Saturday, September 25, 2004

shipping off my computer

Originally from an old server that is now gone. Reposted in September 2006.

and some cool links and whatnot


If all goes well, I will be putting my computer in a box and sending it off to Korea today. Not sure how much its going to cost though... hope not too much! And I hope it goes to the right place, I'm a bit worried about that. And for those who think I'll be making a lot of money in Korea, I'm actually going to be making less than I am making in Japan! 2 Million won might sound like a lot, but in US money its about $1,740 a month. (1,418 EURO, 192,956 YEN) I'll be enough but it aint no 2 million bucks so dont get no distorted ideas!



As a movie fan, I want to say I want to see The New Police Story a Jackie Chan movie. (That link is actually really cool, if you go to the english site and click "video" and then on the "trailer" you'll be taken to a really cool media viewer that has a lot of HK movie previews on it, woohoo!)



I think its time to be the first (?) blog to announce Hollywood's sea change. Its a new market, its a new world, no longer is it weird to have endless sequels, its the new way of making movies... why only have one movie when you can have a chain and have more to watch? Its not really a bad thing maybe? And if you dont belive me, check out Terminater 4.



And just like other people out there, I'm fascinated by the appearence of illegal textbooks on file sharing services. It takes a lot of work to put a book online (Just ask the good folks at project gutenburg! only 12,000 old non-copyrighted books online, and they have been working on it since 1971 or something!) ... we are talking scanning in all the pages and converting it to text, or PDF, etc etc etc.. . but the implications of this are amazing... the world's information is actually slowly going online, its happening folks, the net is summoning the world together or something else freaky like a B movie! woo woo!



Since I am going to South Korea, I thought I should share this video I found of these two young korean girls singing karaoke I found a long time ago. (Did I ever link it?) Its funny. Best of luck all, its off to Korea for me... I'll be buying a ticket and going over there and hoping all this job stuff works out. Wish me luck. DAAG!





14:06:00 | permalink | comments (2)


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my sister is saying she also wants to see the chinese movie! maybe you guys should watch it together! because im not interested!!!!


vicky


Good luck with the relocation! That's exciting! Too bad we weren't able to make it to Tokyo, but maybe now we have an excuse to visit Seoul... :)
syrinx

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Early in the morning

Originally from an old server that is now gone. Reposted in September 2006.

a million random thoughts



I love Japan, and I already feel sad about going to Korea... (although Korea will be great too!) but its signs like the one above (orginally posted to my Keitai Current moblog) that make me realize some people here need to grow mentally. Could you imagine a sign in Canada (for example!) saying "No Japanese unless accompanied by a Canadian"?! I ran across this sign (posted at a weird club we didnt go to) while hanging out with my friend Marykoh in a dark area of Ikebukuro.



More details about my job in Korea were emailed to me by the person recruiting me for the job, and this is what he had to say...

The job condition is:

Salary : 2.0 million won per month.
Working hours : 11am - 6 Pm
Elementary level students.
Vacation : 7days of paid vacation per year and ,
If you wish : You can get the whole August off, and Dec/22nd - Feb/22nd off for unpaid vacation.

50% medical insurance provided.
The position is in Central part of Seoul, in the Jong-ro area.

Instead of housing, they provide housing allowance of 400,000 won per month, which is plenty to get a room for yourself anyplaces.



Good to hear more details... now apparently I have to hunt down my orginal diploma (something I didnt need for my Job here in Japan. They only wanted my transcripts here...) and other stuff to do the paper work for getting my visa... I plan to go over to Korea around the first week of October. More on that stuff as it pulls itself out of nothing and becomes something. Elementary school kids... aaah! scary?! ^o^



I have been going on some major infodiving trips, and I present for the enjoyment of the three readers of my site... the treasures!

I recently stumbled apone Turkish Spiderman (Turkish Star Wars led me to it) and was amazed by its pure crap level. 100% utter beautiful stinking amazing crap. I can now say that it is one of my favorate movies of all time now. Its brilliant, weird, shocking and utterly pointless. Ahh, a master work of art... If you're too lazy to click links here is your one sentence summary: Turkish Spiderman is a fiendish 1970s low-budget ripoff of the spiderman comics produced by a Turkish movie company that somehow got a few important details mixed up, for example spiderman is a bad guy! (the above link gives a great summary of this wonderful movie, also known by its orginal Turkish name 3 dev adam, but if you dont mind having the story spoiled and want a full very funny "play-by-play" of this movie check out this link.) I think this movie should have a special edition DVD.



I find it weird that I actually really want to watch a George Lucas movie... although, it is actually an old movie.. his first to be correct... he has just edited it in the way he does recently, but in this case it seems to have made a modern movie out of an old good idea that suffered from no-budget. Interesting.



Talking to a computer for an hour and a half with out realizing it? Someone reprogrammed an old (1960s?) A.I. computer application to talk with random people on an instant message service... some of the conversations almost seem like real conversations, check them out... weird. (source) This reminded me of when I programmed some simple "smart random" A.I. things with, at first, BASIC and then Visual BASIC a long time ago when I was younger and knew more about computers. It is a little creepy when you begin to talk to the computer, even more when you programmed it yourself but it feels real. I remember conversations something like:

Me: Are you a computer?

Computer: Of course.

Me: Are you real??

Computer: I think so.

Me: Are you just answering randomly???

Computer: Yes.

And of course that was random (although my programs would parse what the user typed too, so they werent 100% random) but it would freak me out sometimes. It's ALIVE!



I recently love Wikipedia (free online dictionary everyone makes together) its slowly removing the idea that the web only has surface information, its becoming a very deep source for infodiving. (By the way, watch for that word to be used now that I coined it.) In fact did you know about the movement to call New Zealand by the local Maori name of Aotearoa? Did you know that name means The Land of Big White Cloud? I think that name makes a lot more sense anyways, since New Zealand was just some random name thrown at the island by a european sailor who didnt even know the island.



Anyway, the light is begining to come in my window and I can hear morning birds. Its really not so healthy to stay up this late I guess. Best wishes for the world... DAAG!





06:20:00 | permalink | comments (5)


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diego... I hope you were joking, in any case, its a good point... signs like that treat foreign people like KIDS, as less than equal.. make any sense? .... and aaron, i mean, noexit.. if you read the dang entry you would know where that sign was :p hehe daaang
Dansen


In possible defense for the sign, perhaps they didn't want to deal with foreigners who might not know how to act in that establishment. Don't get me wrong, it's still very exclusionary, but it could be like the signs in some stores that say kids can't be unaccompained by adults.

Hey, I read the Turkish Spiderman/Santo/Captain America thing and it was hilarious! Awesome!

For some reason, 2 million won sounds like a lot, though it probably isn't. A million of anything sounds like a lot!
Diego


I wouldn't go into a club that had one of those signs either. Happy moving... you'll probably love living in Korea, so don't fret. I'll have to check out that web encyclopedia another time, or I'll end up hearing birds chirp before get to bed.
Steph


Wow! You'll be a millionaire!
Joe Schmoe


Where was that sign?
Noexit

Monday, September 13, 2004

all play and no work makes me lazy!

Originally from an old server that is now gone. Reposted in September 2006.

meeting friends, dancing, and new music


A massive flow of "no work" has led to me hanging out with a tide of people. I dont feel like turning this diary entry into a roll-call of who and when, but I had a lot of fun. (Curious people should head over to my Korean Site where I have uploaded some pictures... a quick summary includes hanging out in Ueno with Christina, saying hello goodbye to Aya's cool friend Kelly, going to a Bellingham Reunion and seeing Shunsuke and Momoe and other stuff!)



Oh. And yesterday Yosuke (not to be confused with Yusuke) invited me to go with him and another friend to this odd techno club in Roppongi called Velfarre... Roppongi is rife with gaijin (foreigners) and it has to be seen to be belived, in some of the more grity places gaijin from many countries out number Japanese it seems. Anyway, the club was odd because it was having an "after hours" party, meaning a show that started from sunrise (about 5:30am) until 1 in the afternoon. Techno dancing basically is twisting and flaying the arms and legs, so I was very tired by the time I finished. Going there tuned me into something interesting though, I was sitting in the "chill out room" with Yosuke (who was too tired to stand) and heard the song "Learn Chinese" by Jin... I did research on the song and apparently it is a bit of debate maker right now... Some people say its racist (because of the lyrics) and I cant decide an opinion though, because yes he does use racial slurs, but nothing wrong with telling everyone they have to learn chinese and racial pride can be cool, although I wonder why he has to disrespect himself so much with some of the lyrics, some could argue he isnt though, I would have enjoyed more dissing on others.,.. anyway, listen and make up your opinions. (I am not in the states, is this song even making a dent? anyone over there care to comment?)



Anyway, thats all for now. I was going to update about some cool movies I saw, but I am going to watch one now. Thats all for now folks. DAAG!





23:00:00 | permalink | comments (4)


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How long until the big move to Korea, Dansen? Will you be living in Seoul?
Steph


I will have to listen to that when I get home. right now my speakers are being used and I am to lazy to switch them over. Vacation time before a move is always a good thing
Ted


I will have to listen to that when I get home. right now my speakers are being used and I am to lazy to switch them over. Vacation time before a move is always a good thing
Ted


I'm in the US, but I don't listen to pop stations or go to Techno clubs, so I couldn't tell you if Jin is being played here. (I'd guess that he is, though).
Steph

Friday, September 03, 2004

meeting Christina in Japan

Originally from an old server that is now gone. Reposted in September 2006.

and writting this at 5:30 in the morning?!
Well, I was awake. Editing on the design of my learn japanese site and other geek things like that. Yawn. So I thought I would do a diary update! (if for some weird reason you are slow and looking for pictures of my "goodbye work" party, check out last months entries!) Anyway! I met my college time friend (Wow, I graduated, huh?) Christina Sakura in Japan, and she was with Trevor (right below her).. the other people I knew or remembered at her party thing were Megumi (below next to Christina) and Mutsuko next to her, and on the far side of the room Shota, being the typical loner rock star that he is... regretfully, the others have been lost to time (they were all exchange students at my college, well everyone except Trev-rev-yer-motor and Chris-tinnnny-a of course!) What do old friends do when seeing each other in a new country? Walk around of course. Was great to see her, hope to meet up some more before she goes home to America... Meeting Christina means I have met almost everyone that was in this one weird study group thing I had. It was like a magic "come to Japan" study group! OK, enough of late night rambles... the picture...

taken from cyworld source, original picture missing (I think it was the top photo in this collection of photos). Click for bigger version

of course more pictures will be on my Korean website, like I normally do.



Another geek note, because I love computers so much. If anyone noticed, the quality on my keitai page has jumped up. I have a new keitai phone, which is kind of silly because I am moving so soon. But cool bigger clear pics. (Which, for example, captured Horikoshi going to a palm reader in Ginza tonight. He gave her quite a good future, but interestingly her friend got a less cool one... wonder why.) Ooooh.



More details about my new job.. it seems real. Working in centeral seoul maybe? about 10 people in each class (versus the max. 4 adults I had here...) and it might be all kids? Not sure about anything else yet. So thats the basic information. yo.



Anything else I wanted to say has been lost because I am sleepy and the sun is coming up.

DAAG



05:34:00 permalink comments (3)


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When you graduate, are you supposed to change? I haven't. I'm still goofing around as much, if not more, than I was when I was in school. The only difference is that I pay attention to getting sleep at night. It's okay to sleep through classes when you are the student, but when you're the teacher, it's a different story.
Aaron


When you graduate, are you supposed to change? I haven't. I'm still goofing around as much, if not more, than I was when I was in school. The only difference is that I pay attention to getting sleep at night. It's okay to sleep through classes when you are the student, but when you're the teacher, it's a different story.
Aaron


Hey dansen,

seems like you haven't changed much, still spending a lot of time on the internet doing different things! For some reason, I didn't know what you were going to do in Korea. I guess teaching should've made sense, but I wasn't thinking. Cool! And your blog finally is fixed too!
Diego

 
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