Bento Box

1988-1994
I started getting into rap music at a young age. Maybe 7 or 8. I started off listening to my brother’s LPs and CDs. I remember it was a big deal when my brothers first got their record player. I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I distinctly remember the Bobby Brown Don’t Be Cruel LP and the MC Hammer U Can’t Touch This LP. I loved those albums and I remember my brothers and their friends would watch me do an imitation of the Hammer shuffle. I was also huge fan of Another Bad Creation and Kwame and would listen to their CDs nonstop. Kid rap groups were my fave; with their songs about schoolyard puppy love.

As I got older I learned how to operate our tapedeck and I started making my own mix tapes. By this time, my brother Tim introduced me to Run DMC and Kam got me a mix CD with lots of hits. These two CDs really shaped my appreciation of hip-hop. I was able to recite almost the entire 15 minutes worth of the Super Rhymes song. From old school hip hop, I got into gangster rap; listening to my brother’s NWA and Ice-Cube CDs. Kam somehow got a bunch of demo tapes and I remember one of them was the first Bone Thugs-N-Harmony EP.

When my mom was driving me around, I would listen to whatever I wanted. Mostly Run DMC and sometimes Bone Thugs. Thinking back about how she put up with the silly gangster rap and incessant rap, makes me really appreciate how awesome my mom was. I was just a barely pre-teen punk kid getting driven around by mom, ejecting her Chinese music and then blasting Bone Thugs and Run DMC in our Volvo 200DL (see picture). I didn’t dare listen to NWA around her though; I knew that much.

Mom freaked out when “No Surrender” came on because it started with siren sounds

It finally came! The wait was well worth it! The day the package arrived I was nervous and giddy like a schoolgirl. I could barely keep my hands from shaking as I un-boxed the long awaited custom stick. It came wrapped in layers of protection. Words simply couldn’t describe how I felt as I marveled at the craftsmanship and attention to detail. I was simply blown away. Everything I had asked for, Godspu delivered on and exceeded expectations. It might be the pride of ownership in me, but I must say that this stick is his best work yet.

I asked for a dual console custom stick with round edges, similar to the glossy simple black stick he made before. But I wanted to have it in a pearlescent white, and incorporate some LED lighting elements into it. Godspu offered some suggestions like the plexi side panels so I trusted his vision of the project and it came out looking awesome.

The details:
+MDF construction
+White base paint with pink pearl flake
+Dual console (Xbox360/PS3) – Madcatz SE PCB, Toodles Chimp Board
+Sanwa JLF stick
+Seimitsu PS-14-G-N buttons
+LED lit buttons and case
+Xbox microphone jack
+Seimitsu bubble top
+Anondized aluminum shaft cover
+Removable cord

The paint job was professional and perfect. Pictures don’t do the paint job justice. I went with pink pearl since I had some pink Sanwas I was going to re-use (but ended up getting the Seimitsus since I needed screw-ins)

Clean clean clean wiring and attention to detail

LEDs lit up

And it plays like a dream too. Having the stick farther away from the buttons makes it more comfortable than the TE.

I have no reservations whatsoever about recommending Godspu for any custom joystick or even modification work. He was incredibly easy to work with and very responsive. He even obliged me with work-in-progress pictures.

The current duo:

More pictures here

Great memories. Sony MZ-R50.
Back in high school my friend John showed me his cool MD player he got from HK. I had to have one too. It was way smaller than a CD player and had tons of skip-protection. Bought one in Japan during my home stay in Ishigaki-shi. I was dumb and bought an optical cable to try to record stuff, but stupid me, I couldn’t figure out why the optical cable wasn’t working in the stereo mini-jack. I bought a bunch of MDs (even the cool clear cased ones) and started making my own mixes from CDs I would rent from the music store there. Came back to the US and showed all my friends the wonders of Jpop and MDs. Some got really into Jpop and one guy even installed an MD deck in their car. I’ll save the Jpop memories for another time, but I loved that MD player. Thought it was the shit with the remote that would display the tracks and the twistable knob to skip tracks. Would clip it to my shirt with the display facing out. Hot stuff.

Then one day in Japanese class my MD player was stolen off my desk. I was crushed. It was substitute teacher day so he didn’t care about it. I thought I only had friends in that class but I guess that was the life lesson. Maybe the sub stole it. No idea. The MD loader mechanism was kind of busted anyway; and I hope whoever stole it liked the mix of Cocco, Speed, and Brilliant Green. Never bought another MD player to replace it though. My next music player was a Rio PMP 300. What an awesome piece of crap that was.

Speaking of my Jpop-crazed era; interesting factoid: “Rise” came from the name of a Speed album, my favorite Jpop group back in ’98. 1998 was the best year of Jpop ever. Loved those days. EFnet #jpop #jpopmp3 #jrock and on and on

My favorite SPEED song “Alive”

Fell in love again. Listen to Stars. More energetic than In Our Bedroom After the War. The Five Ghosts is an easy instant favorite.

Reminder to self, they’ll be in Seattle Nov 6th. Louis CK will be here Nov 12th.

Got a snazzy new iPhone 4 and you can’t get large video files off it? I was having this same issue with a 10 minute 720p video I kept trying to transfer using Windows explorer. Windows would create a 0 byte file with the same file name. Tried this on two different PCs. Maybe it could be a WinXP issue?

Thanks to this blog post, CopyTrans is the answer.

Here’s the 758mb file video:

(3:37:23 PM) rise: http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/25/jason-bateman-booed-after-cutting-iphone-line/?iref=obnetwork
(3:37:31 PM) rise: would you let jason bateman cut you in line haha
(3:37:39 PM) parlance: nope
(3:37:46 PM) parlance: i woudln’t let anyone cut in front of me
(3:38:03 PM) rise: not even… Paul McCartney
(3:38:06 PM) parlance: nope
(3:38:12 PM) rise: serious!
(3:38:16 PM) parlance: why would i
(3:38:18 PM) parlance: seriously
(3:38:31 PM) rise: what if he gave you an autograph
(3:38:33 PM) parlance: i hate letting people cut in front of me when i drive
(3:38:38 PM) parlance: who cares
(3:38:42 PM) rise: an autographed LP
(3:38:47 PM) parlance: maybe if he bought me my phone
(3:39:09 PM) rise: paul AND ringo came up to you, after you waited a long time in a line, and would give you an autographed album
(3:39:22 PM) parlance: maybe if it was also signed by John
(3:39:28 PM) rise: gimme a fucking break hahaha
(3:39:33 PM) parlance: serioiusly
(3:39:37 PM) parlance: i’m not joing
(3:39:44 PM) parlance: i take my time seriously
(3:39:54 PM) parlance: and he wouldn’t be jsut cutting in front of me
(3:40:03 PM) parlance: he would be cutting some other people
(3:40:16 PM) rise: ok, what about Obama
(3:40:22 PM) parlance: hell no
(3:40:29 PM) parlance: there isn’t one person
(3:40:32 PM) parlance: NOT ONE
(3:40:42 PM) parlance: i would need substantial compensation
(3:40:55 PM) rise: a BJ from Megan Fox
(3:41:31 PM) parlance: lhahah
(3:41:44 PM) parlance: i suppose that is compensation enough

Writing on my new iPhone 4. This screen is amazing. My 3GS screen looks blurry in comparison.
Big difference between the non-updated hi-res icons and the hi-res ones.

Click image for full res

I’ll miss my skinned gameboy iPhone though. Good bye love, I hardly knew ye

Update: Due to lameness/laziness, I forgot write about the wonders of the Octopus card and how the MTR is so not the same. So instead, check out The Book on Flim Flamming to read about how convenient and awesome the Octopus card is.

What else did I do in HK… mainly just eat and hang out. So much has changed since I last was in HK 16 years ago. Tons of new malls and buildings were erected; but at the same time it feels it hasn’t changed much. The same ol’ MTR, the same trams, buses (all AC’d now), and taxis. I didn’t remember seeing so many Westerners in HK back then. It seemed like 1 out of 5 people was a whitey in Central. Almost everyone is capable of speaking English now.

Me and Dad at Stanley, on the first day I arrived

A rare clear view of HK from across the bay. This was taken from near the pier.

The pier keeps getting extended out as they add in more landfill. Kowloon and HK are getting closer and closer. Here’s a pic of the fill from the American Club in Central. The road, and everything to the left of it is new. When I was a kid, I don’t remember having to walk a long walkway to get to the pier. Very few people take the ferry now anyway.

From the tram

Wasted a day looking for joystick parts, only to find they aren’t sold in Mong Kok or Sham Shui Po computer centers. Didn’t see many places selling MadCatz sticks either. Most were selling Qanba sticks.

Hung out with long-time IRC friend Guillaume and his girl Helen. Spent a lot of time in arcades. Last time I was in HK I wasn’t old enough to get in. Kicked ass and got my ass kicked at SFIV, he beat me ez at KOF.

Nasty arcade controls at an arcade that allowed smoking

Some para para pros at the huge Kowloon Bay arcade in Telford Plaza:

I tried to find this coin-pushing game I saw in Japan, but didn’t see it in HK

We went to Wong Tai Sin temple and also the Peak

iPhone HDR app not bad

Caught World Cup fever and over paid for it:

Really weak stinky tofu from a stand in Mong Kok, the Taiwan stinky tofu is way better (and stinkier)

Cheesey eggettes from Mong Kok

Hunan Sour and Spicy noodles in TST

McDs delivers if you over more than $66 HKD. After 9pm they have double filet o fish.

Rest of the pictures of HK are here