Some Dancing!

So I previously laxed wyrical (what?) about the Fijian open day event, and here is the video proof that I attended.

The audio quality is balls because I didn't balance it properly; and the video quality for the first minute or so doesn't fare much better - I knocked the focus ring just as I was lifting it to record the video, without noticing.  I do get around to correcting it after a while.

It's exceedingly interesting watching the parallel evolution of these kinds of things.  I say parallel because the first two dances are Samoan rather than Fijian, but the relaxed style of all three certainly suggests a shared heritage.  They might not all agree on that, however...

In other news I played for the Lion corporation at the weekend.  We were beaten by a team that ground us down, our fitness wasn't enough despite having a points advantage going in at halftime.  I got on with thirty minutes to go, with a massive cold that reduced my lung capacity to barely functional.  I did okay though, and next week I'll get the DVD of the game so I can put up a few highlights or something.  We were in full defence mode when I arrived, and the game didn't change tempo while I was on.

In other news, I took some photographs of Tokyo tower.  The now defunct Eiffel Tower ripoff is still quite large, but thanks to the new skytree it's a bit underwhelming.  I also love how people in Japan are touting the skytree as the largest tower in the world.  I've even heard it described as a symbol of Japanese 'greatness.'  True, in the world of architectural lingo, the skytree is the worlds biggest tower, but it's nowhere near the worlds tallest building.

The Burj Khalifa is an absolute monster.  Not only does it dwarf the skytree, which can be seen from every-bloody-where in the greater Tokyo area, by the way, it annihilates the previous world records held by big buildings.

All the other competitors were fannying about making the fastest elevator, or the most number of floors, i.e. they were specialising.  The Burj came along and took all their prize pieces away, cantering into a magnificent record stealing lead.

The 'great,' skyscraper building period of the late eighties and early nineties was decades ago, so the materials technology and computer modelling necessary for the Burj are obviously far more advanced, leading to the ability for such a gigantic advancement; but I still can't help but be impressed by the scale.  It is a fantastic thing - something humanity can be proud of (assuming it doesn't fall down).

I can't personally envisage another tower of this size being constructed within the next thirty years, simply because no one has any money.  China, who own the entire world now, aren't in a position to chance their arm with a two billion dollar vanity project for a few reasons.  Firstly, the poor farmers who complained about the wasted money of the olympic legacy won't be impressed.  Not that anyone cares in china; they've put the average peasant through the ringer without any major revolts or setbacks so short of poking them in the eye with a pointy stick, they're fairly secure in that regard (but it pays to be careful with totalitarian regimes).  Another restraint is technical know-how.  The chinese aren't particularly knowledgeable in classically america-centric areas of massive design and production, and they're the least likely nation on earth to outsource for any aspect of their construction.  The Abu-Dabians were purely interested in flashing the cash in an ill-fated attempt to outrun their reliance on oil.  That kind of exploded in their face, but we have a fucking great big building out of it, that a few bankers committed suicide as a result of the melt-down is a positive side-effect we couldn't have foreseen, what with bankers having no souls.

Another reason the chinese won't be able to build a vanity project of this magnitude is probably as much phallic as anything.  These towers are massive penises, created to cover up for qualities lacking elsewhere - just look at Donald Trump.  The chinese have long since reconciled their paucity of phallic aptitude (let's call it) and will therefore be less inclined to reach for the skies.

If anyone is to do it, it'll be the chinese; but like I said before, I don't think it'll happen for a very long time.

Of that picture highlighting the size of the Tokyo attempt, notice it doesn't have the other major players on the 'tall things kaleidoscope,' instead preferring the iconic, and substantially smaller offering of things like the pyramids and the defunct Petronas towers - it's very important that you only pick things that make you look impressive!  That's why so much care is taken at mens urinals...

Anyway, enough penis talk for now, onto a few pictures!

The first thing everyone was doing (it was quite late, but there were still a few camera toters) was looking at the tower.  They kept looking at me like I was mental, because I had my back to the tower itself.  I thought I was being really clever, but then I saw this picture a million times on the internet.  Oh well.

So I went back to taking pictures of the tower like a normal person.

Boring, but the design itself is interesting enough in a recurring, ever-repeating-pattern kind of way.

The park in front is quite nice with no one in it, but I fear this kind of green space in the middle of Tokyo would become crowded the second any light is shone upon it.

On the way back to my digs I crossed over this river, a quite interesting proof that not all of Tokyo is clean.

And that's it, I can't think of any more phallus jokes so we'll leave it at that.  Bye!

As of Yet, Untitled

So I previously wrote in handwriting because an article inspired me to try it out.  Upon re-reading it, I found that it was total garbage and instead of flipping it over, I'm going to leave it as an impenetrable wall of hand carved nonsense.  Good luck, should you wish to attempt deciphering it.

Anyway, I went to a Fijian independence day party at a country club.  It was a proper country club too, with bowls lawns and an artifical pitch.  In the middle of Tokyo.  Amazing.  It was chock full of white people wearing tennis gear, and Japanese people wearing blazers, tuxedos and ties.  What the hell?

Anyway, this bizarre slice of life in colonial Japan aside, it was awkward because Fiji was previously a colony of England and I happen to be English.  It would have been awkward if it were any other country.  That is to say, if it were an american independence day gathering, I would obviously have been shot.  If it were Indian, I'd have been burnt in effigy, if not worse.  Fijians are super chilled out however, and everyone got along swimmingly.  Even the berks in blazers were having fun, which is a rare thing in Japan.

So, onto the pictures.

The first girl is one of the organisers, the second a translator.  No one mention the man at the back.  Inappropriate.

The guy in third in this mini conga is one of the centres for the gaijin. Mojee weighs a metric tonne, and looks dapper in a skirt.

This rather nervous woman didn't look particularly thrilled at being handed the speech obligations.  She was evidently someone quite important, but just how so I'm not sure.

The line began with only a few people.  Normally it would have expanded to everyone within seconds - but this is Japan.  It took a rather long time for it to reach this number of people, and the eagle-eyes among you will notice that it's mainly foreigners.  Ever such a difficult proposition, getting the locals to have fun.

The Samoan delegation also danced, and considering the history between these two islands, I'm surprised there wasn't a fight.  Indeed, their territorial disputes make the invasion by England look tame.  At least we didn't eat anyone.

All the women wore these dresses.  The reason this picture is black and white is because it's slightly out of focus.  A good way to mask it is make it black and white and hope people focus on that, rather than your poor skills.

Bati is like the tribal elder or something.  He's at all these events, leading the dancers and helpers with great enthusiasm.

They can't sing though.  The nicest people in the world, but they can't sing.

This girl was sporting a traditional Fijian wedding dress; actually made of bark.  Her mum liked the picture, but she didn't.  I got a hell of a dirty look when I took it.  Sorry girl.

Another view of the conga, always of interest to those who take part.  Probably less interesting for you.  Sorry about that.

Again, the leader rallies his troops, just out of shot.

Mojee doing a climb the rope impression.

The traditional dances of these islands are usually rather sedate.  Think of Hawai'i and you'll get what I mean.  A much different proposition to their past endeavours.

One of the two basque we have in the gaijin.  Both are constantly reminding us that the basque are neither french nor spanish, a proud race unto their own.  So proud, one of them is training to overtake his homeland with a bazooka.  No one told him it was a stage light, we all thought he'd have been sad.

An alternative view of the conga.  I really don't know if this photo works.  Only the girls face is in focus, which immediately draws my eye, but it's such a small part of the picture that I really don't know how I feel about it.  At least she is looking away at something off screen, so you're left wondering what it is that has her attention.

Two of the Samoan dancers, giving a similar dance to the Fijian ladies.  It's all very sedate, and shows that women have certain roles thrust upon them, regardless of where they're from.  The men do the war dances, the women do the... I don't really know what to call them.  Those dances.  Yeah, them.

Anyway, that's all for today.  Three anyways in the introductions probably means a rather scatter-brained approach to the blog, but whatever.

Catch you later!

Handwriting

Read this.

Then read this (sorry, I can't seem to turn them 180 degrees.  Is there HTML code that?) :

Korean Pop Music

This audio recording, from the much overrated New Yorker magazine (obviously their website, as attaching a CD to print would be so 90's) shows why people don't take man-babies seriously.

The first few minutes start with the show plugging their other segments, so you can skip that.  What I want you to focus on is the giant, self styled man (baby) who has the same musical tastes as a teenage girl.  Of course, in this age of early maturation, that means he has the same tastes as a nine year old.  Congratulations on admitting that in public, you closet paedophile.

Not that I am one to criticise musical tastes of course - I often tell people to listen to the Mars Volta whom I adore, but no one else does.  It's basically music for the sake of music, and they only seem to play crazy, irreverent stuff that only appeals to themselves.  I'm exceedingly selfish, so I assume that kind of self-gratification (steady) suits my 'style.'

I also like some country and western, classical, drum and bass (particularly dubstep, if that's even a sub-genre?), jazz and exactly one rap song.  Therefore, my tastes are fairly ill-defined, and it would be difficult to pinpoint a single genre I listen to most.  I would imagine, quite to the surprise of a few, old world chinese music with flutes and whatnot is probably my most listened to genre.  It's fantastic for relaxing, and with my track record with the ungodly realm of sleep, that's quite a useful property.

Anyway, the reason for this particular rant is simple.  Korean pop music; contrary to the moniker, is not actually music.  It's garbage.  It's trash.  The paedophile speaking for the New Yorker, openly says the main attraction is the visual aesthetic.  That is to say, mostly naked asian girls dancing around a lot.  That, therefore, isn't music.  It's dance.

Every.  Single.  Asian.  Pop.  Song.

All the same.  All of them.  They are all the same.  They are interchangeable, to the point of the very 'humans,' themselves being no more than shells, removable façades on the face of humanoid automatons - incapable of showing emotion, eschewing it in favour of puerile 'sex appeal.'  I say puerile because it's marketed for youngsters, kids who don't get any of it.  But they want more.  Holy shit, they want more.  I've never heard of a phenomenon where someone came up with an idea, then replicated it a billion times without changing a single thing about it, and the audience kept buying.  Even chocolate bars release new flavours once a decade or so.  These guys, they've been doing this for twenty years.

They'll keep doing it for twenty more.

I think it's because asians don't have a boredom threshold.  Honestly.

Think about it for a second.  Asians have the worst eyesight in the world, not because they lack vitamins (that was originally thought to be the problem) but because they don't get enough direct sunlight (the newest hypothesis for the increase in childhood short-sightedness, the one I most subscribe to).  It can affect 90% of individuals in certain places.  Why aren't they getting enough sunlight?  They're indoors doing their homework.  Then they're playing games where the main objective is to do the same thing, for hundreds of hours.  Assuming that not everyone who reads this is a nerd, there exists a subset of games created by, and for, the various asian markets that require hundreds, if not thousands of hours be poured into them for no purpose other than to... do whatever.  There's never a story, you just kill a million monsters for the sake of killing a million monsters.  There's never a plot, never a system to manipulate or break, never a challenge to overcome, never any reward at the end.  You do it, to do it.  And then you repeat it a hundred thousand times.  I can't begin to describe how mind-numbing it all is.

They have often tried to export these games to the west.  Every time, the community collectively writes a nasty letter back, often with a sacrificial horse head, intimating that the head is foreshadowing what will befall the game developer, should they try to foist their shit on us again.

This mind-bending ability to turn their brains off is great in certain situations.  If I wanted something built really quickly, with no regard for safety, to exacting specifications, I would hire chinese to do it.  I would hire a westerner to manage them, because we are lazy and want to do the most amount of work for the least effort.  In business terms that means more money for less work.  Bonus.

It's these traits that ensured the Japanese were catapulted out of world war two with enough momentum to become the then second, and now third largest economy in the world.  It's also the reason why, when the alien arachnids come from outer space to take over the earth, I recommend forming vast armies of japanese, korean, indian and chinese soldiers, under the command of american, german and french generals.

Why no english?  At this point, on the global stage, we're an overweight OAP, involving ourselves where we shouldn't and acting stupid, embarrassing ourselves like a collective group of imbeciles (I suggest the collective noun be, simply, english.  An english of imbeciles).  As such, we should just sit out the oncoming galactic war, and barter trade agreements or something.



Aaaaaanyway...

So far we have learned that korean, japanese and chinese pop music sucks balls.

Now we learn that one of the rugby league fraternity has lost one, following on from a final defeat.  I can't get over the fact he played on.  Jesus, that's impressive.  Dumb, but tough.  I'm not going to make any puns here, you can all probably come up with a dozen better ones than me, so I won't even bother.



So that's all the interesting news out of the way, now for me.  I was terribly sick this week, in the stomach.  It's terrible when you feel fine but can't actually eat anything, and after taking a day off work (lest you vomit on everyone you meet) being attacked by your boss doesn't do anything for morale.  I got back the next day and was asked (some time after saying hello to my boss) whether I was okay, having missed the prior days work.  My boss then, upon hearing my answer that I still felt like shit, decided to change my schedule.

Relieved was I that there was still a shred of humanity in her broken, icicle encrusted soul.

I gratefully took the new sheet of paper, holding my schedule.  It was changed from three lessons that day, to five.

Fuck you.

Diseases have prevented me from going to the dentist, but the fact the ol' gnashers don't hurt, means it's in no way serious.  No problem!

And that's about it really.

Teeth and Testicles

So I went to training on Saturday with more than a dozen gumshields, sent to me courtesy of dad.  What I didn't do, was use any of them.  Now you might find this strange, or peculiar, or simply bad form - but in training sessions you are rarely put into a position as to require their use.

I should have put two and two together when I was first kicked, then punched in the testicles, however.  The first was painful, the second was excruciating, both were accidental.  After these unfortunate events, I should have seen that the rugby gods were not favouring me on that day, and put in one of the veritable collection I now own.  After these events, I tripped over and was folded backwards, having a prop sitting on me while precariously balancing upon two other forwards.  That was extremely painful, and should have been further indication of what was to come.

We were doing maul practice, against the forwards.  As you can imagine, the backs were continually being driven backwards, but during one such maul(ing) I had my head to one side; at which point one of the wingers who is very much in competition with me for the position, ran in head first and nutted me with all his strength.  It was obviously a deliberate ploy, one to either concuss or otherwise subdue me, but he caught me in such a way that my jaw snapped shut, thereby chipping a couple of front teeth.

Unfortunately there's very little recourse in a team game with the physicality of rugby, and even if there were nothing would ultimately come of it.  Take your lumps and move on, with an eye to making the offender somewhat more lumpy in the future.  Watch out, son.

In less sinister news, this article is making my newly bruised plums ache in sympathy, while highlighting the inner hypochondriac as upon reading this, I immediately feared for my own.

At least we're all cursed with two; although I do wonder if he needs to take testosterone to supplement the loss?

In other news, freedom of speech has once again taken a knock.  Not that we have any rights to our own opinions anymore, of course.

Yes, the guy is an asshole (no more so than any politician, he copied a shit joke from somewhere, a politician lies to your face, with a smile).  I don't, however, think there are any laws that say, 'if you are an asshole, you will go to prison for 16 weeks.'  Yet here we are, racists and assholes are now punished by abusing laws that had no intention of being used to form society in the way of Orwell.

Something I've known for a long time came to light today.  We're all going to die, you are all horrible, horrible human beings and should be ashamed of yourselves.  You are all filthy, disgusting non-parents who, after drinking a glass of wine as has been customary for people for thousands of years, you become a sub-species of worm, not fit to lay eyes upon.

Feel bad yet?  The only purpose of this article is to make you feel bad about something that you have no right to be criticised for.  I think that your kid turning into scum, or not turning, has far more deeply rooted origins than a glass of wine.  Not causally related, people!

This made me laugh, so you can all watch it and laugh along.  What a lot of people make the mistake of thinking is that everyone, everywhere, does whatever is suggested in news articles.  Obviously this isn't true, and I've yet to see anyone in my local town start swimming around in that stupid gear.  Presumably they have access to someone who does it in their spare time, and thought it'd make the chore of learning to swim in a comprehensive education setting less arduous.

It always amazed me how they could make something as fun and interesting as swimming, dull and laborious.  I guess that's your tax dollars and public education system at work.

A really, really funny article about Mitt Romney, the berk who is running against the other berk in america.  When I read the title I thought it was going to say that the president in running (I love how they always have titles like that, following on in the traditions of English servitude (maiden in waiting, second under butler to the queen etc.)) was actually a human being, and was going to reign in their enormous, untenable (both financially and morally) war spending.

No.

Oh, how wrong I was.

I honestly don't understand the american delusion.  To quote the article:

Mr Romney said the US was missing "an historic opportunity to win new friends who share our values in the Middle East" and said there was "a longing for American leadership" in the region.

Okay let's dissect this shall we.  The US set the friendship boat on fire by invading Iraq.  Twice.  And then Afghanistan.  There are no friends to be won in the middle-east, you enormous baboon.  You installed a puppet regime in Iraq, and even they don't like you.  Surely that should alert you to your chances of winning over anyone else.  Christ, obliviousness seems to be a pre-requisite for being allowed to live in america.  Jesus.

Of the longing for american leadership part, if you need to make fun of this statement, I fear you are too dull.  Seriously.  Longing?  Really.  No.

Christ on a bike...

This unfortunate incident shows that large volumes of volatile liquids, when uncompressed, have the capacity to explode with a rare ferocity.  Now, at this point I feel it pertinent to highlight the fact that I turn the sound off almost all the BBC videos.  After the debacle whereby the BBC overlayed a video of a few men playfighting with cardboard boxes in Haiti, with words intimating that they were somehow actually fighting, I don't trust them.  That and all the other lies.  SO MANY LIES.

Anyway, it's a pretty hefty explosion.

I showed you guys this video a few years ago (I think) but felt it right to re-visit the issue.  That, and it makes me laugh.

What a jerk.

And finally, something that vindicates my stance on posture (hehe).  For my entire life, I've been told that I have a bad posture, and that tomorrow my spine will contort and twist in such a manner as to make living impossible.  That, within minutes, due to my terrible form, I will at once be infertile, inebriated, broken, pulverised and dead, in no particular order.

I have always believed that if something is wrong, my body will tell me.  When I sit upright, it hurts my back.  When I sit properly, it doesn't.  Guess which one I am going to continue doing?  I also point to you, the fact that I have never had random back problems as most people in England have - mine have always stemmed from self-inflicted injury.

And that's everything.  My gonads ache, my teeth tingle and my brain hurts.  Another day in the life!

Don't Buy It

First of all, I scribble this warning to anyone who wishes to purchase a Transcend MP330, 2 gig, 4 gig or 8 gig variant.  I've had mine for a week, and the battery no longer holds any charge.  As such, it's a stinking pile of horse shit, good for nothing more than being a simple pen drive.

To make matters worse, for the fleeting moments that it worked, it sounded terrible.

At least it was only 20 quid or so.