knowledge

december

2011-12-28T13:11:00.002+11:00

I haven't blogged for a while but for those of you still lurk around in this occasionally dead space that is my blog/mind, merry xmas to you sir/ma'am.

Looking back at this year, I didn't really blog a lot. Partly due to the fact that I had nothing much interesting happen until late September.

I guess the most exciting thing that happened late September was that I finally found a job, after 9 months of searching and random internships at Haystac (thank you!) and Calibre Menswear (thank you!).

Its ironic that when I have lots of time to blog, I don't have much to blog about. When I have plenty to write about, I don't have time. I'm happy that I get to finally sit down and jot down somethings.

I'm currently working at Adconion Media Group as a Media Operations Executive, the world of digital media is nothing like anyone could ever imagine without working in the industry. The sheer amount of media delivery and innovations that happen in this industry towers above any other medium. Sometime in the next year when I've worked for a bit longer, I think I will do a post describing exactly what we do.

Another update in my life I guess has been a new found enthusiasm and fascination with the world of eSports.
Like the rest of my generation, I've been playing computer games from a very young age, just like traditional sports like football, basketball etc. In fact I played plenty of sports growing up but it never occurred to me why I never classified the competitive nature of computer gaming as a "sport".

I played Age of Empires 2 semi-competitively online a very long time ago, played Counter-strike plenty and more recently the Halo series. Its such a non-issue if you think about it in terms of these games evolving into spectator sports just like any other sports we play. Everyone plays games in some respect, why can't the most competitive, most well designed of these be watched and appreciated in public?

I still remember being in Korea for the first time, seeing Starcraft: Broodwar on TV and thinking that it was just so lame. But why is watching Liverpool vs Arsenal any better than watching Boxer vs Idra?

I think we're all "nerds" to some degree about something in our lives, weather it be fashion, music, films or computer games.

I think this has been a great post leading into the new year. I've already got inspiration to write a post about my company and about the fantastic world of eSports.

Its gonna be a good year! Bring on 2012!

K-POP Fest 2011 Sydney

2011-11-13T17:12:00.001+11:00

If you are Pedo-bear, then K-Pop Music Fest 2011 Sydney would have been the most amazing experience from the start. Due to the fact that I am not a pedophilic (or hebephilic) bear, my enjoyment of this event really came with some endurance, but the endurance did not go unrewarded.

From the moment the ticket prices were announced I was feeling quite unhappy. Almost 300 dollars for a VIP ticket, close to 200 for a Gold with no real benefits apart from being closer in fantasy to putting a marriage sack over Taeyeon, I decided to go for gold. For the most part, this was a good choice.

Our true realisation about the clientele of this event came when I received a call a few hours before the concert from a friend. He had a very simple message "Hurry up and come, its terrible here, I'm 20 years older than everyone else here", considering hes only 24, this was unsettling. The promise of sitting next to a cute girl (my age) was one step further.

"COME AT ME GIRLS!"

Our second realisation came when waiting on the platform at Central Station. As indicated by the phone call, the girls in fact did not exceed the age of 10. There were a few fat white chicks sprinkled through-out for good measure (the ones that watch anime, you know the ones I'm talking about, refer to video) with the odd Korean here and there wondering why there were so many Indonesians here.

every white girl at this concert pretty much

Our final realisation came when we got to ANZ Stadium, at this point we sincerely regret the purchase of these tickets and devised an elaborate lie to cover up the reasons why we were there if any cute girl of age were to ask in conversation.

there is probably a total of 5 koreans in this shot

Options included: We were Korean language students that won a contest at uni and got free tickets, We worked for marketing company that sponsored us because they wanted to make an investment in Korean entertainment companies. Basically whatever story that resulted in free tickets.

Being probably the most bad ass people out of this whole crowd, we cut in line and got to our allocated seating and patiently waited. At about 7PM, a countdown started on the screen and havoc in the form of thousands of girls screaming ensued... we decided to make the most of our money and join in the excitement.

SHINee opened with "Lucifer" and the screams got louder. Ring Ding Dong came on next I gave up what dignity I had left and sang along and danced, intentionally laughing to suggest I was only doing so in humorous purposes (rather than you know, actually enjoying myself).

It was too our delight that alcohol was served at this event and I quickly downed 5 coke and bourbons. This was when shit got real.

Sistar took the stage and man... they looked hot. By the time "Ma Boy" came on, I was rocking out like I was at a club (though being careful not to stray too close to the underage girls in front and behind of me). Martin however, lost all sense and began yelling profanities at the stage such as "SHOW US YOUR TITS!" "I WANT TO PUT MY COCK IN YOUR MOUTH" etc. He had very little regard for the age of the people around us, I kindly reminded him that its against our wishes to be arrested.

I really got in the mood to dance when Secret played their set, "Madonna" is such a sick song. I'm not sure if the people around me were shy or they were just retarded, coming to a concert with danceable music and just standing still trying to film rather than getting into it. (I don't care that they're 15, I was much more bad ass when I was 15).

Boy bands were really filler time for me to go get more drinks and to visit the rest room, or in Martin's case, get a nap. I also noticed that the camera man was probably specifically instructed to film as many white people as they could find, so that they can pretend that the concert wasn't 95% Australian Southeast Asian girls.

Miss A performed "Good Girl, Bad Girl" and "Good Bye Baby", 4 Minute performed "Muzik" and "Hot Issue", one awesomely notable performance was the cover of Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Outta My Head". I felt like we were part of a very small handful of people who were alive when this song came out. I pretty much died and went to heaven during the "set me freeeeeeeeeeeee" part of the song, dear LORD it was good.

It wasn't long before I saw what we came to see... S.N.S.D.
They started their set with a song that was very true to their words, they had brought the boys out. Though their set was short lived with only "The Boys", "Kissing You" and of course unarguably the greatest song of all time "Gee", it was possibly a good contender for the greatest 20 minutes of my life(yes I realise how ridiculous that statement sounds). I'm glad they didn't do too much off their new album, it was classic SNSD, classic adlibs from Taeyeon. I chuckled at how adorable Sunny was when she flinched at the fireworks and I was sad when they handed out roses, sincerely regretting not spending an extra 100 bucks (having spent close to that on drinks already at this point).

CNBlue's set was actually quite good, their music was surprisingly catchy and they were a lot less gay boy than I had previously imagined. I'd say comparable to the "Songs About Jane" period of Maroon 5. Quite fun and funky pop rock. Except their instruments weren't plugged in on stage and somehow played their songs?... hrmm weird.

Our appreciation for CNBlue was very kindly rewarded by KARA's performance of "Jumping" "Lupin" and of course "Mister". This was the moment we started to grope the air in front of us as they taunted us with their extremely fit bodies. Martin "the Hulk" Won, had truly released the hulk inside of him in the form by wiggling his ass around (again disregarding the girls behind us), but the tight leather outfits of KARA really negated all of our morality and will to stay out of jail.

TVXQ closed the show with some surprisingly good songs, I still can't get over how homo-erotic "Keep Your Head Down" is.

Despite a slow start, it was a very enjoyable experience for me, despite the music being drowned out by preteen screams at times, I thoroughly enjoyed the performances, the price is a different story. If the tickets are not made to be cheaper, then I would strongly reconsider going again (or I might just have to go all -out with VIP tickets and a marriage sack ready next time).

I'm not a big fan of taking photos and videos during live events (I'm there to enjoy the performances) so I didn't take many, but heres a shot of the gold and vip areas.

There is no doubt how much money there is to be made in the coming years

We managed not to get arrested and I managed to resist my urge to run away with Taeyeon and grow old together.

edgy

2011-09-12T16:45:00.004+10:00

Something I noticed recently that brands are trying harder and harder to be "edgy" in attempts to gain controversy and publicity as well as strengthen(?) their brand awareness and philosophy.

From the obvious attempts of the french connection campaign (fcuk off, too busy to fcuk etc) to recently this "stupid" campaign for DIESEL.

I think brands have been acquiring tunnel vision in "edginess" and focused on outdoing eachother that they are really forgetting about the message they are sending.

Here are some examples of advertising from Diesel's campaign:

Ad 1

Ad 2

and the irony in this one is great:

Ad 3

in effect, Diesel is calling their target market stupid. And if they truly embrace their own message then they are calling themselves stupid. Nothing that really makes me want to buy their products. But nothing I didn't expect from a label that I already thought was stupid.

today I saw this:

http://mumbrella.com.au/dangerfield-fuck-off-poster-slammed-by-asb-57381

and this after they had to recall those gun and sword shaped umbrellas, it seems like their management staff just doesn't want good PR. (http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/police-descend-on-umbrella-gunman-20110517-1er0z.html)

Diesel should buy them

free

2011-06-21T16:54:00.002+10:00

I remember in grade 6, when we graduated. We all ran around screaming we were finally free.

I remember at the end of year 12, we were all looking forward to our last VCE exam, again: "freedom".

As I sit and stare at my facebook newsfeed, everyone's screaming out that they're free as they finish their last University exams.

I wonder what occasion would warrant this feeling of apparent "freedom" again.

When we retire? When we die?

busted

2011-06-21T14:00:00.000+10:00

photobomb win

source: http://www.collegehumor.com/picture/6474378/mythbuster-guys-photobomb-seth-rogen-and-fan

lyn

2011-06-03T12:48:00.006+10:00

On my last night in Korea, I watched episode 18 of Invincible Youth. Martin had left in the morning and Ahyoung was busy shopping.

It was the last time I could watch live Korean TV for a while so I decided to switch the set on for any Starcraft or Kpop Shenanigans.

I came across a show called Sketch Book and there was an acoustic cover of a 2PM song in process. I'm not a 2PM fan but man this cover was so smooth that it kept me watching, soon they started playing this ridiculously awesome version of SHINee's Ring Ding Dong, I just had to keep watching. Keeping in mind I have a overwhelming bias against korean boy bands. The lady on stage finished her set with a cover of 2NE1's "I Don't Care".

I just had to write down her name which was apparently "Rin" or "Lin", I couldn't tell based on the Korean script. Eventually I found out it was "Lyn".

Here is the original performance.

Now last night, I decided to check if she had done anything else since, I was to be impressed.

That T-ara cover at 3:20 blew me away. If you want a taste of the original song to get a full appreciation of how good that cover is, check this out:

I acquired Lyn's albums, even though her vocals are still amazing, they were not as good as these covers. I would pay big money to see her just do these covers live.

crazy wings

2011-05-29T11:26:00.002+10:00

so I went to crazy wings last in Melbourne last night with a bunch of gay boys.

We spent about 14 dollars each and we ate 4 chicken wings, a stick of pork and some enoki mushrooms.

It attempts to mimic the taste of street side vendors in China, and does this very accurately. However street vendors in China sell this for 10cents AUD where as I'm paying about 4 AUD for 2 chicken wings.

The whole novelty of this place is the "crazy wings". If you didn't know, they are ridiculously spicy chicken wings. And by ridiculous, I mean, half my face went numb after taking a bite.

Literally. No exaggeration what so ever.

I ate 2.5 tubes of wasabi at one point in my life, I am not sure which one was worse to be honest.

These wings lack flavour, you can not taste the chicken and struggle to find the logic behind someone eating this for reasons other than to torture themselves for humorous purposes and/or filming the humorous results as your eyes water up and snot dribbles down your nose due to you losing control of the nerves in your face.

You may as well just be punching yourself in the face whilst drinking lava.

This is not an ironic endorsement, nor a challenge, this is a dire warning, DO NOT GO THERE!

streisand

2011-05-25T13:54:00.002+10:00

so whilst procrastinating on facebook, a friend of mine discovered this:

http://gobarbra.com/hit/new-f02df11c0d9a4de357be322bee50ed8e

which reminded me of a question, why was this song called Barbra Streisand anyway?

(someone was kind enough to tell me "because they say it in the song" which wasn't quite the answer I was looking for nor quite the intended interpretation of my question)

my search lead me to this:

and then this:

I still don't know why its called Barbra Streisand

social media

2011-05-22T15:18:00.004+10:00

At what point did it become frowned upon to add "randoms"? When did social media become a tool to stay in touch with existing friends rather than to make new ones?

I remember the fun in adding someone I didn't know on ICQ, in fact I'm pretty sure thats all people used to do. You could search for people via age and interest and then you can send them a msg. I used to search for people aged from 8-16 (even though I think you needed to be at least 16 to have a ICQ account) and chat about Pokemon all day.

It would be such an occasion when you ended up speaking to someone in the same city.
I distinctively remember once when I gave someone my phone number (horrible decision in retrospect) as a kid and I talked about Pokemon on the phone with a stranger.

Now I've realized that people from non-english speaking countries tend to use facebook to make friends rather than adding existing friends.

I wonder why that is? When did adding randoms become creepy in our social norms, because at one point it wasn't. I remember making homepages on geocities with photos for the world to see, from that to writing on xanga and then eventually social networks as we now know it.

Will other cultures go through similar usage patterns? Or is there something that sets our behavioral evolutions apart?

Confucian philosophy which heavily dominates Asia insists that one does not exist to you unless formerly introduced, whilst Australians like to think we are friendly and could make friends everywhere.

Why is this reversed when it comes to the internet? (As far as I know)

el cider

2011-05-06T15:54:00.005+10:00

Every once in a while you meet someone so oblivious to things that go on in our world that you can't help but laugh and take advantage for humorous purposes.

This person shall remain unnamed, lets call her Murphy.

So Murphy approaches me with a query, "how do you pronounce this word?"

The word she was referring to was "Monarchy".

I was baffled, I explained to her what it was and what it meant and stated it was odd for her not to know as Australia was a "Monarchy", she gave me a confused look.

I soon discovered that she did not know a royal wedding had occurred lately. Which I was also baffled by. You did not need to be interested in this topic to know that it occurred, I mean for gods sake, it was all over every type of media for the the last few weeks.

Murphy explained she had been in Phillip Island for the last week, which I reluctantly accepted as a plausible excuse, who cares about the wedding anyway?

She soon approached the topic of Osama Bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda, she asked me what was the proper method of pronouncing Al-qaeda which was also followed by a "What is it?"

Explanation as follows:

Al-qaeda was a grammy award winning arabic rock group lead by it's controversial leader Osama Bin-Laden, a rebellious Saudi aristocrat. They were extremely controversial last year with the release of their hit single "Bombs in the USA" which caused a wave of alcohol abuse all over America by teenagers and young adults in the form of "Jager-bombs".

They are commonly confused with "El-Cider" and it's leader Obama Bin-Laden, a Mexican based terrorist group with a business front selling fermented apple beverages.

Murphy: So did they just killed Osama?"
Me: No, no. They killed Obama, not Osama.
Murphy: Oh! Ok.

Now to give Murphy some credit, she didn't 100% believe me and was highly critical when I explained to her that the UN was started by a group called the Famous 9 that included the lights of Albert Einstein, George Washington, Ghandi, Sai Baba and a few other people.

Oh and I also explained to them the Lemon Party was a political party in Indonesia.

Springvale Chronicles: Day 1

2011-04-16T19:21:00.009+10:00

The Duma Guy - Springvale Chronicles

For all y'all who didn't know, I am working on a web series with a team of people including Matt Pastor, Andrew Mai, Christina Peng, Takako Kajiya and I'm sure many others to come.

For this particular series, I'm the main writer with Matt contributing to the plot and pretty much the rest of the cast contributing to the script as we film.

Day 1 of shooting was today and required me to get up at about 7am after a big night out...good times.

Follow Duc Tran as he traverses the hurdles of life as leader of the D.I.X. crew. Be there as he smashes heads in, traffics "merchandise" and eventually falls in love. See life from a whole new perspective and re-discover the Duc Tran that lived in each and one of us...

radwimps

2011-03-20T19:36:00.004+11:00

Recently, I was shown a song by a Japanese band named Radwimps. I felt so strongly about the song itself that I shared it with many people over facebook and have recommended it to a few people in person.

I think this song, Oshaka Shama, speaks for itself.

After watching this video, I acquired their entire discography. I am slowly churning through their discography, having really only listened to 2 of their albums (Okazu no Gohan and Altcolony no Teiri) , but they both have been great.

When people ask me what kind of music I listen to, I usually stutter and find myself unable to answer that question. But I think once I said my favourite type of music is music made with intent and music that sounds epic and grand. Radwimps definitely satisfies those two requirements.

My only regret is being unable to understand the lyrics, which I have been told are even more epic. Oshaka Shama speaks about humanity's place in this world in regards especially to our religious beliefs.

"We kill crows because there are too many, we rid of monkeys because there are too many, we raise more pandas because there aren't enough, yet we raise more humans and there are too many"

Here's another one of my favourite songs from these guys, I am not sure what hes singing about yet, but this music is very cinematic without even understanding the lyrics. The bridge with what I assume is a new born crying, gave me chills the first time I heard it. Check it out:

jigga man

2011-03-09T11:40:00.004+11:00

average

2011-02-12T17:13:00.013+11:00

so heres apparently the "average" faces of women from countries across the world

very interesting

source:
http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_II/Psychologie/Psy_II/beautycheck/english/index.htm

burqa

2011-01-21T10:30:00.006+11:00

"A SYDNEY artist whose anti-burka mural has infuriated left-wing and Islamic activists is vowing that the provocative artwork will stay in place despite death threats, abuse, a string of vandalism attacks, a violent weekend protest and a police request to remove it. "

source:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/sculptor-sergio-redegalli/story-e6frf7jx-1225990694187

the anger obviously arises from the issues of racism and intolerance towards other cultures.
I was one to believe that it is extremely intolerant to ban the burqa anywhere in the world, however things have changed slightly...

take for example, the lily foot, a practice in china that survived a whole millennium.

if you don't know what the lily foot is, basically girls had the bones in their feet broken at a very young age and bounded til it was transformed into the shape you see above.

by "today's standards", this practice is extremely cruel and unjustified, i mean men finding deformed feet extremely erotic? urghhh

"Another attribute of a woman with bound feet was the limitations of her mobility and, therefore, her inability to take part in politics, social life, and the world at large. Bound feet rendered women dependent on their families, particularly their men, and, therefore, became an alluring symbol of chastity and male ownership, since a woman was largely restricted to her home and could not venture far without an escort or the help of watchful servants." - Wikipedia

yes, wikipedia isn't the best source, but my great grandmother was in the process of having her foot bound and I have been told the same things many times.

so this practice has disappeared as far as we know. the eventual ban of this practice was definitely due to foreign influence.

If i were to take a different perspective and judged this as a religious practice, would it then be intolerant for us Australians to outlaw this practice? Would it make me a racist if I deemed this practice inhumane?

if you knew anything about the lily foot, you'll know that it was definitely not a choice (your parents made that decision, its either binding your feet or you will be rejected by society). where as many people will argue that muslim women have a choice, but do they really?
if i told you, you had the choice to pay your tax or go to jail, is that really a choice?
if i said you had free-will as long as you do what i say or else you burn for eternity, is that really free will?

so, is it really "racist" and "intolerant" for us to ban something like the burqa in our own country?

you decide

denon

2011-01-20T10:52:00.007+11:00

i bought some 50 dollar denon headphones last week (Denon AH-C252) to replace the horrid horrid potentially harmful to your health ipod headphones

i was extremely extremely disappointed, disappointed enough to never buy denon headphones again.

they sound just like the crappy ipod headphones if not worse, the cable feels cheap and rigid, whilst the headphones themselves hurts my ears, there is so much distortion in both bass and treble, feels like i bought these at a two dollar shop.

i will be making half arsed attempt to return them.

will be buying sony again when i get a proper job, hopefully i don't go deaf from these denons by then.

21st

2011-01-09T00:00:00.002+11:00

thanks to everyone for coming! this picture sums up my feelings for the night pretty well! =D

jeep

2010-12-20T23:48:00.006+11:00

public service announcement:

my friend zeineh the warrior princess is trying to win herself a jeep and needs everyone to "like" her photo, apparently she will throw a beach party and buy everyone booze if she wins, hooray!

you'll need to "like" the page jeep australia and then "like" the photo itself

check it

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=131884803538121&set=t.577436337

educate

2010-12-16T14:25:00.003+11:00

"In fact, 15-year-old Chinese students in Shanghai out-performed all students internationally in all three categories, including math, science, and reading. According to Time Magazine , this is the first time China participated in a PISA study, and the results are stunning because researchers did not expect the country to do as well as it did." - Ana Kasparian of Young Turks

Full article here: http://www.examiner.com/politics-education-in-national/china-beats-the-u-s-education-1

I really don't think these studies mean too much. Definitley that Math, Science and Reading are the foundations of a good education. But the quality of education is not and should not be defined by these basic building blocks. As far as I can see, the building blocks are there, but no one knows how to put everything together in the right way.

So what if the 15 year old kids in your country can do advanced calculus? if they're not going to pursue a career or life that will utilise their education, then it is useless.

Kids in China are not given a choice of specializing in their secondary education and only recently were tertiary electives introduced.

I asked my parents a question, I know many people that excel in areas that my parents do not consider as part of a traditional education. Now some of these people chose to drop mathematics and sciences in favour of subjects like Visual Communications or Studio Arts, they excel and gain recognition and proceed to have a prosperous career doing something they love, should they be forced to do Mathematics and Sciences instead?

I think the problem with the Chinese education is a completely different problem from what we face here in the "Western World", its more so that people are being shoved into jobs that they never had a passion for and thus mediocrity breeds more mediocrity and new ideas are always one step behind, because that person who had a passion to be innovative and creative in a field they love was forced to do subjects they didn't like and is probably in a tertiary course they have no love for and is now stuck in a job they hate.

Now this doesn't just apply to professions that require artistic creativity, but a good example is indeed jobs that require artistic creativity. During my time working with designers in Shanghai, I have never seen such uninspired work coming from profession designers. The skills are technically all there, but there is no passion. This is mainly due to the fact that most of these designers did not get into design as part of their passion, but as a last resort for a career due to failing at something else they were forced to do.

To demonstrate the macro-effects:

When you think of America, you think of Apple, Ford, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Google etc

Japan: Honda, Sony, Nintendo, Toshiba etc

Germany: Mercedez Benz, Volkswagen etc

these are some of the world's largest economies, China ranks above all except America...yet there are no brands (at least that we know of, Lenovo would be closest) that has become synonymous with industry defining innovation, possibly due to lack of creative marketing skills or possibly because that most people in the workforce are uninspired. If China's education system is not revamped, then China will be stuck with copying the rest of the world forever.

(however, I am also aware that the Japanese schooling system is also very strict and arbitary, I am not familiar with the details, but its interesting that their schooling system can produce so many talents and innovative companies...curious)

watchmen

2010-12-07T19:58:00.003+11:00

i've been watching the watchmen movie again and also in light of recent issues regarding wikileaks has got me thinking.

freedom of speech and transparency is something we often take for granted in a country like Australia, but do we really have freedom of speech and how transparent are our systems really (thats a topic for another day)?

now many politicians in the USA have condemned Julian Assange, some going as far as calling for his execution.

our own prime minister, Julia Gillard has stated that Julian Assange and Wikileaks have conducted illegal activities (though remained silent when asked what laws Wikileaks have breached). Paypal and Mastercard have suspended Wikileaks account and donations towards the organisation.

show you how far our freedom of speech really goes. if wikileaks has been engaging in illegal behaviour then every single news source that has since reported its leaks are also engaging in illegal behaviour.

how can our own prime minister be so irresponsible, condemning a fellow australian who has yet to be convicted of any crime to be a criminal?

how is this any different from China or Iran (or any other country that does so) censoring the media to potray the government in a favourable light?

again...how free exactly is our freedom of speech?

classified information is of course kept secret for a reason, keeping the population in the dark in regards to certain topics and issues insures peace and stability.

so whats better? violence based on truth? or peace based on a lie?

arnuld

2010-12-01T13:18:00.005+11:00

i should start by saying i am by no means a fan of 2pm like the hordes of asian girls out there, but i saw this a while ago and oh man did i crack up.
so this is a song called "i'll be back" and yes the reference to terminator is intentional...

this is probably the worst attempt at looking...post apocalyptic bad ass, instead they look like anorexic pandas shuffling to a song a few writers wrote whilst watching terminator drunk

oh man did the choreographers get lazy with that stupid running on the spot move and that thumbs up whilst slowly sinking into the molten steel move... oh dear lord

heres something thats actually worth your time:

emi hinouchi

2010-11-28T17:27:00.004+11:00

through my random wanderings through youtube, you discover many new and interesting things.

i love discovering new/old music that i haven't heard or wouldn't ever be put into contact with otherwise, example include:

apparently this has been a meme for a while but i've only discovered it, musical genius!!

but humour aside i discovered this japanese vocalist, whose name is in the name of this post.

i first heard her in this song with the teriyaki boyz and thought it was pretty chilled out and energetic at the same time, i thought she was cute but didn't look into it too much.

but recently, whilst going through my old favourite list, i found it again and decided to listen to it, and then decided to check out some of her other songs. i don't know if she writes her own songs but the girl knows how to sing

i decided to check out her solo stuff which reinforced my impressions of her vocal abilities.

now i know theres a lot of people who don't like to listen to music of a language they can't understand. it'd be great if i could understand what shes singing and would definitely increase my appreciation for the music, but good music transcends language and everyone should keep an open mind :)

i think i shall do more research into this young lady and acquire more of her music

muzik

2010-11-18T13:51:00.005+11:00

so i've been trying very hard to get my mind off stuff lately, in that process i stumbled upon this, check this out

i can only pick out 6-7 of these, some of them are pretty obvious, some of them aren't. how many can you name? (don't say lady gaga for all of them even though thats a perfectly good answer)

hip hop lives

2010-11-17T11:44:00.002+11:00

lets hope he stays true when he does make it

nokia

2010-11-04T20:24:00.002+11:00

Extreme disatisfaction and dissapointment does not even begin to describe my feelings towards Nokia.

My first phone, like many people my age and older, was a Nokia. I was very fond of Nokia phones, they were extremely user friendly and were very robust in design. I dropped my Nokia countless times and it continued to work with no problems.

Eventually came a day when I lost my Nokia 3200, heartbroken I was. My parents did not want to buy me another Nokia phone and decided to purchase me a Panasonic due to pricing, it was the crappiest phone I had owned to this date. I was so unhappy with my parent's decision, I really liked Nokia phones.

There soon came a period when the operating systems on other brands started catching up in usability, when eventually it was obvious that my panasonic was no longer useable, I obtained a Sony Ericson which I was quite content with. It looked nice, fitted nicely in my hand and more importantly the user interface was pretty reliable (like a Nokia I thought).

After 2 years, it was time to renew my contract and finally, Nokia has some great phones out with great reviews, pffft who needs an overpriced iPhone when my Nokia E71 looks and performs better (cheaper too).

Oh how I was wrong, don't get me wrong, I still think iPhones are overpriced luxury goods that are more pleasing to the eye than reliable, but Nokias? hoho.

Recently, my Nokia started freezing (I've had it for just over a year). The off button had become my best friend, the interface was so slow that I would often assume it had just frozen. Not only that, it has stopped displaying the names of the people who sms me and also just today, an error message saying I don't have enough memory to accept smses starting appearing even though I have a 16gb memory stick in use. Sometimes I would press the accept call button whilst a call was coming through just to have the phone freeze on me.

e71 is also meant to have a multilanguage dictionary which is hardly multilanguage at all. I downloaded dictionary languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean just to see that my phone could not display the characters. Ridiculous I thought, must be some sort of mistake? I contacted Nokia just to have them tell me that these languages will only work for their region that use East Asian language operating systems, which means they can display English as well as any language that uses the Latin Alphabet as well as their native languages, whilst we can't view them. I searched for language patches and hacks to no avail.

But what was puzzling was, this explanation was far from satisfactory, Nokia had no operations in Korea durring the development of the e71 as far as I know. But there is a downloadable Korean dictionary. According to them, the only place with phones that would be able to view Korean was Korea, but Nokia didn't have phones in Korea...what the hell is the point of having a downloadable dictionary when none of your phones can display the characters?

There is also no Timer on the e71, this basic function just simply does not exist on the phone.

Bottom line is, Nokia software (Symbian) is crap. It seems to degrade overtime and is far from reliable, especially for an e71 that is meant to be a business phone.

As a result, I have lost all loyalty towards Nokia and will be moving to HTC Android phones as soon as my contract expires, somehow I think Nokia's new open source project is too little too late. Its a shame, a company once known for its reliability and innovation has ended up like this.

ka yoot ness

2010-10-30T20:35:00.002+11:00

there are times when cuteness can overwhelm an otherwise logical grown male

i am still finding it hard to grasp that this is not a doll

accents

2010-10-29T21:14:00.005+11:00

very interesting. though i do claim that english is my first language quite commonly to avoid confusion and also for the same reason cenk stated, i don't actually speak english as a first language.

english is the language i speak and write most fluently in, but i speak a dialect of Wu chinese at home (Shanghainese) and was the first language i learnt to speak in. (though english was the first language i learnt how to write in)

i think accents and fluency is also something to be set a part, i have met many individuals with a strong accent but with extreme fluency. my parents on the other hand, have a strong accent AND poor fluency, which means they speak in an ..."odd" grammar?( i'm not sure what the proper terminology is, but that'll have to do). the way they arrange words orally and in written form sounds strange, though my parents have lived in Australia for more than 10 years, their fluency hasn't increased as much as i would expect, possibly due to the nature of their employment (not having the chance to interact with locals)

I agree, discrimination does exist, but i do think that at least in Australia, you are less credible not because your accent/lack of fluency reflects your heritage but more so that it is a requirement to have fluency in that particular role.

I had a chat with an international student and she said that it was extremely difficult to find a job in Australia as an international student, she assumed it was because of discrimination.
I don't think thats true, I think that even if you have an accent, when you show fluency and articulation in your language skills (along with all the other requirements for the job) there is no reason not to hire you.

take eg. Telemarketers
i'm a pretty open minded guy, a part from when i was in high school and sent a telemarkter on a wild goose chase by giving them a false address, i've been quite nice to them. but i think i am definitley more inclined and a lot more likely to hang up on a caller from india, not because i hate indians, but because its just takes that much more effort to understand them.

so if you're an employer, its natural that you hire someone you can understand more efficiently.

If discrimination was the issue here, Australians of ethnicities other than white, would have just as hard of a time finding a job, but i don't think thats the case.

get your engrish skills on yo!

pop culture

2010-10-28T19:07:00.003+11:00

so watching the newest snsd video got me thinking (ironic).

When we say 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s styled theme party, what we really mean is USA themed party or maybe UK.

Why is that the case?

Might it have something to do with that most other countries were busy with revolutions, political turmoil etc?

Did people in the 60s have 30s themed parties? What did they dress like? I wonder how this will change in 50s years time, as Asian economies and influences rise, will we ever have an 2010s party based on how people dressed in China? Korea? Japan?

here we go again

2010-10-24T15:44:00.001+11:00

now, true love dictates that i love taeyeon no matter what (lol so sad). but i cant help but think this is slightly "wondergirlish".

btw if anyone has a cure for this disease of snsd, please help me thanks

the one

2010-10-17T00:56:00.003+11:00

i know this stuff is old but man, is it just me or is this stuff hilarious?

in the end

2010-10-09T13:08:00.005+11:00

i've been a linkin park fan since i was 12, from the days where i would listen to nothing but hybrid theory and meteora (and thought all other music was crap), to the days where i thought "damn linkin park sucks now" when minutes to midnight came out just to eventually love the album.

since their new release a Thousand Suns (ATS), i think my love for linkin park has grown to an all time high.

now many of my friends have disliked this album, saying hybrid theory was a much better album, and you know what, i agree to a certain degree. Hybrid Theory (HT) to me was something so new and fresh, at the time i thought it was in your face, mike's rapping layered with chester's beautifully sung melodies. I am a fan of hip-hop and i miss the days when mike would rap, but on many levels, ATS is much more hip-hop than HT.

if HT was rapper's delight, then ATS is Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy or Nigger by Nas.
HT was full of catchy hooks and mindless lyrics, dumbed down for the masses (if you listen to the demos of the songs from HT, mike's verses are laced with many complex flows and metaphors), great and ground breaking for it's time
but ATS challenges your thoughts on what it means to be a band in this age, and what it means to have lyrics with substance, delivering a message on how this world is and how it could turn out.

If ATS came out directly after Meteora, I feel I would not be praising it as such. I would not have been ready for it. I think there are two kinds of people that would like this album

1. mindless linkin park fan boy who will like anything linkin park
2. someones whos gone through this journey with them intelligently and understands what mike and the rest of the band are doing, not just musically, but as people, not just with a guitar,drumkit and turntables, but with everything available to them

one thing i hear is that their sound is now too over produced, well, technology evolves music, ppl hated DJs at one stage, ppl hated DJs in bands, ppl hated sampling, ppl hated electronic music overall, but its just progression of things.

many times have i heard that mike is trying too hard to do some ground breaking shit everytime linkin park does a new album but i feel hes under more pressure to push out something like HT if anything.

the above song, waiting for the end has also received many mixed reviews, i do agree that i would prefer mike delivering a powerful verse as an mc rather than singing, but the melody chester sings...i will overlook everything else.

when MC's say "y'all not ready for this" i find that i usually am, but in this case, i think many people aren't ready for this

happy listening

student internationale

2010-10-02T15:54:00.003+10:00

decades ago, international students, exchange students from China were always the best and brightest the country had to offer. Without your proven academic success, there was no way for you to be accepted into a foreign university.

Sure, academic results are not definitive indicators for your intelligence as a whole, but even so...how times have changed.

I have met many international students who are very bright, very cosmopolitan and very open to new ideas. Unfortunately, these students are a very small minority.

The motivation for many Chinese international students do not come from within themselves, but came as an ill concieved contingency plan for failing academically in their own countries.
The irony of it all is that if they fail academically in an enviroment where academic results is everything, where you are forced to study...how would you succeed with no one to control you?

Given the situation in Australia, we love these international students, they come here, make up a large portion of intakes for most universities, often pay more than twice the fees local student do.

Is it ethical to be benefiting like this?

Universities often lower their english language skill requirements to increase international intake, again, is this ethical when even students who achieve 7 on their IELTS test sometimes have trouble linguistic problems at school and at work.

regent

2010-09-22T19:21:00.002+10:00

so a few days ago, at my train station, a woman was crying as she waited for the train.
upon closer inspection, she was on the phone.

she didn't realise I was there, but she yelled into the phone to the person on the otherside,

"IS IT MY FAULT THAT I'M PREGNANT WITH YOUR BABY?"

amongst other revelations. she hung up and sat in her seat, sobbing loudly.

if someone sat down next to her and patted her on the back, it would have probably meant the world to her.

so why didn't I do it?

was I afraid that she would get the wrong idea? was it because I didn't want to seem creepy? was it because she looked like the crazy cat lady from the simpsons? was it because she smelt funny? was it because she was carrying a suspicious looking suitcase that was probably full of drugs?

all of the above? none of the above?

purchases

2010-09-19T17:16:00.006+10:00

Team Noble (Jorge, Kat, Carter, Emile and Jun)
Sculpt very detailed, i'm loving it, unforutunately you can't take them off the platform and they're not poseable, but otherwise still awesome

mum's 50th present

text reads "longevity" in chinese

i am now a long way into the negatives on my credit card account

Rolando Mendoza

2010-08-30T12:43:00.013+10:00

If you didn't know, roughly a week or two ago, a disgruntled, highly decorated ex-cop in Manila decided to take a bus load of tourists as hostage. He had alleged that he had been wrongly discharged out of the force and wanted his job back.

It took 12 hours to kill this man, 12 hours and 8 dead tourists, some of who's deaths could possibly be attributed to the police rather than the Mendoza.

This story has angered on so many levels.

Not only was the assault poorly managed, anyone who's played a game of CS could have done a better job.

The first assault resulted in a retreat as Mendoza fired towards the police entering, police are expected to show courage and determination when faced with these situations, however after the first cop was wounded, instead of pushing forward to kill the hostage taker, they all retreated
(keeping in mind that this was inside a bus)

At this point, what was stopping the hostage taker killing some hostages?

The second assault which happened hours later, was even more poorly managed, a group of SWAT members assaulted the bus, first by smashing windows...and then...not much else. They did not have ladders to enter the bus after smashing the windows, nor did they have an effective plan to prevent Mendoza from killing any hostages. Footage reveal police throwing smoke grenades... into a bus full of hostages.

Again, there was nothing to stop Mendoza, who has nothing to lose at this point, killing everyone on the bus.

After revealing his position inside the bus by firing his M16, snipers were able to pick him out.

The reckless assault wasn't even required, when a sniper could have just shot this guy at any given moment in the 12 hours.

Mendoza was out in the open without his M16 raised many times during the day with negotiators, yet no attempt was made at either disarming him or killing him.

The pinoy government has defended the actions of the police at the scene, apparently the gun-man had not shown signs of wanting to kill the hostages (despite taking them all hostage with an M16).

The Chinese Central government as well as the Hong Kong SAR government has expressed their anger at the situation and has refused to host a delegation in Beijing and Hong Kong to "explain" the event, and has rejected the pinoy president's press conference explanation.

Now sure we can all say that this is the short comings of a corrupt and immature government, the people are just as fed up with this sort of incompetence.

I know you all want to be billionaires, but can you please not seek your 15 seconds of fame at a place where 8 innocent people were just murdered?

Sure a bunch of naive school girls do stupid things. I'm sure the government and the police department would condemn such behaviour, possibly even go to their school and give them a lecture...oh wait...

(theres even a picture of a policeman posing WITH a high school girl, but I can't seem to locate it.)

I hope everyone around the world can learn something from this incident ...apart from don't go to the philippines

i've been missin your devilicious?

2010-08-25T23:19:00.002+10:00

did anyone know nikki webster is doing this rubbish these days? this is like a crappier version of kylie minogue x keisha

grandmaster kia and the furious 5

2010-08-21T17:13:00.003+10:00

i was eating my food before and i heard "the message" playing on my tv

the message about urban youth struggling through a unfair and racist society...playing in an ad about some white guy who forgot to buy his nappies?

"...from beat street to commercials for micky d's..."

power catalyst

2010-08-07T19:11:00.004+10:00

this is showing some promise, im glad kanye has finally gotten over his emo-ness and even more glad hes gotten over autotune.

according to wikipedia, his new album will include production work from RZA, Q-Tip, Pete Rock and Souljaboy...what? Souljaboy? oh dear...

i am slightly curious though to what souljaboy has to offer kanye in terms of music and how hes feeling about himself being placed along names like RZA, Q-tip and Pete Rock. Will be an interesting album

at the same time

i like this song a lot more than "what i've done" and "what i did/what i've done again" aka new divide. very different from anything thats been done by them before. rick rubin is co-producing with mike shinoda himself. this album should also be interesting

i dream of corea

2010-07-24T12:14:00.004+10:00

martin, cissy and I were somehow high school students in Korea, but cissy was of billionare status. whilst we were just chilling out on a beach in Korea, we realised that cissy had some stalker fanboys around who was in love with cissy and her friend whom was nameless but lets call her taeyeon (at this point martin wasnt in the dream)

we decided to move locations as cissy only likes to be bukkaked by people she knows. we get in the car and they approach us and asked cissy if they could come along, i was disapproved but, since they introduced themselves, cissy now officially knows them...so yea.

we are driving to another beach and more fanboys are chasing after what appears to be our carriage pulled by automatic robotic super horses. the two fanboys inside our carriage are naturally sitting next to cissy and i'm sitting next to taeyeon. the fanboys outside soon grab a hold of our carriage and are trying to climb in so i had to defend the carriage from being breached whilst cissy is flirting with the other fanboys, soon enough i succeed but the fanboys next to cissy are so happy and nervous that they vomit all over me, i get pissed off, and to cissy's dismay i throw the other two fanboys out of our carriage and make a turn back to our boarding school so i can go shower.

this is where it got all "asian high school drama".

so i am taking a shower to get all that vomit off me and martin comes in and tells me there seems to be a big group of people waiting outside for me.

a bunch of those dudes walk into the bathhouse and scout around and are speaking to everyone there, one walks up to martin and asks him in korean, if he was korean and if he wanted to beat me up, i chuckled and martin chuckles and says ok but continues showering, one of them looks at me and walks off.

so i walk outside and theres a whole bunch of guys sitting outside waiting for someone, most likely me but i ignore them and approach taeyeon to chat with her. as the conversation is going great, one of the fanboys i threw out of the carriage earlier interrupts my conversation and is like

"YA! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?" (all dialogue is in korean too, i miraculously speak and understand korean in my dreams)
"chill buddy, i'm just speaking to my friend"
"why did you throw me out of the carriage? you are stupid!"
"you vommitted on me buddy"
"i will beat you like a drum with all my friends, you do not deserve taeyeon" he whispered to me

i gave turned around whilst they were all staring at me ready to fight, i walked up to taeyeon and kissed her. martin realising that this was a signal, punches about 10 guys in the head whilst i'm fighting the more agile ones in a fashion similar to this:

me being the guy in the black except there were about 20 of them and 2 of us and we actually win the fight

end of dream
(images courtesy of young and dangerous and temptation of the wolf (worst movie ever))

who wants to be a billionare?

2010-07-22T17:55:00.003+10:00

Travis "Travie" Mccoy (not so) new song is really starting to shit me. This song not only has no substance but flamboyantly preaches...nothing.

according to the video clip, travis mccoy gives someone a car, a new skateboard and some new spray paint, i dont think you need to be billionare to do any of those things for one, and two, travis is definitley rich enough to do all those things though i doubt he has.

i was sitting at melbourne central, just eating some food before work and theres a group of high school kids sitting next to me, this song comes on and as if the(their) national anthem had come on, they all started singing

"i wanna be a billionare sooooo frickin baad"

i don't think any single one of those kids will ever be on the cover of forbes magazine next to opera and the queen (as far as i know, i don't think they've been on the cover of forbes? could be wrong, not gonna pretend i read forbes regularly)

as far as materialism goes, i think this song is the epitome, but its covered up to make it seem like its got some sort of hipster substance (oxymoron?) when its full of ignorance typical of its target market.

lol

2010-07-18T18:37:00.000+10:00

+

=

lol

refs

2010-06-20T00:46:00.001+10:00

please fifa, introduce video reviews

technology these days

2010-06-03T18:56:00.004+10:00

i want one

smoked

2010-05-12T16:03:00.003+10:00

now I don't know if i should present this story as a serious issue or as just a humorous happening.

an acquaintance of mine from work, who shall be known as "pree" recently took up smoking, i'm not sure how old he is but if i had to guess i say hes about 21 or 22.

"it still hurts my throat a bit," he says "but i am getting used to it."
"so why exactly did you take it up if it hurts your throat?" i asked
"because i need a girlfriend man, all the smokers have girlfriends, girls think its cool"
"HAHA" i chuckled due to the humour of that statement
"what are you laughing about? its not a joke"
"HAHA" i continued to chuckle as i was still under the impression he was making another obviously ridiculous statement to further his initial humourr.
"its not funny"

At this stage, my mind considered the odds of this guy actually genuinely believing his statement in regards to cigarettes being the reason for female attraction to males.

"so explain your theory," i said in a very worried yet curious tone

his theory is as follows:
he has never had a girlfriend nor has he had much luck with girls relationship wise and sexually. now he attributes this situation to the lack of cigarette addiction on his part. he thinks that it is extremely attractive to the opposite sex when a male walks around with a cigarette in his hands. "it looks cool" as he likes to put it.
to justify this theory, he said surveyed 10 people he knew and discovered that all the ones who don't smoke have never had a girlfriend, and those who do are either in a relationship or are "successful with the ladies" as he likes to put it.
he proceeded to demonstrate this theory was real life examples in the room, he pointed to person A and person B who were both smokers.
"neither of them have a girlfriend..."
"yea but they are both successful with the ladies! they told me!"
"i see, they told you they were successful with the ladies did they?"
"no not exactly, but they tell me stories about their chicks all the time."
"so you think, the reason why they are successful is due to cigarettes...?"
"yes"

our conversation pretty much finished there, i saw him again the next day and someone looking to exploit him due to the tax hike on cigarettes asked him for a smoke, he kindly replied that he has not officially started yet, but he will start buying decks soon.

"let me know when you start buying decks yea?"
"for sure man, for sure," pree said with a confidence in his voice

i think he attracting more cheap guys who can't afford to smoke than he is girls.

Avatar

2010-04-17T11:45:00.004+10:00

I've acquired avatar to view at my pleasure but you know, the more i watch this movie, the more i realise something crucial that was overlooked by many people.

there are some very obvious themes to this movie such as colonialism, racism etc. this movie has been praised for dealing with these themes.

however, i feel there are points that need to be critisized. one very outstanding point needs to be considered, an american made this movie. a very rich white american came up with this story and filmed it.

it seems funny to me that Jake Sully (a white male), mastered the arts of the Na'vi, that usually take a whole life time of training and conditioning within a few months. and it's ironic to me, that though there has been only 5 Toruk Makto's throughout the entire history of the Na'vi, Jake Scully was able to capture a Toruk with 3 months of training.

This suggests to me a few things:

The white male is far more superior than any other ethnicity or race.

The Na'vi are stupid and only 5 of them have ever thought about flying higher than a Toruk to capture it.

It is even more ironic that the Na'vi, a culture rich in history and traditions, needed a White Male to lead them to war. Yes, he was a US Marine Corporal, but apparently a US Marine Corporal is better than anyone native to that entire planet.

Jake was able to defeat Tsu'tey, apparently the finest warrior who has trained all his life in the arts of the Na'vi, in hand to hand combat with ease, didn't even need his knife.

Not only did he tiger knee Tsu'tey, he stole his girl too...

James Cameron, instead of debating an issue, subconsciouly reinforced all the negative imperalist stereotypes of Western Culture.

"the last samurai, starring tom cruise, get the hell outta here"

fashion promotion

2010-04-15T21:16:00.004+10:00

for those of you who are any interested, i am doing fashion promotion as a subject this year and i decided to start a blog to track my progress

here are my attempts at designing/marketing/being cool:

likeled.blogspot.com

i'll be updating it regularly and i'll probably make the blog more presentable
in the near future

analogies

2010-04-01T00:19:00.000+11:00

now i read these when i was in year 11 but i discovered them again last night...enjoy:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

the king of mimis

2010-03-30T15:04:00.004+11:00

a friend of my (matt pastor) just released a new movie, its a short film about a japanese girl, check it out yo:

dreams from beyond 2

2010-03-25T11:59:00.000+11:00

so i just woke up from some...interesting dreams again.

part1.

so i was working at roymorgan research, except it was at an old secondary school that was converted into a call centre. i also had samuel l jackson as my supervisor. halfway through the shift, samuel l jackson says to me that he is mfckng hungry and he wants me to get him a mfckng whoop.
what is a whoop? i asked him, he was like a mfckng whoop, english mfckr do you speak it? after some pointless ramblings about how hes never heard of a country called what and threatening to shoot me, he explained that a whooper = whooper. he ordered hungry jacks before and ate the chips and drank the tasty beverage but left the burger under the seat because someone came in and he didnt want them to see.

i try to use the elevator but its not working and lucky for me theres a industrial elevator, i head down and i see two guys with assault rifles aiming at me, i was like wo what the hell, whats up. and they thought i was the one thats been causing some disruptions in the city today, i had no idea what they were talking about so i went to find the whoop.

funny enough, i found two burgers, one was a quad-mighty angus pretty much and the other was a quad-bacon whooper, i was hungry too, so i decided i was gonna eat some of the quad-bacon whooper and tell samuel l jackson that thats how i found it. just before i do that, a supervisor on the bottom floor (i cant remember who or what they looked like) screamed out NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. and warned me of the dangers about eating a whoop like that, i said i was hungry but i was only gonna take two bites and give it to samuel l jackson to finish it off. and he was like "oh samuel l jackson? why didnt you say so, carry on"
so i take two bites out of it and almost died, took the burger upstairs, samuel l jackson didnt even realise that there were two bites missing and then....something goes wrong (continue to part 2)

samuel l, the fact that i can understand what you are saying renders your query about my english speaking abilities obsolete.

part 2.

the aliens from district 9 attack. those commando guys earlier were refering to them when they almost shot me. now the rest of the dream was a bit of a blur, now someone i know gets stripped by the aliens, samuel l jackson is no where to be seen so i had to help her out. she just happened to be wearing extremely sexy lingerie underneath her work clothes and i was like yo, thats dope. so we're running for our lives and im fighting off prawns. one prawn latched onto her ...bottoms and ripped them off, so we had to like go into a small shack and ask for the kind villagers for some pants. thats as far as i can remember...

bloody prawns, get off my planet.

stories from abroad

2010-03-16T13:20:00.003+11:00

so i haven't really made a blogpost about the humourous and exciting stories that happened overseas when boon and danh came to visit in shanghai and then i subsequently escorted them to korea. Heres one story that i've been telling:

The Dump:

So my mate Chester tells me that hes got some friends at Richys on a friday night and I decided to take Boon and Danh to this balla club. At Richy's, there is no entry fee, the dance floor is like the size of my room so if you want in, you have to book a table. To book a table, you need to spend 2000 AUD on alcohol that night, and thats why it is baller.

Initially we couldn't really get in, because my mate's table was pretty damn full, so we decided to head somewhere else first and come back later when there is less people. (we also bumped into people that we knew....sorta from melbourne this night...weird)

We arrived at this rip off white person bar called Rendevous at Xintiandi, where cocktails were 85 Yuan each (i had the same cocktail somewhere else for 25 Yuan) and decided to just have one cocktail there and move on, Danh got very drunk and generous and shouted us 4 rounds of cocktails. As the night progressed, 2 ladies approached us speaking Chinese and said "hey you guys wanna play together?", i realised the status of these "ladies" fairly quickly and directed them towards boon and said he was our boss for tonight, they broke into english and asked him to by them a drink so they would "play with us" for the rest of the night, boon did not buy them a drink and thus they did not play with him.

After a generous amount of long island icetea, we proceeded back to Richys. This is when the trouble started. Boon and Danh were very drunk and getting drunker. When i checked up on Danh, i thought he was getting pretty into it, chatting to women and playing drinking games. Boon on the other hand, just kept saying that he lost his jacket and camera for about 20 minutes, womenless might i add.

It came to a time eventually when neither of them were in my sight anymore, eventually I became a little worried for their kidneys and decided to look for them. Danh was easy to find, he was in the toilet vomiting in the sink with 10 ignorant people behind him thinking he was just taking a long time to wash his hands. Boon was outside crying (no joke) and vomiting into the gardens at the same time, he did not have his DSLR. I searched for about 30-40 minutes for it in the club and eventually found it under a pile of clothes. There was music, more alcohol and plenty of women...I did not want to leave, Danh and Boon on the other hand were close to death, (Danh did not win a single round of drinking games with that Shanghainese girl).

In the cab ride home, Boon started crying about how no one appreciates him, Danh was trying to calm him down. When we arrived at the apartment, Boon was still crying about how no one appreciates him, I eventually pulled out a picture of Sunny and said "BOON! LOOK AT THIS FACE! DO YOU WANT HER TO BE SAD BECAUSE OF YOU? SHE WANTS YOU TO STOP CRYING AND GO TO SLEEP" and not suprisingly he did...

but wait a second...where is Danh? Perhaps he fell asleep in one of the two bedrooms? nope, i opened the toilet door and there he was: pants down, fresh from a number 2, passed out and feet soaked in his own vomit.

"Danh", i said "what are you doing? wipe your arse and go to bed!"
"I Can't..." he replied slowly "just leave me"
"Danh, you are sitting on a toilet, there is vomit on your foot, your faeces is in that bowl and probably on your arse, you can not stay here!"

I took some toilet paper and put it in his hand

"Close the door..." Danh mumbled

I closed the door and waited for about 5 minutes with no response. I opened the door again, he had passed out in his attempt to wipe his arse and dropped the toilet paper in his vomit. I grab the toilet paper, making sure i did not touch the corners soaked in stomache acid and put it back in his hand. (Now this exchange actually went on for a few cycles, but for progressions sake i'll move it along.)

I reiterated that he was in a lavatory and could not spend the rest of the night in there. Eventually i closed the door and i heard a flush, that was good, he came out and i realised he only had one sock on. Passed out immediately on the inflatable mattress. I walked into the toilet and discovered one of his socks inside the bowl, clogging the toilet, i removed the sock carefully, making sure i only made contact with the dry part and threw it in the bath tub and hosed it down. I mopped up the vomit and finally went to sleep, the next morning Chester told me how they clubbed more and went to Karaoke and all sorts of crazys...damn you Danh and Boon!

here is a video of Danh the next morning (sorry Danh, haha)

racist

2010-03-15T23:53:00.003+11:00

so what is stating a fact and what is racism?

i am asian. fact

but lets say i said, asians all have black hair... is that a fact? or is that racism?
maybe there are asians with different hair colours? but its accepted as fact

now you could say that its only racist if its offensive or harmful

now if i said asians are all good at maths which probably isn't a fact. but is it racism? its not offensive...or harmful, its potentially untrue, just like hair colour.

anyway, we had a very elaborate discussion of race and the concept of asia during my "modern asia tute", quite interesting, but i think the funniest/worst thing i ever heard during the tute was when a rich white girl said (after much discussion of indian students and having concluded that many of the attacks probably were not racially motivated, they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time):

"i don't want to sound racist or anything, i'm not racist, but i think the indian students bring it on themselves"

i think she was just lucky there wasn't any people of indian decent in the class haha.

what is more scary? being a racist? or being racist and not realising?

kaist poster boy

2010-03-12T22:32:00.004+11:00

pretty soon, every korean mum who wishes their kids to attend kaist will be wondering who that handsome slightly blurred guy in their kaist poster is.

damn you lucas, you know the only reason they used this photo is coz you're white! haha

happy birthday!

2010-03-08T23:17:00.003+11:00

金泰妍, 生日祝賀합니다!

my key?

2010-03-02T23:23:00.009+11:00

I, unlike most Melbourne commuters was joyfully looking forward to the statewide adoption of the new myki system. It is very similar to what I have become accustomed to in China and Korea. Leave the card in a wallet/bag, scan when you get on, scan when you get off. No more cheap frail paper tickets. I was even more happy to hear that you can buy passes that exceed a monthly, which meant I did not have to buy a new ticket every month.

One of the first things I did when I got back from overseas was sign up for a free myki card. One of the first problems I realised was that my concession Myki will be useless by next year because I won't qualify for concession status, I thought maybe they might work out some system where they could send me a full-fare card for free, no problem.

The day came when I finally had to use my Myki, I realised that I had no cash in my wallet, but then I remembered I could charge the card on the internet, so far so good, very convenient. I logged on, charged 10 dollars and clicked ok and thats when the second problem came up "please allow 24 hours for top ups to go through"... that should have been shown before i pressed ok, I potentially just wasted 10 bucks, but I thought it probably would go through and it says 24 hours just in case. But as a plan B, I asked my mum for some change. And I was quite right to do so, when I scanned the card it had "0 balance".

All those negatives can be mitigated with experience and planning ahead, but just a few days ago, I heard somewhere that Myki can not be used on trams and buses. Now this got me boiled up, apparently I am expected to purchase another ticket if I want to ride a connecting bus or a tram, that is just bloody ridiculous. I go to uni in the city with buildings all over the cbd and now they tell me i can't use this on the tram...

The bottom line is, this system would have been great if they pulled it off correctly, frankly I regret having jumped on Myki so early but lucky for me I had only purchased a 31 day pass, i shall be returning to metcards until they can pull myki off correctly.

Just to give you a perspective of some other countries.

Shanghai Public Transport Card:

I think it averages 50 cents Australian a trip, one of the fastest growing networks in the world and definitely one of the most used. I've only ever caught one metro that was about 2 minutes late. Metros come every 2-3 minutes during peak time and 4 -5 minutes at other times. You can also use the transport card in taxis.

(just another day in people's square station (so many people and yet...rarely any delays))

Hong Kong Octopus Card:

Now i can't remember how much it cost average a trip, but it definitely was not alot. You can use them on all forms of public transports, including ferrys. Similar to Shanghai in terms of scanning on and off, but you can also use the card to make small purchases at corner stores and fast food outlets like Macdonalds, I'm also aware that you are able to use it to pay for parking in certain areas. I think 3-4 million people use the metro every day, the same company that runs this system, currently runs ours. (the metro system, not the ticketing)

(parking made easy)

Seoul T-Money Card:

Not only could you get them in different colors and patterns, you could also get them in different shapes and objects. My "card" was a phone dangler and pretty much just scanned my phone every time I used the metro. 50 AUD lasted me a good month, keeping in mind that I made multiple trips back and forth a day, as opposed to a 85 Zone1-2 monthly in Melbourne. Also one of the most used. You can also use it to buy things from participating convenience stores, vending machines inside the station usually accepts T-money and like the other cities you can use these in taxis too. And I also think theres a push to get it running nation wide as I noticed some taxis in daejeon also accepted T-money, but not the metros.

dangles

In these cities, a car was pretty much only needed when the metro stopped running after midnight, even then taxis were affordable and i could use my card in there too.

Myki...fail (so far)

my question is why did we spend billions of dollars developing this fail of a system, when we probably could have bought one of these very well developed and proven systems for alot less?
And how are hongkong (approx 7 million population), shanghai (approx 20 million) and seoul (approx 10 million) able to maintain such a good system and keep metros running every few minutes without delays, when melbourne which only has around 4 million population can't do it?

philaharmonics

2010-02-27T20:06:00.004+11:00

i vaguely heard something about this, but for all you who don't/didn't know, back in 2008 the New York Phillaharmonic orchestra did a show in Pyongyang that was broadcasted world wide. today i saw the documentary of their experience on sbs. Me, i have a huge interest in North Korea and would like to visit some day and have seen sooooooooo many documentaries on the country (recommend me one if you know any) and well the documentary about their performance was really inspiring. i hope you all have the time/gather the amount of effort to see it, here is a video of their encore performance of "arirang"

just beautiful given the context of performance

Sandara

2010-02-27T10:53:00.000+11:00

i'm sorry but this picture has got to be the cutest thing i have ever seen. god damn

she broke her trophy and shes crying...god damn

dreams from beyond

2010-02-25T12:01:00.004+11:00

so i just woke up from some extremely odd dreams. and i shall blog it before i forget it.

ninjas and vampires:

I went to this rooftop party at some apartment of a guy named...dan, the rooftop was so bling it was pretty much like a suburb, like when you arrive, theres roads and you have to walk to his apartment which was in another building on top of this giant one. anyway, we soon realised that dan was a vampire and he invited us all to turn us into vampires.

lucky for me i was a ninja and could defend myself. in the elevator, there seemed to be an incinerate button that incineratees everything in the elevator, i got into the elevator with dan pretending that i didnt know ninjatsu, i then put him in a genjutsu and then pressed the incinerate button and left.

but soon i realised he could not be burnt to death for some reason due to his vampire properties. i then realised i have been betrayed by the majority of the people at the party as they were all vampires, but i didnt realise, but not the blood sucking vampires we all love, but the cock sucking vampires from twilight. i soon realised i had been turned into a vampire, a ninja vampire. and i realised that all these dudes were just guys with pointy teeth and sharp nails. the crisis soon turned to a fellow vampire clan attacking us and dan forgave me that i tried to kill him.

i soon realised the reason why this fellow vampire clan was attacking us, because they hated cock sucking vampires. which was fair enough. now i could fight against these cool vampires evenly as i knew ninjatsu, but the rest of the vampires were getting slaughtered coz they couldnt even jump off the building and turn into bats to run away, they were all jumping off thinking they could turn into bats but falling to their deaths.

now this is where it gets random, so i'm with a group of people and then all of them die trying to jump off the building in attempt to flee the cool vampires except for this one girl. she turned out to be a nonexistant wife of a nonexistant mma fighter, and she was really hot, so she convinced me to fight in the UFC with my vampire/ninjatsu qualities.

(like orochimaru but less powerful and less michael jackson)

end of dream

Star wars:

so like i was in a universe similar to that of the starwars universe, and i had been sent on a mission to infiltrate a star destroyer and destroy it from the inside. i posed as a tourist as the empire was poor and had a tourist day on the stardestroyer, they had these little midget guides standing around with little gps sorta things. as i am doing the standard tour, i realised that i had been discovered, they just didnt know what i looked like so i had to escape and abandon the mission. i asked my tour mate if he knew where the dock was and he said go ask one of those midget guides in the hooded robes. so i went and asked and they used the gps thing, and they said the star destroyer didnt have one according to it, i got angry and i stated that its ridiculous that a huge star destroyer doesnt have landing docks for other ships and decided to kidnap him and run away. he started crying and i realised that it wasnt a midget, they were all like 4 year old kids, so i feel bad and i decide to leave him somewhere but i took his gps which could come in handy later. so after a while of looking around, i give up and im sitting at a bar on the star destroyer, just when i was about to give up, i heard hansolo in the bar, he was about to give up on his mission too, he had a aircraft that needed two people to pilot and the other person was dead, i took off my hood and revealed myself and he was like: KEN? WHAT THE HELL, WHY ARE YOU HERE? LETS GO?

end of dream

employment

2010-02-23T22:46:00.003+11:00

so i've had some friends who have graduated recently who are getting paid pretty good, now im 90% sure i want to work in Shanghai after i graduate, or maybe even Hong Kong and Seoul (unlikely because i can't speak korean...(yet))

looking forward to my last year of university, my electives are all pretty interesting:

fashion promotion
modern asia
mass media in asia
introduction to public relations
client relationship management

anyway...updated flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ji_ken/

소원을 말해...누구?

2010-02-02T23:03:00.003+11:00

A Chinese group very, maybe too similar to Korea’s proud Girls’ Generation is making headlines!

This Chinese group is called Idol Girls, and they are consisted of 9 girls. Okay, so the number of members can easily be the same, right? But that’s not it. According to a Chinese site, the Idol Girls are an average of 18 years old, and are supposedly talented not only as singers, but as actresses, models, MCs and more.

Meanwhile, cosplay cover groups other than the Idol Girls are making even the Girls’ Generation fans do a double take because of the amazing similarity.

So how similar is too similar? Look for yourself. A cover group is seen here posing in similar clothes to SNSD’s “Tell Me Your Wish” days!

Remember last August when a Chinese singer was called out for copying Girls’ Generation’s choreography? They were so similar that netizens started calling the dance not even a copy, but a parody. Regarding the group in general, Chinese netizens had commented, “If the Koreans saw, they would burst out laughing. I’m embarrassed.”

Girls’ Generation and the Korean netizens may feel bad, but don’t forget!
Imitation is the sincerest flattery after all.

-stolen from allkpop

the problem

2010-02-01T12:11:00.004+11:00

so as many of anyone who reads this, i'm back home from my "year". i sit here quite satisfied with my rich experiences but at the same time hungry for more. it is a matter of interpretation and perspective how much i have grown in this year and how much i've learnt about the world around me and more importantly, myself. now no one wants to read a highly conceptual/abstract/impossible to actually understand blog about myself so heres about the world around me.

When I arrived in Shanghai, I preached tirelessly to my relatives and colleagues how great Seoul was and how much Shanghai could learn from Seoul. Both were huge cities with a huge population, one was classified as a developed, the other is still developing. In truth, both are still developing.

Something I noticed on the Seoul Metro is the number of elderly passengers, they seem to be everywhere. Seoul also has a pretty defined curteousy system, where of course you give up your seat for someone who looks over 50, usually female. Everyone does it, it is just a matter of fact. Of course that is a great thing but I found myself afraid to sit down as I probably have to get up for someone within a few minutes.

Now I preached how great that was in Shanghai and how rude it was of Shanghainese people that no one gave a crap about the elderly when they came on the train, especially if they looked like they were from the country side. Now I practiced what I preached in Shanghai and many times the elderly were unexpectly grateful. But eventually the spirit of the city seemed to hit me, when I got up for someone and they didn't see, instead a schoolgirl sat down. I thought to myself, if no one expects it and no one else does it, why should I do it? why should I be the one making sacrifices? ...and I stopped giving up my seat.

Another thing that was eating me was when I saw a limbless beggar on the metro system in Shanghai. People gave him change here and there and then when i reached into my pocket, i found it empty, i only had 100 yuan notes. I thought to myself, I was buying jugs of beer for 120 yuan each last night, jugs of beer that i don't need. 100 yuan is so much more to him, if i bought one jug less last night, i could have made this man so happy. But I didn't want to give him 100 yuan, it was too much, I could buy a drink to woo a girl at a bar...

we're all apart of the problem

worst week of all time.

2009-11-21T18:41:00.002+11:00

of all time...

so the week started with my hot water system breaking down. ive had no hot water since. ive resorted to turning my heater up and just wiping down my body with a wet towel.

i hooked up my younger cousin to play piano on Wednesday at this media conference for avene, in my opinion, she played crap. i was not happy with her performance.

on thursday night, the biggest failure of my life happened, but thats another story.

Friday morning I finally got the poster I ordered last week, it was really awesome, BUT the edges were a little torn because the guy that sent it didn't use a real poster tube, instead he used a pvc pipe that wasn't cut properly, so when you put it in, it ripped a little....sigh

thats ok i thought, because a mate of mine organized a gathering tonight with apparently alot of girls and unlimited alcohol for 20 aud, where i could drink my sorrows of the week away and sing my failures of Thursday night away. We got there, there were like 4 girls and 20 guys and everyone was ugly and singing Chinese songs from the 80s.

We ended up going to this bar that played really shit music and i had 1 free beer and decided to bail to my friends apartment where we were gonna watch some dvds, but that beer made me so sleepy, i fell right asleep on his couch.

i woke up in the morning, thinking what a crap night but thats ok. I was going out to watch 2012 or This is it with Lydia and then eat some dinner tonight. i go and buy a new shirt because all my other shirts are unwashed and creased, 30 minutes after i bought the shirt, Lydia messages me: My cold on friday has turned into a fever, im so sorry, i don't think i can come out tonight.

fml

(i still dont have hot water)

sittin on the toilet

2009-11-13T22:06:00.002+11:00

today, i was on my way home. i checked the bag pocket where i usually put my keys, they werent there. i thought i must have left them on my office desk, lucky i had spare keys. i bought some baked goods and some shanghai mini buns for dinner. i really needed to pee.

got home, reached for the toilet door. gg. it was for some reason locked, i noticed there was a slot for a key on the door, i checked through my key ring and found no such key. called my landlord to inquire weather he possessed this key which would enable me access to the lavatory, negative. he said he will call the locksmith. i desperately waited until i could wait no more, i considered peeing into the sink but then realised its a bad idea, i finally got a bottle, unscrewed the cap, took off my belt and....the doorbell rang, the lock smith was here. phew

2009-10-27T19:20:00.001+11:00

"The noble art of losing face will someday save the human race" - hans blix

tales from shanghai (new sigma = happy times)

2009-10-20T22:49:00.004+11:00

Foreword:

today i bought a new sigma 10-20mm wide angle, the result was an instant adventure. but not the type i had hoped for and certainly too instant. From this point on, all dialogue in english will be in bold.

i was eager. eager to experience the adventures my new sigma was about to provide.

i happily stepped out of the store having been convinced (scammed?) to purchase a kenko UV cover.

i put the viewfinder to my eyes, my right hand was trembling with excitement. there was no time to look for the right lighting, i needed to take a photo as fast as i could manage, a masterpiece is about to happe...oops, lens cap is still on. i embarrassingly remove the lens cap secretly hoping no one had saw such an amateurish mistake. "must happen to everyone at one stage," i convinced myself.

as i press down to take what could have been a masterpiece, i see with my preferal vision, someone walking with extreme direction, that is to say they were moving in my direction with strong intent. "Someones in a hurry," i thought out loud in english "better step out of their way."

i move forward just enough for this man to pass behind me, though the space was not very generous, it was all the distance i could spare without ruining my masterpiece of a photo. "finally...i can take my photo".

as these thoughts moved through my head, i felt a bony hand placed on my shoulder also with extreme direction and strong intent. "GIVE ME BACK MY CAMERA"

"What the hell?" i asked rhetorically.

"Why did you steal my camera?"

"Buddy, you better let go of my tie, i did not steal your camera," I said as I contemplated the possible reasons for his violation of my personal space.

This guy is most likely trying to cause a scene, make me show him my camera and then run away after scamming me of my camera. I just bought this new lens and I was in no mood to be that generous. He was definitely going to ask me to show him my camera.

"Show me your camera, let me see it!" he demanded.

"Buddy, you are not touching my camera, i did not steal yours, if you let go now, i'll pretend nothing happened and i'll let you go."

After that statement, he paused for a second, maybe to contemplate my offer. At this stage i had my left hand on his neck and my right hand firmly gripping my SLR. This would be scammer was very skinny, looked like maybe he was suffering from malnutrition. I could count the amount of hairs coming out of his chin, they were whisker-like, like that time me and John Low decided to do Movember and failed. I snapped out of this thought just as he pulled on my tie which was choking me, he then grabbed my shirt and ripped two buttons off. I had no hands free to strike him with, for a second i thought maybe I should pummel him on the head with my camera, but i was not willing to sacrifice my camera either way. I still had my fingers tightly wrapped around his neck and i pulled his face close to mine and semi-bluffed "Friend, I'm traveling on a passport, not only will I beat you up, not only will the police arrest you, my government will look for you."

The Australian government most likely would not do anything for me in this situation except tell me they couldn't do anything.

Just as I realised I was close enough to head butt him in the nose, 3 men surrounded us and attempted to break us off.

"Stop! We're the police, what the hell is going on here?"

I examined the face that these words came from, a tall middle aged man, he had a greasy comb-over and an extremely wrinkled face. The two men standing next to him, one slightly overweight with a semi-guile-from-street-fighter haircut, and another man who was darker than I and missing a tooth. My instincts were telling me these guys are probably apart of the scam, they will probably ask me to handover the camera in a few seconds.

"He stole my camera!" the scammer yelled

"Buddy, this is my camera, if you lost a camera, tell me the model number."

"Give me the camera," the first cop calmly stated. (ah-ha! scam indeed)

"Sorry, I am not letting go of this camera, I can't be sure if you really are indeed a cop"

He quickly reached for a badge and displayed it, i apologised again and stated i don't trust it.

"How about we go to the police station then, is that enough to prove we're cops?"

"Sure," I said "but this camera isn't leaving my hand."

At this stage the scammer had a sudden change of expression and his eyes seemed to have lost the strong purpose it had before.

"I can't go," he said as he started backing off "I have a friend still waiting for me in KFC, my things are still there."

The police were quick to grab a hold of him, after a short negotiation, we decided to go into KFC and I wanted to see if this guy really lost a camera or if he was trying to scam me. After questioning some people in KFC, turns out he had been sitting in KFC for about 45 minutes prior to our incident with his girlfriend who was waiting for him at the seat. Surveillance cameras revealed that whilst he was passionately "displaying his affection" for his lady friend, a man some would consider obese simply walked by and put the camera in his bag and mingled away. The police pleaded that i don't press charges, I assumed it was because I held a passport and would definitely mean more paperwork, I initially refused and wanted to teach this guy a lesson about taking action before thinking. He had lost a Canon camera whilst I was taking photos with a Sony that had a strap clearly visible displaying the brand name. He clearly was not thinking straight and he clearly was distressed, I contemplated for a while and decided not to press charges, he just lost a pretty expensive camera and almost had his ass whooped for no good reason (apart from ruining my shirt). I gave him a 20 minute lecture about how to be a decent human being and just because he was wronged doesn't give him the right to act like he did. The lecture also included how he is embarrassing himself, his girlfriend, his city and his country.

I departed KFC with a friendly chat to the police, apologising for my distrust and thanking them for their timely arrival. They apologised again on behalf of the foolish man and hope my views on Shanghai weren't tarnished by this experience.

The End

Regardless, I'm still pretty stoked on my new lens (Sigma 10-20mm f3.5). As you can I gave my blog a mild update with another picture of my wife. Now i need to purchase an external flash and a camera bag, I'm gonna be out of money real soon.

nobel?

2009-10-10T00:33:00.003+11:00

barack, you might be a cool person to chill with and i probably would agree with alot of things you say.

but awards are usually given AFTER someone has done something.

no disrespect yo

60

2009-10-01T16:36:00.002+10:00

today, china celebrates.

china celebrates the last 60 years of change, china celebrates the last few decades of relative peace and unprecedented development.

i feel a strange mix of pride and shame.

my grandmother anticipates this day more so than her own birthday, in fact shes not even sure when her real birthday is. i vaguely recall my mother telling me that my grandmother lied about her age at one point in her life to register for something and ever since the revolution shes forgotten her real birthday.

"if the communist party did not exist, my life would not be so comfortable right now"- my grandmother

my grandma belongs to a special de-facto club of elderly party members whose membership dates prior to the revolution. the government of china does indeed take special care of these members and thus they are ever so grateful. its true that the pension rate for these elderly members exceed the average wages, sometimes by a lot. if my grandpa was still alive, apparently he would get roughly 4-5 times the average wage.

but then i think to myself, whats the average wage in taiwan like? and whats the average pension there? theres no doubt that the average wage in taiwan is higher than that of the mainland, and there is no doubt the average living standard is higher. but its unfair to compare the entire mainland with that of one developed island. but then even if i compare shanghai, the flagship city of china's economic development to taipei, i still think taipei's average numbers are probably higher (i could be wrong).

so i was watching the parade and it seemed that blatant inconsistencies and doublethink contradictions were the theme...

the first float for the leaders was for mao, a tribute paid to him standing on tiananmen and pronouncing the birth of new china to the the people of china and the world. a tribute was also laid to the establishment of mao's school of thought otherwise known as maosim. statements were made about his benevolence and god-like decision making skills and then the next float was for deng, the successor of mao.

statements were also made about deng's endeavours and his pioneering decisions to open china to the rest of the world and how great he is for starting the revolutionary market changes that has made china the economic power it is today...

theres the contradiction.

i'm going to avoid giving everyone a history lesson so i'll just simplify it for everyone.

mao didnt like deng very much, infact, he didnt like him enough to spread propaganda against him which eventually lead him into exile.

maoism included self dependency, if maoism continued, china would be just like DPRK. infact juche was formed under heavy influence from mao.

deng introduced market reforms that opened up china's boarders to FDI's and Macdonalds etc.

polar opposites it seems.

yet they're both praised openly with no question...

flickr

2009-09-02T15:50:00.002+10:00

many of you already know, blogspot is blocked in china. (omg how am i on this website??)

and though i can access facebook seemlessly i cant seem to upload photos to it through my means of accessing it.

so i've made a flickr account to upload some photos, more like a picture blog i guess. flickr isnt blocked so i dare say i'll be using it more than i'll be using blogspot for the time being

im a noob but for the time being, check it out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ji_ken/

(fall of) reach

2009-08-12T16:53:00.002+10:00

something to take my mind of snsd for a while when i get back

hot issue

2009-08-10T01:18:00.003+10:00

i really enjoy korea.

apart from the excellent waitresses at this bar i like to frequent, you meet some interesting people. in terms of enviroment, i think korea is like a shanghai except less dirty and less people.

i've met a few different people in the past few days in korea. yeongsoo, yeonhwa, hyeari, brian

yeongsoo i met through my friend justin. as yeongsoo is also a fan of snsd and has the disillusion that taeyeon is his wife. first time i met him i battled him over soju for taeyeon, i had just purchased CDs and a poster and he had cards in his wallet, it was touche. but second day i pulled out my big gun, taeyeon tshirt, i win (i lose?). he doesnt speak much english but snsd and soju is our medium of communication.

yeonhwa and hyeari are two waitresses who work at this bar called queensbar. they speak english so whenever me and the frenchies go, they serve us and speak with us. in these korean bars, the waitresses chat with you if you want and are more like ppl you meet rather than at chinese bars where theyre instructed to milk your cash. hyeari worked in brisbane and sydney for a year but never visited melbourne. yeonhwa recently broke up with her boyfriend of 2 years (who is also a body builder) and is apparently looking for a new boyfriend.

brian, random dude i met at the bar. korean guy, finished his degree in america and is i think an english professor at a uni near by. we discussed many political issues and historical issues and i found him very interesting, i had a great time discussing chinese/korean history and the development of the asian economy.

i want to stay

소원을 말해봐

2009-08-07T16:45:00.002+10:00

long time no post.

so i'm back in snsd country for a little while and im back to shanghai. my main mission is to obtain as much snsd goods as i possibly could before i have to leave for shanghai

yesterday, i found the store wwhich is doing cross promo with snsd. you can buy a diary for 2 dollars ONLY if you purchase mass amounts of roasted chicken first.

and so i did:

now the smart thing to do would have been to buy this chicken when i was actually hungry or for an actual meal, but i could no control myself when i saw the diaries and i had to do whatever it took to buy the diary. because i bought so much chicken to buy the diary, i bought 3 diaries...

sml

ps: tiffany...jessica...taeyeon...hyoyeon, i know you guys can speak/read english, if you ever read this...please stop your madness, i am powerful but powerless against your sorcery.

you are the one ring and i am gandalf, you have put this sorcery into the wrong hands, i could potentially destory everyone including myself.

sm entertainment, dont be so heartless

testing

2009-07-14T13:02:00.001+10:00

testing if this comes up on facebook

Dear CCP

2009-07-08T15:32:00.001+10:00

hello, my name is ken. even though i was born in china, i am legally not chinese...probably for the better.

last night at roughly 7:45, facebook was blocked.

for a month now, youtube and blogspot have also been blocked.

i don't know what your purpose of blocking these things are, but according to foreign media, it is in response to events that occurred in 1989 and also recent riots in the Xinjiang region.

if so, then my lack of understanding of the decision to block these websites continues . "questionable" and "unauthorized" accounts of said events can still be accessed via a simple google search. these sites can still be accessed by those who dearly wish to access them via proxy servers or a vpn.

i can say that if these websites were indeed used to spread "malicious" rumours about the chinese government/people, they can still be spread by those who are dedicated to these causes and still be accessed by those dedicated to their causes.

so why bother blocking these websites?

personally i want to access youtube to watch my 9 wives dance around (in HD), i want to access blogspot so i can blog about how i love them dancing around and i need facebook to publically display my love of watching them dance around.

but today, i officially can't do any of these, so thus i use my proxy server to blog about how angry i am.

i will get a VPN tonight so i am able to access all the sites i want to as the web proxy server i have been using is unreliable.
furthermore as i have had nothing to do, i have read many articles that would be classified as "questionable" by your standards about the xinjiang region (i would rather be watching my 9 wives dance around).

in conclusion i would like to say your attempts at censoring information are annoying at most, they do not censor information from those who want to access them and only nurtures disgust and discontent at the conduct of this government. these half-hearted attempts at censoring information is not only useless, but it hurts party reputation and the reputation of china as a whole.

please fix this.

love, ken

michael jackson?

2009-06-26T09:09:00.001+10:00

WHAT? i wanted to see him live before he/i died :(

damn

rip dude.

once upon a time in china.

2009-06-20T21:45:00.000+10:00

so yo, i'm coming to you from a proxy server because the chinese government has blocked blogspot, this proxy server doesnt seem to support alot of scripts so i can't add any photos and i can't click on the html mode either, but most of y'all who read this have facebook so you can see them anyway.

anyway, so i've met a few ppl and done a few things since i've gotten to shanghai.
i moved into my bachelor pad last night and i gotta say its been mildly boring haha, was going to go and explore the neighbourhood this afternoon but it rained like a biatch.

stories:

tress, strip and beach.

so i met three girls in jingshan (an outter suburb south of shanghai cbd).
they all have chinese names but i gave them some english nicknames to refer to them in my stories.

beach:

i met a dude named alko 3 years ago when i came back after year 12, he owned a hiphop store and i walked in whilst he was watching you got served and i asked him about dancing and stuff and we trained. we stayed in contact after that.

when i got back this time round, alko invited me to go out and have a cruise in his car and we bumped into a few girls, one of them was beach. later that night we went to the club and he invited beach and some of her girlfriends.

now this is probably the most uninteresting story, because the only reason her name is beach is coz she called me up to go beach yesterday but i had to move houses.

strip:

2nd time we went to the bar, strip had ALOT to drink. she was going nuts shaking her head like she was some wild horse. alko was pretty high up there and did a bit of a dance with her. i saw him dancing with her, turned around and looked at the crowd and then by the time i turned back around, alko was sitting on the couch, his shirt was off and was in strip's hands being swung around. he had this look of amazement whilst she was on his lap doing the crazy dance, her name is strip because she stripped him.

tress:

also one of beach's girlfriends. her name if pronounced with a different tone, means "mrs" BUT said in a particular context it means mistress. calling someone a mistress is degrading along the lines of calling a girl a whore in english. i purposely mispronounce her name to call her mistress = tress.

but there is justification to cal her a variation of teacher or something, coz she put on some thick frames at the club, and told me i can pretend shes my teacher.

i almost died.

girls

2009-06-13T18:44:00.002+10:00

oh yes i did.

angels

2009-06-08T18:10:00.004+10:00

now im not religious

but maybe heaven and hell are the same place with the same thing, but the characteristics of a good person will allow them to enjoy it and be content with it whilst the characteristics of a bad person will hate it and to them it may be like torture.

so if you're not a naturally good person, don't even bother faking it. we're all going to the same place.

good people will be good regardless of the existence of a heaven.

think about it.

boredom + photoshop

2009-06-07T00:46:00.001+10:00

big test

2009-06-05T01:02:00.002+10:00

world's a mess, life's a mess, but maybe its just one big test
i must confess, sometimes i feel different, like a division in my mind
a fine line, opposite opinions on each side, holding out which ever one is right at the time. doublethink, probably need to see a shrink.

carried away

2009-06-02T22:24:00.002+10:00

its funny how we can get carried away doing anything. even carried away trying not to get carried away.

eg. some dudes in relationships get carried away with proving love for their lady and they end up being perceived as whipped whilst other guys get carried away demonstrating theyre not whipped and end up being cold and shit and lose their girl.

its especially hard once you realise this because you have no idea what to do.

for me personally, to be honest, i've never been one to make much plans in life for the long run. up until now, i'm a lot better at going with the flow and then hopefully something good comes out of that and then i can say i planned it all along.

so now i've got plans for the next few years of my life and perhaps even the rest of my life.

now i fear that i will get too carried away trying to make unrealistic plans happen but then im also afraid i'll get too carried away not bothering to put effort into said plan and it will fail when it could have succeeded.

going with the flow and doing what i feel like at the time hasn't worked out very well this year.

China and Korea

2009-05-25T17:13:00.002+10:00

Background of Relations

Relations between these two states, economic or otherwise have always been close. Korea was content to look up to China for centuries as the centre of world civilisation, this relationship meant that starting in 1637, three official embassies from Korea travelled to China every year. These travels occurred during the New Year, birthday of the emperor and the birthday of the crown prince. The inauguration of a new king in Korea or the death of an emperor in China required special missions. The Korean kings seeked and wanted the approval of the Chinese Emperor otherwise known as the “son of heaven”. These missions could be seen as early trade envoys, the Korean king would send gold and silver as well as skins of precious animals to Beijing whilst the emperor would send back the best quality silk, herbal medicines, pottery and libraries of books. Tribute trade was a cultural exchange as well as an economic exchange between the two states. Language wise, roughly 50% of Korean vocabulary have Chinese origins and could be written with traditional Chinese characters (Hanja).

When invading Japanese forces attacked Korea in the 1590s, Chinese troops were sent to help repel them. This relationship has lasted well into the 21^st century and played a strong part in the Korean War which resulted in the division of the peninsular. Chairman Mao personally refused to intervene to stop his eldest son to be sent to Korea and was subsequently killed in the Korean War as a Chinese volunteer.

In the beginnings of the last century, exiled Korean governments organized liberation movements and set up in the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan and Chongqing to fight against Japanese colonial invaders.

China (PRC) has risen above the depressions and atrocities (economic and otherwise) of the past two centuries and continued process of retaking its place in the world as a major power rivalling that of the United States, as of January 2009, China overtook Germany as the world’s 3^rd largest economy. Rising from the Asian financial crisis and the after-effects of the Korean War, South Korea (ROK) has also risen to a major economy in the world, being Asia’s third largest economy (after Japan and China). Today, PRC is ROK’s largest trading partner.

Political-Economic History of PRC and ROK (Post WWII – 1990)

The People’s Republic of China
(Five Year Plans, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution and Market Reforms)

After defeating the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), in October 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Wealthy landlords and peasants immediately had assets and land confiscated and redistributed to poorer peasants. Titles to roughly 45 percent of arable land were redistributed from wealthy owners to families that had previously owned little amounts to no land at all. The ultimate goal of the CPC was to transform the China into a powerful, industrialised and modern nation. This would mean industrialization, improvement of living standards, production of modern military equipment and narrowing the income gap. From 1949 to 1952, the chief concern of the government was to restore China’s economy to normal working order. The CPC quickly repaired infrastructure such has transportation and communication links to restore economic activity. A central banking system was also established.

In the 1953, the first 5 year plan begun. This policy aimed to achieve fast growth rates in heavy industry and was achieved. Soviet technicians, economists, scientists amongst other personnel helped the PRC develop this plan. Equipment for industry was also purchased from the USSR. State control over all forms of industry was increased during this time by introducing financial pressure and incentives to convince owners of private firms to sell them to the PRC. By 1956, privately owned firms had ceased to exist, 67.5 percent of modern industrial firms were state owned and the rest were joint public-private ventures. Agricultural sector also went through vast changes. From the mutual aid teams within communities, villages of farmers were to ascend into early forms of agricultural collectives. Economically the first Five-Year plan was largely successful, key industries such as iron and steel manufacturing, cement production, machine building and electricity generation expanded rapidly.
Whilst changes were happening, certain prominent members in the party such as Liu Shao Qi argued against Mao’s radical stance and expressed that change should be gradual and collectivization of the agriculture industry should wait until industrialization has occurred.

However, the extensive economic growth would come to a halt when the second Five-Year plan was introduced; it was dubbed “The Great Leap Forward (GLF)” by Chairman Mao. Ironically, this “great leap forward” was practically many leaps backwards in terms economic development and triggered various social upheavals which would haunt the economy and the society of China for many years to come. The GLF was intended to dramatically increase steel and agricultural production to twice the amount that was produced in 1957. As peasants were poorly educated and ill equipped, too much low quality steel had been produced. Local authorities quite often reported unrealistic and unreachable production statistics to hide the problem. Even though that steel production had indeed increased by almost 3 times as much, most of the steel produced was impure and useless and was unable to be used for its intended purposes: the production of machinery for industry and weaponry for the military.

The GLF has since been reviewed and approached as a huge economic disaster. Chairman Mao stood down as the State Chairman of the PRC in 1959 presuming he would take most of the blame and responsibility of this failure in policy. Economic recovery and progress seemed reachable under new leadership that aimed to make Mao a figurehead, realised this Mao initiated the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” otherwise simply known as the Cultural Revolution to expel his political enemies who included Liu Shao Qi beand Deng Xiao Ping whom later succeeded as de facto leader after Mao’s death. This Cultural Revolution further crippled the Chinese economy and society with the abolition of tertiary education and persecution of senior academics, doctors, politicians amongst others by the youth league formed by Mao otherwise known as the “Red Guard”. Plans such as the “Down to the Countryside Movement” aimed at sending privileged urban youth to mountainous areas or countryside farms to learn from the workers and farmers increased the destructiveness of the Cultural Revolution as many high school graduates were forced out of cities and exiled to remote areas of China. Although Mao himself declared the revolution to be over in 1969, the period of unrest remained from the power struggles between factions within the party until the death of Mao in 1976.

Deng, who was previously purged from the party, slowly emerged as the de factor leader of the country in the few years after the death of Mao. Immediately policies that prevented “land lord class” citizens to join the communist party were removed. Though Deng provided the political support to allow economic reform to occur, Deng‘s economic were not originally conceived by him and only furthers those by previous party leaders such as Liu Shao Qi and Zhou Enlai. Deng’s proposed reforms included planned and centralized management of the macro-economy but management was unlike Mao’s model which included vast projects and campaigns to construct the economy, Deng’s management was indirect through market mechanisms that were free to an extent. Deng had also decided to advance modernization speed by stepping up the volume of foreign trade conducted with purchases of machinery from countries other than the USSR. There reforms were a complete u-turn of policies and philosophies of self reliance set by Mao himself. Under this new program, relations with foreign nations improved drastically. Deng travelled to meet with western leaders and became the first Chinese leader to visit the USA in 1979. The UN also switched recognition from the ROC (Taiwan) administered by Kuomintang to PRC.

The Republic of Korea
(Korean War, Political Instability and Five Year Plans)

Korea had been in a state of unrest for many years leading up to and after WWII. Japanese occupation before and during WWII crippled Korea in all ways possible. After being unified since the 6^th century, Korea was divided at the 38^th parallel by the USA (occupying the south) and the USSR (occupying the north). The USSR agreed to the 38^th parallel being the demarcation between the occupation zones in the Korean peninsula. In December 1945, the US and USSR agreed to administer the nation under the US-Soviet Join Commission. It was agreed that Korea would be allowed to govern itself independently after five years of international oversight. Both the US and USSR would proceed to endorse their own sponsored governments as the inheriting government of the peninsular and an agreement could not be reached. The majority of the South Korean population disapproved of further foreign rule and occupation within Korea as it had been occupied by the Japanese for almost 35 years prior. The US called for an election to be held in all of Korea but the USSR refused. During this time separate governments were established. Both these governments had the vision of uniting Korea under their respective system. Yi Seungman (aka. Rhee Syngman) was appointed the head of the Korean government with strong backing by the United States whilst Kim Il Sung was chosen by Stalin himself to lead. These de facto governments intended to run all of Korea became governments for their respective geographic associations on each side of the 38^th parallel. Initially Kim’s proposal for military aid from the USSR and PRC were refused by the USSER, but with the withdrawal of US troops from the south and the development of Soviet nuclear weapons, Stalin soon reconsidered Kim’s requests. Soon after receiving Mao’s support and promise to send troops to aid Kim, Stalin approved the invasion to reunite Korea by force under the communist structured government. On June 25, 1950 Kim escalated small battles into a committed offense and crossed the parallel with huge numbers of troops. The South Korean army were ill equipped, poorly trained, inexperienced and were caught by surprise. Kim quickly captured Seoul and Yi’s forces were forced into a pocket around Busan. Tides quickly changed as UN and US forces arrived and pushed Kim’s forces back into a small pocket along the Chinese/Soviet border, fortunes once again changed when Mao’s forces were sent in to repel the US troops, pushing them back close to where the original border was drawn. Since then a ceasefire was declared, however the two sides are technically still at war as an official peace treaty had never been signed.

A period of political instability followed the split of the peninsular; in 1960 a student uprising overthrew Yi’s government and established 2^nd Republic of Korea, Yi peacefully resigned. On May 16, 1961, a group of military officers supported a coup that overthrew the 2^nd Republic of Korea, lead by General Park Chung Hee. Though it was the government of the 2^nd republic to have originally conceived the plans, it was the military government (Supreme Council for National Reconstruction) that implemented the first five-year plan, which was inaugurated in 1962. This military rule was soon replaced by the 3^rd Republic with Park Chung-hee a former general as head of government; he ruled the country by authoritarian means. Park however has been credited as a turning point in developing the ROK economy by shifting goals to focus on export-orientated industrialization. Park was able to enforce his policies by declaring a state of emergency and tightening down on personal freedoms. In 1979, Park was assassinated by the KCIA director Kim Jaegyu. Kim believed that Park’s authoritarian rule was a threat to the long term development of Korea and its democracy. Park’s administration saw the establishment of POSCO, which is now the world’s second largest steel maker. Despite the unpopularity of his dictatorial rule, the economic growth during his years in office was unprecedented; it was during this time that another two 5 year plan had been implemented. The first 5 year plan under Park’s administration aimed to convert ROK into a heavy industry making nation competitive in the international marketplace. The second 5 year plan saw the government borrow heavily from foreign countries so it could direct its projects. The days of Park saw the passing of two new governments (4^th and 5^th republics of Korea) from the initial rule to the change in constitution which resulted in Authoritarian rule. After the assassination in 1979, another series of protests lead by students emerged. Another coup soon took place in December of that year and saw the establishment of the current government, the 6^th Republic of South Korea.

Economic developments (1990-2000)

Due to the cold war and other political reasons, for a long period of time, PRC and ROK had only little indirect trade carried out through Colonial Hong Kong. In 1991, PRC and ROK both established trade and economic representative offices in Seoul and Beijing respectively. Bilateral trade between two states was only at a rough US$5 billion in 1992. It had increased to nearly US$60 billion by 2000.

China’s economy regained its momentum after the beginning of economic reforms established by Deng. China’s key task as stated by Deng was to create a “socialist market economy”. In 1993, economic expansion had been growing rapidly with the induction of more than 2000 special economic zones (SEZs), this brought in foreign capital and investment far beyond the state budget. The Chinese economy continued to grow at a fast pace in 1996, the GDP growth rate was roughly 9.5%. A policy named “Grasping the large and letting the small go” was produced as part of a wave of industrial reforms in 1996. The concept was adopted in 1997; it aimed to corporatize state owned enterprises and to downsize the state sector by relinquishing state control over small state-owned enterprises whilst maintaining state control over the larger enterprises.

Larger enterprises were also nurtured by the Korean government in the form of “Chaebols” which are business conglomerates; they have accounted for almost 100% of the South Korea economy since the 1960s and experienced rapid growth since the late 80s. The largest 3 conglomerates include Samsung Group, Hyundai KIA Automotive Group and LG Group. These conglomerates have facilitated the growth of the Korean economy; by the 1990s South Korea was one of the largest Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs).

In 1997, the Asian financial crisis showed the weaknesses in all financial systems in Asia. Korea was hit especially hard, of the 30 largest conglomerates, 11 had collapsed between 1997 and 1999. Under President Kim Dae-Jung, the government made several reforms to the economy and business strategies of these conglomerates. Instead of competing in every market and industry, conglomerates were pressured to focus on a core competency and a core business. Accounting regulations were tightened to limit the ability of these businesses to hide financial losses.

China’s economy was also hit by the Asian financial crisis though the damage was not as severe as those of South Korea. Unlike most other Asian nations at the time, most of China’s FDI were physical assets such as factories rather than securities which shielded the country from sudden capital flight. Whilst it was left relatively unharmed compared to the collapse of major conglomerates in South Korea, GDP growth rates had dramatically declined in 1998 and 1999. China saw the weaknesses in other economies and corrected them within its own economy such as having too many non-performing loans and relying too heavily on trade with the United States.

Current Economic Situation and Relations (2000-present)

PRC is both ROK’s largest export partner and import partner. 27% of exports go to the PRC including its SARs whilst 17.7% of imports are from the PRC. Even though China’s total GDP is the 3^rd largest in the world it is still considered a developing nation as its average income and GDP per capita is still extremely low. In contrast Korea has the world’s 13^th largest economy but is classified as a high income economy by the World Bank and an advanced economy by both the IMF and CIA. In 1992, only 265 investment projects in China were approved by the Bank of Korea. According to the Ministry of Commerce of China, the Chinese government approved 5625 FDI projects from Korea in 2004 with a total value of US$13.911 billion. By the end of 2004, the Chinese government altogether approved 32,753 Korean investment projects with a total contract value of US$50.56 billion.

The growth of the industrial sector contributed heavily to both nations’ GDP. In 1987 manufacturing industries accounted for approximately 30% of the GDP and 25% of employment. In 1990, the ROK government decided to focus on high-technology industries such as robotics, micro-electronics, fine chemistry, aerospace etc. Industry and construction contributes to 48% of China’s total GDP. Roughly 8% of the total manufacturing output in the world comes from the PRC. Major state industries are iron, steel, coal, machinery construction, armaments, textiles and light industrial products. These industries survived the reforms of Deng with little management change.

Both the PRC and ROK have succeeded in the expansion of their automotive industries. The Hyundai Kia Automotive Group was formed by merging ROK’s largest car company with the second largest. It is the third largest automaker in Asia and one of the top five automakers in the world as of 2008. PRC’s automobile industry has also experienced rapid development since 2000. In 2008, over 9 million vehicles were manufactured in China, surpassing the USA as the second largest automobile maker in the world. China also has the world’s largest automobile market which has meant numerous foreign firms have entered the market. Some of these enter the market as joint ventures with local firms. Hyundai entered into the market as a joint venture with the Beijing Automotive Industry.

Hyundai has raised its sales growth forecast for China this year from 22 percent to 36 percent as economic stimulus measures increase demand in china. Hyundai’s forecast in China was raised from 360,000 to 400,000 units compared to the previous year of 294,508 units. This target also does not include imported cars from ROK which is expected to be at 30,000 this year. The success of Hyundai in China in recent years can be contrasted with toughening conditions for General Motors who entered in 1997 and Volkswagen who arrived 21 years ago. Hyundai Elantra compact cars have increases sales by 156% from this time last year. As GM fails in its own domestic market it is struggling to compete on price against Hyundai in the Chinese market. Market capacity is forecasted to grow roughly 30% this year and Hyundai plans to invest $1.1 billion USD to triple its annual production capacity.

At present, roughly 18000 Korean firms are operating in the PRC. President Lee Myung-bak urged Korean and Chinese companies to expand investments in each other’s countries, proposing to turn the Yellow Sea between the two nations into an “inland sea”. President Lee expressed a wish to help Korean firms to be included in large inland development projects in the north eastern and western parts of China. Shanghai Motor also bought a controlling stake of 48.9% in Ssangyong, becoming the first Chinese firm to own a major stake in Korea.

In terms of bilateral trade between ROK and PRC, China has always had a trade deficit which has been growing every year. China’s exports are mainly products from labour intensive industries such as textiles. Where as Korean exports are mostly capital/technology-intensive products such as integrated circuit components, micro electronics, communication instruments etc. It products, heavy industries and chemical industries dominated Korea’s exports to China, these products accounted for 57% of total exports from Korea. These included computers, wireless communication apparatus, steel sheets, petrochemical products, semiconductors, automobile components. Whilst 40% of China’s exports took form of commodities, such as garments, coal, aluminium, steel sheeting, crude chemical materials, acoustic equipment etc. The main difference between the economies is that China and Korea are in different stages of economic development and have different competitive/comparative advantages. According to the economic history of various other nations, the transformation and development of a nations industry generally follow the same route:

Agricultural Light and Textile industry - Heavy and chemical industry - High Tech IT industry - Service industry

The structure and characteristics of Chinese export show that China is in a transition stage from light textile industry to heavy chemical industry, where as Korea is in a transition stage from heavy chemical industry to high tech IT industry. Korea seems to be one stage ahead of China; this fact makes cooperation between China and Korea complimentary rather than competitive.

Rapid growth in sales of Korean products in China will accelerate future prospects for Korean firms in the Chinese market. Samsung entered into the market in 1992 and it has achieved significant success in the past decade. The total sales revenue in China was US$9.7 billion in 2003, which is roughly 26% of its total sales worldwide. LG Chem’s export to China makes up 50% of its total export amount. In 2004, it earned a profit of US$120 million from its operations in China. As the Chinese economy develops, its market will become more open and its domestic market will expand. This will stimulate the development and growth of Korean enterprises whilst their advanced technology and managerial experiences will bring more vitality and dynamics to the Chinese marketplace.

In 2006, a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is also being discussed by ROK and PRC. PRC’s Commerce and Industry Minister Bo Xilai met with his Korean counterpart Chung Sye-kyun to discuss issues such as the push for a FTA. Seoul however is treading carefully with the push for an FTA as it could mean a sudden surge in cheap agricultural products and light industry goods. Bo visited Korea 3 times as of 2006 and met not only with Chung but also the Trade Minister and other entrepreneurs during his visits. In contrast, Japan and ROK begun negotiations for a FTA in 2003 but negotiations came to a halt during 2006 when the Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koziumi was reported to visit Toyko’s Yasukuni Shrine regularly. This shrine honours Japan’s war dead including convicted war criminals who committed atrocities in Korea, China and other various Asian countries. Meanwhile, ROK and PRC have agreed to make efforts to double trade between the two states to US$200 billion per year by 2012.

There have been other indirect relations such as PRC and ROK’s interest and purchase of Australian iron ore. China has made strategic equity investments to secure Australian iron ore supplies. The Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-Hoon expressed that his government had no concerns about China’s moves to secure supply.

Relations under current Economic Crisis

As the current crisis develops China is leveraging its position and trade surplus to achieve a new position in the world as a financial leader. Premier Wen Jiabao and other leaders of the party have blamed the West for the current economic crisis. Chinese officials are challenging the primacy of the dollar and warning other countries about the risks of using just the USD or EURO as their main reserve.
Much like the Asian Financial Crisis, Korea’s economy has been hit harder than the Chinese counterpart. The South Korean Won has been heavily depreciating against the USD. Unlike the crisis of 1997 which stemmed from domestic financial mismanagement, the current crisis stems from outside its borders. The shrinking of US and EU markets has heavily effects the export driven economy of ROK, this crisis has highlighted the need for its regional trade efforts. Even though the US and EU markets are driven into recession, Korean exports to China has expanded by almost 34% in the second quarter of 2008. China has been pressured to float its currency which will cut down its exports as a way of correcting the current global imbalance. However, the real solution is to increase domestic consumption so it does not need to heavily rely on export. China has been implementing economic stimulus to increase domestic demand. This includes RMB¥ 4 trillion to be invested into infrastructure and public welfare. Key areas including housing, transportation, environment, industry, income building, tax cuts and finance. These will not only help shield against the financial crisis but will increase consumption and demand as living standards increase, this is not only a good opportunity for Korea but also a lifeline out of the current financial turmoil. Korea has also proposed a joint fund of US$80 billion with China, Japan and ASEAN members to fight the current global economic crisis.

Future

As the Chinese and Korean economies develop well into the future and as the large Chinese population develops and matures into a well educated and consuming market, unlike the tainted relations between Korea/China and Japan, Korea will be in the perfect position to benefit from China’s economic developments with a history of good relations, geographic proximity to support and reinforce the relation between the nations. As both nations move out of the depressions and turmoils of the last century, both will look to each other for support economically and culturally.

South Korea’s Sunshine Policy and its ultimate and eventual goal of reuniting the ROK with the DPRK into a single Korea cannot be realised without China to provide a channel of dialogue as a friend of both sides of the peninsular. Though traditionally China was looked up to by Korea as a bigger brother, in this new world it resembles a relationship of two close friends who have been through hell together and on the road to recovery, both nations need each other and both have a lot to learn from each other.

The challenge issued now for both nations is to continue its streak of economic advancements in the wake of a global recession. Both nations need to decrease dependency on US and European markets as demand in those regions decrease. China will work towards not only continuing to increase its total GDP output but also improve average income levels. Being one step ahead of the Chinese economy, Korea will no doubt compliment China with its high tech and high capital industries whilst China supports it with what could be the largest consuming market in the world.

he's on a boat

2009-05-16T13:56:00.006+10:00

props to my homie john low who received a scholarship to go home into the sea with other creatures like him.

hes gonna travel around on a boat for a week or so, so i should have photoshopped him onto a boat but no doubt he is also a gay fish.

so i went completely 미쳤어 looking at photos of snsd from before they were famous/got record deals and in some cases plastic surgery... stay tuned for next post...

soon

2009-05-14T16:25:00.002+10:00

exactly one month from now i will be in the city of shanghai doing my internship with sagatem advertising.

i personally can not wait for it, i really wonder what kind of people i'm going to meet, what kind of things i'll get up to at work and outside of work.

at the moment still looking for a suitable apartment, apparently its still too early to settle on.

not sure what im looking for really, i'll be happy with any clean place near work with good water pressure in the shower. i would prefer 2 bedrooms but 1 is ok too if the place is nice.

i'm gonna start some work at roy morgan again for some extra cash to spend.

completeness 2.0

2009-05-13T15:49:00.004+10:00

HAHA

music

2009-05-09T18:31:00.008+10:00

the topic for today was asian music in comparison with the music from the anglo-sphere.

before i start, don't get me wrong im not some little tb asian music fanboy, (i maybe turning into one though haha), but i was a long term hater of asian music thinking it was plastic and had no real talent and that the people in the western community generally had better music taste

but i've come to discover thats not really the case, please read on:

i randomly picked some artists in my impression that have received a alot of radio play / club play within the last few months/years.

souljaboy
flo rida
kanye
lady gaga
p!nk
britney spears

i think out of all those, i only approve of kanye west. the general quality of the music is pretty poor to me. souljaboy has 0 talent. flo rida has minimal talent (though low was quite catchy).

britney spears in her prime didnt really write her songs, nor does she write her songs now, p!nk i think writes her own songs but meh...

lady gaga is quite unique of a character, im not too fond of her music but at least i can see why people like her.

special mention to kevin rudolf featuring lil wayne...let it rock = worst song out.

did people actually like that song? or was it just big coz of lil wayne (whom i think is overrated as an mc)

general perception for me and probably alot of other people was/is that asian music is generally alot more gimmicky and poorer in quality musically.

now if you havent noticed by now, my blog has had a sudden influx of girls' generation who i guess is quite gimmicky but i really rather listen to them than flo rida or kevin rudolf.

so by now i think its pretty clear that bad music is just bad music, and bad music in the western world is just as bad as music from anywhere else. unless you think the stuff i listed is actually good then in that case you have no reason to hate asian music and think its tb, coz this shit is just as bad really.

i downloaded girls' generation's mini album, i enjoyed 2/5 songs, the other 3 might grow on me, one is a soft piano song called dear mom, and the other two is i guess exactly what you would expect asian pop to be like, but then replace them with an english speaking person and it could just sound like any of your american songs these days.

so through my exploration in asian music today, i realised that jay chou is actually a really talented dude and when i heard alex (stolen script) by ghost face i realised i heard something familar, ghost sampled henry mancini - the theif who came to dinner:

skip to 0:21 to hear the part sampled, now listen to this jay chou song (which i think is pretty damn good)

intro is abit long, but skip to 1:20 if you cbf listening to the whole song, familiar? hrmm

its been a very exciting post, peace

new banner

2009-05-09T00:17:00.003+10:00

ive been very bored, i should be doing homework and what not but ive decided to make a new banner. enjoy (i think its missing something, open to suggestions...REAL suggestions)

i've done some research into post grad options overseas, i can do an international studies post grad in Seoul National University OR i can do a MBA at Beijing University with one year in beijing and one year in seoul national uni, atm the second option sounds extremely good, i will apply next year.

king of the world here i come

소녀시대

2009-05-04T14:19:00.006+10:00

oh and another long term goal, meet and pursue a romantic relationship with 김태연

fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight, never running from a real fight, she is the one named 김태연 from 소녀시대

소녀시대 is the only thing that is keeping me alive right now, shit cures cancer
if you have not experienced the healing capacity of this girl group then you have not experienced life itself, here are some gifts:

you can watch that in HD

thats just an interview, watch from 0:20 seconds and when you get bored of the first girl skip to 1:28, that wink killed me and revived me 100 times in one go

peace

f*k that fat iceberg

2009-05-03T13:44:00.006+10:00

bought a whole new set up yesterday as my dad is leaving for china, hes taking my old trucks and wheels to china for me and then i'm gonna take my old deck there when i leave later this year so i can have something to skate.

this is my new setup <3

setup as follows:
plan b sheckler deck
venture trucks
spitfire classic bearings
53 bullet wheels

im already contemplating getting some new wheels because my old deck had softer wheels and i got used to them.

goals for the (short?/long?) terms

get smoother at skating
(maybe) get back in the dance
decide to either get a external flash or a wide angle for ye ol DSLR
become more musically talented? (not sure how im gonna do this one, improve guitar skills. i have realised that i have been able to hit notes at times that i was not able to hit at all years ago.)

those are the tangible things i want to do, here are intangible things:

become more ruthless in what i do
supress concience (overlaps with ruthlessness) so i am able to do what needs to be done
regain consciousness

long term:
attempt to write a manifesto

destroy the motherfcking bitchass nigger fat iceberg

therapy

2009-04-29T14:23:00.003+10:00

is the proud owner of a platinum visa card.
even though i'll never use it (its too powerful), coz i got another card that i use, but it still feels good lol. apparently i have my own concierge

park bu yoen sent me some photos today that i uploaded to facebook.

her and her brother, whom is very depressed because he has to go to the army for 2 years lol.

good times

democracy

2009-04-19T14:23:00.001+10:00

the majority of the world's population is uneducated and easily exploited.
if majority wins all the time, then where is this world headed?

asbestos flaygon you too

2009-04-17T17:44:00.002+10:00

so yo.

connex sucks balls, i dont understand how a city with only 4? million population cant have their trains run on time when shanghai, seoul and hongkong are all doing it greatly with alot more complex lines and alot more people.

1 billion dollars on this new nonaexistant ticketing system? i can't comprehend how a new ticketing system can cost 1 billion dollars when it hasnt even been implemented yet.

what kind of shit is this country on? is this what it means to be a developed country? everything just runs inefficiently? its like when you get dudes who work hard all their lives and get rich just to have a lazy spoilt kid who does shit all and watch tv all day inheriting their money.

on my mission to get my masterball back and use it. so far only got 2 pokeballs, and the pokemon is leveling up as we speak. not looking good.

and i wonder

2009-04-13T21:45:00.002+10:00

i forgot why i left in the first place, but i remember now.

one day

2009-04-10T18:42:00.002+10:00

"one day i will grow tired of this world and it will see an evil like never before" - anonymous

seoul search

2009-03-30T18:32:00.000+11:00

well not much to say, i came back from seoul and it was a complete failure. kthanx

its not me, it's your intimacy

2009-03-20T18:37:00.013+11:00

so its exam week next week here at KAIST, which means classes have temporarily finished. i've finished my homework for the time being which means i have some spare time laid upon me.

in that spare time, i've attempted to join some co-curricular activities such as taking up chinese classes and also i'm helping a korean guy learn english.

but even with that, i've still a handful of time so i've decided to take the time to listen to some albums i've wanted to listen to for a while in their entirety, (not an album review, just what i my impressions)

intimacy - bloc party
and
it's not me, its you - lily allen

intimacy -

i can't say im too much of a indie guy. but i relatively enjoyed this album. i dont enjoy the current trend of this rock electronica dance blend so thus i didnt really enjoy listening to the songs on this album with that element. my favourite two songs from the album is prob: ares and halo. when it comes to rock i enjoy the heavy hitting and fast paced drums that was present in both those songs and a hard and heavy riff which was more existant in halo. i'm still getting used to kele's voice on a song like ares, just feels it would be better if there was an angry white guy screaming on it (corey taylor or chester bennington or someone) so give me some time. but those two songs were enough to suggest i should check out their other stuff.

it's not me, it's you -

i quite enjoyed her first album, theres something about her bitchy attitutude that makes her songs that good. even though i enjoyed the "bitchy" songs on her first album i also enjoyed her reflective songs and emo songs. i don't think this album is better than her debut, but i think given time it will grow on me like the first album did. favourite songs on this album are: the fear and who'd have known. Even though i think katy perry is hotter, lily allen definitley has more attitude and that extra bitchiness that delivers her songs with perfection. so when shes singing emo songs its like: nawwww she has feelings too haha. now im just rambling.

another album that recently downloaded in it's entirety is...

Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde

i've heard lots of songs from this album prior to downloading this album, but i really enjoyed this whole album. it was such a shame that i couldn't see them live when they came down for good vibes. this for me is really what light hearted golden age hiphop is, its just so energetic and so chilled at the same time. can't really pick two songs i like the most, but if i had to it would be between a couple of songs haha: Otha Fish, Officer, Return of the B-boy and Oh Shit.
Return of the bboy really made me feel like it was 87 or someshit, or better yet, 2009 and hip-hop was back from the dead. they just dont make songs like these anymore.

thanks for reading, heres a present:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7tEtWUfUkY

gyeongju

2009-03-09T23:12:00.002+11:00

so the ISO organised a trip for all the exchange students to gyeong ju on saturday, and we spent the night there.

i think the trip would have been alot better if we just skipped the temples and had a whole day of rest before the binge drinking at night.

i simply cant binge drink if i get no sleep the night before due to inconsiderate people talking extremely loudly in the corridoors of the dorm 3 in the morning, i was just about to go kick all their asses when the janitor kicked them all out, thank you.

must have sucked to visit gyeong ju if you were a japanese, in which there were a few i heard.

every relic you visit, is either incomplete due to japanese stealing apart of it, or it was restored or completely rebuilt because the japanese burnt the whole thing down.

damn japanese

oh fitzwilliams

2009-03-06T01:12:00.001+11:00

fitzwilliam says:

*haha

*i've had to pee for like an hour

*just so you know

*lol

back from seoul city

2009-03-02T12:25:00.002+11:00

so we went on club night which is the last friday of every month to a district named hongdei, basically you pay for one club and that gets you entry into about 5 or 6 different clubs.

it was a good night haha.

at the club, they played linkin park, i was extremely happy. i realised that the ppl in the electronic clubs are generally alittle bit more ugly than the ppl in the hiphop clubs. there are LOTS of american black guys everywhere that night, some with their trashy americankorean girlfriends.

i spent 20 bucks at kfc, seemed like a good idea at the time.

going back next month...this time without spending 200 bucks...

funny story:
a frenchman named yan, he had sooooooo much to drink apparently he caught a taxi from seoul to daejeon (where our uni is about 2 hours away), so thats like someone from bendigo coming to melbourne getting drunk and accidentally catching a cab back to bendigo. so basically when he got to daejeon, he realised he didnt have his wallet or any form of ID, so he sat in a police station for 1 hour before they contacted our uni. he then took the same cab back to where we all were in seoul just as we were waking up, so it was like nothing happened. i thought he was joking when he told me he went to daejeon, but yes, surprisingly the whole trip only costed him 40,000 won which is only about 45 bucks.

his wallet is still in seoul because he put it in a locker and he lost the key...gg

to seoul!

2009-02-25T13:10:00.003+11:00

going to seoul this friday and coming back on sunday, shold be very exciting! keep y'all updated off what i get up to.

ive finally downloaded continuum in its entirety, very good album. gravity is working against me.

i failed miserably at the automatic baseball machines where they throw balls at you and you try to hit them, but i redeemed myself by playing the "kick the ball as hard as you can" game by breaking the machine with my awesome kick. go me.

and happy birthday to YOU!

1k

2009-02-13T14:51:00.002+11:00

i will apply for travel grant for second semester which shall add another 1k to my netsaver!

my whole body is sore and ive got bruises on my knee and wrist cause ive found a place to train finally.

im starting to hate the ppl in my dorm, someone keeps opening the staircase door which keeps being banged by the wind at night, i closed it twice last night but someone kept opening it. :@

its raining outside, i don't like the rain.

im settling in, adding people to friends list (in real life, not facebook).

need to go seoul, daejeon is pretty boring. i also want to go drinking and go karaoke.

i would have killed to be in somewhere like rye for this week, im sick of winter. i need sun, i need sand and i need to sit somewhere and do nothing but stare at some water for a week.

ok, got korean class in 2 hours, enough rambling. bye now

window side

2009-02-04T20:15:00.000+11:00

there is just something about being window side in a foreign country that makes you want to ...