Scribblings of the Metropolitician

New Policy: Be Civil or Be Banned

I don't have the resources to get a comment "sheriff" going on this blog, like the Marmot has, but I've made a new rule, which I've decided to announce here.

In the interest of getting more people to comment and feel safe from being attacked by merciless trollsters, and to reduce the back-and-forth bickering (as opposed to real debating) that, at times, drags my comment section into a list of just two people goign back-and-forth, I've instituted some new rules.

While I generally don't erase posts or comments, and have only ever erased 2 comments on this blog, one of them in relation to a potentially libelous statement I made, I will start deleting abusive comments immediately, and permanently banning their authors as a matter of course.

This doesn't apply to the vast majority of you reading this blog, but I wanted to make it clear, so that more of you might be encouraged to post comments. Also, this is a blog, not The New York Times, and I have been more than tolerant of allowing various opinions to be posted and remain posted here in the comments section, to a fault. Even the rabid anti-Semitism of recent weeks or racist comments about me have been left up.

So the cries of "illiberalism" or "censorship" are pretty baseless and silly. You can say whatever you want that is on topic and engages the conversation, but you start attacking and calling names, pepper your comments with slurs against entire nations or peoples, and you get banned and your comments erased.

And reporting abuse to ISP's is a click away, as well. You'd be surprised at how much information is tracked in wherever you go on the Internet.

To all my civil and thoughtful readers, thanks for coming to this blog.

Shout Out – "Black Man in China"

Now that I've decided to give Ron Sims a proper mentioning on this blog, definitely take a look at his most recent episode, in which he makes the pilgrimage to the Shaolin Temple. I think you will be as surprised as I was to see what he finds there.

Now, this is a video podcast done right. I think this works because 1) it's short and sweet, and 2) it doesn't rely on a strong interest in China as much as the POV of the person doing the show. Seeing the China through the eyes of a funny guy you'd definitely want to have a beer with makes it fun; I'm not gonna sit through even National Geographic's take on the story, no matter how well produced.

That's the power of podcasting, people.

And who else actually does real graffiti art (here's a video!) in addition to podcasting and has all the skills that go along with that? This is a talented "black man in China" – I see Ron Sims going places.

Personality goes a long way, as Mr. Tarantino once said, albeit virtually. I wish I had that much personality. *SNIFF* Is it because I'm only half a black man in Korea? Hehe. Joking, obviously.

On his YouTube director's page, he describes the show chronicling the life of "A Black Guy from Cleveland [who] moves to Fuzhou China, Ha! it's funny already." We're both black men from Ohio who moved to Asia. And I will join you in the ranks of video podcasting soon, albeit in a very different way from Ron. If you ever get to Korea, you've got a hookup here. That's an invite.

Keep it going on, Ron!

New Link – SeoulLife.net

A great blog that is updated fresh and daily, and has that rare extra element of wit and smarts that I like. I've added it to my select list of links.

And Cat's cats are cute. Almost as cute as my cats. Almost.

Base-ic Instincts

"That's what blogs are forrrrr..."
[Cue Chorus]

Here's to Gardner in Korea, cool commenter from this blog who helped me out with my having "been kookminned" out of getting the cash from my money orders – the type that can't be used outside of the US.

Well, since I figured that the base IS the US, for all intents and legal purposes, and has a federal post office there (two, in fact), that I might get this postal money order exchanged.

So I met Gardner and headed off to the first post office, which only had enough cash to exchange one check. I was glad my gracious host had the time, since the main exchange didn't have the cash, either, and told me that they'd probably have it later in the day, around 4.

So what to do? EAT. Now, of course, I had to treat, but I felt kind of like I was the one getting the fun, since I was so happy to just even be on the base again (I had had access until I was 25 as a military dependent, and go there when the parents visit Korea).

I've never been happier to be inside the bowels of American normalcy.

We almost hit this bar-and-grill that Gardner in Korea suggested, but it chose that day to be closed for cleaning or some such. So we ended up at the Dragon Hill's Mexican place.

I know, a lotta people complain about that place. But they're crazy. That place rocks. Shredded pork, BBQ spare ribs, mashed taters...oh, my! I wish I had two stomachs.

Wait. I already do. Or so Korean folks tell me. Hehe.

Well, that day, my 배 was really, really 나왔어 like a mofo'.

I had cash in the pocket, a bursting belly, and I bought two pies and apple fritters as sweet bribes and payoff for missing so much work unexpectedly that day, as well as for myself.

I'm pretty well settled in here in Korea, but there's nothing like BBQ ribs that don't come with 20-year-olds in striped uniforms, killer cheer, and purple knee socks. OK – so sometimes, I like the kneesocks...

Anyway.

I can't help it. No matter what people say, no matter how uncool some may think it to be to salivate at the prospect of getting into the base, let them see what they do if they get an invitation to sticky macaroni, salty pizza, and Cool Ranch Doritos™. Cherry Coke, "real" hot dogs, and link sausages.

And white teenagers. And black people. Fat people. Cars that stop for pedestrians. Women in military uniforms. Houses with yards. Stuff like that.

Did I mention Cool Ranch Doritos™?

I feel a tear welling up.

JK – Just Make a Blog, Dude

JK - The reason why I think your argument isn't convincing is that it's all a function of your narrow, singular experience (which is a limit all of us have) combined with your continuing to read that experience through a lot of assumptions that are not as necessarily as a priori "true" as you think they are, combined with the fact that you seem to read everything through the lenses of national categories (the Japanese do this, the Koreans do that) and equivocation (blacks in Japan experience X, Korean Americans in the US experience Y, therefore whites in Japan should experience Z).

It doesn't work this way, if you really look at the peculiarities of the situation, along with some of its informative parallele.

You seem to be setting up a straw man that frankly, I don't think exists in the monolithic way you describe it to be such that you can represent yourself as being on the receiving end of this singularly crazy chimera of white men in Korea. Yeah, there are a lot of annoying white people here who don't recognize their own (largely male) white privelege and only see the examples of their apparent discrimination and don't see how their very mode of existence here depends on their whiteness and their passport. Or whiteness as the passport, as the case may be.

Yet, the majority of those people grumble to themselves or people like themselves, they might complain about it on some blogs, but the majority of those people don't turn into pro-Japanese Korea-haters. Come on, dude. I know you're really put off by the site in question, as I am, but let's both be real and admit that that is a particularly unique site. Yeah, it touches a nerve with many white expats, but there's a big difference between MAKING a site versus passively becoming part of its community.

And pattern describing the "typical" white male expat who dates and even marries a Korean woman, comes to or lives in Korea with "open eyes" and then over the years, builds up a bank of derision and anger at being discriminated against and then "explodes" in fits of anti-Korean rage – man, it just doesn't jibe with what I've seen.

And given your previous comments that seem to so prominently assume that people like Matt were dissed by Korean women and are just angry, or by extension, that Korean men overseas who give white men shit for being with a Korean woman become the source of such rage for those white men – I think that they explain your psychology much more than the apparent motivations of the white men in question. In any case, it's a pretty weak accusation.

From what I've seen – and this seems more reasonable than your explanation, although I question the very utility of linking romance with Korean women to eventually hating Koreea, but – the majority of men who date Korean women and marry them are reasonable people who don't become wild Korea-haters, but actually have had to find ways to deal with the occasional rebuff, stare, or comment from folks.

And we have to think about generations and how things change. The majority of white men TODAY who get married to Korean women whom *I* know and see around - and I have attended several such weddings just recently – have made great affective committments to their spouses. It's part of the process of getting married to anyone. They've already come to terms with being the odd-man-out, and also generally know a lot about the culture, many of them speak conversational Korean, and definitely do not "hate" Korea or even Korean men, as you tend to assume.

Am I defending all white men? No. I'm not even working within such a paradigm of "us vs. them" regarding white men and whomever else. But I am saying that if you're talking about WHITE MEN WHO MARRY KOREAN WOMEN, the majority of them don't end up becoming Korea-haters.

In fact, the people whom I think you're talking about – people who seem to cheese you off to the point that I don't even think you're being reasonable anymore, like Matt – are not typical.

Even if you're talking about the majority of expat blogs written by white men, I don't think the majority are Korea-hating, right-wing Japan-boosting sites, nor do they go on and on about hating Korea, as you say they do. The majority of sites in the Korean blogosphere – as in any blogosphere – are personal and reflect the stage of life where the blogger is at. Most are English teachers trying to give wry and witty observations on life in Korea, being an outsider for the first time, strange and quirky cultural differences, weird food tales, and the like.

The majority of Korea blogs are remarkably mundane and apolitical, existing as functions of the blogger's experiences. Since the majority of these blogs are functions of people generally experiencing what I call the "Stage 1" of life in Korea – "Oh, there's lotsa Korean people and look, they have a different logic than me, and look, weird food, and wow, I'm a minority for the first time in my life, and gee, I wish I could be understood for who I am instead of whom I appear to be" – and there's nothing wrong with that.

And along the way, you get some righteous indignation about being discriminated against in Korea as a white person for the first time. It's part of the playbook, guy. I went through my own version of that in 1994. Korean Americans go through their own version of this, but instead, you often get "Oh my gosh, I'm really much more 'American' than I made room for in my 22-year-old identity politics, and wow, why don't Koreans see me for who I am instead of whom I appear to be?" From watching all types of people come and go through Korea, I'm struck at how similar the Stage 1 reaction is, as opposed to how different they are.

I'm not saying I want to sit down and listen to the conversations of white people complaining about "finally understanding what it means to be black back home" over beer; nor will I be friends and hang out with people going on and on about how much Korea sucks and America's suddenly great and whatnot. It's so Stage 1 life in Korea - no matter where you go, there's nothing to make someone more patriotic than a year spent overseas. And it can happen in a lot of ways: a Korean American from LA might get all Korean nationalist and "Korean Pride" and "if it's Korean, it's good" for a while (seen a lot of that), while some white folks can get a martyr complex and all "I'm Malcolm X in Korea" (seen a lot of that, too). But most people keep it reasonable, and a few get excited about it over beers. I myself remember in 1996 reading Francis Fukuyama and once yelling duing a beer-filled debate about Hiroshima and the Smithsonian that "They deserved it! I'd bomb those motherfuckers again!"

Wow. The thoughts of a 23-year-old living overseas for the first time in a bar. Yeah, there was no real web back there on the island I lived on, international long distance was still more than a buck per minutes, and there were certainly no blogs or other ways to let off steam. Thank God, in my case. I don't want a record of things I said back then - umm, actually that would be kinda interesting, come to think of it – but the world isn't necessarily a better place for it.

But just try to interpret this "situation" honestly and reasonably – yeah, there's a site out there that really irks you. But what it sounds like you're doing is trying to place every annoying conversation or even annoying person into this singular category of the "angry white man" who, I'm sorry to say, I don't think exists, at least in the cartoon-character form you're describing.

Dude - it sounds like you need to make a blog. Get it out. Express. Add to the conversation. Seriously – that's why anyone – even the people whom you hate – make blogs. It's a vent, an overload cutoff system. It's why I blog. It's why many, many expats blog. It's probably why Occidentalism is a blog. We all got shit to get off of our chests, or something we want to say. You may think that I'm lying down with the devil for even saying so, but whether the blog is about "I Love My Korean Life" or "I Hate Korea" or "Me and My Pet Turtles" or whatever – we all got something to say.

And no matter how you cut it, you obviously have something to say as well. You come here, you go there, you complain of having been unfairly banned, you have an agenda. You also seem to have a point-of-view. People with agendas, a point of view, and a lot to say generally need to blog.

So just do it, dude. I think you'll find that in the process, you'll see it's hard work to keep up with past the first couple weeks, you have to deal with people who disagree with you or even hate you, and yet, you have to find a way of dealing with them in a way that doesn't turn off your readers.

It's a process, a struggle, dude. And for me, something fun to do. In the end, blogging has gotta be fun, else you won't do it anymore. And for the readers, it's gotta be fun, else they won't come anymore. And once your blog is going, I think you'll see a lot of things differently and may just well come to add to something to the greater conversation in the process.

So make the blog, dude. I'm not being cheeky or facetious. I'm serious. Make it – I'll link to it as long as it's reasonable. Even if I find it unreasonable, I'll link to it in a post or two because it' s an interesting story, and I'm sure that readers both here and at Occi would be interested in seeing what you have to say.

Hey – you're guaranteed a much more public birth than most blogs get, so when's the opening date?

Kitty Porn

I thought my cat – Orenji – was pretty innocent, especially since he was neutered early and still tries to act like a baby. Recently, I was shocked to have this encounter. I was vexed, very vexed.

It was also a chance to play with my new program, Comic Life, that came with my Mac Pro. It rocks. Please excuse this indulgence, my cat narcissism, and publishing of kitty porn. Orenji's one-and-a-half years old – so what does that make him in human years?

If Orenji or I smoked, I think we'd need to share a cigarette.

Signups for Multimedia Production Classes!

Want to learn photography? How about podcasting? Want to learn how to properly produce a podcast in the first place? Want to bring your blogging to the next level?

Announcing second signups for the Multimedia Production classes. The course is 8 weeks, but pretty evenly divided between photography in the first half and multimedia in the second, which we're about to begin. The classes are 3-hour seminars, once per week, some conducted in my studio and a couple spent out in the field, made professional by an 80-inch projection screen fed by a superfast Mac, as well as a secure wireless Internet connection for your use.

We're coming up on the 4th session (next Sunday) of the multimedia production classes, having started to round up the photography portion of the class. For those who'd like to start right away with the podcasting/production/blogging portion of the class, now's the time for signups.

This is the portion that is a lot harder for many people – blogging, audio/video production, and podcasting. It's not rocket science – in fact, it's not so complex. But the learning curve can be steep if you're starting up alone but it's pretty straightforward when explained by someone else.

So far, we've done some basic photo theory, went out on the streets shooting, then did a basic Photoshop workshop in the studio. Next week we do a blogging overview, followed in the following weeks by podcast production, podcast creation, and then connecting the dots together in the blog and with other media formats.

Original image:

After levels control and minimal saturation and contrast adjustments applied (not so apparent in these compressed JPEGS):

Cropping choice 1:

Cropping choice 2:

Al depends on what you want. Here's an example of the photo analysis we did (nice Job, Brendan).

Original (after basic adjustments):

Some of our comments from the session:

Find this interesting? Interested? Drop me an email in the link at the top of this menu.

All Clouds Have a Brushed Aluminum Lining

Well, a pretty bad week has come to an end, but with one upbeat note.

I now own one of the fastest and most flexible personal computers in the world.

It's a dual dual-core Xeon Mac Pro, which a friend helped procure for me, since I've been hit so hard financially between moving and Hardware Disasters #1 and #2 that I needed a new computer. Not only that, since I directly depend on a computer for my income stream, not having one for 1-2 weeks would not just set me back X amount, but would actually prevent me from even starting to make it back.

Those who read my previous couple posts will understand why the next logical step is a professional Tower of Power, so once I had weighed the options and made the decision – with the credit card help of my Super Friend – we went to Myeongdong and walked out the door with it. It's not many times that you get to walk into the Apple Store and say "Wrap up one Mac Pro, please," so I savored the moment. We were big pimping.

I am one happy camper, let me tell you. I have accepted my troubles of the recent week, and am getting back to work, with a redoubled effort to get ahead with my new projects while keeping myself financially afloat. At least those efforts won't be hampered by a lack of computing power.

And I will be installing Windoze next week. Oh, the horror! But, like poking a bruise or picking a scab – who can resist? And this way, I'll be able to my Korean Internet banking from home and finally sign up for the NateOn chatting service (if foregners can do such a thing). It's going to be like sleeping with the enemy for REALS, but – hey – Mac and Windoze are friends, now, right?

I'm still a true believer, though – an old-school Mac freedom fighter. I still remember the days of the Power Computing sticker and the brief experiment in Mac clones – people actually thought Microsoft could be on the attack. Unrealistic, yes – but a pirate's dream.

But when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, he started by nixing the clones, restarting the entire Mac line with the candy-colored new "iBook" and "iMac" lines, armed with the powerful and pretty OS X, and then came iPods, Pixar's move to Disney and Jobs' move to the board of directors, and now, Apple's move to Intel chips.

Now, you can combine the strengths of both platforms – the ubiquitous-yet notoriously hack and virus-vulnerable Windoze OS will be best viewed (from next year's release of Leopard) inside the Mac OS's elegant, virus-free, and truly secure system. It's the best of both worlds – you gotta have Windoze in this world, but you don't have to worry about security if you run it in a window inside Mac OS X.

Or you can boot in either, which is the state it's in only for the next few months. In any case, why would you buy some generic Windows-compatible machine when you could get the equivalent of TWO computers for pretty much the same money?

Does anyone really think Apple won't double its market share next year? I mean now, you could choose to buy an Apple PURELY for the looks and just run Windoze, if you were a truly unenlightened philistine. You could get a Macbook for the pretty design and just run Mac when you hooked up your iPod.

A disgusting thought, but hey – they'd still have bought a Mac. This may be one of the best – out of many – ideas that Steve Jobs has ever had. And the industry's already talking about why smaller computer manufacturers like Dell should be shaking in their boots. Microsoft should be happy – for now – because it will still be selling copies of Windoze. But what happens over the next several years when people who have been slowly getting weaned on the elegantly superior OS X start asking the questions, "Do I really need to set up my network in Windows and pull my hair out every week? Why not just do it in an afternoon and not worry about it after that?"

Jobs has done the opposite of Bill Gates' brilliiant move in doing the unnthinkable – licensing software to go with the machines that everyone thought would be where the real profits were. Now, Jobs has remade the machine to run the two major softwares, and just might be able to start making in debt in the luddite conventional wisdom that the world's operating system is Windoze, no matter what you think about it.

To me, the true test and sign of change is Korea, which has always been Mac-unfriendly and infected with this false notion that the Mac system is actually "harder" than Windoze and only "specialists" and "media people" can even touch it. There's still this idea that Macs are inordinately expensive (they used to generally be twice to three times as expensive as equivalent computers in Korea, since Apple's proprietary hardware and software were always imported and there was no official Apple representation/distribution in Korea) and a sign of being a computer literati.

I still like that last assumption, since it's true. Hehe. Anyway, now the iPod has become an item of want here in Korea, and I think that once the word gets out that Macs run Windoze, Koreans could – in theory – get them.

Advice to Apple – knowing how things are marketed and sold here – if Apple had a commercial campaign here along the same lines as their casual, yet witty campaigns have been going, they'd hit a home run in Korea. Here's the pitch:

A pretty, perky agassi using an iPod, which everyone wants. A business dude trying to look cool by using his white Mac on a subway. She sits down next to him, because they're the Mac tribe, part of the same Apple family. You think she's just another "doenjang girl", with silly, superficial sensibilities. We get into her POV, and we find out she's listening to a ESL podcast. We get in his POV, and we see he's running Windoze. End with the line, "Abandon old assumptions. Get a Mac."

Or whatever gets the point across that 1) cool-looking Mac laptops are now as cheap as any Korean computer, 2) that same computer will run Windows, so yes, you can do your Internet banking and go to Daum cafes, 3) Mac actually handles multiple languages better than Windoze (and has since forever, actually, but that's another conversation), 4) Macs are more secure and no OS X viruses exist to date, 5) iPods gain so much more functionality (ICal, iPhoto, and other stuff works with them) than just iTunes when used with a Mac), and that "Macs and Windoze" just "go better together."

A campaign that gets those points across, combined with Macs' already-existent COOL POWER and BRAND-NAME POWER (as objects thought to be really expensive and inaccessible), would be unleashed if you just told the Korean consumer that Macs were two-computers-in-one, cool, and cheap.

All the time, when pulling out my white iBook, when people would get me talking about Mac, they would always say "I could never afford one." When I say that my old iBook was 1,700,000 won, or NOW, that the new Macbook that runs Windoze is around 1,200,000 won – they are always floored.

Or they say, "It's too hard" (which always started my eyes rolling) and "I'd have to learn the computer all over again." Then I swivel my Mac around and let them fiddle with it, noting that the only major difference is with the collapse, minimize, and expand buttons being cute red, yellow, and green (traffic light – hello!? – what's hard?!) and on the left side of the window instead of the right. Then I show them little neat finger tricks like Exposé or the powerful search tool Spotlight – and people always "ooh" and "aah."

Windoze Vista will be introducing features that are pretty much copies of the previous two things, much as the cute and fuzzy Window XP was a straight copy of the Mac OS X's cartoony and cute "Cocoa" style. But when Leopard comes out in early 2007, VIsta will be waaay too little, too late, much like the Playstation 3 is going to be a stillborn horror story. But – they're both coming anyway, although I think the PS3's demise will be much more sudden, apparent, and embarrassing.

I think Apple's rise – and Windows not "demise", but...hmm..."fade from the spotlight" – will be more gradual and not as obvious. But one day, perhaps 3 to 5 years from now, people will be sitting around and realize – "Whoa – when did Apple become the new rising sun around here?" in terms of not just mindshare, but marketshare as well.

The day is coming – that holy day – when I will be able to do my Korean Internet banking in OS X.

I feel a tear welling up.

I'm a Dead Man

It's official - my camera's broken.

In aperture and shutter-priority modes, it won't come out of the lowest setting, although it will still meter for it. It still works in program modes. Anyway, a half-broken camera is a broken camera, so...

Maybe there's something I can do with firmware? Whatever - somebody's trying to tell me something. I'm writing in on an old Windows 95-enabled PC at work, with no laptop, borrowed money for a new computer, and a broken camera.

What the hell did I do?! Damn.

Update: It was the CF card, not the camera. Working fine after removing the card and changing it.

I'm Being Very, Very Careful...

It's like Final Destination up in here.

First, my hard drive. Now this.

I sat down to eat dinner with a friend and put my laptop bag down a little hard. When I started up later that evening - nada. I was a bit nervous, since my Mac has never crashed unless a piece of hardware was broken, so you can understand that, I'm sure. I messed around with it a little bit, did some UNIX debugging mode voodoo magic I learned from my Mac guru friend Anthony, and actually got it to work again for about 20 minutes before it took another suddent tank.

Anyway, the data's fine, I think - the motherboard is toast, though. The guy said I may be looking at 700,000 won. Ouch. That's "news I could lose"  - but at least it's not my data going...again. I think I'd just jump off a bridge. I was going to go buy that DVD writer today, too.

Well, I'm dead in the water. The new Macbooks have too many problems for me to deal with, and what's the point of buying another low-end computer? We were planning to get a desktop tower, anyway, since there's an upcoming project, which you will all know about in about two months, that we need the power for.

And my digital camera hiccupped today. Just stopped working suddenly, until I took out the battery pack and reinserted it. Dude. I'm getting nervous.

If I see that Candyman dude from the morgue scene in Final Destination, I ain't leaving the house with any technology. If you read about me in the paper in the next few days, and like they found me dead in the house after my projector fell on my head, at least it'll make a good movie.

Or maybe it's more like Rise of the Machines up in here.

Damn.