Springvale Chronicles: Day 1

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

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

average

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

"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

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

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

jeep

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

"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

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

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

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

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

lets hope he stays true when he does make it

nokia

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

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

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

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

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

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