Dystopian Autocrat's New Writeups

October 28, 2003 (idea)

2003-10-28T04:15:01Z

I've been intending to write a daylog for quite a while now. I'm sure those who were following my adventures in South Korea have been hoping for one, but my life back in Canada has thus far not been as exciting as Korea.

Let's see... where to begin. I got back from Korea and travelled around a bit to visit my Canadian friends. I then spent about a month with my parents in Montreal and wrote a story about Go and Korea, loosely based on my own experiences, which is getting good reviews on the Zoetrope Studios website.

I moved to Toronto a little over a month ago, planning on getting a place with my friend Sylvan. His current lease isn't up until December though, so for the time being, I'm staying with my mother's friend Linda, who recently split up with her husband and now has a big empty house with no one but herself and her son, Robbie... and now me.

Sylvan's girlfriend Asuka has moved back to Japan so he's now talking about going over there for a year, in which case, I'll…

Zoetrope Studios (thing)

2003-10-14T01:05:53Z

Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola's production company is known as American Zoetrope. A fan of the short story format, Mr. Coppola started a magazine called Zoetrope: All-Story, dedicated to publishing short fiction, especially short fiction with cinematic potential or feel to it. Now, as a further effort to encourage creativity and new talent in art-forms relating to the world of film, American Zoetrope has brought us Zoetrope Virtual Studios, at http://www.zoetrope.com.

What this site is, aside from carrying a few bits of news about the company as a whole, is a community for aspiring writers and artists to share their work, receive criticism, and, just maybe, receive an offer from the company.

The website is divided into five "buildings", some of which are further divided into several subsections. These are:

Writing Building (Screenplays, Novellas, Short Stories, Flash Fiction, Short Scripts, Poetry)
Art & Design Building (Graphics, Scenic Design,

…

Takemiya Masaki (person)

2003-10-12T04:14:44Z

The "Cosmic" Go Player

Takemiya Masaki (1951-) is one of the better-known Japanese professional Go players of the 20th century. His career peaked during the period 1985-1992, during which time he won many titles, including the Meijin, Honinbo, Judan and the Fujitsu Cup.

He first achieved fame at the young age of 15, by which point he was already a 5-dan (see dan level). At this time, he won several games against 9-dan professionals (the highest rank available), earning him the nickname 9-dan Killer.

What he is most famous for, however, is his unique style, which he calls Natural Style, but is more commonly known in the Western world as Cosmic Style (due to the translation of one of his books into French, with the title "Le Go Cosmique").

The conventional wisdom in Go is that it is easiest to make territory in the corners and on the sides. There is a proverb that "There is no territory in the center," because you would need four walls to…

August 5, 2003 (idea)

2003-08-05T05:46:23Z

Inviting my sister, Laura (not her real name), to come to South Korea for two weeks after I finished my contract, and before my return to Canada, seems to have been somewhat of a mistake. Not that Korea isn't good for her; she loves the country... but being stuck together for two weeks is being harder on us than we expected. There are many reasons for this, but let me just tell it as a story, in chronological order.

The trip started off well enough, with the only early disaster being lost luggage, which Air Canada got to us perfectly intact only 24 hours late. We started off in Seoul. I took her shopping the first day at Migliore and Doota!, both of which she loved. They're a kind of shopping mall or department store of a type we don't have in Canada, an (approx.) 10-story building full of tiny little stalls selling every kind of clothing imaginable. It's understandable that she went nuts over it... it's a 20 year-old girl's wet dream.

The second day, I took her to…

July 25, 2003 (idea)

2003-07-25T12:13:56Z

As we say in Korea, "Assa-byeong!!!" Just finished my last day of work at Evan-Moor School, got my final salary and severance pay (total 4.4 million Won - 400 thousand deductions, so about $3500 US) without a hitch, and left on good terms with the director.

I am now financially quite well-off for a 24 year-old who's only been out of university two years, and isn't an engineer or hacker. For those who may be thinking about coming to Korea, if you're wondering how much money one can save here (or how much of one's student loans one can pay off), in two years of solid work, without travelling out of the country, but without actively trying to be particularly frugal (most of my money goes to booze, actually), I have saved... *drumroll* $26,500 Canadian. And that's with the Canadian dollar quite strong these days. If the exchange rate was what it was a year ago, I'd have close to $30,000. This is without any prior teaching qualifications.

I am now in the best mood I have…

July 22, 2003 (idea)

2003-07-22T10:08:36Z

The end of an era. 3 days and counting. For those who haven't been following my sporadic daylogs and don't know what I'm talking about, I've been in South Korea for two years teaching English, and I'm about to go back to Canada. 3 days is the number of teaching days left, not until my actual plane leaves. My sister is coming to visit and I'll be showing her around this lovely country (and it is a lovely country, some of my bad experiences notwithstanding... it's possible to have bad experiences in a lovely country) until August 12, 2003.

If I've discovered something in the last couple of weeks, it's that having a non-refundable plane ticket out of the country, set to leave in a few weeks, it is exactly equivalent to having a girlfriend. It puts you in a position where you are incapable of getting into a new relationship with a woman. This leads to a specific case of Murphy's Law, or maybe just human psychology, known as The Forbidden Fruit Principle. Put simply, women can't…