Dwarf sliding on his face

Disclaimer: This brief post features brutal honesty in the header.

Got this from another random blog:

I cannot stop watching this.

The internet, the world even, is a fucked up place.

God Damn You Yoshio Kojima.

Disclaimer: This youtube clip may make no sense.

I was hunting for something else, but I saw a vid on youtube today that caught my eye. I kinda wish it hadn't.

Yoshio Kojima has featured here before (see December for Louie's impersonation of him). He's the guy everyone loves to hate. I'm beginning to see why he's so popular. And it DOES have something to do with him being intolerable.

Japan send New Years cards like rabbits multiply. There's an obligation to send to everyone you ever knew and their extended family, it would seem. Japan Post came up with a carbon offset program this year, with more expensive cards that include the offset for the footprint it takes to send them.
How do they market them? Add in the monkey boy.

Just watch it. It doesn't make any sense even if you understand Japanese.

Audience wouldn't know talent if it gave them a blowjob

Jon Stewart speaks to what may be an empty auditorium
Disclaimer: This topical post ridicules the cinematic taste of the proletariat.

Gmail spamming news headers managed to catch my attention with this tidbit:

Oscars draw record low TV ratings

I figured it was something like a boycott based on writers' strikes. But no, apparently most of the nominated movies this time around were genuinely unpopular as box office items. I was gobsmacked. Well, at least a little surprised.

On the bill this year we had independent lovable but fairly black comedy Juno, the kind of movie I always wish would win Best Picture but never will, up against the big guns of direction The Coen "Kubrick-reference" Brothers and Paul "what 'norm'" Anderson. No Country For Old Men genuinely deserves its 8+ rating on imdb, and though I haven't seen There Will Be Blood, Lord knows I want to. Atonement and its fellow also-rans are a big "whatever" to me, though I'm curious about Michael Clayton. But anyway, there's a genuine three-horse-race of quality cinematic achievement right there.

I don't understand why these three movies (and other European gems like La Mome failed to perform at the box office. Oh wait; yeah I do. People are sheep. I forgot.
I've been iffy about the Oscars for a while (last year's Departed was good, but in the end its just another remake), but the quality of movies (and the justified awards they received) this year really impressed me. Every Oscar season should be this good. This is how movies should be made, ladies and gentlemen. Don't buy that ticket to Saw 5 or Next Friday After Next (or anything with Snoop Dogg or Hillary Duff as a main character), and start getting into the miracle that is foreign and independent cinema. Your soul will thank you.

Dongbucks

Disclaimer: This brief post features corporate evil.

Who says Dongguan isn't a tourist spot? If Starbucks can make a souvenir out of it...

Look - we have a bridge! And...uh...coffee!

What did you do today?

Disclaimer: The post features childish mischief.

I burned Pokemon toys. With an acetylene torch. On the stone floor of a Chinese factory.

I can't believe I can say that.

What's there to love about China?

Disclaimer: This post involves time zones that may not coincide with your own.

Week one has passed in China, and I'm only here til next Friday, so it feels more like a casual fling than a committed relationship. I can't really get settled, always thinking about the next cuntry to enter around the corner. Oops. I mean country. See what I did there? That's rather coarse of me.

Can't say I love the air here. Or the water. Or the traffic. Or most of the food (I prefer my Chinese in moderation). Or the lack of reliable places to shop, lack of friends (and the remote location of the ones who are here), cold apartment and slow internet. That's about enough to get my point across.

However, there is one thing that does make being in China worth the while...brace yourself...the work. Isn't that just wrong?

To illustrate, let me explain my average day in Japan and China respectively. If you get bored, go check out...this song. Then find and marry SebastiAn. Because he's French and quite simply too amazing for you not to want him.

The Average Day At Work in Osaka

- Wake at 7am, out the door by 7.30
- Work from 8.45 (after morning aerobics/meeting)
- Reply to emails from curious US customers
- Meeting regarding current status of developing projects (usually kills an hour)
Lunch (12-1pm) Eat from local convenience store, play Halo 3 with coworkers, win comfortably
- Ask Chinese staff about production issues, schedules
- Chat with design team about work they're doing for US projects
- Kill an hour on facebook or blogspot
- Hurriedly write emails I forgot in the morning
- Decide to leave making invoices til tomorrow
- Leave work at 7pm

Average Day at Work in China

- Wake at 7am, out the door by 7.30
- Coffee at McDs, work (at factory) at 8am
- Look at emails, realise I don't have time to reply, call senders to explain
- Drive to outsourcing factory
- Complain to outsourcers about current status of products, solve production problems, request new changes, argue over deadlines and costs
Lunch (whenever)
During lunch eat at greasy Chinese restaurant or get takeaway KFC if we can't stop
- Drive to molding factory
- Discuss changes to molds, solve about 3 problems with design of new molds, receive coffee
- Turn down offer to go to dinner
- Return to HQ factory, check production line, scare Chinese staff, solve production hiccups
- Check emails, decide to receive replies til I get home
- Leave work any time between 7pm and 10pm
- Follow-up emails at home leisurely until around 2am

What's the difference? Well, its not obvious on cyber-paper. But I never left the office on the day in Japan. And I ran out of stuff to do. Getting paid to browse facebook might sound nice, but it gets old.
In China its about going everywhere, work in hand, and dealing with the nitty gritty of making stuff people might someday hopefully buy. Its finding solutions to problems that would decide if we get paid or end up losing money on late shipments. Its the hands on the mutha-funking big rig wheel. Ha - ironically I saw one of those rolled on its side on a highway yesterday. Hopefully I drive better than that. Knock on fake Chinese wood.

I don't like this country. But I do love the work here.

I realise this post looks a little dull without a picture, so allow me to include some shots of the place we ate at on Friday. It's the only Hu Nan restaurant I'm willing to eat at - not because I'm prejudiced, But because Hu Nan-ese tend to like their food really fucking hot. I mean, god damn. Think about taking a chicken, feeding it chilli for a year, then serving it in a bath of peppers. I'm serious. Well, about the peppers.
This place is more mild, and I love the decor. Especially the Mao bust.

Hotch potch

Disclaimer: This post contains content that may offend some vegans, or hygiene freaks.

Last night we hit one of my favourite "real Chinese" restaurants. Real Chinese refers to the fact that its a place that Average Chens and Wongs (as opposed to Joes) eat, for super low prices.

The menu? Spicy whole deep fried shrimp and chicken broth with rice (with bonus chicken bones). Altogether pretty good winter food - and it is indeed winter over here.
Having trouble heating our oversized apartment, and until last night we had no hot water for showers. You're never as cold as you are in somewhere under-prepared for it. Japan, on the other hand, turns their train carriages into furnaces and struts out the winter fashion. I don't appreciate the effect on the environment, but it is toasty warm. Sometimes too so - if you're wearing a coat for outside you're constantly playing the strip game when you're walking anywhere in town.

The highlight of last night though, was when we'd just finished eating our (rather indistinguishable) chicken, picking out the bones and laying them on an empty plate (unlike the Chinese who tend to utilise the tablecloth), when a rat the size of a small dog thunders out of the kitchen, dodges the collection of waiters and darts around a corner. First thoughts? Um, what did we just eat? Was that a neck or a tail?
As Jeff said, I'm not coming back tomorrow. Chances are that rat's days are numbered and someone's going to get lucky. Ratatouille a la real.

Koosh!

I'm in China at the moment, on a brief mission to restore peace and order to our production and development. So far it's not going too well. China companies seem to have this disease that compels them to lie about the status of anything. More than anywhere in the world, "I'll believe it when I see it" is a code you have to live by.

After being in China for 6 months last year, I was itching to get some photos from inside the factories, showing exactly what it's like where all the products you know and love are made. You wanna know where that Happy Meal toy has been? I suggest you wash it before little Johnny puts it in his mouth.
Anyway, out of respect for the workers and the factory (and so as not to look like a spy) I refrained. I couldn't find adequate reason to ask permission; saying "I want to show it to the world" was more likely to get everyone a bit antsy.

There is one machine however that I finally plucked up the courage to ask about. Everyone at our supplier knows I'm in love with a particular device that happens to make Koosh balls from time to time, as I've often abandoned what I was checking out when we tour the workshops to stand mesmerised by it. Why do I want to film it? "Because it's just plain awesome." I didn't need to have a reason for this one.

The video doesn't do it justice - spaghetti ropes of elastic twisting around like some rainbow-coloured spinning wheel, it looks to me like it's doing gymnastics. Then a fastening of seatbelts, a flick of the switch, and the spaghetti explodes. Vanishes into thin air, leaving in its place a fun and safe projectile toy. I haven't tried to analyse it too hard, but I still can't figure out exactly what gets cut when it "explodes", nor why that makes it a Koosh ball shape. And I don't care. Frankly its magic to me.

Thanks Hasbro - I hate your attitude towards Scrabulous, but you make some neat toys.

Enjoy.

For those of you who were wondering...

...that's me.

Oh, and this is my 50th post on my blog. It only took me 18 months...

Finally!

On my third attempt, I finally managed to get this on camera.
It occurs every morning at my company, like many traditionalist companies across Japan.

I'm kinda happy the quality is bad and I don't really infringe on anyone's privacy with it, because after all, I did record it candidly. There's no way they'd agree to let me to if they had known.

Anyway, without further ado I present to you, straight outta the wops in South Osaka, the much awaited (well, by me), Radio-Taisou (aerobics) morning routine!



Check out that soundtrack. That's from dubya dubya two, that is. Nearly 70 years and they still haven't updated that song. Though there are 2 or 3 "movements" to it (the second one is actually kinda scary). Number 1 (featured) is the most famous. There isn't a kid in Japan who doesn't know (and probably loathe) this song.

Can you imagine them trying to get kids to do this in any English speaking country? And yet even 40 year old somewhat-masculine guys here don't complain. Nor do they have any sense of rhythm, as you can see.
FYI, I'm the one who comes down and faces forwards quite far from the camera. You can't see me after everyone closer by arrives.

After the taisou is the morning meeting, which I cut out for boredom/privacy. Move along, nothing to see here.

Twisted

Disclaimer: This post is not suitable for people who thought Bambi would have been a better movie if the mother hadn't been killed.

I finally watched Saw the other night. It was a movie I had been avoiding due to a misinterpretation of what the film was. I thought it was just a movie about two guys in a room who have to mutilate themselves or face certain death. Well, that's what it is about, but I thought that's all it was. I thought the movie never really left the room. Little did I know that it had a back story and character development like any good thriller or murder mystery.
It's not really that gory – they do a good job of insinuating gore without actually showing it. Only one real "ewww" scene, involving feet and hacksaws.
And, like everyone who has seen it had been telling me, it is indeed quite clever. Not least of all because it packs a nice set of twists up its sleeve.

The sequels, which I subsequently downloaded and watched shortly after, naturally take a step up in gore (pleasing the fans that surely had crowed for it), but they still manage to crank out some nice unexpected endings. If anything I'd say that what happens in Saw 2 and 3 is impressive, although rather...convenient. Everything seems to run according to Jigsaw's(the villan) master plan, which is fair enough – but it seems like he had a lot riding on some events that someone as clever as he supposedly is wouldn't assume to be 100% certain. Then again, maybe he has a back-up plan we never get to see.

Anyway, this got me thinking about what I thought my favourite 10 "movies with twist endings" are. I may well have missed a few, but they would probably be (order irrelevant):

1. Saw (see above)
2. Cypher (damn!)
3. The Sixth Sense
4. Fight Club
5. Memento
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Matchstick Men
8. Infernal Affairs
9. Arlington Road
10. Vanilla Sky

NB: If Donnie Darko can be said to have a twist ending, then that should make the list way ahead of many. Also, The Usual Suspects and Existenz are worthy also-rans, as is Inside Man.

The worst twist movies I know include:
- Gothika
- Secret Window (why, Johnny? why?)
- Identity
- The Prestige (well, its a good movie...but Science is angry. Plus it was very predictable for such an unrealistic twist)

Any thoughts?

You've got white on you

Home sweet home (Katsuni "Mansion")
Disclaimer: This post is not only essentially a diary entry and thus potentially not entertaining, but it talks about the weather.

It snowed like the coming of the four horsemen in Osaka today. Woke up to find careening out of the sky like the unfortunate blue whale in Hitchhiker's Guide. This may not be news for some, but for me it was being woken up by a puppy or my first bike. Every time I've been anywhere near snow, it’s been somewhere I have gone to. I.e. I've been to snow, but snow has never really come to me. But in this case we had sheets of it piling itself outside my front door. And these weren't mere snowflakes. They were frozen precipitous guerrilla warfare. Assault teams of snow. Snow that should have kung fu sound effects dubbed over when it collided with the ground and innocent bystanders.It didn't let up all day – must be at least 12 hours of snow so far, as I write this from a train heading to Mie. It wasn't snowing when I rolled in at 4am, after my average Friday night. Seems I've turned into a bit of a Pure whore. For those of you playing the home game, Pure is an all-you-can-drink hip-hop club in central Osaka (Namba, near Dotonbori). It opened sometime in 2005, and it's probably the most reliable club in the South in terms of pulling a crowd on Friday and Saturday nights. Yes, they play hip-hop. No, it's not a perfect world. But-all-you-can-drink means as long as you bring a handful of other mates and it's not entirely packed out (Saturday tends to be a bit too like sardines for me), you can have yourself a fun ol' night. Did I mention it's all-you-can-drink? Well, for 30-35 bucks (dependent on your gender), so you have to make it worth it. My failsafe-so-far drinking method in order to maximize my money's worth works in a shot-chaser double punch, in fairly rapid succession. It's necessary to wipe away the sadness that you’re not in a club that has the potential to drop a Pendulum or Digitalism track.

An average night at Pure:
- Beer (Corona or Kirin)
- Shot of tequila
- Beer
- Tequila
- Sex on the beach or Red Bull + Vodka
- Tequila
- LA Water* or RB+V
- Sambuca
- LA Water
- Sex on the beach (or Coke, if I've had enough)
Total retail value: $50.00
(You save lots!)

There's no way I could fit 10 cocktails in – the sweetness and volume of liquid would make me feel ill. Usually 4 shots of anything stronger than Kristov would have me conversing fervently with the toilet seat (Tequila is easy to shoot, but it tends to be slow-release and screws me up a few hours later), but for some reason this works well. It might be the lemon. Certainly the only time I felt nauseous all last evening was after the Absolut Vanilla shot I had before we arrived. Something about the taste of vodka triggers something in my vomit gland. I don't tend to lose it, but it puts me in a bad way for a bit of the evening.

Anyway, the snow. All that white fun and noone to share it with! Most people my age find snow either boring or inconvenient. People carry umbrellas through town and stay in sheltered areas as though it was raining. Meanwhile, I put my headphones on, ran up on the roof of my apartment and danced while the sky painted my coat white. It originally wasn't cold enough to pile up, but the stubbornness of the snowfall (like lemmings off a cliff) was enough to put a good amount on the ground.
Then I made a friend.



I love summer, but there’s nothing like snow to make everything seem beautiful.

Suggested snowfall enhancing music:
- Coldplay, esp. Square One
- Royksopp, esp. In Space (jeez this reminds me of Lexx)
- Stars
- Mylo, esp. Valley of Dolls
- Underworld, esp. Glam Bucket or anything from The Oblivion Ball

More pics of childish excitement on Flickr

The time my mother had to remind her of her own birthday

You'll never meet a more awesome 49 year old angel. Nor one as sneaky.

Here's a story about my mother.

Too bad if you don't want to read it, because I'm not writing anything else. Go read something less indulging if you've got such a problem with mother-boy cheese. I think A Clockwork Orange, 1984 and the like are light on respect for mothers. I don't suggest Hamlet or anything by Freud - they tend to take it to the next level.

Anyway, this woman I know - quite well actually, as she happens to be my mother - is a rather respectable individual.
...Respectable? That's the kind of word to use to describe a donation, or hierarchical status. To make matters worse, "individual" is the kind of word used for garden variety members of society. I'm not off to such a good start. I don't think of my mother as big on hierarchy, nor is she at all anything as common as to come from a garden. All the varieties of my mother are far more...gourmet.
Indeed, gourmet. A tasty chick. Oh crap, did it again, let me rephrase. "If you were to eat my mother, you.."...you know what, lets just drop the food analogies.

One interesting fact about this woman is for all that I think she's worth (see: Mastercard ads), she's actually probably not "worth" much at all. Ah ah ah - what I mean is, I don't think I've ever really seen her indulge time and money on something just for herself. Every dollar or afternoon she spends tends to be used to help someone, especially her spoilt-rotten kids. Well, besides her book collection. But then again, she's a librarian, so we'll give her that under "work resources". In order for me to claim the same, I'd have to be a film directing, software developing, bar-tending musician. Who owned a clothing outlet.
Oh yes, she's kind. But sure, lots of people are kind. Mother Teresa was kind. Lassie was kind. But my mum's no bitch. 3 reasons my mother is better than Lassie:
- My mother isn't arrogant enough to have multiple films made about herself (I can't even get her to star in vacation videos)
- My mother would never stand outside and yap until you paid attention to her
- Her glossy long curls don't have fleas

Plus, have you ever slept in the same bed as a dog before? My mum is way better to sleep with. Ahhhhh Where's the delete key on this Japanese keyboard?

My mother would also be my favoured choice to be stranded on a desert island with, because I have a feeling that no matter how deserted it was, she'd still cook for 6 people and find SOME way to make cookies. I wouldn't even have to be on the island - she'd probably mail them to me.

So when February 7 rolls around, I always try and take some time of my busy "me-schedule" to give her some love and respect(able individuality) she deserves. Doesn't matter if I'm not in the country - a mail and a chat would do her just fine. But what did I have to do? I had to go and get busy and forget what day it was. I'd only been staring at the calendar all day, trying to figure out how to expedite our production lead-time. There it was, the 7 staring at me like a lucky roll on a craps table. Lucky seven. Lucky me, to have such a great mum. But all I could see was weeks in advance: 18s and 25s and Marchs (well, just the one).
Don't blame me too much. Like my mum, the 7 wasn't yapping. It was smiling secretly, bemused and slightly proud of my distinguished concentration-lines on my forehead. It was probably thinking that I shouldn't have shaved my beard the other day, because it thinks a bit of stubble suits me.
What did my mother do after the 7 reminded her there was only a few hours left for her son to call her on her birthday, and that she might want to do something about it? Oh not much - just sidled up on MSN and popped me a subtle message: "February 7 is a great day, isn't it". Ho-shit.
Since WHEN is it already Feb 7? Was I in a coma? I remember it being Feb 1, and thinking "righto, a week to get your act together boyo". But time did a number on me (namely 7), and suddenly I was staring down the dual barrels of guilt and shame. "After all your mother's done for you...", "She never asks for much..." "Just a simple phone call - it doesn't cost the world, does it?" went the invisible parental figure in my head. Not my mother - no way would she ever say something like that. I think I probably created an alter-ego mum in my mind years ago, that says all the annoying mum things she never would - otherwise I'd have turned out a complete self-infatuated prick who truly believed I was the greatest thing in the world. My mum is sneaky like that - she'd never say whinging things like that, so all the guilt I build on myself can't be blamed on her. Tricky little thing, isn't she.

Anyway, for all the feelings of self-worthlessness and stupidity, and with all the humble pie choking my throat, was I worried? Depressed, that I might have let her down? Apprehensive about what she might think?

....
nah. My mum's easy to deal with. Just tell her you love her and there's no way she'd hold anything against you.

Happy Birthday Mum.

Waste not want not

What a waste.