It was interesting to see with my own eyes the consistent disregard for intellectual property in places as modern as HK and Taipei. I haven't seen any questionable VCD shops in Tokyo, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

There's an article on Economist.com about intellectual property & poorer countries that is a good summary of where things are at right now. Countries that join the WTO sign into a deal where-in they must strengthen their IP laws. Once again, the developed protect themselves at the expense of the developing. Most poor countries don't have the capital to build the infrastructure for supporting IP laws. Dollars will get diverted to address IP when in fact much more pressing problems may exsist in the developing country. Good times.

I can no longer be a slave to blog-continuity. I have many many pictures from Malaysia to post, but have run out of hard drive space on my free webhost. I'm currently waiting for my new 300MB pay account to go active. But my patience is gone, and we'll have to live with my non-linear picture posting.

I've been in Tokyo coming up on a month now. It's been a really great feeling to have some degree of independence again. In China, Taiwan, and Malaysia I was limited, by either language or travel logistics. But in Tokyo so far neither of these is holding me back. That's been a really refreshing change.

Wow. So crazy to be a college student again. College is like a fantasy land, where the expectations you are to meet are clearly articulated and handed to you. They call it a course syllabus. And after six months, no matter how horribly you fail to deliver at meeting these expectations, you get to start with a clean slate and do it all over again. If I ran a college, I'd prepare students for the real world. First I'd make the course syllabus very very vague. Then, just as students were beginning to get a grasp on the direction they should work towards, I'd pull their goals out from under them and switch in a new one. Best of all, there would be no semesters. Just one, long, class where everything you do matters.

I bought a ukulele. Only 2000‰~. It doesn't sound the best in the world, but who cares. It's got four strings and can stay in tune for 45-minutes, good enough for me. I was shocked to discover post-purchase that Waseda doesn't have any ukulele circles (similar to a club). Too broke to pay for uke lessons, well I'll track down some uke friends eventually. Or maybe I'll start a uke circle.