< Home

Background: After receiving my present: Oakley Flak Jackets XLJ (LiveStrong Edition), I was once again met with my predicament of trying contact lenses. After failing numerous times, I decided to look for the easy way out–buying a set of RX lenses for the frames. I figure I can use benefits, now that I don’t have to buy the frames, it shouldn’t cost that much right?

The Search Begins: If you thought that it shouldn’t be that hard to find an optical shop that can do RX-you’d be grossly mistaken. After calling a few stores met with no success, I called the Oakley Vault store, and they said by Canadian law, they cannot sell RX lenses without an optician and they suggested EyeStar and LensCrafters. EyeStar quoted $3-400. When I called LensCrafters, I was quoted $170 (no tax; in Canada, apparently no tax on RX lenses, not sure if this will change with HST). With a CAA membership, you should be able to get 15% off so I figure wow, lenses for just under $150 and change. I should do it up. But first I’ll check it out in store to confirm pricing and then maybe check a few more stores.

The Confrontation: So after work last night, I stopped by the Lens Crafters (Hillcrest Mall location) and was met by an unfriendly woman behind the counter (ok, maybe she wasn’t not unfriendly, she was just stern and not what you’d expect from somebody working in a front-line business). In short, she told me that Lens Crafters ONLY does RX lenses on frames that are purchased in house. When I told her it was Oakley Vault who actually referred me to them, she abruptly interrupted me saying that only frames sold by Lens Crafters were the ones they’d be able to do RX for as they have to ship the frames to Oakley for them to mount the lenses. I repeatedly told her that I spoke with another rep from that store, and they quoted me $170 for the lenses and such, but she insisted, that they only do it if they sell the frames. Reason? Because when they ship the frames to Oakley (apparently), the frame gets cracked really easily, and if they shipped my frames, they’d be liable for the damage and thus they don’t want to be on the line for it. I also told her the Flak jackets were listed on their website, to which she came up with a lame excuse saying, that their website is not a correct representation of store stock, (and they cannot order them or something). So I went along with her, and checked out their store stock and within 30s, I found the Flak jackets. (now becoming more agitated because she clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about), I confront her, and ask her for a quote for frames and lenses. The flak jackets are selling at a premium of $250 (when the MSRP is $180), and she looks through her papers, $515 for the lenses for a total of $765. Floored with disbelief, I asked her to check again, I said my prescription is quite simple, -3.00 and -2.00 (well within the limits of Oakley’s RX lenses) and I didn’t need anything special, just grey or black with irridium coating, I showed her my prescription. She then proceeded to show me on paper, $515 to prove to me, this is the cost. And she says, this is the price, you must buy both frame+lens, otherwise you’re SOL.

I went home, quite upset at the fact that the initial rep I spoke with apparently didn’t know what he was talking about, and of course there is no accountability. So I called up Lens Crafters Promenade to confirm if all this was true, because it sounds a little insane, how would somebody ever buy Oakley RX sunglasses, surely I cannot be the only person looking to do this. I explained to her my sitaution, and made it clear I was looking for lenses for the Flak Jackets, and she quoted me w/out irridium: $317, w/ irridum $374. Further, they DO accept the frames if purchased elsewhere, they just ship the frame off to Oakley for the lenses to be added and if anything happens, Lens Crafters will take responsibility. She added, that because the Oakley store carried more styles than they did, that people typically buy their frames elsewhere, then bring it to them for RX lenses. Completely surprised, I confirmed that Oakley has a standard pricing chart (to which the CAA membership discount does not apply to these lenses), and then asked her why the other rep quoted me $515. She responded: “oh that’s if you wanted RX, w/Irridium, w/polarization AND progressive.

My Gripe: Why would the rep at the Hillcrest location quote me for their most expensive lenses, while knowing that I didn’t need progressive? Is it because the recession has somehow made their business SO successful that they’re ok with turning away business? Why did she so adamantly tell me that this was Lens Crafters’ policy, and every store would sell only frame+lens. What bugs me is theses people say things without any accountability, and its not like you can fight them. I’d launch a formal complaint against that store, but it’d probably be a waste of effort yielding no result, that is why I’ve posted it here, maybe people searching for stories of bad service from Lens Crafters will find it.

The Solution: After finding the $374 price a little more acceptable, I proceeded to call the chinese optical shop I usually deal with. They confirmed that since the lenses are extremely curved, they cannot produce an in-house lens that fits that shape, meaning official Oakley lenses was the only way to go. Surprise surprise, the price she quoted was even lower than the promenade Lens Crafters, she quoted me…. get ready… $250!!
(while that is still expensive, it is a price that I’m willing to strongly consider)

In short, chinese optical shops ftw. Lens Crafters fail.

It’s been seven months since the first post about dogs, and while it doesn’t seem like long counting it out, it feels like it’s been an eternity. For friends as well, since I won’t shut up about it :). I think in June was when we got really serious about adopting a puppy, and while the delays have been sad, it’s been a good chance for us to think it over and consider the impact it will have, as well as plan, research and prepare for such an undertaking.

Anyhow.. here I get to present.. Burton (amongst his siblings anyway), born January 19th, 2010. The top two photos are taken at 11 days of age, the bottom was taken at 15 days. 44 days until pickup!

Guess I’ll do some musical reviews too after reading the Rent review sadd3j and teewee made. I’m definitely piling up on the number of Playbill programs I have =), but this will be another way of keeping track of what I’ve saw. Oh and I decided to be a season subscriber to one of the musical theaters here too ;).

I went to see a touring, revival production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific last night. Rodgers and Hammerstein are definitely the classical Broadway masters – the “Andrew Lloyd Webber of the ’50s”, to help paint the picture. Rodgers is the composer and Hammerstein is the lyricist, and they collaborated on a whole bunch of musicals including Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, Carousel, The King and I and of course, South Pacific. Random trivia bit: Richard Rodgers is one of 2 people in the world that has an EGOT + Pulitzer prize =P.
Anyhow… South Pacific is a very classical broadway show I would say. The music is very complete but classically styled – a lot of reprises of themes, which makes it very well rounded. Amazing baritone lead with his French accent and the soprano lead is fairly decent. There’s a surprising amount of French dialogue in the show – one of those instances that I’m glad I got a Canadian education, where at least I could understand enough of what they’re saying to catch the gist of what’s happening. Otherwise, the story was very flat – nothing dramatic like Rent or Wicked (granted it is a little unfair to compare to my 5 star musical selections), and people just fall in love at first sight – not a lot of character development. There’s also a very unexpected theme of racial prejudice that shows up in the second act regarding interracial marriage. My initial thoughts were since South Pacific is an older musical from the ’50s, maybe segregation is still a big issue back then and hence the characters made a big deal out of interracial marriage – but on further thought, that seems to be something we (especially as Asians) still struggle with nowadays.
The musical is just shy of 3 hours long with intermission, which is quite lengthy, especially when the plot isn’t moving. 3 stars for me.

This week’s pick is definitely something I’ve been looping a lot in my playlist lately. One Republic’s “All the Right Moves” – has a “Phantom-esque” theme to it – I think I’ve watched this video like 10x already!

One Republic is not an unheard of band anymore (thanks to “Apologize”) and this track comes out of their sophomore album (do I speak like an American now?) released last Nov (2009). I gotta say – One Republic is on my top 3 favorite bands (you can guess what the other 2 are) and primarily because of Ryan Tedder (their front man), who is probably my favorite artist. He’s definitely a talented performer (can sing and plays multiple instruments, piano being one of them), but I think I like him most because of his songwriting and producing background – he writes One Republic’s songs, but moreover he pens a number of chart toppers for MANY other artists (Beyonce, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, Leona Lewis, to name a few). He definitely has an identifiable style in his arrangements, which I probably appreciate the most. For example – listen to the arrangement for “All the Right Moves” above – the instrumental at 2:40, then the piano/vocal solo at 2:53, then the double snare to drums/vocal at 3:06, then the cutout “Yeah, we’re going down” at 3:18… ah so creative!

Ryan Tedder’s bio is very inspiring as well – a story of tenacity. He was an intern at Dreamworks singing demo tracks, and was soon offered a publishing deal, but he wanted to be an artist (more than just background producing work). So at age 21, he entered some MTV hosted singer-songwriter competition ran by Lance Bass (N’Sync), and he ended up winning the competition. As a winner, he’s supposed to get a contract with a recording label, but this did not materialize as Lance Bass’ company folded soon after the competition – Setback #1. After that, he continued to work behind the scenes doing production work for other artists, apparently working with Timbaland from 2002 to 2004.

2002, he formed One Republic with his high school buddy, and at that point he had the choice of being a producer, or going to be an artist. “I was offered two publishing deals within two months of being in Nashville…I could have just written songs and lived a carefree life, but I knew that I had to be an artist. I wanted to form a rock band and create my own sound.” And then Setback #2: “The band had previously been signed to Columbia Records, and their album was due to be released in 2006, but this did not occur. Tedder explained, “Crap happened. People got fired. Labels merged and politics abounded”.[24] Subsequently, the band was released from their deal with Columbia, and they were signed by Timbaland in the summer of 2006 becoming the first rock band to be signed to Mosley Music Group.”

Hehe too bad he isn’t an outspoken Christian (not sure if he is one), or else another ++! But he was brought up by an extended family of missionaries and pastors, so maybe, who knows!

So this one has been bugging me for more than a few weeks now, and I’ve asked Sam a couple of times, why it is we say “move along at a decent clip”. What does it mean? What’s a decent clip? What is a clip?!@ The first thing that comes to mind is the fast ship from the 1800s called the “clipper”, so I always felt that this version of the noun “clip” had a kind of nautical nature to it. It turns out I wasn’t too far off the mark.

For myself, “moving along at a clip” evokes a kind of.. smooth, continuous rapid movement imagery in my head, like a ship cutting through the water or a galloping horse. The other common “clip” nouns include the attaching kind (paper clip) and the movie kind (movie clip). It also used to describe a hug, a blow (like a punch) and a number of other things, but now we’re getting off topic.

A few weeks ago, an initial search for “moving along at a decent clip, phrase, origin” in google turned up nothing, and I promptly gave up. Today I decided to try again, and this time was a bit smarter and looked up the definition of the word. The first few definitions just said that it was slang and informal, but eventually I found this, which gave a bit more clue to it’s origin:

clip (1)
“cut,” c.1200, from O.N. klippa, probably echoic. Meaning “rate of speed is c.1867. Noun meaning “extract from a movie” is from 1958.

I wasn’t sure what O.N. stood for, but after moving from dictionaries to etymology I found that clip came from:

Middle English clippen, from Old Norse klippa.

Ah ha! O.N. Old Norse! I originally looked for it in latin, greek and swedish (since Klippa sounds like somethign from IKEA) but now I was onto something. Eventually I stumbled onto www.word-detective.com and a post back in 2006 which says:

The other kind of “clip,” meaning “to cut,” appeared in English around 1200, derived from the Old Norse “klippa,” probably an echoic formation (meaning that the word imitated the sharp, sudden sound of something “clipping”). This “clip” developed a variety of derivative meanings, including “to form or mark by clipping” (as hedges are clipped), “to cut short or diminish” (as budgets are “clipped”), to cheat or swindle, and, in the 19th century, “to move or run quickly” (giving us, in noun form, “at a good clip” as well as swift “clipper” ships). This use evidently derives from the notion of “cutting short” the time taken. One of the more recently developed senses of “clip” is “an extract from a motion picture,” which appeared around 1958.

I also found out the below, that the ship was named after the horse, which comes from clippen, meaning to “shorten” which in turn may have been influenced from the Middle Dutch word klepper.

c.1330, from clippen “shorten,” perhaps infl. by M.Du. klepper “swift horse,” echoic. The type of fast sailing ship so called from 1830, from clip (1) in alternate sense of “to move or run rapidly.

Suffice to say, the origin is something along the lines of the time taken to travel has been cut / clipped short and somehow been transformed into a noun along the way.