Saturday, June 25, 2011

香港へ行きましょう!#YUI

I will be heading off to Hong Kong in about 15 hours' time for GSS (Global Summer Studies) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong! Which can only mean one thing - 6 weeks of awesomely good food! (which is probably the only reason why I go there 8D)

Last time I was in Hong Kong in 2010, (here and here), it was to attend SCANDAL's very first one-man show overseas...

This time, by a stroke of insanely good fortune, I will be attending YUI's very first live outside Japan!!



How fortunate was I?

Her concert will start tomorrow, 26th June, at 8pm. Guess when I will be arriving in Hong Kong?

...26th June, at 10am

MIND-BLOWING! *boom*

Although I won't be at the airport to welcome her (by now she'd have touched down in Hong Kong, as well as touched several of fellow fans' hands D:), being able to attend her live is an incredible lucky coincidence.

I will cherish it.

Enjoy it to the very last second.

YUIさんとYUI-LOVERSの皆さん、一緒に最後までお楽しましょう!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

I heart Japan


Its been 2 weeks since the earthquake and the resulting tsunamis struck Japan, and its been on the front pages of newspapers ever since.

While there have been equally devastating earthquakes in the past (Haiti, Sichuan), I must admit I have paid much more attention to the situation in Japan, mainly because of my interest in Japanese pop culture, language and of course the music. While most of the news have been focused on the unfolding nuclear disaster in Fukushima, what shook me was watching an online video showing the tsunamis sweeping aside whole residential areas - the extent of the destruction wasn't that apparent to me until that video.

1 thing really struck me during this whole ordeal - the rise of social media (Twitter) as a tool for information dissemination as well as communication where traditional means failed, and the rising power of the Internet over traditional media. While I was safe in Singapore, I could feel the collective spirit of the Japanese people from various first-person recounts, as well as the non-stop twitter feed of the many Japanese celebrities I "follow" on Twitter. One particular tweet that caught my eye was something that went along the lines of "If you need help, please tweet your location with the hashtag #helpme #jishin".

(hashtags enable people to categorically search for tweets. "jishin" is Japanese for earthquake.)
Another thing that really left a deep impression on me was the ability of the Japanese people to cope with the disaster. When most people would have gone into a state of panic or despair, they remained calm and stoic, despite losing homes, family members and much of their livelihood. Elsewhere in less affected parts, most tried to go about their lives as normal even as blackouts brought down the transport system. I was particularly impressed by a report of thousands of workers walking several kilometers home from work on the day of the earthquake (the trains were stopped) with shops and businesses along the way offering their amenities to them. Orderly queuing for limited trains, voluntarily cutting back on electricity use, buying only what is required (although there were cases of panic buying) - to them, its all about helping one another despite inconveniences to one's self. Their collective resilience and endurance in the face of difficulty really deserve a lot of respect from the rest of the world.

And what can we do, as outsiders, other than dig deep into our pockets for donations?

Well for one we'd do well to stop believing all that bullcrap about radiation reaching Singapore. If you've been talking on your handphone for the past 30minutes you've probably received more radiation than any potential dust that floats our way anyway. And if you've panic-bought iodine tablets to swallow in case radiation poisoning, I can safely say that you've wasted your money.

The same applies to Japanese produce - if it gets past our scanners, its probably safe to eat. All that news about tainted vegetables, milk and water only serves to increase unnecessary fear. Read it yes, but for goodness' sake don't overreact and avoid everything Japanese totally. Paranoia doesn't help anything - if the Japanese economy were to recover, we should do our part to help. On that same note, don't stop eating Japanese food, or buying Japanese products. (This should give me a reason to order a couple of SCANDAL DVDs online :p). There's really no reason to give up all that delicious sushi, sashimi, ramen, seafood and Meiji chocolates just because of some exaggerated news reporting.

On the bright side, I stepped into Isetan's basement market in Shaw House this afternoon and saw a healthy crowd inside. I did buy a nice haul of mini taiyaki to munch on the way home from Japanese class. おいしかったです!



And if you have a Japanese friend or relatives and friends in Japan, do give them friendly words of encouragement instead of pestering them to leave the country. Most of the people I know connected to Japan would love to stay there and help out in some way.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

50% of this blog post was concocted on an aging Nokia E63 phone, due to me switching off everything that requires a power socket for Earth Hour.

Did you turn off your lights? Fortunately for us, its a voluntary thing. For the Japanese in the areas affected by rolling blackouts, Earth Hour happens every few hours.

Something to mull about as we grope around in the darkness.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

First geek post of 2011

Since I'm at home on a school day (just went to the doc and he said I'm finally free from crutches!), I decided to write a long-overdue post. And a geeky one at that.

and here it is - the updated list of free, useful apps that currently reside on my machines.

1) Microsoft Security Essentials http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/



I abandoned AVG Internet Security for this, mainly because AVG 2o11 refused to co-exist with my COMODO firewall, something I couldn't sacrifice for the sake of an updated AVG version. So I went searching for an alternative, and MSE popped up with very good reviews. One review in particular caused me to go ahead with MSE "...these guys at MSE are working to protect their own product (Windows)..."

Made sense to me. Low on resources, unobtrusive, regular updates, scanning is fast, and according to many websites has a fairly good detection rate. And its free!

2) COMODO Firewall (and Anti-virus) http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/



I've been using this for many years now, and it hasn't disappointed me yet. It usually detects malicious stuff way before my anti-virus could even sniff at it, which says a lot about its monitoring ability. Excellent replacement for the Windows Firewall.

It has a setting called Defense+ that prevents unauthorised installations, but isn't for the faint hearted - programme updates and innocent installations usually cause it to raise the alarm, something I've learnt to live with. Besides, it does let me know what's happening behind my back in my computer.

3) VLC Player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/



If you've heard of it, no surprises there. It is THE open source video player that can play almost every video format out there, and has replaced the player I've been using for years (Media Player Classic). Its fast and has no problem playing HD videos, although I've had a few problems with subtitles.

4) MusicBee http://www.getmusicbee.com/



For those who don't own iPhones/iPods or are not using Macs and are craving an iTunes-like experience this player is for you. I was looking for a replacement for my old SongBird, which was crashing and starting to lag, when I chanced upon MusicBee. Amazingly it looks almost like SongBird, minus the lag and the crashes. It scrobbles to Last.fm flawlessly, and playback is smooth, with the songs almost starting immediately once you click "play". One drawback is that it doesn't show up on my Windows Live Messenger, which might be just me.

5) Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/

This little tool was introduced to me by a friend, and its amazingly useful! It works like an online storage box of sorts, and you can sync its contents across all your computers and devices. And its as simple as dragging and dropping into the Dropbox folder in one computer, and voila! You can access it anywhere with an Internet connection! You can also share files with friends who have Dropbox accounts as well.

6) Dekisoft Monitor Off http://www.dekisoft.com/mou.php

This little gadget turns off your monitor with a click of the mouse or by pressing a hotkey on the keyboard. Extremely useful for laptops and can help save battery life as well. I use it whenever I transform my laptop into a music player.

7) GIMP http://www.gimp.org/



Free Photoshop anyone? Does almost everything that Photoshop can do, and is an incredibly powerful image editing software. I don't like its floating interface though, which can be changed via downloadable skins (something which I haven't gotten round to doing)

8) Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/



If you ever need a free relatively basic audio editor, Audacity works just fine. It has tonnes of editing options that I haven't fully explored yet, aside from the usual cut and paste, equalising, pitching and normalising.

9) 7zip http://www.7-zip.org/

Annoyed by WinRAR telling you to purchase the product because your 30 days trial is up? 7zip unrars those .rar files (something Window's native unzipper doesn't), as well as many other compressed formats. And it doesn't annoy you because its FREE. It doesn't pack into .rar though.

There you have it. I have others, like CCleaner, but those have been mentioned far too many times (and underlining their importance).

Monday, January 10, 2011

The Simple Things.

And so, after surgery on my left knee to repair a torn ACL ligament, I am currently one legged. Well, if you count the 2 crutches I use to swing around, make it 3. And with the special leg brace on, I look like I have bionic left leg that could propel me to insane heights or hit insane running speeds. Unfortunately its just a few pieces of plastic and foam.

Nothing much has changed really, except that I can't really leave the house as much as I want to. Theoretically I could, but seeing a 3 legged guy on the bus/train isn't the most welcome sight in the world ain't it? It usually means "Aw damn, I gotta give up my comfy seat now", followed by a fake smile, and gesturing at the person to have your seat. And horrors, what if all the seats are taken up by old people? To have an old woman give up her seat for you, that would be the ultimate embarrassment.

And taxis are just too crazy expensive.

Daily activities and routines now take twice as long. Actually, almost everything takes twice the amount of time. I take 2 times longer to wake up, 2 times longer to fall asleep, 2 times longer to bathe, 2 times longer to get changed, 2 times longer to walk (oh alright, hobble) to anywhere, 2 times longer to... you get the idea.

But really, nothing much has changed. I can still sit in front of the computer screen for hours on end (actually, that's pretty much the only thing I can do). Or laze on the couch with a bunch of Nat Geo magazines and comics. Or watch documentaries and dramas which I haven't been watching for a long time.

And would you know it, my online time has been cut drastically, mostly because its much more comfortable on the sofa compared to the computer chair which has whacked-out cushioning thanks to endless compression by my butt. Which brings me to the realization that the sofa will probably suffer the same consequences. That, and the fact that I've just completed the Starcraft 2 campaign. I know, time to move on to Battle.net, but I've yet to play a single skirmish match against the A.I yet.

All these has made me really appreciate the simple things in life that we usually take for granted. And thanks to a special someone who will be visiting me in the coming days, being one-legged for the next few weeks doesn't seem so bad at all :P

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On that note, it does give me a valid reason to skip the first week of school so that I can camp at home and fight the infamous NTU Star Wars.

Watch out Death Star, I have my proton torpedo locked onto your exhaust port.