queen jean tagged me so here it goes :)

1) as a child, i couldn’t have been furthest from the land of scholaristic/academic brainia; i was an absolute under-achiever. this was partly because i was just plain weird. i refused to participate in academic activities against my (philosophical) beliefs… whatever. for example, i refused to answer any of the subtraction questions in my math exam becaues, according to young jaz, apparently we should try to be positive (+), not negative (-)… my parents were called in, and i’m sure they had a very enjoyable conversation with my teacher. i actually had no recollection of this until mum told me about a year ago. to my family, it’s a miracle that i’m in academia.

2) i’m fascinated by all forms of fortune telling. korean shamanism really interests me on various levels but i’m not a fan of witchcraft. i also do tarot readings for people sometimes. when i first came to australia, one of my homestay mothers was a jahova’s witness and she used to take me to special meetings and give me bible lessons. quite clearly she had high hopes of me becoming a great jahova’s witness… well, it appears that i’ve failed her, slightly.

3) once i won a karaoke competition. i was the only under-age karaokean there. i sang some silly R&B song, but i don’t remember a single word or a note of that song at all now. anyway, i won a deck chair as a prize, which i couldn’t pick up because i didn’t have my licence then. and i was living by myself, hence no one to help me with tasks like picking up a karaoke prize. the last time i did karaoke was in japan early last year. four of us nondakures (drunks) + (what appears to be) an endless supply of alcohol + yummy hokkaido dishes = fun times. people close to me tell me that i talk and sing trilingually - in japanese, korean, and english - when alcohol takes me over. of course no one understands what i’m saying or singing then.

4) i’m ornithophobic. i have inherent fear of birds. about a year ago, someone made me feed little birds. that someone told me “trust me. you’ll be fine, you’ll see.” i thought, “yeah right, the only thing that i’ll see is none of you!” well, i did end up feeding them - after all, he was the one with the car key and it didn’t feel too smart to stay in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. thanks to him, i’m much more comfortable with those terrifying flying creatures now.  

5) i cry to some most random things. the other day, i cried to a lily allen’s song. god, i wish i’d never told you that.

 i tag lucy, carmen, and hanna.

now i’m in korea.

it started to get really cold here yesterday with some areas reaching -20C. pusan, where my family live and where i am now, is generally one of the warmest cities, so it’s about 3C at the moment. it feels like winter. it feels like korean winter. love it.

i’ve been pretty much offline since i got here. i did bring my laptop but after much trying and screaming, i’ve given up on the whole idea of “let’s get a mac connected to the net” here. korea is pc-chauvinistic to its core; it’s not funny.

so i had to come to a pc bang (pc room) close to my parents’ place. i’ve noticed that many pc bangs have closed down not only in this area but in general, and the existing ones don’t seem to be as popular as before. i wonder what’s happening with the infamous korean pc bang culture. perhaps someone (me?) could write something about this for the special issue of journal of interactive media on gaming in the asia pacific.

anyway, before i go, i’m going to talk briefly about the new “finger-mouse phone” from samsung (SCH-V960/SPH-V9600).

as you can see, there’s a little sensor in the middle of the main navigation panel. This sensor detects the user’s finger movement, and therefore functions as the touchpad/mouse for the phone. smart idea. i’m sure most people agree that so far the mobile interface design in general has been not so user-friendly thanks to the greatly limited navigation capability which forced the user to come back to the main menu (top-level navigation options) to move to a different section and/or use a different function. the mobile touchpad will surely make the mobile phone a lot more userfriendly and fun to play with. another neat function that these phone offer is automatic screen and keypad brightness control, which detects the surrounding environment (how bright/dark it is) and adjusts the brightness of the screen and the keypad. smart stuff.