東京

Before you start reading, you should know this is not a guide or a walkthrough of Tokyo. This is a personal reflection and a collection of thoughts after visiting. Tokyo may not have the same effect on you, but hopefully this will encourage you to find your own place in the world. Enjoy

I never really understood my fascination with Japan. It may have been the endless hours of Ultraman I watched as a young’un, it may have been the countless Animes and Manga characters I admired, or it could have been the fantastic games and technologies that came out of the country. I was never sure.

A strong love of Pokémon games prompted me to take Japanese classes when I was 11, Japanese versions of the games would always be out 6 months before an English version, I so desperately wanted to play it as soon as they were released.

I learnt Japanese for 3 years in high school, but you couldn't distinguish me between someone who has learnt it for 3 weeks these days. My parents denied me an exchange to Japan whilst in high school, that combined with a general laziness resulted in me ceasing to study Japanese.

However, the general awareness and a slight fascination continued.

This year, I made a last second decision to visit Tokyo. Even though it was only a week, it would prove to be a rather significant point in my life.

I'm no stranger to large East Asian metropolis cities. I've visited Hong Kong, worked in Shanghai and studied/travelled to Korea/Seoul. Urban jungles shaped by tightly packed buildings where a large amount of inhabitants teem with fervour and breathe life into an endless night.

I was impressed by the efficiency and infrastructure of Hong Kong, constantly amazed by the tenacity and the ambitious culture of Shanghai and Seoul seemed like a perfect place where a fast moving city came to be in harmony with a peaceful culture and identity.

Yet Tokyo was the only city that truly blew me away.

I spent a total of 10 days in Tokyo, utilising each day to try and explore each neighbourhood as widely as possible. To me, buildings and landmarks are only a small part of a city. It’s the people, the culture and the subsequent vibe that entails which really define and shape the city.

I was fortunate enough to visit Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Asakusa, Ginza, Tsukiji, Roppongi and Akihabara.
Each of these areas had a distinct feel, not just to the architecture and services, but the people. I could go on for days trying to explain what the differences are, but it would not do these places any justice.

Tokyo seems to be a city full of contradiction. People work hard, people play hard and people are sexually conservative, yet it’s one of the most sexually liberated cultures in the world. You can pray in a secluded temple and walk out straight into a red light district. Everyone conforms, yet everyone is different. Customs and traditions are strict, but thinking outside the box is common. People are crazy but they are respectful. They are racists but they are extremely open-minded.

I often found myself sitting on a corner and just watching people walk past. It amazes me how significant and insignificant that simple act can make you feel at the same time. A world full of surprises.

The variety of people I met in Tokyo was astounding, hardcore rockers who went to great universities, a bboy whose parents perished in the tsunami, expats of various nationalities/ethnicities who had been working in Japan for up to 15 years, Japanese people who have been overseas and come home to their motherland never wanting to leave again and seemingly like-minded people who draw no conceptual boundaries.

The weight of each of the words exchanged during my conversations with new friends is probably not reciprocated and I guess I will never know. But chatting in an empty Shibuya at 4AM with the sun slowly rising really does inspire you in many ways than one.


At the Meiji shrine in Yoyogi, I wrote on an Ema in Chinese, Japanese and Korean:

A Vibrant Life
A Mysterious Future
A Clear Path

I never really understood my fascination with Japan, in many ways I still don't. But after this trip I think I'm getting closer. I felt inspired in Tokyo, more so than the first time I set foot in Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong or any other cities.

But once upon a time, I ranked these cities and saw them as rivals. But now I see them as different parts of myself and my stepping stones towards:

A Vibrant Life
A Mysterious Future
A Clear Path

retail australia

I booked my tickets to the land of Pokémon aka. Japan aka. Nippon a few weeks ago. I decided that I needed a more versatile lens for my DSLR so I don't miss a thing.

This led to an extremely frustrating adventure through the world of Australian retail.

The lens I wanted was the SONY 35mm 1.8F lens. Its quite a basic, cheap, low range lens.

http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666254721

Sony USA had it for 219 USD.

Usually official Sony stores sell for quite inflated prices, amazon seemed to have similar prices and eBay was going for roughly 210 (shipped)AUD at the lowest price.

So I thought I will do some research looking at local retailers.

Ted's cameras has this lens for 299 + 10 delivery if you want it delivered.
That's 310. 100 dollars more than INTL retailers.

I did a quick search on static-ice. A local retailer in Northcote is selling this lens for 249. A great price for Australia it seems (though I can't find the site of the retailer atm).

I printed this out and took it to the many camera retailers along Elizabeth Street to beat that price. Given that the retailer is in the same city and not TOO out of the way, it would not make sense to price match as it would only encourage expensive retailers to inflate their price and match when the occasion comes.

To my surprise, not one single retailer wanted to beat the price of 249.
These retailers include Ted's Cameras, Michaels and Camera House (their retail for this lens was actually 399).
Both Ted's and Michaels tried to convince me that their whole sale price is 249 which I called bullshit.
I hate it when retailers try to convince me they're not making any money with a sale but are willing to sell it to me anyway, that is an insult to me as a consumer. I will never buy anything from Ted's or Michaels moving forward.

At Ted's the first attendant told me that this lens was out of stock and they needed to order it in (which would take about a week). Just as I was walking out, I saw it on display and approached another attendant if I could buy the display model, he said no but funnily enough said there was stock.

The only place that was willing to beat 249 was Sony Center for a token price of 245. But when he checked his stock, he had to order it in (would take up to 2 weeks). He said the display model belonged to "Sony Australia".

(A word of advice to stores, if you are going to call yourself Sony Centre, don't tell me this stock belongs to Sony Australia and you're not actually Sony.)

I wanted to spend my money and would have settled for 230-240. No one wanted to take my money so I spent it with an online store from Hong Kong, paying only around 200 bucks.

This is why retailers in Australia are failing, not because of taxes. But because they are stubborn and would rather lose business and lie about their costs than adapt and lower their prices.

racism

2020 June 22nd Update

I no longer agree with my views below and think this is a perfect example of my rationalization to adhere to the cultural zeitgeist of "racism doesn't exist in Australia"

There's also an element of victim blaming

I kept the below post intact as a record of my own thought process back then


------

Recently something quite tragic (though I can't say I am surprised), happened in Sydney.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/nsw/latest/a/-/newshome/13513195/chinese-students-fear-sydney
http://au.news.yahoo.com/nsw/latest/a/-/newshomef/13530527/chinese-students-at-risk-in-australia/

A few Chinese international students were assaulted and robbed in Sydney. What's more disgusting arguably in my opinion is the media position and how the Chinese community have reacted.

Being of Chinese decent and ethnicity, I've quite often had to deal with racism growing up. Though not quite as often the older I got, either because people become more educated or they become less inclined to show their racist ideology in the open.

But as you grow older, you also learn how to deal with racism and learn how to diffuse the situation. I've strongly disagreed with any media (even Australian) classifying these attacks targeted racist attacks and its even more ridiculous for any media (especially Chinese) to claim that Australia is somehow unsafe for international students for other ethnicities.

If the issue was racism, then the color of my skin should determine the amount of "racially motivated" assaults I'm exposed to/be a victim of. KKK did not discriminate between African American or Native Africans.Why then is it that international students seem to be the center to these attacks?

The truth is, the criminals committing these acts of violence are targeting people who are vulnerable to these attacks. International students need to reach outside of their shells and circles and learn how to avoid these situations much how you learn not to get pick pocketed or ripped off by street vendors (at times because of your race or origins) in China.

It angers me that one of the students went to social media and tweeted "Australia is not safe, no security at all" despite the perpetrators being arrested a few stops later on that same train. I would be more than surprised if he can find me an example of Chinese police doing better.

@Australian Media, please stop calling these attacks as "racially motivated" because someone threw in an ethnic slur. The focus should be on the perpetrators rather than the victims, those kids would have mugged anyone they could.

@Chinese Media & Netizens, stop pretending China is any safer for international students. A few rich Chinese international students in Australia get beat up and make headline news in China, set your priorities straight, there are worse things in China that you might want to start reporting on.

people people

This is a more humorous follow up to my post about the differences in social network norms across western and eastern countries.

Recently, I've been trying to be more active on the Chinese version of Facebook in attempt to increase my understanding potentially for future professional benefits.

RenRen net started off as "Xiao Nei" which literally translates to "On Campus". It was an exact clone (or attempt at) of Facebook right down to the color and the interface. A few years ago, their team decided they wanted to expand their demographics to more than just students and was renamed to RenRen, which roughly translates to "Everyone". This puts it in a better position to compete against "Kaixin001" which is pretty much the same thing but with a different color scheme and targeted towards young professionals.

RenRen Interface

Through my poor understanding if written Chinese, I somehow stumbled upon a beta app, an extension to the main website named YuJian, which translates to "To Meet". Basically its a lighter version of the main social network application tailored towards "meeting people". Here is what it looks like:

Yu Jian

You're supposed to list your personal details so gold diggers can check you out and be like "yo! this guy baller" I've blacked it out to avoid embarrassment as it is extremely exaggerated for the lulz.

At first you think "There is nothing humorous about all of this". Then you need to keep reading. So a big difference between this and the main social network is that you can view profiles and rate people out of 10.

Needless to say, the first thing I decided to do was go trolling, giving people 1/10, 2/10, 3/10. You know? Just being a jerk.

After I trolled some girls, I decided to explore it a bit more. A notification pops in the corner of my eye. "Oarsome, someone rated me 10/10! I'm the fcking shi.... ah fuck its just a bot :("

Within a few seconds...I had realised, you can see exactly who has been on your page and what rating they gave you. Of course these girls i trolled were very happy to give me a 1/10. Life lesson learnt, don't be a jerk...

After a while, the girls all start to look the same...actually, they all look the same from the start. I don't mean that in a racist way, I mean that they all take oddly composed photos that are either over or under saturated. Most likely taken at home by themselves in some funny pose:

And then sometimes you see girls that takes it to the next level, some of my personal favourites include:

The Ultimate Duckface

Apparently shes 19... go figure.

Toilet Seat Duckface

"Must take dump, must rinse mouth, must look cute!"

The Semen Tears

I guess Chinese guys find this cute?

I thought pretending to model in your own bathroom was only for early high school kids? I guess that's not the case in China.

Apparently this girl is like 25 so something

Oh wait, that's not from China, that's someone on my actual Facebook friends' list...guess we're not all that different then.

The most ridiculously next level profile I stumbled upon turned out eventually to be a bot. But here is a picture at how ridiculous it was. Here is a sample:

I had to give her a 9/10 for effort

It was not until this person uploaded this following photo that I realized it was a bot...

Sorry I had to censor the boobs.

And with that I end my post. To be fair, there are some pretty hot girls on there, even if they don't show their boobs on their profile.

Peace.

december

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

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

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

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

photobomb win

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

lyn

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

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

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

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

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

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.