All Things Yummy

I was watching the Daily Show last night which showed Britons marching and protesting against warmongering George “Hitler” Bush. They were protesting against US’ actions in Iraq and Afghanistan… And I was once again struck by selfishness of people.

Iraq, I might understand, but Afghanistan? I’m sure that if couple of planes crashed in the middle of London and wiped out couple of thousand people, and couple of planes crashed in middle of Paris wiping out Louvre, we’ll be seeing French and British coalition army (as ironic as that sounds) with almost same response as the US. So many people are swayed by rhetoric of others into arguments and protests without realizing what exactly they are fighting about.

Take, for instance, the whole WTO and Globalization hoopla - I fail to see just exactly what is wrong with it. Everytime a WTO meeting is held, people gather together and protest (and break mail boxes, loot stores, and other fun protest things). As far as I can tell, these anti globalization protesters say that big multinationals are ruining humanity by ‘exploiting’ cheap labour and taking advantage of difference in living standards to make money. What I fail to see, is just exactly what is wrong with those practices and what alternatives these people are suggesting besides burning effigies and shouting slogans. Complaining about another system without providing a way for it to be fixed or improved is just whining…

This hasn’t been covered at all by any press outside Korea, but there’s bunch of Nestle Korea employees who are protesting - in Korean - in front of Nestle’s head office in Switzerland. The union was in labour negoations and had asked for over 10% increase in their wages and say in management of the company. Talks failed and after 3, 4 months of strikes and lockouts, Nestle is looking at shutting down its factories in Korea and union, as expected, is less than pleased. But what’s the point of sending people to middle of Switzerland and having them protesting outside the main office in a Language they don’t understand?

The entire world seems to have gone a little crazy… But with all these interesting things happening, I’m now thinking that Politics and/or Civil Servant would be an interesting job to have.

30 hours long talkathon at the US Senate, eh? The entire thing sounds, well, childish. Here’s an interesting tidbit…

Because Senate rules require agreement from both sides to quickly confirm a nominee, the GOP cannot force a confirmation vote as long as a Democrat is present on the floor to object.

But if they fall asleep or stop paying attention, the GOP will immediately confirm the nominees….

Doesn’t that sound just like little kids fighting with each other? “Is Not! Is Too! Is Not! Is Too! Is Not times infinity!” Ah well, ’tis politics. By the way, no matter how much I try, I just can’t get into Canadian politics… it’s just… well, boring. Apparently Dalton’s complaining about debt and is scaling back his promises (as expected), a left wing guy became mayor of Toronto on a platform of “I will not build that bridge”, Chretien is doing his politician about to retire thing trying to pass funny bills left and right, and Paul Martin’s running around doing stuff… and I shrug my shoulders.

While we’re on the subject of politics, South Korea seems to be just going up in smokes - militant unions are swinging metal pipes and throwing molotov cocktails at the police while bunch of striking union members at a shipyard are refusing to bury couple of dead guys (one guy committed suicide, I don’t know how the second one died) who’s been dead for about a month, so there’s a guy up at a large crane surrounded by dry ice and a guy down at the pits in a refrigeration van. The union at Nestle went on a strike demanding say in company’s management, so Nestle HQ got pissed off and are shutting down all the factories… Bah, it doesn’t make any sense to me, but then again, I’m a conservative, pro big-company, small government type of guy. Then I read about kids commiting suicide because low entrance exam grade, president trying to veto a special prosecution bill that aims look at corruption in his own inner group, not to mention entire North Korea thing.

Reading up on these things makes me want to backpack around Korea. Bah, if only the POSTECH thing went through…

And last thing - for over a year, Bush put on a protective tariffs around steel products. Now that they’ve been ruled illegal by WTO, Bush can either bite the bullet and get rid of tariffs (and lose whole chunk of votes in states that depend on steel mill jobs) or continue the tariffs (and get retaliation tariffs from EU, Japan, China, Korea, and piss off a lot of company who use the said steel in US). It’s an interesting mix of politics (remember, election is coming up fast) and economics. This will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Oh yeah, and I’ll be nice and warm in Corpus Christi, Texas during Christmas break Maybe I’ll buy my camera there.

Watched Matrix Revolutions today - so possible spoiler alert, though I don’t think I’ll say anything that’ll spoil the movie.

It wasn’t as bad as all the reviews and stuff made it out to be. Enjoyable movie, more focused toward action than the previous two… But the only scene that really got my attention weren’t the 30 minutes long extended fight scenes - it was the one towards the end where Trinity finally sees with her own eyes what the fight really is about, that moment of clarity…

Heh, I had couple of inner chuckles at Trinity (Trinhity?) being called “Trin” (Trinh?)… and some of the ridiculous sappy scenes… but hey, at least there wasn’t a Rave scene.

PS. Scene that I’m referring to is the one where they go up through the clouds…

Bought Finding Nemo DVD and watched it for the first time… Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine!

Also bought DVD set of Indiana Jones - I figured I’d watch it enough time over the years to justify it. Bah, I’m making money, might as well spend it somewhere too. FutureShop had the camera that I’ve been thinking of getting, but I’m figuring I’ll wait until around Christmas time to see if there are any sales or discounts at that time.

My Fourth Year Project have finalized on our final project which is wireless communication of robots for RoboCup. The other idea that we were seriously considering was VoIP, and it’s free for taking.

Gonna try to spend the entire weekend for the fourth year project website. Hopefully I’ll be able to tie up all the loose ends…