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Friday, June 13, 2008
Party time at South Korea’s protest 2.0
Work Safe: Yes
This is strange. Even as anti-government demonstrations in South Korea go, this is an odd, odd scene. Even a foreigner thinks so. “I have never seen anything like this before,” said Jeff Lazar, an American activist observing the ongoing protests here over the import of beef from the United States. “It’s like a festival. They are even using a laser projector to write their protest words in the air. It’s effective because it’s fun. It’s also a sure attention-grabber,” he adds.
Filed under: Hot Links
Friday, June 13, 2008
Introducing the world’s first MP3 player
Work Safe: Yes
The Diamond Rio’s false status as the first MP3 player is practically cemented in technology lore, so before it’s too late, I want to set the record straight. The world’s first mass-produced hardware MP3 player was Saehan’s MPMan, sold in Asia starting in the late spring of 1998. It was released in the United States as the Eiger Labs MPMan F10/F20 (two variants of the same device) in the summer of 1998, a few months before the Rio.
Filed under: Hot Links
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Scorpions for Breakfast and Snails for Dinner
Work Safe: Yes
In Beijing, where my family lives, I once returned home from a restaurant with a doggy bag full of deep-fried scorpions. The next morning, I poured them instead of imported raisin bran into my 11-year-old son’s cereal bowl. I wanted to freak him out. The scorpions were black and an inch long, with dagger tails.
“Scorpions!” shrieked my son, Roy. “Awesome!”
I had to stop him from chomping them all then and there, like popcorn. Then an idea struck him. “Dad, can I take them to school as a snack?”
Filed under: Hot Links
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Aigo Sunglasses with Digital Camera
Work Safe: Yes
New sunglasses from accessory maker Otas were launched earlier today. These sunglasses come with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera and a build-in mp3 player. The weight of the product is only 45 grams and it includes 2 GB of internal memory and a USB connection port. Now you can listen to music while you are taking pictures of women’s boobs. Yay!
Filed under: Hot Links
Thursday, June 12, 2008
For English Studies, Koreans Say Goodbye to Dad
Work Safe: Yes
On a sunny afternoon recently, half a dozen South Korean mothers came to pick up their children at the Remuera Primary School here, greeting one another warmly in a schoolyard filled with New Zealanders.
The mothers, members of the largest group of foreigners at the public school, were part of what are known in South Korea as “wild geese,” families living separately, sometimes for years, to school their children in English-speaking countries like New Zealand and the United States. The mothers and children live overseas while the fathers live and work in South Korea, flying over to visit a couple of times a year.
Filed under: Hot Links
Thursday, June 12, 2008
In China, an Airport Colossus for the Olympics
Work Safe: Yes
Adorned with the red and gold colors of Imperial China, the massive glass- and steel-sheathed structure of the new Terminal 3 building at Beijing Capital International Airport is expected to handle over 50 million passengers a year.
I personally have been to this airport recently and it’s nice. However, if they want visitors to have good experience, they need to fill the airport with more English speaking staff and make it more convenient. Considering it’s an international airport, 99.5% of the staff doesn’t speak any English, I had to show my passport 3 different times to 3 different people in matter of 10 feet while going through security, and they only accept Chinese currency at airport restaurants. I was like WTF?!
Filed under: Hot Links
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
China’s Grieving Parents
Work Safe: Yes
An estimated 10,000 children lost their lives in the May 12 earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan Province, crushed to death by falling school buildings. In a series of portraits, photographer Shiho Fukada captured the grief of parents of some of the 127 children who died at the Fuxin No. 2 Primary School in Mianzhu.
Filed under: Hot Links
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Vietnam’s Troubled Economy
Work Safe: Yes
year ago, Vietnam was being hailed as the next Asian miracle, a success story to match the rise of the Asian tigers of the 1990s and more recently the stunning growth of China and India. Thanks to economic reforms, the communist country was attracting record amounts of foreign investment. The economy expanded by 8.5% last year - among the fastest rates in the region - and housing prices doubled and tripled, driven up in part by frantic buyers who stood in line to snap up condos before they had even been built. The country’s nascent stock market was minting millionaires. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, their flashy new cars clogged roads better suited for bicycles.
Filed under: Hot Links
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
The World’s Hardest-Working Countries
Work Safe: Yes
If you thought you worked long hours, consider 39-year-old Lee from South Korea. A civil servant at the ministry of agriculture and fisheries, Lee gets up at 5:30 a.m. every day, gets dressed and makes a two-hour commute into Seoul to start work at 8:30 a.m. After sitting at a computer for most of the day, Lee typically gets out the door at 9 p.m., or even later.
Filed under: Hot Links
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Virtual-reality golf is a winner in South Korea
Work Safe: Yes
As dusk falls, a restaurant-lined lane in Seoul’s Mapo district fills up with customers, many from the nearby Obelisk office towers. For Kwon Sung Woon, it’s time to switch on the tall illuminated advertising column outside his shop to attract patrons.
Inside his establishment, men take off their neckties and play 18-hole rounds of golf, swinging real clubs at Pebble Beach in California, St. Andrews in Scotland and other famed courses around the world - except that it is all computer-simulated. They hit their balls into 4-meter-by-3 meter, or about 13-feet-by-10 feet, plastic screens showing projections of virtual-reality fairways.
Filed under: Hot Links
