Month: March 2020

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A reflection of the state of events due to the coronavirus.

Living through a major historical event like this is pretty crazy. One could argue it’s nothing compared to some historical events like the Great Depression, WW2, the moon landing and so on – but, to say this ongoing pandemic isn’t a major historical event that will be remembered years after like the rest of those is naive. Each of these historical events have their own distinct and unique characteristics obviously, and how the nation and people felt throughout each one also differs of course.

The feelings I’ve seen from people on the internet seem to vary. Like everything, this can also be examined from a socioeconomic perspective and by doing so you can see the impacts and emotional well-being of each groups. The well-off, from my time spent on the internet, seem to be enjoying this time with their family and being able to pass time with hobbies they weren’t able to give as much time to. The savings they’ve accumulated have given them peace of mind during this situation, and many in this category have jobs that can be done from home so there’s no worry of a lack of paycheck. This group would be the wealthy and upper-middle class.

The lower-middle class and poor, however, aren’t doing so well. Recent content on the internet seems to be largely filled with the fun that the folks at the top rings of the socioeconomic ladder showing what they’re doing to pass time, but if you scroll far enough you’ll see what those near the bottom are feeling. A week or two ago, celebrities who sang a song about giving up material possessions caused quite a ruckus. Folks who’ve lost their jobs and have been forced to take a pay cut were rightfully angered by wealthy people who are so blinded by their money that they can’t stop to think how this pandemic is affecting what would be the vast majority of Americans.

Right now, essential businesses are still open. This would include banks, pharmacies, gas stations, home repair stores, restaurants doing take-out/carry-out and drive-thru orders only and a couple others I may have missed. Most of these folks are well aware that those with jobs that aren’t minimum wage like theirs are in the comfy confinement’s of their home, away from the reach of the virus. Yet, they have no choice but to work to keep a roof over their head, and ironically are paid peanuts despite being called essential workers. “If we’re essential workers, why doesn’t their pay reflect that?” As an essential worker myself, I agree.

I have no choice but to go to work and risk getting the virus despite the vast majority of the world under lockdown and countries enforcing even stricter measures to keep people inside. Yet I have no choice but to put myself out around almost 50+ people everyday and be paid just a few dollars above minimum wage, and given a letter to show authorities that I’m an essential worker and to allow me to report to work. My work conditions don’t seem to be reflective of that of a essential worker either considering no gloves or masks are given to us despite us being in close proximity and touching objects used by other colleagues throughout our shifts. It’s not just me who’s experiencing this though, it’s essential workers in all fields that are currently open.

Now they’ve told us that a stimulus package will be passed and $1,200 will be given to adults and $500 for each child. $1,200 that some may not even see because they’re college students that are still considered dependents, despite living on their own and providing mostly for themselves. I’m not expecting a check, but I could use it to make sure I’m practicing the necessary measures to ensure this virus doesn’t spread.

The incompetence I’ve seen regarding this pandemic is so disappointing. Right now that’s what I feel the most: disappointment.

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J-Drama Review: ブルドクター, Bulldoctor.

Rating: 4/10*

*Personal opinions towards storyline and actors/actresses factor into the rating. Don’t take it too personal if a drama you liked/disliked has a rating you don’t agree with.

On to another drama I’ve completed watching, Bulldoctor! In one of my prior J-Drama reviews I had talked about Unnatural, a drama based around forensic pathologists uncovering mysteries around bodies with unnatural or fishy deaths. I did enjoy that drama and the slightly dark theme with the clever mysteries you get to see solved was extremely entertaining. So when I discovered there was another drama based around forensic pathologists uncovering mysteries behind bodies with unusual deaths, I knew I had to watch this.

For this review I’ll keep the spoilers out and let viewers give it a chance to see it themselves. I’ll start off by saying the drama wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t the greatest. My number one reason for saying that is due to the subpar acting from the main heroine and one of the main male forensic pathologists. The male did have an involved role, but he didn’t do enough screen time as the heroine so I didn’t start noticing him until a few episodes in. Everything from emotion conveyed through voice or through facial reactions to extremely mechanical-looking movement, it felt “fake”.

In addition, there is one relationship plot that they introduce towards the beginning and try expanding on throughout the drama that gets to be somewhat annoying. J-Dramas are known to be notoriously slow for progressing any romantic stories, but this one took the cake. I can’t believe I had to wait as long as I did to finally see one of the characters open up and reveal their true emotions. So if you’re the kind of person who’s inclined to watch dramas for its romantic aspect don’t bother. Also, another notable plot involves another important character and they hint to this unknown plot periodically throughout the drama. And when I say hint, I mean they only acknowledge that there is some sort of story behind why a character is acting a certain way except it they do a poor job in making it seem important. Without giving too much, this involves your classic threats being sent and nervous ticks a character gets when something involving them is brewing in the background. But each and every one of these occurrences remains mild and as a viewer you’ll just go “oh this again” and not give too much thought into why it’s being done since it’s just not presented in an eye-catching manner.

Overall, the drama is decent. It’s nice if you want to follow the forensic pathologist theme BUT I highly recommend watching this first and then Unnatural in order to not be disappointed. Unnatural is an extremely similar drama to Bulldoctor, except 10 times better.

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When the world comes to a stop.

A lot has happened since the last time I posted.

  • Global pandemic due to Covid-19 declared
  • The U.S. has declared a national emergency against the virus
  • I’m working a crazy amount of hours at work
  • And lastly, although this week was the week we were supposed to return back from spring break, they decided to extend the break into this week. And then starting from next week our university will transition into online classes until the end of the semester

Wow. A few other spotlight worthy things are the unnecessary hoarding of toilet paper and other paper products, although I suppose I could see why people would do this in order to get the goods from the stores before the virus spreads further. However, it’s ridiculous to take 5 or 6 huge bundles of toilet paper. To be honest the internet has been inundated with nothing but toilet paper talk, so I’d like to refrain from talking anymore about that!

Back to the world coming to a stop. Events are being cancelled back to forth, people are losing jobs, businesses are shutting down, and curfews are being implemented and people are being told to stay at home. It’s everything you’d expect to happen during a pandemic so it comes to no surprise since some of my classes have covered situations like this, and movies have even shown stories like this unfolding (albeit, with some extra drama added to it). But, at the same time it’s a bit surreal living through this.

Many people are relating this to the Spanish flu pandemic but I really hope it comes nowhere close to such a tragedy. Currently, Italy has been hit extremely hard and other countries are scurrying to prevent a strain on their health systems and prevent unnecessary deaths. As a healthy, young college student I am not at a high risk of this virus but I still think it’s critical for me to limit my outings and be careful as well. I’ll be fine likely if I contract it, but it’s the elderly who I’m worried about. The virus hit at the worst time possible (spring break) and a lot of college students are taking advantage of this holiday and cancelled classes to get in large gatherings and party at clubs and bars. That’s not my type of scene and I don’t have anything against it, but I really question their priorities if this is what they would choose to do during a pandemic.

As the world slowly comes to a halt, certain businesses (such as my job) are getting extremely busy and actively trying to recruit more people. So while some people will spend the next few days with not much to do, others will be busy their entire shifts and managers will be scrambling to get more people on board. It’s just incredible how drastically this virus affected each person’s lives differently. I don’t mean to imply this virus is impressive or good, of course. It’s just the scope of change in such little time that I find incredible…

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J-Drama Review: 拝啓、民泊様。Dear B&B Houseguest.

Rating: 10/10*

*Personal opinions towards storyline and actors/actresses factor into the rating. Don’t take it too personal if a drama you liked/disliked has a rating you don’t agree with.

If you’re looking for a drama that has a nice little slice-of-life feel to it, I’d recommend this underrated drama a lot. (Underrated in the English-speaking J-Drama enthusiasts community at least, I haven’t seen it mentioned before). The situation the Yamashita couple goes through, however, isn’t exactly one that people normally experience. It involves the husband getting duped into a business scheme where he ends up taking a hefty loan to start a bed and breakfast. On the other hand, his wife is an employee for the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare so it’s a shock when her own husband gets duped when her whole job is making sure businesses are taking care of their employees and vice-versa.

We get to see how Mr. Yamashita deals with the situation and how he turns the negatives into positives when dealing with the company that manages the property. The foreigners who stay in his B&B learn about Japanese culture during their stay and leave an impression on Mr. Yamashita as well. Not everything is rainbows and sparkles though. When Mrs. Yamashita gets wind of her husband taking out a huge loan (and doing something else that she wasn’t informed about), tensions get high and we see whether or not they’re able to reconcile.

The drama looked like something that could happen to any entrepreneur who wanted to take a risk, and there weren’t any over the top storylines or scenes that were highly unnecessary to the plot. The acting was great and it was nice seeing Hirofumi Arai (Mr. Yamashita) again after I watched him in モテキ (Moteki) several years back! Kuroki Meisa (Mrs. Yamashita) is also a phenomenal actress whom I’ve seen in a few other dramas too and she brings back her good acting to this drama too! So give this a watch whenever you can!

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Imagine playing Minecraft (or any PC game) like this.

I’m in awe at the size of this absolute unit of a monitor. This whopping 49″ Samsung QLED gaming monitor had me feeling like I was Steve himself. I sat in the comfortable gaming chair a bit and played around for a couple of minutes and would have been there for hours if it wasn’t a store. It’s fun imagining you’re rich enough to get a setup like that!

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Movie Review – Death Sentence (2007)

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional movie critic and my opinions are purely subjective and should be taken with a grain of salt.

I watched this movie with a buddy that swore to this movie and claimed it as one of his top favorites, even having set a personal record of watching it a total of 8 times. Hearing that, I had to search up this movie before we watched it, but the Rotten Tomatoes ratings were one of the first search results and a quick glance would make you think this movie was a horrible flop. I’m not swayed by snobby movie critics very easily so I ignored the ratings and decided I’d give it a watch based off of my buddy’s recommendation.

The following contains spoilers and my opinions regarding scenes and characters.

Continue reading “Movie Review – Death Sentence (2007)”

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That feeling when a pandemic ruins the entire year.

We’re just a couple days into March and the world is still feeling the affects brought upon by the coronavirus. The economic, health and psychological affects in particular are a reminder how volatile and fragile our society can be during times of stress. During the years of my life that I can remember, the biggest scares – in regards to diseases – were the Ebola virus and H1N1. Fortunately, America didn’t suffer the brunt of these viruses. And as far as I remember, it was an epidemic (eventually just an endemic) and the perceived severity of it went down fairly quickly. Unfortunately, thousands of people elsewhere had their lives taken by these viruses, and thousands more endured difficult years following these outbreaks while trying to remain healthy and return back to normal life.

The virus going around now, however, has a perceived severity and perceived susceptibility reading of “off the charts” everywhere. At least, that would seem like the case if you were to go by the content put out by the media and posts made by people on social media. Everyone is scared and worried about corona virus. And considering how the virus causes pneumonia, this is extremely scary for those with elderly relatives.

Economically, this virus has done a lot. Reservations for hotels, restaurants and airline tickets are being cancelled by nearly everyone. Events scheduled for this month are being cancelled like crazy, and even future events are being postponed even further because companies believe this virus won’t be going away anytime soon. I just want to say my heart goes out the most to the poor mom and pop shops whose sales have plummeted. As an entrepreneur you’re constantly aware of the risk, but a pandemic is not a risk most people factor in. A lot of businesses I’m sure have calculated that staying open is costing them more money and have opted to shut down instead. Having to dig into savings is rough, and I hope everything goes back to normal as soon as possible for their sake.

I also hope everything goes back to normal so no one has to worry about contracting the infection and spreading it to a family member, friends or others. The cases of deaths seem to be largely elderly patients but those with compromised immune systems are also succumbing to it.

And lastly, psychologically it’s scary how quickly people can spread a fake rumor and have everyone panic around the world. The toilet paper shortages in Japan and Australia due to a false claim that there was a shortage in the material for toilet paper since it’s from China. Masks are sold out nearly everywhere and it’s worrying to think that someone who may have the virus is unable to find a mask and is walking around exposing everyone unknowingly. All due to panicked people being selfish, but it’s difficult to blame them because we all know the mind just works differently in time of stress and fear.

At this point, who knows how this year will progress. Clinical trials for vaccines or medication are surely in progress but for those to be approved it could be a matter of months. It’s likely we won’t see any of these things until the end of this year or early next year. The safety protocols put into place are there for a reason so I’m confident we’ll come up with a working solution, but in the meantime hopefully this year isn’t entirely ruined. Wishful thinking is how I’m opting to spend this year!

Continue reading “That feeling when a pandemic ruins the entire year.”

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The Internet != The General Population

Note: “!=” is used to mean “not equal to” in coding but feel free to read it as “does not equal” in this case.

Yesterday was Super Tuesday, and for my American friends who are not familiar with it, it’s a day when a handful of states have their primary elections for the candidates running for the presidential race. When you pull up your favorite social media platform and scroll through the feed, it’s probably extremely one-sided and filled with the name of one or two candidates. One might assume that the general population is probably on board with the opinions and views that you see filling your feed everyday leading up to the elections.

Well, the 2016 election was when I naively realized how wrong that thought is. It’s when I also began to become familiar with certain terms. One of which was “echo chamber”, a word which in this context refers to being on sites and communities where you say just your political opinions and they bounce off the walls and echo back to you. Essentially, you only hear what you’re saying. It’s when I also realized how easy it is to live “in a bubble”, which in this context refers to living in your own political “ecosystem”. I was never much of a politics person but the 2016 presidential election was the first presidential election I was eligible to vote in, so I thought I would do my due part of being a citizen and learn what was going on.

At the time the two main contenders for the seat of the President of the United States were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The “bubble” that I unconsciously found myself living in, due to the social media sites I was using, depicted Clinton as the candidate who would confidently secure that seat. Well, the results of the election obviously proved that wrong. As a user of those sites, I was surprised, but some of the citizens who invested a lot of time in their candidate only to see them lose were even more devastated. So why were they so shocked? See: title. This little article isn’t intended to go deep into the topic and won’t go into detail about the tampering with election results or fake news, both of which had a hand in influencing the results according to the top-government intelligence officials, but I do recommend anyone interested to do some research about it. But one of the main things that lead to so many people being shocked is living in a bubble and only frequenting echo chambers that reverberated their opinions and did not leave any room for opposing thoughts.

The Super Tuesday election results served as another reminder of how influential the internet can be on a person’s thoughts and opinions. This time I was well aware of how biased certain sites can be and I was not surprised when the results showed something contrary to what the multitude of users thought (and the articles they brought to the top of the feed). Again, this article is NOT intended to share my political opinions and beliefs. It’s only to share my observations and give a friendly reminder to people that you shouldn’t allow sites that have algorithms in place to show you what they think you want to see – or, sites that allow users to vote up certain submissions and vote down others – to influence you and change your perception of the real world.

I know a lot of people already know about this, so it might be redundant or useless reading this, but if it helps at least one person realize the content they see online is not reflective of the real world and opinions held by the majority of people, I’ll be happy. This will save you from a lot of surprise or shock and make you be much more careful the next time you use certain sites.

Sticker for proof!
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J-Drama Review: Unnatural アンナチュラル – My Thoughts

Rating: 9/10*

*Personal opinions towards storyline and actors/actresses factor into the rating. Don’t take it too personal if a drama you liked/disliked has a rating you don’t agree with.

Without further ado, introducing the first drama I’ve ever reviewed – Unnatural! This is a story of a group of forensic pathologists who take matters into their own hands and investigate the circumstances revolving around the “unnatural” deaths of the bodies they’re tasked to perform autopsies on. The group of folks at the Unnatural Death Investigation (UDI) Laboratory is basically its own crime-solving unit, just without their own tasers and flashy badges.

Mikoto, Shoji, Kube and Nakado are the four “main” characters and except for Shoji, each of them have a personal storyline that the drama delves into deeply. This is something I enjoyed since it was tied in perfectly to the story and didn’t feel unnecessary at all. If you watch this drama prepare to be wrapped in a lot of mystery and by the end you’ll be on the edge of your seats wondering if they’ll solve the puzzle behind the last body they’re assigned for the autopsy!

I’ve watched a handful of dramas by Ishihara Satomi and she’s a great actress – that’s one of the reasons why I chose to watch this. I was not disappointed!

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