 billion property to 20% from about 38% indicated by Mr. Adelson in October 2010. Las Vegas Sands didn’t provide any absolute visitor numbers for its Singapore casino and the company doesn’t regularly disclose the foreign-domestic visitor split.

But analysts say the growth in the foreign share suggests traffic from Singaporeans–a political hot potato in the city-state–is at least stabilizing. That would be welcome news to lawmakers, who have anxiously watched local patronage at Singapore’s two casinos since they opened in early 2010, and to Marina Bay Sands, which is betting on a greater contribution from Asia’s more lucrative VIP gaming market for earnings momentum. “The foreigners come in with more money than the local Singaporeans…it’s commonsense that somebody that comes in from a foreign territory will carry more money with them because they’re there less frequently,” Mr. Adelson told analysts in a conference call late Wednesday after his company reported its fourth quarter earnings. Singapore authorities have sought to temper enthusiasm for the casinos in the nation of five million since gambling was legalized, partly to prevent locals from losing big sums of money and also in response to citizens who oppose the existence of the casinos on moral grounds. Singapore officials have consistently tried to impress on locals that the new casino resort attractions are mostly there to draw in high-end tourism, not help Singaporeans make fast fortunes. A S$100 entry levy or a S$2,000 annual membership fee applies to citizens and permanent residents. Locals initially appeared undeterred: in the seven months since the first casino opened, Singaporeans made more than one million trips to the two gaming houses. But while the cash rush from local punters may have provided a nice tailwind for casino operators, the government has been quick to halt promotional efforts–such as free bus services—designed to reach out to locals. According to CLSA gaming analyst Aaron Fischer, it makes sense that local demand should level off after the rapid growth of Singapore’s nascent gaming sector in less than two years. “The key point is really that the mass market or locals is fully penetrated – the incremental growth has to come from overseas visitors,” he said.

Singapore’s gaming success, with its two licensed casinos at Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa, has defied the expectations of many cynics and has helped fuel a resurgence in the island’s tourism sector. The city-state took in S$17 billion in tourism receipts in the nine months to Sept. 30., up 22% from the same period a year earlier while total international visitor arrivals climbed 15% to 9.8 million. Marina Bay Sands reported US$2.99 billion in gross gaming revenue for 2011, equivalent to almost 50% of the total gaming win for the Las Vegas Strip over the 12 month period to Nov. 30. The resort’s hotel facilities have also been struggling to keep pace with demand, running at an occupancy rate of 98.8% in the three months ended Dec. 31. Mr. Adelson said he has made requests to the Singapore government for more land to allow his resort to add hotel capacity. There have been no indications to date the government in the land-poor country will oblige, especially as it continues to monitor the social impact of the new industry on its population.

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Feb 5, 2012 @ 05:47 pm Marisa Sung The N.B.A. Is Missing Its Shots In China

Foreign companies doing business in China must inevitably navigate the country’s distinctive brand of “state capitalism,” in which the invisible hand of the market is often hard to free from the tentacles of the authoritarian government. The companies that do best usually exercise patience, maintain a low profile and are careful not to give the state cause to regard them as a threat. When the N.B.A. revealed its ambitious plans for China, it was pursuing the logical next step to expand its already successful business there. But the logic of the Chinese state was very different. As Arthur Kroeber, the managing director of GK Dragonomics, a business consultancy in Beijing, puts it, “Foreign companies that come in here with announced, large, grand strategies — as well as these grand statements about what they are going to achieve — rarely are going to get there.” Stern and the N.B.A. owners were able to handle the players’ union in the lockout. The People’s Republic of China is proving much, much tougher.

Jiang Heping is arguably one of the most powerful figures in global sports as the head of China Central Television’s all-sports channel, known as CCTV5 and sometimes described as China’s equivalent to ESPN. Jiang’s office is inside the old CCTV building on Beijing’s bureaucratic west side. When I met him in December, it was a delicate moment. He was in a tough negotiation with the N.B.A. over the renewal of broadcast rights, with less than two weeks to go before the opening of the lockout-shortened N.B.A. season on Dec. 25. “To be frank, I haven’t found a solution,” Jiang told me, conceding that failure to reach a deal would mean a blackout of the N.B.A. on the country’s all-sports channel. Jiang, whose office is decorated with photographs of him with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, seemed genuinely anxious about the stalemate. The problem was advertising: CCTV was demanding changes in an arrangement that for years allowed the N.B.A. to sell a share of ad time during games for its own corporate partners. “I was instructed from above that we can’t maintain such a business model,” Jiang said, referring to the officials who run all the CCTV channels, which constitute the Communist Party’s most influential propaganda mouthpiece. The N.B.A.’s formal relationship with CCTV began in 1987 — the year Wilson Chandler was born — when David Stern visited Beijing with a demo tape in hand. Stern had no idea that China’s economy would soon remake the world — few people did — but he realized earlier than most that globalization would change sports by transforming games and players into commodities that television could deliver across borders. He made a deal to provide CCTV with videotapes of N.B.A. game footage, sent weekly from New York, in exchange for a share of advertising revenues. Since advertising barely existed in China, Stern later said he assumed he was largely giving his highlights away in exchange for exposure to the vast Chinese audience. Basketball already had a long history in China, having been brought to the country by the Young Men’s Christian Association a few years after James Naismith invented the game in 1891 in Springfield, Mass. Nearly a century later, rough highlights of N.B.A. games would begin appearing on a weekly CCTV sports program, and Chinese viewers would get their first glimpses of Magic, Bird and, most significant, Michael Jordan. By the 1990s, when Jordan’s Chicago Bulls were most dominant, CCTV was paying the N.B.A. to show its games, as were provincial and city TV stations. What’s more, advertising revenues were starting to materialize, as the games became a popular way for companies to introduce themselves to the Chinese consumer. Today a major chunk of the N.B.A.’s revenues in China come from marketing partnerships with multinational corporations and Chinese companies. The biggest boon for the N.B.A. came in 2002, when Yao was the first pick in the N.B.A. draft. CCTV5 soon began broadcasting live N.B.A. games throughout the week. Viewership soared, despite a time difference that meant N.B.A. games were on during the morning rush in China. Games between two ordinary teams might draw 10 to 15 million viewers (and perhaps three times as many if Yao was playing).

The N.B.A. had already opened an office in Beijing and inaugurated a series of annual preseason games in China when, in late 2006, Stern mentioned during the Reuters Media Summit in New York that the N.B.A. was also considering having its own league in China. Privately, N.B.A. officials were exploring how to incorporate an N.B.A. subsidiary company as a separate Chinese entity. In 2007, they made presentations to prospective investors and raised $253 million from some of China’s most powerful private and state-owned companies, as well as from ESPN/Disney. Goldman Sachs said this $253 million stake represented about 11 percent of the new company, which suggested that the total value was about $2.4 billion. The new subsidiary, N.B.A. China, was announced in January 2008, and in August, the N.B.A. used the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a stage to show off its global dominance. N.B.A. stars were playing for several countries, and more than 150 million viewers watched an opening-round game pitting the American team against Yao and the Chinese team. Then last year, within a matter of days, Yao retired and the N.B.A. owners locked out the players. “The lockout was a blow to the N.B.A. brand,” Jiang told me in December. But the top official in the Chinese league is a creature of the old age, an old-school Communist Party bureaucrat named Xin Lancheng, who put his foot down, prohibiting Chinese teams from signing N.B.A. players who were already under contract at the time of the lockout. Only free agents would be eligible — and they would have to sign that binding contract. This was partly about pride, and arrogance, but it was also consistent with an ethos that has prevailed since China opened itself to the outside world in 1978: foreigners are not invited to China to profiteer; they are invited to make the Chinese better. Even N.B.A. players.

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