Song Ji Eun - 희망고문 (False Hope/Torturous Hope/Hope Torture) MV Review

Besides BoA, Song Ji Eun of the Korean group, Secret, helped immerse me into the world of Kpop. In May last year, I happened to stumble across "It's Cold", an OST track for the drama Take Care of Us, Captain. I was amazed by the clarity Song Ji Eun had in terms of her vocal abilities. Due to that clarity, I dubbed her as the Mozart of the Kpop scene. True, I don't have a vast knowledge of all the singers in the business, but I have to argue that her voice is one of the clearest ones that I ever heard in a long time.

I just found out literally last week that Song Ji Eun was to release her first mini album, featuring three songs in which one of the songs had parts of it composed and lyrics written by Ji Eun herself. For the purpose of this review, I will focus on just her title track, which I'm not quite sure of the exact title so I'll stick with the term I first heard: Torturous Hope.

Once again, this is not a professional review. This review reflects my opinions and you're free to disagree with it in anyways that suit your needs. This time however, I'll try to integrate the music and the video into one to save on time it takes to write this blog post.

WARNING: I forgot to mention it on my blogpost yesterday, but this Music Video (MV) is rated 19+ due to some disturbing scenes. Viewer discretion is advised. For my own screen caps, I will not include pictures of these scenes, but I may make reference to it during the discussion of the music video.

Review and Thoughts
First of all, I have to say that the style of the MV from the teaser I saw didn't coincide with my expectations of Song Ji Eun or Secret. From my experiences, their MVs tend to be cutesy or sexy, but never overly complex to understand. From the teaser, I knew that this MV would be different for it looked dark and had images of minor body mutilation on Ji Eun's hand. Also, this video is filled with imagery that I cannot begin to hope to be able to interpret the intention of each scenes.

The slow-mid tempo R&B piece complements well with the mostly dark themed music video. The massive use of scene changes, from scenes of Ji Eun by herself, to those with, what I assume is her ex-boyfriend, really keeps the song going. At times, it made it difficult for me to keep track of where I am in terms of the song because I become so fixated to the intense images.

In a recent interview, Song Ji Eun stated: "It is said that guys tend to give false hope to girls after a breakup. So the title became False Hope. There are many guys who give false hope to girls even if they don't really like her. The lyrics talk about that kind of story." Message received. Despite not understanding a word of Korean, I could get that message from the video.

The constant usage of monotone and cool blue tones helped, I believe, bring out attention to the sadness that comes from a breakup. It's furthered supported by having Song Ji Eun and her ex having a long nail pierced into their hand; perhaps to illustrate a love turned to becoming a burden, especially to the girl. It is like Ji Eun has this "false hope" of being able to rekindle a 5relationship that have became unrequited. On the other hand, there were warmer scenes. I want to say that this represented more about the anger that comes from a break up (for we see her tear a cake apart when they used this filter [if that's the right word to use]), but I cannot say for sure. Perhaps it could be her own personal anger, for not being able to let go? However, the contrast between the sad and "angry" scenes convey the multiple emotions of the theme well.

There were two scenes that really caught my eye. The first one includes the monotone scenes with the red pomegranate. As simple as it is, it's purely ingenious in my opinion. The imagery of blood plays figuratively, and literally to an extent, to help strengthen the theme. Second, the scene where Ji Eun sits within a thorn bush. Well done in terms of conveying the feeling of despair and hopelessness of being trapped in this relationship. I believe it makes reference to the rose tattoo on the ex's arms.

Looking at this as a whole, I find the music video for Torturous Hope to be a wonderful contrast between the clarity of Song Ji Eun's voice and the complexity of the video. I feel that it is consistent with the mixed emotions that comes from a breakup that has one party with lingering feelings. And thus, this is the torture. To be a prisoner of one's own feelings. In conclusion, it's an amazing piece of art, and something really unexpected from Secret's main vocalist.

Screen caps
In the same interview, Song Ji Eun stated that she had to wear 12 different outfits for the shoot! I went through the music video and took screen caps of the 12 different outfits, or what I thought were the 12 different outfits.

I took them in order of appearance, so they may not all be the most pleasing shots of Song Ji Eun. And since I'm not really in tune with fashion, I have came up with my own names for the outfits. =P (I feel like those Asian restaurants with funny English names for their dishes)

 #1: Red stripped skirt

 #2: White dress with black squares

 #3: Cardigan

 #4: Satin outfit

 #5: Black and White Dress with skirt tail

 #6: Blue flower pattern

 #7: Fluffy shoulder dress (My personal favorite in this MV. I really like her hair in this one)

 #8: Office attire 

 #9: Simple White Outfit

 #10: Another black dress 

 #11: Mademoiselle Outfit

#12: Similar to number 5, but pure black

Surprised that I didn't need to nap today!

Over the past couple of weeks, I normally take a nap during the afternoon. This afternoon, however, didn't make me drowsy at all! I guess I stayed awake by studying physics (onto Hydrodynamics) and playing some LoL.

I got a haircut in the early evening and then finished putting decals on my Red Astray! I used up most of the recommended decals, but there's a whole bunch of nice ones left. I'm on the fence whether or not to put more on it... so I'll ponder that tonight!

Also, tonight marked the release of Secret's Song Ji Eun's third single: Torturous Hope/Hope Tortue/ False Hope/ or whatever other names it's being called at the moment. It's been a while since she last release a solo single, and I have to say that she delivered well! Perhaps a review if I feel like it tomorrow, which I think I would! It's a slow R&B song with a dark, but really artistic music video.

Check it out!

Splitting Headaches

Have you ever been so bored that you develop a intense headaches? That was me today. I was pretty much isolated in my room for the entire day. Since I'm not the type to study on my bed, I wasn't able to do any work. Also, I pretty much had no access to internet. I ended up just laying there, finishing up the first Harry Potter audio book.

The boredom, almost quite literally, killed me. My head was pounding. Fortunately for me, after I was able to go on my computer, it went away after a while! I guess it also helped that Wind Mobile accepted iPhone 5s. I can't wait for my plan to expire so that I can transfer over to Wind! My iPhone 4 served me well over the years, but iOS 7 is laggy on it.

Plus, if they still have their $30 plan, I don't have to pay over $50 each month! (For pretty much little data).

Short blog post for today...

Such an ordinary day today. Woke up like how I would normally wake up on Fridays, ate, job searched for a while and relaxed for pretty much the entire day. Went out in the evening for Bro Night and came home to get my win of the day in LoL.

I guess my next goal is to try and find a way to maintain productivity on Fridays. That seems to be a shortcoming of mine ever since I graduated from University...

Early Friday

Despite knowing that today is only Thursday, I treated it like a Friday. I woke up early, but spent over an hour to eat breakfast. I was watching an episode of Invincible Youth. It was slightly heartbreaking since Yuri, Sunny and Hyuna all left the show due to their group's oversea activities. Since this show is a couple years old, I know who the upcoming replacements are going to be, but nevertheless, it was sad to see them go. I thought that Hyomin did a great job in her letter to Sunny.

Note: Sunny and Hyomin have a "thing" in the show. For those who don't know, "couples" are quite popular in Korean groups. For example, in SNSD, there's Taeny (TAEyeon & TiffaNY). For IY, it's Sunny and Hyomin, or Sunbyung (since Hyomin is always edited out, she's known as a folding screen).

After breakfast, I did some laundry and other small chores. I job searched for a while, and then proceeded to watch another variety show: Hello Councillor. It's essentially a show where contestants compete to see who has the worst issue. Each segment is about 20 minutes long, where you see the "victim", the "perpetrator" and guests of the victim or perpetrator. The hosts and their guests usually give advice. At the end of the segment, people vote to express whether they think the particular case is a concern or not. The case with the most concerns win $1000 (after three weeks I think? Not too sure since I only watched 2 episodes). From what I saw so far, some cases seem quite far-fetched... like a guy lending over $200 000 to people when his company is going down.

In the afternoon, I ended up reading the manga for Attack on Titan. I couldn't stand the suspense from watching an episode a week... so I went ahead and read about 12-13 chapters. That took up a good chunk of my afternoon. As for my early evening, I ended up going out to buy some supplies.

And then it was dinner and LoL...

Yes, not a very productive day, but next week will be different! Well I hope it will be!

I guess I'll just enjoy my two Fridays this week.

WE'RE HAVING A SALE! 0% OFF!

For the past couple of weeks, I've been receiving mail from crunchyroll advertising their daily deals. 

But in fact, they're not deals at all. They're taking away 0% off. (If you're a premium member, then they'll take some more off). I'm not sure if it's a glitch, but it has been occurring for a while now. 

Twitching Eyelid...

I'm not sure why, but my right eyelid was sporadically twitching all day! I noticed it first thing in the morning when I woke up. I walked to my bathroom.

Twitch

Did my business.

Twitch, twitch

Ate breakfast

Twitched (throughout my meal).

And then it stopped for a while when I was job searching. It came back after I began studying. =/

My guess it's either from eye strain or stress/anxiety. I don't think I have an eye infection and I hope that it goes away tomorrow.

If it's due to eye strain, I'll stop watching YouTube videos at night. I have the habit, for the past 5 months or so, to watch YouTube videos on my iPod Touch or iPhone to help me fall asleep. Starting today, I think I'll pull out my old Harry Potter audio tapes and listen to them instead. =)

Yes I admit, I'm a Harry Potter Geek.

This just in...

There's nothing really special to report today!

Started my day once again job searching, but to no avail today. Also it didn't help that I was reading a bunch of articles about the job crunch for teachers in Canada. =/

Next was Physics. It took me a while, but I finally finished going over Work, Energy and Momentum. I really need to step up my review time now! I also started to review my biology, by going over some basic biochem and cellular respiration. It reminded me of how much hate I have for cellular respiration. =/ I really dislike all those pathways!

And that's that... Took a walk as well, and noticed how cold it was with the wind blowing. =/

Lazy..... Sunday

What an extraordinary ordinary day! (I wonder if that sentence makes sense). Absolutely nothing really happened today. Went to karate, taught afterwards, went home, ate, napped, YouTube, study for like 10 minutes, ate, gamed.

And now this...

Blah...

Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive. It always seems that I'm productive on Mondays...

A Garbage Day

My morning started bright and early since we had to go dump some garbage at the landfill. It wasn't too far from our house, so we left a little bit later than what we wanted to leave at. Once we arrived at the landfill, we got to our spot and started chucking our junk out. It was actually quite a stress-relieving activity, since it was pretty cool seeing windows travel in a parabola to see it smash into pieces on the ground! Unfortunately though, I was injured twice during the ordeal (though not with the windows thank goodness!). I stabbed myself with a nail (wasn't rusty and I had my Tetanus booster a couple years back) and managed to scratch the side of my neck with some lumber. =/

After getting home, I prepared to rip out some old carpet that we needed to get replaced. My task was to work on the stairs that leads from my main floor to the upper level. Six stairs took me nearly four and a half hours to complete. It was a pain removing all the old staples and nails underneath the carpet. Each stair had almost 100 staples!! And each staple, for me at least, almost took 20-30 seconds to remove...

Oh well. At least it's done!  

Moving Day

An ordinary day like any other day. I woke up, did some job searching, studied a little and worked on my red astray. 

In the afternoon though, I went with my dad to rent a truck to move some things. It was a pretty huge truck, though luckily for me, I didn't have to drive it. After we arrived home, we started moving things into it. It took us over an hour since we had a lot of heavy things to move =P. 

And that's my day for today! I need to get some sleep sincey brain isn't functioning at the moment...

Why don't you go pick on somebody your own size?!

Today was quite the contrast to yesterday's gloomy weather. It was bright, though a bit chiller than the last couple of weeks. I noticed it while I was taking my afternoon stroll; the wind was definitely a lot cooler as it gently brushed against my face. Since I didn't want to walk too far out today incase I needed to be back home, I just walked right outside my street on the pathway.

After making my 3rd lap, I noticed a small dog in the distance barking it's head off. Apparently, a bigger dog and it's owner was causing it grief. I watched with mild interest, since that dog seemed awfully familiar to me...

As I was making a roundabout, the dog lost interest of the bigger dog and whipped across the street, onto the crosswalk (where I was walking). It started to sniff the garbage can. I looked back and realized it was the same dog that terrorized me a couple months back during my daily walk.

Fortunately, it seemed more interested in the garbage can, but not wanting to be near it, I quickly hurried on home. As I was nearing my house, I turned around and saw the dog went back to go chase some person. This time though, I noticed the small terror's owner (or what appeared to be the owner) chasing after it. I thought to myself, "Finally, somebody to control that menace".

Boy, was I wrong.

As I made it to my driveway, I heard footsteps, and I turned to see a small whitish bullet heading towards me way. Knowing it was after me, I quickly faced my small opponent as it tried to snip at my ankles, growling like a little demon. We continued our charade for a couple of seconds. It was definitely a nail biting moment. It was circling me as I constantly turned around/pranced on the spot, trying to stay away from its teeth. Now, this dog is the is size is probably only about a foot long, while I'm 5'7", but it was still nevertheless terrifying. It got to the point that I was thinking I should kick the dog to defend myself, but fortunately the owner caught up to us. When the dog realized that it's master was nearby, it made a dash towards the sidewalk.

The owner seemed embarrassed, for she just hurried after the dog without acknowledging me (or perhaps not even her dog at all). I quickly ran inside my house, incase the little beast decided to come back and give me more trouble. =P

Looking back, I guess it's a good thing that the dog wasn't any bigger, or it would have been a lot scarier. But then again, I guess large dogs usually don't go chasing people (from what I've seen so far).

Bright and Colourful! Presenting a brief overlook of iOS 7

Like many other people with "current" iPhones, iPads or iPods, today marked the day that iOS 7 came out. Not wanting to deal with overloaded servers, I waited till about later afternoon to install the new OS.

A friend recommended that I install a clean version of the OS, so I entered my phone into DFU mode and reinstalled iOS 6.1.3. Once that was completed (made me realize that I should have deleted old apps and songs that I don't listen to for next time so I don't have to wait as long), I went ahead and updated my iTunes.

Once iTunes was installed, I went ahead and downloaded the new OS. It failed the first time, but I was able to install it after the second time. All in all, the reinstalled iOS 6.1.3 to installing iOS 7 took me about an hour and a half.

But it was definately worth the wait. The first thing I noticed when my phone rebooted itself was the Apple Logo. It was no longer the "metallic" (metallic looking to me) looking Apple sign with a slash across it. Instead, it was simply the Apple sign, one that you can find on top of Macbooks.

Like how it was presented weeks/months ago, the Lock Screen was hugely different than the outgoing OS. Gone are the boarders that once resided since the very first iOS I believe (or at least iOS 4). Instead, it's a very simple, clean look. The numbers used for the time is slimmer, but looks just as good as the old one to my eyes. Instead of signal bars, you have signal dots instead. Also, another significant difference is the Control Center. You swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access key settings like airplane mode, wi-fi, night mode, brightness, etc. I believe it was a feature in Android, but I'm glad they put it into the iPhone. I especially like how they have a dedicated flash light button (using the LED), clock and calculator buttons added to the Control Center.

Finally, when you go onto the home screen, you see a whole new change to the interface. I'm not familiar with the other platforms (Windows, Android and whatever else there is), but I heard its a mixture of many of them put into one. Initially, I wasn't too fond of the bubbly like appearances of the app buttons, but after time, I started to like it. (Maybe I should get a White iPhone next time? Might blend better with the white bezel). I haven't tried all the built in apps yet, but I had a chance to fiddle around with Safari. I have to say it's a lot better now. To me, it seems faster, and I like how they integrate the url bar with a search bar. The mail app looks great too, though I think it's a bit buggy. It says I have 3000+ unread emails, when I actually read all of them already!

On the iPhone 4, I have to say that there's a bit of lag in terms of performance, but it's not too noticeable in my eyes. I have to say that iOS 7 is quite the welcoming change for Apple as it competes with strong competition from the likes of Android. All in all, I'm really enjoying the OS! I can't recommend it at this point, since I wasn't able to play with all the features, but I'm definitely liking what I have now!

 iOS 6

iOS 7

Invincible Youth

Nothing to talk about today, since my day was just like any other. Got up, job searched, walked, studied, went to work and LoL. (Still on somewhat of a Losing streak in summoner's =/).

So for today, I'm going to briefly discuss a show I've been watching. It's a Korean variety show, a show that takes seven female idols and place them in a farming environment. At first, you see these idols struggling to adjust to life in the countryside, but over time they start to adjust.

As of the moment, I finished episode 29. I catch my episodes on kbsworld's YouTube channel. As a side note, the show finished airing years ago, but KBS is reuploading with subs. I don't find the subs as good as the ones done by Soshified (I believe it was them doing the subs), but they upload full episodes.

As a newbie in the Kpop world, I found Invincible Youth a great segue into the culture. Initially, out of the 7 girls, I was only familiar with three of them: Yuri and Sunny from SNSD and Sunhwa from Secret. I had no idea who Hara, from Kara, was... no idea who Narsha was (never heard of her group Brown Eyed Girls)... thought Hyuna was just a sultry idol (girl in Psy's Gangnam MV and part of the group 4minute). And as for the last member, Hyomin from T-ara... well once again I never heard of her, nor her group.

But after watching the show for a bit, I got to know each member and see their charisma shine out from the initial awkwardness. There's characters like Sunhwa's "dumb blonde" (called White Paper in Korea), Narsha's Adult-idol (from her "explicit" comments/actions) to CEO Hyomin. Completely Edited Out. And Hyuna! She just whines a lot, but she's so funny when she does! Each episode is full of laughs, from seeing the girls and the hosts play games to see who has to do more chores to who gets a snack. Despite it being scripted, it just seems so real, that each member is acting the way they want to act.

From that show, I researched each member and their groups and started listening to their songs. And from that point on, I became more and more immerse into Kpop!

And now... just waiting for Episode 30 to come out...

Edit: I just realized that the screen cap has the new cast for season 1. Victoria, Sori and Jooyeon weren't part of the original cast. They were introduced midway through to replace Sunny, Yuri and Hyuna due to their conflicting overseas schedule... or something like that.

It's easier than it looks! Cleaning up my keyboard

Pretty much an ordinary day. I woke up, made a couple of calls, job searched (found an interesting teaching position involving science, math and photography), studied physics, took a walk, etc etc. What was different about today perhaps was that I got the chance to clean up my mac keyboard.

It was getting filthy, so I went online and read up on how to clean my keyboard. There were a variety of suggestions, from getting a Tide To Go Pen (or however it's spelt), using a micro fibre cloth dipped in a soapy solution, to as simple as using soap and water with a regular cloth.

I chose to just clean it with a old dishrag and regular water. And it worked quite well! All I did was take my rag and made it damp. I then scrubbed down the grime from all my keys. It looks almost like new, save the aluminium sections looking a bit dirty.

After cleaning up my keyboard, I ate dinner and played some LoL.

And that's that!

I need to start thinking up of more creative blog topics since my life is quite boring at the moment.

Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah Electric Shock

What another ordinary today was, or mostly was! I got up early, went to karate, and came back home. I was pretty much stuck in my room, so I ended up not doing much. =/ I tried studying, but I can never study on my bed (my study desk is not in my room). Therefore, I ended up reading up stuff on the net, and watching YouTube videos.

After I left my room, I was in a bit of a haze, so I was walking haphazardly down the stairs. I made contact with some bare live wires (we're fixing some outlets in my house at the moment).

And of course, as one expected, I got an electric shock. It wasn't too bad since I was mostly drowsy at that time, but it did help wake me up! After getting shocked, the song "Electric Shock", sung by a Kpop group, f(x), started playing in my head...

Maybe I'm getting too immersed into Kpop, though it's definitely not a bad thing!

Afternoon Fatigue

One of the reasons why I like to wake up early is because I get a lot of my work done in the morning (when I do wake up early). When I don't I tend to get nothing accomplished, since after breakfast, it's pretty much lunch time... and then yeah... the dreaded afternoon.

When I got nothing to do, I tend to get really sleepy during the afternoons. I try not to nap, but then I tend to just sit in my chair and scroll through YouTube videos. I dub these tired spells as my Afternoon Fatigues.

Today's afternoon fatigue was extremely fatiguing. I was earnestly trying to study torque and rotational inertia, but I ended up just staring at the page. So I went out for a long walk with my brother. When I got back, about an hour later, I managed to finish reading up rotational inertia. However, very soon after, I fell asleep.

For like 3 minutes...

And then somehow I was full of energy!

But no motivation...

Weird. =/

Make some luck for an "unlucky day"!

It's Friday the 13th! Or it was 15ish minutes ago!

Since it was Friday, I decided to take a day off and relax. Therefore I played a bunch of LoL and surfed the net. I did feel kind of guilty since I didn't get any work done, but that's okay! Gotta relax now and then... or maybe I've relaxed for too long (*cough cough Summer cough cough*)

As for the title of the post...

So for Bro Night, I got to pick the place today. I wanted to try out a new place in the NE, Banana Leaf, but it turned out that they closed at 8. (We arrived at 8:30). We then went to downtown for Happy Hour at Sakana, but that didn't start to 10! After Sakana, we went to see if Calgary Court was open, but it was still undergoing renovations from the flooding.

Okay, three restaurants down, but we weren't out yet. We decided to check out a Korean place in Dragon City Mall (forgot the name of the place), but they were closing in about 40 minutes. Since we normally take our time when we eat, we didn't think it was the right place for us to eat (despite the fact that they probably wouldn't kick us out, but you know... it just doesn't feel right staying too long after closing time).

For our fifth place, we went to Hokkaido on 5th ave, but it was closed for a private function. Then towards our 6th restaurant, which was more of a pub I guess, Palomino was too noisy for our tastes.

Finally, for our 7th restaurant stop, we decided to eat at Milestones. Since it was a nice night, we opted for a table out on the patio. There was a really faint, but pleasant breeze which made the night really enjoyable. We got to see a lot of interesting events, such as exotic cars passing by to a couple police officers arresting/detaining some drunken people down Stephen Ave.

So overall, the 7 restaurant stops ensured that we had a night that wasn't full of misfortune! Sure it's not scientific, but I am a little bit superstitious!

Hot September Day

I can't believe it almost reached 30 degrees today! Normally, it would be in the teens for this time of year.

My morning started off with a trip to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. It was a normal, semi-annual clean up. Fortunately, it seems like my improved dental hygiene is working since the hygienist didn't scale my teeth too hard/long this time!

After the dentist, I attempted to job search and study, but to no avail. =/ I ended up taking part of my morning off till I managed to muster some motivation to study. Afterwards, I managed to go over a good chunk of physics: center of mass, circular motion and torque.

In the evening, I went out to eat Korean food at Insadong in the NE. It's one of my favorite spots since it's relatively close to my home. I ordered my pork bone soup and ate quite a bit of the other dishes. I had to say that I was overly stuffed after the meal. =P It was the first time I tried Korean beer as well: Hite. It wasn't too bad! Reminded me of Heineken.

And that was pretty much my day for today!

What an interesting walk today...

First of all, today marks the 12th year since the 9/11 attacks. May those souls rest in peace.

Onto my day! Woke up and did my usual once again. After my brother went to work, I went outside and took a walk on the pathway outside of my house.

It was an interesting walk to say... For the first part, I kept giving myself a wedgie... >_<. I had to adjust my boxers discreetly since I was worried that, if somebody was behind me, would wonder what this guy is doing... "scratching his butt". No matter how much I tried to adjust, I kept giving myself wedgies!!

Out of frustration, or something, I started to jog a bit and voila! Wedgie gone!

And onto something a bit more normal...

Near the end of my walk, I started walking with my eyes closed. I wanted to feel the warmth of the sun (quite a warm September we're having so far) and feel the breeze that was wafting by. Sure, I opened my eyes every 10 seconds or so to ensure I wasn't going to crash into anything. Overall, it was a very pleasant walk, and something I think I'm going to try more often!

Not the wedgies of course!

Same old, same old

Nothing out of the ordinary today. Woke up, did my usual thing in the morning, went to work in the evening. Just another normal September day, though I can't say that for the weather. It has been gorgeous for the past couple of days. Though I'm starting to notice how dark its starting to become at night when I left work today.

And as a side note, turns out I didn't catch a cold. Rather, I probably just burnt my uvula yesterday, thus giving me that pain. (I checked in the mirror last night and noticed how it looked kinda weird. I'll probably look at it tonight and make a comparison.)

You're kidding me...

As of the last couple of hours, my throat started to feel funny. If it does turn out to be a sore throat, it'll be my third bout of illness in about five months... a first for me from what I can remember.

What happened to getting sick once a year >_<. Ah well... what can you do? I guess things could be a lot worse...

Anyways for today, it turned out to be a pretty productive day! Once again, I started my morning off with job searching and physics. Afterwards, I went to the police station to get my security clearance fixed. I forgot to put down the agency from last time =/. Also, this'll be my third police check this year! (Or is it fourth now...) I wonder if they care how many police checks I get..

After submitting my fixed check, I went home and took a lengthy walk. Normally, I would travel North or East of my house, but I decided to try a southern route today. I wandered through neighbourhoods that I never explored before. I think I ended up walking for almost 5 km today!

Besides a productive day, I wish I could have said the same for LoL... I'm currently on a losing streak. Since I'm on this losing streak, I'm also below par once again. =(

And that marks my day for today!

Nearly completed!

Finished building my 1/100 MG Astray Red Frame!

The body isn't overly complicated, but the huge sword it has (or tactical arm as they call it) is simply beautiful. Also, I was glad that I picked this color scheme: metallic red, silver, black and brass gold. Initially, I was thinking of making a black and red Astray, but it was a good thing that I changed my mind!

Tea Funny

Nothing really to report for today. Got up, went to volunteer and came home and studied a bit. Didn't really feel like studying, so I ended up playing quite a bit of LoL. Besides gaming, I managed to finish the big sword for my Red Astray! It's pretty huge! Just the katana's left and the building part will be done!

Too lazy to write another review blog now, so I'll just talk about Bro Night from yesterday. After dinner, we went to try out a newly opened dessert/bbt place called Tea Funny. It's located on Centre Street and between 12th and 13th Ave. Essentially, it's next to the Tim Hortons on Centre.

The place apparently opened just last week, so it was really new looking and quiet. It was innovative in that each table had a couple of iPads for you to order food (with a virtual menu of course) and to browse around on the net. I thought it was a pretty neat concept!

I had a green tea, though my drink didn't look remotely like what it did on the menu. On the menu, it looked like green green tea. Instead, I got a red green tea, like something you get from Tim's. It wasn't bad though, and the price was reasonable. I wasn't in the mood to try anything else, but I'll definitely will the next time I visit that place!

Kara Damaged Lady Review

It's been a while since I made a review blog of something, so here goes! I'll start off with Kara's Damaged Lady and then proceed to SNSD's GALAXY SUPERNOVA tomorrow, or another day. I'll discuss my opinions for both the song and the music videos.

Once again, I am not a professional, thus I may use the wrong terminology/expressions throughout my review. These are strictly my opinions and you're free to agree or disagree with them. Feel free to comment/critique this post!

***

KARA - Damaged Lady

Music

(*Note, the MV's song differs slightly from the song by having a brief instrumental introduction before the rapping starts.

The brief instrumental introduction in the MV starts off catchy, with a syncopated (off-beat) to grab my attention. Soon after, we hear the face of Kara (Goo Hara) rapping, with a sense of loathing in her voice. 

That then leads to a brief... vocal belting (not sure of the term) from the main vocalist of the group, Han Seung-yeon. which goes well with the accompany music. It gives the song a strong start and ensures that it has my attention. Soon after, we hear the first verse: a fast-flowing melody line accompanied by piano chords and some guitar rifts. 

Then comes the rock like background, followed by what sounds like a synthesizer to tell us that the chorus is soon coming up. And it sure delivers. 

The chorus is beautiful, with all the members singer a melody line that is mostly stepwise (not a lot of leaps). This, along with the strong background music really creates an atmosphere of power but bitterness. 

The bridge then follows continues with the synthesizer, which I think helped smooths the transition of to the modified first verse (or would this be considered the second verse). Nothing really changes besides that it's shorter and the synthesizer is still present to tell me that the chorus is coming back quite quickly!

There is another bridge... or something equivalent to a dominant preparation in which it preps up for the chorus and ending. 

And the song ends well, with what sounds like a diminished chord. It's no perfect ending, but it does leave me with a sense of closure for the piece. 

Overall, the song is catchy with smooth transitions. The group members are able to, in my ears, to mesh their voices into one for the chorus quite well. The strong rock guitar sections and synthesizer really creates the atmosphere for the song; the sense of bitterness from a break up and a broken heart. However, there is that power present, like the empowerment that can come from the break up (if that makes any sense!).

I have to say, that it is my favorite Kara song to date! The chorus is catchy, the verses are catchy, heck... everything is catchy about this song! There isn't any flaws I can pull out from this song.

Score 10/10

Music Video

Instead of describing the storyline of the MV, I'm just going to express my thoughts for the piece.

First off, the clothing used in this MV. All I can say is that the dresses, dress shirts/tie combo, victorian-royalty-dresses and whatever else they're wearing was well crafted. It really brought out the charm from each member of the group. The dresses looked elegant. The dress shirts and ties gave them a sense of power and independence. Nothing was overly sexual, which I believe is the right path for this song. Even with the wet dress shirt scene was tastefully done. All in all, clothing was well used well to strengthen the message, of the transition of being "girly like" in a bad relationship to strength and independence. 

Next, settings and transitions. I think the transitions and settings were thought out quite well for this MV. There's probably a reason why they chose certain things, but I am unable to interpret them at this point. All I can say is that each setting is pleasantly crafted and the transitions make perfect sense, with nothing seemingly out of place. I especially liked the scene where the five members, dressed in their dresses, were looking at their reflection before they made their transformation.

Finally, the choreography. I'm not a dance expert, nor am I familiar with the type of dances that Kara usually does, but it seemed to be a pleasant choreography. Their moves aren't really flashy, nor strong looking, but it works well with the song. The "taking-off-the-ring" move feels really symbolic and caught my eye (that feeling of independence once again). Also, I liked how the moves weren't overly suggestive.

To sum it up, great MV! The clothing, transitions, setting and choreography mended well together with everything having a part to play in the music video!

Score 10/10

Final Thoughts

I'm not a huge Kara fan, but this song and music video may change my position on that! Damaged Lady is a catchy song that has a wonderfully made music video. There isn't anything I really dislike about Damaged Lady (well... maybe the short wigs at some parts). For Kara fans, it's a must watch and for non Kara fans or those getting into K-pop, I think it's a great first video for you to watch!

And now some screen caps that I captured via YouTube

 The "taking-of-the-ring" move

Dress shirt and tie that I mentioned 

Kara's Nicole (One of my biases in the group)  

Goo Hara looks so happy here! She's the one in the middle 

Kara's Nicole 

Kara's Goo Hara (my other bias thanks to the variety show, Invincible Youth)

Urgh... so much rage in LoL...

Ever since the patch from yesterday, I've been experiencing some heavy lag and low fps.

All my settings are set on low too...

And for the past two days, I finished playing LoL with much frustration. >_<

I apologize for ranting. I promise that tomorrow's blog post will be better! I think it'll be a review post since I haven't done those in a while.

PLC is 25

I went to go volunteer at the hospital today for it's 25th anniversary. I first went up to the volunteer office to receive instructions on what I have to do for the day. It started off with them programming a walkie talkie like device called a "voicesera" (something like that). It's special in that you can direct your calls to people, rather than to broadcast it to everyone.

After receiving my voicesera/voicecera/whatever its called, a bunch of us volunteers went down to help set up the cafeteria. After that was set up, I proceeded back to the office to grab the bench so I can, along with another volunteer member, play music for those coming in the west entrance.

We spent about three hours playing, while we took turns on our instruments (the other volunteer was on a violin). I was hoping to recognize some people passing by, because apparently all three levels of gov't heads (mayor, premier and prime minister) were supposed to be at the celebration. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch a glimpse of any of them... though I may have seen the premier passing by...

But yes, that was my day today!

Productive September Day!

I actually got quite a bit done today! I started my morning with job searching and applied to a couple posts. After job hunting, I proceeded to study some physics. Out of the three sciences taught in secondary schools, physics is my weakest since I never took it in high school and pretty much copied my friend's homework in university. (Two of my biggest regrets in my schooling life). I started off with basic kinematics, and practiced some questions.

After studying, I ate lunch and went out for a walk. During my walk, my knee started to feel a bit funny, but I guess that's from sitting down all summer break. It's going to take some time to get back in shape. (I keep telling myself to keep in shape, but I guess it's finally time to act on it.)

And after all that, I lazed around the afternoon for a bit. I was feeling a bit fatigued from the morning and lack of sleep/waking up early.

Then work!

And yes! A productive day indeed! Hopefully this trend will last! Time to turn a new leaf!

The Kitchen God's Wife

Labour Day! Somehow I woke up super late and ended up eating both breakfast and lunch at the same time. I guess that's what people call a brunch? Or is that when you eat a meal between breakfast or lunch...

Anyways, I ended up reading quite a bit of a book that my mom got for me: Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife. It's an interesting story that, from what I'm getting so far, speaks about a strained relationship between a daughter and her mother. The mother ends up telling the daughter about her past, which is where I am currently at in the book.

It's a good read since I'm able to connect in a way, especially in terms of the Chinese culture depicted in the book. I didn't expect to enjoy this book since I barely read anything now a days, but it has been a good read so far!

And no huge English words or confusing point of views (ie: The Sound and the Fury. I'm sorry Faulkner fans, but that book made absolutely no sense to my simple mind). And thank goodness it's no Great Expectations.... my mind imploded when I had to read that book for high school. Perhaps I'll tackle that when I'm a bit more mature and wiser. 

And that's that! Time to sleep and wake up early and start fresh! Studying and job searching =P

credits: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNeS515X0OVYA1GxBI3AGKKzFCcbczQ1rejgNf3uHzarrFED9RVbsAgtwHCrjxq37vS3z_RM5VNnzlUwGYpvWA6kYqKI2cWga2AcLkbFsAw5ga73JtM3Dr4N1lvR7Nb12V7noGyx4-5A/s320/scaled.19721.jpg

A new month! A new start!

It's hard to believe that summer went by so quickly! (I know it's not the official end of summer, but I like to associate September as the start of a new school year).

Hell, it's hard to believe that 2013 is almost over. At times, it really feels like yesterday was January 1st. The months keep on rolling by!

As for today, I ended up playing board games with my brother. It's a nice change from being so hooked to the internet in recent weeks. We started off with a Pokémon board game that we got years ago, in which you capture Pokémon chips and battle the Elite Four. Afterwards, near the evening, we played a game of Stratego. It was our first time playing it, so we used the newbie setup. Despite not being very good at strategy games (in which I got my butt kicked by my brother), I'm starting to get the hang of the game.

And with that, I hope that I end up blogging more often!

Credits: http://porfiriopartida.com/java/pokemon/images/mastertrainer.jpg

A picture of the cover of the board game.