Tag: english

iAmerica

November 27, 2009
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The power of America. Where is the culture that could at least withstand the amazing pressure from the States? I mean that now the world’s too concentrated there. The official “stars” of “popular music” are the “stars” of the american scene, enough to check last.fm for the most popular bands, and in the very top, i always see those bands i’ve only heard the name of, but don’t know how or when they popped up. Maybe, i’m just not keeping up with music news (very true, i don’t really know any good global music news website that could tell me about the stuff i need—be it from Europe, Asia or America), and only know about the bands i listen to (also true). Or is it that last.fm is american as well, so they only focus on their own market, and also that users from other countries use it lot less, thus can’t really be considered “significant”?

The same way i was wondering what’s with the huge hype around Apple. The States’ got tired of the Microsoft monopoly, so switched to Apple? How clever. Instead of turning in an “open” direction, use the even more closed computers ready-made by Apple (not to mention i don’t like their user interface). Nevertheless, i considered buying an iPhone now that i became twenty, but again, no way. (For now.) I couldn’t get one (luckily) in april, when i came here. I’d have bought one then, but i don’t have a normal credit card, nor was of age then (here), not to mention it’s expensive, so it would’ve been kind of troublesome. Now i was wondering if i needed it—and concluded: no. I’m not using all the features of my current “small, dumb and cheap” phone, why would i need the almost-computer possibilities of an iPhone? I hardly talk on the phone, and when i’m texting, i like to do it quick. It’s pointless. Rather buy a new, high-end laptop next year for the sake of Starcraft 2.

What’s luck?

November 26, 2009
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“I don’t believe in luck…” said a then-little kid in the youth camp of our church many many years ago. It struck me, and i remember it ever since (the sentence continued “… i believe in Jesus Christ”, but that’s not the point of this post, however beautiful a creed (is this the correct word? i know it in hungarian and japanese, but not english…) it is). I agree. There’s hardly an objective thing called luck. It’s just us, no other thing. As displayed in for example the sixth Harry Potter book, the Half-Blood Prince, one doesn’t need external boost of luck, the placebo effect will do just the same (though rather have a bottle of Felix Felicis on you if you’re going to duel to death). Further proof of that is that when you’re down, the world’s against you as well, and vice versa.

There are times when i think what it’d be like if i stayed at home. I’d be studying programming on second year, i’d probably be researching artificial intelligence, neural networks and cloud computing, work on getting an advanced language exam in german and an intermediate in spanish, and that’s kind of all of what i could think of. I absolutely have no idea. Sometimes i think that coming to Japan with this national scholarship was a mistake—but as for now, i’m happy. In april, a great thing happened to me.

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Ambiguity

November 21, 2009
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All these human rights declarations, the countless treaties about human rights are all unnecessary. They are made because of the ambiguity of the phrase “free”. When is someone free? Who can be free? Check, all the declarations of rights limit these rights, to citizens of that given state (like too many constitutions), or more generally, to humans. It’s so interesting that humankind couldn’t yet resolve this problem. The declarations and treaties list all what humans are free to do or what they have right to, but this is not the right way. This way, the rights and freedoms are inverted: it would be more practical to suppose that everyone is free to do whatever he/she/it wants. And then come all the limitations. First limitation: as long as it doesn’t limit someone else’s rights or freedoms. And all the others of what you’re not allowed to do.

Are these the same? Are the human rights actually just the limitations of the rights of the community? For sure, since we’re a race that has to survive, the community has to be put higher than all else (meaning that if one can reproduce, they have to). And an “embodiment” of the community is the state, which would explain why there are so many freedoms from the state.

Are we trying to write our own laws of humanics (after Asimov’s laws of robotics), the same way, just since we’re not born bound by these laws but impose them on ourselves, nor are we good, we have to detail them to minimize the damage possible. What’s the answer? How to deal with the whole of our race, and later, with the whole of lifeforms?

Opeth

November 21, 2009
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Tuesday, the seventeenth of november in year 2009, from evening seven o’clock Opeth played a fantastic concert in Shibuya O-East, Tokyo. They played for two great hours. I can’t list all the songs in the setlist, but they mostly played songs i knew, with a few from the older records i’m not so familiar with.

Not only the music was great, as expected from (in my opinion) one of the best active progressive bands, but between songs Åkerfeldt’s hilarious comments made everyone laugh too. (It turned out Opeth renamed themselves Swedish manboobs, i’ll have to re-tag my mp3 library.)

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Notes

November 20, 2009
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In my phone, once again, short (sometimes too short) notes of what to blog about once i have the time to write a decent post are piling up. And after a while not only the “too short” ones, but all the other lose their value as well. For example, i had about a dozen, all of one or two words, keywords only of course—but out of their context they either don’t make any sense or just not interesting at all anymore. I found only one that’s worth noting, saying “Ichimaru – Billiken”. At least i can recall why i wrote that note…

Anyone knows the anime Bleach? There is a certain character with a probably funny Kansai accent, called Gin Ichimaru. Google a picture of him, he has a really characteristic face. Which happens to highly resemble Billiken, the mascot of (among others) Osaka. It looks totally the same to me…

The Big Bang Theory

November 19, 2009
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This article is about the sitcom. For the cosmological model, see Superstring theory.

Wikipedia

Beside How i met your mother, The Big Bang Theory is another series i’ve first (and until coming to japan, only) heard about from fellow hungarian bloggers and/or plurkies. Until about a month ago, i wasn’t watching series that much (kind of at all). But now that i don’t have time for going to club activities in daytime due to massive school duties, i guess this is the way i found subconsciously to relieve stress. And it works. I watched the second and half of the third season of How i met your mother in a month (as a comparison, the first one took about two years). And now i picked up TBBT as well. Worth it. I decided that in mealtimes, when i can’t do anything but stare out of my head and eat, i’m watching TBBT while in the evening chills after ten, HIMYM. TBBT is extreme, i’m already getting used to getting all those extreme nerdy jokes (at first a bit difficult to catch the science phrases), and i sometimes almost suffocate eating my rice because of laughter. The adventures of Leonard and Sheldon are just starting for me, but it won’t take long… (Oh, and i heard that in january the new Skins season is starting as well. Can’t wait!)

Piss off

November 16, 2009
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Absolutely unrelated to anything, today a nice guy pissed me off totally. It was a nice day. I watched How i met your mother (season two, episode twenty), slept well, woke up, reviewed today’s kanji, did well on the test (one stupid mistake only), had a good lunch, and exceptionally managed to finish the math problems well before time. Then i decided i need hand cream (fingers very dry), so bought that and a pack of throat candy just in case, in the pharmacy-ish shop, where i went by bike. On the way back, i saw a military helicopter (looked like these), which i couldn’t really understand. Then it disappeared out of sight… And then.

There was a delivery service car on the pavement, two guys just getting out of it. They stepped aside as i neared, i nodded thanks, and then, i just heard one of them saying “邪魔だよ” (roughly “you’re in the way”, not really nice). By the time i realised i what he was saying, i was already past them, and my japanese swearing skills are still not high enough to answer with an appropriate curse quick enough, so i just swore at them in hungarian, quite elaborately, emphasizing mostly on their parents’ ancient occupations. Seriously. Obviously he was thinking i don’t understand what he’s saying, as i’m pretty apparently a foreigner. Asshole.

(And please don’t start telling me all the meanings of the phrase from the “三千年前の中国” (China three thousand years ago), explaining how it’s not that offensive, the way he was saying it in itself would’ve worth a healthy smash in the face.)

But for now, change of subject, working on the pol-eco paper/presentation till drop dead.

Culture shock

November 15, 2009
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It sucks. It’s not normal right, having something like a culture shock after half a year, but well, i can’t really find any better word for this. It’s very annoying. The working methods. At home you had to think, to understand what you were working on, and those who don’t care about social contacts just their precious work are considered low. Nerds. Geeks. Freaks. But here, people who i’ve never seen out of school, although we live in the same dorm for half a year, who’re always either in the classroom studying, or their room studying, those who memorize everything word by word and probably have trouble using it even if just the context is different, but of course for the exam they know all the words, all the stroke orders, all the grammar structures and math formulae by heart, here those people are the first. And what sucks the most, that here this thing works. I think, this is what one can consider a culture shock.

Kaiji (gambling apocalypse)

November 13, 2009
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Last friday (among others) was the day also for a movie, a new japanese movie titled カイジ·人生逆転ゲーム, Kaiji in short (the above “Gambling apocalypse Kaiji” is the “official english title in japan”, no comment). That’s the name of the main character as well, by the way. Also, that main character is played by 藤原竜也 (Fujiwara Tatsuya), the guy who played Shuya in the Battle Royale movie and Light from Death note. No surprise he seemed so familiar… This time he’s playing a supposedly everyday guy, who has a serious problem with gambling. In addition to hoping to win huge piles of money on lottery tickets, he has problems with controlling himself after losing, hitting and kicking cars and stuff. Then once everything turns out bad, and he has to gamble for his life. That’s about the first two minutes of the movie, but the remaining parts are not much different. As usual with any japanese entertainment product, be it anime, manga, book or whatever, the central point in the plot is how Kaiji grows up and matures. For some reason though, he doesn’t really get the message of the first one and half hour of the movie: don’t gamble. Of course there’s also a multi-chillionaire, who apparently has a fetish (japanese tradition) for life-and-death games, and beside him half-mad CO’s and sadist servants. The whole thing is very japanese, but if someone doesn’t have a problem with that, it’s really entertaining.

The lunch

November 8, 2009
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Today after church i went to buy spices and veggies, and ended up cooking something really interesting. There was a banana in my fridge “maturing” for about a month now (totally brown on the outside, but not rotten), and since i don’t really like that state of the fruit i decided to fry it—years ago once i had fried banana in a chinese restaurant back home. On olive oil, with chicken, the banana soon disappeared, turning into sauce. Also played: the juice of a whole lime, loads of ginger, basil, some turmeric and paprika (red and ground), a bit of my beloved pirosarany from home, cabbage, paprika (yellow and fresh) and olives. It ended up really pleasant. What pleasant, great. (And i’m being modest here.) The coffee before lunch finally managed to wake me up somewhat, though i’m still not that fresh and lively. I realised what they were talking about with “coats your tongue”—it really left a nice feeling. I like to drink my orange-grapefruit juice mix after coffee anyways, but this way it’s simply magnificent.