Olympics Boycott 2008

So why would I Boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

I could go all PC and complain about the opening miseries ceremonies, the way China is suppressing the news of Olympic issues that aren’t 100% favorable, but there has never been freedom of speech for the Chinese or for the visiting media. There is the oppression of the Tibetan nationals, but the Chinese government has been imprisoning and vanishing ‘political prisoners’ for as long as its been in power; Tibetans were too afraid to talk about their situation in case they were carted of to prison when I was there in 2006, why should now be any different?

….and drugs, don’t get me started on drugs. The IOC chairman comes out and basically says that “we know a lot of athletes are doping, but we can’t catch them”. Ben ‘the needle’ Johnson blew the lid on how many folks were on ‘Roids back in 88, and this years 1500m winner came back after a drugs suspension. Then the mess with Tamsyn Lewis, the poor girl.

Screw this shit, why penalise the few athletes who obey the rules? Let everyone shoot the go-juice and we’ll see just how far we can push the human body. If nearly everyone does it, why not just let the pharmaceutical companies sponsor, and power up, the athletes. At least we’ll get a level playing field.

Nope, I’m not a fan because I don’t enjoy watching near perfection. When a field of athletes perform perfectly, where’s the fun? Where’s the human frailty and confusion? When everyone is almost perfect why not just watch a computer generated simulation? I miss the time when the facade that the Olympics was for amateurs still existed. Now when athletes are performing for a million dollars if they get X gold medals, how can anyone pretend that these are anything but paid professionals?

Like the paid cheerleaders, near perfection…..

Downunder again!

Time to wake up and smell the….. OH MY GOD I CAN SMELL AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back in Australia, blue skies, space, fresh air, and actual quiet. Time to get some writing done…

Catgirls

and now… for no reason what-so-ever

World in a Nutshell

It seems Scientology is back in the news killing its followers, while in Canada a Chinese tourist has gutted and partially eaten a teenager on a tour bus. China is hosting the Olympics and will probably swipe the sperm from successful athletes to breed a new generation of super athletes, Tibet is being beaten back to the stone age, and America’s economy is going down the toilet.

So what do I think about all this? Not much really… I’m just happy i found a good 24 Hour Coffee place in Sinchon. The Lavazza lounge (hmmmm good coffee Lavazza) is just down from Sinchon station on the way to Yonsei University, first cross roads its across the road on the second floor and has a rather obvious blue sign. I intend to be spending a lot of my  last three evenings there with a Pratchet or Dresden book in hand trying to drive the blood out of my caffeine stream.

Right now I’m the only (very out of place) white guy in a PC-bung across the road from that self-same cafe. A good space to hang while I spend my last few homeless days hanging out in a Yagwan with no network. Soon as I’ve chatted to the missus (who is already back home in the blessed coolness of an Australian winter) I’m heading for my coffee fix. All hail stimulants.

Korean girlie’s (possibly Olympics related) for the hell of it

From the Chosun

M2

It’s 7:30 in the morning, my ears are ringing, I hurt from the neck down, and my shirt is salt encrusted. I’m going to guzzle some water and a trio of bananas to replace all the potassium I’ve sweated out, and then I’ll tell you about M2.

I wandered into M2 (Hongdae in Seoul) about 1am, having had a skin-full of Vodka in various mixes, and found the usual crowded, sweaty mess. Like most visits the dance floor was so packed that dancing was reduced to a kind of hyper-energetic swaying. This time however  the air conditioning was on, and there was surprisingly little smoke in the air. Awesome.

Artist for the night was Sergio Flores, and he was pumping out stuff that meandered between Happy Hardcore and Old-School Dance. There wasn’t a hip-hop rift to be heard and I was one happy old fool. Took me back to the late 90’s when the Rave was king, and R&B was still an off-shoot of Country and Jazz.

That wound up around 3 leaving us all wanting more. What can I say, the man played an awesome set, and I felt like I was 18 again back at the Jelly-Bean Raves. Of course I was fitter then and liked my Dance a lot harder, but we old folks mellow and Sergio really hit the spot.

The next set was sadly a bit of a let down, moving away from Electronica to a more Hip-Hop sound that didn’t really do it for me, but hey with a 20,000 Won cover fee I was going to keep dancing, and I did. The beats got better again with DJ Niki in time to welcome the new day in. Sadly by this time I’d reached my old man limits and spent a lot of the last hour propped up against the wall.

M2 photo 2004

Left the club at 7am, hot, tired, but very happy. I have to recommend M2 to all those aging Ravers out there who miss the old days. I also have to report that I wasn’t the oldest guy there (HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY). Now I just have to get hearing back in one ear.

Korean Blogsphere grows up

There is some great stuff floating around the Korean Blog-sphere at the moment, and it centers on analysing why expats seem to complain so much about Korea. The lead article can be found over here at Roboseyo (co-authored with Ask a Korean), and talks about the possible reasons why we expats talk so much smack.

The one thing it does seem to miss is the nature of the Blogging itself, not the tone, but the overall intent. Some blogs are obviously ameture affairs designed for personal expression, and maybe to inform friends and family, others like the first class Grand Narrative, Gusts of Popular Opinion and the Metropolitician are well researched pieces of online jouranlism written to inform. Of course many blogs also fall in the middle ground.

I myself love to write, I may not be much good at it, but its something I enjoy. I could, and will write about the things I enjoy about Korea, but it seems so much easier to complain. When we get on our high horse about this mess, or that disgrace, we can get a bit verbose. When we’re giving praise its so much harder to spin out the article, yes there are some lovely Korean women, yes the country is highly industrialized, yes the standardized test scores are good compared with some other first world countries. Yet its the negative things that get us fired up, and for me it takes passion as much as inspiration to get the words flowing.

A more cynical part of me whispers that maybe its because all the ‘wonderful’ things we hear about Korea don’t really seem that marvellous to someone from the outside. I come from what was once the self-titled ‘lucky-country’, that became a ‘clever-country’ with a massive educational push. Now we’re the thirsty country with the mistakes of past decades leading to massive water shortages, no one who can fix the plumbing or build a house, and a nation of over-educated folks who can argue philosophy and talk business but can’t find work. Education is only a means to an end, an over educated workforce simply becomes a frustrated unemployment base.

The natural wonders of Korea are fantastic compared to the polluted and overcrowed streets of Seoul, but when you’ve got Ayres Rock, the Great Barrier Reef, the Twelve Apostles, Hamilton Island, Simpson Desert, Monkey Mia (seriously if you ever get the chance go there), and the Coral Coast…. well Jeju looks like the non-tropical tourist trap that it is.

Kimchi…. apparently it is the healthiest food in the world and cures Bird Flu, lets overlook the fact that its wonderful acidic nature may be a major contributing factor to Korea’s large stomach cancer problems.

Korea is an industrial powerhouse and economic power. Yes you are. Its something to be proud of. Yet with being a developed nation comes the responsibility for your development and how you interact with the world. Looking after those limited resources like clean water, clean air and so forth is part of that. Granted America hasn’t work that out yet but look at their education system, we have to give allowances for those whos mental capacity has been retarded by their education system. Korea has a chance to do it better, and we’d just love to see it.

Korea’s cultural heritage. Apparently its okay to burn it down if you’re a local, but not okay to ‘diss’ it if you’re not.

…….. and I am so getting away from the topic.

In a nut-shell. The Korean Blog Sphere is looking inwards at itself for a change, and this is a positive thing. Go read the article where it all started. Oh, and the girls are still cute… but I’ll get back to why I think that is soon.

 

oh… and I get more crabby in summer

BattleStar Galactica – Please Explain

Okay I’ve seen the hype, I’ve watched the first twoseasons and I have to WTF? I mean the original series was complete crap, saved only by the fact that it was a one-of-a-kind sci-fi with some original concepts. The remake has all the CGI you could want, some decent adversaries and….. um…. what does it have? Completely 2 dimensional milepost characters that never really develop or change throughout the seasons… hero’s fighting a seemingly endless and pointless retreat… unclear plot development moved forward by using the characters purely as plot devices… illogical decisions… characters who all seem to be socially retarded… characters that aren’t simply made human by their flaws, they ARE their flaws.

I don’t get this at all.

There are some great sci-fi series out there that have great characters, fantastic story arcs and so forth. Babylon 5 is the theatrical space-opera with a 5 year arc and awesome characters. The battles are Epic and it has (drum roll please) sub-plots, something completely missing in BattleStar. Firefly has wonderfully developed characters, a well constructed political backdrop, characters develop and subplots rock.

Can someone please explain the appeal of this series? This CGI soapy is defaming the name of intelligent Sci-fi and hasn’t the good grace to vanish into the murky depths of obscurity they way crappy sci-fi is supposed to. The first season started off so poorly that I barely stuck with it, but got better with some philosophical questions and what promised (but failed to deliver) character development. The second season started well but died in the second half… and season three started so badly that I haven’t been able to watch past the first episode or two. 

….and don’t get me started on the strange personality (and haircut) change of starbuck moving into season 3.

The Gods hate me

Took me a little while to get home last night, my last class finished at 7:30 and I was off and racing by 7:40… or almost. I made it as far as the exit when I was called back to do an interview. Momentum broken I swung past a nearby fast-food joint on the way home and was stared at for a good half hour of ordering and eating. Then as it wasn’t too stinking hot, despite me still being in jeans and carry a bag full of books to do lesson plans for, I went for a wander.

About 2 minutes from work is a little park that seems to be about 20 meters deep, since I had the rare luxury of being able to stroll home in whatever manner and time-frame I so chose I decided to meander that way. So I went for a stroll through the park as my Styrofoam meal (McDonalds) slowly dissolved into its fat and sugar components. I’ve been here eleven months now, and the thing that kills me about Korea (aside from the crowds, pollution, light, and noise) is the lack of greenery. One month before leaving I discover that 2 minutes from work, and 7 from home, is Jangja Park and it has a hidden and green walking path that stretches a few grass and tree girt kilometres towards the mountains. 

It’s not exactly Kakadu, but it moves away from the high-rises and into the ‘country’ of Korea. We’ll its green(ish) and they are growing some sort of leafy vegetation which helps clean out the air so I’ll call it farmland. If I’d known about this place I might have considered extending, at the very least it has driven home the need to explore my immediate area as soon as I get established in a new location.

The walk itself is kind of nice in the lets-get-back-to-nature-yet-make-sure-there-is-nothing-natural-left kind of way that is so common here. The walking path follows a river and is skirted by wooden rails, the path itself is broken by those pebbled patches that are supposed to be walked on barefoot for circulation benefits, and every 20 meters or so there is a light. Attached to the light is a speaker pumping out the usually banal Korean pop songs that sound like remixes from the late 80’s and early 90’s, and little phrases in both English and Korean that have deep and meaningful content.

Heaven forbid that there actually be silence or darkness in Korea, I mean we’re going crazy just letting a bit of grass grow, we can’t completely revert to the stone ages now can we?

Eventually my meandering reached the 500 meter mark and I decided to cross the river at the next bridge and turn back. I was hot, and sweaty, and cursing my jeans and crappy shoes by this point and headed home for a much needed shower. A cold midnight shower was great, but emerging to find that my modem was hot enough to fry eggs, and therefore on the fritz, wasn’t the best end to the day.

Flawless Bank Job

A movie review

I’ve recently watched two movies, Flawless and the Bank Job.

Flawless is Michael Cain and Demi Moore. Michael is a bit flat as a character, but acting is top-notch as always. The story (without spoilers) follows a woman’s attempt to rise in the male dominated Diamond Industry, and the result of constantly being smacked with the glass ceiling. It is a heist movie, and a fairly good one too.

Bank Job is based on a true story and , to no ones surprise, is a heist movie too. A bit more action here, and a good story to boot. Love the cast, love the acting, good movie all round.

Now I know this is a bit different from my usual posts but I’m camped in Mokdong for a week of ‘try the big school environment’ and while wandering the street looking for breakfast at 8pm, I noticed a LonD site and it reminded me of the movies. LonD is London Diamonds and the setting of the movie flawless.

And on an unrelated note