Watching Mad Men, wishing I was back in the 60s, then realizing that I was there, but in my version everyone spoke Korean.
I just found out that all emails sent to my david@davidadaire.com email address haven’t been getting through. If you tried to send an email at all during the past few months, I’m sorry I didn’t get it, that’s why there was no response.
I have resolved the problem and it should be ok. If not, you can always drop me a line at my adaire(at)gmail.com address.
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There comes a day when you’re not considered young any more. It’s a shame because I still feel young. Of course, the little kids I teach at the moment annoy me because they’re so stupid, but part of me wishes that I had a little body and could run around and play too. I have to snap out of it because I’m not a kid anymore.
That’s the weird thing about age. It just happens. When I hear myself talk and say “well after uni I decided to see a bit of the world” I have to stop myself and say, well hang on, that wasn’t just yesterday any more, it has been almost four years. Four years, in itself is not a long time, but the number of your age is progressing from 22 (which is a nice young age) to 26 which in Korea is 27 or even 28 depending on who you ask. So that means 30 is just around the corner, in some part of the world and that’s no age to be standing around daydreaming about climbing trees or chasing the girls until they cry.
So we have to adapt those things as best we can to match our advanced state, our numerical maturity and our larger, hormonal bodies. Which I guess means I can climb mountains and.. well chase girls and try not to make them cry. When you are young, you have years to spare and great dreams to realize. When you stop being young, you feel like you should’ve already gotten to your dreams. The question of ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ turns into ‘So what are you doing with your life?’ and that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel old. I still have the impatience of youth, and that’s partly where this post comes from. But now I am starting to see how one might fall into an ordinary life. When I was younger I would see people in the suburbs with their Holden cars and their 2.3 kids and think how boring and average it was. But I guess it just sorta happens like that. After you finish dreaming, you have to start earning and once you start earning, you want to build a secure base around you to protect it. Then biological clocks tick louder, social expactations hover closer and you have to take the next step then the next. Before you know it, you’re putting up your picket fence.
I believe in dreams, I really do. But until those dreams are realized, they’re not really much good.
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Kids here are crazy about games. More importantly, games which combine collecting with smashing things. One such game combines these pursuits perfectly and it’s name is Dak Ji. Dak Ji is a game consisting of throwing plastic pieces of shit (PPOS) around and trying to collect as many as you can in the process. Now they’re not actually plastic pieces of shit, but I call them this because they essentially cost the same to make, and have zero intrinsic value. You throw them around until you realize that they are actually just a PPOS and then throw them away. Why would kids do this? Because it’s fun.
A hive of unguarded Dak Ji pieces
See there are rules to the throwing. Let me pretend that I’m a kid again and not an old spoilsport and explain. So you and your opponent put your PPOS down flat on the ground. Then, you take it in turns to pick up your PPOS and throw it at the other players’ PPOS. If you manage to turn their PPOS over then you take it, thus becoming the proud owner of another PPOS. If you don’t, he has a chance to get yours. To a kid, the prospect of this is the most terrible thing in the world. Now, if your PPOS is lying flat on the ground, you have a pretty good chance. But if, in the midst of your attacking, your PPOS lands on the curved side, then your opponent has a good chance to flip it and take your PPOS forever.
Close-up of a PPOS
Whoever thought of this game must be rolling in money now. These crazes take hold of kids, and I was no different in my youth. Matter of fact, I still suffer from it now with my handphones and iPods. But at least my PPOS does something like play music. Back in my youthful days we went through marbles and yo-yos, ninja turtle cards and elastics. We pursued these things like they were the Holy Grail, the very answer and key to our existence. If someone took them from us, we felt like we had been robbed of our life savings, but even after losing we just scraped together what we had and traded, swapped, saved and bought again until we had a superior collection. We were wary of those who were experts at the game and despised those who didn’t play by the rules. One day, in a game of cross-country marbling a crow flew down and ate mine. I have never liked those damn birds since.
Marbles was possibly the most interesting because they were like gemstones. I’m not sure how the value system of marbles came about, but all we knew was that some were more valuable than others and we had to do all that we could to get them. During elementary school, the school oval would be like a Turkish bazaar of marble swapping and playing. People set up tracks where you could step up and try your hand at hitting the kid’s marbles. You had to be careful of course, just in case the track was “rigged” in favor of the vendor. It was our first foray into carnival capitalism and when we established a nice collection of our own, we did our best to acquire a track and set up shop. Once this happens, you cultivate your track and do your best to get one which is fair, but not too fair.
But suddenly, as soon as it started, it was forgotten again. The collection which I had amounted through many games around the schoolyard and at home went into a cupboard and I haven’t thought about it until now, when I see these kids smashing their PPOS around. Of course in a little while there will be another craze over another POS, plastic or otherwise. I can bet you it will seem equally pointless and will take hold of kids like Michael Jackson. But somewhere deep down, I know that there are complicated thought processes churning around behind those kids’ innocent eyes. Strategies and market analyses are being formed in order to acquire more and more and more of the shit that they so desperately need. Maybe I should teach them about mergers and acquisitions, keeping tidy records and managing losses. I should point out to them a weaker player, such that they might focus energy on exacting the maximum payment of plastic, then using said plastic for the conquering of other players. Maybe they can use their plastic as a tool of manipulation, giving generous donations to buy partnerships. The possibilities are endless if they know how. Maybe I’ll play too and become the supreme champion of Dak Ji and own all the PPOS for miles around.
Or maybe I’ll just listen to my iPod and let them be kids.
Contemplation of flinging strategy
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I have been called a techno-junkie, yes and I guess it’s true. So let me educate on a new feature of this site. It’s RSS. Now, until a few weeks ago I didn’t know what RSS was either and I didn’t really care. Then I thought I’d find out a little more.
RSS stands for “Real Simple Syndication”. It is basically a small piece of text which carries news. It lets you know when a page has been updated without needing to visit that page. It is becoming more and more popular and now the main blogging sites offer RSS feeds of the latest posts. Not liking to be behind, I decided that my site needed this feature too.
Still confused? I don’t blame you.
Normally, if you like a site, you might save it as a bookmark in your Favorites menu. But then, if you want to check out all the sites you like, you click on them all and review them. Pah! Too slow. If you just had a little piece of text like the date it was updated and the latest headline, you could check everything with a glance. That is RSS. It’s like Google News, where many sources come together and give you the headline.
The new Internet Explorer will have an option for subscribing to these feeds, just like Firefox which has offered RSS for a long time. Also, if you have Google Desktop with the sidebar, you can subscribe using the Web Clips section. Have a look at today’s photo to see a screenshot of this wonderful wonderful feature. If you want to try it out, copy the following into your RSS reader or into the Google Webclips options section:
http://www.davidadaire.com/feed/
Oh don’t I sound like the world’s biggest nerd? Ok I’ll cut it out now. Next blog will be about something cool, I promise.
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On the weekend I was catching a taxi with a few friends and a random French guy who was in town for a few days. The girl in the front seat encouraged the taxi driver to play his music and, well here is the evidence of what happened after that.Let this be a warning.
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I have joined the legions of iPod owners across the globe and I have no regrets. They are amazing little machines and I love mine. I am a self-declared pod addict and I don’t mind if anybody knows it.
I got it last Thursday after finishing work. My job is close to COEX, a huge mall close by my workplace. It is a subterranean mall, like a labrynth of walkways and designer stores. The first time I went there I thought it was rather small. That was because I only walked through the main street. This time I thought I knew which way to go and took a shortcut. It took me lots of walking, map studying and aimless circle-making before I finally found the Apple store.
The choice was between the 30Gb version and the 60Gb version. There was a $120 difference between the two. I went for the lower value, figuring that I wouldn’t get carried away. I don’t even have that much music on my computer so it will be some time before I exhaust all 30 gig. It’s a video pod so I can watch videos in theory, but in order to see them, I’d need to convert the files into pod format which is a drag. However, there are a growning number of podcasts which are available in video.
Podcasts? Oh podcasts. They are a dream come true. I am a regular listener to the Ricky Gervais Show which has me laughing at the most inappropriate moments, like in the middle of a packed subway car. I don’t care, there’s no way I can NOT laugh at some of the things Karl Pilkington says and I’m not going to stop listening. If you haven’t heard it yet, I strongly suggest you get iTunes and check it out.
Another favorite of mine is Ask A Ninja, run by the creator of www.realultimatepower.net , which is essentially a guy dressed like a ninja and whose complete knowlege of ninjas has been gained from a half-hour study of ninja movies. He is pretty funny on video, but I’ve gotta say his website is funnier.Any ninja-related questions or problems? Tune into this hilarious podcast to find out. Roger looks forward to killing you soon!
The only thing which bugs me a little about the iPod is the inability to transfer files as you please. You are limited to hooking up to one computer, but should you own two computers then you can’t download songs from both. Of course, there are very simple ways to get around this and I do, but it’s just a little annoying.
Battery dying now on my laptop. iOver and Out.
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