New books

Finished the one on the right but who knows when I'll get through the rest once assignments kick in.

HI SEOUL!

Footage of the flooding in Gwahwamun - Tuesday

Incredible photo taken from plane of the localised rain

Stormy Seoul

Not a great start to the Chuseok holiday here. Rain started late last night and I was woken at around 9am to the sound of extremely heavy rain on the roof. This rain continued the entire day getting heavier and heavier. Up to nearly 290mm fell in some places causing surface and even severe flooding in many places. West and North West Seoul took the brunt of it with whole carparks being turned into lakes.

Cheonggye Stream - The footpath along the stream completely

submerged, it became a raging river surging through the centre of Seoul

This also affected a couple of the Seoul Metro lines as a result. All service was suspended between Guro and Incheon on Line No. 1 and Line No. 4 was also affected, services being suspended between Seoul Station and Sadang. Line No. 2 was unable to stop at Hongdae Univ. Station due to flooding and Gwanghwamun didn't look much better off either.

Oryu-dong Station, Seoul - Line No. 1

This station apparently has a history of flooding easily.

Hongdae and Gwanghwamun Stations became waterfalls.

Outside Hongdae University Station - Passengers unable to get on or off here

Historic New Lynn Photos - Peter Trevor

These photos do not belong to me. They were uploaded to NZLocos by Peter Trevor on July 17th. They do not appear to exist anymore so I cannot link to them. I hope this is okay Peter and if it is not please post on NZLocos to let me know.

Rear of New Lynn Depot - 19th Nov 1969

New Lynn Interchange - 19th July 1982

The Last Station

Today me and my wife took a trip to the border between North and South Korea.

(Click photos for full size) - I've noticed the first few don't work but the bottom ones do.

We took the new regular passenger service to Munsan which opened at the end of last year. operates every hour and is now integrated into the rest of Seoul's subway network.

The trip took about an hour and it was nice to travel up a line I had never been on before. When we arrived we battled in line for a ticket to catch the special shuttle train which travels to the few final stations on the line. Originally we had planned to simply go to the park at Imjin River but on seeing how cheap tours of the DMZ were, we couldn't resist. So we got back on the train.

Before boarding we were frisked and sent under a metal detector. Quite bizarre before boarding a very old commuter train.

It started to sink in that we were quite close to the border when we started seeing road signs for Pyeongyang. We crossed the Imjin river which still has the remains of the original bridge, destroyed in the war. It's the first real damage from the war that I've seen which has been preserved and it felt quite eerie.

We reached Dorasan Station, the final stop on the line before it goes into North Korea. We were now in a restricted area, off limits to the public. (Not the station itself, but outside the station.)

Looking toward the border.

The station looks ridiculously new and unused. Everything is set up so once relations between the two countries improve, things can get moving right away. Trains were crossing the border last year when relations were better but I don't think they would be at the moment.

The next stop in obviously not Pyeongyang but I guess it is a symbol of how close the capital is to here, that being 205km away.

Inside the station, the gate which takes you underground to the other side of the tracks for North bound trains.

The hanging signs above shows the real next station is Gaeseong.

The building is huge and I was very nervous taking this photo, not knowing what was okay and what was off limits. (Photoshop did something weird when I took myself out of the photo.)

Oh and here's a picture of North Korea from the mountain. Pity it was such a hazy day :(

KTX 2 - KTX San Cheon

As of February 13, 2010 the new KTX San Cheon (Previously called the KTXII) have started appearing in stations around the country. I have yet to ride the new high speed trains but I got to go aboard a model version at the Korail Museum. It should boast faster speeds and have more room between seats for a start. You could also sit at the controls and figuring this the closest I'll ever get to the real ones, I took some snaps.

Click to see a larger version.

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?