Stormtroopers Doing Stuff: July 2010

Monday, July 19, 2010

Stormtroopers with their plush toys

TK168 and TK158 sure love Stitch and Scrumps

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Little boys play with toys, big boys get the real thing!

I set the theme 'Little boys play with toys, big boys get the real thing!" with the key as the 'BIG' object.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Pranks #1: Twisted Staples

Back in secondary school days, we'd twist staples together and throw em on the seats of classmates just before they sat down, causing them to jump out of their chairs!

The Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony

Friday, July 9, 2010

Real Estate Blues

TK168: "Hey, since when did you have an interest in properties?"

TK158: "Erm......I'm just looking at the real estate chics! Best part is....they leave their mobile numbers!"

(Pause)

TK158: "By the way, what do they mean by nearly sold?"

TK168: "It means either the agent wants more bids or he has trouble selling the house."

Studies of real-estate agents include data that reveals how agents convey info through the for-sale ads they write. A phrase like "well-maintained," for instance, is full of meaning to an agent. It means that a house is old but not quite falling down. A savvy buyer will now this (or find out for himself once he sees the house), but to the sixty-five-year-old retiree who is selling his house, "well maintained" might sound like a compliment, which is just what the agent intends.

An analysis of the language used in real-estate ads show that certain words are powerfully correlated with the final sale price of a house. This doesn't necessarily mean that labeling a house "well maintained" causes it to sell for less than an equivalent house. It does, however, indicate that when a real-estate agent labels a house"well maintained,", she may be subtly encouraging the buyer to bid low.

Five terms Correlated to a Higher Sale Price

Granite

State-of-the-Art

Corian

Maple

Gourmet

Five Terms Correlated to a Lower Sale Price

Fantastic

Spacious

!
Charming

Great Neighbourhood

Three of the five terms correlated with a higher sale price are physical descriptions of the house itself: granite, Corian, and maple. As info goes, such terms are specific and straightforward - and therefore pretty useful. If you like granite, you might like the house; but even if you don't, "granite" certainly doesn't connote a fixer-upper. Nor does "gourmet" or "state-of-the-art," both of which seem to tell a buyer that a house is, on some level, truly fantastic.

"Fantastic," meanwhile, is a dangerously ambiguous adjective, as is "charming." Both these words seem to be a real-estate agent code for a house that doesn't have many specific attributes worth describing. "Spacious" homes, meanwhile, are often decrepit or impractical. "Great neighbourhood" signals a buyer that, well, this house isn't very nice but others nearby may be. And an exclamation point in a real estate ad is bad news for sure, a bit to paper over real shortcomings with false enthusiasm.

Source: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Lost in Translation

A Helping Hand

Fixing up an arm injury

Portrait of a Stormtrooper

TK168: "A little bit more to your left"

Wealth Management Anyone?

TK168 conducts a seminar on wealth management concepts

Baby Sitting

TK168 does a little babysitting and keeps the little one occupied with Play-Doh.

Gashapon Prize Machine

TK168 and TK158 took a trip to the prize machines. TK168 was lucky as usual to get all the prizes that he wanted.

The same can't be said for TK158, whose coins got eaten up by the machines......again. In a fit of anger, he destroys one of the machines!

The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust and Wrath

The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust

The Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath

TK158: "Stupid machine ate my coin.....AAARGGHH!"

Monday, July 5, 2010

Scent of a Stromtrooper

TK168 uses Eternity, the classic scent for gentlemen

TK158 uses the bad boy scent of Cool Water to pick up chics

Drakkar is Vadar's choice. All black, all man, all powerful.

Meet the Stormtroopers

TK168

TK168 is perhaps the luckiest stormtrooper around. He sometimes does ponder where his good fortune comes from. What he doesn't know is that his designated number '168' actually reads 'yi liu fa' in mandarin. A good number to have which translates to 'easy to prosper'

Disciplined and streetwise, he takes great care of his armored uniform and blaster. Though he aims to be the best stormtrooper in the unit, he dislikes the ways of the dark side and carries out orders based on his own discretion.

His motto "To be counted upon to do the right thing at the right time......every time."

TK158

The total opposite of his partner, TK158 is the unluckiest stormtrooper ever.

TK58 can be identified by the tiny speck of dirt on the top right breast plate of his armour and his slightly misaligned weapon. Hot-tempered and cranky most of the time, he strives to escape from work duties as much as possible.

His motto: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"