Tuesday, November 09, 2004

if cities were people

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

and geeky obsessions


You know, the fact is... if cities were people, I'd be madly in love with Tokyo. Its shapes, its lost roads, and vibrant ambiance. (The other cities on my love-list shouldn't get jealous, I still hold a fond place in my heart for Vancouver, Canada and Auckland, New Zealand, among others.) Why do I mention this? Because I haven't fallen in love with the city of Seoul yet. It's an interesting city, and I am slowly starting to enjoy being here. But between me and Seoul it feels like someone said "lets just be Friends." Was it me? Was it Seoul? How do I get to know Seoul better? Those are the dorky thoughts swimming in my head at the moment.



From millions to none. When I got here this youth hostel was full of people, I slept in the only empty bed. And now its down to just me in the dorm room, and three of the Germans in the private rooms upstairs. Is this a trend of full-not full or is it because its so cold now in Seoul?



And onto my newest geeky obsession!! I love the website wikipedia! One of the things I love about it the most is its multi-language support. I started off on pages and pages of useless data, enough to slowly make me (an infoaddict) happy. But then I realized they had feeds in Japanese (and many other languages) so I began to surf in Japanese too. And then I realized something shocking. Compared to the English pages, the Japanese ones were dull and lifeless. Why? They often had no pictures! I did more clicking and realized that it often seems like the French pages are even more colorful than the English ones (go Frenchies!) and in atleast one or two cases the Spanish pages had extra charts, etc. I wondered what I should do about this and decided to start my own army on the pages of wikipedia! Every geeky obsessional army needs a name, so (for now) I have dubbed my new goal ******** or something crazy like that. ((EDIT: I've been told by Japanese and Chinese friends that my pure mind didn't notice the kinky sound of my old name X jyusei-gun [X受精軍 ] so I'm going to change it to something cooler, and not kinky, hey its not my fault if I was thinking in a pure niave way! stay tuned. )) Anyway... whats my goal? I'm going to try to cross pollinate (hence my name) pictures (and other datasets) from the English (or other pages I can understand) onto the Japanese version of wikipedia! OK. Why? I don't know. Because I'm not working and its fun. So much fun I've now added this to my "Woohoo! If only I got paid to do this weird geeky crap" list. Yes, I'm still looking for a job. But my beautiful mother finally stole (haha) my diploma from the college I graduated from and got it sent over to me in Korea, so I'm that much closer to working again. Woo!



SAMPAI JUMPA LAGI



17:52:00 | permalink | comments (2)


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Cooper


Why'd she have to steal it and why didn't you have one in the first place?
Noexit

Friday, November 05, 2004

thoughts about living and language

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

and other things to type on a friday night


I'm worried about my rate of spending money. Lets get honest, in college I was poor. In some of my poorest times I was able to survive on one meal a day. One. Of course I was hungry, but graduating college was really important to me. And even after taking student loans I didn't always spend so much on food, wanting to save it for travel to Japan. I remember once telling a single friend how much I spent on food in a month, and he said he spent more in a week. (I should point out though that a network of very friendly nice friends sometimes fed me, many smiles for them.) The point is though, by the time I got to Japan, I was able to survive on very little food a day until I got a job. I didn't consume a lot, and was able to survive until I got a job (although once again someone, in this case kayo's sister, sometimes offered me yummy food, so it wasnt always so thin on the meals). Now after being in japan a long time (and gaining nearly USA 25LBS!) and having a lot of money to spend on food (eating three or four times a day) I've sunk into a bad spending habbit. Yes, food is cheaper here, but I tend to buy more than I need to survive, or even I sometimes buy useless things like snacks (puffed-balls made out of penuts and shrimp flavor, yummy!) and 100% juice. I know this sounds odd, but I want to survive until I start working, and if I intend to see my friends sometimes and not run out of money, I need to cut back on my spending. Just a note to self I guess.



Language. I've read a lot of articles about this; if a baby learns three languages none of the languages are damadged, three can be learned with no problems. But what about an adult? (or a kind of old person if you cant think of me as an adult.) Everytime I'm walking around and I hear myself thinking in Japanese, I wonder if I should try to "think" those thoughts in Korean. I wonder if it would effect my Japanese? I don't think that thinking in Japanese has effected my English (lets hope!) but English is my native language. Will my Japanese response rate slow down if I begin trying to force Korean thoughts? (although I'm not at all close enough to being able to think in Korean yet, I can't even communicte right now.) And you know? Have I ever mentioned that its weird to think in another language. Its like another "thing" in your mind. It feels, atleast to me, like a different shade, a different texture, its hard to explain right now.



I've been seeing more movies recently, because they are so cheap here (as cheap as $4, the price of two cheap lunches). Although so far most of the movies are typical hollywood stories, with nothing special to mention.



All right, this brings to close this odd entry. DAAG





21:07:00 | permalink | comments (1)


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I'm really trying to envision you 25 pounds heavier, and it's amusing me a little bit. Anyway, dude, you're not spending too much for food. Everyone should eat three meals a day, it's healthy, dude. I know college is a different deal, because you're feeding yourself and you eat like crap because it's cheap, but hopefully soon you'll realize that life is too short and you should enjoy eating. But I know you're also a gadget freak, so maybe your spending there needs a little more monitoring. I dunno.

And you should work for the UN or something. Or translate for a living.
Diego

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

still waiting for a job

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

and sad about america


OK, cue the dramatic music... its just my own opinion, but it sucks Bush is really close to getting the Whitehouse. I don't really like Kerry either, but Bush just sucks for so many reasons. I am, however, aware that many Americans really like Bush. And you know, as I told a New Zealander yesterday, thats what scares me. (Credit for the music: Bacchanale (1940) by John Cage as recorded by Stephen Drury, from aworks.)



No matter what your feelings of Eminem (and some of his biggoted remarks) you've maybe heard his anti-bush song Mosh (if you havent, check it out, its interesting) but what I find most interesting is the tons of less famous and well, uhh... untalented, others who are trying to make their mark against Bush too. Its my love of B-Movies again making me love this, but you have to check out this super low-tech anti-bush rant. Its odd (not the least being the title which is "George W Pussy") but I like to watch it because of its extream oddness. I wonder though what the person was thinking when they made it (made by the same person/people who gave the world a rap song from the point of view of jesus christ, oddly enough). Theres a lot of extream anti-bush opinions still pumping strong, even if he does win, and I wonder how this will all end up.



And now, its time for a pointless link rampage! I have tons of links in my gmail (yes, I mail myself info about sites I think are cool, but dont have time to decide to put on my random list of cool sites or anything) so I'm going to throw them at the few viewers of my site. Woohoo.



Proving that people can fight about the most useless things, people fighting about urban legends and language. (my orginal link about verbs died before I posted, weid.)

Weird. Proving to me that Bush and Kerry are really much closer than most say. They are related. Yup. Family tree shows us they are from the same roots.

An exclent rant about how people should not worry about movie spoilers. Interesting!



Oh and I almost forgot to mention the most shocking thing of the day. No not bush seeming to win the Big Seat... no.. I put my clothes in the laundry and came back a while later, and pulled them out but there was one (men's) underwear that wasn't mine. Totally 100% not mine. How was it in my wash?? Weirdness.



Are we now in a Bush-Bashed World? Weird. peace to the streets... DAAG!


18:36:00 | permalink | comments (2)


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I liked "the other guy"!
Steph


We're all going to hell. That's been my observation today. Bush won and he won HUGE. He's the first "President" to win with more than 50% of the vote in 12 years. That means he's going to do what he wants and pack the Supreme Court with reactionary facists. I'm hoping that the Senate blocks every nominee. Anyhow, don't blame me, I voted for the other guy no one liked.

Dansen, good luck with the job thing. I hope your degree comes soon. Kayo, It's been kind of funny conversing with you over Dansen's site, but I hope you enjoyed the Japan Series. Personally I am looking forward to the NPB/MLB all-star game. That should be good.

Oh well, It's back to the books for me. Criminal law and torts tonight. At least reading cases about murder is mildly interesting, if not disturbing. Oh, who am I kidding I am already getting desensitized to it.
Nick!

Monday, November 01, 2004

waiting for work

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

and seeing friends...


So I want a job. I really do, but I don't really want to work at a cram school this time. I think I got the job at that elementry school, but I still don't have my diploma so they weren't able to hire me. The recruiter guy was taking me to another job interview, and then at the last moment he told me it was for a hakwon (cram school) so I canceled that interview, but have another one for a elementry school soon. Was supposed to be today. Didnt hear anything about it. Soon, I hope.


I went to my friend Uni's hometown last weekend, it was my first time to see her parents in 2 years! (Although I met her and her boyfriend a few weeks ago here in Seoul.) Her parents were very nice to me. They bought me a lot of expensive food for dinner. Including... living octopus. For dinner. Living. Well, it was cut to pecies live... but, yes, the legs were still kicking. It was a new exprience for me. And yeah, I couldn't help but think it was kind of gross. But it tasted good, actually. I took some awesome pictures of the trees in her hometown, but I can't figure out how to get the pictures off my cellphone yet. So I'll show those some other time.



And other than that, I've been seeing a lot of friends. And waiting for a job. Exciting. Heh.



17:07:00 | permalink | comments (2)


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Yeah, I am not much into "live food". I can't eat anything that is still trying to get away. As such I hope that if I get chosen to be something's lunch one day, it will go ahead and kill me fully before starting in on my tender midsection. A fellow I know said that he had eaten a living fish once and that it was by far the best fish he had ever eaten.
At any rate, hang in there Dansen, you will find a good job yet. I know you will because you have the "charm" as my family calls it. Translate as "luck".
Take care.
Trench


Uh, did you bite into moving octopus legs or start on dead pieces?

Good luck on the job hunt, teach.
Steph

 
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