NZ Festival

Well it was over a month ago, but here are some photos from the NZ Unlimited Festival in early April. I was quite impressed by the set up which had stalls from various companies providing samples of meat, milk, cheese, mussels, juice, ice cream, not to mention the constant supply of free NZ wine and vodka cocktails. And all for free!

I was pleasantly suprised at the decent sized samples of meat they were giving out. Tasted beautiful.

There are some more photos in the album below, including pictures of NZ soldiers currently working on the peninsula with United Nations.

NZ Festival

Idiots

What's worse than a botched translation? What's worse than PAYING to see a movie with a botched translation? How about paying and not being able to see the correct translation at all!?

Being a linguistics major and language geek (my nickname to some at high school), it really really bugs me when I'm watching a movie and what is being said by the actors doesn't match the subtitles appearing below. I'm not just talking about a slightly different translation to make it sound more natural in the other language. I can understand that many translators do this to a certain degree and there are definitely times where this is needed.

What I'm talking about is some real horrible translating which sometimes reads the complete opposite from what is being said. Now a lot of these botched translations are from amateurs on the internet, maybe Uni students who think they have enough English to roughly understand everything being said and put out a translation for the internet community. And to be honest, if you are downloading a movie illegally then you can't really complain about a botched translation and you half deserve it too. This is why if I'm to show someone a movie in another language I like to get an official copy so I know I can probably rely on its accuracy.

But what if you pay to go and see a movie but can't see the subtitles at all?

Well this seems to be the case for many Korean movie goers. I have been to two movies now where so much of the dialogue has been lost to the non-English speaking members of the audience because you couldn't see the subtitles! And why not? Because the font is a plain white and blends into any bright image on the screen! My prime example is the movie "Australia". Whether you liked it or not I don't care, but the first hour or so of the movie being filmed in the Australian desert, consists of mainly white sand and bright skies which meant you couldn't see the subtitles at all. I'm sure the audience didn't get 70% of the dialogue in that first hour. How frustrating it must be! Ridiculous. 

The latest culprit is Gran Torino. This movie being based in a neighbourhood with houses all painted white, left a lot of the dialogue in certain scenes to the imagination for the audience. How is one expected to appreciate a movie like this? The font was extremely skinny, white and had no dark outline around it. Do the producers or subtitilers(?) not preview the movies before they are sent off to the theatres? Or do they just think,"Oh whatever, they'll get the jist of it"?

This could be fixed several ways. You could use a darker colour for scenes where the subtitles are clearly not going to be easily visible. Why not use a black outline if you really want to use white for the whole movie? Or place the subtitles in the upper right corner (as in many other movies) where there is generally a better contrast? Even if it's a slightly different shade of white it's still hard to see right?<---- Please select.

Anyway thats my rant about subtitles. I'm curious if there are similar situations for the English speaking audiences watching the subtitled Korean films?

Slow NZ news

The headline on the  bottom right.

Living in Korea I like to get my news from back from the usual news sites the NZherald and stuff.co.nz. 

Is it a slow week, is NZ that boring? Or do we really care about trivial things that much? 

What I am referring to is that the front page headlines have seemed to have remained the same for the last 3 days.

Maybe if it was something important such as the ongoing Bain trial, Sure. But having your front page headline for an article about a blog by some Australians talking smack about NZ on the internet? As a friend of mine would say (probably the only guy reading this blog actually) "somebody call the wambulance!". Geez somebody talked down another country on a blog? Shock horror! Geez how long have you been using the internet, I'm sure you could find a hate blog for Mother Teresa if you tried.

In other random and irrelevant news, water has started to leak through the bottom of our walls and floor which is a bit of a worry so we'll be calling up the land lord tomorrow. Just lucky we caught it before water dripped into a power socket or something.

And in blending news. My wife surprised me by ordering a blender over the net. (We had been planning to buy one.) Turns out it was just the one I wanted! Look forward to making some high calorie, energy filled, power weight gaining shakes! Hopefully help stomach a few more things in shake form to make my scrawny frame look a tad more sturdy and muscular.All this of course accompanied by a workout routine which I'm doing a shocking job at sticking too.

And finally, welcome home to my sister who just got back from India. Cannot wait to see the photos!

March and Civil Defence

Well it's been a good month since I last posted, largely due to tiredness, laziness and not having enough time to complete my work in work hours.

Last year I spent my first spring here and I found that March just seemed to drag on forever. It's cold, but not cold enough to snow, it's spring but not a sign of grass or new flowers (until the very end of the month). It's been a cold March compared to last year with the temperature hitting -4 this weekend. Supposed to get warmer from today so hopefully that'll wake up some of the trees from their winter sleep.

There were a couple of events that happened worth noting, one being the Korean president's trip to NZ. I happened to catch some footage of this last night,  which showed him looking curiously at NZ fruit while they talked about it to him. He then proceeded onto Australia and then to Indonesia. While the president was in NZ a Korean international student stabbed my old high-school Japanese teacher in the back in front of two of my family members and the rest of the class. He is currently being held in custody until his trial. There has been a lot of gossip spread around by students and NZ media regarding the injured teacher who is still in hospital. This has really pissed me off as there is no excuse for stabbing a teacher and putting two of my family members and a class of kids in danger.

Anyhow apart from that,we had one week at work with no students. It was nice and quiet and we got a lot of much needed work done. Now the year has started again and our students will be coming through week by week.

Civil Defence Drill

The 15th of every month in South Korea is civil defence day and on this day drills are carried out by the military forces, public emergency services and sometimes the general public. Often in the month of March there is a nation wide civil defence drill where everything and everyone in the whole country comes to a stand still for 20 minutes while a siren wails out through the streets. Sometimes fighter jets fly overhead and emergency services can often be seen roaming the empty streets. They don't do it in the weekends so there is a nationwide drill scheduled for tomorrow at 2pm. I'll be working when it happens but hopefully I'll be able to hear the siren since I'm near the army hospital and airforce base. Here's a video of what it's kinda like.

Korea - The Land of Extremes

With a title like that I could probably go off on a couple of tangents but let me stick to weather for now.

Here's a great example of how in a couple of days you can go from weather that's almost good enough to wear a t-shirt in to long johns, scarves and gloves.

As I'm sure you can make out that the image above is a summary of this months weather so far. If you take a look at Friday the 13th, the temperature shot up to 17 degrees Celsius. Quite unusual for February but weather is an unusual thing. At the bottom you can also see the lowest temperature for this month was this morning at -5.7 degrees, just a couple of days after.

Surely enough, this will be topped tomorrow morning when the mercury is supposed to drop to -11 degrees as you can see on the forecast below. (On the right) The high for the day is 0 degrees.
What frustrates me is when people say "Why is it so cold?". Uh Hello? Is it not winter? Did it not used to get even colder a long time ago at this time of year? Maybe I'm just being anal about something people say just for the hell of it but it just seems a funny thing to say.

Anyhow, maybe I'll be putting my long johns on tomorrow for the last time this winter. I look forward to the crisp, icy air and the ol' jack frost stinging my face, because before we know it, it'll be 36 degrees and 99% humidity again.

Time

After being back here for one week I am reminded that a really don't have time for anything extra. All week I was thinking to myself, "Gotta make a new post on my blog sometime" but to no avail. Because even if I have a short space of time, I know that in a few minutes I'll have to go somewhere, or do something. Being married, having a full-time job which includes working every second Saturday and trying stick to a regimented fiteness routine is not something that everyone seems to understand. So to anyone who ever thinks I'm ignoring them, I'm not. I'm busy, that's the lifestyle overhere and I'm quite enjoying it. And now I have to get up and go and do something again.

A sign?

While shamelessly trying to promote my blog on facebook, the security checks which appear when you attempt to post a link bring up some interesting combination of words sometimes.

Jellyfish

During our visit to Hong Kong we went to Ocean Park, a giant theme park with animals, your usual theme park rides and a bunch of sea life. They had a jellyfish viewing exhibition which was quite interesting. I'd never taken photos of glowing jellyfish in the dark before so it was a nice challenge and good chance to muck around with the settings on my camera.

Scary stuff

I took this photo while standing on the steps going to a spa pool at the Harbour Plaza Hotel in Hong Kong. The spa pool is on the roof (obviously) on the 21st floor. How long do you think it would take a little kid walk across that tiny garden? *Shudder* Pretty irresponsible for a 5 star hotel if you ask me. Just standing there made your heart race.

And so start the rants

After having a mini honeymoon in Hong Kong (proper long one will be coming later), my wife and I arrived in Korea at 4.30 in the a.m. and lined up at immigration. My life being a Korean citizen, was through in the blink of an eye, since it was a foreign airline there weren't too many Koreans anyway. I on the other hand being a "foreigner", had to wait for what seemed like half an hour in a line full of couples who could have gone up together but each one of them insisted on being served one by one. Frustration.

While in Hong Kong I noticed a special "e-channel" service for foreigners (non-residents) who frequently travel to Hong Kong so the can just place their passport into a machine enter the country as easy as catching the subway. What I wonder is why there isn't a similar service here. Not even a separate booth or queue. With so many thousands of teachers and soldiers working and living in Korea, why not have a booth set aside for foreigners who hold a current Korean visa? Even at least for residents?

Another frustrating point was after arriving at 4.30 with 1 hour of sleep behind us, having to make our way down the hall of gates, catch the subway to the other terminal and walk some more just to get to immigration. Would it be so hard to park the plane at the main terminal> I'm sure the runways can't be too busy at that time of the morning.

On the topic of airports, We were not sure if we were heading to the right place when we went to check in for flight CX118 on Friday morning at Auckland International.

The birth

And so another blog is born. Will it last? Who knows? But here goes... (Gees I wonder how many other blogs start off with that exact same paragraph)

As a New Zealander living in Korea who is married to a beautiful Korean woman and having been in contact with the Korean language and culture for more than a quarter of my life, the title of this blog seemed appropriate.

For those unfamiliar with some of the terms:

Kiwi = A New Zealander.

Kiwiana = Everything and anything NZ. According to the Oxford dictionary, Kiwiana means: any of the many 'collectable', items redolent of New Zealand life and culture. (According to a New Zealand Holiday Park site)

Kowi = A word which describes those of us who identify ourselves closely with both New Zealand and Korea.

Mash them together and you get Kowiana.

So, what will I discuss in this virtual diary of sorts? Politics and international law? Pfft, doubt it. Most probably things that I see, think of, or discover that I would like to share with anyone who cares while we live here.

There were actually alot of things that I wanted to write about for a long time but are probably long forgotten so we'll start from now. Thanks for reading!