30 April 2004

O-Ha!

Asagohan chanto tabeta?
Minna de taberu to oishii

Mama to papa oniisan oneesan
Ojiichan obaachan otonarisan mo
Ohhaa (ohhaa) ohhaa (ohhaa)
Ohhaa (ohhaa) ohhaa (ohhaa)

Itadakima-su
O-ha de mayo chu chu!

At this point, you're probably wondering, "What the fig is going on here?" and that's a pretty understandable question. Allow me to reminisce... (cue wavey special effects and going-back-in-time music)

One of my san-nen-sei students at Narusedai used to ask me occasionally, "Do you know o-ha?", whereupon he would bring his hands up, curled in a grip, and then fling his fingers outward.

"O-ha!" he would say again, to emphasise.

"O-ha?" I would ask, a little confused, but at least willing to humour this spontaneous outburst of English from a member of a student body generally reluctant to speak anything other than the Emperor's Nihongo.

"O-ha. Very popular in Japan. Good morning - o-haiyo - o-ha!"

"I see. O-ha." And I would mimic his hands, waiting for him to nod in agreement - you got it.

And then I would go and make the girls giggle by sneaking up to them and yelling (well, okay, speaking loudly) "O-ha!" And they would look at me weirdly for the rest of the semester, but I didn't care, 'cause I was cool, I was with it, I was rapping with the yoof in their own lingo.

So, of course, as with most things that confused me about the students (and there were quite a lot of things in relation to the students that confused me), I asked one of the Japanese English teachers what the heck this 'o-ha' thing was all about. And they filled me in.

About two years ago, on a show called "Saturday SMAP" or somesuch, Katori Shingo, one of the members of the boy band SMAP would dress up as a woman, and call himself Shingo Mama.

SMAP are huge. Think of the biggest hysteria over a western boy band, say, and multiply it by a billion-gazillion, and you have an idea of SMAP's place in the pantheon of Japanese pop culture.

Anyway, the idea was that Katori Shingo, in character as Shingo Mama, would go around to people's places at 6 in the morning, sneak in, and prepare a huge big breakfast, on camera, as a surprise for long-suffering mum.

And of course, he had his catch-phrase - "O-ha!" - short for "Ohaiyo!" which is itself short for "Ohaiyo gozaimasu!" - "Good morning" in Japanese.

As happens in Japan, this become a song. Which of course did blisteringly well in the charts. And we have another one of those quirky little pop-culture nuggets that beam out around the world and convince everyone that, by god, those Japanese are well and truly wacky.

You can download this hyperactive video clip here at Sonic Warfare.

28 April 2004

DVDs A Rip-Off

"`Vol. 1' goes out, `Vol. 2' goes out, then `Vol. 1 Special Edition,' `Vol. 2 Special Edition,' the two-pack, then the Tarantino collection as a boxed set for Christmas," he said. "It's called multiple bites at the apple."

That's how Hollywood is ripping you off.

I've never quite understood the need to actually buy a DVD, rather than just renting it and returning it a few days later. Let's say a DVD is $15 - half price 'cause it's old, but it's a classic, so that's not a problem - that's at least 3 rentals you can make of that movie. I can't think of any movie I'd sit down and watch more than twice.

Course, if you were a really, really big fan with deep pockets, I can understand the urge, the need, to own it - hey, you now can watch it any damn time you feel like - but when you read quotes like the above, you realise that the only way to hit rapacious movie studios with a clue stick is to close the wallet.

Adding insult to (financial) injury is the fact that region 4 DVDs, which are released in Australia, are often lacking a lot of the extras release on the region 1 version. Why the hell is that?

Asian

McDonald's reckons it's Asian. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Dinner

Dinner at Dickson and Lucy's - crisp, golden, baked potatoes. Yum!

Cold

It's started. The irrational reaction of Sydney-siders to sub-20C temperatures. Out come the coats. In they march at work, complaining long and hard about how "freezing" it is outside as the mercury struggles to bust past 17.

27 April 2004

The End Of Democracy?

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty," Ashcroft said, "my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."

And so criticism of the government becomes un-American (read: un-Australian), it puts our troops in danger (somehow) and comforts the enemy. Only the government can make it all go away. How? By making it harder to live our lives with the freedom and democracy we take for granted. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. If you're not a terrorist, you shouldn't complain about the intrusions. They're for your safety, you know. The terrorists take advantage of our freedoms, so best we revoke them before they are destroyed.

Britain's rushing to mandatory ID cards, ostensibly to prevent terrorism, but to be sold on the basis of reducing illegal immigration.

And in the meantime, the world spends $1250 billion a year on 'defence', and only $80 billion on foreign aid. Do we win more hearts and minds by bombing the crap out of small countries, or by sharing with them the things we take for granted - clean water and fresh food? It looks like the governments of the first world countries have made their choice.

From the SMH, 21/4/04.

"We don't have to exploit the resources. They can stay there for 20, 40, 50 years. We are very tough. We will not care if you give information to the media. Let me give you a tutorial in politics - not a chance," Alexander Downer, Australia's abrasive foreign minister, recently told East Timor's prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, according to a leaked transcript.

Hey, East Timor, we know you're the poorest country in the world, and we're the richest in the region, but we really want your gas and oil, and we don't see the need to give you a fair deal on it. We're much bigger on you, and we know who would win if push came to shove. Hint - it's not you.

26 April 2004

The Gong

Drove down to Wollongong. It's a lovely little city nestled between the mountains and the sea.

Had a rushed morning tea with Norio and Yumiko, followed by a more leisurely BBQ lunch at Wen-Tjien's.

Near Wen-Tjien's, there's a walking track through the bush that takes you to a lookout on top of the hill. From there, you can look out over an amazing view of the town far below.

25 April 2004

Sunshine

Saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - it's $9.50 for tickets at the flicks in Double Bay. Pretty trippy. Pretty excellent.

24 April 2004

Football

Unpleasantly surprised to find out that they weren't joking when they announced the umpire appointments at training on Tuesday - I really was umpiring by myself. By the end of the first quarter, I was absolutely wrecked.

UTS ended up running away, beating UNSW-ES by about 30 points. I was pretty disappointed at missing a few obvious free kicks, and while it would be easy to put the mistakes down to fatigue, that's not much of an excuse when you're aiming for perfection.

Football

Dinner with Kris and Rodd at Juju's in Kings Cross, probably the only izekaya-style restaurant in Sydney, and perhaps even Australia. Got to get over and try the prize-winning home brew at some stage too - thanks for the invite, guys.

23 April 2004

Movie

Watched Needing You, a HK movie with a fairly pedestrian plot. Not as good as Beauty and the Breast.

It's been a while since we've watched a movie with a Cantonese soundtrack - the study I was doing prior to Japan sort of got forgotten, to the point where if I were to pick it up now, I'd have to start from scratch.

Terimah Kasih

Had dinner at a little Indonesian restaurant in Cleveland Street. Wonderfully authentic, all the way down to the bottles of Teh Botol in the fridge.

The young Indonesian girl serving had a broad Australian accent to go with her hajib.

21 April 2004

Work Changes

After my post in late December regarding how I was doing photocopying for my nine-to-five job, things have changed a little bit. I ended up at that company for, all up, three months, and I was doing a few different things. In the end, though, it was a fairly easy job that didn't require much in the way of ability, except for if that ability was "Willingness to put up with tedious and repetitive work". Oh, and "willingness to put up with crap, web-based interface for document management". I hate web interfaces for reasons which are much too long to go into here.

So, I quit. Despite having nothing to go to. Despite having just signed a lease for a new place. Despite having a big, fat, Greek wedding to save for. When all is said and done, you need to have some self-respect, and a crap job that you hate that is beneath you and that has no redeemable features apart from "it pays" is the opposite path to self-respect.

And, funnily enough, in the usual way of the cosmos, something came through.

I started on Monday at a company doing software testing, which is a slight diversion from the work I was doing before we went to Japan. Hopefully, a more satisfying diversion, too.

Training

They murdered us at training last night. 10 100s, 5 150s, 5 200s and 5 150s. Very short recoveries. After two weeks with no running, a night like that just kills you.

19 April 2004

Irony

The definition of irony at the current moment must surely be using David Beckham in an ad for mobile phones.

Sangeet

Our friend Sangeet just called, prompting minor hysteria on Kathleen's behalf. Lest you think that people calling us causes freak-outs, let me explain.

On Saturday, I drove Kathleen up to Avalon, in Sydney's northern beaches for a tarot reading. Kathleen's manager at work had recommended her, and Kathleen was pretty impressed by the 'strike rate' (for want of a better word) of the predictions/readings.

Some of the things were impressively accurate - I could get "stroppy" on occasions (which is, unfortunately, true!), I take her for granted (or in her words, I sometimes think Kathleen is "part of the furniture"), but I adore her (which is true - awww).

During the course of the reading, she mentioned that a 'Sam' would be calling, on the Sunday.

"Uncle Sam?" thought Kathleen. "My uncle in Hong Kong who speaks hardly any English and who we haven't talked to for a few years?" Then again, we are getting married next year, so maybe he wants to come, or something.

Sunday came and went, and there was no call from HK. Another rash prediction... or so we thought.

So tonight, Monday, we're sitting on the couch, and Kathleen's talking to Darise on the phone, when all of a sudden, she gasps.

"Sam? Sam who? ... Oh my god! Oh my god!"

Because we call Sangeet Sam for short.

Hmmmm...

17 April 2004

DVD!

Finally caught up with the 21st century and bought a DVD player yesterday. 10% off at Myer, as well as $170 worth of vouchers courtesy of Christmas didn't hurt, either!

The initial driver was the fact that our stereo doesn't have a line out, which means that we couldn't record anything onto Kathleen's MD player, causing her all sorts of grief on her morning walk to work. We also have a couple of DVDs people have bought us as gifts, as well as cheap Chinese VCDs bought in Malaysia, that need to be dusted off.

The second thing we road-tested was the Tropfest DVD which finally turned up, three months after the initial free offer in the SMH. We'd missed the last two, but unfortunately three months' worth of anticipation creates a harsh critical environment.

(The first thing was the only DVD we had in the house - Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi.)

Yam!

Season finale of Iron Chef pitted Iron Chef French Hiroyuki Sakai against a Buddhist monk. Since meat and fish were off-limits due to the monk's beliefs, the secret ingredient was yam... which doesn't grow in France. Talk about an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, yam also doesn't have any taste, so all up it was a bit of an anti-climax.

Kathleen thinks it's disturbing that I can reel off the names of the Iron Chefs (Rokusaburo Michiba and Chen Kenichi are the other two)... I put it down to the fact that I'm a bit of a pop culture sponge. And also I think the names are cool. But not as cool as Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda!

16 April 2004

Autumn At Rushcutters

On my way to training, I walk through Rushcutters Bay Park, which at this time of year is beautiful. And every Tuesday and Thursday for the past few weeks, as I watch the late afternoon sun light up the leaves, I curse myself for not bringing a camera.

Well, not yesterday!

Unfortunately, the photos I wanted to take didn't turn out quite as well as I hoped, but I think these more than make up for it.

Believe it or not, these photos were taken within 30 seconds of each other; one facing northeast, the other west.

15 April 2004

Ode To My Slightly Obsessive Compulsiveness

O my SOC
You grace me with your
    presence
When I don't
    want it
Is there anything more
    Frustrating
To the slightly obsessive compulsive
    Man
Than putting one hundred
    Photos
In an
    Album
And then realising there's a
    Blank page halfway in
Where you accidentally turned
    Two pages
Instead of
    One
I weigh up the lost hour in taking all the
    Photos out
And putting them
    Back in
Against the agony I feel every time I see
    Four empty photo sleeves

O my SOC
Thanks to you, I can't open a
    Book
Past a certain width for fear of damaging it's
    Spine
And it getting those
    Wrinkles
Makes it almost worthwhile paying an extra
    Fifteen bucks
For the
    Hardback copy
But then I'd have to deal with the
    Dust cover
My books must be in
    Mint condition
Reading the first ten columns of the
    Page
Is ok. But anything after that is like trying to read an
    Optometrists' chart

O my SOC
Luckily I don't have enough
    Things to do
That I can afford the time to go through my
    MP3s
And add the
    Artist information
All the
    Album information
Every
    Track number
Every
    Year
In another
    Language
That doesn't use
    Roman characters
Even better when the
    Original details
Are lost and so I have to translate the
    Lyrics
To find a match for
    It
Ever tried to find lyrics for a
    Song in another language
You don't know the name of, nor
    Who sings it?

O my SOC
Why is it so hard to format
    HTML?
Why does
    Poetry
Require weird-arse
    Spacing?
Sometimes to the
Left
Sometimes to the
    Right
The fact that the
    Line four above
Is out of whack with the rest of the
    Poem
Annoys me, even though it adds
    Impact

12 April 2004

Canberra

Just got back from a weekend trip to Canberra. I haven't been there for about ten years, and it was Kathleen's first trip. We did all the usual touristy stuff - the National Gallery, the National Museum, and for me, the political junkie, Parliament House and Old Parliament House. Very cool, but Canberra's really only good for a weekend.

It's a bit of a strange city, too - there doesn't appear to be a coherent Canberra spirit. It's got a larger population than Hobart but none of the atmosphere. It's only reason d'etre is to support parliament and the two universities. The streets are wide and almost empty, what passes for the CBD is small, and the 'eat street' area of Kingston a depressingly solitary block.

But it's a beautiful city in autumn. I'd almost forgotten how beautiful autumn colours are, and Canberra is nothing if not a green city.

Trip to Melbourne

Just arranged our flights for the last weekend of July for Matt and Kim's wedding. After a year of saying to our Melbourne friends that we were planning on organising a trip to visit, it's finally happening! When I think of Melbourne, I think of sunshine bursting through grey, rain-laden clouds in the afternoon.

7 April 2004

Aggravations

The new place is lacking a reasonable number of telephone outlets. It has one, in the loungeroom, which is okay for your average Norm, but for the wired generation, the yoof of today, that's like having less than one leg. The computer room (which needs to be renamed to something a little cooler - perhaps The Control Room, CENCOM1, or maybe even Graham) is plugged in via a 10m telephone extension cable which Kathleen manages to trip over every time she moves from loungeroom to bedroom, to bathroom, to CENCOM1. It's very annoying for her, which means it's very annoying for me.

Also, our TV reception is quite crap. Our neighbours don't seem to have a problem, for the TV is blaring from behind their front door on a 24-7 basis.

Because we're the middle apartment block, ringed by others, we don't have much privacy, either. So instead of walking around the house naked (hey, it's our domain, and if we feel like that, then my oath we're going to go for it!), we're forced to wear clothes.

An for some weir reason, the '' key on the keyboar suenly seems to have given up the ghost. I'll have to get that fixe. Maybe I'm pressing the amn thing too har. That's not apartment-relate, but it's an aggravation nonetheless.

Computer Forensics - Career Path Of Choice

One of the areas of IT I wanted to get into (although it looks as though that option has run its course) was computer forensics. The first paragraph of this article is not why I wanted in. Really.

6 April 2004

Spare Time

I have a bit more spare time now that I've packed my job in.

The contract job that I had, the one that was bringing in the money that would allow me to look for The Ideal Job (TIJ) in a more leisurely manner, was starting to become a bigger and bigger frustration.

Frustrating in the boring and tedious work that I was doing.

Frustrating in the aggravating software package they were deploying, that was annoying everyone (including me!) and that I somehow managed to get roped into helping with, given that I "knew something about software".

Frustrating in that I actually wasn't really looking for TIJ.

So I went and saw the manager who I thought I reported to (I seemed to report to three different people, who each had the idea that I was working solely in 'their' area) and told him I wanted out.

Now that I have stacks of time, and a whole heap of projects that I meant to start or complete, the sheer volume is so overwhelming that I can't actually start anything. It's like a grown-up version of ADHD or something.

House Warming

We've been steadily unpacking for a bit over a week now (6 garbage bags of old clothes to Vinnies!). It's amazing how much crap we have. Our place in Toorak was much larger than this apartment, which means we've had to be ruthless in simplifying our lives. Tough but fair.

Anyway, Greta gave us our first housewarming present:

Luckily, this gift fits well with our new philosophy of "Only essential items live in our house!"

5 April 2004

Cooking With Gas

Gone a while without any updates. Not for want of trying - it's just that Telstra decided to mess up the ADSL connection. Clowns.

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