Month: September 2005

Policemen yesterday removing steel mesh from windows of buses used to transport riot policemen. The National Police Agency said it removed the mesh from all 1,131 buses, citing a drastic drop in violent demonstrations as the main reason. A symbol of the military government in the 1980s, the vehicles were dubbed “chicken coop cars,” and used both to transport forces and blockade roads. Police said there were 809 illegal violent demonstrations in 1998 but the number fell to 215 in 2001, 91 last year, and only 34 by August of this year. “The buses also give a bad impression to foreign tourists,” officials added. By Byun Sun-goo
ripped off from the JoongAng Daily

From the NYT
The Ultimate Body Language: How You Line Up for Mickey

HONG KONG DISNEYLAND, the second Disney foray into Asia, is known to some in the theme park business as Disney Lite. At a little more than 300 acres, it’s far smaller than Disney parks in the United States, Japan and France, with fewer of the elaborate signature rides.

Read more

I put an order in for a new PC today.
I have been having problems with my old PC

The case is a GMC H60. GMC is not the giant motor company, General Motors, but a small Korean company which seems to have a good reputation here.
The thing I like about the case aside from the price (42,000 won) is the 3.5″ drive bays have a fan in front of them which dramatically lowers the temperature of any hard drives.

The motherboard is an Asus P5GD2 Premium with an Intel Pentium 4 630 3.0ghz
The Intel 600 series is a pentium with the AMD 64 bit extensions plus the NoExec instruction.
That is about the only difference from my old Pentium. The price has come down since Christmas when I got my last PC. It is now only 201,500 won for a 3ghz. If you want a 3.2 ghz it jumps to 250,000 won!

The Asus P5DG2 Premium when it comes to features takes the “kitchen sink” approach
It has 2 gigabyte network controller and a wireless 8011g adapter built in!
It has an Intel i915 chipset so it has the 7.1-channel C-Media CMI9880+ soundchip.
4 memory slots, 8 USB 2 Ports,
It has 2 raid controllers in additional to the standard Intel IDE/SATA controller on the Intel southbridge.
This means you can have up to 14 drives in your PC! 8 SATA, 6 IDE!

Asus’s Website on the P5GD2 premium

Trusted Review’s P5GD2 review

CDR Info Review of P5GD2

digit-life.com’s review

I also got one gigibyte of DDR2 RAM and a Antec True 480 W PSU

Most impressively the P5GD2 is completely passively cooled, so the only fan noise you will get is from the CPU cooler and any additional case fans. ASUS has even added a passive copper cooler on the MOSFETS, to aid the cooling of the power regulation

The International Association of Chiefs of Police training guide on profiling suicide bombers gives some guidlines as to how a terrorist behaves:

I exhibit all of these traits!

?¢‚ǨÀúBehavior. Does the individual act oddly, appear fearful, or use mannerisms that do not fit in? Examples include repeatedly circling an area on foot or in a car, pacing back and forth in front of a venue, glancing left and right while walking slowly, fidgeting with something under his or her clothes, exhibiting an unwillingness to make eye contact, mumbling (prayer), or repeatedly checking a watch or cell phone. […]

Appearance. Is the clothing, grooming, gender, or age of an individual out of place within the context of the environment? Examples include someone wearing a heavy coat or jacket in warm weather […]

Equipment. Does a briefcase, duffle bag, or backpack seem extra heavy or have protrusions or visible wires? When the individual sits down, is he or she overly protective of this item or preoccupied with it? […]?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢

In London a french techie was arrested in a tube station while waiting for a train because he was “suspicious”. Even through he was innocent his fingerprints, DNA and other records will be kept by the British Police.

Holiday Diary – From the Land of the morning calm to downunder

August 17 – Thursday

Finished work at Ulsan Language Academy.
Judy and I caught a 3pm flight to Kimpo airport, Seoul which was very relaxing. We flew over Pohang, which was very interesting because there were so many ships in the harbour.
After ariving at Kimpo we took an Aiport Limonsune (bus with nice seats) to Incheon Internation Aiport.
We met Judy’s mum there and since I was hardly carrying any baggage I volunteered to carry one of their bags which I have now learnt is illegal.
After waiting for the flight I had an average to bad flight to Australia. I could not sleep at all.

August 18 – Friday – Arrive in Sydney

Summary: Stress, and more stress

Mistake One

There appears to be two types of flights for people like myself arriving from an another country in Sydney and transferring to another city like Melbourne.

1. Arrive in Australia on an international flight which terminates in Sydney then transfer to a domestic flight to Melbourne.

This means you have to do your duty free shopping and collect your baggage in Sydney.

2. International flight arriving in Sydney and continuing onto a domestic flight terminating in Melbourne.

With this your luggage is automatically transferred to the domestic flight. This means you don’t have to pick up your luggage which takes a long time. It also means you can do your duty free shopping in Melbourne.

At Sydney I only had an hour to get on the flight to Melbourne. Sydney is Australia’s busiest airport. It is extremely congested unlike, Changi or Incheon ,it was not planed to deal with the volume of traffic it handles. People have been trying to build a second airport for decades to ease the stress on Sydney, but this has not happened yet due to the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) syndrome. No one wants an airport near their house because of noise and the fact it lowers your house value.

Result: No second airport. Sydney Airport and its passengers suffer!

For example to get from the domestic terminal to the international terminal you have to take
a bus which takes about 10 minutes. But you have to walk a long way, clear security, get a boarding pass
and then wait for the bus.

When I arrived in Sydney I had the assumption that my baggage would automatically be transferred to my domestic Quantas flight as it said on my baggage tags!

That assumption proved to be incorrect causing me to miss my flight. Fortunally the Quantas people were very understanding and issued me another ticket and told me to go to the baggage office and collect my luggage

I arrived in Melbourne without much trouble where my sisters Leeanne and Karen picked me up.
We then tried out Leeanne’s “lets go in circles” navigational method which seemed to get us there, eventually.

After four or so hours of driving we arrived in Heywood where my parents lived. We stayed there until 4 pm on Sunday when we drove back to Melbourne.

August 22 – Monday – “Opps I did it again”

Karen was nice enough to give me a a ride into Melbourne’s CBD, aka “the city”
She works as the Capital Projects officer at Yarra City Council.
So she usually drives into the city around 7:30am and comes back sometime after 6pm.
I went and saw my old friends at VCAT which was a lot of fun and then went and saw the new Jet Lie movie “Unleashed” which was not bad.
I then tried to see my old flatmate but he was not home, so I caught the 7:20 train to Werribee and then went shopping at Werribee Plaza, arriving at my sisters place at 9 pm.
Unfortunally I discovered upon my arrival that she was quite distressed. She has expected to pick me up where she works and drive me home. I had misunderstood her and took the train home instead of going with her.
Naturally she was quite angry at me. She had waited three hours or so outside her work and then started calling hospitals to see if I had been injured … OOPS

August 23 – Tuesday

Shopping and more Shopping in the city

August 24 – Wednesday

Took the day off and went shopping at Werribee Plaza. Read an email from Mr Kim at Ulsan Board of Education that I will be working at a different school next year and do I want to move house? I decided to move house and am very curious about my new school.

August 25 – Thursday

Went shopping in the city

August 26 – Friday

Went shopping in the city and Victoria Market. Had dinner with Denis and his friends in Chinatown. Caught the 10:30 pm train to Weribee and walked to my sisters place.

August 27 – Saturday

Finnished reading Designated Targets – World War 2.2 by John Birmingham. It is one of those alternative history techno thrillers novels which I like very much. This one involves a modern naval fleet being transported back to World War II just prior to the battle of Midway. It is the sequel to Weapons of choice – World War 2.1 which I read last time in Australia. Unfortuanally I have to wait until next year to read the third and hopefully final book in the series.

August 28 – Sunday

Went to Mandy’s house and celbrated Alexis’s first birthday one day early. Very nice BBQ .. it was fun.

August 29 – Monday

Plan to stay in Weribee and go shopping at the Plaza.

August 30 – Tuesday

Plan to take the 8:20 flight to Sydney, find a hotel, sleep and get up early for the flight to Incheon, Korea

August 31 – Wednesday – From Downunder to the Land of the Morning Calm.

My flight leaves at 8:20 am from Sydney to Incheon.