free web tracker soliloquies: 06/15/2008 - 06/22/2008

soliloquies

so・lil・o・quy/- n. [C,U] a speech in a play in which a character talks to himself or herself, so that the audience know the character's thoughts.

Friday, June 20, 2008

photography

In addtion to the weird "peace sign" culture, I found out how people tend to take sceneric photos often without people, here in Japan. I wonder why...

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

unnecessary footprints

Thanks to my friend's recommendation, I have entered the world of facebook, the world's second largest social networking service.

Meanwhile, here in Japan where most people are isolated from the rest of the world from their lack of English skills, the biggest players in the industry are domestic services. One is called mixi and the other is called GREE. Basically, these services including facebook offer the same things: commenting, photo uploading, connections between people and so on. But there's one major difference in feature that vividly distinguishes Japanese serrvices from those of American origin. It's what mixi and GREE administrators call "footprint".

Footprint feature automatically tracks who checked out your profile page, your friend list, your diary, or basically, anything you uploaded on to your mixi or GREE page. While GREE allows you to delete your own footprint, mixi's footprint is mandatory and cannot be deleted. This feature is quite annoying and stressful when you find out how someone you know or someone you thought were close with you suddenly appears out of nowhere, steps in your page and disappears with out a friend request or a comment of some kind.

I ADMIT IT, THIS REALLY PISSES ME OFF. In my mind, I'm chanting FUCK OFF, DOUCHE, repeatedly.

So, I wanted to send an opinion to the service provider to abolish this nasty feature that can cause a lot of bad effects in human relationships, but you know what? These assholes don't give a shit about what the users think. To be honest, I think most mixi users disapproves of this feature and are basically annoyed and hurt because of it. What if I begin a petition online to put an end to it? Will people follow me? Let's give it a try.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

peace

Question: Why do Japanese people make peace sign(s) toward the camera?

It's one of our customs I can't and will not get used to...it looks so retarded. But after browsing through some people's photos uploaded on facebook, I have found out that some other Asian countries like Korea have mocked our weird tradition.

Was our country too peaceful since the WWII, or is it considered cute among girls? Why? Why? I believe a big smile is the one and only way to look good in photos.