Connect Four

I begin this particular presentation with an ancient form of weaponry.

They wedged rockets into the small cylindrical holes, lit them, then presumably ran away.  It's a miracle that one survived, given the wooden nature of the construction.

I certainly wouldn't want to be the chief 'post operation,' visual inspector.  Not for all the tea in china.  Come to think of it, that's probably what they were fighting for.

So I tried experimenting with different in-camera options while I was shooting.  I had the opportunity to use an entry-level SLR afterall, so I wanted to tinker and see what happened.

Obviously, I can't do highlights, so I've lost yet more in this picture; but I must admit that I carry a certain fondness for this extremely warm picture.

I haven't seen many like this, and while it's probably an acquired taste (hence why so few examples exist) I am bemused as to why there should be so little interest in this particular colour scheme.

Thoughts, anyone?

This is the neutral colour scheme I predominantly used during the days' shooting.

It's the same entrance shrine thing, but with a decidedly lacklustre aura.  The picture above reminded me somewhat  of Lord of the Rings, so maybe I just have a fondness for unrealistically ethereal imagery.

I know two of the chinese characters on this shrine by the way.  One means door, another middle, and the third I've no idea.  Door something middle.  Door God Middle?  Door Sunshine Middle?  Door Oranges Middle?  Who knows.  (Obviously someone does, just not me.)

I was somewhat enamored by the chinese characters, so took incrementally closer pictures of them.

There's no other reason for me to include them here than, and I apologise for this, I feel this blog should be at least some way indicative of my overall shooting habits, so I need to include enough that it is proportional to the number I took overall.

That probably doesn't make sense to anyone but me, so I apologise.

Door, something, middle.  In that order.

There's not a lot more to say on this particular topic.

It's pretty though right?

It smacks of Asia too, which is nice in a country of macdonalds and KraZe burger.

The americanisation of this country is total, whereas Japan is only partially exploited.  Long may Japan hold out.

I like the perspective of this one.

Last one of the writing I promise...




(I made sure it was very small!)

I love drawing the traditional and modern together.

The best way to do this is zoom in to the maximum extent of your lense, and pull the background closer to the foreground.  The elements in this picture look quite close together, but they couldn't exist further apart.

Isn't photography fun!

Taking photographs is, but listening to a deranged lunatic isn't, so let's move on swiftly!

I don't know what this ugly little fellow is, but I assume he's guarding the temple at the top of the steps.

The warm colours are useful here, because they bring out detail that was lacking from the neutral colour scheme I used in other pictures.

He's got some awesome teeth on him.  He doesn't even look particularly menacing, as is common for these gargoyle type constructions.

I was of the opinion that a face like that needed extra attention, so here it is.  It's really well made, and while obviously modern, I'm told it is a faithful replica of something that would have been present some years ago.

Presumably some foreign army took them home.  Which one is a good question.

Korea has changed hands a number of times, and it's this history that makes the people so wary of Japan, despite them being less of a threat than their northern neighbours.  I think it also helps that North Korea has the word 'Korea,' in the name, despite being a completely foreign country.  Actually, it's more of an alien country than foreign.

This is a comparison of neutral and warm colour tones.

Which you prefer is up to you.

I wondered whether I should place the warmer variation on top, to give it priority; I then wondered whether anyone would care, so put them back this way round.

A large amount of the site was being renovated or reconstructed, so I was somewhat disappointed to find myself unable to enter some of the smaller buildings.

Most are easily entered, and unlike Japan, photographs are usually allowed.

I always wondered why photography was banned in these kinds of places.

A day in the life of a pot.

There were half a dozen urns around this particular building.  In Japan these were usually used for incense burning, but those examples were either indoors or covered, so I doubt this urn is used for that.

I can honestly say that I have no idea what it does.

I just felt like mentioning what other examples of such pots do...

I took this one, much to the hilarity of a few Korean tourists walking past.

I was laying down, using my bag as a headrest.  This is a position I've noticed a lot of dockworkers adopting, around ten PM, after a particularly harsh day of work and drinking.

Often I'll get in from late night shopping or meeting friends, see a worker lying down in such a position, then I'll head out the next day to see either the same man unmoved, or a pile of detritus blown up against him.  Imagine someone being snowed in, like a scene from a typical cartoon, but with coffee cups and coke cans.

I find myself taking the morally ambivalent road and laughing; more often than not.

I think the wives here drive the men to such stupid acts.

But more on that  another time!

I'm going to end this particular presentation with some pictures of a present I got from one of the students.

 Nail clippers, believe it or not.  I think I need to improve my finger based hygiene, on the evidence of this present.

The interesting thing comes from the picture however, as it is a famous Korean picture.  There are some partially nude women in the foreground (It's difficult to see from this photo) and a couple of men hiding in the bushes.

Bearing in mind this picture is the Korean equivalent of a raunchy Italian renaissance picture, I find it incredible that they would sensor anything on this picture, but apparently they do.  You lose the entirety of the bottom, which is the nude part - comically however, you also lose the peeping Toms in the top left.  The picture must look more like a half drawn 'paint your own,' type affair than a national treasure, after the censor is finished.

'Certificate of World Best Product.'

'Made in Korea.'

Modest much?

Third Post, Hanging on in There.

This post will be somewhat shorter than previous ones, as I'm determined to sleep well tonight.

I had a weight and body fat test at the gym, and no matter how hard I try I cannot gain weight.  I eat everything that comes my way (except tentacles, I've had enough of those for a while now) both healthy and unhealthy; yet I can't break 87Kg's.  I'm at 86Kg's right now.  It's frustrating to say the least.  I want to be a solid 90kg's, with a preference to being one or two Kilogrammes more.  It's only five Kilogrammes, why so much effort?

Of my body fat test, the machine said I had 8% body fat.  This is patently wrong, so I will test myself again tomorrow.

Onto the rest of the Seoul pictures; I wonder where todays jaunt through memory lane will take us?

I'm going to include a number of photos including these guards for two reasons.

Their positioning reminded me of our beefeaters, and some of the HSBC advertisments have them with their giant polearms.  The intimation is that these guys are chinese, but they never explicitly say as much - I guess a few people will have to know the truth.

They're very colourful though, and I can't imagine they'd be much use in combat.  No armour, no swords, just a great big flimsy stick with a cotton tail attached to it.

I guess Koreans loved cute fluffy things even back then...

Ok so this is the second of my pointless ancient military inclusions.  I was here for something akin to the changing of the guard ceremony.

Many in England think our events  are somewhat low-key compared to our European or american neighbours.  They have obviously never seen a Korean handover.  A man with drums.  Five men.  Two minutes.

It's hardly inspiring me, so I'll move on.

I felt somewhat awkward taking a picture of these guys so close up.  I'm not a real photographer, so I have no real legitimate reason to take a photo of them.

My illegitimate reason was to show the incredible boredom on their faces, and the lack of discipline with which they moved.

I began to suspect they were not, in fact, military personal at all.  They were probably hired by the same company that hires for disneyland.  I have heard nothing to suggest that this isn't true.

A shot of the 'grand,' entrance to one of the palaces in Seoul.

The colour of their uniforms doesn't convey any of the normal military emotions.  It's not particularly uniform, camoflauged or awe-inspiring.

It's kind of cute actually.

I would have no qualms about overthrowing this particular dynasty, if not for land then surely for fashion sense.

Of reportage photography I have been told that you can't get exciting or artistic shots all the time.  When reporting facts, your pictures should aim to convey some of those facts visually.

On the other hand I quite like this picture.  Even with its' quirky, barely focused subjects that are framed in a decidedly drunken fashion, I enjoyed taking it as the man tried his best not to make eye-contact with me.

I like this one too, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly it shows how long the poles are, and how, with a bit of positioning and camera trickery, you can make anything look shorter or taller, no matter how big it may be to begin with.

The second reason I like this photograph is decidedly more puerile.

You see that 'entrance,' sign behind the man, to the extreme left of the picture?

I didn't.

I was emphatically, to the point of rudeness I might add, told to move to the entrance lest I find myself in some Korean sounding trouble.  Did I mention the Koreans can be exceedingly rude?  The very same man, with a chocolate and sunbeam smile, welcomed in a pair of Korean couples.

His problem with foreigners?  I can only imagine he had the misfortune of standing next to a foreigner at a urinal.

The sky in this particular picture looks photo-shopped, in my particular world.  It reminds me of an oil painting.

This, coupled with the myriad converging lines, makes this one of my more liked photographs.  The lines really lead the eye towards the modern buildings.

Enough of that claptrap.

I just like it.

In the uninteresting reportage style I mentioned earlier - this is one of the internal parks.  There really is no way of escaping the sky-scrapers I'm afraid.

Horticulturists, name that plant.

The weather was perfect for losing weight, and for sitting in the shade.  Alas, not for much else.

It was a nice park though.

There's a big meeting of world leaders happening in Seoul soon.  Or it has already happened.  Either way, someone paid a lot of money to have the fact advertised on the side of this building.

It was also quite a selfish act, as the poor people working inside that building would have little to no light for the duration of the advertisment.  Everyone should have the basic human right to vitamin D.  Or E.  I forget which one is made in our skin.

Now we start coming to the really interesting photographs.  Unfortunately, this is also my penultimate picture for tonight, as it really is time for bed.

Despite complaining earlier about the huge numbers of concrete towers, some  of the shots do benefit from that contradiction; the juxtaposition, if you will.

I think the greenery and old world buildings, coupled with the extremely modern background is an example of that.

On the other hand, forget everything I just said and tell me whether you like the picture or not, claptrap aside.

I've just noticed that I take a lot of portrait style photographs.

This leaves a large amount of room to the side of the picture in which to write, and also means I have to fill a larger vertical space.

Remind me to produce more landscape orientation pictures in the future.

This is a famous bell, rung several hundred years ago.

I didn't have the kutzpah to ring it myself, but it was beautifully decorated, as were the water columns, part of an ancient clock, that were used to co-ordinate chimes on the hour.

Everyone loves dragons!

The Seoul Continuation

The next batch of pictures, as promised.

It was a reasonably pleasant thirty degrees when I ventured out on this particular day, eventually cooling off to the twenty seven degrees you see here.

Even though it wasn't remarkably hot, the heat is of a humid kind, sapping energy and making you sweat.  The result is that, after a day of walking, you tend to feel very tired and uncomfortable.  I encountered a similar phenomenon in Japan, just less pronounced.  I think this is more to do with the time of year, and less to do with geography; whenever I see weather reports Korean and Japan have identical weather.  Interestingly though, the typhoon that never was did not  approach Seoul.  The difference between Seoul and Geoje seems more pronounced than that of mainland Japan and here.

If I had a computer, rather than a laptop, I would have taken two shots of everything, one focusing on the foreground, and one on the sky, such as this one.

Using some clever photoshoppery, you can then merge the photographs, creating a picture with details in the sky and foreground.  You're stuck with the sky at the moment though, as I don't have the capability to produce such a picture right now.

The themed bridges belong to a (largely) indoor theme park called Lotte World.  I didn't visit on this particular day, but I did go on my last day in Seoul.

Having visited I can say that it's fun, but the company you take is the most crucial aspect of deciding a trip like that.  If one person doesn't want to ride the interesting roller coasters, then the other person will not have nearly as much fun.  Plan your trips carefully!

More interesting than the themed bridge however, is the mass of apartment buildings in the background.  As you will see in the next picture, these buildings stretch for quite a distance, and are three deep in most places.  This particular complex is the largest I saw while I was there.

I include this because people sometimes enquire as to the nature of the housing here.  Flats are the prime source of housing here, and as you can see, they don't mess around when building them...

I can only imagine living in those buildings must be a tortuous existence.  If you live in one of the inward facing flats, towards the bottom, all you would be able to see is the gargantuan building opposite.

That's not something I would particularly enjoy, I must say.

I suppose if you've never lived  in anything else you might feel differently; I think living in a house is more of a luxury than any commodity we  might buy, but we do take that for granted in England.

Koreans have as little space as the Japanese, so I suppose the only way to build is up, and when you run out of up you build within inches of each other, as they have done here.  I daren't guess how many people live there.

There were some random tortoise monsters around the lake.  I assume they were monsters, because they were damned ugly.

I don't speak enough Korean to ask what they were, or what they symbolised, and Koreans seem to be unwilling to teach me, so I guess I will never know most of what goes on here.

Offering to pay for tutoring doesn't seem to work either...

I'm actually in the curious situation where I'm learning more mandarin and cantonese than I am Korean.  Bizarre right?

Again, if I had a PC I would lighten the foreground and merge the picture to create something slightly easier on the eyes, but I don't, so you will have  to imagine.

It's a shame because I would have liked this picture, had the policeman and cars been a little lighter, and the detail somewhat easier to discern.

One day though, when I get my camera...

How long have I been saying that now?

This raccoon is the symbol for Lotte World, and reminds me of the monopoly man, Mr. Moneybags.  Is that his name, or did I just make that up?  It sounds feasible to me...

The designers have also managed to create something not seen since the old manor house paintings of yore, as his eyes follow you around the city.  Assuming you can see this statue, he is looking at you.

This is even more impressive considering the three dimensional nature of it - you would assume that looking at him directly side-on wouldn't be creepy; but they managed to make his stare transcend normal space-time.  Amazing.

Alas the camera I borrows had little in the way of zoom, so I couldn't properly focus on the woman in this picture, greeting incoming cars.

Needless to say, she was  enthusiastically greeting patrons of the store, doing an intricate dance every time someone new arrived.  This store is colossal as you will see later, so there was never a moments rest for this poor woman.

This is the continuation of her little dance sequence.

Yet more dancing...

And the conclusion.

She didn't seem particularly out of breath or anything.  I'm impressed at her stamina and mental fortitude, as doing this all day must be mind numbing and body breaking.

A curtsy and bow is included in the routine, so all major muscle groups are affected.

In fact, I'd imagine all muscle groups are affected.

Although department stores aren't usually the most inspiring buildings to look at, I particularly enjoyed taking the following sequence of photos.

I saw this statue below the building and knew there was a nice photo to be taken, but I couldn't quite figure out the best angle.

Eventually, I stumbled into the position that I think benefited the statue the most, essentially foregoing the inclusion of the department store.

Those who know the brand name will recognise the store, but everyone else will focus on the bronze.

I tried a different position and orientation for  this picture.

It still didn't quite deliver what I was expecting, so I moved onto the next one.

And this is my favourite of the three.

This is an Olympic statue, they have them all over the city.  Seoul hosted the Olympics in 1960 something, so they have statues of all the major events dotted about the place.

Despite being my favourite I don't think it's a particularly interesting picture for anyone else, my enjoyment is derived from the actual taking of the picture - in this instance anyway.

This was taken in the same area, as there were lots of unrelated pieces of work on display.

If only I could straighten the edges up...

I like this one too, because it's really simple.  I'm sure this particular picture has  been taken fifty thousand times already.

There was a family holding up this particular cherub/child.  It's probably symbolic of something, but of what, you can decide (I have no idea).

This was the tallest building I found on my travels around Seoul (except for the observation tower, but I've already included that in a previous post).

There's a definite angular precision to the buildings in Seoul, I don't know who designs their buildings, but they all seem to derive from similar principles.

Maybe the explanation is as simple as: They were all built around the same time.

Maybe they're just prickly, angular people.

Who knows.

And the final picture goes to something you see quite often here.

I guess the strong american influence showed them how to hang flags everywhere.

My usual trick of pretending to be american when I screw up doesn't really work here, because when you tell them you're american, they go all gooey-eyed and sickeningly nice.  The point of doing something wrong and then blaming america is to bond over a multinational distaste for certain american behaviours, not have all actions (no matter how obscene) vindicated by way of national thanks.

It really takes the fun out of being the dumb foreigner.

The most annoying thing is the two-faced nature of it all.  When the foreigner leaves earshot, they start talking about the dumb invading white man anyway, but I don't get the satisfaction of openly annoying them!  That, in itself, is annoying.

That's all for today.  This latest batch of pictures brings me 2/7ths of the way through the photographs I took in Seoul.  Phew!

The Long Awaited Seoul Update!

After a wait of two weeks, I can finally reveal the pictures I took during my trip to Seoul.  I took some eight hundred pictures, of which only a handful were of a good enough quality to show the world.  Of those few, only some had interesting subjects, so the resulting pictures should be respectable, if unspectacular.

This is outside one of the underground stations, I have no idea what it is, but I like the lines and reflections.

There was a police car parked just opposite, but I don't think they would have taken too kindly to me photographing them.

I got quite a few odd looks for taking this photo, so I'm not sure whether I did something wrong.  That's pretty much the story of how I live my life here; blundering from one cultural faux pas to another.

On the way up to Seoul there is usually a TV on the coach.  This, more often than not, shows a horrendous period drama, with the production values of, well, they have none.

This time however, they showed a film about the creation of this building.  I have no idea what function it serves, what it houses, or how many cubic feet of concrete were used to make it; but I do like the shape of it and its' sister building.

This is a view  of both buildings.  I think this is one of those rare occasions where the individual building is more aesthetically pleasing than the pair.  The shape is unique, and having two together mirroring each other seems to destroy that individuality.

They also remind me of the stealth jets, with their angular design.  The world first stealth buildings.

There is a wonderful land of new and old technology here called 'technomart.'  It houses a floor of cellphones, a floor of cameras, and a few floors of all the constituent parts of a computer, both old and new.  While wandering around I came across an old Geforce graphics card that I owned eight or so years ago.  Who could possibly want to buy that?  Or rather, who could hope to sell it?

On my travels through this place I also came across the above picture, as it demonstrates that even people whose livelihoods depend on consoles and games are prone to pirating them.  The homebrew channel for the wii is a way of loading games you've illegally downloaded, and he was openly displaying it in his wii booth.  Interesting marketing strategy!

Imagine a giant department store, without the clothes, solely catering to computers, cameras and mobile phones.  That's pretty much what this place is.  These picture are provided for a sense of scale.

There are signs all over the place telling you such interesting things as the weather, or who has the best coffee in town.

This one could be warning people that taking pictures is illegal, for all I know.

I found myself drawn towards it  though, because it's extremely shiny.

I struggled to figure out why the bus service here was so effective.  Indeed, the inside of these buses was unremarkable.  You might say they were dirty, even with English transport in mind.

After seeing this picture however, I realised that quantity is far more important than quality, in terms of providing an efficient service.  Eight lane roads in the middle of the city help too, I'm sure.

It seems everyone who lives in the city enjoys the scenic views afforded by a park and lake.  The only problem is, and it's something no one can fix - you will always come up against a big ugly building once you leave the park area.  The view inside the park may be fantastic, but there will always be a massive lump of concrete in the background.  No matter how hard you try to mask it, or how hard to try to make it look good, you can't...

Horticulturists name this plant.  Or tree.  Maybe tree.  It was above my head afterall.

This is a view over the lake, still inside the same park.

The whole place is sunk below street level, so it's amazingly peaceful considering the noise just metres away.

It would be a nice place to sit down, if it weren't for the hundreds of others who had the same thought.  This place was really packed when I went, and I would imagine you couldn't go there without it being so.

This picture illustrates the size and number of dragonflies here.  There are tons, all over the place.  They're also roughly five times bigger than the ones we have at home.  They look able to eat small mammals...


As promised, I have only provided a tiny fraction of the photos I took.  You need to check back regularly to find the rest of them!

Typhoon

So the typhoon disrupted school on Wednesday, meaning I didn't have to go in.  However, the typhoon never materialised, meaning I had a free day.  It transpired that the typhoon had struck overnight, uprooting a handful of trees.

While I  walked around looking at an (almost) entirely untouched island, I wondered why they were so scared of this particular event.  There must have been a really powerful storm recently, otherwise there would have been nothing stopping us from working.

All things told, I was disappointed with both the effects of, and the storm itself.  It didn't even wake me up the night before!

I did get a day off work though, bonus!

We also had a power cut on Thursday, rendering all our air-conditioning units useless.  The power cut didn't stop the sun however, and we were all soon melting inside the classroom.  Rooms full of overactive children broiling at thirty degrees do not smell good...

Well, I Was at Least Partially Wrong

There's a hell of a lightning storm going on outside, so I'm going to go to the sea.

How strong is it? Lightning, then a full 8 second delay, then a feeling that woke me up through reverberation as much as noise.

Weather and Hyperbole Update

So there's a monsoon coming, apparently. The only forecasts I can find suggest a rather subdued smattering of rain and cloud, with a small chance of lightning. If this is what passes for monsoon weather over here then no wonder they have so many, the Korean MET office probably consider sea spray to be a bonefide hazard.

Maybe I'm just being cynical though; the event hasn't happened yet so who knows.

But after the Japanese cataclysmic typhoon/monsoon that never was, I will retain this cynicism.

I will endeavour to upload at least a handful of pictures tomorrow, and indeed it might be better that I do so, as it will force everyone to come back and read it time and again as I frequently upload a small number of pictures...

Baby Laptop, Say Goodbye

So my baby laptop has died again. It won't even recognise a boot disk now, so unless something amazing happens I'm going to have to assume this is the end for the little one.

It happened at a frustrating time too, as I have some 600 photos that were taken over my Summer break. You'll have to wait a while longer for those. It's okay though; only a few are good...

I might go swimming tomorrow, that's as exciting as my life is, now that the holidays are over.

If You Don't Laugh, I'll Tell You

So I've been playing my  PS3 with no sound for a couple of weeks, and to understand why you need to delve into my understanding of HDCP.

It was my initial thought that HDCP was preventing my monitor from decoding the audio signal from my PS3.  This is because HDMI cables have several signals that are encoded, including video and audio signals, and should, for whatever reason, something not be working correctly, any one of those signals can be interrupted.

HDCP is ostensibly to prevent video pirates from copying movies using run of the mill Blu-ray copiers.  Should the receiving device not recognise the signal, it will simply refuse to play it.  This leads to occasions where you can see video, but can't hear anything, because the audio signal isn't being processed.

The reality is that these measures have been implemented to enforce region locking.  If you have an Asian TV and a European player, you may not be able to hear the audio, or see the video; or maybe nothing will work.

I assumed the reason I couldn't pick up an audio signal was because of this 'content protection,' and gave up trying shortly after I couldn't get it to work.  My plan was to purchase an extra cable, and run the audio through that, into a separate set of speakers.

As it turns out, the reason for there being no audio was much less sinister, and frankly more stupid than HDCP.

In Korea, a speaker 'mute,' symbol is the reverse of England.  A speaker that is crossed out means the speaker is, in fact, not muted.  A speaker that appears to be blaring out music, with the three curved lines, means mute is activated.

...

I honestly don't know what possessed me to try it out again, but I'm glad I did, as I learned a few important lessons.  Firstly, Sony isn't always as sinister as its' competitors.  Secondly, Asian logic is backwards.  Finally, always try for a few minutes to get something working, before you give up.

Good Old China Does it Again.

Not two weeks after the latest spate of forced evictions, the report into the 2008 Tibet demonstration massacre is released.

The chinese government officially killed seventeen people, and unofficially murdered two hundred.  A particularly charming murder occurred when a woman was detained for eight days, after tearing down a poster on a police station.  Her crime, that of defacing a piece of paper, earned her torture and beatings so severe, that she couldn't eat without vomiting, she was unable to speak, and she had difficulty breathing.  She died twenty two days later.

Another fantastic example of human rights comes courtesy of the same event, as people were left to die on the doorsteps of hospitals.  Why weren't they treated?  All hospitals in the area were told to lock their doors, and accept no-one on the days of the riots.

Classy.

When talking about china, it's often mentioned that america, and indeed the west at large, should force change upon them; presumably through some economic measure.  The blind hypocrisy of the west when condemning these acts of violence on the one hand, and supplying them with raw materials and purchasing from them with the other, is not lost on those I talk to.

To understand the reason no-one in the west cares we should look at the latest governmental evictions in Shanghai.

Tens of thousands were forced to leave their homes, not to make way for a fantastical government project, like the thousands who were made homeless by the Beijing Olympics, or the thousands more who were made homeless by the recent Trade fair in the same city.

No, these people have been evicted by Disney.  They're building a new Disneyland in Shanghai, and thanks to the american mega-corporation, thousands of essentially harmless chinese people, depending on subsistence farming and basic wage jobs, are moving into destitute tenement blocks to live out their lives in poverty.

Way to go Disney.  While Obama condemns chinese co-operation with North Korea, his country funds Billions of dollars worth of investment in the same government he condemns.

Hypocrisy 1  Sanity 0

Entering the Wireless Free Zone

It has recently become painfully apparent to me that wireless technology needs to improve quickly.

The main purpose of wireless in the UK is to  enable many devices to connect to the internet, without the need for extremely long cables.  This is fine in the UK, where the current fastest internet tops out at a notional 50mb/s.  Korea doesn't have wireless.  Wireless routers are sold in the shops, but nowhere near as heavily.  I don't know the reason for this, but I would imagine it has something to do with the 100mb/s internet connection I'm using at the moment.

In the big cities they can get gigabit internet.  Wireless technology is about a decade away from a sustained throughput of this magnitude.  Supposing I obtained the latest N router, and a wireless card of the same ilk, I could reasonably expect a burst throughput of 100mb/s.  That would be sustained for all of a nanosecond, before the connection settled down into what could be reasonably expected.  This equates to a fraction of that, so all that extra speed would go to waste.  If you connect a second computer, then the overheads of constantly accepting, verifying and error checking both streams would take a percentage of the throughput away again.  Forget about media streaming, at least of any high-def content.

So I'm stuck with wires all over my room.  My complaint isn't aesthetic, I could care less what my room looks like.  Besides, the wires are primarily hidden underneath the piles of clothes.  It's the ever present trip hazard that concerns me.  I've fallen over dozens of times, even though I've routes the cables to the very extremities of the room.  This problem would be solved should I get a bone-fide router, instead of a 1980's styled single output modem, as I could tape the myriad wires to the floor and be done with it.  As it stands, I'm too tight to procure a router.

Thinking about it, I could play on my PS3 and talk on MSN at the same time if I did that...  Maybe I should invest in a dodgy old second hand junker.

In reply to the anonymous poster on an earlier thread, apparently you can't escape reality.  Or maybe I haven't tried hard enough yet.

Summer Holidays and Games

So I've somehow started playing an absurd amount of table tennis.

I always assumed china was the hotbed of table tennis, but Koreans quite enjoy a game or two.  They all use the pen grip (I may have made that name up) just like the chinese, and the national average ability is pretty good, assuming the four Koreans I've played are indicative.  One man said he started playing in the army, and based upon how good he was, I can only assume he didn't fire any guns; he was ridiculous.  We played in a relatively confined space, with walls along two sides.  I would knock seven bells out of the ball, with the craziest spin I could muster, and he would hit it against the wall onto my side of the table.  When someone starts doing that, you know you're beaten.  His service game was impenetrable, and after only three points, he realised I was not Asian, so toned his game down somewhat.  He still played off the walls and ceiling though.  He's the general manager of the gym, and is generally an awesome guy.  He was generous with his praise, and not once did he lord his dominance over me - verbally anyway.

The ultimate aim of these games being my matchup against the landlord.  He set the game up between me and a couple of other teachers last week, and I was chomping at the bit.  The first game was a complete washout, in his haste to play against me I was abruptly awoken from a pleasant evening nap, my eyes were still bleary when he won.  I can't remember the score, but it was (probably) humiliating.  What I didn't expect was his reaction.  Every point was accompanied by myriad noises from his end, ala womens tennis.  Not only did he play more seriously than a professional, he wasn't quite as gracious about his victory as one might expect from the Asian tradition.  His words during the match ranged from: (Exact quotes) 'Wow bad shot,' to 'wow you bery bad.'

It was on.

The second game I took the lead, he took the lead, we were tied on a number of points.  It was intense.  Every point I won I shouted in his face, the same way he had done to me; I think this got the point across, as he was completely silent after that.

So he was leading 20-19, match point.  I served a net, so we replayed the point.  Everyone was silent, the atmosphere intense.  I served a humdinger, it completely threw him off.  He scrambled across the table, hitting the ball with his finger.  The point was over.  Except he hit the net, and the ball crept over.  It hit his hand, and he fluked it over the net.  For the record, he fluked five points by hitting the net in the game.

So he beat me with some Korean Jam on top.  His exact words after the match:  'Wow, you bad, me good.'

Mum would be proud for the restraint I showed.  All the foreigners just looked at me with a combination of fear, for I might decapitate our landlord, and wonderment for not doing so.

I'm going to purchase a bat, without the extra lumpy pen grip thing, and rubber on both sides (western style) and play against him again.  If I win, I will rain the foulest abuse unto his ears, and maybe, finally, at age forty, he will understand that there is such a thing as being a terrible winner.

Overtime. Oh wow.

So it's 8:30 PM.

Where am I?  I'm at work.  I've been here since 8:20 AM.  Twelve hours of work at this place.  No lunch, because it was primarily tentacles (I'm tired of tentacles now) and I'm just about done.

The amount of work we put in here is, frankly, insane.  Eighty students each, speech contests, schoolwide competitions, handouts, certficates, endless meetings.  This is exactly what I was trying to avoid with a normal job...  On the plus side I get to ass-around for most of the day, while everyone else screws up their plans, and makes me stay until 9PM.

So tired now.

Hungry too.

Fixed

So I got the computer working again.

It took a bizarre, unconventional approach but it worked.  I won't go into the details because they're boring, but it means I will be able to take my laptop with me when I go to Seoul next week.

I've been three times now, but only for the weekend.  The Summer holiday is fast approaching, and I'm determined to take a full tour of the city, seeing everything it has to offer.  I'll have a camera too, which means I will have something more interesting to offer; the last few weeks have been rather uneventful.

We have a half day on Wednesday, and then it's free time for a couple of weeks.  I can't wait to see some more of the island, and some more of Seoul.  I think after this break I'll start exploring Busan next.