By Ruben(nerd) Schade, a UTS university student and IT guy in Sydney and Singapore. c.2004
Now this is just too cool for words: a Starbucks branch in Singapore made from railway sleepers.
Reclaimed railroad sleepers from around South-East Asia have been used to line this wall. Where will it live next?
The store also uses LEDs for lighting, which are far nicer than those florescent tubes that buzz and make everyone look terrible.
Regular Rubénerd.com commenter and all around awesome person Nurie sent me a link to a fantastic Starbucks themed shirt on Nordstrom.com!
The iconic Starbucks logo is reimagined by designer and 2008 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner Alexander Wang on a soft knit tee. The exclusive style was designed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the iconic coffee company.
The only catch: it's AU$91. I suppose its true what they say, Starbucks coffee is good, though a little overpriced ;). Still, a brilliant design, and I'd also feel less conspicuous if I spilled coffee on it in public.
After giving a talk at uni this evening, I took the train a couple of stops to Circular Quay and just wandered around for a while. Whipping out my cameraphone to take a picture of a very colourful paddlewheel boat thingy, I just felt the urge to keep taking grainy, awful photos! It was fun though :)
The Rocks area is really pretty at night, kinda like wandering around Marina Bay in Singapore at night only with way more music and a bit more chewing gum on the footpath ;).
Yes, Starbucks. I happen to like them. If you don't, that's great, exercise your free will and let others do the same :). They even gave me a free cranberry and vanilla muffin, and it was super tasty!
In the late evenings CityRail usually only operates trains every fifteen minutes or so to the places you want to go, but fortunately by sheer chance I stepped onto the platform almost as soon as the train was due. Surprisingly, it was on time too!
I really do miss Singapore a great deal and hope to return there, but this birth country of mine is slowly growing on me again :)
So it was a sunny afternoon and the writer of Rubenerd needed something to cheer him up after writing about IBMs video thing, and he remembered Sudohbucks!
When I first started watching this anime back in the day, I surmised it was typical harem fare, but I loved the art and graphics and thought I'd give it a shot. Now years later its still one of my favourites not only because I liked the really strong characters (and art!) but for the little things.
One of those little things was Sudohbucks. Over the course of the show the characters often found themselves sitting at this coffee shop which looked eerily similar to Starbucks from the layout of the chairs to the logo. When Ryuuji kinda-sorta broke the fourth wall and asked how they weren't getting sued, I laughed out loud far too loudly!
The name was brilliant and worked on so many levels! Sudohbucks sounded like Starbucks; the "Sudoh" sounds like pseudo which implies its a pseudo-Starbucks; it sounded like sudo-bucks from *nix; and best of all the logo was a guy with sunglasses and a waxed moustache in the exact same style as the Starbucks siren! In case you haven't noticed yet, I'm a bit of a logo nerd. That doesn't mean I can design my own, mind :P.
rubenerd@taiga 1 ~ % bucks
cannot create regular coffee `bucks': \
Permission denied
rubenerd@taiga 2 ~ % sudohbucks
omnomnom!
I had a Starbucks thermos in Singapore that had a paper sleeve insert, and one of the first things I did was take the lid off and put in a Sudohbucks logo! I think only two people ever called out to me when they recognised it (in Takashimaya and Kinokuniya respectively!), but it was absolutely worth it :D
One thing I will say that Sudohbucks looks as though they do better than Starbucks is their pan pan pan pan, judging from the numerous shelves of bread in the corner. Aw gosh darn it, now I want to rewatch Yakitate Japan and Shakugan no Shana!
The bread I really like are those little bread rolls with the red bean paste. I forget what they're called. Bread Talk in Singapore sold them, and they were goooooood.
And finally, because I was talking about Toradora, this picture from the infamous Megami is just too adorable to pass up, even though their boots look suspiciously like uggs, which would just be terrible.
This story could potentially be bigger than The Gap's ill fated new logo that looked like a blue version of PricewaterhouseCoopers or however you spell it. Waterhouse sounds like a company that fixes dodgy roofs.
Photo from the Starbucks weblog, under the "Available for Download" sidebar heading.
First of all, to get it out of the way because I've heard it all before every time I mention Starbucks on Twitter, Gowalla and Foursquare.
Starbucks is a heartless megacorportaion, their coffee is terrible, and Ruben Schade is not only a stupid sucker and a pawn, he's also not politically correct saying he likes spending time there having caramel macchiatos. He's a poser and a fool, and spending just as much time at a local family run coffee shop in his neighbourhood does nothing to clear his super evil conscience. He should go to the Starbucks CEO and offer him sexual favours in exchange for his servitude, and just move to Seattle to pretend he's Frasier like all those other stupid people who think Starbucks is a relaxing, nice place to have a cup of coffee and get a little work done. They're all just so arrogant imposing themselves on others with their holier than thou attitude and their cups with paper sleeves. Why don't they just accept that different people like different things already?
Yeah yeah, whatever. Moving on.
I don't listen to Marilyn Manson at all and think his music is terrible, but I have respect for him. Like Lady Gaga, or that guy who's always playing that weird guitar at Central.
I had no idea but the current Starbucks logo has been in use since 1992 when they had their IPO. I know this because I read their press release, and if information is in a press release, it must be true.
The updated logo isn't really new per sé, they've merely removed the phrase "Starbucks Coffee" from the name, expanded the mermaid woodcut and changed the colour to match the aforementioned name that was once there. From their weblog post Bringing the Siren to Life, second paragraph:
From the start, we wanted to recognize and honor the important equities of the iconic Starbucks logo. So we broke down the four main parts of the mark – color, shape, typeface and the Siren. After hundreds of explorations, we found the answer in simplicity. Removing the words from the mark, bringing in the green, and taking the Siren out of her ring. For forty years she’s represented coffee, and now she is the star.
So that's my problem, I'm trapped in a green ring that says "Ruben Schade"! Maybe if I took myself out of that ring and painted myself green I'd be more dynamic and synergistic. Yes, apparently synergistic is a word. *facepalm*
I'm of two minds about this. First, to paraphrase Einstein, I'm generally not a fan of change simply for the sake of change unless there's something meaningful derived from it. This updated logo doesn't really seem to do this, at least to me as a non-graphics designer. The typeface and stars and colour balance in the current logo are just brilliant.
Perhaps wrapping the logo in "Starbucks Coffee" was part of an elaborate, two decade long scheme to get us to associate their logo with those words, much like Nike had their name next to the swoosh for a while before removing it, or Apple Computer having their retro typeface "a" as part of the bitten part of the logo and pple proceeding it, then having no lettering at all.
Of course conspiracy theorists no doubt will claim the removal of the term Coffee from the Starbucks logo is akin to Kentucky Fried Chicken changing their name to KFC because their stock was so heavily genetically modified that they couldn't legally be called chickens any more. Oh you didn't hear about that? Yeah, its all true! Its not because its so fatty I always feel green afterwards, its for THAT reason I don't eat it!
You see, Starbucks doesn't sell coffee, they sell coffee flavoured floor sweepings, and all those pesky truth in advertising laws would have meant a drastic logo change anyway, so they may as well disguise their products true origins as well as save themselves the hassle of adding all those extra words to the logo which is already big enough. I mean, only a Venti cup could fit a real description in the logo rather than just Starbucks Coffee.
I dunno, on the one hand I'm pleased they're retaining the main part of the logo, but call me a cranky old man who drinks terrible coffee or any other insult you care to throw at me, but I like the current one better. And to prove it, I'm having a drink from their branch in Wynyard now as I speak. Or type, or whatever this is. Near the station of the same name.
Hey, at least they're not pulling an Adelaide in Sydney :O.
There was a discussion on Slashdot this morning about WiFi access at Starbucks in the States, so I added my own SG$0.02 about the free access here.
Probably not all that relevant to this discussion, but my SG$0.02.
All the Starbucks branches here in Singapore have free WiFi provided you register first, it's part of the government's Wireless@SG initiative, which I can forgive the corny 1990s name for because it Just Works. The irony is this free internet is faster and more reliable than the ADSL I was paying a small fortune for back in Australia!
There's a huge coffee shop culture here. It's really fascinating to see Starbucks (and Coffee Bean, and Killiney etc), even at 11pm they're absolutely packed with students studying on their MacBooks and business folk frantically typing away. I asked a few local friends why, and mostly it's because apartments here are so small an overpriced cup of coffee is a small price to pay for a comfy chair, relaxing music and a place to do some work on the Internets without your siblings making noise in your ear.
Starbucks have released a PDF of their opening hours during the Chinese New Year long weekend. Their branches at Liat Towers, Pacific Plaza, Plaza Singapura (with the exception of Tuesday), Raffles City, Northpoint and all the airport terminals are still open 24 hours. All the branches in the CBD around Raffles Place are completely closed.
No word at all on the Coffee Bean's website whether they're open or not. Killiney Kopitiam seems to be closed from the ones I've been to.
This has been a public service announcement from the Rubénerd.com Coffee Obsessors Association, Pte Ltd, Pty Ltd, GmBH, Sdn Bhd, LLLLLLLP.
Given I've done pointless milestone posts celebrating 1960 and 1980 posts, it seems only fitting to now do one about the 1990s now that I'm inching closer to 2000. Wonder if my blog will have a Y2K like explosion when it reaches that?
Yes so I was born in the 1980s, but I think it's safe to say I "grew up" in the 1990s. The decade was about a ton of change for us as a family, we moved interstate three times and finally moved to our de facto home in Singapore, then moved apartment buildings twice. My sister and I changed schools three times, our schools changed campuses twice. About the only constant in that decade was the knowledge we had that it was useless to become too attached to a particular place because we weren't going to be there that long. It was a hell of a ride, and I wouldn't have traded it for anything... most of the time!
Of course the 1990s was when I first got interested in this little field called computing. Our first home computer that we bought ourselves instead of my dad bringing it home from work was a 486SX tower with a huge 4MiB of RAM, a 100MiB hard drive and MS-DOS with PowerMenu and XTree Gold, later Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions, later Windows 3.1. We had Commander Keen 1-3 and Monopoly Deluxe 1.0 both of which my sister, dad and I play now! After that I got a Pentium MMX machine with a spiffy Zip drive (I escaped the click of death problem), we got Pacific dialup internet in 1997 and we got our first broadband connection with SingTel Magix in 1999.
On the entertainment front my sister and I grew up watching Agro's Cartoon Connection in the mornings when we lived in Melbourne and Brisbane, and cartoons on Premier 12 and Channel 5 in Singapore. Much of what we watched was British TV from Fireman Sam and Postman Pat to Banana Man and SuperTed. We also had really weird shows like LiftOff which I can still hear the guy complaining about all the silly things you're not supposed to do in the Foyer even now! Then there was Gumby which my mum hated but tolerated when it came on and we had to see.
Then there was the Japanese pop culture invasion. We all had Tamagotchis (my sister had a dozen!), we watched DragonBall Z and Sailor Moon (we both still do!). We had yo-yos upon yo-yos upon yo-yos which neither of us were very good at but they were nonsensical fun! We had Pokemon Red and Blue, I can remember a school camp to Thailand where the jocks got fed up trying to tease all us nerds because we were ignoring them as we were glued to our Gameboys trading Pokemon with those purple cables!
What else? Oh yeah the Beanie Baby shop in Wheelock Place in Singapore which closed down and is now a Japanese pasta shop. I didn't have too many of them but my sister collected them religiously, even when we went to Europe she'd get my parents to buy her bags full of them! Ah the blatent consumerism, that was the real hallmark of the 1990s, you gotta love it!
Ever since I was a little kid I never really liked pop music, one of the first CD sets I ever got for my birthday was a complete works of Ravel and another set of the Rat Pack! In the 1990s though we had the blasted Macarena and Mambo No. 5, we had Britney Spears back before she became a symbol for all that's wrong with the music industry, we had Oasis, Alanis Morissette and Robbie Williams, we had Ricky Martin who seemed to literally come out of nowhere.
Unfortunately the 1990s also marked the last time my late mum was healthy before she got cancer and spent most of my sister's and my living memory going to oncology wards and not having the energy to do anything. I can still vaguely remember when I was very little her painting and stitching all those stunningly beautiful pictures for our bedrooms with all the bright colours as well as her drawings and paintings of angels and views outside windows. Her favourite thing to draw was eyes. She also had a calligraphy business for place cards at formal events and weddings. She fought the f*cking Big C for over 12 years when most people give up after only a few because she said she wanted us to have memories of her. We do, and there isn't a day that goes by where we don't miss her.
Anyway what else about the 1990s? Oh yeah, my dad drove me up to Malaysia to see my first Formula 1 race! And while waiting for my mum at the hospital at weird times of night I unwittingly started my love affair with the coffee bean, later going to the then-new Starbucks and the surprisingly titled Coffee Bean and Tea Leafs that were popping up all over the island. We'd occasionaly make trips back to Australia to see relatives and I'd feel surprised at how little I rememberd about my birthplace and how disconnected I'd become. I'd feel weird walking around with my parents and seeing caucasian people everywhere! Where are the MRT stops? Why is there litter on the street? Why do people smile at me at shops even when I don't know them?
If you grew up in the 1990s what memories do you have? I'm sure I've left out a ton of stuff!
Neal over at iPhone User News is reporting that some coffee shop owners have started cutting down on people taking up space and using precious electricity that could be better spent heating up milk for someone’s Iced Frappa Munga Cappacinolatte.
Coffee shop owners are reportedly cutting down on people taking up space and using precious electricity that could be better spent heating up milk for someone’s Iced Frappa Munga Cappacinolatte.
I just said that.
More and more branches of Starbucks and other coffee chains are banning laptop use at certain times of day, preventing use of power outlets, and generally becoming less amicable to Internet users.
I'm all for limiting the time people can sit there taking up space with their laptops, but banning them outright is akin to telling your best customers they're no longer welcome. I'm doing computer science and economics at university not business, but I'm pretty sure alienating your customers is not the smartest thing to do. The RIAA in the US hasn't learned that 101 lesson either it seems.
I can just imagine people frantically waiting for tablet computers to come out so they can use them instead of laptops at coffee shops to game the system! And with EVDO cards and tethered iPhones making it possible to use wireless internet without the need for a WiFi connection, it seems to me instigators of such bans would be fighting an uphill battle. I can just imagine nerds sitting in comfy chairs with their lattes hiding their tablet computers under their coats!
For the record, the owner of the Boatdeck Cafe here in Mawson Lakes has no trouble with me sitting at his shop for a couple of hours with my laptop. Why? Because I'm a good customer, and he's a nice guy!
I was asked a question yesterday from someone other than a person from high school who had almost never spoken to me unless they had a computer problem, so for once I felt obligated to answer. Zombie Plan (yes, THAT ZombiePlan) wanted to know how it is I can blog so much and where I get my ideas from.
There are two ways to address the question, the first is the academic way. I am able to blog so much because I endeavour to discover new and exciting fields of study both in my life and in the world around me and therefore I am able to produce blog posts of a high calibre and social value for my readers. As with most academic answers of this nature though, this reason is a lot of hot air and complete nonsense.
As I've said many times here over the years I find blogging a fun distraction from studying and work, I guess you could call it a coping mechanism. It may sound counter-intuitive, but often I blog the most when I have the most amount of work to do! When I'm distracted, my brain can come up with more material. Perhaps when said brain is stimulated it's thinks better, alas I'm no Sam Harris neurologist I'm only interpreting the results in my own frame of reference.
The other thing to try is not something if you're a serious person attempting to write a serious blog. Write nonsense! I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets tired of reading dry, impersonal posts on blogs; buck the trend and put material in posts regarding your own life and experiences when you talk about things. Recently I took this one step further by having a dedicated nonsense category where I can put fun silliness. I remember when I used to work for Discovery Channel as a voice over guy one of the things the director said is that people can tell when you speak whether or not you're smiling just by listening; I reckon the same could be said for blogging.
And while I'm giving away my super duper secrets, my other trick is to just go online and find silly or completely random pictures, often they trigger something in my head and I can write about something. I try to have at least one image associated with each post because I feel text-only blogs kinda defeat the purpose of having a website on the multimedia intertubes anyway. While we're talking about triggers I also have a notebook page on my iTelephone for blog and show topics too which I frantically jot nonsense into whenever I get the chance.
I almost forgot! The other thing is I create the vast majoraty of my blog posts in coffee shops; in Adelaide I sit at the Boatdeck Cafe in Mawson Lakes, in Singapore I sit at any number of Starbucks Coffee thingys. Don't ask me why I'm more productive or mentally stimulated in places like that, because I don't know the answer myself!
Is my blog a good one? Heavens no, it's awful! But that wasn't the question, Zombie Plan wanted to know how I blog so much. I hope this sheds some light onto it. Do lights have fur?