I had recently finished the Hong Kong drama series The Drive of Life (歲月風雲). An epic 60-episode production (each show is an hour long), the shooting primarily done in a trio of cities - Hong Kong, Beijing, and Vancouver - previously unheard of for a television series. It covers the multi-decade history of a wealthy business family through the Asian and dotcom financial crises to modern times, through relationships and business successes and failures, and the complex character interplay during tough times.
The show also spends significant time celebrating Chinese ingenuity; not a surprise considering it is sponsored by the Chinese government to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to sovereign Chinese rule, but some of its influence is blatant and distasteful propaganda and tarnishes an otherwise excellent show. I wonder if anybody watching the show really believes in the stated convection of the characters’ patriotism and love of all things Chinese.
It has been a while since I got hooked to a Chinese drama series, so it took only a week (something like 7-8 shows a day) for me to fly through the DVD’s. While the story was captivating and acting superb, I can’t help but be reminded of all the clichés by drama series since the beginning of time, plot devices overused to the point of being offensive in their dismissal of viewer intelligence:
Zeon and I went down to the local Korean supermarket for some food tonight. By chance I saw this peculiarly-named bread on the shelves, and the captions really write themselves. Juvenile humor at its best:
It was a while since I bought any videogame-related toys and collectibles, and my upgraded room started to fill a little empty with all the unused shelf space, devoid of the paraphernalia which adorn most geeks’ bedrooms.
Of course there are a ton of sites who love people like me that go on random spending splurges, and video games are enough of an enthusiast hobby that almost any piece of branded crap can be sold for massive profits. In particular, anything imported from Japan (at great shipping and handling costs) for some reason is especially cool. NCS is one such company.
So this solar mushroom thing looked pretty cool, and for good measure got this cute Mario plush to make the shipping costs worthwhile.
And two weeks later, Sui gives me something cute she found in the hobbyist store next to her work… ()
I was genuinely surprised by this American English accent quiz; it hit pretty close to the mark!
I usually don’t post simple links in my journal entries, but I’m making one exception for something that I found uniquely funny. Dubbed nerdcore, it’s rapping about subjects of interest to geeks and dorks, which is an interesting - to use a mild term - juxtaposition of two very different things.For a sample of what such rap may sound like: one such artist, MC Plus+ (+0×0A point for the nerds who get the reference), has made his art free and downloadable online. The lyrics are along the lines of:
I’m encrypting shit like every single day;
sending it across a network in a safe way;
protecting messages to make my pay;
if you hack me you’re guilty under DMCA.
+20 points if you’re groaning along with the rest of his listeners, +062ul if you get the references.
I had recently finished the Hong Kong drama series The Drive of Life (歲月風雲). An epic 60-episode production (each show is an hour long), the shooting primarily done in a trio of cities - Hong Kong, Beijing, and Vancouver - previously unheard of for a television series. It covers the multi-decade history of a wealthy business family through the Asian and dotcom financial crises to modern times, through relationships and business successes and failures, and the complex character interplay during tough times.
