This mix was way overdue. I had a lot of time on my hands back in Shanghai and I had started working on a new mix. However, time caught up with me, and by the time I got to South Korea, and later Australia, finally mixing this together had slipped off my mind.
So without further adue, here’s a quick mix of songs that accompanied me during my trip to the Chinese Metropolis.
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After our holidays in Korea, Shana left to go back to the US. On my end, I had an extra week in the country, so I decided to visit Busan for the weekend. You can watch the latest vlog below:
Busan is a charming city located as far down south as you can get. It’s famous for its fish market, its harbour, and its film festival. Oh, and let’s not forget Gamcheon, a small colourful village that will bring back to mind the Cinque Terre in Italy.
Overall, it’s been a great trip, albeit a short one. But just a few days later, I would fly to Australia, for a month!
My girlfriend came to visit me!
Part 2 of our holiday in Jeju Island, including hikes, lava caves, food, sunsets and so much more!
Hi everybody!
Before I get started, I just wanted to remind you that I’m doing a digital catch-up and Q&A on Periscope on Monday (tomorrow).
I’ll be online at http://periscope.tv/itibz – all you have to do is come on there to watch, or signup/login to be a part of the Chat, say hi, or ask any question about my work or this trip around the world!
As I’m writing this update, I am in the train back from Busan, in the south-eastern coast of South Korea, all the way down.
Traveling to/from Seoul is easy thanks to a really convenient and fast train system. Taking this trip all the way to the other side of the country takes only two and a half hours.
Busan is the second biggest city in the country, and know for being a big fishing town as well as hosting a popular international film festival.
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Jeanne Moreau, in 2001[/caption]
I’ve tried the local fish cakes, traditional delicacies that the city is known for, and I’ve also gone to a street food market located around the BIFF Square (Busan International Film Festival).
I also visited the gorgeous Gamcheon Culture Village, a small village overlooking the sea, on a hill, with very colorful little houses. You’d almost junk you were visiting the Cinque Terre in Italy.
Finally, Shana happened to have a friend visiting the Busan area too, and we ended up spending one evening together, having dinner and discovering the boardwalk and beachside by night.
All in all, it was a short-but-sweet trip to Busan!
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My girlfriend came to visit me!
Part 1 of our holiday in Seoul, including animal cafes, a street art village, street food, and much more!
Earlier this week, I went to watch the brand new Wonder Woman movie. Except rather than go to the nearest theatre I could find, I saw that Seoul hosts one of the best and biggest screens in the world —apparently it was also manufactured in France, but I digress.
In addition, something else triggered my curiosity : a showing of the film in “4DX” — something I had vaguely heard about before.
So what is 4DX? The future of blockbuster movie entertainment.
The 4DX experience starts with bigger, larger seats, and a 3D movie. Where it goes beyond however, is that the seat tilts, depending on the action of the movie. When the camera hovers above a big landscape, your seats kind of rocks along, looking down. Or if someone jumps off a cliff, your seat gets inclined, just as if you were jumping with them.
There is also wind blowing in your face at certain specific moments (in my case, the camera was facing the barrel of a gun, and when the protagonist fired, air was blown straight in my face, I could almost feel that bullet being fired), or gentle breeze on my legs, when the camera goes around a more natural landscape.
And when a big explosion occurs on-screen, additional strobe lights on the side of the screen start flashing in your face.
Apparently, some cheaters & movies combination can also splash water in your face, something that could be great when watching Johnny Depp’s latest attempt to pay off his debts with yet-another-lazy-sequel.
The point I’m trying to make, of course, is that 4DX is hugely immersive, and is not an experience that you can replicate at home.
Coming out of that screening, it feels to me that the future of blockbuster entertainment lies in real experiences, whether a movie theatre that lets you order food & drinks, or that offers a new level of immersion in the story and its action.
As noted by Todd VanDerWerff for Vox:
It jostles your seat, which is larger and more like something you might buy at Brookstone than your typical movie theater seat, and sends you bumping along as Vin Diesel and his Furious co-stars race through the streets of various global metropolises. When the camera tilts, the seats often tilt with it, and an early set of shots of the blue ocean waves is accompanied by a gentle rocking motion that made me a little sleepy.Every so often, little puffs of air burst by your face to accentuate, say, gunfire or a big explosion. On your 4DX armrest, there’s an option to “turn water off,” but Fate of the Furious is not an especially wet movie, so I did not get sprayed once. But other effects are also possible: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 director James Gunn has promised “snow and bubbles” for his film when screened in 4DX.
All of this is meant to draw viewers into the movie, by making them feel like part of the action. The Fate of the Furious is a junky enough film that I didn’t mind bouncing around like I was on a Tilt-a-Whirl, but for my first viewing of the movie, I found the whole experience a little distracting. If it had been a better movie — like many of its predecessors — I might have been actively annoyed at having the experience interrupted by my seat suddenly trying to make an escape (or maybe if it were better, I would have been even more drawn in). But I also can’t deny that the whole experience is fun. I just don’t know if I’d want to do it more than a couple of times.
My only gripe with the 4DX experience, is that it’s meant for Blockbusters, but having to grip your seat during big action set pieces was a bit distracting. During Wonder Woman’s last act, there were a few times when I wished they could have toned down the movements a little. If only so that I could focus on the movie, and not on the prospect of seeing my popcorn fall out of its box.
But I really do hope to treat myself to more 4DX movie screenings in the future!
Oh, and Wonder Woman, the movie itself? It’s great! Go see it!
[via How can movie theaters compete with your living room? By building a better living room. - Vox]
Stoked to hear about this: 1Password introduces a Travel Mode in its apps.
If you’ve been using this as your password manager (and you really should), you know that it can be scary to travel and think about what would happen if your device got lost or stolen. Now, you can choose a specific vault, for example your Work Vault, and activate Travel Mode, and the passwords will be removed (temporarily) from your device(s) until you deactivate Travel Mode.
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Here’s what Apple obviously — obviously — should do:(…)
In other words, this should all work as it does on iOS. The Apple Music app on macOS would be the same as the “Music” app on iOS (which is also confusing given it has the same logo/branding as iTunes on macOS).
Along with my former colleagues, we’ve been saying this for years:
Apple really needs to find a way to unbundle iTunes into more manageable pieces of software. There is no reason why our Macs still come bundled with that huge, sluggish and clunky piece of software.
Visiting the Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, South Korea — and making a pretty incredible encounter in the process!
Beats by Esta.
Hello everybody!
It’s been 10 days in Seoul, South Korea, and I’ve got a big ol’ crush on this city, this country, and this culture.
Over the past ten days, I’ve gotten to discover multiple facets of Korean life, its food, its lifestyle, and its culture – both old and modern sides. And I’ve been loving every moment and every day.
I do not actually know a lot of close friends who have been to Seoul before – I know that a former friend studied there, and that the lovely Ashley & Jon, two good friends from Brighton, met here in SeoulI believe. They still look fondly on this time!
So, for what it’s worth, I just want to point out that South Korea is criminally underrated.
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Similarly to Shanghai, people here say that “they don’t speak English very well” – except that here,they do know the basics:in Shanghai, I had some trouble getting understood when asking for water. So as a foreigner, it gets much easier to chat, ask for directions, or order at a restaurant.
In addition, I’ve tried to correct my earlier mistake of not learning basic phrases – so I now know how to say Hello, Chiken, Beer, Thank You, Sorry, and a few other useful phrases.
But let’s get back to Seoul itself. The city is more spread out than Paris, as a point of reference, but holds a population of similar size: about 10 million people.
So far, I’ve had a lot of different food – but being solo most of the time, I haven’t had the chance to try a real Korean BBQ – a wrong that will be corrected next weekend, when I get some company, and a very special visitor for a few days.
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In addition to the food, I’ve been lucky enough to meet up with a contact who’s here as a foreign student, and he introduced me to his group of friends: a mixture of Koreans, mixed Asians, and westerners. These folks actually took me out last Sunday, for ChiMek (The contraction of the words Chicken & Mekju – the latter which stands for beer).
It was essentially a picnic by the river Han, which flows through the city. You sit down on the grass, and order from one of the many vendors and takeaway places who offer different variety of fried chicken. From there, they took me out drinking, eating some more, and later, to my very first karaoke! That evening finished at 5:30am, and we waited for the very first metro: I got back to my Airbnb at 6am, on a Monday morning, haha!
Besides that, I was incredibly surprised and excited to discover he local coffee scene: see South Korea is actually a bigger coffee drinker than the USA, and there are coffee houses everywhere. Starbucks and other chains are here, of course, but you can also easily find indie coffee houses that roast their own beans —something else that’s right along my alley.
So I’ve been working from coffee houses from times to times, to get a breath of fresh air. The rest of the time, I’ve been in my Airbnb, living with a family of four, who have been very kind and helpful to me. The children are very cute, if turbulent at times, and it’s definitely a unique experience to live with them and witness Korean life first hand!
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This past week, I’ve focused on my work, of course, but I also went around the dynamic Hongdae neighborhood, just two metro stops away from my neighborhood of Gongdeok – this is a small student town where you can find a ton of shops, coffee houses, bars, restaurants, but also ANIMAL CAFES!
That’s right: in Wednesday, I’ve actually hit a Raccoon cafe, a Sheep cafe, and a Meerkat cafe! This was an incredible and amazingly cute experience, and you’ll be able to watch all of this in the latest vlog (see the first link at the top of this email!)
That’s already a handful, and I’ve got many more Korean adventures planned before leaving this country, so stay tuned for another post in a few days/weeks.
I’m in love with this country and city!
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Moar adventures in Seoul:
I’m developing an obsession towards stickers and cute things from here in Korea!
For my next destination, I am now in Seoul, until mid-June! I’m already loving it!
Hello everybody !
First of all, I wanted to thank those of you who’ve shared some good vibes, of friendly messages and support. As I’m writing this, I’m in my Airbnb, in Shanghai, for a few more days, before hitting my next destination.
Over here, on the blog, you can find the Dubai Vlog, as well as THREE vlogs from my time here in China.
It’s definitely fascinating to be in this city, so far out of my comfort zone, and learning to “be comfortable with being uncomfortable” as I tried to explain it to some of my friends, recently.
This past (almost-) month has been very interesting. I’ve definitely felt outside of my comfort zone, in a different culture, but especially more so when it comes to being unable to rely on my English, or speaking with the locals here — in Shanghai, people will only speak English in the touristy and expats area. And even then, it remained a fairly basic exchange, for the most part — not quite a conversation.
It’s also a city where, strangely enough, expats and locals rarely mix. There’s no animosity or conflict, but each enclave seems to live separately from the other.
It’s been hard to keep my vegetarian diet here. First of all, because I do not speak the language. Thankfully, my friend Lincha wrote a line of text, in Mandarin, that I can show when I go to restaurants to look for someplace that will accommodate my diet.
But the biggest challenge has been because I couldn’t get myself to tell my Airbnb hosts. See, they’ve welcomed me into their homes and offered me so much food during this entire month. They cooked breakfast for me every morning, and took me with them on a road trip with their friends and family. And the last thing I wanted was to offend them or put them in a bad spot, feeling like an asshole of a tourist, and refusing their food.
In any case, this has been a great experience, and I think that my blog posts and vlogs reflect that properly.
Thanks again for reading all the way to the end! I’m gonna start packing for my next destination — it starts with an S.
—T
"Another reason to be uneasy about the revolving door between national-level journalism and politics."
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This past weekend was a bank holiday — and my Airbnb hosts graciously offered to take me on a road trip with them!
Great concise piece by Zach Beauchamp for Vox:
The point, then, is that European elections are increasingly no longer about principally European concerns like the size of welfare states.They are about issues that affect the broader stability of Europe and the global order — which America has a huge stake in. As a result, center-left politicians like Obama feel entitled, maybe even obligated, to involve themselves.
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Current status: [😷][http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2093081/shanghai-path-massive-sandstorm-choking-northern-china]
Current status: [😷][http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2093081/shanghai-path-massive-sandstorm-choking-northern-china]
Finishing to watch Netflix’s The Crown while working on a Survival Guide to Shanghai — anything y’all would like to know?