My parts came in last Tuesday, and quite excitedly, I went to work on it. With the help of my friend, it took me about 3 hours to finish putting together. It was a little nerve wracking handling the parts and ensuring a random chance of static electricity wouldn’t render them useless. Wrapped up in the process, I forgot to take pictures. I did take a few after shots, though:

Over the last week I’ve been working to set up a file and web server. The setup for both are pretty much done. Next step: creating a website.

I’ve been milling around with the idea of building a desktop to serve as a media center and as a web and file server. Now that I’m back with a little time on my hands, I decided to do it. My reference was a $620 Dell Inspiron 570 MT with an AMD Athlon II X4 630 (2.8 GHz), 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3-1033 SDRAM, a 1TB SATA 7200 RPM HD, an ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3, a 16x DVD+/-RW drive, and a 19 in 1 media card reader. Including tax and shipping it comes out to about $700.

With some (read: lots of) help from my friends, I ended up getting this configuration:

*Motherboard: Asus M4A78T-E ($114.99 – $20 mail-in rebate)
*Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-750TX ($109.99 – $20 mail-in rebate)
*CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 630 (2.8 GHz) ($99.00)
*Case: Rosewill Challenger Mid Tower ($39.99 + $9.99 shipping + $3.30 tax)
*Memory: G.SKILL 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1333 SDRAM ($81.99 + $6.76 tax)
*Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 7200 RPM HD ($74.99 – $10 promo code + $5.36 tax)
*Optical Drive: LITE-ON Black 24x DVD+/-RW ($19.99 + $1.65 tax)
*Media Card Reader: Koutech IO-RCM621 ($19.99 + $1.99 shipping + $1.65 tax)

Total: $581.63 – $40 mail-in rebate = $541.63.
(For some reason Newegg calculated the shipping to be $11.92 instead of $11.98, so the total was six cents less…oh well.)

So in the end I saved about $160. Not bad! I probably could have saved another $10 getting a 650W or $20 with a 550W power supply, but I stuck with the 750W in case I ever decided to upgrade the video capability of the machine.

Onwards to building!

Thursday we went to Cannes. When not during the film festival, is simply a beach town. I was disappointed by the fact that so many of the beaches were privately owned, and as a result covered with umbrellas. The view from the Croisette was underwhelming, because the beach was full of white umbrellas. There was a small exhibition dedicated to photographs from the film festivals of past, and a hill in the old town where you could look over the harbor, but other than that, I didn’t find Cannes to be very impressive. Perhaps May is a better time to visit.

We went to Monaco on Friday, quickly understanding where we were upon seeing a titanic cruise liner in the distance. Our first stop was the Aquarium, which if you’ve ever been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, is not worth the 13 euros to enter. The actual aquarium consists of a medium size tank in the center and two wings with about 30 display tanks each. I was able to get snapshots of Marlin and Dori (of Finding Nemo fame).

Perhaps the highlight of Monaco was our visit to the Monte Carlo Casino. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed on the inside, but this is what it looked like on the outside:

It’s very classy inside. No fancy lights in the style of Las Vegas, no loud noises, no waitresses coming around with drinks. (Well, perhaps there would be later in the night, but we didn’t stay that long.) Just two rooms, a slot machine area, and a few private salons.

Oh, and we saw a woman turn 30,000 euros into 80,000 euros on roulette. Talk about the rich getting richer.

That was my World Cup final experience in Spain.

Now onto Marseilles. Marseilles is a port town, the second largest city in Paris, and home to the famous bouillabaisse dish. Sightseeing-wise, there are few places to see. Notre Dame on the hill affords a panoramic view of the city, Chateau d’If is famous for it’s appearance in Alexander Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, and Palais Longchamp is breathtaking.

Palais Longchamp

The major shopping area along Rue de la Republique is pretty commercialized, but beyond that the city is like a web of older buildings.

Bouillabaisse, according to Wikipedia, is Marseille’s specialty dish that is, put simply, a fish stew. Guidebooks direct you to the Miramar restaurant by the Vieux Port; the bouillabaisse there will cost you 58 euros. We got ours as part of a fixed priced menu for 20 euros…it might have been an “imitation”, but it was certainly an experience. We spread rouille on a toasted slice of bread and dipped it in the soup, then ate the rest of the broth, which contained fish, mussels, and potato. It had quite a salty, and fishy, taste.

Bouillabaisse

The nightlife is centered around the two towns of Ibiza Town and San Antonio. I stayed in a small hotel in the latter, which, rumor has it, is the less expensive, more lively area more suitable for English speaking students. I spent part of a day in Ibiza Town, and enjoyed San Antonio a lot more. It had a more familiar feeling. Its roads were small, uncluttered, and more like pedestrian walkways. It took just 15 minutes to walk from one end of the town to another.

Despite my reservations, I found people to be very friendly and easy to talk to. Most tourists are actually English — I met no more than four fellow Americans.

The nightlife is exactly as you read about in Ibiza travel guides. People get dinner at 9pm and then hit the bars, before going to the clubs, staying up all the way until 6am. Something interesting I found was how attuned to the club music everyone was. Coming from the US and not really being into the the club scene, I didn’t really know much about the listed artists, but the Europeans certainly knew who was playing in each club, and what kind of music there would be.

But not everything in Ibiza is about the nightlife. In fact, it is as just as easy to be completely removed from the music and partying as it is to be enraptured by it. Saturday, tired from staying up the nights before and not wanting to oversleep my flight today, I took a slow day, went to the sunset area in San Antonio (which is conveniently on the west side of the island), and watched the sunset. When the sun disappeared, everyone cheered.

Sunset in San Antoni

Madrid is very much a walking city. Both Monday and Tuesday I spent a good portion of the day just walking through the streets and checking out the different neighborhoods. Finding specific stores can be difficult without a map. With a map, it’s very easy to walk from place to place, and each area can be very different from the next. You could walk one street over and go from a very lively plaza to a very tranquil, quiet terrace.

The Reina Sofia museum has been by far my favorite of the places I’ve gone. After a walk through Gran Via and the Botanical Gardens by the Prado, I spent the rest of Monday in the museum. It’s got a huge collection of Picasso, Miró, and (a smaller one of) Dali. I was more interested in these works than the ones in the Prado. Each gallery in the permanent collection also had a handout that explained the history and theme of the gallery.

A Miró painting. Art?

Incidently, there is currently a photography festival happening in Madrid, and one of the exhibits, photographs about Manhattan in the 1970s, was on display in the Reina Sofia. There were two other exhibits inside the Botanical Gardens that I checked out.

Tuesday night I went to Casa Patas for a flamenco show. This place was recommended as the best place to go to see flamenco by two different sources, and was conveniently located a block away from my hostel. It was more pricey than the show advertised by the tourist information office but very entertaining. One woman behind me was particularly enthusiastic for shouting “Olé!” often and arhythmically, and such enthusiasm was welcome.

Only a day left in Madrid, which happens to be Spain’s semifinal match. Sorry Germany, gotta root for Spain here!

Madrid’s metro, despite running at 50% due to the strike, is still very nice: it’s clean and fairly frequent.

My first step into the city of Madrid was unfortunately met with rain. Luckily, after checking in, the weather cleared up, and it’s been terrifically nice for the last two days. No signs of rain again.

Day 1 began with a frantic mission to obtain a SIM card, and then a leisurely stroll via Calle Serrano (the 5th Ave of Madrid) to the Parque del Buen Retiro, which is gorgeous. There was one point, walking through, when I felt that I was having the quintessential park experience: tree-covered paths to explore on the right, a pond with families in rowboats on the left, and artists down the esplanade, set to the cool rhythms of a jazz saxophone.

Saturday also happened to be the Paraguay-Spain game, so I went to the city center, Sol, to find a place to sit and watch the game. In fact, there was a crowd watching on the display TV of a department store; it was a pretty entertaining sight

A crowd outside a department store, intently viewing the Paraguay-Spain World Cup match.

Unfortunately for these fans, the store closes at 9. I captured a video of the screen going black, and everyone yelling in dismay, before they all move to the sports arcade next door. I wish I had a video of people’s reactions to Spain scoring though. Maybe I’ll get a second chance on Wednesday.

Day 2 involved a move to a hostel, and some more touristy things. I took a tour of the Palacio Real, ate in Plaza Mayor, and explored the Prado Museum. Protip: the Prado is free from 5-8pm on Sundays, and 6-8pm Tuesday-Saturday. It’s nothing like the Louvre, but holds a gigantic Goya collection and an impressive Velásquez collection, if you’re a fan of those two painters.

It’s crazy how fast these two days in Madrid have gone by — I feel like I won’t be able to see everything I want to see, as jet lag and getting used to travelling solo have slowed down my adventuring. Only 3 days left here; time to make the most of it.

Edit: A few notes about Madrid

* I seriously seemed to be the only Asian in Madrid until a large Japanese tour group stumbled into the restaurant I was eating at for dinner yesterday.

* It is far easier to get around if you know Spanish. I wish I remembered more from high school.

The movie is very loosely based on its predecessor. Dre Parker is a twelve year old boy who is uprooted from his childhood home of Detroit when his mother is transferred to a car factory in Beijing. Whether it be because of his attitude or because he is truly a fish out of water, Dre finds it difficult to adjust to his new home. As in the original, Dre meets a girl, Mei Ying, but his interaction with her causes Cheng, a kung fu student whose family is close to Mei’s, and Cheng’s friends to bully him. Dre’s time at school is thus shrouded in fear. At the climax of a terrifying five-on-one encounter, Dre is rescued by Mr. Han, the maintenance man and modern version of Mr. Miyagi. Mr. Han and Dre confront the master of the kung fu school where Cheng studies, only to find that Master Li is a ruthless man who teaches his students to show no mercy. If you’ve seen the original, then you know what happens next, as many of the plot points are the same. Dre trains under Mr. Han in preparation for a kung fu tournament against Cheng, which is the culmination of the movie.

Jaden Smith awed me in The Pursuit of Happyness, but impressed me in this movie. While his character wasn’t particularly multifaceted, if anything, Jaden showed that he can act exactly the type of person he is: a twelve year old boy, with a little bit of spunk. He showed that he can be seen as a budding actor and not just Will Smith’s son.

Jackie Chan was somewhat less impressive. It’s already odd seeing him in a serious role, it’s even more odd seeing him as an old man with a mustache and goatee. Perhaps it was just his character more that Jackie Chan’s performance, but Mr. Han, while likable, was dull. The scene revealing his “dark” past felt emotionally muted; it was extraordinarily out of character and the film gave no hint to Mr. Han’s backstory up to that point, so it was unbelievably sudden. As audience members we aren’t given enough time to empathize with Mr. Han’s sorrow.

The movie was entertaining, for sure, if only because the basic plot line is quite inspirational and the martial arts scenes, to this untrained eye, were fairly well choreographed. There were some humorous moments, for example, in an homage to the original, when Mr. Han follows a fly with his chopsticks and proceeds to swat it, and some creative reinventions of the chores. I especially enjoyed the jacket motions, because it served a dual purpose of being the new “wax on, wax off,” and positively influencing Dre’s relationship with his mother.

However, overall things just felt…unimportant.

Allow me to elaborate. Many times, there were people or events or items that seemed significant, but ended up never showing up again. Dre received a skateboard from his friend at the beginning and it seems to be important to him, but we never find out who his friend was, or why the skateboard had to pass hands. On his first day in China, Dre meets his first new friend, a young boy named Harry…who appears only in that one scene. Mei Ying has a violin audition that is clearly an important focal point of Dre and Mei’s relationship, and yet we never find out the aftermath of that audition. During the tournament, the camera zooms in on Mr. Han showing an expression that looks like he knows something about the upcoming match. But ten more minutes and we realize that’s just how Jackie Chan looks intently at something.

Great movies often have interweaving storylines. The original Karate Kid had a subplot with Mr. Miyagi’s backstory, which in the process revealed the lesser known injustices of Japanese internment during World War II. In this Karate Kid, so many things would show up and then not show up again, that there ended up only being just one significant storyline: the one from the original.

I think this movie is a great launchpad for Jaden Smith and a refreshing look at the original story, but its still just an average movie.

6/10