Category: Uncategorized

Bizarre Email

I got this inexplicable email. It sure wasn’t intended for me, but doesn’t exactly appear to be spam. If it’s some kind of phishing scam, I just don’t understand how. I include the email address it came from, so if anyone wants to contact this person, feel free.

谭 明飚

Dear Sir/Madam

I am a international student who come from China and last time returned
China,have been transient in Seoul Incheon International Airport by ASINANA
AIRLINES.However,when I chek out,the staff of your airport doubt about my
passport and defined my passport is artifical.After than they were detain
me!!Keep me in a room over 10hours!taken freedom from me and confine me in
the room!Such rude it is unbeliveable!!!but it was happened in your
airport!

As the result,I returne to China spent my holiday,after then I comeing New
Zealand for my study,without any trouble with my passport and my status!!!I
am a chinese,No any doubt about that!!

Iam sure that you will agree that this is most unsatisfactory
situation.However there is not any apologize from you airport!!!

I wish to make complaint and request your pay me!!Pay my time and spirit,it
was hurt me deeply!!

My name is TAN MINGBIAO
Paeeport Number GO3671006
Flight Number OZ608 from AUCKLAND to Seoul incheon
Flight Number OZ325 from Seoul to GUILIN
Flight Number OZ370 from GUANGZHON to Seoul
Flight Number OZ607 from Seoul to AUCKLAND

I look forward to hearing from you soon!!

TAN MINGBIAO
27/11/2004

By the way,your staff’english is badly,I mean need more training,because
this is an international airport!!!

Nike rips off ideas from Shibuya Fashion

It’s something that I’ve known for years, having criss-crossed to and from Japan every year or so: first knee-high boots are popular in Japan, then they’re popular here. First thick turtlenecks are popular in Japan, then they’re popular here. About 10 years ago Japan was infamous for its extreme reality shows (MXC, anyone?). Now it’s Britain and America. American pop culture has been secretly ripping off Japan for quite some time. I was happy to finally see something about it here:

Nike keeping secret eye on Shibuya

Nonfiction writer Hideki Kiriyama reveals that Nike Inc, the world’s largest sports and fitness company, is secretly keeping a close eye on Tokyo’s Shibuya district, a favorite hangout of the capital’s youth.

Writingin this month’s issue of Voice, Kiriyama says that Nike always bases its product design on insight that enables it to connect with consumers. The casual product sensibility and taste for bright colors seen in the street fashion that fills the cities of modern Japan, he says, are known as “J sense” and have attracted not only American designers but also young people and children in Asia.

Kiriyama asserts that Japanese “cool,” which involves improving Western designs and colors in a Japanese style, such as by adding transparency or sheen to cosmetic products, is unmistakably beginning to win the hearts of people all over the world.

He laments that in contrast to Nike, which takes inspiration for its designs from Shibuya, the heart of Japanese youth culture, Japan itself has failed to recognize the global value of this culture and can only focus on the decadent aspects of the changes instigated by young people.

He stresses that if rejection is Japan’s only reaction to its youth culture, the country will not be able to recognize the new value created by the new generation. (Foreign Press Center)

He certainly has a point. While ultra-cool Japanese kids have been supplying rich clothing companies with ideas, they have been getting nothing but crap from the press and public opinion.

Governor Cody

Cody is the current acting governor of New Jersey, serving the remainder of Jim McGreevey’s term following his unexpected resignation.

I just answered the phone to hear a recorded voice saying ‘Hello, I’m Governor Cody. Cold weather is approaching and-‘
And guess who isn’t getting my vote if he actually runs for next term. Do people even comprehend how tasteless prerecorded phone spam is?

Hong Kong City


Various photos of urban Hong Kong. The HSBC photo was discovered on my previous blog by a Hong Kong based PR firm that offered to buy it from me for use on some kind of promotional postcard, possibly for HSBC themselves.

Fortune Teller’s Tools
Taken February 28th 2004.

Temple Street is one of the main market areas in HK, with everything from fake name brand clothing to old fashioned Chinese fortune tellers like this. There are maybe a dozen fortune tellers clustered together where Temple Street passes by a small public park. Most of them have a sign advertising their services in six different languages.
In this picture, the sign in the background is written in Japanese – clearly for the benefit of tourists. Translated it says “Can speak Japanese. Palm-reading, Face Physiognomy{Divination by form, I’ve never heard of that before}, Fortune-telling, House Physiognomy {according to my dictionary, determining whether a house is lucky or unlucky based on it’s location, position and architectural plan using methods derived from the five classical Chinese elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water}.

Korean DMZ Photos

Pictures from the Korean DMZ (DeMilitiarized Zone)
December 24 2002

Invasion Tunnel #3
Photographs are of course banned in the tunnel, but I snuck some picture with the camera sticking just out of my pocket. Out of all of them this is the only one that wasn’t a blurry mess, and it’s really just a wonderful picture – easily the best picture from that trip and also easily one of the best I’ve ever taken.

Invasion Tunnel Tram
Outside North Korean Invasion Tunnel #3. This tram descends for several 10s of meters on a very deep slope through the shaft excavated by the South Koreans until it meets the tunnel proper.

Reunification Memorial
The two halves of the globe of course represent North and South Korea- divided but natural parts of a single unit. This memorial is placed just outside of the entrance to the invasion tunnel, as if to say ‘We know you were just lonely, we don’t hold it against you. Sneaking in through the broken window is no good, but if you just ring the front doorbell like a normal person you can come home.”

Hong Kong Food

Snake Soup

After SARS came out a year ago newspapers worldwide were filled with stories about the eating habits of Southern China, particularly in Guangdong province (Canton), which is the area that Hong Kong was part of before it was split off into a British colony, and still has many cultural links to. I read a lot of stories about horrific semi-underground markets where one can purchase for consumption a whole range of animals from the most mundane such as chickens or pigs to exotic and often highly endangered animals, possibly stopping just short of the very well protected pandas. Well, with the relatively tight customs controls between the Hong Kong Semi Autonomous Region and the mainland no markets like that could possibly exist. While eating a large variety of animals has been part of Cantonese culture for a long time, in Hong Kong their options are very restricted and this snake soup is one of the few mildly outlandish things readily avaliable.
Continue reading Hong Kong Food

Iranian woman ‘gives birth to frog’

An Iranian newspaper has reported the controversial story of a woman who claims to have given birth to a frog.

The Iranian daily Etemaad says the creature is believed to have grown from larva to an adult frog inside her body.

While it is unclear how this could have happened, the paper carries quotes from medical experts who say there are human characteristics to the animal.

It has been speculated that the woman, who has not been named, unknowingly picked up the larva while she was swimming in a dirty pool.

The woman, from the south-eastern city of Iranshahr, is a mother of two children.

The “so-called frog”, as the newspaper puts it, has yet to undergo precise genetic and anatomic tests.

But it quotes clinical biology expert Dr Aminifard as saying: “The similarities are in appearance, the shape of the fingers and the size and shape of the tongue.”

Medical history recounts stories of people who believed they had frogs – or even lizards or snakes – living and growing in their bodies.

One of the most famous was the 17th Century case of Catharina Geisslerin, known as “the toad-vomiting woman” of Germany.

When she died in 1662 doctors are said to have performed an autopsy, but found no evidence animals had ever lived inside her body.