Monday, April 23, 2007

It's been kinda drab around here lately...

I haven't been posting pictures or videos at all lately and I'm assuming that my glowing posts about work aren't keeping people as interested as I've led myself to believe. As such, I've decided to post a few things that I've been keeping to myself and hopefully a few of the remaining people who actually read this blog still will get a laugh or two out of them.

This picture dates back to when the Bears were marching through the playoffs. I dressed up my friend Gina in this outfit. Da Bears~

Okay, so the way this sign is pronounced is "Don King" but it has absolutely nothing to do with the Don King. Why? In Korean "Don" actually means "pork". So in this case, it's actually the Pork King, a place where we can get Korean BBQ.

This is the only picture I managed to take on my birthday since I forgot to charge the damn batteries. Here from the left we have: Jayce, Greg's Wife's Sister, Greg, Greg's Wife, and Joe. They're great fun.


This was a random Japanese couple I met at a bar in Itaewon. They were hilarious.

This was in a country bar in Itaewon. The only one of its kind that actually has a damn square-dancing floor. Needless to say, I hate the place. They do, however, have cheap jello shots. I also get to watch fools dance around while they are drunk.
This is what happens to people when they fall asleep around us. Poor Gina, and her own boyfriend Aaron is the only one placing the cigarette in her ear. Boo Hoo.

This is Rhett in all his glory. Rhett was my "boss" at my old English teaching job. Besides doing stuff like this whenever he feels the urge, he also engages in far more interesting activities that, because of their nature, will never see the light of day on this blog.


This is Micah in his drunken daze. I like to call him Clay Fakin'. I bet some of you who are well versed in the uselessness that is pop culture know why.

And finally (at least for tonight), I will end this picture update with a video that everyone everywhere must see. I haven't laughed as hard as I did when I first watched this in years. Enjoy.

http://funnyordie.com/v1/view_video.php?viewkey=3efbc24c7d2583be6925

Monday, April 09, 2007

Otaku-licious

I’ve noticed something interesting about myself lately and I wanted to comment on it.

Now, I’ve been reading comic books (most especially Japanese manga) for as long as I can remember and I’ve never really considered myself to be a manga “otaku”. However, I am starting to question now whether or not I am.

I never used to purchase comic books, rather I would just sit in a library or store and look over them when I had the time or was just bored. They were also something to do while sitting over at Chris’s house and engaging in not-so-legal activities. I always liked comic books/manga and really felt jealous sometimes of people’s abilities to create whole new worlds and characters out of thin air and put them on paper. Ah, yes. That’s the ability I envy the most, the ability to draw comic books.

In the last few years however, I’ve gone from the occasional indulger to the avid collector/reader. I have purchased something along the lines of about 200 manga comics or tankobon in the past 2 years. That is well over $1000 in comic books alone. Since I started my new job 5 months ago, I have purchased about 40 or so tankobon and it seems I am buying at least 2 per week.

I love reading them when I am traveling on the train or bus or sometimes when I just get the urge to lay down and read something. Besides being decent Japanese reading practice, I like how completely immersed in the storylines I become when I crack them open. It really helps me get away from the stress and worrying of the real world even if only for the 10 minute train ride.

I don’t know if this makes me an “otaku” or not but I guess if it does I really don’t mind the moniker at all. I used to think of “otaku” as scraggily haired white kids who wear anime shirts and spout off the random 3 words they know in Japanese at the most inappropriate times. I actually still do carry that stereotype now that I think about it. Maybe I’m a new type of otaku, a more suave type of comic book nerd….

Probably not though…

At least my hair isn’t scraggily.

Here is a list of the current manga I am reading. If there are other “suave otaku” out there who feel like sharing their list with me, it would be appreciated. Recommendations are great too.

“Samurai Deeper Kyo”
“Naruto”
“Bleach”
“D Gray Man”
“Full Metal Alchemist”
“Death Note”

The beginning of my social withdrawl...

The PS3 is finally here. I ended up having to pay about $120 in taxes to get it out of the post office but after dropping what I did on it already, it didn’t seem like much. They even asked if I wanted them to deliver it to my house so I didn’t have to carry it.

“No thanks. I’ll just carry it home.”

It consumed almost all of my Saturday and a few hours of my Sunday. The new Tony Hawk is pretty damn good and I’m also liking NBA 2K7. Madden 07 has its usual luster and the Marvel Ultimate Alliance has the makings of a great multi-player. I’m not that happy with the Sonic game because it’s just too damn uncontrollable and the new Genji is very fluid. That was my game breakdown. I look forward to getting a few blu-ray disc movies and seeing how good they are.

Other than the PS3, I went to the movies with the girl and her brother. We saw “300” and I was pretty impressed with it. It wasn’t “Sin City” but it did a similar job in making gore beautiful. I also now have a goal for my workouts because the Spartans in that movie were just impossibly ripped. I’m going to have to find those workouts somewhere. Anyone know where to look?

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

The knife's edge

Before I get into my usual updates about nothing, I must start with a little rant about my recent work experience. (I know I usually do this anyways but this rant is special, I promise)

So, work starts out as any normal Wednesday does, working on some random project while taking intermittent trips to the water fountain for more tea. I then find out at around 3:00pm that I will have a presentation the coming Friday for Walt Disney. Now, I have not heard about this, I have seen not hide nor hair of the report and I don’t even know the content of the project or the NAME of it. The fake apologetic tones coming from the person who relayed this information to me made me even angrier.

“I’m so sorry for the late request, but please understand us.”

“No, I won’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you. I don’t want to come within a trillion miles of the bridge that leads in the direction to coming close to understanding you. Just gimme the damn report and let me at this thing.”

“Okay, we will give it to you as soon as we finish it.”

“When will that be?”

“Umm, I’ll get right back to you.”

I’m sure you can see where this is leading at this point. To make things short, I ended up not getting the report until 4:30pm on Thursday and the presentation was at 9:30am that following day. I had to turn the report into a good report into a presentation and memorize the content. The kicker here is despite the time I spent on the presentation, at 9:27am that Friday morning (read: 3 minutes before the presentation) that they wouldn’t be using my version, but rather one that they had cooked up that morning. I was ready to draw blood.

The one saving grace of this whole debacle was the fact that I already knew the content of the report, possibly better than the report did. It was covering current business opportunities in the English second language system here, something I was apart of for 15 months. This was probably the fact that saved my ass and the asses of the team I helped.

The presentation went very well and I secured a longer term contract with them because of it. As a result I will now be handling everything that comes from them regarding this issue. It felt good to nail something so important with the amount of time I had to prepare for it, but I’m still pissed about the whole thing in general.

An interesting addend to this comes from while I was going to the presentation that Friday morning. First I get up and leave extra early, as is my habit for presentations, so I could have about a 30-40 minute window in case something happens.

Something did happen.

As I was riding the train, an elderly drunken fellow gets on the train in classic red-faced, stumble mode. Unfortunately he wasn’t of the quite drunk-type and obviously had a few words he wanted to say to me. He basically called me “a dirty American bastard” in translation to which I quickly responded with a sharp glare and a “야…말 조심해라 아저씨..” or “Watch your damn mouth old man” which quickly ended the confrontation as he got a little surprised and had obviously arrived at his stop and got off.

After that, the train got packed. I mean PACKED. I eventually got pushed off 3 stops before my stop because of the physics of people pushing into the train and people getting pushed off on the other end. El Nino, Korean train style. So I ended up waiting about 40 minutes for a taxi and arrived a few minutes before the presentation started.

Anyways, that’s my rant. Long as hell, I know, but it feels good to get it all out there.

As far as other things, the PS3 should be here in a day or two so I’m pretty excited. Unfortunately I might not get to play it right away since I have another presentation this week I have been preparing for. I can’t wait until the weekend though so I can officially tear into this thing and see firsthand the potential addictive properties.

I will update more later as it is time to eat lunch.