Pokemon Sword and Shield complaints

I do like the pokemon series. The first I've played was Red and Blue (generation one) when it came out. I remember getting one colour for myself and the other was given to my brother and we'd just play for hours on end. There were a couple of pokemon generations I missed since school, other interests, puberty etc got more important and I pretty much just forgot about the game. Instead I played some random online games and had a period of playing starcraft. In any case, as most grown as millennial, I got interested out of nostalgia, boredom and hype. I bought the alpha sapphire and it was awesome. It had less of that griding as the original pokemon did and they made it much easier to follow and catch rare pokemon. I never got mew in the original games. So I've played sun and moon, my boyfriend got me the pokemon go, so I played that, and now came the next in the whole chapter, pokemon sword and shield. So here's my review.
I've changed the title to a 'complaints' because I'm not going to review it much, I'm mainly going to bitch and moan about the dislike parts. I mean, I'll start off with the positives since I do have a lot of those.
I actually like the game. There's no doubt about it. I'm not a huge critique on graphics, as it never bothered me much or the ease of the game play, since I was never a serious or competitive gamer and my goal was always just to catch them all and play with cute pokemon. I do recognize that the ease of the game made it less engaging or challenging and a bit too linear and boring at times, but I'll complain about that later. Ease of the game for me, wasn't so bad. I also love most a lot of the new pokemon introduced. Like this simple sheep

or this dank as black goth bird


Obviously, there were a few hit and miss that I thought were just... weird, like

But overall, I liked it.
I also liked the whole scenery and design of characters, costume etc. I know some people were annoyed at the main rival hop or the design of his brother, but I mostly, couldn't care less.

So!
Here it comes. Buckle up cause as a loud mouth anus that loves to complain about anything and everything, I'm going to spew out my list of complaints.

Set up of the bag interface. (pic from reddit by u/gmendezm)
 (
This is not just a complaint from me. I've seen numerous complaints in previous years about the same issue. As the years went by since the first game, the number of items have increased... well with exaggeration, exponentially. If I want to scroll over to find that one item to give to my one pokemon, the one and only that uses it to level up, well I might as well scroll a mile and if I miss it, fuck me. With no search function, even sorting the items by type doesn't help and if u sort it by name and it's in the middle of the alphabet, you still have to scroll half a mile to get to that one item out of a hundred. It's the same with TM and berries and possibly with pokeballs.
I wouldn't even care about sub-categorizing too much if they added a search function. But they haven't.

Pokedex layout.

The same thing with the bag menu. It just sucks. You can't sort by type, which is understandable, but sorting by name might not be so helpful if the pokemon is again, in the middle of the alphabet. And again, I would've been happy if they just added a search function, but they didn't for no reason at all...

Player dialogue choices.
I couldn't find a pic, so you'll just have to believe me when I say things. Games like skyrim and fallout (I know they're from the same creator... I know there're others out there, but I don't know a lot more sorry) were famous because dialogue and choices mattered. You killed someone who was important, BAM, consequences. You said something insulting, BAM, consequences. I'm not expecting the same with pokemon, however, players like ownership. gamefreaks went in the right direction of at least letting people chose the appearance of their characters, however, the dialogue choices... well... it's like you have 2 choices, of a 'YES!' or a 'yes but less enthusiastically'. I don't mind that the outcomes are the same, I'm not playing a completely open world open choice game like skyrim, I know I'm playing a game made for children, but they could've at least personified it more to put in a bit more choices and a bit more reactions. For example, there were times I wanted to at least act humble and decline a challenge. But my only choices were, like I said, 'YES!' or a 'yes but less enthusiastically'. If there was a choice to say, "no" and be ignored by it, I would prefer that as it still is my character acting on my own accord. Or the conversation with Hop, my main rival. Even though I knew he was a game character, I wished I could be honest with him at times. I felt kind of bad for him, always challenging me, being defeated... All my dialogue choices were to accept his challenge or just say some generic cheering up bs when he looked genuinely depressed that he can't live up to his brother's name. (and by the way, the name hop is just ridiculous. I'm really hoping it's like a nickname, or a shortened version of something really cool, rather than his parents saying "oh you know how we named our first kid something normal like leon? Well lets name this one something retarded, like hop, from hopping down the street). Besides not having any dialogue choice I have to painfully watch by and see hop monologue about everything.


Trading system
So... They got rid of the GTS (global trading system). Now that sucks, but no worries we'll manage somehow by talking to, and trading with other random people online using their link trade. Well. 'talking to' was never really a feature in pokemon. We now have a system, where we can't advertise the pokemon we want, and we can't communicate with the person we're trading with, so we blindly have to pick pokemon in hopes that it was the right pokemon the other person wanted, hope that they give me the pokemon I want and if not, the sales basically doesn't go through and one always seem to quit, having to repeat the process again, of connecting, waiting for connecting, having very poor communication, then cancelling trade. People started naming their pokemon with the pokemon they want because that's the only way to communicate. A better system would be to at least be able to pick the pokemon they would like from the pokedex or something and put a request over the y-comm. In the GTS system, people would trade with you just for humanity sake to be nice. When games like nier automata and death stranding thrives to link people together and make them help each other out, this game has limited communications making people more frustrated with each other, rather than thriving to help each other out.
AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS SHIT AS WELL!!!!! On top of the cost of game, you now have to pay monthly to access online. FECK

Starter pokemon
When I said I liked most of the new pokemon, well it didn't include the starters. I just hate how they're making pokemon more and more humanized. Before evolving, they're all this cute little beings and I loved it. I thought their evolution would be all cool monster like.

But what we got was this

They've gone down this route for some time now, like pokemon x and y

I miss when they were more monster like.

Now it looks like all those pokemon are wearing some sort of weird clothing.
I would've preferred this fan version instead

Or even this


No petting
The feck. It's a touch screen. USE IT. I loved pokemon alpha sapphire and sun and moon. You can actually pet the bloody things!!! They looked adorable!!! Then what did they do? "Oh now you can swing this poorly designed toy in front of them and they'll play with it equally poorly by just head butting you. The feck!?! I seriously wouldn't have minded if they just brought in the old games 3d animations and just recapped it. I don't mind graphics like I said. I mind game play.

Lack of pokemon
Not having all the original is... well.. just limiting. I didn't mind it at first, but after finishing the game... I'm just... done. It was a short game. There was a lack of feeling of satisfaction that I collected them all. Like I said, I don't really care much about graphics (which was the reason why they limited it to the galagar pokedex only apparently). So if they included them all with the animations from the previous version, I would've been happy as.

I think that's about it for now.

Assassination Classroom review

Assassination Classroom (Japanese: 暗殺教室 Hepburn: Ansatsu Kyōshitsu) is a Japanese comic science fiction manga series written and illustrated by Yūsei Matsui. (Wikipedia)

Synopsis: When a mysterious creature chops the moon down to a permanent crescent, the students of class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Middle School find themselves confronted with an enormous task: assassinate the creature responsible for the disaster before Earth suffers a similar fate. However, the monster, dubbed Koro-sensei (the indestructible teacher), is able to fly at speeds of up to Mach 20, which he demonstrates freely, leaving any attempt to subdue him in his extraterrestrial dust. Furthermore, the misfits of 3-E soon find that the strange, tentacled beast is more than just indomitable—he is the best teacher they have ever had! [Written by MAL Rewrite]

I don't know why I bothered putting in all that synopsis stuff since my review is quite bad and I'm not really going to finish watching the rest of the anime.

The anime was a good reminder of what I like and dislike when I'm watching anime. The anime I watch are quite varied, but for comedy purposes, I seem to like a certain genre. I don't even like sophisticated or complicated comedy, I'm not posh like that, I just like the good ol' slapstick, parody type comedy that has very little big-titty jokes or poop jokes. Also in that, I like when they put in a lot of random.
Here are some comedy anime/manga series I enjoyed:
Gag Manga Biyori


Arakawa Under the Bridge


... For some reason I can't seem to think of others, but I don't tend to watch comedy anime or series for long, since I tend to get bored easily. Movies is just one off so there're bundles more that I stuck to, like the Scary movie series, Naked gun series, Airplane! etc

In first look, Assassination classroom gives off a similar vibe, but it soon becomes clear that it's not really the case. The anime seems to be going for both comedy with a side note of serious which just does not work for me. There are times when they're laughing at themselves, but mostly, it's just... cringy.
So here are my 2 things that just made me dislike the anime
1. Students
If you're going to make an anime/manga about the growth and development of children, I think a good start might be making characters that are relatable and generally likable. These students were either so generic that it might have been relatable to some students out there, but were mostly just so god-damn boring. I mean, do people like watching the paint dry? That's development right? Nagisa, the main protagonist, probably falls into that area and he might as well have been invisible if they were going to make such a generic and boring character. I know this may be harsh, but it's mainly the storytelling that did his character no justice. I'll tell you a better 'wall-flower' story telling. Aku no Hana has a character just like him. A boy that was just a generic character, but the story revolved around him and made him into this most interesting center of attention and events as the story unfolds. However, in Assassination classroom, they did such a bad job of deciding whether he's a background character, or the main character, that for me, he was just a 'background character with a bit more focus, but is still boring because the character development is so shallow'.
Then there were a few students who were just downright annoying and unlikable. I'm guessing that should've been a part of the perk and we're supposed to like them after watching like 10 episodes as they develop through koro-sensei, but even after 10 episodes, my distaste for them either stayed or even grew further as some characters just became a ball of cringe. Like Karma for example. He's supposed to have a tiny little sob story where he is betrayed so he detests teachers and he jumped into the opportunity to kill a teacher. Well that's where the 'like' part seemed to have ended for me, because after that, he just became this silly little 'I'm so coooool' character that isn't actually really cool, yet his human side was so badly portrayed that he remained this weird try hard character. The episode where the students did a big term test and koro-sensei thought he failed everyone, Karma does this thing... which I'm guessing the writers thought was a cool move? Like he throws a knife at sensei and says something which I don't even remember cause it just felt so lame.
Anyway, enough about the students. I'll get to my last thing.

2. Unprofessional everything. (Professionalism is a word but unprofessionalism isn't haha obviously)
I've watched about 10 episodes btw. It might have gotten a bit more serious afterwards? but I wouldn't have a clue.
So this is where the imbalance of serious moments and not so serious moments just make this anime stupid. It's like watching a serious detective movie about homicide, but they try to bring in humor by making the detective a total joke, giving him a silly hat and making all the science or detective work ridiculous, like blood was actually ketchup, even though a real detective would notice that in no time. It just doesn't work. It's not silly enough to make me laugh, but it's also not serious enough to really make me engaged and find it interesting or smart.
This is a universe where people seem to take a huge threat to humanity as lightly as some sort of a joke. They even have fake knives and BB guns (in the pretense that it was specially designed to not hurt the children, just the teacher) and they can give whatever excuse they want because it doesn't even matter since everything else surrounding the whole situation seems ridiculous and child-like anyway.
Like they hire this 'professional killer' who's supposed to be the best of the best, speaks multiple languages and know the skill of seduction. What a joke. Not even a funny one. She had no professionalism, no sign that she had any secondary plans, her plan was stupid in the first place, she did not study her target carefully first from afar, second close but no too close, third from a close range after gaining trust, none of that. In fact, the sniper someone hired in another episode seemed ever so slightly more professional that this bitch. Just so you know, that's also her name. After they made a joke of a character, in order to emphasis to the audience that the character is indeed a joke, the author said, 'hey!! let's make all the students call her a bitch!! So the audience knows this is supposed to be funny!!" Listen, if you have to point out where the joke is to make people laugh, it's not actually a good joke.
Another hint of this stupidity is when they hired a robot and enrolled her into the class. The robot obviously immediately starts shooting at the target. Then you know what students did? They bound her up and told her she's annoying and bothering their learning!! Fuck!! And instead of doing the smart thing of saying "you know the world is going to end??? Studying won't matter or mean a thing if the world actually fucking ends???" The robot then asks her creators for help... and then koro-sensei re-programs her basically. She becomes this weird as kawaii character that is again, a ball of cringe. I just wanted to slap pretty much all the students (not the teacher, because he'll just stop me)

List of Movies I liked

I have a list but I keep forgetting to update it. I'll upload one here as well. It's just a list.
I won't write descriptions. Just a poster. I guess if I forgot about it, that's when I should revisit it :)

A
Alpha (2018)


Avatar (2009)



B
Big Fish (2003)


Blade Runner (1982) - Ridley Scott

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - Denis Villeneuve

Blind (2007) - Tamar van den Dop (foreign language)

Bone Tomahawk (2015) - Warning violent


C

D
The Dark Crystal (1982)


E
Equilibrium (2002)



F

G

H
Hook (1991)


I

J

K
K-Pax (2001)


Kick-Ass (2010) - Matthew Vaughn

Kikujiro (1999)

L
The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003)


M

N

O

P

Q

R

S
Satorare (2001)


T
The Thief and the Cobbler (1993)


Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010) - Eli Craig

U

V

W
The Witches (1990)


X

Y
You were never really here (2017) - Warning, violent



Z

Bicycle helmets

https://cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped-wearing-a-bike-helmet/
https://www.bikehelmetblog.com/?fbclid=IwAR0Gn29M6eeXfWF-mGSAUPFnJSzqtL7tdaHeFaDIYb06I6XwNCtcnT2jCgA

I never really liked them. Growing up watching anime and living a bit of my childhood in korea, I got used to seeing and being around people not wearing helmets.
It's the usual childish tantrum for me. Like wanting the wind in my hair, not having to worry about where my helmet is, where to store it or whether it'll get stolen. Plus I do want to be stylish at times too you know haha

The article I linked on the top kind of nudged my view to be a bit more radical. I don't like mandatory bike helmets (I also don't like fines for people riding on foot path).
I know a lot of people compare bike helmets to seat belts and bikes to vehicles. But are they? I agree that if cyclist wants to ride with the cars, yes, a helmet should be mandatory. If they want to ride as fast as a car, yes, they shouldn't be on the foot path. But this blanket law has discouraged a lot of slow and casual riders like myself, who just wants to use the bicycle as an alternative commute like the bus, car or walking.
With cycling, you can adjust the speed quite freely and the size of the bicycle can be relatively small. I'm a small person, so my wee mountain bike I used for commute can even be compared to a woman strolling a large buggy, or one of those electric scooter for the elderly.
As for speed, I've had children on scooters riding faster than me on the foot path (without helmets, just to add). If I'm going that slow on the road with cars, I actually become a hazard way more than if I were to ride on the footpath and risk being hit by a driver carelessly backing out without looking.
I understand that NZ culture is not the same as Denmark or Japan. We don't have wide foot path and many of our roads don't have cycle lanes yet. But cultures can be changed and should always aim to change for the better. Cars are already guzzling up our fossil fuel that will eventually run out. Buses can have ridiculous waiting time and limited routes. People can't always walk to their work and an alternative choice should be made more freely available to the general public. Bike helmets should always be highly recommended, but fining people for not using them will just put people off.

In any case, I just wanted to share the article somewhere so I can keep it in mind.

I don't support HK protesters

I've had a lot of things happening throughout my life and at times I try and distract myself by going on joke sites like 9gag, youtube or just scroll across facebook. Since June, all those platforms have been bombarded with two main news; Hong Kong protest and climate change protest. We seem to be living in some sort of a mass protest stage which happens in wave every couple of decade, like the equal rights protest, climate change protest (there were some pretty huge one in the 70s and 80s), peace protests etc. The difference this time is that social media has given these protesters another platform to fuel each other in and the protests have become global much faster. There is one thing that's common about the recent protests though, which is that people seem to want the government to make changes. A funny fact is that HK protesters want less government control and climate change protesters want more government control. (Yes, I know some climate change activist will say they don't want 'control' but they don't actually realize that 'control' is what they're actually protesting for. Control on transportation, regulations on power output and consumption, control on import and consumption etc) I've already stated my discontent with climate strike, my views have become a bit more radical in its opposition, but I won't delve into it. Today what I wanted to talk about was my discontent towards HK protests.

So most people know the history and the reasoning behind the protests, but just in case they don't here's a brief overview. I'm going to copy and paste from BBC news since I can't be bothered typing everything myself.
"3 April, Hong Kong's government introduced plans for changes to legislation that would allow for criminal suspects to potentially be extradited to China."
"On 9 June, an estimated one million people marched to the government headquarters to show they were against the proposed bill."
Since then there were protests pretty much every weekend.
"On 9 July, Carrie Lam reiterated that the extradition bill was "dead" urging protesters to stop their actions. She still refrained from fully withdrawing the bill." "It's not just about extradition any more"
"By this point, here is what protesters still want:

• The withdrawal of the "riot" description used about the 12 June protests
• An amnesty for all arrested protesters
• An independent inquiry into alleged police brutality
• Universal suffrage in elections for Hong Kong's chief executive (the territory's leader), and Legislative Council"

So the protests are still going on. There were quite a few violent clashes and it's still happening.

Initially, my heart went out to the protesters. Although I didn't physically support them, I thought it was brave and beautiful what they were doing. This is when the protests were peaceful. They marched, sang songs, and held candle light (more like phone light now) sit in for their cause.
However, it didn't take long for the protests to turn nasty. I don't mean the police. They were nasty too, but what the protesters were doing and what they're still doing is nothing more of just mindless vandalism and fascism.
I just want to verify one important note
I still believe the cause of the protest (well... some of them that is, like freedom and universal suffrage etc) is a good one. I believe in their rights to protest and I believe they should protest. Also I do not support violence from the HK police. I did see the videos of rubber bullet shooting, beating and water blasting protesters and I don't support that at all. 
What I don't support and believe, is the way they're protesting and what they have done. Here's a list of things that protester have done that I don't support.

1. Masks. Gandhi would frown at HK seeing all those masks. It didn't start with the masks which was one reason I thought they were brave and fighting justly, but as soon as they did, they showed the world that they were cowards. They basically sent this statement to the world "We want to act like we're brave and fighting for a cause, but not actually fight since fighting requires putting oneself on the line and we don't want to do that." It wasn't fighting against police brutality, since if the police wanted to use force, they'd use it whether the protesters were masked or not, but they were mainly afraid of being arrested and other consequences such as losing jobs. Well here's my view. If they actually believed that their cause was great and just, they wouldn't fear arrest. In fact, in other grand protests, people were even proud to be arrested, because they became the face and the story of the protesters to the international eyes. If their cause were just and they got arrested for peaceful protesting, they would proudly wear the label or badge (as a figure of speech) and say "I fought bravely with no shame for a just cause". But no. They decided to be cowardly. And don't give me this bs that it wouldn't be the same in europe or america. Masks protests are banned. It's illegal for a very good reason which I'm going to talk about now.

2. Vandalism and violence. Ever since the masks came out, the number of violent incidence with the police and other chinese people have sky rocketed. Protesters started vandalizing shops, subways and streets more frequently. Protesters started picking up bricks to throw, they started bringing Molotov cocktails to throw and started fire throughout the city every now and then. Then because they were cowards hiding behind masks, blamed the chinese or americans for infiltrating their protests, WELL WHO ALLOWED THAT TO HAPPEN?? HMM?? I have no doubt that there are infiltrators causing a scene just to get things violent, but I also have no doubt that there are HK protesters themselves are also going around doing the things I've just listed. This is exactly the reason why masked protests are banned around the world. With anonymity, dark nature of human beings start to arise. "I can set fire to this and get away with it." "I'm angry at this guy, now I can beat him up and get away with it." "I can break all the windows steal a bunch of stuff and get away with it." Having a chance of getting away with things and having a mass that thinks the same way is dangerous. They also cannot blame everything on the 'infiltrators'. Protesters did not stop the few people smashing windows, blocking subways and writing graffiti on the walls. In fact, protesters themselves chained and beat up quite a few people they believed were from china. I'm going to link all the videos showing this at the bottom. Also that thing about blocking the subways and beating up chinese people brings me to my last point.

3. Fascism and restriction of other people's human rights. When I saw them occupying the airport and causing almost 300 airplanes to delay for not just a few hours, but a few days, my emotional support for the protesters were lost. As one interviewee stated "You don't fight for freedom by taking away others." And this was just the beginning. Here's a part of the definition of fascism for anyone who doesn't know what that means, "fascism is... characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition"(from wiki. I can't be bothered with references) Ah... yes... "forceful suppression of opposition". Just in case people don't know, suppression can happen in multiple ways, including restriction of others freedom or rights. Like the freedom to travel which is exactly what happened in HK airport and subways. A mother begged because she has a baby at home she needs to get to. A traveler slept on the floor with no shower for 3 days because his flight was delayed and couldn't leave the airport because he was uncertain when his flight would be announced. A student was missing her university lessons due to delays. A worker was worried he'll miss too many days of work. Few people got no compensation and had to fork out more money to book new flights instead. Whilst most of these were just minor inconvenience, at heart it was still a restriction of freedom. These people were in the cross fire and they did not deserve this treatment to support someone else's cause forcefully. What have they achieved? Well they lost a lot of support internationally which is what they achieved.
Another example of  "forceful suppression of opposition" is when the protesters started beating up people who expressed their support for china and vandalize companies and shops that were deemed 'chinese supporters'. What kind of a dictatorship is this? Freedom of speech still should apply to these people. Most shops they vandalized seemed like they were just normal businesses with people just making a day to day living.

4. Last thing I'm just going to mention is the mess they're making of their own city. In most recent photos, you can see rubbish, rubble, broken windows and graffiti everywhere. Vandalism is a small part of the mess. Businesses are failing, and livelihood was lost in many parts of the city. People, including tourists don't feel safe on the streets anymore. They caused a separation between people and in some cases, even segregation.



I'm going to stop there since I've written quite a bit. I have a bit more on my mind, but I think I've vented enough.

Here are the following video that made me detest the protesters.

Hong Kong Protesters set fire to subway station 
Protesters set fire to barricades to block access to Hong Kong airport
Protesters block subway trains, causing massive delays during Hong Kong rush hour
Hong Kong protest tactics: occupy, disrupt, disperse, repeat
HK airport protesters beat up man suspected of having pro-Beijing links
Hong Kong airport protesters tie up man later identified as Global Times reporter
Hong Kong protesters set fire to Chinese banks amid violent clashes
Street fights in Hong Kong
Elderly woman vents frustration at Hong Kong protesters

Korea vs Japan

Few weeks ago, my mom told me that she was affected by a trade war that Japan started by blocking chemicals being exported into Korea. I didn't really think much of it back when she told me since I kind of separate myself from politics and also foreign country matter since it's usually depressing stuff. I really should've stayed that way. I made the mistake today of looking at an article about an island in Japan that's gone down in tourism due to this 'trade war'. This sparked some curiosity as it seemed extreme. Koreans were boycotting Japan tour completely. I looked into it.

'Apparently'. I have to emphasis this 'apparently' because it was such a petty fight back from Japan for such a small thing that Korea has done.

So a few month ago Korea has made a verdict that a company in Japan, Mitsubishi, needs to pay Korean slaves from WW2 as much as 100,000 USD for each individual involved. A few weeks later, Japan, decided to stop(or limit as some news outlet lays) exportation ease to Korea from Japan. Now, Koreans in retaliation, started a huge protest and have banned themselves from buying Japanese products or travelling there... 

Both reactions are just pathetic as fuck. I teach children. This is what children do.

Just to make things clear, I want to point that there's nothing wrong with Koreans who were slaves and families who were affected wanting compensation. Totally normal and they should demand it. What is wrong, is for the Korean government to ignore the treaty made between Japan and Korea and just charge an individual Japanese company willy nilly out of .

The treaty that was signed and settled included this

"1 The High Contracting Parties confirm that the problems concerning property, rights, and interests of the two High Contracting Parties and their peoples (including juridical persons) and the claims between the High Contracting Parties and between their peoples, including those stipulated in Article IV(a) of the Peace Treaty with Japan signed at the city of San Francisco on September 8, 1951, have been settled completely and finally."

I live in a country, New Zealand, where 'treaty' is a continuous point of argument and problem. But luckily, both parties work towards a settlement even when there are individuals that are unhappy about the settlement or treaty at times. Yeah it's easy when we're all in the same country, but still, there's always a level of professionalism when there are discussions around the treaty.

In any case the Korean government could've done a hundred other things, including pointing out to the treaty and actually paying the affected themselves which should've been included in the settlement, rather than just charging a Japanese company for enslavement, but they have not.

Japan... oh boy... also have not retaliated well. Japan could've easily played the bigger man and came up with a better solution. I've read in comments that Japan tried to open up conversations? But I can't seem to find any evidence in that. It's hard to assume that they didn't, so they probably have. However, obviously that didn't work and Japan had a hundred different way to protect Mitsubishi and keep the peace between countries. But they decided to play petty. Blaming it on another hundred reasons, they decided to restrict exportation privileges to Korea. Their excuses included unrelated subjects such as "Oh we don't really know where these chemicals are going... They could be going to North Korea??" 

So now we're here with the mess. Koreans, as patriotic as the typical American red neck with a confederate flag, are doing all these protest that... to the international eyes... look very very pathetic. They've stopped using, buying Japanese products and stopped travelling to Japan. Which is fine and all, but the citizens themselves are blindly defending their president and the decisions made by the high court that has blatantly ignored the treaty and charged a Japanese company. Then now they're saying "Oh, it's not about the money or the compensation, it's about Japan owning up."... No... Japan has owned up and paid. The only protest there should be is not them defending their stupid president or the high court system, they should only protest about Japans history books and education system. Not to mention how this 'hate' is the most ineffective way of proving a point and making changing. Hate just breeds hate. Now Japanese people who were ok with Koreans, hate Koreans for being petty. 

The saddest part is that I'm Korean and I am embarrassed by what our country has done. I am annoyed at the Japanese governments decision to stop trade sanctions as a sort of retaliation, but this whole retaliation from both sides are so pathetic and disgusting. Go on any youtube comments on the matter, Koreans are getting such a bad light. No one is siding with Koreans because they've realized a treaty was broken and they're just out there protesting and spreading hate when the world is (well at least trying to be) at a peaceful age after the WW2.

I just want to add one last thing
We as a human species ALL have less than 1% difference in DNA with one another. We're basically family. Stop hating each other!!

'the dream merchant' book review

I just couldn't stomach it all after reading 1 out of 5 'books' within the book so I can't write a review on goodreads so I decided to write one here instead.
Obviously I didn't like it. The author seems to have this idea that withholding information makes a story intriguing and mysterious. If it was just one or 2 interesting big points that were unexplained, I'd be interested in finding out, but rather it was a lot of tiny details that wasn't told to the readers until the last minute. Josh never got satisfying answer to how the institution found out about him and it might be shown in the next books, but let's move on from that mystery and here's 20 more mysteries for you to ponder. Like everyone talking to Josh seems to give him like a quarter of any full explanations and it's not even a mystery half the time, it's just withheld information that is just told later on. I mean I guess that could be classified as a mystery, but most books make mysteries actually engaging like a puzzle and intriguing. This is just 'hey do this.' which Josh doesn't know how to and there are 0 hints to what this is, then just a few pages later someone goes 'oh you don't know what this is! Here's what it is' which is just annoying.

Something else that was annoying was the poor explanation of the science behind the whole thing. It actually is my downfall. I know it's a fantasy book and there's no set physics like the real world, but as a scientist, I like a bit of explanation and some sort of realistic view of things. The idea of a joined dream world itself is fine, but when someone starts bringing in time travel it makes things a bit more prone to plotholes and ridiculousness. Anyway, what I didn't like was the poor explanation of how items could be taken in to the dream world and taken out of the dream world. Well when I say poor explanation, I meant there were none. People just accepted it as is. A lot of things were accepted as is in fact. Like the associate kids just hang around the building Willy Nilly, how did they get there, do their parents care and what about time zones, or is everyone British? Why does Josh and baz take the bus when jumping there is way easier? What triggers jump? How do they jump between space? No explanations, just accept it.

Also just wanted to note I reread this part where Josh talks to this guy called Melvin like 10 times, but he never mentions gipart just max, but he figures it out?? Like this was so confusing.

Overall if I could rate the book having only read 1/5th of it, I'd give it maybe like 2/5

Rant about Strike for Climate change

I was writing reports all weekend so I missed this. I'm going to rant a bit now. I don't expect anyone to read this since this blog has like a maximum of 2 views. I am annoyed at this secondary strike (Possibly more according to some other news). I'm hoping most students do not attend. First off I need my students in my class. I've read so many people saying "one day of missing classes won't do much". If it was just one or 2 students away, then yeah, they have friends that are in the class who can help them later, the majority won't be affected and my whole term plan can go ahead. The problem comes when more than 40~50% are away. It's harder to justify continuing the lesson. Too many students would've missed content and the power of mass is that if a few too many students complain about the difficulty of a lesson, you have to make changes. We have a very tight schedule in Physics due to our school's math department not teaching algebra and trigonometry to about half of our year 11 students, meaning we actually have to teach that in physics class. I spent 2.5 lessons on simple torque problems because students did not know how to rearrange equations. I know that doesn't mean much for some people, but it just means I just need a bit more time to slowly drip feed them how to rearrange equations at the same time as learning a new concept. We have 4 lessons per week and one lesson missed screws up the whole scheme that now some content will have to be crammed into a 2~3 hours than 4 which takes a lot of toll on the rest of the students who weren't a part of the protest.

Secondly, a lot of these kids... are actually quite the hypocrite that makes you mad. A lot of these kids aren't aware why we have this climate problem and how they're a part of the problem. They will go to this protest thinking they've done so well for the climate when in reality, a lot of them get dropped off by cars at school regularly, and even got dropped off to the protest. They often buy brands and products that are known to be a part of the problem (the clothing industry produces a lot of pollutants, but I know one student who went to the protest bought a bunch of new branded shoes). They freely trash the class and school because they can't be bothered picking up their trash and "The cleaners are paid to do this". They buy food and products packaged in plastic, drink out of plastic straws which will add to the large pile of plastic that the world is sitting on. They often go on trips with their family, on plane trips and cruises that add to the CO2 gases around the world. They protest for methane, but buy and eat meat and dairy products freely. They are oblivious to the population crisis and they don't care about how many children people are having. They some how think that the government and corporations are this evil place that dumps plastic and pollutants in rivers, but in reality, they're just mass producing what the students themselves buy instead of environmentally friendly stuff. I'm not saying all these students are bad, but the amount of change in attitude I saw after the last protest made me realize that not many of these students actually care about the planet, they just care about feeling like they care and taking a day off to be with friends to 'feel' like they care. If they really cared, they'll study to become a politician, a scientist, an entrepreneur that makes products that are environmentally friendly, they'll ride their bicycle to school and keep the school a nice and tidy place, use less plastic and buy environmentally friendly product and tell their parents to too. I loved how some Australian students took this initiative and rather than skipping school, they went and planted trees on their own time. I hope our students do the same.

I hate the focus of women in STEM

So as a science teacher, every year we have different science conferences. This year, was the year for the NZIP (new zealand institute of physics) conference. I almost always go to these conferences, not really for too much professional development since a lot of the stuff gets repeated, but for keeping up with connection and the newest technology in physics so I can promote it better to students.
In any case, promoting women in physics or STEM subject comes up every now and then and they have projects in some universities to get more women taking physics. I hate it. I think it's stupid and is rather detrimental to the cause than be helpful. I know this view is going to be hated by a lot of feminazis and butt hurt sensitive millennial, gen-z or whatever you call those nut jobs, but luckily no one looks at my blogs.
So here are few of my reasons.

1. By saying women aren't taking STEM courses for any reason beyond the fact that they simply want to study something else, has hidden implications that women are not capable of making good choices in life. Here are some 'ideas' that some people seem to have, especially feminazis. They think for some reason, STEM subjects are sexist. That because there are more men in there, they some how chauvinistically pushed out women. This could be true in places like... america... (haha that's partially a joke) or male dominated countries where women aren't even allowed in the same class like... I don't know... Saudi arabia where women only make up 14% of the workforce. However in this day and age in most developed country like I said, (New Zealand is definitely one of them), women are brought up to be strong independent individuals, equal as men to make fair judgement of their own future and they're not put down by men. I teach science and physics. I observe more female students caring, studying and focusing on their own future. In fact, a lot of them roll their eye at how immature some boys can be. At high school physics, none of them care that there are slightly more boys in class. A lot of them sit, chat and discuss physics with them, and the boys don't treat them any differently because they're female. Simply saying "because men", "because media" or "because sexism" implies that women are weak individuals that are pushed around by everyone. If by any chance, this implication is true, then the focus should be how to train women not to be pushed around, rather than "fighting sexism".

2. This whole push down plays women's success in other fields. Here are some interesting stats, there are now more young graduating female physicians than men in some countries. In 2018 more women were awarded a PhD than men in america. "Data from APA's Center for Workforce Studies show that women make up 76 percent of new psychology doctorates". There are also more female veterinarians around the world. Are these not successes? What if women WANTED to take something other than STEM? What if they simply wanted to become a teacher? Is that a... BAD THING? No, in most developed countries where there is a stronger sense of equality women are succeeding in different ways, not in a bad way, just in a different way. So by saying women are not taking math at university is a bad thing, is like saying women who are doctors, nurses, educators, artists, writers are not as good as women who have taken a STEM subject.

(After writing it, I realized I raged in reason 3 and ramble on about 3 ideas that all lead to the one factor that girls aren't exposed to math early on)

3. They totally and utterly ignore the actual cause of all this which most physics teachers have been screaming for YEARS. One of the BIGGEST reason why women don't do well in physics... is simply because their math is too weak. Before I continue, I should make it clear. Women and Men are DIFFERENT. IT IS NOT A BAD THING. Women and Men are both strong and independent creatures that can do whatever they want but people hate it when I point out this fact that they're still different. Now I'm not saying all women and men are different. There are always outliers since personalities, traits and characteristics are all slightly individualized but we do still have a bell curve. Therefore in general, there are a few definite differences between men and women. For example... Remember how I said more of my junior girls focus and study harder? (by the way this is statistically true, women do better in new zealand education in terms of gaining something called NCEA credits), this is because more women 'care'. Genetically and historically speaking women who survived and passed on their genes were child bearers and carers, which means they did have to worry a bit more then men about their future. This is also why there are more women who experiences anxiety, depression and loneliness (ok this is a bad thing). But in general, women caring more is a GOOD thing. As I've stated there are more female doctors, nurses and teachers. Women and men are 2 sides of a coin that compliment each others. Some men might do more dangerous, tricky or sometimes even dirty things (like builders, police, truck drivers, car mechanics etc) and some women do other important things like caring, curing, educating etc. In any case, before I explained the whole math thing, I had to explain the difference first.
Women do poorly in physics because they're bad at math. In new zealand education especially, most primary schools don't have a specialized math teacher. They also don't memorize timetable in a lot of them, and lastly but most importantly, they don't do ANY algebra in most primary school. As a matter of fact, some primary school teachers hate the idea of math and say stupid shit like 'what's the point of memorizing timetables if we have calculators??' (fucking idiots who have not actually learnt shit in university. I HATES THEM!!!) If any of these fuckers who say that actually study physics in university, they would realize how important memorization is. Human brain is a complicated network of neurons that are constantly making new connections. We learn from repetition mainly, because we need to teach our brains that the information we need to learn should be in the long term memory by telling it 'hey! we use this information often, you should keep it!'. Now here's another important part that people seem to forget or just not care about. Making connections between ideas only comes easily and clearly when both ideas are in the long term memory. Here's an example. Teach a kid that '3 x 4 = 12'. Then ask them a few weeks later 'a x 4 = 12, what is a? If they have memorized their times table, they'll easily say 3. NOW, we can teach them the secondary idea, the link, and how to. '12/4 = 3, hey look! it's the same number! it's because we're doing something called 'rearranging'' In stead, if you skip that part, if the kid never memorized the idea of 3 x 4 and you just tell this kid, 'a x 4 = 12. To find a we divide each side by 4 and 12/4 is 3 so your answer is 3', it becomes less clear, and definitely not easy.
Phew. anyway, now I'll get to my final conclusion of all these explanations. Women care more and statistically they're more prone to anxiety. When it comes to learning physics, if the students math is not solidly in their memories, making connection on how we interpret information and calculate that given information becomes much harder. Look at kinematic equations like, " d = v t + 0.5 at^2 ". First look at the equation gives some students anxiety. We get over that hurdle and tell them "you just need to put in the numbers to where it goes first". Easy step. "5 = 0 x t + 0.5 x 9.81 x t^2"... by now, if you came into physics without practicing and memorizing how to calculate and rearrange something like "5 = 2 + 2 x 4 a^2", this step will now give you the next anxiety. Now here's a problem with anxiety, when people become anxious, it's a physical thing. Chemicals are actually imbalanced. This actually causes the brain to not work like they're meant to. Suddenly, this added new challenge and hurdle makes people's brain just turn off and make it harder for them to practice, memorize and learn new things.
Now, I pointed out the difference in men and women. Male students, they care less and they just do. Making connections is an important part, but to them it's more 'Hey, I'll just do kind of what the teacher does, and hope for the best.' A lot of them don't have that anxiety blocking their brains like some female students do. You see this in university as well. They just take engineering even though they're not fully prepared for it just because it's a cool subject. I know this whole anxiety seems really negative, but it really isn't a completely bad thing. Like I said, this is the reason why girls study harder and care about their future. The only actual problem is that they were stripped of their opportunity to pursue engineering and physics because the stupid primary sector decided math was too hard for students and they're going to revolutionize it with their stupid modern learning environment or learning using tablets. I HATES THEM!!!!!!! I HATE EVERY SINGLE FCUKING PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS WHO SAYS 'why do you have to memorize timetable when there's calculators'???!?!?!?!! FUCK!!!!

By the way, english is my second language so this whole article was poorly written. But hey! Why do we need to memorize grammar and spelling when there's word doc and grammarly right?!?!!?!?!?!?! FUCK


Very bad non-APA referencing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/women-are-now-a-majority-of-entering-medical-students-nationwide/2018/01/22/b2eb00e8-f22e-11e7-b3bf-ab90a706e175_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.17cb9abbc0a6

https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/01/cover-men