May 17, 2006

Ben Applegate's Clips Portfolio

Here are a few samples of my work.

At the International Herald Tribune-JoongAng Daily:

Feature Writing:

Transcend weekday stress, discover empty Zen mind
Text only | As it appeared in print

Climbers conquer peaks above the clouds
Text only | As it appeared in print

To learn gugak, foreigners pay in money and blood
Text only | As it appeared in print

Travel Writing:

A village blooms from the ashes of colonial rule
Text only | As it appeared in print

Entertainment:

Meet Japan's drama queens
(interviews conducted in Japanese)
Text only | As it appeared in print

Bhutan monk's film opens to mark Buddha's birthday
Text only | As it appeared in print

Animators gather as industry faces transition
Text only | As it appeared in print

Interview:

Kishore Mahbubani: Singapore diplomat puts trust in talk
Text only | As it appeared in print

Film Reviews:
The Host (Goemul) | Final Destination 3 | V for Vendetta | Monster House

At Toon Zone News:

Audio Interview & Editing:

The Toon Zone Podcast
Episode 4: Jerry Beck Part 1 | Episode 5: Jerry Beck Part 2

Posted by Ben at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2005

New Princeton Blog

If anyone happens upon this page, note that I have a new Korea blog at Princeton's website and so this one will not be updated for a while. Check it out.

Posted by Ben at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2005

Settling In

Random:
*-If it works out, I may be covering SICAF in August, along with a couple of other neat animation-related things.
*-I had a green tea McFlurry night before last and was underwhelmed. Starbucks' Matcha Frappacino is king of creamy green tea beverages after all.
*-It appears my landlady has stopped trying to have detailed conversations at me over breakfast, which is good. Now she's (presumably) limiting herself to things I absolutely need to know, but of course I can't understand those either.

Less random:
I was meeting Sumi and Sun Jung for lunch at a Japanese place in Hongik today, so I took the opportunity to walk around for a few hours before hand. Thanks to my handy-dandy transformer my iPod is back in business, so I had the first opportunity to try out my Sennheiser noise-reducing headphones (graduation present-- thanks Dad!) on the "bustling" (deafening) streets of Seoul. Incredible. I flicked that switch and it was like night and day. Unless there was a truck going by or someone throwing boxes around, there was total silence. It was as if I had rerouted my aural nerves directly into the machine. Kinda creepy actually, but awesome.

I took the opportunity to visit a record store (Purple Records) where I found some neat stuff, like Astor Piazzola Remixed (which I ended up not buying) and a 2-disc collection of Indian electronica that I will have to go back for sometime. What I did buy was the new Gorillaz album (freaking awesome-- Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey's Head is really really weird) and a French compilation of loungey Japanese electronica called "Japan Touch: La nouvelle vague pop et electro." Good for kitsch value but not much else.

The entertainment listings appeared in the paper today and I wrote maybe half of them (the rest carried over from last week). You can see them here and here and they're OK except that I MISSPELLED RACHMANINOV!!! I didn't misspell the parts that are usually misspelled, though, instead I made an uncommonly stupid mistake. Which I suppose I should be proud of (the uncommon part, I mean). If you find any other errors let me know so that I might castigate myself appropriately. Diplomatic Pouch comes out Monday. Tomorrow is my day off (I work Sunday) so I'm going to go somewhere. I just don't know where yet.

Huzzah!

Posted by Ben at 03:55 PM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2005

Holy crap I'm in Korea!

Busiest few days of at least six months. Finally got luggage after forty minutes Monday, Sun Jung picked me up at the airport and I stayed with David Moll (deputy editor in charge of the national page-- page 2). The next morning I went to the area around Yonsei University with Sun Jung and found a boarding house to stay at. The old lady seems nice, but it is so frustrating not to be able to speak any Korean. I feel like a bad person (not to mention rude). But that will soon be remedied. Next week I start Korean lessons with a tutor referred to me by Sei (another deputy editor). The teacher also speaks Japanese, so I'm considering having her teach me Korean in Japanese and kill two birds with one stone.

Seoul is big and hot and smelly. And totally awesome. My job so far has consisted of preparing "The Ticket," the entertainment listings that come out this Friday. Fortunately we have interns for everything that involves speaking Korean, but even then it's time-consuming. I'm also called upon with every other native speaker in the office to proofread the pages, so in fact you can already see a few of my lovely typo fixes in the pages of the JoongAng. Ticket for this Friday is done (Dad, I hope you enjoy the way-too-verbose orchestra series section) and tomorrow I start learning how to do the Diplomatic Pouch section from Sun Jung.

This morning I had an enormous breakfast followed by some kind of tiny melon pear that I think is called "sawa." Also met the Korean-Canadian English teacher who lives above me.

Went out last night to a tiny place with David, Sun Jung, Sei and Lance, a former editor now working at Samsung. It looked like it was a train car. I was still so jet-lagged I don't really remember anything that was said.

Hopefully I can start on a story as soon as I get settled. Something that involves Japanesitude. Maybe a textbook story for the next time that flares up.

Summary: This is right up there as coolest thing I have ever done.

Posted by Ben at 07:06 AM | Comments (7)

June 10, 2005

That's all he wrote!

That's it! I've just finished my last college paper. What'll I do with myself now?

...

Oh right, I'm moving to Korea to work at a newspaper in nine days. A real job. In the real world. In a country I've never lived in before, in the real world. And I still don't have a visa.

But still, nine days? Plenty of time.

PLENTY. Hahaha.

Posted by Ben at 05:10 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)