A Spy on the Inside

There are many perks about working in a company where the girls outnumber the guys to a ratio of 10:1 - especially when there is in fact only 1 guy. But before you let your mind get too carried away with some kind of fantasy, I dare say there are a few issues you should consider first.

You see, effectively the situation could be likened to some kind of North Korean regime. You’ve got a highly specialised bunch of people who’re all batting for the same team; and they’ll back each other up until the death even if they’re wrong. Worst of all no matter how hard you try, you’ll never completely fit in. Like some kind of South Korean spy, I have infiltrated the organisation and work amongst them on a daily basis - flying low under the radar to avoid trouble, turning a deaf ear to any jokes about men; and for heaven’s sake don’t leave the toilet seat up. Besides, doing that would blow your cover and they would discover that you are infact, a man.

A walk to the photocopy room may require a sudden barrel roll to avoid a flying mood swing, and as you pick yourself up off the floor watch out for the one who’s relying on coffee to get her through the day. If she’s had a rough night with little sleep, the last thing she needs is someone to push her over the edge. Then you’ll really know about it. So believe me when I the novelty of being surrounded by women soon wears off.

You’d sooner be out the door and running to the nearest pub. As you enter, the reassuring wave of the old drunk sitting at the bar does indeed sooth the soul in a weird and detached kind of way - as if he somehow knew what you had just escaped from, and that perhaps many years ago he had to flee from a similar situation and that maybe he had been sitting at the bar ever since. Despite these assumptions, you’ll never actually speak to him, ever. Perhaps it’s a bit like a case of “never meet your heroes”, or “never meet that guy at the bar”. It’s as if keeping the ideas you have in your head is probably better than the reality of it. Maybe he used to be a garbage collector and since his retirement changed to a professional beer drinker.

Not a great story by any means.

Panda Diary

Wow! I’m proud to announce someone made a movie about me!! ^^ It’s very interesting, I encourage everyone to check it out!

Company
Shochiku Co., Ltd.
Cast
Miho Kanno
Director(s)
Tadashi Mori
Producer(s)
Shigeaki Yoshida
Completion Year
2008

We pandas must continue to survive until our natural habitat is restored.

Welcome to the Chendu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. 60 pandas live in the sprawling, verdant grounds. We pandas live not as families, but are separated into groups according to age.

This is a group of strong and healthy youngsters, including the three-year-old male Yong Yong. Yong Yong and his three female companions are always hungry. The group has been named the goofy quartet. Over on the other side of the Center, the area known as the nursery is home to eight one-year- old pandas. Although they are still drinking milk, they will soon begin to eat bamboo. Once they have dinner, the cubs play with each other. Fooling around, wrestling, running out… Just like human Kids.

The eight cubs were born here this year. A newly born panda weighs only 100 grams and they are pink, without the black & white markings at birth. They cry out, desperately seeking their mothers milk.

Although we look alike, if you examine us closer, each one is quite unique. Even the natures of mother pandas are quite different. Some mothers are attentive whereas others have problems with motherhood.

Cheng Ji is a young seven-year-old panda mother.The first-time parent is initially hesitant to hold her young. One of the twin cubs, Ji You, has grey, not black fur. The handler shakes his head. It pains me to look at him. We call him the Ugly Ducking.The mother by instinct selects the stronger child to be brought up. However, here every life is precious, and a bridge to their future. Ji You must grow to be strong.

14 year old Er Yatou is a veteran mom. She deftly guides the cub crawling across her tummy towards her breasts. Watching the mother panda hug her young is a moving experience.

The mating season takes place between summer and autumn. There are high hopes that Ya Ya is pregnant again. She has been under observation after showing indications of pregnancy. However, her due date comes and goes. Then one day her appetite returns and she tucks into a batch of bamboo. It seems that this was a false pregnancy. What a pity!

We have spent our life in a strange land
called Japan- the only place we know.
But it is now time to say goodbye..

Here in Japan at Adventure World in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture, a family of eight pandas, including the great mother Mei Mei and father Ei Mei, live peacefully together.

Mei Mei was born at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center and came to Japan in 2000. Although breeding in captivity was considered difficult, she has successfully given birth five times. Moreover, she is the first mother in the world to rear twins on her own. She is currently looking after newly borns Ai Hin and Mei Hin.

We are the four-year-old twin brothers Ryu Hin and Shu Hin. We are very different in character, but we are the first twin pandas in the world brought up together. At the moment, we are the equivalent of a human twelve-year-old, but in a couple of years we will become adults. And to prepare ourselves for fatherhood and to bear the next generation, we will return to our native land of China.

October 27th, 2007 - it is time to say goodbye to Japan. Although we have calmly practiced being placed in small cages, we now cant stop making a fuss. Perhaps we are scared. The plane carrying us heads for China.

Up until the fourth day after arriving in Chengdu, we were calm. However, we pandas deal with stress badly. Although the staff was worried about my quiet brother Ryu Hin, it is I, Shu Hin that starts to panic. All of a sudden I climb to the top of the cage, letting out mournful cries. Ryu Hin approaches me to comfort me, puts his paws around me. My cries finally stop. We twins start to adapt to our new life together…

Our new life begins

The newborn cubs born in the summer leave their mothers and move to the nursery. A nursery full of furry panda cubs… They cling to the first trees they see, climb up and slide back down. They grow up teasing each other, fooling around and occasionally fighting. Ji Yous grey fur at last seems to be turning black. He has grown strong and energetic!

Around the time that the cubs enter the nursery, we, Ryu Hin and Shu Hin, are released into the grounds. It is our first time ever in such a large exercise pen! Our new life begins in earnest.

Time goes by slowly and gently for pandas. Birth, rearing, growing up. Eating, sleeping, playing. Our everyday life leads to the future. The dream to return to the wild forest continues…

BoA: Best & USA

I don’t usually write about music and CD’s, however I came across BoA’s latest album the other day and something has really been bugging me about it.

Despite being Australian I am a huge fan of her previous albums, and I can appreciate it must be extremely difficult to break into the American music industry - but to be honest I think they’ve done it all wrong. Looking over the disc’s track listing gives you some idea of the problem:
01-I Did It For Love
02-Energetic
03-Did Ya
04-Look Who’s Talking
05-Eat You Up
06-Obsessed
07-Touched
08-Scream
09-Girls On Top
10-Dress Off
11-Hypnotic Dancefloor

If you were to put these words together into some kind of sentence and then say it to someone on the street, you’d probably get arrested for sexual harrasment. If you wrote them down on a page, you’d be on your way to writing a script for an Adult movie - each and every song is about, or relating to sex.

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My Clockwork Day

As human beings we have a habit of forming routines in our daily life. A typical full-time worker will do the same things each day; such as waking up in the morning at the same time, catching the same bus, eating lunch at the same shop, taking the same path home. We choose to keep our routine because as a human being we don’t like change. But I believe this can bring quite a lot of boredom into our lives, too

I am shamefully stuck in a routine of my own. I know what time I have to arrive at work, so I just work back from there. Minimum times to get get ready, shower, have breakfast etc, means I have to wake up at 7:00am - which for me is difficult even on the best of days! Driving along the road I see the same people waiting at the bus stop, the same people riding their bicycles and I also pass the same cars almost every morning. I like to watch the faces of the other drivers because they always look so miserable - like they’re on the way to a funeral or something. I see all of those people and realise I am not alone.. they’re all stuck in their own routines too - somehow we’re most comfortable when everything is the same. But there are some things I could do to change this if I really wanted to.

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Not another American action movie

What is it with American action movies? I think they’re all secretly made by the same director - some guy who has a 3 way fetish for Technology, Guns and Heavy Military Equipment. I was watching one the other day by Stephen Spielberg - except I can’t remember the exact title of the movie because it was so utterly forgettable. If I could draw a parallel - Stephen is like that annoying friend of yours who constantly tries his hardest to impress you and make himself look cool to you. You’d be watching the movie with him and he’d be constantly digging you in the side and going “Get a load of that! Cool isn’t it?”.  To be fair though, I shouldn’t single Stephen out - there are plenty of other directors out there doing the same thing.

So if you’d like to follow in their footsteps and create your own American action movie, let me tell you 10 things which you’ll require:

*Get Bruce Willis for the lead role - or if he is not available, some other mean looking son of a bitch.

* You’ll need some kind of central command room with lots of stupidly big screens showing impossibly clear satellite feeds used to track suspects. Computers should all have matching FBI spec desktop wallpaper, plus lots of techy computer noises whenever anyone uses them. Men walking around with clipboards should be seen in the background.

* In this room you’ll need a slightly fat, bald, mean looking man in an army outfit with lots of badges to be the Major/Commander. At some point in the movie someone should challenge his authority, so he can yell at them “Yeah? Well I’ve got orders from the President to run this entire operation - so get the hell out of my face!”. He’ll need a sidekick too, so when the enemy forces attack he can then turn to him and yell the obligatory “Damn it…. Get me the President. I need CIA, NSA, FBI, The Pentagon, and the whole god damn police force on the phone! I need to talk to all those sun’sa bitches now Junior!”

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March 4th,2009 Movies | 1 Comment

A rare new panda is born…

Welcome to Panda Diary! This blog started out in life almost two years ago but was extremely short lived, however I snuffed out the flame shortly after it was lit. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it - and exactly how was it Panda related? It wasn’t. But all this time later I found out I had it still sitting here.. so I have decided to give it a shot again. I don’t really mind if no-one ends up reading it, or if Google completely ignores it - I never kept a diary when I was a little boy and I kind of regret it. Our brain has a limited capacity and we slowly find all of our older memories getting pushed out the other end as we fill it up with something new.

I got the nickname Panda due to my often sleepy nature. Sleep is something I adore,  I am often seen yawning throughout the day and I seem to have some darkness around my eyes which fails to ever fade away. If you were to sit me among some bamboo plants the look would be complete. I am Australian but I have huge interest about the world and other cultures.

So here it is.. Panda Diary.. a blog about anything and everything. I really hope you’ll find it a laugh!