Judging from Markvs's previous post I'm not the only one having a rough week.
But let him tell you of his and let me tell you of mine. We've got a container coming up. If all goes well we're loading on Friday and next week will be smoother sailing with at least one fun project coming up.
But the workload for this container, just one, is serously unproportioned. We have a new location from where we are loading from - I will arrange the workforce and loading. We have a new shipping company we are using - extra worry. The products for the container won't be finished until day before the loading and will need to be transported to a different warehouse. Oh, and we have several side projects going in to the container including prints and stands.
So I'm running between the factories doing the products and arranging everything for the container. If I pull this off I believe most future containers will be much, much easier. It's just that this one can not be late and is more difficult than any of the previous ones.
I know it's my job, sure, but I'm stuck between a deadline and my boss doing equal parts of work, worry and hoping for the best. It's stressful enough. On a side note, I used to have problems waking up in the morning; up to this I've been a late sleeper. Not anymore. I wake up 20-30 minutes before my alarm, having checked the time usually more than an hour before. Nothing serious, but I believe it's caused by pressure at work. No problems falling asleep though, and I get enough hours a night to get trough the day, it's just different.
OP out.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Decisions
In life, there are decisions. Always. Lately for me they have been whether to buy Warhammer 40 000 Daemonhunter Miniatures or continue with Tau Empire. Now, however, I have a new smaller decision ahead concerning a bit different subject; Where should I live? Basically I have three options; Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Hong Kong or Finland. Each have their sides, but right now I'm sick of jumping from one place to another so I'd prefer staying in Malaysia.
So the decision has been already made? No. I have to consider social relations. Fuck. Life without social relations eventually ends to apathy, but on the other hand, it is so much easier to "jive" when you don't have any family or other than personal and work-related responsibilities to take care of. General consensus is that the latter option is naive, but I don't really know. I'm just tired of the hectic of "traveling" and moving. I've moved all my life as far as I can remember, mainly due to my parents.
The thing about working abroad is that eventually (sooner than you think) you want to settle down. I don't know why the hell running around the globe appeals to some people, but for me, if you haven't settled down for at least a while, you never experience the small details which really makes life worth living. Yeah, you can enjoy some parties, exotic girls, diarrhea and all the other crap related to traveling in not more than just few months. But what about the local communities, "underground" food culture, small shops you can't find in any other way than by luck and knowing at least 20 people. Those are the things I travel and work abroad for. And right now I'm getting into them slowly already in Malaysia, so moving again doesn't appeal a damn bit to me.
Funny enough, right now the decision about this seems to be entirely in my hands. No matter what will be my choice, some people will get pissed or unhappy in some way, but I don't know if I'm actually up for such humanity anymore - to try to please everyone else. Would be best to think about myself for change, big time.
If one thinks this post was too personal, get a grip. Everyone's pissed about moving, and anyone who was required (or opted) to move constantly can relate and feel how stupid it feels. You can't get anything nice & permanent cause you're about to move, neither can you waste your money on partying or passing time 'cause you need to save for your new settlement.
"Moving! Fuck yeah! Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah. Moving, FUCK YEAH! Freedom is the only way yeah!"*
*sang in a tune of "America, Fuck Yeah" from the Animation; Team America: World Police.
So the decision has been already made? No. I have to consider social relations. Fuck. Life without social relations eventually ends to apathy, but on the other hand, it is so much easier to "jive" when you don't have any family or other than personal and work-related responsibilities to take care of. General consensus is that the latter option is naive, but I don't really know. I'm just tired of the hectic of "traveling" and moving. I've moved all my life as far as I can remember, mainly due to my parents.
The thing about working abroad is that eventually (sooner than you think) you want to settle down. I don't know why the hell running around the globe appeals to some people, but for me, if you haven't settled down for at least a while, you never experience the small details which really makes life worth living. Yeah, you can enjoy some parties, exotic girls, diarrhea and all the other crap related to traveling in not more than just few months. But what about the local communities, "underground" food culture, small shops you can't find in any other way than by luck and knowing at least 20 people. Those are the things I travel and work abroad for. And right now I'm getting into them slowly already in Malaysia, so moving again doesn't appeal a damn bit to me.
Funny enough, right now the decision about this seems to be entirely in my hands. No matter what will be my choice, some people will get pissed or unhappy in some way, but I don't know if I'm actually up for such humanity anymore - to try to please everyone else. Would be best to think about myself for change, big time.
If one thinks this post was too personal, get a grip. Everyone's pissed about moving, and anyone who was required (or opted) to move constantly can relate and feel how stupid it feels. You can't get anything nice & permanent cause you're about to move, neither can you waste your money on partying or passing time 'cause you need to save for your new settlement.
"Moving! Fuck yeah! Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah. Moving, FUCK YEAH! Freedom is the only way yeah!"*
*sang in a tune of "America, Fuck Yeah" from the Animation; Team America: World Police.
Friday, July 25, 2008
My favourite colour is transparent
I'll be off to Finland for a few week holiday so my posting will be slow for a while. With that said, let's move to the two issues at hand.
There is a trainstation close to the border of Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Not the KCR station, but the real train station. It's a really nice and modern station. The trains on Chinese railways (especially in our neighbourhood) tend to be quite new as well. With the economy booming, China has been improving the infrastructure quite well, and it's a really nice feeling taking a train which smells like a new car.
Anyway. The train station in Shenzhen. For incoming trains, there is one platform and one small exit from it. The exit is about 5 meters wide and has stairs going down. What this means is that when a train unloads its passengers to the station (last station on the rail), the whole system just chokes.
It takes forever to get anywhere. It's ridiculous!.. The reason I'm writing this is that I had to wait for a good 10 minutes to get out of the platform in the blazing heat of mid-day sun. I was wearing a full suit (had a meeting earlier) and carrying my bags. And I was sweating like a pig. Not your cute little piglet but a fullgrown swine.
Warm weather is nice. Sunny days are nice. Even hot weather can be nice sometimes. But NEVER when wearing a suit! Damn it all to hell.
Few hundred little Chinese trying to squeeze through a 5 meter opening all at once. And one super pissed off Gweilo.
No point in the above. Nor in the below.
One thing I've noticed in Hong Kong (and now in China too) is that a large percentage of girls/women in Hong Kong (and probably in China) who dye their hair are actually not that good looking. And they are probably thinking that doing these kind of "improvements" would somehow improve their situation and make them stick out of the crowd to their advantage. Well, no. They don't.
What they do, is attract attention, yes. But... You see an asian girl with a funky colour hair and you're bound to pay attention. 'First mission accomplished', thinks the girl. But you'll quickly realize that despite the hair colour it's just an ugly broad.
Fail.
Off to Finland in 7 hours. Super fun times. Tchau!
There is a trainstation close to the border of Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Not the KCR station, but the real train station. It's a really nice and modern station. The trains on Chinese railways (especially in our neighbourhood) tend to be quite new as well. With the economy booming, China has been improving the infrastructure quite well, and it's a really nice feeling taking a train which smells like a new car.
Anyway. The train station in Shenzhen. For incoming trains, there is one platform and one small exit from it. The exit is about 5 meters wide and has stairs going down. What this means is that when a train unloads its passengers to the station (last station on the rail), the whole system just chokes.
It takes forever to get anywhere. It's ridiculous!.. The reason I'm writing this is that I had to wait for a good 10 minutes to get out of the platform in the blazing heat of mid-day sun. I was wearing a full suit (had a meeting earlier) and carrying my bags. And I was sweating like a pig. Not your cute little piglet but a fullgrown swine.
Warm weather is nice. Sunny days are nice. Even hot weather can be nice sometimes. But NEVER when wearing a suit! Damn it all to hell.
Few hundred little Chinese trying to squeeze through a 5 meter opening all at once. And one super pissed off Gweilo.
No point in the above. Nor in the below.
One thing I've noticed in Hong Kong (and now in China too) is that a large percentage of girls/women in Hong Kong (and probably in China) who dye their hair are actually not that good looking. And they are probably thinking that doing these kind of "improvements" would somehow improve their situation and make them stick out of the crowd to their advantage. Well, no. They don't.
What they do, is attract attention, yes. But... You see an asian girl with a funky colour hair and you're bound to pay attention. 'First mission accomplished', thinks the girl. But you'll quickly realize that despite the hair colour it's just an ugly broad.
Fail.
Off to Finland in 7 hours. Super fun times. Tchau!
Last One Out
In the news again, Three Gorges Dam.
The government finally finished evacuating all the people from under the Three Gorges Dam project. The last person evauated was a lady whom the police dragged out of the water. She protested to the end but was removed.
The key concerns of the people are of course the meager compensations given for their houses. In the usual Chinese style the payments aren't much and the protesters say many have been forced to move into their relatives houses. The houses weren't even left for the water to take care of - a few hundred people reportedly came and dismantled the last houses last week.
The whole artificial lake displaced some 1.4 million people. It's a grand monument for Hu Jintao. You can critisize the dam all you want, but it's very grand to have built a 2km+ wall holding back a 660km reservoir of water during your administation.
Several smaller hydroelectric dams along the river would have been more efficient, I recall hearing 12 being the optimal amount instead of 1. And we don't know yet how much the hillsides next to the reservoir will erode and fall to the water. We also don't know how much waste the local cities will dump in to the huge lage. Oh, and we won't know how corrupted the relocation program really was, all we have is accusations.
But we can hope the dam doesn't break. It's a nasty worst-case-scenario, with possibly millions of lives on the line. Luckily China isn't the most likely target for a military or a terrorist attack targeting a dam, but it's a large target. We must also hope no large earthquake hits the area and that it was well enough built to withstand the masses of water.
At least the government doesn't see cause for worry and claim the site is safe. But as an unrelated note, they have "encouraged" anohter 4 million people to relocate from the areas nearby by 2020. Completely unrelated to the dam as they say.
I'll credit this info to Yahoo News, who got their news from AFP and Xinhua.
OP out.
The government finally finished evacuating all the people from under the Three Gorges Dam project. The last person evauated was a lady whom the police dragged out of the water. She protested to the end but was removed.
The key concerns of the people are of course the meager compensations given for their houses. In the usual Chinese style the payments aren't much and the protesters say many have been forced to move into their relatives houses. The houses weren't even left for the water to take care of - a few hundred people reportedly came and dismantled the last houses last week.
The whole artificial lake displaced some 1.4 million people. It's a grand monument for Hu Jintao. You can critisize the dam all you want, but it's very grand to have built a 2km+ wall holding back a 660km reservoir of water during your administation.
Several smaller hydroelectric dams along the river would have been more efficient, I recall hearing 12 being the optimal amount instead of 1. And we don't know yet how much the hillsides next to the reservoir will erode and fall to the water. We also don't know how much waste the local cities will dump in to the huge lage. Oh, and we won't know how corrupted the relocation program really was, all we have is accusations.
But we can hope the dam doesn't break. It's a nasty worst-case-scenario, with possibly millions of lives on the line. Luckily China isn't the most likely target for a military or a terrorist attack targeting a dam, but it's a large target. We must also hope no large earthquake hits the area and that it was well enough built to withstand the masses of water.
At least the government doesn't see cause for worry and claim the site is safe. But as an unrelated note, they have "encouraged" anohter 4 million people to relocate from the areas nearby by 2020. Completely unrelated to the dam as they say.
I'll credit this info to Yahoo News, who got their news from AFP and Xinhua.
OP out.
Monday, July 21, 2008
The Dark Knight
If Hellboy, Batman, Hancock, Hulk, and Iron Man were to have last man standing in the Coliseum with no other ways out besides victory or death, who would win? Joker. Previously played by Jack Nicholson, the greatest actor of all time, and now played by a seemingly lousy wimp, Heath Ledger. But before jumping and screaming, hear me out; Ledger actually outdoes Jack Nicholson! When I saw The Dark Knight yesterday, the moment Joker appeared and started to talk I went all like "This is the best thing ever, in all of chaos' endless possibilities, this is THE best fucking thing!". The new Joker is more sinister, more chaotic, more intelligent, more cold, and without an identity, which by the way does a lot good to the character . Something that Tim Burton didn't earlier realize, albeit I admire his works, was the fact that if one drops a villain to "normal people's level" even temporarily, the character loses a lot of its grimness and power. Seemingly Burton thought the completely opposite.
Actually one could easily argue how Jack Napier (earlier Joker) was far more clear and stylish character when played by Nicholson, and how Ledger's version without an identity was just more chaotic, but not necessarily better. However, when the original Batman movie came out, the Joker was a rather normal person just gone crazy - and albeit at that time he may have seemed like a real scary and paranormal character, nowadays a traditional lunatic just won't do. Enough madmen in the movies alright. When I heard about the blasphemy of sequel being made to Batman Begins, and Joker being re-enacted, I thought that the new guy must look like a ridiculous B-class villain, unless he is at least 10,0000 times more sinister and mysterious than Jack Nicholson's masterwork. But, again, he really made it.
SPOILER! There was one little flaw in the new Joker however. He seemingly showed a small sense of humanity when he started to explain his traumatic childhood, and how he got his scars. However, later in the movie, he has a different explanation to those scars, which made me hope , and I still hope, that those explanations about his scars were just lies all the way. /SPOILER! I don't want villains to be "abused children" or crap alike, I want them to be genuinely logical, intelligent, sinister and just plain crazy for the sake of it. That's primitive, that's brutal and that's like the way it should be. In other words, villains with no traumatic childhood etc. are just far more fascinating. I hate when there needs to be an explanation in the movies for people's "bad" behavior. It really is a spit in to the face of audience, when everything is readily chewed for them. Just open your mouth and swallow.
This is the point which makes Batman movies so great; There is a morality game all the way throughout the movies, where you really can't say most of the times if Batman himself is doing any good. And if the thing with new Joker was really how I hope it to be, that he has just gone berserk through logical reasoning , it is really how "good and bad" should be done in every movie. Not in the way that you have in most movies "Ooh, his dog died when he was 12, and now he is killing everyone." For most people the quoted is just fine, and thus, they can go safely home after movie without fearing of becoming killers themselves 'cause their dog didn't die when they were twelve.
The Dark Knight is a best movie of all time for me, currently. Movie-wise it's maybe not that great to some, but I really don't mind about minor details if the overall feeling of the movie is great and entertaining. Just like in music, the main point in movies for me is the atmosphere. The Dark Knight has a brilliant atmosphere, and although Gotham has too much daylight, it is only a minor "mistake" in my books. Go and see it, it outdoes Batman Begins, Batman the Movie, and Batman Returns. Those two other movies including Batman are not to be spoken of. They suck.
Actually one could easily argue how Jack Napier (earlier Joker) was far more clear and stylish character when played by Nicholson, and how Ledger's version without an identity was just more chaotic, but not necessarily better. However, when the original Batman movie came out, the Joker was a rather normal person just gone crazy - and albeit at that time he may have seemed like a real scary and paranormal character, nowadays a traditional lunatic just won't do. Enough madmen in the movies alright. When I heard about the blasphemy of sequel being made to Batman Begins, and Joker being re-enacted, I thought that the new guy must look like a ridiculous B-class villain, unless he is at least 10,0000 times more sinister and mysterious than Jack Nicholson's masterwork. But, again, he really made it.
SPOILER! There was one little flaw in the new Joker however. He seemingly showed a small sense of humanity when he started to explain his traumatic childhood, and how he got his scars. However, later in the movie, he has a different explanation to those scars, which made me hope , and I still hope, that those explanations about his scars were just lies all the way. /SPOILER! I don't want villains to be "abused children" or crap alike, I want them to be genuinely logical, intelligent, sinister and just plain crazy for the sake of it. That's primitive, that's brutal and that's like the way it should be. In other words, villains with no traumatic childhood etc. are just far more fascinating. I hate when there needs to be an explanation in the movies for people's "bad" behavior. It really is a spit in to the face of audience, when everything is readily chewed for them. Just open your mouth and swallow.
This is the point which makes Batman movies so great; There is a morality game all the way throughout the movies, where you really can't say most of the times if Batman himself is doing any good. And if the thing with new Joker was really how I hope it to be, that he has just gone berserk through logical reasoning , it is really how "good and bad" should be done in every movie. Not in the way that you have in most movies "Ooh, his dog died when he was 12, and now he is killing everyone." For most people the quoted is just fine, and thus, they can go safely home after movie without fearing of becoming killers themselves 'cause their dog didn't die when they were twelve.
The Dark Knight is a best movie of all time for me, currently. Movie-wise it's maybe not that great to some, but I really don't mind about minor details if the overall feeling of the movie is great and entertaining. Just like in music, the main point in movies for me is the atmosphere. The Dark Knight has a brilliant atmosphere, and although Gotham has too much daylight, it is only a minor "mistake" in my books. Go and see it, it outdoes Batman Begins, Batman the Movie, and Batman Returns. Those two other movies including Batman are not to be spoken of. They suck.
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