"Happy End" (1999)

In 1999, Korean people were still under severe stress due to the broken national economic structure. Several companies had gone bankrupt and unemployment rate increased from 2% to 8%. Korea had been long enjoying the results of an economical boom and this crisis had a deep impact on the self esteem of the nation.

Amid the storm, there comes "Happy End". This movie tells the story of Bo-Ra. She's a successful career woman and mother of a baby girl whose marriage to the older Ki-Min is less than satisfactory on all levels. Her husband is an unemployed former banker who's finding more than difficult to find another job. He spends his days on domestic chores (taking care of the baby, buying groceries, cleaning the house) and in used book stores. Meanwhile, Bo-Ra is cheating on him with Il-Beom, her co-worker and former lover.

(From this point on, there will be spoilers.)

At some point, Ki-Min finds out about his wife's affair and for a while it seems like he's willing to accept that life. He never confronts her directly, which leaves the audience very unsatisfied. The only confrontational moment is when a somehow regretful Bo-Ra prepares dinner, during which Ki-Min utters "I only wish you will be a good mother to our baby", or something to that effect. But that same night, Bo-Ra gives their daughter some sleeping pills and goes out to meet her lover, which sends the baby to the emergency room. Then, Ki-Min has had enough. He stabs Bo-Ra to death in a extremely graphic scene, framing Il-Beom in the process.

To its credit, "Happy End" tries to portray all sides of this triangle in a fair way. It's easy to understand the motives of everyone involved. And although it shows that women can have the same disrespectful and abusive behavior when in the position of power in a relationship, it also "redeemed" Ki-Min's masculinity with its violent conclusion.

The greatest quality of the ending, in my opinion, is that it doesn't provide satisfaction to anybody in the audience. Ki-Min doesn't deserve what's happening to him and I believe Korean men were shocked to see the extremely graphic nature of the sex scenes between Bo-Ra and Il-Beom (I know I was). No man wants to imagine his woman fucking another man.

But she also didn't deserve to die for it.

As of today, I'm officially an American citizen

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

Obama elected!

Obama as our next president doesn't make me particularly happy or sad. The fact that the USA was ready to elect a black president makes me happy.

Now let's see if he lives up to the hype.

My swiss knife phone

Five years ago, I was introduced to the world of smartphones. A co-worker showed me his newly acquired Motorola MPx200 and its strange bulky looks attracted me. I also had never seen the Windows menu in such a small screen. Then he proceeded to play "The Usual Suspects" on his phone and I was hooked. It was the beginning of a long journey and since then, all my phones have been smartphones and the more expensive they get, the more I like it.

These animals may cost you a kidney but if you need your cellphone to do more than the basic, they are the way to go. There are several choices for several different needs. The best thing to do when looking for one is to determine exactly what will be the main purpose of the phone and start from there. I, for instance, am a sucker for convergence (all in one). That's why my phone is the Nokia N95 8Gb (in this entry, specifications will only be mentioned when relevant, so people in need of more information should check here).
When it was introduced, two years ago, the N95 family was clearly a cut above the rest, and it helped that Nokia didn't wait much after the announcement to make it available. Everything on the N95 looked fresh and it was probably the first phone to have several features like a 5MP camera, GPS receiver or VGA video recording. And even today, there's no phone available or on the horizon that significantly improves its features.

(For more information on the "members" of the N95 family, check here.)

It has of course its bad points and limitations, specially in its first version. The first N95 had a small RAM and low memory issues were very common when more than one application was open (the phone would close applications or simply reboot). The battery life was also poor, in some cases lasting less than a day with heavy usage. Also, some people may point out the lack of a qwerty keyboard or touch screen, but this is not exactly a problem of the N95, since it was conceived to be used without those features.

All limitations were addressed in recent versions and even the original N95 improved considerably with some firmware updates. The only thing I see as a nuisance for the whole family is the build quality, which can be poor if you are unlucky, specially the wobbly slider. But this also has a do-it-yourself fix so for now my phone is perfect.

Now let me tell you what I do with this phone.

I almost never carry my digital camera and my video recorder is collecting dust at home. With the N95's 5MP camera, the pictures are always nice (given good lighting is available) and since I have the phone with me at all times, I never miss the opportunity for a nice picture, ideal situation for a proud parent of a 4 year old daughter. The VGA recording produces quality video clips and with the TV-Out cable I can show them to anybody on a big screen. And if I want to, I can upload my pictures and videos to the internet without connecting to a computer.

My sense of direction is notably poor. I couldn't find the ground if I jumped from the 1st floor of a building. Two days after we moved to a new house, I had problems finding it on my way back from work. But the N95 has a GPS receiver and with turn-by-turn directions I don't have to worry about my stupidity anymore. On our last vacation, the N95 helped us a lot. Try to find a Korean restaurant in an unknown city, in the middle of the night. Well, I did.

The internet is only a touch away. The N95 has a good browser and it renders most pages like a computer would and with 3G speed from AT&T, I have all the power to surf whenever I want. I use it all the time to check weather, sports results (I know the Seahawks are going to lose, but I still want to know the score) and anything else that comes to my mind.

The N95's gorgeous 2.8" screen is bright and big enough to watch a whole movie on it. At the moment I have a Brazilian film ("Tropa de Elite"), "Training Day" and (guilty pleasure) "National Treasure". I also have some MP3s and a few episodes of "Entourage" and "The Office" on it. It amounts for hours of entertainment and I still have about half left of its 8Gb internal memory. It means that at any time I'm bored or have nothing to do (waiting for a plane, waiting for a table at a restaurant or whatever else that makes me wait) I can snap my phone out of my pocket and start having fun.

Whenever I'm tired of watching the same movies or TV shows, I can play one of the several video games I have available. Remember "The secret of monkey island"? I know I may be dating myself here for this is a very old game, but it sure is a pleasure to be able to play it on my phone. I can also play Texas Hold'em Poker, Civilization, Frozen Bubble (my favorite) and loads of other stuff.

And if I need more applications, Symbian S60 (the operational system that powers the N95) has lots and lots of native software that can be found in several different sources like here, or here. With Quickoffice, for instance, I could write a novel on my phone if I wanted to (or had the talent) or I could create spreadsheets to control my finances (actually I do that). There's virtually no limits to what third party applications can do and the hardware is powerful enough to support it.

I'm not even counting the usual stuff that most phones do, like making phone calls, SMS, MMS, e-mail and PIM applications. My phone excels in every single one of those features. And, despite having full Bluetooth capability, I don't even need a headset (by the way, people who wear one all day are ridiculous) because it has the most powerful stereo speakers available in the market.

I still have a computer, a laptop, a digital camera, a video recorder and an iPod Touch and I agree that each one of them performs its specific task better than my phone. But what other single device can do so many things so well? My N95 8Gb is a true swiss knife phone.

Halloween

On Halloween night I joined some friends and we took our kids trick-or-treating. In our group, we had four princesses (Snow White, Belle, Aurora and a generic one) and two firemen and, by the end of the night, I had seen ghosts, pirates, Hogwarts students and lots of other creatures, and all of them went home with their bags full of candy.

Watching the kids get their portion of candy at each door, I couldn't help but admire the way in which people decorate their houses for this night. There were some nice ones, like a spider web made of Christmas lights or a guy who transformed his garage into a haunted house, but in only two instances I felt compelled to put my beer aside (in a plastic cup, of course) and snap a picture.

It's a pumpkin and I only took the picture above because I know how hard it is to carve something like this. Wonderful job.

Now if the picture above isn't disturbing, I don't know what is. I know it's Halloween but there should be some limits.

Ichiro being chippy

Ichiro has already made some semi insulting remarks about Korea. Now he proves he's really got a chip on his shoulder when it comes to the country where I was born. When he mentions "revenge for Beijing" he's clearly talking about Korea, team that beat Japan twice in that event (2008 Beijing Olympic Games) and went on to with the gold medal against Cuba in a close game.

Ichiro, stop worrying about Korea and concentrate on improving these freaking Mariners!

TB Rays in the World Series!!

I'm so very happy that the Rays are in the World Series. They have a payroll just a tad bigger than A-Rod's annual salary, they were one of the worst teams in MLB last season and now they're close to winning it all. It's a very feel good story.

In Brazil they used to say something like "cumming with someone else's dick" for a situation like this. But I, a Mariners fan, almost lost my voice rooting for the Rays.