I surprised my Karate teacher tonight, and myself actually. Last week I went through a new kata that contained a complete new move set and stances I hadn’t practised before. Last week I was sloppy and weak. It was hard to comprehend the new movements and where the power for them came from. Usually hips are the key. The power you can generate from hip movements is amazing. So being unable to use my hips much at all in these new moves was a challenge. However tonight I was sharpe. It was incredible. I somehow just figured out where to pull the energy from. It was insane. I felt as if my arms were going to come out of their sockets. One time I had to stop because I thought my elbow was about to disjoint. Once I learned to control it, I looked good. My teacher couldn’t believe the improvement in just one week. I too was in shock that so much power can come from single movements without using the hips. Karate never fails to impress me.

My final University project is taking longer than expected and Flash is somewhat limiting my image skills. However, I have some slick movement and vector art going on, so I think I can save this project and make it look good in a different way than initially intended. Long hours in University required to finish this!

Some of your comments may not appear right away. I had to activate spam protection to stop those pesky bots posting comments about poker, casinos etc. So I have to approve your comments if they get caught by the spam protection. Carry on commenting!

I’ve been on a mission with my late night film watching. Here’s a little about a few recent ones I’ve watched.

Madeleine from South Korea is about a girl named Hee-jin who recognises one of her old high school friends, Ji-seok. She likes him and is very forward. He’s more reserved and not as adventurous. She hangs around enough and convinces him to go out with her for a month and tells him he will fall in love with her. Even though both characters are opposites all seems to go well… that is until another high school friend shows up on the scene. She happened to be Ji-seok’s first love. Then throw in Hee-jin’s ex boyfriend and there’s plenty to work with. Who will win Ji-seoks love? Will he stay faithful to the simple Hee-jin for the month?
I liked this film. Hee-jin is a very simple lady and Ji-seok is the type that thinks too much. The film was pretty with it’s lovely summer scenes and quiet morning shots. The sub stories that arise firstly seem to disrupt the flow of the film but all add to the film as it comes together. This is a pretty humourous film that is worth watching for romantic comedy fans.

Guns and Talks (Killerdeului suda) another Korean film is about a group of assasins. They live together and take on jobs to pay the rent. Everything is going good, bar a few unseen circumstances. However, things are taking a turn for the worse as the cops manage to notice the assasins and are watching their future moves. To make things worse a High School girl knows their identity and is pestering them to kill her English teacher and one of the assasins is getting cold feet when trying to kill his next target.
This a funny film that sometimes forgets it’s a comedy and gets too serious. The comedy is good though and I was laughing at how important the power of love is to these assasins. You could argue their motives were fueled by love. The film has good chemistry between the actors and is acted fairly decently. It’s well shot and pretty for the most part. Great film as long as you don’t take it seriously.

Finally from China, A letter from an unknown women (Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin) is a one sided love story. A man finds a letter about a women’s love for him. She tells their story through the letter. She loved him from the moment she saw him. They have had brief encounters over an 18 year span and he fails to recognise her every time.
The film is directed by the lead actress and she does a wonderful job. The film is acted out wonderfully and captures China in the early-mid 20th century beautifully. I felt her pain and his ignorance were portrayed very well. The narration really works for me, and holds the movement through the years together excellently. Other than being a little slow paced at times, there is much to recommend here.

Gigs on a Saturday night at Le Pub have been free recently. It’s done wonders to get the people in. Last night was no exception a strong turn out for some very fine bands. The first band (I forget the name) are worth mentioning. Guitar, occasional bass, a drum machine and an almost funny kind of rant, styled lyrical twist in vocals. They somehow managed to grip me for the whole set and thus I somewhat enjoyed them. However, I wasn’t prepared for what was to come…
Grabba Grabba That! Wow, these guys blew me away. Hailing from Spain or out of space depending on your prespective, this duo simply played keyboards and drums. Their sound was distorted, loud and in your face. They were dressed in pink alien suits with white fur and rocked the hell out of the place. Their set was short due to lack of songs to play but every second was worth it. The buzz flowed through the room, everyone seemed affected by their strong preformance and let them leave to great applause. I’ll remember these guys.
Finally, That Fucking Tank took to the stage. Their setup was a small drum kit (bass, snare, symbol, hat) and a baritone guitar linked to two amps. As soon as the first track started I was hooked. These guys are incredible musicians. They are the noisiest two piece I’ve seen live. The baritone guitar went from twiddly tunes to heavy bass lines while maintaining a rythm and large sound. The drumming was incredible, especially for such a simple kit. Awesome. This show won’t be topped for a while.

Yesterday was strange. Morning it was sunny and warm. So I walked the dog. There was plenty of clouds passing over the sun so colour was constantly changing. It was nice. I took a pic on my phone of the blossoming trees. They looked nicer when the sun has hitting them. Then the afternoon was chilly and grey. My room became dark so I had to open the blinds which I had closed because the sun was so strong. Then the evening was all about a storm. It rained heavy, thunder clapped and lightening prettied the sky. I enjoy watching storms. I think it’s because there is so much happening. People walking on the streets start jogging and hold there hands over their head like it stops them getting wet; car headlights start to pop on and they change speed; trees begin to dance; objects fall over and set the neighbourhood dogs barking; drying washing gets wet and wastes peoples time. It’s fun just to observe it all through the window.

My sister got back from Spain yesterday. She was living there for a few months. I think shes off to Italy next. I hope to do similar. I want to go and live in Korea for a few months. The downside is it’ll cost me a lot of money for the 3 months but I think it’s the change I’m looking for plus I’ll get a good experience. I consider myself a city person so I’m applying for a place in the main University in the capital city - Seoul. I’ll study language and culture. It involves field trips, experiencing cultural differences and getting to advance my language skills. Sounds good.

Comment spam. Hate it. I had a large string of them just now and had to set up Wordpress to catch spam comments. It’s annoying now because I have to go to the effort of deleting them. I read that spam works and that’s why it exists to a point. People are willing to click the links in comment and email spam. I guess there is no way to avoid it once you start getting hit by it.

Finally, I’ve launched my portfolio. There’s a nice set of work to begin with and I’ll add more as I get access to it. Let me know what you think.

I watched a lot of films recently. I’ll sum a few of them up here.

…ing is a lovely film from Korean. Mina lives at home with her mother. She has an illness that has stopped her from socialising, or at least the confidence to try. Her mother is pushing her daughter to live life best she can because she knows Mina’s illness will eventually kill her. One day a stranger comes into Minas life. Can he provide the enjoyment of life Mina needs?
This is a lovely film that is funny, well written and nicely shot. The characters are lovable and pass over the emotions this type of film needs. I enjoyed this one.

What time is it there? (domestically: Ni neibian jidian) is filmed in Taiwan and France. A watch seller on the street makes a connection with a girl who wants to buy his personal watch. However, she is soon off to Paris. He feels for her and from now on turns every clock he sees to Paris time. Meanwhile she is lonely in Paris and bored out of her mind. Nothing really seems to happen. We see his mother dealing with the lose of her husband in her unique way, we see him play with clocks, we see her do nothing much in Paris but the film still manages to be a success. The minimal shots are superb with fixed camera angles and we watch the characters interacting with the sets rather than following them around the sets. The colour used is beautiful, especially in the mother’s home. It’s hard not to recommend such a beautiful film.

Spring Subway (Kaiwang chuntian de ditie) tells the story of the relationship of a couple who have been together for 7 years. Jian Bin and Xiao Hui are both doubting their relationship. Bin hasn’t worked for months and travels the subways everyday to kill time but he can’t face telling Hui. Hui also doubts the relationship and is starting to see something in a man she calls Tiger. There are also two sub-stories happening on the subway. One with a man looking for love and the other with a young man trying to build the confidence to ask a girl he likes out. These two stories cross over with the main story. It all works very well. The acting is okay and the stories are realistic. I could imagine I’d go through some of the same feelings if the spark in a long term relationship was lost. Xiao Hui is beautiful and because of this stands out a mile on the packed subway scenes. A good film looking at contemporary relationships then. Recommended.

So it’s over finally. I finished writing up my 10,000 word dissertation about the apparent absence of female players in the videogames industry. I actually wrote over 10,000 words and had to edit it down dissapointingly. I feel I’m so up on the subject now that I can write a lot more about it. However, I had to force myself to accept the limit. I spent today doing all the odd jobs like a contents sheet, cover, preface, page numbers etc. After I finished printing two sets of all 37 pages of it it was about 2:30pm. I needed to get two copies of it bound. I headed to the University and picked my friend up on the way but he was still printing. So I went out and grabbed us some veggy burgers with fresh salad and melted cheese. I love those burgers more than real meat. Anyway, we got into University 3:45pm and expected the print and copy services to be rammed with people but to our surprise it was dead. All that was there was the humming of copy machines. So we handed our dissertations to the lady and she said 30 minutes and £5.20 and they’ll be done. We used the 30 minutes to return the books we used to the library and in doing so off loaded the studies we had come to know so well. Back into the design building and we filled in the submission forms, picked up our neatly thermal bound dissertations and handed them in a sweet day early. Yes! It’s over. The mission of research and an academic essay that we spent two years on. The quiet hallways became filled with the noise of the bounce in our step as we headed out of the University. Joy.

I saw the movie poster for this film and I thought this could go either way. However, I gave it a chance since you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. Hainan ji fan (English title: Rice Rhapsody) is about Jen, a mother of three boys. One flys around the world and isn’t home often. He is gay. The next son lives local but stays over his friends homes mostly. Gay too. Jen wants at least one of her sons to bring a girl home and she has her suspisions that her final son (Leo) may be gay too. In an effort to make sure he’s not, she gets together with neighbour and restaurant rival Kim Chui, to scheme a plan to accept a foreign exchange student into her home and set her up with Leo. Sabine, a girl from France soon arrives, her cocky attitude and unique outlook on life soon affect the way Leo and Jen look at life. The film tells the story of Jen’s relationship with the four men in her life and the views Sabine bring to their life. The film is set in Singapore and is beautifully shot. The colours are rich and not over dramatic. The acting is solid and believable but Sabine may be a bit over the top. Interestingly the language is mostly English mixed with Madarin. Singlish I’ve heard it called. So I only had to read subs for the bits of Chinese I couldn’t understand. Recommended.

My weekend job hasn’t been the greatest lately. Since the managment shift, I think my department has been going downhill. They have all these “wonderful” ideas that are going to make the department run so much better. At the moment I just can’t see it working. There isn’t enough people to do the jobs and the main thing that’s going to make it fail is that people aren’t perfect. They aren’t going to do everything according to the plan and they will get lazy if they can get away with it. I’ll never get lazy because it makes the time go so much slower when I’d rather just do my hours and get out of their as quickly as possible. I’ve been asking myself recently, should I even care? I mean it’s not like it’s my career. It’s just 8 hours a week earning some money to get me through University and allow me to live a social life. My job is secure so even if it does does break it’s not my fault. I think I’ll give up fighting and leave them to it. I can always say, “I told you so” afterwards.

The picture is of a vinyl I picked up last night. I watched some bands who were all pretty good. Anyway The City and Night of Broken Promises were selling their first release and since I’ve seen and enjoyed them about five times, I thought I should support them and buy their vinyl. The postage package style packaging is great. There are various stamp marks on and inside the packaging. Also inside is a couple of distressed lyric sheets, a credits sheet and a stamped envelope containing a CD copy of the vinyl. It’s also numbered 17/200. Great stuff.

So the job in Japan I applied for… well I didn’t get it. They said the competition was vigorous this year due to the thousands of applicants. Gutting. I’m dissapointed because that would have sorted the next three years of my life. I’ll try again next year maybe. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it this time because I wasn’t that hot on their English test. The application was a success and the interview was great but my pesky English skills are what gave someone else the job. Plan B is to study in South Korea. I have the course detials just need to apply. Plan C is Japan either with Nova or staying with family friends out there for a while. Ideally it’d be cool to study there but I think it’s beyond my budget unless I stay with the family friends and study in their city.

Right now I’m writing my dissertation. You know, the one about gender and videogames. The word count is getting there but it’s a real mess. I hope the word count is reached tomorrow so I can frantically edit on Friday. Then illustrate on Saturday and print on Sunday.

Ohh the picture is one of a random bunch I took on my phonecam this morning exploring shape and light.