My Pet Peeves: Long Haul Flights

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I’ll be flying to Portland for the Grace Hopper Conference and it will take me 18 hours to get there. God, please have mercy on my soul. It is currently 3:50am here and I need to leave at 6am. I am not going to sleep tonight so that I can just sleep it off in the plane. I hate long haul flights; maybe we all do. Well, I tell you what I DO NOT want to experience in the flight tomorrow.

Crying Babies
It is really annoying to have babies crying loudly in the plane especially when you are trying to sleep. It makes me want to smack the hell out of these babies! I travel a lot and most of time, I will always experience babies crying non-stop. Most of the time, I just give the parents a dirty look or glare at them angrily…like an owl. :P

The Friendly Stranger
People are so friendly sometimes especially when they are travelling alone. They would talk to you even if you are not interested in listening to them since you are too sleepy. So, I had this guy (who has Halitosis, btw) who sat next to me in a flight to Malaysia once. He was travelling alone and he would not stop talking when I was trying to just ignore him and sleep. He talks about how he named his daughter based on a Lord of The Rings character and about his work, etc. I put up with him (and his breath!) for 30 minutes until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I just told him to Ssshhhh cause I need to Zzzzz…

Dirty Lavatories
This is inevitable; we share the lavatories and some people are just so rude and disgusting. They won’t clean it up properly after they used it.

Smelly Feet
It is comfortable taking off your shoes in the airplane but some people have nasty smelling feet. They should soak it in vinegar! Sometimes, this is inevitable too. I always carry a surgical mask with me when I travel. There are two reasons for this:

  1. I do not need to smell their nasty feet.
  2. I save myself from the embarrassment of others watching me when I am sleeping with my mouth open! This happens when I am extremely exhausted. Sleeping with your mouth open is not sexy, Renetta! :P

Alright, I’ll be doing some last minute packing. I plan to blog about the conference but it depends on whether I have the time or not. I hope the 18+ hours flight would be as painless as possible. Wishful thinking.. wishful thinking…

Short Shorts: Japanese Short Stories

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I went to a local film festival here and I watched a screening of the New Generation Japanese Shorts; it is a list of 7 Japanese short stories.

I never watch short stories before and I never know that I might enjoy it. After watching these short stories, I noticed that I enjoy short stories more than the typical mainstream films. I got bored after 40 minutes of watching a mainstream film (unless if the movie is really good). Short stories are extremely short (duh!); each last for about 10 to 15 minutes. I ended up craving for more after one of the stories end; just can’t get enough because the film is too short! So which one did I enjoyed the most?

MISTER ROCOCO by Naoto Hidaka

This is a hilarious short story about a girl who loves cute things. She only owns things that are cute. She do activities that she thinks is cute, e.g shopping for a cute dress. Everything that she owns is PINK and cute. She met a boyfriend who dumps her later on and this force her to do something that is totally unexpected; something that a typical cute girly girl will not do.

I love how the story line is totally random but it is very entertaining and hilarious too! Spoilers are above if you really want to know what happen. I recommend you to watch it if you are a big fan of comedy and J-Drama.

Frog in the Well by Ken Ochiai

This is quite different from the first one. It is not a comedy and it is based on a true story about a man fulfilling his dead mother’s wish; she wants him to spread her ashes throughout the places that she adored in Japan. The film chronicles the man’s journey by combining photographs and motion pictures with Ochiai’s narration about his journey.

I love the method that Ochiai used in order to tell the audience about his emotional journey; he tells his stories mostly through photographs that he had taken. He explored himself and discovered things that he was not aware of by travelling. Towards the end, he discovers that his mother’s true motive was to get him to explore Japan by spreading her ashes throughout the country.

One downside of this film is that the flickering of the photographs makes me feel a bit dizzy. It is an overkill and he had use it too much. However, I understand why he had use this method to tell his story; it is a very stylistic way to chronicle one’s captured memories.

This short film almost made me cry since it is so sad! :( I love my mommy even more now.

SUSHI JAPAN by Kenji Tanaka

Another short story that is hilarious but has a totally random story line. It is about these 4 men who are eating sushi in a restaurant. I don’t know how to describe the story line since it doesn’t really have one. It is just about those 4 men eating sushi. Still entertaining though.

Smile Bus by Park Sang-joon

This short film is in Korean but it was set in Japan. This film is about a Korean girl who left Korea and went to Japan in order to become a tour guide for visiting Koreans to Japan. Her ex-boyfriend followed her to Japan since he wanted to win her back. Basically, it is about a lovesick ex-boyfriend trying to win his ex-girlfriend back.

I don’t really like this one since it is predictable and it doesn’t really bring anything new to the audience. The story line is not really that interesting either. I included this one because I feel that it is educational and I get to learn about a Japanese tradition that I’ve never heard of. In Enoshima, you can ring a bell called Ryuren-no-Kane with your other half so that your love will last forever.

Verdict
I love short films more than I love mainstream ones. ;)

Daily Inspiration: Techority

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One of the things that I love is experienced programmers sharing their knowledge with other programmers especially the ones that are generous enough to provide free tutorials for learning programmers who are eager to learn.

Check out Techority, a tutorial site run by Peach Pellen. She is a programmers specializing in iPhone application development. She is also a certified Corona developer and she provides free tutorials on how to use Corona and Lua to develop iPhone applications.

I have no background in developing an iPhone application. My main focus is just web application, for now. But I am planning to try something new and I will definitely come back to this website and learn a thing or two from Peach! I am always curious, which is quite a pain sometimes.