linterry's blogger

it's the last day of waiting before i can rejoin my girlfirend in okinawa. despite this, i feel really blah. i think the only source of excitement for me right now is waiting for that "new mail" icon to popup. i am so deprived of face-to-face communication. another 24 hours. i can make it...

...with charlie and sharon tonight. we talked about a lot of interesting things, things that have been on my mind recently.

the suffering that taiwanese kids goes through school

...because they are forced by many invisible forces to study and memorize things all day long, and have no time to play or think freely. does this really benefit them intellectually and allow them to achieve greater things in the future? or does it just exclusively benefit the pockets of the bushibans, aka cram schools, who are probably laughing while driving their benzes as they steal money from the pockets of desperate parents?

the corruption of the taiwanese media (something i knew nothing about).

the media's goal should be to provide the public with an unbiased, informed, neutral, report about the world. when every single news channel in taiwan is funded by a political party, each with their own greedy little agenda, there isn't much chance of the ideal being realized, is there? simply terrible. also, the quality of the taiwanese media has gone down to newer lows every year. their philosphy, judging by the sheer amount of worthless news on tv, is simply "to produce the most shocking and attention-getting news no matter how dirty or irrelevant"... which is why you hear lovely stories about how an elementary school kid committed suicide over school pressures. next thing we know, some guy is going to find a story about how a kindergarten kid committed suicide, because thanks to some clever scheme by the bushiban head honchos, parents are now going feel compelled to send their kids to bushibans when haven't even learnt how to spell or tie their own shoelaces.

the reluctance of chinese parents to give their daughters sexual freedom

this one was a good topic, because i received negative energies that allowed me to refine my point of view. the core idea is indeed correct, more sexual freedom would allow young people to be happier as a whole. however, an even bigger problem is that chinese parents have a tendency to not respect the opinions of their children. they feel that having gone through so much more, they can "drive" their kids to a successful future while avoiding all the pitfalls. this is a fallacy, because it ignores one critical opinion: humans are not sheep or cattle... they must think independently in order to fulfill the role of a truly successful person. the cliche of "living someone else's life" will only set someone up for mental breakdown. therefore, parents must learn when to back off on certain issues, especially if the child feels very strongly about doing something they want. i can see the counter-argument coming... "what if your all your kid wants to do is take drugs".... well if that's the environment your kid has grown up in, he's fucked no matter what you do... if a parents continues to forcefully project his or her own ideal onto the kid, then they must be deemed as selfish and only intersted in fulfilling their own agenda, with a disturbing lack of empathy for the child's feelings. hence, good communication, a willingnes from the wiser one to back off and allow children to make their own mistakes would create better people and a more harmonious world.

inability for technology to improve life

while we may think technology has made our life better and has brought us more conveniences, it has also brought along many complications that have actually made our life more complicated and stressful. if we compare our lifestyles today to the way we lived thousands of years ago, people are actually worse off as a whole. never mind the harm we inflict on mother earth's resources, but the fact that people are getting depressed and committing suicide at an increasing rate is proof that what we need is not more technology, but more of a return to our roots... to harmony and nature. it now makes 3 people... charlie, allen, and myself, who all share the exact same point of view on the same topic.

i just tried out this cheesy website called crush calculator.

here's what it said about my relatinonship with my girlfriend:

you may believe that you love her, but in reality what you want most from her is just sex. when she's not around, you spend an inordinate amount of time thnking of ways to be with her. you don't respect her mind as much as you respect her body, and this may turn out to be a problem. when you are with her, there's more of a sexual connction than a mental one. you won't however find it difficult to spend a lot of time with her, as long as you keep visiting different places to keep things interesting.



hrm, that's some pretty accurate shit. i didn't think they'd even have info for a name like "shinobu"...

it seems that i've been writing a lot in my diary these days, and the last 2 entries are both sexual in nature. i think i can only attribute this to my girlfriend's sudden absence, depriving me of my best source of healthy communication and my best (and only) source of healthy sex.

now all that sexual energy is bottled up inside me, and i've got nowhere to release it... except... well by watching porn. i'm still within the "you're fine and don't need to see a doctor" amounts... but i think i'm getting dangerously close to that limit.

also, i have made up my mind to be brutally honest with myself when writing this diary. i've learned from my old pal andy shum, that the best bloggers are the ones that don't put up facades and just write "what comes to mind". so that's what i'm doing. i think andy is totally cool that he can write to the world how shitty his life is... even though he knows that all his good friends are reading it... i think that takes guts. me, on the other hand, i have my girlfriend as "ego currency". if someone reads my blog, comes up to me and says i'm totally fucked up, and need to see a doctor, it won't bother me, because i have my girlfriend and a good sex life. really, there's nothing anyone can say that would make me feel like a loser now, because i have a girlfriend and a good sex life. yes i like to repeat that, it makes me feel good about myself... lol.

though.. if my girlfriend said i was a loser... that would really hurt.

you know how the saying goes.. someone in this world dies every second.. well, if every guy on average masturbates once every 3 days (and that's a conservative guess), and every girl on average of age masturbates once a week... there must be a LOT of masturbations going on in the world at any given second. masturbation from my point of view is sort of a waste. all that sexual energy consumed in a depressingly solitary activity, when it could be better used as a transaction of love.

wouldn't it be fantastic if there was some omnipotent like service that could "matchmake" people who are about to masturbate? think about it. you're about to fire up your favorite porn clip, and some girl 500km away is getting pretty damn horny being all alone in her bed.. and this service knows that both people would be sexually compatible. sure, the girl would have apprehensions, but maybe the service could "preview" the guy a bit to lower her resistance. then, some magical teleportation device would whisk both of them into a nice love hotel style suite and offer a complimentary choice of either condoms or an instant effect 1-time BCP. then, after some nice foreplay, the fun starts...

it's a little cheesy i know.. and proably there's some psychological barrier nested within our inner souls that would cause a lot of apprehensions, but just imagine... if people changed the way they thought about sex... and lost their apprehensions, the world would be such a better place, wouldn't it? if 40 years in the future, if such technology existed, i would create such a thing as a non-profit service for the world. just knowing that so many people are satsifying their primal sexual urges instead of wasting it on masturbation would give me so much pleasure... of course i'd install a few hidden cameras... but, it's all part of the fun. to solve the problem of global sexual repression... it's even better than saving the whales.

i just came up with a brilliant example of society's twisted thinking, and it comes from nowhere else but chinese thinking...the parental "i won't let my daughter sleep with you or have sex with you until i think you are good enough to marry her"

for christ sakes, stop the stuck-up preaching, and go have sex yourself, if you still remember how.

young people need to fuck as much as they need exercise or a good amount of vitamin c. i strongly believe that sex is the chicken soup for the teenage soul. it's hard enough that two people can fall in love and be willing to get down in bed, that we need to have this fucked up way of thinking getting in the way of such a beautiful process. i'm not advocating women to be sluts, but with all the birth control and STD protection cheaply available on the market today, people should be fucking and loving as much as possible before they die. i honestly feel more sorry for people who go their entire lives without having sex than people who were never able to afford a big house or drive a ridiculously expensive car. i never envy of people who have those things. i am however, prone to envying people who have amazing sex lives. but appaerently, under the "wise, all-knowing, protecting your future" chinese thinking, nobody gives a SHIT about having a good sex life. it's just a way to get children and blah blah blah blah... god, stop the stuck-up preaching. so what if your daughter gets banged up by the wrong guy. at least she was able to experience the pleasure of being banged up, and maybe next time she'll know better herself not to get involved with pimps, and you won't have to watch over her like a hawk.

living with my girlfriend has brought me IMMEASURABLE happiness.. has taken me from a "Waiting to die" stance to a "hey, life's pretty good"... that is worth how much? can you measure that? immeasurable. it's fucking incomparable. and to think, a lof people in previous generation think this is BAD. thank god my girlfriend's parents are not chinese. i really do thank god for that. because if they were, my life would still be pretty shitty. thank god... thank god...

and what about my future? shit, now that I no longer have the burden of loneliness... or the embarassment of being a 20+ year old virgin, i can now focus even more on these things. yes, believe it or not, living with my girlfriend has even helped me financially... because i can concentate so much better on my job when i am sexually and emotionally satisfied. how the hell can i sit in front of my computer for 5 hours straight if my body is constantly bothering me with such primal urges? it's like trying to work when you need to pee. low efficiency. i am also spared of all the agonizing periphery of not living together... waiting for phone calls, gathering the courage to call someone up for no reason... having to go through the pain of saying goodbye everyday... honestly i can't think of a SINGLE negative thing that has come out of living together. i feel free, so free, from all these bonds have kept bringing me down when i was still in canada. sex makes me a better person, period

and to everybody out there whose girlfriend's parents have the traditional chinese thinking... all my sympathies go out to you. i have gone through the same thing with my ex. part of the reason why we broke up is because her stuck-up mother kept drilling those "wise, all-knowing" principles into her head. but you know, i really have to thank my friend wei for the suggestion that i should break up with her... if it wasn't for him, i would not be in the much more favorable situation that i am in today. also, i must thank my own parents, who have never interfered with my love life (which was so pathetic to begin with), and let nature carry its natural course. or, to quote my neighbour Anton, "a man's gotta eat, so let him eat".

i just realized that allen wrote something very beautiful in one of his e-mails in response to many anti-technology entry a few weeks ago:

"the most precious things we have are your emotions, the ability to feel, to love and to live in harmonically with other living creatures. The things we invented have limited our senses in some way.."

couldnt' agree more.

today i attended my grandma's 84th birthday. it was fun, i guess, but there were some things discussed at the dinner table that got me sort of riled up. my little uncle (who's a doctor) mentioned his colleague was going through serious depression. it was a pretty hot topic, garnering the attention of everyone at the table (most topics usually generate only 20%-30% of crowd interest)... but what amazed me were the shaking heads.. the "he should do this... he should do that... he's not thinking positively enough"... they were shaking heads like there's something wrong with this guy, like he should be able to be happy and cheerful under his circumstances but for some reason lacks the ability to do so.

depression is never the fault of the person. it's always the fault of his surrounding environment. a strong statement yes, but i'll back it up. imagine i am god, and can control everything in this world. do you really think there is a person out there that i cannot depress? all i have to do is take away pleasure by pleasure (small things really... make you live alone, make your wife have a job where she's always running around, give you a job that pays well but gives you mountains of pressures and worries, etc.)... no matter who the victim is, i will always reach a point where they will simply collapse and say "i feel depressed".. if i continue on, i will eventually reach another point... the "i want to die" point.

the only difference between people is where that point lies. some people collapse easily, some people harder. but if we don't accuse people for having a weak stomach, or having a birth defect, why should we accuse them of having a low breaking point? do you even know what YOUR breaking point is? i would say most people don't, since people still equate a good life with good money, which is one of the biggest fallacies of the modern capitalist world. not being depressed is a result of many small but essential things in your environment that keep you mentally healthy from day to day. living in the right place, having many easy paths to healthy communcation with loved ones, having a job that constantly rewards your ego and not just your pocket... but people just don't realize it. unlike money, they're intangible, and uncountable, which is why little effort is put towards the improvment of such things. sometimes they're even discouraged. people who practice yoga and mediation are labeled as new-age weirdos. pretentious facade-ridden MBA grads however, are widely praised for their ambitions and six figure salaries.

whenever i hear a story such as that depressed doctor, all i feel is sympathy, and helplessness... because i know this guy is now trapped in an environment that cannot sustain his mental health, and due to inertial forces of being in such a state, he will probably be in this environment for many more years to come. he'll take prozac, zoloft... the modern "cure" of depression, but do you really think that's going to help him in the long run? why do we even have drugs like prozac? i'll tell you why... because our capitalist money-oriented world is so fucked up that people no longer understand the essentials of a mentally healthy life... financially struggling people would probably skip the understanding and just directly say "a doctor? depressed? what the hell does he have to be depressed about? he's got so much money!"... not knowing that having money is just one dimension out of MANY of a person's mental health.

later on, my aunt grace came out and said in a serious, pleading, tone "i think i'm depressed too...i can't even sleep at night...too many work pressures...", to which my uncle phillip tells her "you should think more positively", to which my aunt grace replies in an exasperated tone: "think positively? what's there to think positively about?" this was a funny moment for me, because i remember several years back, when i had the "can't find a girlfriend blues", aunt grace herself would just tell me to "think positively otherwise life becomes depressing"... hahahah... now do you see the value of such advice? that's right... NIL... you can't tell people to "cheer up" or "think more postiively"... fuck, people ALWAYS try these things first before entering a depressed state... depression, by nature, has no clear solution, that's why people ARE depressed... if there was some clear cut solution, depression would never exist at all. that's why, when anyone i know is depressed... i... dont' do anything... because there's nothing i can do.. except for maybe take them out for coffee... listen to their troubles, and just sympathize. i never offer pro-active advice, sorry, as good as it sounds, it never has any use.

and then the discussion progressed to how an exceeding number of taiwanese people are now committing suicide with increasing frequency. reasons? work pressures. school pressures. money problems. girlfriend/boyfriend problems. and i raise the question... "was it like this when you were young?"... they say absolutely not. only giving proof that society over time, has managed to improve so many things, technology, productivity, convenience... but somehow has done nothing for society's mental health, in fact... it has allowed overall mental health to degrade over time. if you ask me, that's not such a good deal.

the world just doesnt' make sense anymore. if you look at the world with a far enough point of view, it's all a fucked up freak show. through all our expended energies, people should be getting happier and happier on average... but fuck, it's going the OTHER way around... more and more people are committing suicide, downing prozac... more and more young people are lost in life, clueless as what they should be doing on this planet other than fucking and eating and sleeping. it's such a pitiful waste really... we were much better off as neandrathals.

if i sound angry, that's because i am... at the world, at society, at greedy people who make everyone work harder and who are the only ones who profit directly from it. it sounds like I would be an advocate of communism, but you look at countries like china, vietnam, and north korea, and you don't really get a picture of people singing and dancing in fields of flowers, do you... maybe... in a sick and twisted way, mother nature is trying to control our population by introducing such things as AIDS and depresssion->suicidal tendencies... it may very well be that we have "cheated" the game for too long and have grown too many in number for this feeble planet to support.

thus ends my passionate rant.

during tutoring today, Annie cried... i never saw her cry before. i hate seeing people cry for the 1st time, it's one part shocking, one part uneasiness and five parts "what the hell should i do now". i don't think it was my fault. i was already teaching her 15 minutes overtime, and i told her we had to stop here, but she said "no no, let's read one more paragraph together...", but her mom came in and said "no annie, uncle terry has to leave now, you can't force him to stay with you"... at which point... her face suddenly wrinkled up, and i thought.. hey... maybe she's just playing around... but then i looked again at her face, and damn, that's one good impression of someone crying. it wasn't until i saw the tears flowing down her face that i realized that things just got real awkward. she kept hugging her mom and crying all the way to my hasted departure.

the thing is, annie doesn't even like reading during our lessons... she'd much rather just sit down and talk about anything... ask me what my favorite color is, or my favorite hobby... conversely, i enjoy doing the same, except i like to talk about generalistions that i see in life. that's what me do mostly during our lessons... just free-flowing talk (it's amazing that i get paid to do this). so, i'm going to get real cocky and say that the reason why she cried today is because she was having so much fun today talking to me, she didn't want me to leave. hell, i was having so much fun, i didnt' even care that i was 15 minutes overtime.

i'm going to get even cockier, and say that annie probably likes me a lot. not in a sexual way of course(she's only 10), but in ... well... the way kids like people. i'm always dead honest with her, because i hate taking the role of a superior "you gotta respect my authority" grown-up. i act silly, admit to embarassing things like not being able to properly peel fruit (so now, when we have fruit a 10-year old peels it for me)... i also admit to being weak and inferior in certain things... and i guess that's why she likes me. vulnerability sells even to kids, apparently. today, i told her my birthday was on august 25th, and she immediately ran off and opened up a brand new 2004 calendar just so she could write it down. that was good for my ego.

the thing is, i really like annie too. i generally hate kids, because they can be real annoying brats at times, but annie is different. she's so smart for her age... not in the "mentally trained" sense, but in the natural, intellectual agility sense... the way she talks, expresses herself, are all characteristic of an extremely intelligent person. it's like i'm talkign to an adult in a child's body. of course, she's good looking too... satisfying certain personal prerequisites for liking a person. no, i'm not a pedophile, but i gotta say i'm curious as to what she'll be like when she's 18.

i'm writing an embarassingly large number of entries recently, mostly due to the fact that my girlfriend is absent and there is no one to talk to other than my diary. i'm taknig advantage of my girlfriend's absence to discuss a topic that should be discussed more often... the feeling of loneliness. when she's beside me, i'm always spared the burden of loneliness ...... but now that she's gone, the feeling is creeping back down to my bones.

the funny thing is, you mention the word loneliness, and usually you get a distorted response from most people. if someone says they're feeling blue, and you ask... "are you lonely?" most people would laugh nervously and say "no, i'm not lonely, i'm just...[insert irrelevant ego-protecting excuse here]" the fact is, it's just embarassing to admit that you're lonely. probably because it either implies you have no life, or have no friends.

not to sound too new age (and be labeled a pussy by saddam&satan), but we must accept loneliness as a natural, human, response to a lack of communication. as much as movies and hollywood media would like to differ, both men and women need a healthy amount of good, fulfilling communciation from day to day. the need is probably not as important as eating food or having appropriate shelter, but believe it or not, it probably ranks higher than having sex in terms of maintaining mental health.

why? i've puzzled over that for a long time. my current informed and well thought-out theory is this. when we communicate, we fixate our status and position relative to others in the world. like einstein said, everything is relative in this world. if i asked you, "are you smart?", how can you answer that question if you don't communicate with people who are stupider (or smarter) than you are? can you really say that you're smart at all without the implied context of comparing yourself to other people? it's just like einstein's example, where you need to look out the window of a moving train to know that you're moving. without an appropraite frame of reference... other people... you wouldn't even be able to define yourself.

since communciation is our link to the outside world, it is therefore the medium by which we define ourselves. you know who you are only through the eyes of your friends, family, and even strangers. and knowing yourself seems to be a key ingredient in playing out mother nature's plan (along with eating, sleeping, and having sex). it's also extremely satisyfing (which would explain the fun in those personality tests or horoscopes)

of course, very little communication is directly related to self-definition. sometimes the best conversations are banal and without direction. stupid things like saying how much your fart stinks, or singing dumb songs to elicit a laugh can still constitute mentally satisfying communication. the only way i can explain the discrepancy between actual communication and its intended purpose is to simply compare it to sex. the purpose of sex is to have babies and pass on your genes to your offspring, but god knows how many people in this world are fucking around with more than adquate birth control. apparently, it is the action itself which grants pleasure, not the realization of its intended goal.

this means that means that if you're like me now and go the whole day just watching divx movies/porn, playing playsation, surfin the net, eating fast food, and peeing and pooing as needed, then something in your mental domain will be left unsatisfied. nowadays, people are getting lazier and falling back on more convenient but less fufilling ways of communication such as online chatting and telephone. to me however, that's just like reading Playboy or watching a porn video to satisfy your seuxal needs. sure, it might work, from time to time, but eventually you'll get tired of it and want the real thing. in the world of communication, the equivalent of real sex can be as simple as sitting down over a nice cup of coffee with a dearest friend or lover, and just talking about whatever comes to mind. as long as it flows naturally and comes deep from the heart, the mind will be satisfied.



also, with online chatting, you're never really sure whether you have the other side's attention due to the inherent poor feedback... which often results in the disruptino of the very essence of communication. with phone calls, calling someone up with no initial purpose doesn't seem to generate enough mental stimulus to get both parties really involved in a conversation... (it can happen though, should the desire by both parties be strong enough).... in the end really, nothing can a true substitute for real, face to face contact.

i think it's best explained if you think about that feeling when somebody looks at you... when they're really paying attention to you... waiting for you to speak, or speaking to you, or watching you do something. certain animalistic energies arises from within... satisfaction? fear? nervousness? it doesn't matter... what matters is that it feels animalistic in nature... or how about the fact that when you're feeilng miserable...howcome it always feels better to be miserable in the presence of others?

communcation also brings so much undefinable energy into our minds... it allows us to become creative and active.... a sure-fire way to end up in a boring, routine life is to live alone. living alone, you have no exterior mental energies coming in, and in such an environment, your mind is naturally inclined to atrophy... ie doing nothing.

well, one day has gone by, and i feel okay. did some work, played some nba live. ate yoshinoya and beef noodles. i still miss her though. not so much after midnight, but more during the early evening. it's weird, after midnight i can zone out and pretty much focus on any kind of electronic entertainment.

also, i switched back to my old logitech keyboard. the new acer one, after prolonged use, turned out to be a POS. keys just don't feel right. i miss my old ibm.

taking 1 month's worth of garbage down 5 stories is no fun, particuarily when you have to make 2 trips. that's 20 stories of up and down climbing. why doesn't our building have a garbage chute. it's ridiculous how much energy is wasted by manually transporting garbage bags down when gravity could do the job for you. when multiplied by millions of people taking down their garbage every day, that's a lot of kilo joules.

the trial begins

my girlfriend just left for okinawa. now i'm home alone for 4 days straight. should be no big deal right? right...
gotta start downloading lots of porn. finish some games. get some work done. or watch more porn

i gave up a bought a new Acer Accufeel keyboard. it's way clickier than that old mushy POS, but still, nowhere near the quality feel of IBM keyboards. it cost a measly 400NT... i think if the store let me try it properly, i probably wouldn't have bought it....but ahh whatever.

my acne...

seems to be coming back after only 2 months of stopping accutane. not a good sign. this differin better be able to stop it cold this time. i do not want to go through disfigurement again.

i wish all the assholes in the world would stop confusing acne sufferers by spouting all these unfounded rumors about the causes of acne (just do any search on acne in google and you'll see what i mean). are they so short on money that the must profit off other people's disfigurement?? the only thing people should tell those in need for help is: "see a good dermatologist", not sell you all this bullcrap that doesn't work.

those old ibm keyboards

you know, the heavy ones that are super noisy and make that clickety-clack sounds. i love 'em to death. i left my old one back in toronto. i can't stand typing on these cost-cut mushy keyboards. it feels so cheap. the sad thing is, in the cost-cutting profit-oriented who-gives-a-shit-about-true-quailty world, there's no room for good keyboards with a quality feel. but there's lots of room for gimmicky, wireless, 200-key mushy pieces of shit.

people just have no idea what they're buying anymore.

i really hope that my dad comes back to taiwan soon and brings me the old one.

listened to some old music
finally figured out robert miles children

Dbmaj, Bbmin, Fmin x 2

seems to be a VI,IV,I progression in Fmin. interesting

final fantasy tactics ost

i think this game soundtrack is overall the best out of all the music i have ever heard from video games. maybe not the most memorable, but certainly more orchestrally sound and complex. sometimes when i'm really bored, i start randomly clicking at songs in my massively messy song collection until i come up with something intellectually satisfying. more often than not i end up with the fft soundtrack....

some of the better songs:
commander in training
trisection
unavoidable battle
desert land
decisive battle
night attack (awesome beat)
remnants
run past through the plain
back fire
battle on the bridge

simply fantastic use of counterpoint (simultaneous melodies), and lots of other music theory devices i probably have no clue about. it's real amazing what they were able to do with such a castrated synthesizer.

today, at the wine section of the taipei 101 supermarket, I got a free corkscrew. i kept asking the young (and pretty!) lady there questions about wine, she helped me pick out a cheap bottle of cabernet sauvignon... and then when i asked whether they sold corkscrews, she said with a nice smile..."no, we don't sell them, but i'll give one to you for free... just don't tell anybody... we're only supposed to give them away when someone buys 6 bottles or more."

as cheesy as it sounds, that was a big ego inflater. i think i must have charmed her in some way. my girlfriend thinks so too. in real life, i'm a selfish immature ass, but in public, i think i've got what it takes to show strangers what they want to see... a well dressed, decent looking fellow who exudes a certain amount of confidence, but at same time has an appealing vulnerability through honestly admitting that they don't know everything and want to learn.

and whaddya know... the cabernet tastes great, just what i was looking for in a red wine. dry, thick and full bodied. yum.

i was right

taipei 101, the tallest building in the whole world, recently had their first "accident". read it here at http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2003/11/23/2003076924

... accident resulting from "clumsy handling". sounds like typical taiwanese behavior. taipei 101 president says ""We will definitely enhance our emergency management and meet the city government's demands," sure... as long it doesn't get in the way of their financial agenda.

i had a real nasty dream
i got on a bus, and went to tutor my english students back in toronto
when i got there, there was this white lady, who apparently works for thsoe big language schools
i think i got a little mad at the student's mother and told her "don't ever give your information out to those people!"
when i sat down to teach, this white lady would sit right beside me, seemingly watching me like a hawk.
the student asks me, "what does merry mean?"
i tell him, "oh, merry just means happy.." and i know that corporate bitch will butt in and say something, so i try to make my definition more bulletproof... but i can't come up with anything except for... "merry means happy"
and then that stupid white bitch does butt in and says "yes, merry means happy, but just a correction... it actually means blah blah blah blah blah"
she keeps watching me like a hawk and keeps correcting me...the thing is, these corrections are pointless. they don't explain the word any better, but they succeed at making me look incompetent
at one point i get so fed up i try to mock her childishly
and then the student's mother says to me, quietly "you don't like her very much, do you?"
i try to tell her "no SHIT. the only reason she's here is to get your business. the only way she can do that is if she proves that i am incompetent as a teacher, and that you need HER to fulfill your student's needs".
i was so pissed up...fuming.
and then somewhere around there.. the dream ends.

i think that dream is a projection of my deep hatred of large corporations. it's my strong belief that any multi-national publicly traded mega-corporation is nothing more than a money-making machine. it doesn't matter what they sell, or what they produce, these are by-product actions of their main objective. maybe at the start, they were actually in business for the sake of making a qualtiy product.. to really serve the public, bring happiness to people... maybe then, they actually had real ethics. but over time, it seems any successful company slowly loses out to the pressures of the free market, and ethics exists only in the required amount in order to defend oneself from potential legal action. real hand-made care is replaced with streamlined manufacturing that uses cheaper and cheaper parts. the result is that real quality is slowly in dying in favor of cheap illusions. effort that used to be put into making quality items is slowly being diverted towards the art of fooling people into buying the same item made using only half the cost.

just look at the world around you, there is so much evidence that quality is dying out. here in taiwan, we have so many "bushibans"... cram schools dedicated towards teaching english. given the apparent lackluster quality of their actual teaching, it's so obvious that the people who started these companies had absoultely no idea what quality education is all about... they saw a potential market (paranoid chinese parents), and did the "necessary steps" to establish a money-making machine, built from the ground up to take their money with maximum efficiency. do these people not feel guitly towards their own customers? they should. they rake in so much cash... if they really cared about teaching english, they would donate that money towards education so that pubilc schools could afford more foreign teachers. but they probably just use that money to buy themselves a bigger house, a fancier car. all-you-can-eat BBQ 5 times a week.

how about the cosmetics industry. boy, this one is just revolting. when an industry needs THAT much high-scale marketing in order to sell things, it can only mean that what they are trying to sell is vacuous garbage. how many various products are out there that promise to improve your skin? how many of them actually WORK? are they really improving the chemical formula in their product EVERY year, or are they simply releasing the same damn thing under a different, fancier package? i can see it now... in their secret marketing guides... "regarding packaging, always mention the fact that some vitamin or some herb with a fancy name is in the product. it doesn't matter if it's an inactive ingredient, it has been proven that such a label results in higher sales".

for christ's sakes...the only person who knows how to effectively improve your skin is a dermatologist, not a company that can profit only through your insecurity in your own apperance. hell, it's often said that the cosmetics industry survives by making women feel ugly about themselves... how can you possibly TRUST such a company to actually care about your beauty? it just goes beyond all rational thought. actually, now you probably cant' trust your dermatologist either. there have been reports that dermatologists have been doing the same tricks as the cosmetics industry. they'll prescribe you 10 products that don't work and then when they see the frustration in your eyes, maybe they'll have the heart to give you the 1 product that does. why? 11 visits pays more than 1. if the skin care industry really cared about your skin, acne would probably have been cured by now. it sounds like a big conspiracy theory, but the motivation is certainly there.

it all goes to show that in this world, nobody really cares about each other anymore. that's how it works in the free market. the company doesn't care about you. they only care enough so that you'll buy their products. and everybody seems FINE with that. well i'm not. i have evolved to the point where if i spot a product that looks too good on the outside, i will naturally assume that it is total shit on the inside. and more often than not, i am correct. to me, that's distrubing. i have to keep my "bullshit" radar on at all times...because i HATE being bullshitted... but it seems that unless someone forms a bullshit police, the disgusting need for humans to acquire excessive amounts of material possessions will continue to produce bullshit until that's all what's left in this world.

it seems that i have exceeded the 300MB quota for web traffic for this month.
i think i should stop posting those nba live clips to gamefaqs...

my girlfriend's currently watching a real-life movie about a dog who swam across a significant body of water numerous times so they he could be with his long lost girl-dog-friend.

people call it a sentimental love story, i think it's a testament to the power of hormones.

also, we had a little fight today over the fact that i never close the closet. i think it's kinda funny. our house is messy, full of undumped garbage, but an open closet is what she complains about. it's so illogical.

today's events

wake up at 3
work for 2 hours
eat all-you-can-eat hot pot with old pals
come back and watch nba
watch devil's advocate
watch discovery channel
watch outbreak
and now it's bedtime.

sometimes, the insigificant days are the best ones

the capitalist anthem

the world is so wrong, but i don't care.
people working too hard, for consumption than has gone beyond excessive
nobody knows anymore when enough is enough.
so many books, so many cd's, so much furniture, so much food, so many things.
it's all too much, but i don't care.
big companies, so big, we don't know who they are, and they don't know who we are
can't make shareholder expecations?
cut costs. get rid of the inefficient ones. they don't belong here
block windows so that people can't waste time enjoying the view
make them work harder. reduce overtime pay.
monitor internet usage so that people won't waste time looking at things they want to look at
make everyone do things the same way.
there, it's all better now.
the bottom line is achieved. profit.
employees are depressed? committing suicide? threatening to sue?
don't worry. we've got better lawyers.
still can't make shareholder expecations?
cut costs. use low quality parts.
don't worry, our marketing will cover you.
we can fool 'em. that's our job
there, it's all better now.
the bottom line is achieved. profit.
that's all that matters
i've got my benz
i've got a big house
i can eat all i want.
i know i'm satisfied....
i'm satisfied...
...
but i'm getting tired...

happy birthday shinobu, err... cheer up... will ya?



today is my girlfriend's 24th birthday. screwed up big time on the cake transportation. didn't know she was super-sensitive about these things. thankfully, a surprise birthday card saved the day. otherwise i would be it DEEP shit right now...

for her birthday last year, i paid for a photography studio session shoot, and a night's stay at the Taipei Hilton Hotel. this year... just a birthday card and a half-mutilated cake. i'm too used to living with her now... it feels weird to go out of my way to get her something special (wow, that sounds pretty awful just saying that...). but seriously, gift giving is such a hassle...i wouldn't want anyone to endlessly ponder over what to buy me, and i sure hope nobody else expects me to do the same for them. fortunately, i think she was fairly satisifed with the card. good thing i didn't tell her that i bought it at the last minute....

pentatonic scales

i just realized that the "pentatonic scales" that i just read about in my harmony & theory book are a pretty neat trick to create interesting ethnic music in a pinch. here are some neat asian pentatonic scales that i've been playing around with...

chinese scale: C D F G A (or play all the black keys)
japanese scale: C Db F G Ab (sounds real good with a Fmin, Bbmin riff)
okinawa scale: C E F G B (seems to have inflexible harmony)

japan is scary

after browsing this site, it just scares me how good japanese console programmers must be. i mean, i think those guys on that site are pretty damn talented to come up with all that example code, but they probably couldn't even hold a candle to the jap geeks at polyphony who optimized gran turismo 3 a-spec... or the folks at konami who produced that amazing rain effect in metal gear solid 2. man, those dudes probably don't shower for weeks if they are hitting the hardware that hard...i really think that if someone became good enough to become on the programming team of the best video game companies (capcom, konami, namco, nintendo, sega), you would inevitably become 1000% geek and transform into a total social weirdo.

and to think, so many people (including myself) download all that geek effort that goes into a PS2 game, play it for like 5 minutes, and then stash it in their ps2 pirated game collection, never to be touched again. such waste!

work troubles

today, i got a nasty surprise when i checked my linterry@hotmail.com account. i found, amongst the plethora of junk mail (by far the nastiest byproduct of the evil marketing industry), 3 e-mails from my correspondent at CMUSIC... i didn't expect him to send mails to that address. but anyways, in those 3 e-mails, are 2 retakes (goddamnit), and 1 polite but rather insinuating mail indicating that i have only finished 2 of the 5 songs for this month, and that I better get them done soon...

well i fix the retakes asap in a couple of hours (short but painful), which brings me right up to 4 songs. i also finished a leftover song from last month, so the grand total is actually 5 songs. still, my output is declining, for sure. part of the reason is that i'm not really that interested in my job anymore. the other reason is that the job isn't getting any easier. i used to get short, 100-130 bar songs, which i could do easily in 1 day or 2. now, because my correspondent is only giving me dance/techno music (because he insists that's my "expertise"... well, he may be right)... the average is 150-200 bars (my next song is a whopping 293 bars) and the complexity of the songs is also increasing. i find myself often using more than 25 voices for a single song. 25 voices multiplied by 150+ bars is a lot of work. many sections in dance/techno are just loops, sure... but then there's also the fact that dance/techno music uses a lot of synths, and synth sounds are not that easily identifable. since i get paid by song, finishing a 100 bar quickie gets me the same dough as struggling through a 200 bar monster... well i'm not the "just about the money" kinda guy...but still, it gets to me...

i really think i've improved as much as possible in terms of work efficiency. i''m a speed demon with cakewalk sonar now, having memorized too many hotkeys than i'd like to admit. aside from simply spending more hours at my job, there's just no way i can pump out more songs / month. unless i write a brililant piece of software that can automatically transcribe digital audio into MIDI. but that has been attempted before without much success, by far more experienced minds than I, and there's little guarantee that if I walked down the same path, I would fare better.

one thing i need is more sensory feedback. working at home has a lot of benefits, being able to avoid traffic, being able to pick your own time, but on the other hand, you have little external stimulation to keep you fresh and motivated. you don't meet anybody new, you don't learn peripheral things by being in a foreign work environment, and you don't get into a regular "work rythym"...

sometimes, i actually miss programming... but then I remind myself of that guy Angelo at the III research institute. He was just a total wizard at programming in C++. This guy had a shelf full of the best well-known C++ books, and he told me that he read them ALL cover to cover like it was a matter of fact. Angelo was the REAL DEAL. but still, his job was depressing. he got the more interesting projects, but even those seemed kind of boring to him. every day, he would plop himself in front of his PC, code, code, maybe surf the web a bit, and code, and code... and then go home. he would come to work the next day, and just start over again. he rarely talked to anybody during the day, but then again, the same was true for everybody else. everyone's just at the same old place all the time, typing, typing, coding, coding...

although i respected that guy big-time, i sure as hell don't want to end up like him. that's why i'm reluctant to enter the taiwanese programmer job market. i've seen some of those environments. just awful... like a sweatshop of coders trying to meet deadlines for shit pay... and if you don't have a masters degree, you're already doomed to begin with in terms of climbing the miniscule corporate ladder.

and starting my own company... don't even get me started on that. dreaming of ideas is fun, trying to execute them with almost nothing to begin with is not. i just think of alomac.. that startup IT company that i worked for that went nowhere fast. (check out their zombie website... i made that for them 4 years ago...) sure, there's always the lucky one in a thousand who gets rich off his startup, and all his slaves become millionares, but i don't like playing lotteries.

i guess the bottom line is... i still don't know what i should be doing with my life. hell, i don't even know where i should LIVE in the long term. i'd better start thinking....and looking maybe...

the 21st century diet

for 4:00pm breakfast: haagen daas mango sorbet
for 5:30pm lunch: pasta with cream sauce and bacon
for 9:00pm dinner: mcdonald's 2 fried chicken legs + 1.5 medium fries + coffee
for 12:00am midnight snack #1: 1 month old snickers bar
for 3:00am midnight snack #2: sausage + scrambled eggs

i really wish my mom was around to cook for me.
how in the world will i be able feed my kids properly, if i can't even feed myself properly.

picture of the day



guess i'm not very popular with the local felines

Nickel and Dimed



it's way past my bedtime, but today's culprit for burning the midnight oil wasn't video games or mindlessly surfing the web, but instead a fantastic book called "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich. she's a professional writer with a Ph.d in biology, and for this book she abandons every comfort of her upper-class home and decides to see what it's like living in America at in poverty level by taking crap jobs like waitressing or housecleaning and trying to make ends meet.

i think i just found my new "bible of gratefulness".

growing up in a well-to-do family, i think the only real pain and suffering i've had in my life mostly had to do with girls not paying attention to me... but reading these anecdotes, particuarily the one where she partakes in the filthy, backbreaking slave work called "housecleaning", i have now been injected with a pretty strong shot of gratefulness... for the fact that i am able to eat what i want, sleep when i want, work when i want, have a job that i like, and thanks to my parents, never have to worry that i might run out of money. all my little pains and misgivings over the past week seem like dust compared to the gargatuan sufferage that minimum-wage working class people go through. too bad the gratefulness shot will only last until ... tomorrow morning... by which point i will resume whining and complaining about all the small annoyances in my life.

anyways, there are some fairly negative reviews on amazon, mostly regarding the credibility of her study... but that's expected, when a book or any mass-media product (CD's, video games, movies etc...) receives so much critical acclaim from the press, it only entices people to put bullet-holes through that book because it makes them feel smarter than everyone else for knowing what's wrong with something that everyone else thinks is good. i think people should take the book for what it is... an affluent person's perspective on the working class' conditions. so what if she whines and makes judgement calls, that's just being human and expressing your sentiments. i think the author has already done a great job on not being pretentious and truly examining her inner feelings on many levels, which is most likely why i find the book so appealing. it feels raw, unedited... real, and nothing is better than "telling it as it is".

Picture of the day



Just in from the daily news...Taipei now holds the title of having the tallest skyscraper (101 stories) in the world. I seriously hope it wasn't engineered by Taiwanese. Talk about a death trap.

Also in today's news, a girl jumped off her balcony and killed herself because of a heated argument with her boyfriend. Newsworthy? Hardly. Gets your attention? You bet.

picture of the day



average complexity of a move song

fortune may be turning around

today, i received a call from aunt grace who told me that my wallet was returned at the NTU lost and found. well, this would have been gratifying news if it happened 2 days ago... but i was still glad to get my old wallet back... some weird things were missing though, my driver's license, expired ARC card, international student card... what in the world do those thieves want with those items anyhow... still thinking i should report to the police to be on the safe side...

just finished that globe song. took a total 12 hours... longer than i thought. i'm really pooped...

oh, i got a call from carol today. for some inexplicable reason, it really cheered me up. it's not like I have a crush on her or anything, but i know she's real popular, and gettnig calls from popular girls makes me feel like I'm the real shit. if i wanted to act cool, I would say that such platonic calls means nothing, but that's just bullshit. getting surprise calls from pretty girls gets me all psyched up. ain't that the truth...

Marketing people belong in hell



i think the industry i hate the most is marketing. i'd probably hate lawyers even more if i was ever forced to get involved with their dirty kind, but right now, my current hatred is directed towards marketing.

the core reason is this: marketing a product and designing a quality product rarely go together. at the same time, marketing dumbs down general consumer knowledge and makes them even more vulnerable over time to programming.

take TV's for instance. i used to have an old sony trinitron in my house that dated all the way back to 1978. this thing had a beautiful picture. vibrant, CORRECT colors, no artifical sharpening, just a kick-ass, balanced picture that made normal cable signals look fabulous. but you buy any trinitron today, it looks like total shit. over-saturated reds, bluish hues, funny black edges running throughout the picture... it looks NOTHING like a real life picture. why did such a quality product degrade through 25 years of supposed improvements in technology? i'll tell you why... it's because of marketing. since the 80's, marketing people have invented clever ways to make their tv's sell better in the showroom, often at the expense of the actual quality. one of the most hideous mutilations is adjusting the white balance to a more bluish tone. why? because for the same brightness value, a blueish white gives the illusion of being brighter than a normal white. and marketing studies have shown, when you have 20 television sets all stacked up side by side (in a brightly lit showroom, no less), it's the brightest one that sells. but when you bring the television back home, do you really want your set to light up your living room like it's the 5th of july? most people usually turn down the contrast setting to less than half the original value because the "showroom setting" is almost always too bright for most living rooms. if that's the case, do you really want your set to have this unremovable bluish tinge?

another dirty trick marketing people have used is the addition of some cheap circuitry that acts as a "edge enhancer". marketing studies have shown that when people compare television sets side by side, it's the sharpest one that sells. never mind the fact that humans don't see the world through edge-enhanced filters, people somehow equate sharp edges towards a better quality television... "i like this one, it's sharper than the rest", your average consumer would say, with no idea that the picture is WAY too sharp... to the point of looking almost artificial. never mind the fact that the sharpness is produced by a cheap $20 circuit that simply mutilates the signal and is no indication of how well the TV is made.

yet another lousy trick marketing people have used is screwing around with the color decoding scheme and trying to oversaturate colors in a cheesy attempt to give the picture more punch. thus, reds become super reds, blues become super blues... to the point where it looks like the tv is going to burst in an explosion of colors. not only is this idea bad in the 1st place, it also messes up skin tones, and the picture a funky unnatural feeling. mysteriously, it still has a selling impact in the showroom

thanks to marketing, it's getting real hard to find a quality television anymore. i'm not talking about something that's got all the bells and whistles, i'm just talking about a simple, 6500K color calibrated, non-mutilated TV. probably the only place where you'll find a perfectly calibrated television is in a broadcasting studio. the sad truth is, the perfect TV just can't sell in the showroom, despite the fact that it is probably the best picture you could experience in your living room.

the thing is... marketers are concerned only with one thing, how to get you to buy their product, no matter how shitty it is. over time, companies have learned that it's not how good you make the product, it's how good you make the product seem. while it's quite easy to make a good product seem like a good product, with today's marketing razzles and dazzles, it's also quite easy to make a bad product seem like a good one. and if you can sell a bad product just as easily, you can bet that the corporate suits will have orgasms over potentially gained profits.



looked upon this way, marketing people are really the consumer's ENEMY. they are striving for totally opposite goals. in most cases, the consumer wants the most genuinely good product at the lowest possible price, but the marketer wants to sell the shittiest product at the highest possible price. the marketer has so many ways to achieve his goals at relatively little expense... branding, attractive packaging, testimonials (which are SO damn cheesy, and yet I'm pretty sure they work subliminaly in some way)... and so forth. the only thing the consumer has to protect himself is: consumer knowledge, and not to bash anymore in particular, but the average consumer is really stupid. if everyone was like me, the ONLY tv sets you would see in stores are perfectly calibrated televisions. the fact that multiated televisions have been able to sell over so many years is PROOF that the average consumer has no clue as to the quality of what he or she is purchasing.

another spotlight victim of marketing-induced quality erosion is the film industry. thanks to a marvelous tool called the "trailer", billions upon billions of people have been tricked into watching big screen garbage that has been produced through the encouragement of the marketers themselves. the sufferage is too vast, too great to fathom, and yet marketing seems to know no limits... when you allow such sewage as Charlie Angels 2 to be released into the theatres, even though you knowing how much it stinks... and only because you KNOW it will make a profit, then not even eternity in hell is a suitable punishment.

it doesn't stop at products either. here in taiwan, we have so many well decorated, brightly lit restaurants that pretentiously serve "quality" food, when in reality everything is microwaved and tastes like shit. but the funny thing is, these restaurants are always PACKED... and you know why? because people somehow equate a good looking restaurant with the promise of good food, even though nowadays, you're probably better off thinking the opposite. the people who opened the restaurants know this, that's why they spend an arm and a leg on making their joint look better than others, when they really should spend that money on learning how to cook good food. after being fooled more than i would like to admit, i always vow to walk into the shittiest looking restaurant whenever i'm wandering in unknown territory. think of it this way, if it looks shitty, and it's still around, then you can bet your ass the reason it's still around is because it serves quality food.

it all comes down to the fact that nobody can be honest and make a living in the corporate world... and that's the saddest thing of all...

old email



whenever i can't sleep, i often dig out my e-mail archives dating all the way back to january 1999, the spring term of 1st year university. that's nearly 5 years ago. the attraction of reading old mail has often puzzled me, because it really is a pointless activity (especially when you've already done it like 20 times), and yet I can still expereince a strange nostalgic feeling if I find something juicy (juicy=non-forwarded non-reply mail from girls sent to me and me alone)

i think i've figured out the attraction though. often, when i lay in my bed, I feel like I know myself less and less, and that causes feelings of uneasiness. see, living in toronto, i have reminders everyday of who i am, mostly in the form of seeing things that have been in my life since i was a child. my house, the road in front of my house, highway 401, fairview mall, swiss chalet... although many have changed drastically, i have been there to witness the changes. also equally important is the way i'm seen amongst people there.

here in foreign Taiwan, there is little else except for my old e-mails and a few photographs that remind me of where i've been, who i've talked to, and what i was. most of what i see here are from memories that are at most 1 year old.

as a result, the memories i have of toronto naturally get blurrier day by day... sometimes to the point where it feels like it was another life, or maybe a case of amnesia. but 20 plus years of history is an enormous part of who you are... if those memories get too blurry, then, so do you, in a certain way. am i the music arranger terry or the computer programmer terry. am i the lonely terry or the living-with-a-girlfriend terry. am i the nerd terry or... the geek terry. ok, so some things don't change.

when I see old e-mails, it's more than just an e-mail of course, there's really a whole story behind every one... when i see countless e-mails from people asking for my help in Java in the 2000-2001 school year (my golden year), it reminds me of the "java king" days, i then see an e-mail from my ex-girlfriend christnie, and that reminds me of all the time we spent together, new college, marche... and then plenty of e-mails from people i don't talk to anymore... juan & daniel, jacqueline, natalia, alvin, donna... but after reading their emails, i start to remember... everything... who they are, what they thought of me... and I then slowly i can reconstruct the past in my mind, and that makes me feel like i know myself better again.

old e-mails are really great windows to the past, or, to quote Sy the photo guy "signposts against the flow of time". sometimes, I think they're even better than photographs. i'm so glad i kept them...

hail to the 1000NT bill



whenever i go to uncle patrick's place to get my paycheck, it just feels damn good to get a whole wad of NT1000 bills. i got 49 pieces today. makes me forget all the bad luck I've been having recently. i think it's the color of the bills. a nice, baby bluish hue. or maybe it's the high numerical value printed on the bill. 1000 is a lovely number. in any case, i just don't have the same feelings about canadian currency. 20's and 50's just don't get me aroused in the same way. yes i know it's an illusion. so what.

uncle patrick is real nice. he invited us to have dinner with his buddies at jimmy's kitchen, the oldest american restaurant in taipei. the food was good (not spectacular), and I really enjoyed myself. whenever julie, one of patrick's old friend, is at the table, it's always interesting. she just says whatever's on her mind, and even though people make fun of her, she takes everything so lightly. she's not a real looker, but her charisma more than makes up for that. she has an incredible history, a real tumultous youth, that just had me wanting to know more.

after I got home, I did 4 or 5 solid hours of work on a new song today. about 1/3 done. i just love globe songs. every part is so clear and isolated, i don't even need to use transcribe to help me out. contrast that to move songs, which are sometmes a real bitch to figure out... this song is real long though, i think it might take 2 or 3 more days or so to finish up.

the marathon continues

today, I tried to be nice to a stray cat by petting it, and it rewarded me by clawing my hand off, right at the wrist artery. doesn't feel too good, i have to say.

waiting for god to "come"...

GOD IS STILL SCREWING WITH ME

Today, we wake up, and find that our back veranda door was mysteriously left open.

Then, shinobu finds that her small purse is missing. I tell her not to worry, if we left it at the restaurant yesterday, they would keep it for us.

Then, I find that my wallet is missing too.

Then, I add 1+1=2, and find out that

I HAVE BEEN SCREWED OVER BY GOD AGAIN.

My anus is starting to hurt. I had over 1500NT in my wallet, which is FAR ABOVE the average amount i carry (usually 500 or so).

I think the next step would be to come home today and find out that a wayward meteorite landed on our house. Thus making us homeless.

I think it's about time for that jerk up in heaven to make me Terry Almighty.

technology is a sin

i think someone up there is trying to tell me something.... that I should unplug, unwind or something... find some other mind-numbing pleasure other than indulging myself in electronic ice cream everyday...

the brightness on our goddamn sampo tv is now flickering on and off, and it's not even a year old (like I said, Taiwan and China, they don't give a crap about their quality, just as long as they make $$$ to fatten themselves on all-you-can eat Korean BBQ). i don't feel like going through the hassle of going back to that godawful chain store carrefour and trying to explain to them what the problem with the TV is. with my luck, the tv will stop flickering just when I am trying to demonstrate the problem. i think i'll let sampo and carrefour f*ck me over. let them have their stupid korean bbq.

i just bought a copy of gran turismo 4... at least that's what the stupid idiot in the store at shimending told me "yes, it really is GT4, these guys know how to get good stuff before it's even released". i put it in my playstation, and I get a lovely "gran turismo 4: prius trial version". some motherf*cker pirate out there is laughing his head off, raking in all the cash by selling this trial version under the guise of the real GT4. or maybe i'm the only sucker. i'm supposed to go back to the store tomorrow and complain and whine until they give me another game as a replacmenet. but, i think i'll let them f*ck me over this time. it's not worth 300 NT to make another trip. my legs are tired.

just now, the emule P2P program has recently been acting up, stealing 100% of the cpu for no apparent reason. i don't want to fix it. i'm tired of fixing computer problems. they never end. as long as people change the goddamn thing, as long people create new software, there will always be new bugs and problems and bugs and problems. i repeat the same process.. go to google groups, look for the right keywords, and find the solution. but I don't feel like it. to hell with emule.

why even use a computer anyways? they should all be destroyed. hell, tv's should all be destroyed. these are not things that are intended to exist on planet earth anyways. buildings, wires, pipes, automobiles, subways... they are all not in equilibruim with the environment. if you don't constantly maintain them, they will decay so quickly and be unsuitable for use in a very short time. they do not replenish themselves naturally. they are entropic entities, things that will naturally degrade into disorder and ruin. whereas forests, rivers, lakes, trees, grass, animals, are all beautifully in harmony with each other.

we destroy mother earth, harvest her resources, so that we can live in pig nests which foster apathy. really, if you look at it from a far enough point of view, it's sad. technology was created because of the human desire to avoid toil and labor, and yet, if you look at it real carefully, have we really achieved anything except for a transfering of all the physical labor into mental labor? thanks to technology, people cannot sleep, feel lonely (yes ironic isn't it, but if you think about how good online chatting makes you feel in the long run, it's true), let their bodies physically rot, and still work just as long, if not longer, to put food on the table.



look at that picture. the entropic rate of what you see in there is just mind-boggling. this is the opposite of self-sustaining. it is such a fragile system... like a deformed baby, it is extremely delicate and requires constant care and supervision lest it fall into decay and ruin.

we need to return to this:



maybe one day, something like sin from final fantasy x will come and punish us for our sins...

Picture of the day



why it's best not to go to shi men ding on weekends.

sen to chihiro



or "spirited away", is quite possibly the best animated film ever made. I must have watched the DVD over 30 times and no matter how often I watch it, it never fails to move the heart. i don't understand how a movie can be so good. there is just "something" about this movie that gives it such a surreal feeling, it's just incredible. i think the only other movies that i have willingly watched over 20 times were snatch, gladiator, and bill & ted's excellent adventure. sen to chihiro definitely holds the record though.

Picture of the day

I think if my genius of a 10-year old student Annie read that last post, she would probably say something like:


"If you don't learn to relax, silly"


"How will you ever enjoy anything?"

The Matrix ruined my day

Today I got screwed up so bad by the Matrix, or should I say, the popularity of the Matrix. Right, so the movie just came out a few days ago, and Danny and Charlie had invited me to go see it at midnight, so I suggested we go see it at Taipei's biggest theatre, guo bing. Big Mistake #1. biggest theatre=popular=too many people. I was afraid that we would not get good seats, so I went with Shinobu at 7:00pm to buy tickets 1st for everybody and then come back home and wait for the movie. Big Mistake #2.

It turns out, that stupid theatre Guo Bing only sells tickets one hour in advance of each show, and because of Big Mistake #2, we were lining up to buy tickets for the WRONG show, the 9:10pm show. That really screwed things up, because Danny couldn't make it at 9, and we didn't want to come ALL THIS WAY for nothing, so shinobu and I ended up watching the 9:10 show... just the two of us. That would've been fine, except, for 1 hour of waiting, our seats SUCKED big time. I asked for tickets that were "in the middle, a little back is fine", for which the bitch of an usher gave us seats that were 2 ROWS FROM THE BACK OF THE THEATRE. To me, that is not "a little back". I wanted to kill her.

Combine the initial shock of discovering that the screen occupied only 50% of my field of vision, and the inability for Taiwanese people to stop chit-chatting even AFTER the movie has started, I watched the 1st half of the movie listlessly, trying to lose myself in the movie, but that's just like trying to force yourself to sleep when you're not sleepy. I just couldn't get over the disappointment. By the way, while Revolutions was certainly a decent movie, it was certainly not a GREAT movie, there was simply too much mech fighting, and I just don't like mech fighting. And it certainly did not do a good job of recapping what happened in the 2nd movie either... I was for the most part completely clueless as to who was supposed to be doing what. And by the end of the movie, while they certainly "resolved" everything, I still didn't feel satisfied with the outcome....the dragonball Z fighting was pretty pointless too.

After the movie, we saw Shinobu's classmates eating at the nearby KFC, and to my lovely surprise, they didn't have to line up at ALL for the movie, because one of their friends had a membership whereby they can reserve tickets online. Right, that's just peachy... didn't get to see it with my good buddies, AND had to line up needlessly despite the fact that her classmates invited her repeatedly to see the movie together as well, which we could have capitalized on.

To top off the misery, after I got home, I had forgotten that the Lakers played today against the spurs., and that they reran the game at 9:30pm, right about when I was getting listless at the theatres.. I go online to check ESPN NBA, and think (more like hoping)... maybe this was a stupid game anyways, no Duncan, should be a blowout... and find out... DOUBLE OVERTIME!?!?! Kobe, 37 points on 16-29 shooting!?!? I MISSED THIS FOR A 1 HOUR LINEUP, A HO-HUM MOVIE AND THE STINK OF OVERCROWDING?

Sigh... oh yes, I also just missed my bus going to tutoring AND back today. Sweet... just sweet....I think I'm going to drink some beer now... and wallow over so many missed opportunites to optimize today's activities...

Picture of the day



Wouldn't want to be her enemy....

Kobe and the Lakers

You know, with the sexual assault charge on Kobe, and that childish feuding with O'Neal at the beginning of the season, plus the fact that he has to share the ball with Malone and Payton this year, I thought he would really become just a shadow of his former self... so I was all set on giving up on him... before the season started... I would start picking teams like Toronto or the Celtics in 2k3 or Live... I thought.. maybe it's time to put my heart on another SG.

But just as I thought, I like Kobe too much. During the only Laker game I was able to watch on TV this year so far, everytime I saw Kobe score, I freakin' jumped out of my chair and yelled "YEAAAH. KOBEEEEE, THAT'S THE SHIT!!!" (and scared the crap out of my girlfriend who was playing Age of Mythology behind me). It's weird, but when he's on the floor, my eyes are only on him, and hoping that this possesion, he'll make some crazy move...

I think the reasons why I like him so much is because

1. he's got so much talent, and I always respect natural talent over hard work
2. he's selfish, arrogant, and a bit of an exhibitionist, and I actually like that because it gives him an "edge" or "flair"
3. he's good looking (doesn't mean I'm gay tho), and has a great physique, slender, but not too skinny.
4. he just LOOKS so cool doing his moves... ... everything that Kobe does, just looks good... smooth, natural, soft
5. he's got the coolest name... how can you forget a name lke "Kobe"
6. his birthday is is 2 days away from mine (yeah that's a stupid reason, but I believe in signs so... whatever)

Looking at the stat sheets so far, I looks like Kobe will still do his thing this year, despite all the bad signs in the media. Ain't nothing going to hold this kid back....

WHAT A SICK CROSSOVER

here's one reason why nba live 2004 is so much better than the 2k series

CROSSOVER.avi

damn, that's just sick...

bon-odori

on the way back from tutoring, the radio on the bus was playing this japanese song that reminded me SO much of the music in the Ape Escape 2drum mini-game ... obviously it was not the exact same song, but it was eeringly similar, was it the beat? the scales on which the melody was formed? i was guessing the beat, because it was real catchy...

shinobu told me that this style was called "bon-odori". i fired up ape escape 2... and indeed it was the beat... i didn't feel like working tonight, so instead I made a short track based on the same music from ape escape with the sc-8850... i think it's pretty neat! it's got a mix of japanese ethnic instruments and synth sounds.

bon-odori.mp3

well, other than that, tutoring was a pain in the butt today, as the little kids were super-fidgety as always, but eating vietnamese noodles aftewards cheered me up promptly. i gotta get to work tomorrow....

House cleaning

Today, I finally took the plunge and bought a vaccum cleaner. I originally planned to just get a simple dust-buster, but after imagining myself stooping down and breaking my back trying to rid my entire room of dust, I simply bit the bullet and bought a decent sized vaccum cleaner



It's a lovely Hitachi model, genuinely made in japan, and for such a small size it packs 520W of air sucking power. Everything about it is Japanese, its compact size, its handiness, and the feeling that good common-sense engineering is behind the design of this product. One thing I absoultely hate is buying "corner-cut" products. Shinobu wanted to buy something cheaper, but that meant buying stuff either made in Taiwan or China, and no-disrepect to either country (or my own genetic heritage), but neither country makes quality products like Japan. Now I suppose, I should include Korea in that group, because Korea is now making all kinds of stuff that make you go "whoh"... Samsung's LCD's and their high quality online games come to immediate mind.

I never appreciatd my parents vaccuming the house, but after seeing the filth accumulate in every nook and cranny of our room, I just couldn't stand it anymore. Vaccuming all that crap away with an effortless sweep of the vaccum cleaner's head was nothing more than euphoria... i got so addicted that I became obsessed with ridding the entire room of any visible trace of dust. I seriously hope the air quality in our room improves soon because it's just so depressing to come home and find that the carbon-monoxide polluted air outside is far better than the murky, dust-filled air in our own home.

While I was vaccuming our house, I got to take a close peek at the seldom seen corners of our house, and to my rather unpleasant surprise, I saw this horrific view. There must have been half a thousand ants festering near the bottom of our food rack, which prompted me to go on a ant-killing spree. I killed about 200 or so, before realizing that they were having sex as fast I was killing them, because no matter how fast I killed them, they just kept coming back at an equal rate. I tried patching up the apparent "hole" in our window, but these motherfuckers just naturally know how to get around things... so finally shinobu offers to help and smears a bit of the ant-repellant chemical solution in the surrouding area. 5 minutes later... they were all gone, but it's only a matter of time before those suckers find another way into our house.

Internet Presence

i was so happy to find that a google search on linterry actually brings up linterry.blogspot.com (this page) on the 1st page of results. that means... that if I put a link back to my main page... theoretically, in a few days, my main page will FINALLY be listed in google (although I doubt that I'll ever be the 1st result, not like that punk edwin liang)

also, i just noticed that a lot of the linterry results on google turn up quite a few links to that cheesy website I made for morrowind a couple of years ago... people were posting links to my site as far as hungary...

god I am such a nerd.

... except for... we gotta buy a vaccum cleaner, because our room is so full of dust it's disgusting. cleaning it by hand is not an option, because with our low human effort output, we wouldn't be able to do it on a consitent basis.

another song done. meaning i can have another day to goof off tomorrow. ahh, sometimes i feel so content, there's really nothing to say!

Busted!

my old pal ben from high school apparently found some way to look up people who look at his site (where did he pick up these net hackin' skillz?)... so now my lurking days are over. i have to say, my life has been really divided into two distinct and separate chapters... toronto and taiwan... sometimes, when I get too caught up with life here...it feels almost as if I never lived in toronto, like that whole episode was a figment of my imagination, or a remnant from my previous life, but then I just look at the evidence... the yearbooks, websites of people I once knew, and it all comes rushing back to me... i guess TO will always be a part of who I am, even though I often forget it...

today, we had a small get-together with some old engineering friends... some new faces, some old faces which i haven't seen in a while (julian, roger, carol, janice, kevin). ahh, isn't it so nice to see old faces... just brings back lots of ol' memories...and i managed to sneak off a few candid pics (with the exception of carol)



afterwards, i went with shinobu for dinner at sogo, we then checked out eslite bookstore, they were selling old Japanese magazines at 80% off... I was elated when she found 2 issues of Keyboard magazine... these things are just GOLD MINES of information about the music production industry... in one of the issues, the cover story was an interview with Kawano Kei, the keyboardist and synth programmer for utada hikaru. i used to keep rambling that while everyone broadcasts the fact that hikki writes her own songs, most of the "punch" from her songs comes from superb production and sound engineering usually absent from other "non-band" j-pop artists. i mean, just listen to the kick drum and snare from "addicted to you", they bite real hard, you can be damn sure that many sound engineering techniques are in proper use right there. if you ever listen to hikki sing live, you'll find that her voice sounds nothing like the superbly enhanced vocals on the CD recording. while the true is the same for other artists, hikki's voice in many recent songs (deep river comes to mind) have such a punch and presence that you know it's can't be just her voice talent carrying her songs into the top spot on the oricon rankings.

however, one thing that surprised me was that hikki chan writes the drum line in addition to the chord+melody, although she sometimes omits the bass completely and leaves that up to kawano kei. lol, well, at least she does way more than retarded pop idols like w-inds. from what i gather, she prepares the drum, melody, chords, and sometimes the bass into mark of the unicron digital performer, and then leaves the rest to kei. actually, considering how busy her schedule must be everyday, i think that's more than you could reasonably ask for from a pop superstar like hikki. i don't think i could ever dislike her songs... they're too digestible..