Archives For Rants

BiBi Brings Back the Black Tangerine

BiBi placed last this episode. WHATEVER. I’ve already explained my opinion on people’s voting and how faulty the democratic system can be (specially on reality television and competitions). All that matters is that BiBi sang a GREAT arrangement of David Tao’s Black Tangerine (黑色柳丁).

It was around 9 years ago when my friend introduced me to David Tao via Ghost (鬼) and Black Tangerine, and I’ve never regretted it since. Then I discovered BiBi via the Beijing Olympics, learned about the Chinese music scene and the rest has been history. My relationship to Black Tangerine is a very strong one, and I’m usually not one for covers of great songs, but that was a great fresh arrangement. It was the song and it wasn’t — both at the same time. It was like listening to it once again and discovering it all over again.

That’s a great feeling to have.

It doesn’t matter if you placed last in this show, BiBi. You can very well go home knowing you did an amazing arrangement of a great song.

Posted on February 24, 2014 In Celebrity, Chinese, Clips, English, Music, Rants, Sharing, Television , , , , , , ,
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The Harmony Can of Worms

I’m sorry, JK. Not gonna play beyond this, but you just stirred a can of worms full of fandom feelings that a lot of people didn’t want to deal with. I hope you didn’t just do it for PR.

For years (and years) I had moved on from fandom. I was fine, we were fine. We (probably) weren’t spending money or time on it. Now you come in to nudge that nasty fandom shipping war of name-calling and eye-rolling. What for? So you can make a quick buck on your next Harry Potter or non-HP endeavor?

Posted on February 3, 2014 In Books, Clips, English, Films, Rants, Sharing , , , , , ,
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The Piggy Doll Debacle

piggy-dolls-lee-ji-yeon

Korean girl idol group Piggy Dolls was making a comeback — after the quite catchy and makeover-ish The Girl that I Know (아는여자) [MV], which gave a terrific hair style to singer Lee Ji Yeon — only to run into the video for Ordinary Girl (보통여자) [MV] and see that I didn’t freaking RECOGNIZE ANYONE! At first I chugged it to maybe having actors not on the MV, but apparently- yes, they’ve changed all members.

I don’t even know why bother keeping the name of the group. It’s just lazy management and creates an even bigger image problem. And here I was looking forward to Ji Yeon’s latest makeover. Though I must admit, her hair color and shape was perfect the last time.

Posted on September 5, 2013 In Celebrity, English, Korean, Music, Rants, Sharing, Stills , , ,
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Which Race Box Do You Choose?

Thanks to the American way of thinking, for a while now I’ve been thinking a LOT about race. It didn’t use to be a problem, I didn’t care about race because Peru was supposed to be this mix of races of white (mostly Spaniards), Andean people, Black, Asians (mostly Chinese and Japanese).

For a while now, while completing polls and documents, people have added the race option that usually carries some of these: Caucasian, Native American, African-American, Asian, Polynesian, Latino, Other. Though, recently I’ve seen the added option of Mixed, besides the Other option.

Perhaps I didn’t notice this before as I was a minor and my parents would be filling documentation, but I remember I’ve always checked the “other” option because I can’t consider myself Asian… and I’ve stopped considering myself fully Latin American because it just doesn’t feel that way any longer. Not when I’m nudge on the street as people either say “oppar Gangnam Style” or relate my slanted eyes to either Jackie Chan or Jet Li. I’ll actually take them over Psy and the horse-dance though.

So I understand your pain, guys, for either being told they don’t fit within the black or latino communities, or being told to act a certain way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT7_oQzDYMw

Also, don’t forget Alexis Bledel speaks perfect Spanish unlike America Ferrera — come on, her Spanish is competent, but not in the level for the roles she usually gets — so not having Bledel speaking Spanish in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was a total missed opportunity since no one freaking expects Alexis Bledel to speak Spanish.

And yes, Hollywood expects his latinas to look like Sophia Loren.

I need to be a casting director and throw the whole casting process on its head.

Posted on July 14, 2013 In Celebrity, Clips, English, Rants, Sharing, Spanish , ,
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Yuguo Withdrawal Symptom

April 11, 2013 — 1 Comment

I am having serious Yuguo Withdrawal Symptom, especially because I thought Yuguo’s latest album would be out and about in March — it’s nearly mid-April and I’m still dry. I need my next fix! ASAP. Especially considering they do have the promo images for the album, and the official track listing. What happened???? I’m freaking out O_O

yuguo-sunset-strip-2013-album-promo

I’ll have to settle for replaying one of my favorite albums of them, which by the way, I got my aunt to buy for me in her last trip to Shanghai coz- it’s like impossible to get online if you’re not a resident.

In Chinese, English, Music, Rants, Sharing, Stills , , , , , ,
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We eat more than cows, chickens and pigs~ so what?

April 7, 2013 — Leave a comment

About a week ago Nat Geo was showing a new episode of Tabu Latinamerica, which happened to focus on food. One of my favorite subjects. Thinking about food makes me hungry. But this is Tabu, so obviously we weren’t going to be talking about regular food. While the episode focused on Mexico and Venezuela, with their talks on eating rata campestre (countryside rat??? not from the sewers of course) soup, and… some kind of tarantula/spider?

Anyway, part of the episode also focused in Peru, where they showed a town called La Quebrada, in Cañete, they prepare cat. I haven’t eaten cat — at least, not knowingly… though once while we were eating rabbit chicharron, we suspected we had been given cat because the “rabbit” was bigger and had more fat in it — but I’ve eaten a lot of other things. Of course, guinea pig is kind of a regular “bizarre” food, and I guess rabbit is bizarre to some people. Suri (the worm) is also tasty when fried (it’s almost like crispy pork skin), as well as an assortment of fishes~ Including the palometa (which I’ve heard it’s a piranha’s cousin LOL) and paiche. Shark’s fin soup and swallow’s nest soup apply.

It’s kind of always been common knowledge that people ate cats in Peru- my family (and I’m sure many other people) often joked about it, it’s like joking about everything being chicken, or eating the insides of animals — horror movies and 4D jokes are perfect. Let me tell you, thank you Afro-Peruvians for developing Anticuchos. As a Peruvian who has finally learned to eat without asking (much), and not judge cultures by my own point of view, it saddens me to see people’s comments. Especially considering that we’re all Latin Americans.

Does it feel good to call other people ignorant, or small-minded? Is it wrong to eat something just because you think it’s your pet? Is it not wrong that we eat cow so easily when Indians see them as gods? We’re eating their gods, sending them to slaughter houses, and people judge these people because they eat their pets in a non-industrialized way. This is kind of the same issue I had with The Cove [1].

In English, Rants, Sharing, Spanish, Television , , , ,
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Yu Aoi~ Google Image Search and Visits

February 23, 2013 — Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, Google changed its image search to the rage of webmasters — especially bloggers of photographers. However, hits didn’t seem much too affected here. Maybe there was a 10% drop in hits, give or take. So I decided to keep an eye for it to check how affected the hits on the site were. It wasn’t until two or three days ago, when I installed Imaguard (besides having enabled Hot Linking, which has been on forever but doesn’t seem to work with Google Image Search for a reason — is that even ethical?) that I saw a BIG drop in hits. To check what was going on, I did a search on my most popular subject: “yu aoi” – the search is disheartening.

google-image-search

Before, when you used to image search for “yu aoi,” you would end up with a few tons of photos from my blog. Embarrassingly known as “amy the yu aoi fan,” Besides trying to avoid the posting of random picture spam with no data, I did try to do some research with my barely capable level of Japanese. For commercial work, I tried looking up at campaign names, and creatives involved — for photoshoots, I tried my best to post photographer names and maybe stylists. So people who were fans, would generally end up in my site.

Now when you search for “yu aoi,” there’s only one of my files showing up in the first four lines of images. Before, the first few lines used to be flooded with the photos I posted with details.

WAIT, it gets worse.

google-image-search-002

When I do an specific search for “yu aoi + amy wong,” the selected photos in the search get some mix up with Pinterest and WeHeartIt, which are re-postings from my blog. Sighs.

Is it time to look for some other search tool other than Google?

In English, Jobs, Rants, Screencaps , , , ,
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Nuevas Regulaciones de SUNAT?

February 21, 2013 — Leave a comment

Acabo de recibir un correo de uno de los servicios de envío que he usado informándome que ahora tengo un límite de 3 envíos (o un equivalente de $1000USD) como persona natural gracias a nuevas regulaciones implementadas por la eficaz institución de Aduanas que tenemos en el Perú. Gracias, SUNAT, por hacerme la vida más fácil.

sunat-regulaciones-aduanas-2013

Ustedes siempre tan eficaces! Haciéndole la vida tan sencilla a las compañías que dan servicio de envíos por internet.

Express Mail Service FTW! $20USD no es nada si evito tener que lidiar con todos ustedes.

In Rants, Screencaps, Spanish , , , ,
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Victoria Secret Hates Consent… but everyone else loves it.

December 12, 2012 — Leave a comment

The guys at PINK Nation did the unimaginable- they took Victoria Secret’s brand and spun it around. Instead of showing a skinny white (and tanned) VS model sporting a sexy set telling their significant others that it’s a “sure thing” and a string of other slogans, they showed on their front page a curvy model of color wearing… what might or could have been a Victoria Secret underwear with the slogan “No Means No.”

It was Pink Loves Consent.

pink-loves-consent

Response was positive, of course, from girls and women that use Victoria Secret (and even employees! LOL), but when the company found out, the site was momentarily taken down.

Victoria Secret, that’s what we call one bad move after the other.

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Yeah, Whatever~ F*ck Barbie.

November 4, 2012 — Leave a comment

I’ve never liked Barbie. I’ve never seen a true system engineer Barbie, or a true Barbie chef (don’t argue with me, that Barbie is a home cook!), or a Barbie restaurant administrator — I’ve never seen a Barbie that resembles any of the women of my family (except for my younger cousins)… let alone me. I have never been represented by a Barbie doll, so it’s all the same to me that the Barbie store in China had to close shop.

And no, I don’t think it’s entirely the fault of Barbie being “too strong” for Chinese girls. Sure, some Chinese girls (and boys) may grow up like princesses (or princes) in moderately rich households. But middle to middle-low-income families would still want their daughters to help out at the family’s business as well as getting good grades, or in the case of the very lucky ones just be given the best to reach excellency [1]. Putting your kids through school with extra-curricular activities, it’s a sacrifice… so over-paying for Barbie products would be pointless.

Women today, they can go out and do anything,” her grandmother said. “They can do big things.

And I know the example above may sound like a privilege Chinese girl, but her family’s back story isn’t that of a rich family, considering the girl’s grandmother made her mother work to put her two uncles through their studies. Sounds like a lot of hard work to me.

barbie

In Chinese, English, Products, Rants
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