툐오일 아침, 9:45 am: well, "frickin' a," as kids seem to still say these days unless i'm wrong; this morning, i went ahead and did what i've said for a long time now that i'd do: i went ahead and purchased a skateboard online. i bought it from boardtactics.com.
| here are the specs: | |
|---|---|
| deck: | minilogo 146 ki11 7.75x31.475 navy blue |
| truck: | bullet silver 127 |
| wheels: | bullet 54mm |
| risers: | independent 1/8" |
| grip: | jessup |
| hardware: | ironhorse wonder 1" |
it's awful, but i might be spending a bit of money today. sometime today, i'll go to fry's to check out a sony external dvd writer. if it's as good as the lg, i might have to buy it. the price is just ok and requires a crappy rebate. fry's is very dishonest with their rebates, so i'd basically be throwing money away on that, right?
[later] 오후 2:39 pm: this morning, i opened the front door and saw the drizzle and mist. i was expecting a sunnier day. in any case, i put sooni's raincoat on her and drove us out to the santa clara farmers market. there, i bought $4 of grapes at $1.50 a pound. however, first, i bought this gift checks coupon book from this woman selling them supposedly to benefit some missing children's fund. the book cost $10. oh yeah, before i walked to the farmers market from the car, i went to the post office to buy some 1¢ stamps. the u.s. post office is one place where a penny can still buy you something. well, i couldn't find any pennies in my coin wallet for once; so i inserted a nickel into the machine and purchased five 1¢ stamps, which makes no sense since the recent postage increase was 2cent;. (i really needed to buy an even number of 1¢ stamps.)
after the farmers market, i took "the scenic route" through much of western central san josé to get sooni and me to my mom's house, where i picked up my old uc berkeley diploma, an extra pair of land's end slippers, the old wool overcoat that i "inherited" from my dad (whether he knows it or not), two or three bananas, and a bottle of water. i then hurried back to our house to eat lunch with the beautiful kaela hwang during her break from that seminar.
since, then, i've been home, just ripping cds and stuff. you see, i received quite a bit of new music lately from yesasia and buy.com. (please use my links!)
on a side note, do you know who is the "in" thing right now? without doubt it's daniel dae kim of abc's hit television series lost. wow, this korean actor has made it quite far in the american scene (for what it's worth)! i heard he made some lame magazine's list of most beautiful people or sexiest men or whatever and won a golden globe. is that right? if so; wow, that's cool.
of course, people have been saying for the past few years, in years since peter park's bronx's junkyard opened its online doors, that korean pop culture is the "in" thing. thus, for years, i personally have been warning whowever would care to listen to me or read my words in the korean community not to let korean pop culture necessarily be the "in" thing. you understand why, right? just think how japanese culture pretty much became the "in" thing amongst the asian-american and asian-asian crowd for a decade or two. do koreans really want their culture exploited and milked for a couple of decades at most and then tossed aside for the next "big thing"? i would think not. at the same time, fortunately, korea has always been "the hermit kingdom," unlike japan; so there is hope that koreans won't necessarily sell out their pop culture the way, i hate to say, the japanese did. heh, yeah, those are some rather harsh but only brutally honest words.
being of taiwanese heritage, i can say that the taiwanese people have a special bond with japanese culture that goes beyond pop culture of the past two decades. it goes beyond japanime, d.d.r., sushi bars, and import rally cars. often, people have said the taiwanese culture shares more with japanese culture than chinese culture. as mandarin's the official language of the country (i guess), that's a hard sell; but it shouldn't be.
now let's get back for a second to discussing korean pop culture. for the next few minutes i want to discuss the phenomenon of 장윤장 jang yoonjung that has pervaded for the past year or so. in case you don't know, 장윤장 jang yoonjung is a young singer who sings "트로즈 trot" music. it's a bit comical to me. basically, this is the korean pop music industry's biggest practical joke yet. basically, a bunch of "record" company execs (executives) sat around a plush boardroom and said, "hey, let's find a girl, a girl to sing. if she's cute enough, we can make boys listen to whatever kind of crappy music we want to sell! this is great!" in case you don't know, "트로트 trot" music is a type of outdated, outmoded korean pop music. i wouldn't shy from calling it "korean mariachi." it uses lots of accordian timbres and has lots of "cha cha cha." if you ever want to hear someone go off on 트로트 trot music, just ask kaela what she thinks of it. this is grandmother music! oh, i'm sorry... 할머니 halmuhni music! for once, korean grandparents and korean or korean-american grandkids are listening to the same music. 장윤정 jang yoonjung appears on oldies live music shows in a lineup of singers thrice her age as well as modern pop music shows mixed in with buffed out guys in ripped jeans and vixen gals in bikini tops. it's quite a riot. yeah, 장윤정 herself is in her early twenties. i admit, she's a decent looking girl, and her music can be somewhat catchy, especially since it's played so much and promoted so much. her first hit was "어머나 uhmuhna" translated as "oh my!" or "oh me, oh my!" or something to that effect. her next hit was "짱자라 jjangjara," where the name is more of an onomatopoeia. i said 트로트 trot music has lots of "cha cha cha," but it actually has more "짱짱짱 jjang jjang jjang." now, she currently has a hit called "꽃 (ggot)" (the title means "flower"). this song is a ballad, a form that has always been more of a middle ground, i.e. a wider variety of people with dissimilar musical tastes can together tolerate ballads. you can learn more about 장윤정 jang yoon at her official website: www.jangyoonjeong.com. of course, you'll need to be able to read and understand korean. whether you can do those things or not, a couple of good links to follow to learn about these kinds of things would be this yesasia link directly to 장윤정 jang yoonjung's works as well as the perennial www.bunkyard.com. i don't think bronx's junkyard has as much coverage of her because she isn't a "finklses" girl nor does she typically prance around stage in a bikini. heh, just kidding... i don't want my fellow bjunkies to take offense by that remark. i think the reason people don't talk much about 장윤정 jang yoonjung on bronx's is simply because people there don't tend to listen to 할머니 halmuni music!
ok, it's now 4:32 pm, and i believe that i should go check out fry's. tonight, i should do some work work and some housework.