#8: Being a fan

It’s been awhile since post #7, and well, there wasn’t a nice part 2 to write in the end. I failed the entry examinations, but I’ve decided to wait another year. Next year will be the last year I’m eligible for the undergraduate scholarship, and if I miss it again, I will continue to study architecture at NUS and seek other opportunities from within the school.

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Disappointment aside, today I look into how my obsession with Japanese musicians has affected my journey.

It began as just another past-time, following artists whose music I thoroughly enjoyed. And grew into an obsession so great I was willing to travel to Hong Kong just to catch a concert. While my senseless pursuit of music idols, CDs, and limited edition merchandise and tour goods has been, well, senseless, this obsession has surprisingly helped me in a few significant ways that I’ve only noticed in retrospect. It mostly revolves around the community I’ve built around me, on and offline.

In my previous social circles, there were only very few who could identify with my strong interest for Japan, its language, and its culture. In the J-Pop music community it’s as if everyone knows everyone else; a positive result of the sad reality that J-Pop is in decline in most of Asia. Since I’ve “entered the scene” back in November 2010, I’ve experimented with countless artists and met fans of various bands and singers. They all shared one thing in common: an almost maniacal obsession for a particular artist. And that passion shows, and carries through to other things that they do. Some of them learn Japanese just so that they can understand the song lyrics better, or translate blog entries from their favourite singers, or even communicate with them on twitter. I’ve even managed to get to know a couple of native Japanese who have been very helpful in guiding me along as I learn Japanese, as well as sharing with me various things I never knew about Japan.

I’ve also found a much more interesting avenue to learn and practice my Japanese, in the form of translating. Whenever I’m free, I head over to the forums to see if there’s anything to translate. Each piece takes me anywhere between 5 minutes and two hours, but regardless of it’s difficulty, I’m always made to use the dictionary. Above that, more than a third of the people I follow on twitter post in Japanese, and being a twitter addict, reading these posts every day has done wonders for my reading (can’t say the same for my conversational skills though, I feel like I only ever make progress during my Japanese classes, and not much at that ;_; )

It’s almost as if theres some way to apply all of my interests and hobbies under the great umbrella that is fandom. I’ve already contributed a few pieces of fan-art, maintaining my graphic design and illustration interest, and I’ve even learnt a few things about site management, social media manipulation and search engine optimisation in attempting to create a fansite for an up and coming artist. Not to mention, there’s always a reason to pick up my guitar and play my favourite songs.

All this will culminate in a personal journey to Japan next year as I wait for uni to start in August (I will be studying Architecture in NUS for at least the first Semester, until I know the results of my MEXT Scholarship attempt for 2013)

Many people have warned me that Japan might not be what I have always imagined it to be, and I completely agree with their concerns. So to make sure I know what I’m doing, I plan to travel across Japan over 3 months, the maximum duration of a single-entry visa, to experience the land of the rising sun myself.

And when I’m there, in between performance venues and hometowns of my favourite musicians, I’m sure I’ll run into a good number of fellow fans whom will connect with me immediately and help me along my journey.

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While I’m at it, here’s a new song from my favourite of favourites that was written for the victims of the Tohoku earthquake and disaster.

#7: 文部科学書 (MEXT) Scholarship Part 1

More than two years ago, I found myself at a Study-in-Japan convention. You see, it was so long ago, I don’t even remember where it was held, but I remember being there, and I remember keeping an envelope of reference materials related to the mother-of-all-scholarships: The Japanese Government Monbukagakusho Scholarship (MEXT).

Why I didn’t apply there and then, was simply because there is no way to request for a service disruption, nor could I defer the scholarship for 2 years had I obtained it.

And so, that envelope was left at the very bottom of my drawer of “important stuff”. Over the years, the more certificates and awards I obtained, and the fatter my portfolio became, the more obscured that envelope became, and I eventually forgot all about it.

…

Until 3 weeks ago…

A friend of mine on YUI-Lovers was ranting about how he had failed the MEXT scholarship when we asked him about his dreams. The moment I read that, I was on a google-spree, and within the week, completed my application form, including a reference letter from a great friend and teacher of mine (Mrs. Genevieve Tan if you’re curious, she wrote it for me in a day!), and submitted it.

I beat the deadline by just 1 week.

…

The Scholarship (Undergraduate):
- 1 year intensive Japanese language and bridging course in Osaka/Tokyo
- 4-5 years degree of choice, in school of choice (depending on vacancy and how well you fare in the first year)
- Two way ticket to Japan
- Tuition fully paid for
- 123,000円 monthly allowance (SGD 1, 875)
- No Bond.

The process:

Stage 1: Application Screening

Stage 2: MEXT Examinations, Subjects depending on course of choice
- For some reason, Architecture was grouped under Natural Sciences A, which had me doing Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, English, and Japanese, all in one day

Stage 3: Interview

Stage 4: Recommendation to Japanese Government

…

wait.. WHAT?! CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS, AND MATHS!?

Yea, so I had about 2 weeks to get back to standard, essentially what I haven’t touched for almost 2 years now, and mind you the exams were of A-level standard, IN A DIFFERENT SYLLABUS.

Fast forward two weeks (of intensive mugging amidst training).

Today was the day of the examinations, and I’m rather confident that I aced English, and passed Chemistry, but quite sure I failed both Physic and Math. (They said Japanese didn’t count so… I think I barely passed it though)

Sounds dire, but on the slightly brighter side, there were only 10 other candidates in the Science category, one of them didn’t show up for the last two papers (probably gave up after seeing first three lol), and everyone went WTF at physics and math because they were quite a bit tougher than previous years, and the global estimated score floats around 40…

Last year, 6 people got the scholarship.

I have no idea how many people applied through arts (which has an easier version of Math, English and Japanese only), and I’m not sure how they gauge our side of the tests compared to theirs because it seems pretty damn unfair if it’s the same.

So, there is no point trying to guess my odds. Anyway, I’ll know if I made it to Stage 3 by 10am tomorrow.

I hope I’ll have a good Part 2 to write.

Radial is now obsolete, because…

“Apple’s new iOS 5 will bring a dramatic improvement to the typing experience with something they call “Grab Handles” which is a split keyboard. This will be benefit those who need to type with their thumbs while holding their iPad or iPad 2 with two hands.

Previously, one would have to have pretty large hands with very long thumbs to reach the middle of the keyboard. In fact it was practically impossible to do. With this new update there is a handle button on the keyboard that you grab with your thumb and it will split the keyboard making the keys reachable from the average person while they hold the iPad or iPad 2 with both hands.

This will make the iPad easier to use while standing or sitting somewhere other than at a table or desk. It is also something that should have been available far earlier in iOS. There are already similar keyboards available for other operating systems. Until we saw Microsoft’s early previews of Windows 8, we had not seen one built into a mobile OS for quite some time.” – Taken from Gottabemobile.com

—-

Yes, dramatic improvement.

Oh and did you notice the last sentence? Yes, Windows 8 has it too!

Wait what? Windows 8? Yea, it’s the sexy new version of Windows that isn’t even out yet.

The split keyboard feature is shown at 2:50

—-
Q: Wait what the fuck is this Radial you’re talking about?

A: Available on the App Store since January 15th 2011. Check it out here.

Oh and by the way, this was the description written by us, well, 5 months ago.

“Radial is an innovative custom keyboard app for the iPad. Built specifically for use with only your two thumbs, Radial allows you to type on your iPad in a whole new way.

If you’re the kind of user who holds his/her iPad upright with both palms in the horizontal orientation, you’ll definitely recognize how difficult it is to reach the center alphabets on the standard keyboard. Radial was created to help you with that.”

Sounds familiar? *hint: scroll to the first two paragraphs of this post*

Q: Ok… so if Radial was so awesome why didn’t anyone use it?

A: The trouble is, Apple’s app developers simply cannot affect anything outside of their own app, meaning that Radial just could NOT work outside of itself, when you launch other apps, your keyboard will still be Apple’s fat unusable keyboard, not Radial.

We tried to streamline it as much as possible, offering in-built tools for more commonly used apps, such as an in-built “mail”, and in-built “notes”, even an in-built web search and in-built status update poster (that could post to both your twitter and Facebook accounts). When you switch to another app, Radial also automatically copies whatever you wrote onto your clipboard, so you can paste your text with one-tap.

But obviously, it was still way too much trouble for that little bit of comfort while typing even though it made so much sense. Unfortunately, to READ your mail, you still have to go to the original Mail app. Same goes for your twitter feeds and Facebook updates, it was way too much trouble for us to write an in-built twitter, Facebook, AND mail app all in one.

So, why doesn’t anyone use Radial? Because we are indie developers, and not working for Apple.

Q: Yea big deal, how do you know they copied you? It does look kinda different!

A: Never said they did, maybe they already had this in the works for awhile now. I just said that it now renders my barely 5 month old app completely obsolete, and unfortunately because I am neither working for Apple nor Microsoft, my foresight and spark of genius was unable to get me anywhere and I will continue to remain anonymous and unrecognised. I guess that’s life.
—-

I have a feeling that the exact same thing will happen for the project I’m working on right now. I’m 100% positively sure that it’s going to be something that EVERYONE will use, but whether or not that something that everyone is using is made by me, or something similar made by a big ass company right after I made it, is the big question. If the former is true, you’re probably going to see me a lot in the news, but because this is reality, it’s probably going to be the latter, and a year from now, you will see me post something like this again

Ah… Life