maxiewawa The personal blog of maxiewawa

Shanghai Natural History Museum (gallery)

What good are photos if you don't show them to people?

Aika and I went to the Shanghai Natural Museum (上海自然博物馆) the other day. I took some photos, and rather than let them fester on my hard drive I threw this together.

Is it a little nerdy to do a review of a museum? I've always been interested in dinosaurs, fossils and ancient things like that so I hope that you don't mind.

If you couldn't be bothered watching, just know that my opinion of the place is that the dinosaur part is cool, the stuffed animals and anthropological sections aren't.

I quite liked making this; I hope to do it more often. I realize that it's a bit crappy but I hope to get better. Please, if you have any suggestions on how I can suck less please let me know. I think the most obvious mistake I made was not having enough photos... That's why there's such a long blank screen at the end.

If I really pull my finger out I might even do a version in another language!

Shenanigans.

Shenanigans: Once you’ve been tagged, you have to write a note with 16 random things, shortcomings, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end choose 16 people to be tagged, listing their names and why you chose them. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

Cody tagged me. I've seen people doing 16 things about themselves, I've also seen a few friends doing 17. I'm going to do as many as I can.

1. I love YouTube. I really like it. Like "I think I've finally found my calling" kind of thing. A friend said to me a while ago that she thought it was a little narcissistic  that I put so many videos of myself on the 'net for everyone... I can't find an argument against that statment. Well I just hope no one minds my musical stuff clogging up their facebook inbox.

2. I don't like to have a party on my birthday. I always feel guilty because I don't really deserve it. I mean, what do we celebrate on someone's birthday? That they haven't died yet?

3. I like junk food. Anything that can be eaten with your hands actually.

4. I can't cook anything. This might be the reason for number 3... Sometimes when I tell people this they don't think I mean it literally, but I do. Often people say "Well, you can make like, a salad, right? Or like, sausages, or easy stuff like that, right?" For the record, I've seen it done before (making a salad), but I'm not confident that I could do it myself.

5. I like documentaries. I'm a bit of a nerd that way.

6. I'm really lazy. I won't do anything unless I have to. If you ever see a status update in Facebook along the lines of "Max is doing x" it's actually an attempt to motivate myself to do that thing.

7. Max and Aika are moving to Australia next year. We're probably leaving in April. *sigh*. We're going the way of so many others who have left Shanghai.

8. I'm a little sad about number 7. But of course I'm excited about starting a new life with Aika in Sydney. Before you ask, yes we're getting married. Don't know when, but I am definitely going to make an honest girl out of Aika. Maybe that should have its own number...

9. I'm going to marry Aika. Not sure when (see number 6!). I'm a little sick of people giggling about it and asking jokingly... ya know? Don't feel bad if you're one of those people, but yeah... it's a bit annoying. Admittedly it's not something that comes up in everyday conversation, but I just wish people would just ask flat out instead of giggling and asking. You know what I mean?

10 I have terrible posture. My neck sticks out forwards like Mr Burns. The part of my body that I dislike the most is my neck.

11. I miss all of my friends that left Shanghai. More so than my friends that I left in Sydney. Maybe because I know I'll see the Sydney guys again soon! Maybe because we were all living an adventure in a foreign country together... ah well. I'm going to get a bit emotional if I think too much about it.

12. I have RSI in my wrists. I spend a lot of time typing on the computer, and I pass my spare time by playing a musical instrument. That's probably why.

13 I don't think I learnt anything in all the hours of classes at high school. It's not that I didn't have a good time, but I don't think knowledge of Shakespeare, calculus, design and technology, or Water Polo is very practical. And I kinda had an inkling at the time that all of these things wouldn't play any part in my future. I liked bumming around the music department though.

All the things that I am interested in; popular science, podcasting, music production, Asian languages... we hardly touched on them at all in high school. We didn't even have any girls, a topic that is close to the heart of most ex-Newingtonians.

Like I said though, high school wasn't so bad, but the majority of it was a bit pointless.

14 I'm rather deaf. A strange thing for a musician I know, but there you go. I SMS people rather than talk to them. I don't go out to nightclubs or places with loud music much. I've realised only recently the reason: my hearing.

15 I'm going to start a serious musical project in Australia. Nothing big, it's just that I have a lot of gear, and from working for a company that produces podcasts, I've got a little knowhow, and it's something that I really want to do. Anyone who's known me has known how much music I've done; but to be honest I've felt like one of those losers who "dabbles" in music only because he's been too lazy to do it for real. Well those days are over.

Don't expect anything too mindblowing; at least not until I get some very good (expensive) equipment. Some of the JMC guys will remember all the gear I have in my back room, and the recording I used to do. Well I'm going to do it for real now, regularly, and I'm going to try and do it professionally. Auditions for the maxiewawa experience will begin as soon as I get back!

Seriously though, I'm confident that podcast production and similar DIY stuff will be big in the near future. All these people who are now scratching their heads going "Podcasting? Huh?" will, at some time soon learn what a podcast is, how cool they are, and hopefully around that time I will have made my first million.

16 I play Magic: the Gathering. Newington guys might remember them as "Magic Cards". I stopped for about 5 years, but started up when I found the online version.

17 I have a group of people on my Facebook friends list who are called "Max Roberts". We started a group for people called Max Roberts, and I'm tagging all of you guys. I'd feel uncomfortable asking someone I know, even someone I don't know very well, to list 17 private things about themselves. But I don't know anything about these guys except that we share the same name.

So that's it!

Rendering in Final Cut?

Does anyone know anything about rendering in Final Cut? I submitted this question to answers.yahoo.com but no one is helping.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081128225301AAWSvqW

This Week

Got quite a lot planned this week. I've got two tracks to put up, which might take a while to do... They involve Chinese and Japanese voice overs. I won't say any more; I'm just writing these few sentences so that I won't forget to do them.

I'm also going to organise my Youtube channel a bit better. At the moment it's really unorganised. I've been meaning to do it for a long time, like I said before, I hope that by posting this it will mean that I'll actually do it.

Where Have I Been?

I went through a few weeks of regular content, but I've been lazy of late. I've been hoping to change my lazy ways, but have been too lazy to do so. But this week hopefully everything will change.

This week I'm going to post something in Japanese, Chinese, English, and something musical. I've been meaning to get off my arse for a while; I hope that by posting my plan here for everyone to see that it will motivate me to actually follow through with it!

PS I'd like to do something in Korean, but my Korean level isn't high enough for me to be sure that I'd be able to do it!

Compensation

On my way to lunch. I noticed a huddle had formed on the opposite side of the road. I also spied the white helmet of a police officer at the center so I ran over to have a look.

A dark guy with a satchel was also at the center, examining the handlebars of an electric bike, under the watchful eye of the policeman, and fifteen or so old men who had formed a huddle around them.

"Not so bad," proclaimed the policeman. "And the other one?"

The scrum of smelly old guys parted as he made his way through it to another electric bike that was propped up nearby. The huddle re-formed around him and the second bike. Its owner was standing next to it anxiously.

"Nothing. No damage at all."

He made his way back to the first bike, the huddle dispersing around the second bike and coalescing once again around it, him, and the man who was still examining its handle bars.

"Two hundred. At least." said the man meekly, as he noticed that everyone had rejoined him.

"Look, I'm not going to repeat myself again, that's totally unreasonable. You're not going to get two hundred."

One of the old guys shouted his agreement.

"It's broken though, it's completely destroyed, I..." he mumbled.

"There's damage, I'll give you that, but there's no way that it's two hundred's worth. You don't want me to give him a ticket now, do you? He'll get booked, you'll have a broken bike, no one wins. It's not as if you can't still ride it." said the policeman firmly.

"No one wins!" said the same old man. I think he was trying to be helpful.

"You take the money, you can fix your handlebars, get a new helmet, and fix your phone. Good as new."

"Two hundred. I'm not sure I can even ride it." he was saying.

"It's fine. You can agree to a hundred, like he's offering. That's a reasonable price. You can get all the damage repaired."

"I'm pretty sure it's going to take two hundred to fix all of this..." he said faintly. But the general consensus among the unemployed elderly men, and those cyclists who had stopped to watch was that two hundred was way too much.

"Two hundred? For that?! You're kidding! I'll fix it right now, for fifty!" someone shouted.

"Look. One-fifty. Tell him one-fifty." said the owner of the damaged bike.

"Give me the money." said the police officer to the owner of the undamaged bike. He handed over a 100RMB bill.

"Here you are," said the policeman, giving it to him.

"But one-fifty..." he began, but stopped mid-sentence.

He took the note.

Immediately, the mood lifted. The rider of the undamaged bike rode off, with a hundred RMB less in his wallet, but without getting a traffic ticket. The crowd seemed thoroughly satisfied that the right thing had been done. But the guy with the damaged bike, despite the old guys telling him he was doing the right thing seemed a little pissed off with the whole situation.

Back From Hong Kong

Early on Sunday morning, Aika and I set off from Shanghai's 红桥(HongQiao) airport for 深圳 (ShenZhen). ShenZhen is the closest mainland Chinese city to 香港 (Hong Kong). By flying to ShenZhen instead of directly to Hong Kong we saved quite a bit on our airfare.

The occasion we were celebrating was the founding of the People's Republic of China. Everyone in mainland China gets a week's holiday (well technically we get less than that, since we have to work on weekends to make up for the holidays we get) so we were off to Hong Kong.

We had a great time, and got back last night.

I carried a little notebook around with me; I like to write things down that I need to remember. Usually I scrawl things on my phone, but since I wasn't carrying a phone around with me, I used the low-tech option of a paper notebook.

The notebook turned out to be a kind of a diary. Whenever we took a break from wandering around Hong Kong, I took a moment to write down something funny that happened, or where we had been. I'll fill you in on what I wrote in a later post.

So this is just a short post to let everyone know that I'm still here. Or, more precisely, that I wasn't here but am now.