Here we go again

Pimsleur 2
Ran twice today.

2010 Resolution

It's a little early, but its time to start on thinking about what I want to accomplish this year. Here we go.

1. Put commuting by foot back on the table. This means 20 miles round trip. Current thoughts: 3/4 marathon a week? This should be interesting. Hard goal: 10 miles in under 1 hour... not a fan of the idea of a 1 hour commute, twice in a day... on thin soles (vibrams) or barefoot.

2. Figure out a diet that will facilitate my lifestyle... status quo = eating out about 40~80% of the time puts a huge dent in my food budget.

3. Take the GRE and apply for grad school

4. Write more... by hand. Use snail mail more.

5. Keep up the taiko and various other studies: math, physics, photonics.

6. Monitor Energy/Water Consumption and figure out ways to reduce my eco-footprint. Chart foods by the season and push my diet to line up with the seasons more.

7. Pay off my loans.

Loneliness

Looking back on my life... it seems there have been a few constants. The sort of loneliness that corrodes the soul is something I'll probably have to live with for the rest of my life. I think I'm up to it.

The other is dreams of my attempts at flying. I think I'm getting better at the idea. I used to be horrible at it. But its such a great feeling... I don't think I'll ever stop trying.

And of course... the dreams of complicated buildings and infrastructure that I use to run and hide from 'that organization' that's out to get me. Ironically enough, I work for one of the largest organizations in the world now. I wonder if its a premonition. If it ever happens outside of my dreams... they should make a movie about me... with choreographed kung fu fights (I'll use my beginner's wushu and wing chun kuen), and CG special effects. Just don't give me a sidekick... I don't need comic relief... it'll unmake the cathartic end.

More Flying

This time, mix in a little smallville. Its fun dreaming like you're superman. Less fun when you're on the run... again. Lot of ocean... jumping from rooftop to rooftop... running on water... moving super fast... invincibility... but flying really isn't all its cracked up to be. You get horrible agility. I flew into a mountain because i was going too fast and couldn't get out of the way.

The Power of Flight

Its been awhile, but I had the attempt to fly dream again. This time work kind of seeped into the dream where I wandered from lab to lab. I felt like a spy in some instances, granted I don't know what exactly I was spying on since I didn't actually do anything but run around, talk to people, and attempt to fly. Like always, I tried to get the speed needed to obtain flight, but gravity... well gravity's a hard opponent to beat. I caught a few good ones though. Its stressful running away from someone and having an unreliable mode of escape though.

To my friends aspiring to become lawyers...

Don't sell your soul. I beg of you.

Michael. Dear Michael. Of course it’s you, who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I… I know it’s a long way and you’re ready to go to work… all I’m saying is just wait, just… just please just hear me out because this is not an episode, relapse, fuck-up, it’s… I’m begging you Michael. I’m begging you. Try to make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness. Two weeks ago I came out of the building ok, I’m running across 6th avenue there’s a car waiting, I’ve got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport and I’m dictating. There’s this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we’re standing in the middle of the street, the light’s changed, there’s this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I… I freeze, I can’t move, and I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered in some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze… like a... a coating, and… at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic - embryonic - fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth, I’ve breached the chrysalis, I’ve been reborn. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I realized Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism who’s sole function is to excrete the… the… the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the sting of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undue. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time, and Michael, the time is now.

Nights where you want to cry yourself to sleep

Well... maybe not that bad... but yeah, its been awhile since I've felt this shitty emotionally. I think on the outside I might be okay... but there seems to be a lot of inner turbulence. Things have been so busy and fulfilling these few months, so I'm not sure what's going on or even when the last time I had this feeling was. Its a lot of negativity I wish I didn't have... sleeping usually solves the problem, so good night world.

The fairer sex?

Thanks Puneet. This is an interesting article.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/my-brief-life-as-a-woman/

and a link found rummaging through the comments
http://happinessinthisworld.com/2009/05/24/the-good-guy-contract/#more-2253

and the specific blog post that makes me want to read this guys blog more and more...
http://happinessinthisworld.com/2009/05/24/the-good-guy-contract/#more-2253

It's a worthwhile read. Something I took to heart at the last taiko conference was when Shoji Kameda was talking about putting on concerts and dealing with the person he usually goes to for lighting because she's really good. He'd often get into arguments with her about the way things happen, but this is something that should be relished. Some people are hard to work with because they have a specific vision of how to do thing and are less willing to let people push them around. There are typically two types of people we tend to like to deal with: People that are good at what they do... and nice people. There are people that can be neither... but they don't really apply to this particular situation. So yeah... which would you rather be?

It doesn't mean that the two are mutually exclusive... but there will be times as discussed in the blog post where being nice will conflict with your best interests whatever that may be. Do you just cave into the people pleasing state or do you grow a backbone and stick up for what you need to?

I suppose its pretty obvious where I stand on the issue... but like everything, I am still human... I find myself in the same position as the end of that article: having to find the courage to grit my teeth and be a jerk for real (I play the jerk all the freaking time =P since its kinda in my nature to do so but that weak self-esteem still pops up from time to time)

Resolution Month 5 Report

Sorry for disappearing these past few weeks. The adult life is kind of limited when you submit the majority of your waking hours to The Man. This is the progress report and update to the New Years resolutions I submitted back in January. I guess most people forget about these kind of things once the year gets underway, but I've been establishing some metrics to get a feel for how successful I've been. Things have changed a bit since January, so things have been added and things have been removed. Things that have been removed are no longer here because either I've accomplished the task, the task is no longer applicable, or the public domain status of the item has been placed under scrutiny. Now that the boring talk is out of way, let's get to the meat of the discussion:

1. Sleeping Hours
Done. Pared my sleeping hours back to a regular 8 hour nominal per night. Things get a little messy when accommodating for taiko practice since I get home from practice around 11 and need to be up for work the next morning at 6... but things are working out atm.

2. Study Goals
Stalled. I'm long overdue on ALL of the 600 kanji that I managed to shovel through the Heisig method. I hope to be starting that up again. Pimsleur is also stalled somewhere around the second lesson set. GRE hasn't gone anywhere either. =/ I'm hoping to get Heisig and Pimsleur back off the ground. The good news is I found some good Japanese language partners. Now I need to work on my Chinese so that I'll have more things to offer to the discussion table.

3. Physical
Starting to get back underway. My arms have completely recovered from the pull-up death I experienced a few months back. I gotta get back into running and work on the abs. The latter is kinda important for playing Yatai moreso than aesthetic appeal. The pull ups are purely aesthetic though ha ha... as long as the lats don't get in the way of taiko I should be good.

As for running, there seems to be a good running community at work. Part of it is because I work in one of the most beautiful (and exclusive...) parts of San Diego ^__^. Might as well make good use of the area.

4. Weight
Stable is good.

5. Daily Planner
FAIL. Fortunately the calendar system is still up and running. That is getting me through my day to day.

6. Meditation
This has kind of fallen on the back burner. Things have been super busy since work started but maybe in the near future I can find a few good spots at work to do battle with my mind.

7. Eating
Things have been much better especially with the structure of work. I kind of have to eat at specific times otherwise I won't get much of a chance to eat at all and have to deal with being hungry. One thing I need to do is cook more... and by cook, I mean properly cook as opposed to my usual task of making raw foods not raw anymore.

8. Taiko
I'm nearing the end of this unexpected Taiko Month. I kinda got tossed into it where I interacted with the taiko community like 9 days straight which then tapered off into into something like 4~5 times a week from practices to concerts to attend. The best part... I don't have to perform so the pressure is real light. Things are looking up for me in the Taiko world. I found a fue mentor. My goal with fue is to be able to play it like the way I whistle and sing. That will probably take a long long time... but... it should be good. The taiko part should be just as good too.

Project 59... my first song... Hopefully I can actually pull through with one this time ha ha! Maybe I should try writing something a little easier first... =/

I finally have a good practice pad. If anyone wants one, I can make them one. I think cost in terms of material and labor should be around $5.

9. Writing
heh... that's suffered lately just as much as my studies. I really need to get these letters and packages to Japan. I also need to re-establish contact with people not only over there... but on this side of the Pacific as well. Sigh...

I guess a part of that will be stabilizing my operating systems both on my blackberry and my laptop.

10. OS
Finally found a pretty decent solution to my computing. CCRMA on Fedora 10. I have to compile SAGE from source, but hey... if I can get everything under one roof... It means I'll be far more likely to actually use all the software I want to use. So what if the nay-sayers think Fedora is an unstable and experimental POS. Atleast I can do what I want and not have to worry about latency issues and configuration issues... and the show stopper of them all: random kernel freezes. I don't think i'll ever go back to windows for my personal computing. Not when I can get thousands of dollars worth of software for free without the whole pirating issue nagging my back.

So I gotta get Fedora into a more permanent set up configured to taste. My Blackberry also needs to be upgraded. Hopefully I can get Japanese input working on the damn thing. We'll see though I guess.

11. Recording
I've gotten into the habit of recording all my expenditures. Its helped me determine where my weak points are in terms of finance and has increased the transparency to the whole 'where the hell does all my money go' conundrum. Mint.com and relegating most of my expenses to credit cards help a lot... but the use of cash is also an issue which is why I do the recording by hand. I need to figure out a good system for dealing with receipts (keep them? or shred them? How to organize?). I'm trying to do this with taiko as well so that I can monitor the minutes that I throw at various aspects of the artform. I don't know what I'll get out of recording the amount of practice I toss at something, but I'm sure it'll be useful at some point. Just the act itself should be sufficient because it prioritizes my intentions.

12. Math and Physics
I really need to brush up. This might couple into 'Study' but this kind of warrants its own point. I've spent too much time outside of the math world... Granted I never really completely stepped into it, I think there is a lot to gain from modelling. This doesn't just apply to work and my technical expertise, but stuff like Taiko too. If I could model the way a drum head vibrates (it uses a 2 dimensional J-Bessel function for an infinitesimally thin membrane if I remember right) and parameterize the strike point, you can predict the different types of sounds you should be able to hear. This would be pretty useful for Kris' whole theory behind Shime... or heck... any drum... becoming a sort of melodic instrument.

13. Graduate School
For anyone that's talked to me about work in any sort of depth... I've probably been flipping back and forth between a buttload of general issues regarding career path and graduate school. The latest argument seems to predict a return to UCSD for a PhD. I don't know when it will happen and how Taiko will fit into the picture then... but it looks like I'll be in San Diego for a LONG LONG time.



All in all... life is starting to stabilize again. With this stability comes the ability to branch out a bit more and re-establish those niche parts of my life that got uprooted when I left for Japan and subsequently got a job. I sorely miss the experience that I had over there... but there are plenty of adventures to be had on this side of the Pacific too!

24?

Had this crazy dream last night where Ayano was killed by a letter bomb... except the bomb was embedded in a high school text book because for some reason we were all in high school. I forget who else was there now... but it was crazy nuts cuz then we fit like 3~4 people on a street bike and rode around for a few nights being chased by some syndicate that had done the deed. Then time reset and I told Ayano about how she was murdered right next to me.

Oh dreams....

Remember OLPC?

No... its not some new drug... but it might be. One Laptop Per Child.

It kinda fell off the media radar awhile back especially with Obama taking up the front pages of everything.

Here's what happened to that project:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/bittersweet_facts_about_olpc_and_sugar

Where the whole joke back in the day was 'I'll bring a camera' ...

Guess we really were just at the cusp of the digital age.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8043490.stm

Death and Decay Reprise

Last night was odd... I don't remember most of it anymore, but there was one point where I felt I couldn't move. The last time something crazy like this happened... well... nm. Things aren't looking good...

Work Inspiration

to get off my *** ***

http://techmiso.com/114/the-100k-tech-contractor/

Death and Decay...

Why have you been haunting my dreams recently?

Lenovo

God I hate this company so much. The 4 times I've dealt with them has always been bad. My personal laptop got sent to the wrong address... TWICE. The thing almost got sent back to the manufacturer in China. Had I been a day late in calling and asking why the heck my laptop got delivered in norcal instead of san diego it might have ended up on the ship back to its maker. My work laptop almost had a similar issue... The laptop got delivered to the wrong office and I had to jump through a bunch of different hoops to get it delivered to the right office. Lenovo has a special account with UPS such that only Lenovo can make changes to the delivery system.

Then when I was in Japan... I discovered my warranty didn't cover Japan because Lenovo in Japan (and presumably other parts of the world) are not the same company at all and are not able to share parts or specs. So in order to get my laptop fixed... I'd have to ship it back to someone in the states, have them deal with the warranty, and ship it back to Japan. UGH... So I went 6 weeks without a computer at home.

My latest issue with lenovo is in replacing a battery that suddenly died (it went from being able to charge to about 80% to holding a 25% charge in a week.. its prolly less now and the damn thing isn't much more than a year old). I bought a refurbed battery straight off of Lenovo's outlet only to find out that the battery for the 14" and the 15" inch version of my model are different... WTF. After talking to the Lenovo folks about it they were like... we'll give you a refund. But I'm still left with a dead battery.

I am never buying from this company ever again. ugh... Unfortunately... I really like their laptops... just their customer service and the way their business is structured bear few benefits for their customers.

Toothbrush and toothpaste

So I went to the dentist yesterday for my overdue 6 month check up. I had such a great experience with my dentist in Japan that I figured I'd continue the tradition over here. I got more or less the same experience I had 2~3 years ago when I was forced to go in from teething pains (I had a wisdom tooth coming in and coincidentally forced to go again in Japan from gingivival pains most likely associated with said wisdom tooth). The result was basically this "wow... you have no prosthetics in your mouth" and then after looking at the x-rays with scrutiny finding borderline shadows that MIGHT be cavities.

Going to the dentist makes me conscientious about my oral health so getting home I renewed the research on the topic... here are my findings:

The toothbrush has been around for freaking ever so it really doesn't matter what you get on the shelf as long as the bristles are soft and the head is the right size (not ridiculously huge but not so small that you'll forget to cover everything)

http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/090503.html

Sorry, that was just a useless comic illustrating the useless evolution of the toothbrush. Here's something a bit more involved:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/fashion/20SKIN.html?ref=health

Which basically states buying anything more than ol' reliable is an effort in futility (because your brushing technique doesn't require all the bells and whistles) or catering to sloth or ignorance.

Here's a bit of news (well kinda... it IS the onion) that makes me think the toothbrush industry in this country would do well to get their noses out of their own design books and look elsewhere for inspiration...
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/32636
because it was disappointing to come home to america and find that the toothbrush I was quite happy with over in Japan to be non-existent on this side of the Pacific. I suppose it was a pretty rare brush over there because the dentist said you could only get it from a dentist office. The imitations off the shelf (that have also made it here at the asian supermarkets) don't quite have the same zing... the slim brushes are too long. The brush is called Ruscello III, while the stuff you can find here are something along the lines of mooble mooble and Dentek.

Prior to toothbrushes, I was looking at something a bit more involved... toothpaste. Because I don't want the hassle of dealing with fillings and the constant fear that one might fall out. I had one fall out when I was a kid and while picking food out of the hole was fun at first... it became really annoying after awhile... and breaking in a new filling with its sharp edges sucks too not to mention the idea of having mercury stuck in your mouth or having to compromise with with structurally inferior resin composites for those superficially aesthetically appealing pearly whites.

so there are a number of flouride options, which some debate to be bad for your health because of some claim that putting flouride in our water and toothpaste was a good way to get rid of some of our WWII toxic waste.
http://www.aroma-essence.com/research-reports/fluoride.html

And here's a bit of info on flouride pastes... you gotta scroll past all the generic info that you prolly know already to get to the statistics
http://www.dentalgentlecare.com/toothpaste.htm

The basic on flouride... it kills bacteria and prevents the bad stuff from forming for awhile... and it supposedly promotes remineralization, which hopefully means fixing cavities.

Unfortunately the popular belief (or fact depending on who you ask) is that the only way to fix a cavity is to fill it with crap but that's something I want to avoid for as long as possible.

And then there's some cool new crap called Novamin which is some water-activated bio-glass that one dude claims to have cured his cavities. It can be found in toothpaste form through a company called Oravive. Unfortunately a 6 pack costs freaking 40$ T.T
I guess Sensodyne is pretty up there too...
http://www.dentalfearcentral.org/forum/archive/index.php?t-1309.html
Another note: aside from the dietary changes... one useful thing is his take on dry-mouth. I get it from time to time and its gross... so it might be a useful product.

So what's up with all this info about Dental care? Sitting on the bench with my mouth wide open, it always feels like the Dentist is digging around in a treasure box looking for lucrative tidbits to pillage. I figure as long as my teeth work and aren't taking a nosedive in health, I don't need to get any major dental work done. Sure they're a little imperfect, but I kinda hate that unnatural rack of pearly-white look that hollywood tends to shove down our throats. And my family in particular have had a bad run with the dental industry harassing us with phone calls about our need to get our teeth fixed. Yeah... Right...

Oh... and please don't feel offended when I say people that buy into expensive brushes and the like are tools because I'm guilty of doing the same... I have that mace looking 360 brush sitting in my cup right now and don't follow the proper brushing/flossing/rinsing schedule I should half the time. Whatever gets you to brush the amount you need to get the job done and keeps you healthy is the important thing. Although I hear you shouldn't brush more than 2 times a day especially with a hard bristle brush cuz you'll erode the dentin under the gumline... which is essentially the same thing as sawing your tooth off at the neck (enamel stops at the gumline).

Resonance

When I was a kid, I used to sit between two mirrors and revel at how I could project my image a few dozen times. Then I wondered... what would happen if I put light between two perfectly parallel mirrors and just have it bounce back and forth. If I removed a mirror, would there still be light inside? It took me like 15 years slap the label resonance on that thought but now I know. And that one time in when we stood on that grate at the park near the samurai school near Ishinomaki and could hear the echoes of our voices. That was awesome... resonance. I don't think it was a coincidence either.

H1N1

Does anyone else find it a bit ironic that we spent so much time freaking out about bird flu that we as humans get nailed by swine? A bit of trivia... anyone that has watched Moyashimon should know that birds and swine both have diseases that commute with humans. I guess one of those diseases would be the influenza virus. Go figure. I forget what episode it was, but it was pretty amusing since it reminded me of the time taiko kept getting each other sick to breed a supervirus.

As an aftermath to my previous post... I looked up the Win7 exploit. Apparently you have to be at the computer to do it. I'm sure my workplace would freak out about it, but for most people the exploit is pretty minor. Meanwhile I found some fun sites that I can use to increase the security of my home boxes. I think I was born for this job... ha ha.

Japanese:
Pimsleur 33

I really need to get back on the ball for all my little hobbies... =/ Although I was speaking pretty well last weekend; this weekend I really feel like my Japanese is slipping.

Linux FTW

At long last Ubuntu's 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope was released 2 days ago. For those of you that don't know, Ubuntu is just a flavor or distribution of linux... think Windows XP home vs professional except the lines drawn between the different distributions are more complicated than home users and professionals as it touches on your technical expertise with the OS along with the way you prefer to do things. In recent years as Windows has become more and more unfavorable with masses, linux has become more popular with those that feel no need to buy into the OS X (Apple) brand. This trend has been bolstered by Ubuntu who's mantra for user-friendliness has produced a product that leaves me with fewer headaches than windows (finally!), which, to me, puts a rather large nail on the Windows coffin.

I started using Ubuntu as my sole operating system with Intrepid Ibex 8.10. The number at the end corresponds to the year.month of the release so Ibex was released in October of 2008 while Jaunty was released April of this year (2 days ago to be exact). Ubuntu's company, Canonical, releases a new version every 6 months which usually have some marked improvement over its predecessor but has a more stable long term (LTS) release which goes a year or two before getting upgraded.

Ibex was good but there were a few things I had to sacrifice to use it. I have since gotten use to life with a few peripherals I paid for on my laptop, which now factors into my opinion on which OS is best for use. These peripherals include but are not limited to firewire, built-in flash card reader, scanner, webcam, and while bluetooth works I've never synced it up with anything. Where Jaunty surpasses Ibex and how it compares to Windows at this point lies in starting with reinstalling the OS and boot up time. Jaunty now boots up in less than half a minute compared to the 45sec~1min of Ibex and whatever the heck windows might be at the various stages of its life (think corruption and baggage--neither of which give a pretty picture).

As far as installation goes, my partition table was a mess from searching for the proper partition sizes that fit me on top of migrating from 64bit back to 32bit. Flash and Firefox were not happy in 64bit and that was unacceptable for me. In any event, my hard drive was partitioned in a way where I partitions were scattered across the entire drive and to remedy it without just rebuilding the table from scratch would take days. As my windows installation (I dual boot) had become bloated as well, that also needed a format. I spend substantially less time in the windows environment so the lack of upkeep allowed Windows to get fat and slow.

For those of you that don't know, Windows XP doesn't play very nicely with linux, so I had to install it first. Fortunately Linux will cater to XP's whims. I forget how many steps it takes to install XP other than you have to set it up through an ugly blue screen, step away for a half hour or so, come back and run it through more setup, and then step away for like 45 minutes. Ubuntu will not only run off its own CD, it will install after 7 steps that you do at the beginning; the most complicated task being: setting up your partition table. I don't know how long it takes to install after that as I stepped away only to come back to the slick log-in screen for Jaunty. One of the great things about Ubuntu over Windows is right after installing, all the important stuff works out of the box for my laptop. Stuff like internet, video, sound, usb support, and includes an unbloated software suite like firefox, a multimedia player, instant messenger, a disk burning utility, and open office. If most of you are like me, you're not an avid user of windows messenger or Windows Media Player so you have to go hunt for your own installs. Furthermore, some of the more useful things are lacking altogether, like a userfriendly disk burner, dvd playback support, and an office productivity suite. Things may have changed in vista, but for sure that last part has not.

Also, for those of you that have installed windows before, you gotta have those drivers on hand and install them one by one otherwise you're left with a crippled machine where the video won't even look right. Its here that Linux has won a major point against my Lenovo supported machine. Lenovo had something called ThinkVantage Update Server which would automatically install and keep your software/drivers updated. This was useful in that all the update support was centralized and I could update everything at once. So what I usually did after a fresh install was get internet up and running, download the Update program and let that do all the work for me. For some reason Lenovo discontinued this and the thought of having to hunt down the right drivers for my machine along with individually installing each one, run checks with the device manager to make sure things installed and then testing each component to make sure they worked made me leave windows as it was... crippled... and crawled back into my comfy linux installation which more or less works beautifully out of the box. For Lenovo, this procedure might be new as they recently pulled the plug on that service, but for everyone else its pretty standard procedure. I don't miss it. As much as I harp on this working out of the box issue with Ubuntu, there is one caveat. That is: if it doesn't work, don't try to fix it. Usually when something doesn't work straight out of the install, you may luck out by finding a non-free driver or the hardware just isn't supported yet. I've had this in the past with Hardy Heron (I think) and wifi, where my wifi magically worked after having to find the intel driver for it, but another wifi that supported agn networks was still unsupported. I've found that this latter unsupported issue to be the case more often than not.

So after installing an OS, what do you do? Customize! This ranged from customizing your applications suite to the way the OS looks. Unfortunately for windows you can't do much besides play with your widgets (not even so in XP), change your wallpaper, and choose between a few microsoft built themes unless you use 3rd party hacks. As for software, you have to either go and buy it, usually from brick and mortar, or go find it on the interweb. Most of the software on linux can be found in the updater which handles all your OS updates and keeps all your software updated too. Examples of this would be: Deluge for my BT needs (competes with u-torrent); Exaile for music; Xchat for IRC; Pidgin for AIM,MSN,Yahoo,Gchat; gftp; Mplayer and its front end varients: gnome-mplayer and smplayer (replacement for my beloved zoomplayer which replaced windows media player classic); and TeX (a mark-up language for producing the best-looking documents offered to the home-user). I've been able to live pretty comfortably without the rest of the stuff. If I need, I can always emulate a windows environment either under Wine, VirtualBox, or VMWare. Unfortunately windows emulation doesn't work all that well and getting it to talk to Linux for free is a bit of a hassle. Which reminds me... Everything I've talked about so far is free for the most part. Some things like Wine, VirtualBox, and VMWare have paid versions that offer more support for complicated things like transferring files between linux and windows on the fly. I think this should suffice for most users.

There is one type of user that would suffer under this environment: The PC Gamer. You should be able to get some things running under windows emulation but it might not run at peak performance. Linux itself doesn't have any strong games I think but there are plenty of dinky games out there. Some of them are pretty good.

One great more great thing about linux: Its hard to screw up the system by accident. If it crashes, it can usually be solved with a reboot. One bad thing for most people: there are still a fair number of things that require the ability to use the command-line and modify configuration scripts: such as batch unzipping, autoloading an internal hard drive on boot, and a few other things. Fortunately there's plenty of support online so with a little bit of internet 'elbow grease' these software things can be smoothed over.

On a side note: I hear Windows 7 has a serious exploit produced by a design flaw. From the sound of it, Vista is going to be around for a bit longer.

Catching up on the cards.

Sorry its been awhile since my last post. I had a large stack of flashcards to work through on top of a bunch of taiko related things on top of acclimating to the work life.

I don't have much to say because I have a few more things I need to get through before turning in tonight and that doesn't really include spilling my thoughts online. Not like I really want to post up stuff about work anyways... and other than that there's not much else to put up atm... except maybe thoughts about facebooking a certain someone. But I'll see how much longer I can resist that temptation. I've got bigger fish to fry... like calling up insurance companies and a courthouse to settle things related to working adult life.

As you can see group 4 was the biggie. I did about 120 a week ago... the other 150 cards or so I did this evening. The two Pimsleur may have been recorded already. That was from when I moved down here.

Japanese:
Pimsleur 32
Group 3: 35/44
Group 4: 244/277

First Night

Somehow managed to have a taiko nightmare within 10 minutes. It was like... wake up... oh 5:20... I'll get 20 more minutes of sleep... Have a nightmare (taiko bootcamp...) wake up... wtf? 5:30?

I woke up somewhere around the part where i was in the shower and the camp instructor started yelling at us for something. The bathtubs were all at different heights. mine was easily 6ft off the ground...

guess it was only half a nightmare. i forget what the scary part was.

Japanese
Pimsleur 32
I'm currently crunching through a big batch of fours then I need to clear out the fails. It's starting to grow. I'm in the middle of working on 650~675 though.

Japanese:
Pimsleur 30
Group 2: 44/68
Group 3: 32/35

Group 1: 13/25
Group 4: 23/27

It seems i've been editing the wrong post... april 3rd's is actually todays... except for the stats of course.

Japanese
Group 1: 55/55

Self

It seems like with each passing day I lose more and more of myself and the only thing that remains is the cold machinery of an engineer.

Stepped my involvement with facebook one more time. Doing anymore would be a pain. Last step will be when my ucsd email expires and i stop getting notifications.

It'll be interesting when I meet people for the first time and be like... so... when's your birthday? Where do you live? What's your mother's maiden name? ... and put it all in my blackbook... i mean blackberry. c_c oh, i'm serious about the birthday part. I suck at remembering those kinds of details so i gotta rely on something to remind me otherwise i'll never remember it.

Group 4: 51/62

Looks like I've pushed those 600 kanji far enough that I can start learning another batch. Whee.

Japanese:
Pimsleur 28
Group 2: 35/35

I need to stop watching so much Conan and House... otherwise I'll start thinking everyone around me is going to get murdered or fall ill with some strange disease.

Japanese:
Group 3: 34/41
Group 4: 22/29

Crack Berry

Some of you might have noticed this word on my various statuses and wondered what the heck I'm talking about. Apparently Blackberry aficionados refer to their beloved smartphone as a Crackberry, possibly due to their addictive nature. Anyone that knows my passion for electronic devices has prolly heard me rant about the most esoteric things in the tech world, often citing specs that most users couldn't care less to remember.

For the longest time I've been looking a versatile device to consolidate the bulk of my technological experience.

I've resorted to the paper planner as I couldn't find a software that would be able to cater specifically to my needs.

I've compromised with various mp3 players because I refuse to buy into the ipod hype and lack the funds/time to hack an ipod into what I want out of a portable sound system. I strayed from getting a high end md player due to the fact that while the minidisc was immensely popular in Japan... it failed everywhere else in the world, possibly due to Sony's knack for making everything they ever invent proprietary and thus locking out the rest of world since we'd rather buy into apple or some other national brand (not necessarily American for the internationals that are reading this). I'll admit, the recording quality that people raved about was very tempting but the timing in which mp3s were finally incorporated into the technology (it wasn't until flash based mp3 players had already established a firm ground in the portable music market) and the sheer amount of time it took to record songs into an md kept me from buying into it. The Otaku in me was sorely disappointed time and time again--I researched md tech every time I got the hankering for a new portable. On the recording side of things, I settled with the Zoom H2, which is basically a portable recording studio and is pretty good. I reasoned that I could also use the H2 as a portable music player as well, but unfortunately the file management was so clunky/crude that I broke down and bought a Sansa Clip... which is an ipod shuffle killer in every respect except for looks. Unfortunately I got sent back to the market less than a year later when my Clip gave up for dead while I was stranded in Japan and all the electronics I brought over from the US were dying left and right. I figure the gods were punishing me for not making the most of my stay (I actually half-believe that they were...). Eventually I broke down and bought the Cowon D2 which, for what its worth, is a great mp3 player. But I hate the UI, all the gimmicks it comes with are mediocre at best, and much much worse... it makes me hate touch screen devices.

But I digress (into a very convoluted story about my portable mp3 player/recorder ambitions). And so I digress into my online computing issues:

Beyond those things, I wanted a more portable internet capable device as I was tired of having that aching shoulder from lugging a 3kg laptop around. I made do by making sure I was always near a computer. When I lost my laptop in Japan, I made do by visiting my lab more often, which supplied me with a computer. I've commuted an hour by foot just so I could get my computing done several times. When my second laptop died, I had broken free from Sendai and was travelling. I still got online by visiting net cafes, using friend's internet, and even the dorm computer (it was this awesome hostel in Kyoto). After getting home, I didn't quite need the portability anymore. There was one issue I had though: I needed an electronic dictionary (電子辞書). As luck would have it, my trip to Japan supplied me with a dictionary: my cellphone. Unfortunately, the phone is locked into AU's service and I have no intention of unlocking it for use on American networks. I had a hard enough time using the thing in Japan for Japanese services... I don't know how it'll operate in america if at all.

Enter the Blackberry 8900. To be honest, this was a luxury I didn't expect. My dad just suddenly came to me one day saying that we're going to change cellphone carriers. I had a few minutes to decide on a phone, and since I had done cellphone research before (I wanted to get the HTC Slide way back in the day but was weary of all the issues it came with) I found one that screamed... pick me!... which wasn't hard because I have a gripe with most cellphones anyways. It took awhile to get used to the interface but it's more or less consolidated all the aforementioned devices into a small, sexy body... just the way I like it ^.~ ::sweatdrop::

Its not the perfect solution to my needs (I still need to use my Zoom, and my planner has been split into digital and analog parts)... and I recognize a lot of the dangers of owning a pda, such as becoming overly reliant on electronic devices to get through my day to day life. Its one of the reasons why I refuse to get a GPS. But my phone comes with GPS so if I ever get stuck in a hard spot, I have more options. All in all, I'm happy. It's only been a few days, but the potential in my hands is mouth-watering.

Japanese:
Group 1: 24/28
Group 3: 28/32

Physical:
Air Alert III: Week 1 Monday

Catching up

It's been awhile since I last posted my flashcard results so here's the backlog:

Japanese
Should have completed up to Pimsleur 26... I'll have to double check later
Today's:
Group 1: 12/15 (these were cards I've missed... nothing new)
Group 3: 116/135
Group 4: 50/52

3/25
Group 3: 57/67

3/24
Group 2: 41/46

Another way to post from my blackberry

Yo. More testing.

lets see how much of a pain this is

Hrmm. Blogging might be more difficult than I thought. I just lost a few sentences.
I
.
I'm trying to blog from my brand new blackberry here. Overall I'm pretty happy with this thing. Obviously it isn't nearly as efficient just doing it from my laptop but itseems pretty cool. No longer will I have to take my laptop with me when I travel for short periods of time.


Hjji
BuTaki

Japanese:
Group 2: 41/46

The Norcal

Safely up in Norcal and boy is it cold up here. Prolly shoulda brought thermals =/

Now... what to do with my time up here... =/ I hope the cat won't eat me in my sleep.


Japanese:
Completed Pimsleur 25?
Group 2: 32/33
Group 3: 27/29

Thinking while you sleep

Uncovered a few things while I slept this morning (I woke up around 6:30 and don't remember what happened between 1 and 6). 1. 73 is a large prime number. I did this while trying to divide the number of days in a year. Hopefully I remembered the correct number of days: 365. 2. 91 is not a prime number. I got this one wrong because I couldn't figure out how to divide 91 by 11 in my sleep. 3. I might be able to regain cardio-vascular fitness following a program me and my roommate went through our first year in college: Air Alert 3. It's a program that's supposed to increase your vertical jump. We used it more for the workout than the jump back then.

The basic idea is this... I am horribly out of shape and I don't really have a program for working out and I'm having a hard time getting off my ass to do it on the fly or even sitting down and plotting a course. So we'll start on this after I get back from norcal.

Cool thing is... the program is available for free online now. It wasn't 5 years ago.

Group 2: 113/130 (86%)

Detective Conan

Enjoying the Japanese Childhood I never had.

名探偵コーナン
子供の時がないことを楽しみ〜

Group 2: 32/56 (57%)
Group 3: 20/22 (90%)

Random shit

Finished the manga for Watashitachi no Tamura-kun (Our dear Tamura). I'm nabbing the last extra chapter, but the main plot is done. Just gotta say, its short and sweet. Definitely worth the read if you're at all into reading romance. It's a manga made for guys though, so it'll have all the caveats that come with romance mangas made for the male audience. I can promise that it keeps everything toned down to something quite reasonable. Think... Haruhi... whoa.. that sounded familiar. Anyways, think haruhi but without the gimmicks.

Now I get it... Chrno Crusade... only a part of it is like Haruhi... the romance part obviously, which is what made the show such a winner. The series was in a completely different genre though: fantasy. Albeit Haruhi might still qualify as fantasy, I choose to call it psychological because the show is, in the end, has some connection with reality but chooses to discard it. Tamura is similarly grounded.

This is something that people should be angry about... except the people that should be angry are prolly freaking out. You reap what you sow morons.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/fears-grow-more-consumers-just/story.aspx?guid={504D22FD-CC66-4FC1-BF8D-2F199C2AD042}&dist=TNMostRead

Because that is just retarded. About as much as averaging 8500$ in credit card debt per person.

Here's something cool someone is doing with a condition that I've forgotten about...

http://stacyalexander.blogspot.com/2008/03/skin-deep.html

Group 1: 27/28 (96%)
Group 2: 41/46 (89%)

FB

Another gripe about facebook... atleast one of the ads in facebook are a scam enabling identity theft (I got bored one day and decided to check out the quiz ad... the one about the triangles and stuff). I don't know who exactly clicks on those ads... but facebook is not helping itself by getting funded but this sort of crap. What's worse is that the like/dislike function doesn't even have 'scam' as a default option for removal.

For people that aren't aware... the moment a website starts asking for personal information, you should start being weary. Only when you are ready to engage in a business transaction where money is likely to be involved should you ever divulge information such as your address, phone number, your primary email, and even your name. Obviously, even more sensitive information like social security number, passwords, pins, and security sensitive info like mother's maiden name, high school, city you were born in... should pretty much never be shared online.

Comments

I just read all the comments my blog has ever gotten. I haven't gotten very many, but that's okay. I don't really expect a whole lot of people to read my random musings. I'm sorry I've never gotten back to the people that left me comments... I don't spend a whole lot of time readings other people's blogs (its just not in my habit) let alone my own, so I don't see the comments people leave behind. Now that I use the edit function to change my kanji statistics each day I'm in a better position to notice when people have left their mark, although I definitely missed that comment Scott left at the end of Feb. I hope you('re) enjoy(ed/ing) 21CB as much as I did.

Ayano, yes I understood what you were saying without having to pull out a dictionary... almost. I had to for '帰国' which I understood but couldn't read. Everything else I could derive from context and the kanji I recognise.

Jenna... meh... now that we work, we can go to Japan without having to be packed into a suitcase. The problem is getting enough vacation time to go without getting fired =P.

Random celulite person, I can't get to your blog since its gone now =/. I'm glad you enjoy the blog though. I assume I don't get a whole lot of random visitors, which I prefer (because I'm really a hermit) but the ones that stick around I always appreciate.

Also, reading back, I'm happy to see most of my writing is somewhat presented in an un-convoluted manner. I just need to stop abusing the word 'granted'. I also need to get around to writing all those important posts I say I'll get to but never do.

Note the retardedly large set of Group 1 kanji. I'm in a kanji learning mood right now. I'll deal with the memory fall out later. Granted, I already learned these kanji... so I'm basically recovering the stories I made up over the summer.

Japanese:
名探偵コナン：ファイル一 (80%)
Group 1: 163/175 (90%) Up to 600
Group 4: 137/145 (94%)

New Years Resolutions Progress Report

Here they are again (crudely copied and pasted from Lunar and Solar Calendar New Years respectively then numbered and responded to...):
1. Cut my sleeping hours (9+ each day is ridiculous) and push my wake-up time back to emulate working conditions, which likely means waking up at 6am.
Still working on it. Daylight Savings coupled with a trip to SD kinda threw my clock off. Currently doing 10~12 right now... =/

2. Study goals: Week-long foreign language, weekday GRE and self-improvement
Got a pretty strong course of Japanese going. The pace is a bit unstable, but it hasn't given out yet. Cantonese is stalled. GRE is also stalled


3. Physical: Follow a 6x/wk workout regimen, Weeklong taiko/fue regimen
Stalled


4. Raise my weight by 10lbs and keep it there
Weight is up from the 18 ish days that I was sick but without #3, I'm afraid most of it is coming back in the form of fat... I'm getting fat... never thought I'd say it huh...? While I have yet to accomplish this goal... its a step in right but wrong direction if you get what I mean.

5. Re-instate 3 meal days.
I'm back to eating when I'm hungry instead of working through the hunger. The 3 meal division becomes blurry the later I wake up in the day.

6. Start using my daily planner more.
Read David Allen and have a pretty good setup going. It could still use improving but it's functional atm.

7. Exercise more
Refer 3

8. Meditate more
Stalled... waiting for a new Zafu... possibly when I relocate or when I manage to push my wake up time prior to the parents waking up (6am)

9. Eat better
Refer whatever number that was

10. Play more Taiko
Refer whatever number that was too

11. Get a job
Done

12. Get a girlfriend
Avoiding this issue atm. My excuse is 'lack of funds'... but that's prolly not completely true.

13. Study more
Refer... you get the drill

14. Write more
What do you think I'm doing now? Granted, the act of writing has been split into two categories... the actual act of recording thoughts in what are hopefully coherent sentences or phrases... and writing stuff out by hand in an attempt to retrain my writing muscles and improve my handwriting. The latter is stalled at the moment and I have no real intention of starting a journal. It'll have to wait until I start writing into a notebook... for whatever reason.

For 2 months... its not bad I guess. Could be better but meh... I'm just happy about #11. #2 makes me excited.

Something cool Mark showed me:
http://www.nothingamsterdam.com/

Group 1: 16/20 (80%)
Group 2: 67/104 (64%)

Set up some new kanji for reading to start in on SRS... mostly covering stuff i already know.

Facebook

I actually had to use the search function to find the facebook event I created a few weeks ago. Gone was the ability to check out the events page to find the one I made and was managing if atleast superficially. I now see how much of a pain it is for anyone that uses facebook beyond the occasional wall post everytime facebook does a 'facelift'.

Sure the new frontend has smoother edges but its usability has been heavily geared towards the newsfeed has multiplied like rabbits to encompass just about every facet of the social networking site. What's worse, they lowered the character count per post or something so people are unable to form complete thoughts, rather simplistic soundbites. It's 1984 in its own digital bubble, where the complexities of language are boiled down into plus-good... or in this case... 'like' along with its big brother tendencies powered by the newsfeed. Half the time 'like' isn't even a proper response to whatever someone is saying.

I'm not saying that I really liked any of the previous makeovers, but this time around, the floor of usability gave out when I had to actually use the search function to find something I should have known the location of. Not exactly a comfortable feeling. Facebook itself has strayed too far from its college networking roots, pandering to the masses and attempting to compete with other social networking sites out there. As such, I'll go back to using fb for what I originally used it for... an overpowered digital 'black book'


Group 1: 28/30

did a lot of kanji today.

Group 1: First set: 24/32... then up to 425... I didn't really keep track of what I missed. Let's just say the stack is huge. About as a big as a large sized Group 3 stack.
Group 2: 30/44

PS: About last night's dream... the toadfish didn't have slug characteristics... it started off as a snail but i sighted it just as it was losing its shell and evolved into a slug.

Scuba

Had consecutive dreams about the toadfish and scuba diving this morning. That's weird cuz I've never seen the toadfish... I'm only using another fish to replace it. Also, I've never scuba dived. I actually conversed with a fish in the dream too. It started off by bathing in the sand... because it had slug characteristics and was trying to bury itself. Then it morphed into some other fish and developed the ability to speak and was telling me about how it was using the sand to scrape off the black and turn gold. It was doing so to attract the lady fish and told me about one of his friends that got dumped because he wasn't able to completely turn gold. I noticed he was still far from being done so I advised him on where he needed to work since he clearly didn't have a mirror. Finally, I think I went through another cycle because there's a pretty big disconnect. This is where I end up with the scuba gear eventually cuz we're sitting on a boat watching a fish slide off the boat into the water. There was some reality split because there was an analogous something doing something similar in a separate space. The fish had some of the gold from the previous fish but it became a full blown toad fish at the surface of the water where it looked exactly like a toad. I eventually parted ways and start scuba-ing.


Also dreamt about sitting in the audience about something and hunting for food in yet another really large complex... but colorful and no stairs this time...

the coolest thing was... dreaming about making a cool little calendar that would tell you when all the fruits and vegetables were in season so you wouldn't have to remember when you'd find something delicious (I can never remember) and also when certain species were pollinating. Unfortunately nature works according to a loose schedule so that'd never work.

Guess its not so cool after all.

So what do I get from all this? I was prolly high while I slept last night. And at some point I prolly got the munchies. Oh... and I slept for 13 hours...

Here are Saturday's Japanese stats:
Pimsleur 21 completed
Group 2: 23/?

Venice

Aight... you guys might not want to read this since I'm just going to complain. Took me close to and hour getting home from the Santa Monica area because of the night construction they've been performing on the freeways. First getting off the 405 and onto the 10 was a big enough pain. I swear I crossed the freeway 5-6 times and had change direction atleast 3 times... ugh. 20 minutes spent in Santa Monica/Venice area just to find the right entry point where I could get onto the 10 merger only to find out that the 10 offramp was closed... That's where my 3rd 'u-turn' was.

Thank goodness I got gas before making my way home, otherwise it would have been a repeat of a few years ago when I had to gas up in one of the shadier parts of town.

It didn't end there, however... to finish it off, they closed my offramp. They left all the other off ramps open despite having blocked off the two right lanes... they just decided to close my exit. The next offramp is about a mile away because of the way the city is set up... and the street coming back is a 25mph street. Except no one goes 25 on that street because it's wide enough to go 50mph. So all said and done, a 25 minute drive turned into an hour long drive. -.-

On to more important matters... heading down to San Diego tomorrow to look for housing. I'm swinging between a ritzy zoo, the cheap but possibly more homely, and the affordable but professional and really close to work. The ritzy zoo has the best bang for the buck... except you get a lot of bang so you need a lot of cash. The cheap is actually not the cheapest... but it might be where I'll get the best company as the people are more or less my age and seem pretty outgoing. The zoo also has a few people my age too. The last place is cheap and close to work... but I'll be trailing in the age department by anywhere between 7 and 20 years. There's one other place... but I'm not really considering it... we'll see.

Group 2: 29/36 (80%)
Group 3: 52/58 (89%)

Pimsleur 19
Group 1: 23/25
Group 2: 17/22

Japanese:
Group 1: 25/30

Good bye Asayake

I finally removed myself from the blog authors, so I don't accidentally post one of my Japanese status reports to Asayake's site... that would be embarrassing.

On a trivial sidenote, tonight's full moon is called the Worm Moon apparently as its the moon that ushers in Spring and thus stirs earthworms out of their winter slumber in dormant gardens. In Southern Cali, I found plenty of active earthworms in the 'dead' of winter. It was prolly just because the time I discovered them was right in the middle of our January Santa Anas.

Speaking of Santa Anas, looks like we might have another one this week.

Japanese:
Group 1: 36/41 (87%)

Real Drive

I can't tell what the name of this anime really is... RD Sennou Chosashitsu. In any event, I finished it today and I gotta say its pretty good... I'm a little discomforted by the direction they took the relationships though. Taken at face value its alright, but dig a little deeper and things start to get a little disturbing. The execution was superb though and leaves plenty of room to 'interpret' out the more unsavory parts.

Some tips to combat identity theft:
http://thepaintedtelephone.blogspot.com/2009/03/thieves-initiate-new-identity-theft.html

Japanese
Group 1: 22/36 (61%)
Group 2: 31/33 (93%)

Taiko:
Recovered Ogi Okesa Basic
Sado Okesa currently unrecovered
Retrieved a copy of Sado Okesa music

Lost

I'd forgotten how lost and lonely I tend to feel when in large groups. In Japan things were a little different. We were all equally lost and lonely... equally stranded on this island nation hundreds and thousands of miles away from home... equally stranded in a foreign culture and a foreign language most of us were unable to speak proficiently. I suppose college was very much the same... atleast the first year was anyways. It's funny how when everyone is lost and lonely the experience turns into something fun and adventurous. When you're singled out... only then does it become discomforting.

Initiating Defense 009

My apologies for my behavior last night. I'm not quite sure what was going on. A lot of it probably had to do with coming back to a community that I felt I was an integral part of only to be an outsider. I kind of have issues that way, kind of like how it irked me to no end in Japan where people are known for their xenophobic tendencies. I eventually got used to it.

As such, I might have said a few insensitive things (although they were minor I definitely could have painted on a better facade) and just been an overall log. Eventually this robotic mask will melt away revealing more human characteristics... granted I don't know when that will happen. Holing up in my room these past 6 months hasn't really helped to make (re)connecting to people any easier. As always, we'll see how things go.

Last night's progress:
Japanese
Completed Pimsleur 18 (or was it 16?)
I did 5 lessons in the car commuting to San Diego yesterday.

PS. I'll have to get around to writing up my dreams and aspirations for my community... unfortunately its tainted by my experience in Japan...

Group 1: 33/33 (These are the cards I missed in Groups 2/3 today)
Group 2: 57/74 (77%)
Group 3: 146/162 (90%)

Expense

Ugh... paid out the nose for dinner last night. It was for family... but it still stings pretty bad.

I forget what I did yesterday but it must have been productive. I managed to stay on course for productivity today although Japanese is still sitting low on the priority list unfortunately. I turned an 11 page questionnaire into a 62 page questionnaire simply because it was formatted differently. The painful part was spending 3 hours reformatting it. Got some other things done and managed to get some other insightful clues about my own character.

Back to Japanese... Looks like I'm going to have to spend a day resetting my tracks... ie. test what's overdue for testing and if the fail rate is high enough, skip the new batch because I'll have enough cards to cover how much I need to relearn.

Productivity

It's been awhile since I've been awake for close to 18 hours (more like a little past 17). It's been a busy day pushing more paperwork, making more phone calls. spent half the day shopping which is about as nice as nice can be when you're stressing over how you're going to make it through next month when you have bills you know you can't pay on your own and you're not all that happy about having to ask the parentals for more moo moo... but I digress. Or I don't...

Not much to say... I think I'll manage to get my Japanese back on track tomorrow while waiting for Honda's shuttle service to take me home (my car may have a manufacturer defect involving an ABS wheel sensor o-ring).

Some more news regarding my return to SD... I may finally get the go ahead to start looking for a place to live on Friday... if not Monday (or possibly later... who knows till the moon decides its time).

On a side note that might reveal a little something about my personality that most people don't know about: After a few weeks of hunting for materials... I've found my break into letter writing. I've been holding off on the account that I don't have the stationary to do so (I refuse to use copy machine paper or that stuff we used back in grade school). Unfortunately it was too expensive to justify the purchase (especially after spending a butt load of cash on work worthy clothes). fortunately my Mom has a stash of interesting (if not archaic and somewhat ugly... but still interesting) paper that I can use along with some envelopes that don't quite fit. To further the stationary fetish... I've spent the last hour and a half researching laser copy printers (with the altruistic excuse of providing my mom with a good laser copier/printer for her day care business but in reality hoping to find a more robust printer to print off books worth of materials for my own consumption so I don't destroy my color laser which is quite the workhorse itself but is every bit the low middle end small business printer it was made to be) and (to get off my run-on digression and back to the point of this sentence) some disc binding system that I've been checking out at diyplanner.com forums. The DIY planner is basically to make a planner system that typically costs hundreds of dollars cost a heck of a lot less assuming you have the requisite tools. This could range anywhere from printing a letter sized forms (calendar, to do templates, project planners, etc), photocopy and clip together, or you can shove it into a DayRunner or some other pre-existing planner system that would cost you a buttload of cash upfront and each time you run out of forms. One system that seems pretty useful is the rollabind/levenger circa binding disc. I've seen Staples knock-offs before but didn't pay much attention to them because I thought they were ugly... now I'm thinking of giving it a second thought. Unfortunately the products are a bit hard to find since they cater to what looks to be a pretty niche market. Being the ugly little beast it is (think naked 3-ring binder, but less shiny... like plastic) I think the kid who bought this (rather expensive) take on notebook binding would get habitually beaten up by the kids who bought into the latest and greatest mead/five star notebook craze. I think the former will win in the long run though since it is a heck of a lot more versatile than your standard notebook. I kind of wish I had one in college now...

But in the end, cost is everything. I still can't afford it. My new day planner/agenda/calendar experiment will continue in its present clipped and ringed form.

Sorry about the long rant-y post... I tend to write better when I'm half asleep as opposed to when I'm awake but tired. If you're still wondering what the heck I'm talking about... check out diyplanners.com. Think of your calendar or agenda or whatever you use to organize your life... and then see how the pro's do it... and then decide how much they pay for a system like to be retarded and think of a home-made solution that will hopefully cost less in the long run. I've found that the best way to get full ownership in something is to just build it from scratch... which is a helluva lot harder than that line makes it sound.

Good night.

Tyvek

Broke down and made a new wallet today. I made a paper one earlier but wasn't happy with how stiff the paper was (I used a heavy weight paper). After researching some cool features that can be included in a wallet, I made a new one... out of Tyvek.

Its not the first time I've used the material. I used to repair books with the stuff since its basically bullet proof paper (not really buts it pretty indestructible). It features 5 card pockets (1 for an ID, 2 for standard cards, and 2 for keyring cards), and an RF shield to attenuate the potential for spies to nab the personal information stored on RFID enabled cards. It's also got a hidden pocket where I can hide large bills or more cards or whatever.

I'm pretty happy with the result.

Another good thing that happened today: I got my official start date for work: April 13.

The not so good:
Didn't work on any Japanese today =/

Today

Not much happened. Didn't study. Didn't make that much progress on any of my goals really. Did finish my taxes... So I guess don't have to do them later. Fortunately I'm going to get one heck of a refund. Hopefully it'll get here in time for when I get an apartment... otherwise I may have go back to the bank of parenthood, which is alright, but not something I'd be so happy to do.

20th Century Boys

Read the manga. Screw the movie. I haven't seen it... but I just noticed the folder sitting in my hard drive and I was overcome by a pretty strong emotion... the kind I get after I finish a REALLY good series with a REALLY good ending. There aren't many stories of this caliber out there. There's one that I can always remember off the top of my head though... Chrno Crusade. I was in a daze for a few days on that one. The feeling has completely faded... but that was another series I feel quite strongly about.

20th Century Boys is weird, but stick with it because the story is complex and what's more, the thematic elements relate to the way we progress through life in a very undiluted way.

Chrno Crusade is just a damn good love story on steroids. Think Haruhi Suzumiya no Yuutsu except far more epic (it's got more substance and you can't really brush the plot off as a psychological motif) and less cute.

PS. The reason why I say read the manga... no matter how good the movie is, I sincerely doubt it'll come close to what the manga did. This isn't lord of the rings where special effects enhance the story 'x' amount. This is... I'd say a character study. Whatever, just read the damn manga.

Japanese
Group 1: 22/25 (88%)
Group 2: 23/31 (74%)

Handwriting

Mine sucks. Time to improve it. Maybe it'll train the same muscles for calligraphy... with a brush. From what I know... you use your arms more than your wrist and fingers.

http://www.paperpenalia.com/handwriting.html

Japanese
Completed Pimsleur 13
Group 1: 28/28 (100%)
Group 2: 20/20 (100%)

Nothing to write about... whee

I don't think I've ever realized this before... but I spend a lot of time each day reading. I should time myself tomorrow and see just how long.

Some info on how to make flash cards! and some basic guidelines to approaching the learning process.

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm
http://www.nihongoperapera.com/passing-jlpt-2kyuu-supermemo.html


Japanese
Completed Pimsleur 11
Group 1: 24/27 (88%)
Group 2: 36/36 (100%)

Certified First Class with Restricted Delivery

Mailed off some key paperwork today. Whoo... I might finally get the green lights to start the process of moving back down to San Diego. Hopefully it'll happen tomorrow so I can go ahead and start calling places... if it doesn't... I won't get anything till Monday probably =/

Japanese
Completed Pimsleur 8
Group 1: 31/31 (100%)
Group 2: 23/25 (92%)
Total Kanji learned: 175

I guess I should explain what these statistics represent. Obviously I'm currently studying Japanese. While my level should be intermediate (I was classified as advanced beginner or something like that at the beginning of my trip), I figure recovering the basics yet one more time would be beneficial especially since I'm approaching a self-learning system. Pimsleur is a learn by audio tapes language program and seems to be pretty popular. I do have a few problems with the content as the first 8 lessons have pretty much taught me how to approach a young japanese woman and invite her on a date. Well... I suppose I don't have that much of a problem with it to some extent, but the PC side of me (along with some other unsavory experiences with the stereotypical westerners in Japan) baulks at it. I've checked other 'audio tapes' and the experiences are more or less similar. Pimsleur is by no means advanced material. I have 3 levels and at the end of the 2nd level or at 30 hours of lessons (each lesson is 30 minutes long) I could understand maybe 70% of the dialogue. The plus side is that the pronunciation is quite excellent and the dialogue is at a native speaker's pace... which is quite fast even for my experienced beginners tongue (ha ha... how's that for an oxymoron). I'm not sure how close to fluency these 45 hours of audio lessons will get me, but at the very least I should improve my speaking ability while expanding my tenneigo vocabulary. They also cover keigo by lesson 60!

On the written side of things, I'm relying on Heisig's 'Remember the Kanji' which uses a 1:1 kanji to keyword match to teach you how to write a kanji using visual mnemonics. Heisig claims that you can learn how to write about 2000 standard use kanji (quite a number of them are not practical at all but are taught nonetheless) in a month if you pretty much dedicate yourself to the program. Heisig himself claims to have developed this system and learned the kanji within a similar space of time. I attempted the Heisig method over the summer in Japan and managed to stall at about 500 kanji... eventually kanji retention became an unsustainable burden because I was trying to learn 100 kanji a day (yes... I got up to 500 in about a week or two) and it was starting to corrode my abroad experience. During this time I was using a website called Review the Kanji which has a pretty flashcard program that uses Leithner's learning method. The idea behind the method is quite simple. Once you memorize the desired information, you test it at increasingly longer intervals. If you fail, the timing is reset to 0 and you start again from the bottom. This method is useful in that you minimize the amount of 'testing' you have to do in order to maximize the time spent on other things, like learning more stuff. The timings are broken down as follows:

Group 1: 0 Days
Group 2: 3 Days
Group 3: 1 week
Group 4: 2 weeks
Group 5: 1 month
Group 6: 2 months
Group 7: 4 months
Group 8: 8 months

Obviously this follows a somewhat exponential curve on the fucked up increments we use to represent time.
While in Japan I didn't follow the Leithner method, I just studied the entire deck... which is horribly inefficient when the deck grows to 500 cards. Hopefully it'll be better this time around. In an effort to shorten the time it takes to include new kanji into my working Japanese toolset, I plan on starting the learning process on kanji reading. The downside to Heisig is that the keyword matched to a kanji only suggests the meaning of the kanji on its own. There is no reading (which is the difficult part of Japanese kanji as opposed to Chinese hanji which typically only has one pronunciation) and sometimes the readings don't even match a standard definition of the kanji. I figure the sooner I can master these kanji, the smoother the vocabulary learning will be. The thing about Japanese is that there are a fair amount of synonyms which are in-differentiable without kanji. Furthermore, reading large blocks of kana is a bitch. Having kanji delineating words from particles and even foreign derived words from native Japanese words makes communicating in writing so much more convenient and really, complete reliance on kana just doesn't work... but I suppose its better than relying on romaji.

It is my plan to follow a similar course for Cantonese. While I am pretty close to being a native speaker (I've spoken a broken version of Cantonese all my life) it is by no means complete or correct. If you were to throw me out of a plane in Hong Kong I could survive, but I'd be severely limited in understanding. I can't watch the news or listen to the radio because the Cantonese used in these forms of media are out of my reach at the moment. I have several grammatical and vocabulary issues since I learned the basic day to day language as opposed to actually having an education in it... think pre-Civil Rights Movement Black English... then take away the worthless schools they had back then. The trip through Cantonese is meant to serve as a spacer so that I can solidify Japanese before moving on to Mandarin.

Here are the other goals in order of approximate priority:
German
French
Spanish
Hindi (or Pali)

More paperwork

Spent another 7 hours getting this questionnaire done. Paperwork sucks.

With that said... I cut 300 new cards... studied none. My testing stack is going to be large tomorrow =/

Buckwheat hulls make good beds and pillows. If they came in a hypo-allergenic form... that'd be awesome.

But I tested Group 1 cards anyways...
8/29 (27%)

I've forgotten everything I learned over the summer... sigh

And because I couldn't leave it alone... I studied up and took the test again (group 1 is supposed to be 0 days anyways)

Group 1: 28/29 (96%)
Group 2: 31/36 (86%)

Paperwork

Spent the bulk of today doing pre-employment paperwork. There are so many forms to fill out... its nuts. No wonder why the government is so slow at getting work done. The biggest one is going to spill into tomorrow. I haven't had a chance to study the new kanji either =/ Guess i'll have to do it in the morning and test in the evening.

Japanese
Completed Pimsleur 6/7
Group 1: 28/32 (87.5)
Group 2: 13/13 (100%)

WCK

Just got back from a Wing Chun lesson with Robert Cheung (I think... his card doesn't have a last name =/) It's been about a year since I've last trained... it wasn't all that fun getting grilled the way I got grilled... but that's all fine and dandy because he covered a few of my mistakes that i need to fix. It did however make me want to get in touch with my sifu to get counter arguments to certain things.

Japanese:
Completed Pimsleur 5

Habits

This is kind of an extension to the New Year's Resolutions since I'm struggling to actually adhere to them ha ha (go figure =P)

As noted previously, my stumbling upon FSI helped remotivate me to continue my foreign language studies. Although I'm starting again from the beginning, I don't mind too much. I've managed to get a copy of Pimsleur's Japanese 1, and I have the first book of Heisig and a good set of flash cards (I have to print them out though =/) so I'm all set to go. I've also found the blog of a guy in Brazil who did something similar and it seems he managed to get pretty fluent over the course of a year. I hope to be able to do the same so I'll go ahead and emulate his method, which basically involves an online progress report. He started doing it in a forum and eventually moved it to a blog because it was pointless to keep bumping the thread when no one was reading. For the few people that actually read my blog... I can set up a second blog if you so desire because its unlikely I'll write anything meaningful.

Like all my other self-motivated habits, we'll see if this one actually sticks. Who knows... maybe I'll actually write meaningful things along with the progress reports.

Here's where I stand this morning:
Canto:
FSI 1

Japanese:
Completed: Pimsleur 3/Heisig 100
Flash Card Statistics
Group 1: 25/32 (78%)
Group 2: 19/19 (100%)

I think I found something amazing

http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/default.aspx

Old Friends

Bumped into some old school friends today... some of my closest intermediate school friends actually, Steven Ly and Brenda Hao. I'm not sure how we became friends, but I eventually got roped into Steven Ly's posse of friends and as he was he quintessential politico-nerd of the school (being a geek was cool back in those days because of all the gang affiliations) I got caught in a bit of crossfire with the rest of the school. But we were all kids and we were all stuck together so it didn't stop me from making friends at least superficially (it was my intention those days to not get too close to anybody back then). Brenda was... that really cute girl that sat in front of me during social studies. I don't remember much besides that (like what we talked about exactly because we did talk...), but for awhile I looked forward to class just because of her. Guess its not surprising she didn't remember (or recognize) who I was. It's been practically 8 years since I've seen these people anyways.

Work

I got a job offer today. Looks like I'll be headed back to San Diego... yay. The not so hot part about today... I'm still sick...

Race

Now the question arises... was it really that bad back then? At least I never got lynched... How much of it was racism and how much of it was really kids being kids? Kinda hard to say now seeing as I don't remember much anymore.

I do remember being chased around campus by the entire class. I was presumably running away from my problems, likely coming from the fact that I looked different from everyone else. My comrades were... the fat kids, the nerds, the... well she wasn't an orphan but she was living with her grandparents and great grandparents cuz her parents were missing for various reasons, and the other outcasts. But I usually went home on the bus, cuz I lived outside of the housing communities. Things were a little worse there. The children were usually from migrant worker families, a lot of which found their daily bread at the local dairy farms. That's mostly where I got the name 'Chink'. Most of the other nicknames I got were racial in meaning. But was it really any worse than what the other kids were facing? At that school? How about here in Rosemead? Or... the inner city schools? It's hard to say... I managed to escape that reality when I came here.

BTW... the day I learned the word melancholy... I thought it was a flower. It was sunny that day and I was standing in line for lunch because my dad didn't have time to make lunch for me like some of the other kids.

Hail

I love weather... especially when it has gusto.

Andy Pacheco

I was driving to Walmart today when I noticed a friend's name adorning a street sign. It was a name I had forgotten long ago, although I remember his story quite well because it never quite left me. Once I saw it though, I instantly knew... On the way back, I could see how that alleyway overlooked our intermediate school... Roger Temple Intermediate.

I didn't realize they named a street after him, but I guess it makes sense. He was, as far as I recall, much loved by the community and had a promising high school career ahead of him. To me, he was one of my first friends in California, albeit not a close one. Jocks and geeks don't get along THAT well =P but at the very least he wasn't cocky about it. We did share a table in English... along with Annie Lim (I wonder where she is now... She ended up going to another high school for whatever reason) and together we did the little activities that 8th graders did in English class. I'll leave the reminiscing there.

Anyways... here's my New Years resolution (It's kinda coincidental that the posting conditions are somewhat similar...):
Cut my sleeping hours (9+ each day is ridiculous) and push my wake-up time back to emulate working conditions, which likely means waking up at 6am.
Study goals: Week-long foreign language, weekday GRE and self-improvement
Physical: Follow a 6x/wk workout regimen, Weeklong taiko/fue regimen
Raise my weight by 10lbs and keep it there
Re-instate 3 meal days.
Start using my daily planner more.

Sickness

Mom's down with Bronchitis (apparently...) Dad's sick too... and the soft tissue in my sinuses have been irritated by my demonstrated use of my inhaler... this isn't looking good.

Not to mention I wanna head down to SD today. =/

It also doesn't help that I got something like 2.5 hours of sleep last night.

Interesting Sidenote

It seems Japanese has crept into my subconscious because it definitely occurred in my dream last night. Did the 5am wakeup thing and was thinking about getting up to write about it but the cold was a good demotivator. I forget now who it was that I was talking to, but I realized something else after the Japanese epiphany... I don't recall ever having dreamt in Cantonese. Of course this includes people I normally speak Cantonese to, ie. my parents. It seems most of my family is excluded as well. But that might be because of a lapse in memory on my part.

Balance

My coffee grinder and coffee came in on the same day a few days ago. Let me say, hand grinding coffee in the morning is pretty awesome.

Now on to more mundane matters. I had my first interview the other day. Everything seems to have gone well, I'll know for sure in a month or so (its a long wait =/). I'm pretty excited about this company, its got a lot going for it. Something became pretty apparent while I balancing the budget and its has something to do with entering the workforce and playing the retirement game. Despite a having fairly competitive engineering salary a problem arises and its this: after everything, I'll still be as poor as when I was in school. How can that be you might ask? Its actually quite simple... it takes a lot out of your paycheck to take full advantage of the retirement vehicles that are available to you. Take 401k for instance, the industry average at this point seems to be a 3% match for every 6% that you contribute to your 401k. So say you earn a nice round 50k a year (no this is not all that competitive but whatever), you have to put 3k in your 401k and you're company will give you another 1.5k. Which is a nice little bonus for retirement, but that'll leave you with 47k of taxable income and lands you in the 25% tax bracket if you file as a single. Living in California means you'll be taxed about 35% plus whatever deductions made towards social security and other things, so in the end you probably lose about 40% of that 47k to the government leaving you 28k. That's 2350 per month (+/- some). Then there's car payments, rent, utilities, and food. If we put all that at a modest 1850 (and I'm talking about fairly modest living) that leaves you with about 500 a month.

Sure that's a pretty nice allowance each month... but if you take full advantage of stuff like the Roth IRA, that 500 becomes a little less than 80/mo and we still haven't talked about health insurance. And then it occurred to me... what if I were a Mormon? or part of some other religion that takes a certain chunk out of your salary each year. To my knowledge, the Church of Latter Day Saints helps itself to 10% of your annual income. Before or after tax I don't know... but that's a pretty hefty chunk. So how do they do it? The church most likely has some sort of incentive, such as its own little retirement package, similar to an IRA or the fed's TSP. If its like that, being a Mormon might be a pretty sweet financial deal (not to mention its implications of faith). Another note on retirement is this... I can see why kids my age don't care much for these retirement vehicles as it erodes your monthly allowance by a lot and retirement just seems to damn far away. Granted, I have a harder time understanding why more young people don't take up their 401k, as it essentially means more money, and it should stay with you no matter what company you go to (given that you follow the proper protocols). Unless, of course, the plan just plain sucks.

Of course, all my calculations are pretty generalized with a ton of rounding. Budgeting in this way has typically kept me out of trouble as it gives me a lot of wiggle room with my expenditures. One thing I got over other people though... after Japan, I've become pretty infatuated with living the ascetic lifestyle. A lot of this has to do with the opportunity to house with an artist for a few days, and then the necessity to live simple on a short 6 month stint in an island nation. However, I'll have to balance it with the scholarly lifestyle as well since grad school I intend to attend grad school at some point--I gotta keep myself sharp... My final conclusion in this rather convoluted post is this: I gotta give mad props to the parental units, because things get all out of whack when you throw in a bunch of kids.

Speaking of which... Freakonomics (I realize this book was published ages ago)... has given me a solid foundation of data in support of being pro-choice... and it makes a lot of sense despite some of the 'distasteful' thought experiments one has to go through to make such a strong argument.

Ghost

I guess I'll include this little anecdote since I write about my dreams from time to time.

It all started with talk about what the newly deceased do during the mourning period, especially around burial time. The adults (aka. aunts and uncles) were discussing things that needed to be done, superstitions such as making sure the rice storage was full so that grandma would be comforted that her survivors would be well fed, and the tv turning on randomly at night so that she could watch tv just like she had done while living, which meant that we should go to bed early. There were also issues about going vegetarian during this mourning period and that probably has to do with the Buddhist notion that the spirits of the animals you consume will return to consume you in your passing. Whether Buddhism believes in spirits is not really the question, as the word can be broadened to encompass the guilt of taking the life of a conscious living being. The idea behind burial rites, atleast as far as Buddhism goes (and atleast as far as my knowledge and beliefs go) is that it is done to guide the newly departed into the afterlife and hopefully into a better position to achieve enlightenment. As such, the living are to offer prayers, and since I have nothing better to do during the sutras, make myself as buddha-like as possible to set a guidepost for the dead. Lastly (or firstly), the rites are for the living, so that we know her affairs are squared away and as a time of healing and to allow the grief to flow.

Anyways, one little aside was when I changed turned on the wii because I was really bored, and left the room to go retrieve the remotes that were being charged elsewhere. My uncle freaked out a bit when he noticed that the game had been turned on and there was no one in the room.

Fast-forward to nightfall. Earlier I had partaken in breaking the vegetarian diet with a few of my cousins, and was chatting with the cousin I was sharing that side of the house with (houses in Arizona are so huge now that one normal sized family can't live in it). We stayed up late, and when we decided to turn in, my cousin claims the tv was turned off before he could hit the power button on the remote. I figured he was trying to screw with my mind so I paid it no attention.

One of the few things that got me emotional at the funeral service was the thought that nature had finally righted itself. While I'm sure its a rather common occurrence, its not really right for a parent to outlive their children, which was the case for my mother. So the thought that my grandmother would finally be joining my mother in the afterlife hit me harder than actually losing my grandmother. Death is a fact of life, it happens sooner or later, expectedly and unexpectedly. If there were to be something more certain than change, it would be that our time on this planet is limited. Most of you know that I am a pretty logical person (with a healthy spread of irrational streaks), and since I've been living with the shadow of a departed loved one since a relatively early age, I try not to take interactions with people for granted, especially when it comes to the elderly. Granted I usually don't have much to say since I am not on good talking terms with any of my grandparents (I just don't see them often enough). So when it comes time for the rights of death to be played, I can't find it in me to become that emotional because I know that their memory will always live on in their survivors and that death can bring about great release from the suffering and burden of living.

So it was with these kinds of thoughts that I drifted off to sleep. I forget what I was dreaming about, but it was a pretty vivid one, as I had been dreaming pretty often as of late. In retrospect, I think it was so vivid there was actually dialogue (which doesn't happen very often in my dreams). After some time though, my attention was brought back to my current state. Whether I was awake or not I'm not sure, it was the kind of half conscious awareness of my surroundings that I sometimes get while I'm sleeping. What happened afterwards was creepy/scary because I felt the bed move and then the area right over my abdomen (stomach) get cold. It was the type of moist cold that I guess people might associate with the living dead... ha ha. I tried to bear it as long as possible because for one thing, I was scared, and the other thing if it was grandma I just wanted her to do whatever she needed to do and move on. My more egocentric side thought about how I might remind her of her daughter. I don't know. The feeling got so creepy after awhile though that I started struggling and after some effort, I forced myself fully awake and then there was nothing. It was, seemingly, all a dream. Strangely enough though, I heard my cousin moaning from the next room, as if he were having a nightmare too. I checked the time, 4:40 ish after making up the time difference from California time. Those of you that know, 4 is synonymous with death in Chinese. I'm pretty sure I smirked in the dark and thought... That's interesting... and went back to sleep.

I worked up the courage to ask my cousin later that day to see if he had a nightmare that night. He didn't remember anything. We performed my grandmother's last rites that day.

The Afermath

Sigh... I need to read over the stuff I put up. The first paragraph in my last post needs a period in there somewhere.

Got back to the California on Friday after spending a week in Arizona. Met up with a family that I have not known for a large part of my life. Time can only tell if that trend will hold. Like my step-mom's family though, the cousins are all growing up... it's kind of funny that I'm part of the old blood that runs in Arizona--a relic of the past that somehow pops up from time to time. Apparently my family was the first one there and we ended up bringing a bunch of people over. After awhile a number of other families moved in after we moved out. It'd be good if I saw parts of that family at least once every few years instead of every half decade or so.

Apparently, I'm an uncle now... about as close to one as I'll ever get. Well... that's not really true though, there is one person that can make that situation different, but I don't think she's going to have a baby anytime soon. For those of you wondering who I'm talking about, its my one and only cousin on my father's side.

I supposed I should write something coherent on the topic of family and/or mortality, but I think I'll pass. I've sort of lost the desire to do that right now.

One a different note, I have my first interview on Tuesday... and I've put up another batch of photos.

http://asayake.photopians.org/v/Japan2008/JYPE/20080730Nikko/

2009

My grandmother passed away yesterday. In a way, my trip to Arizona hints that the inner workings of the universe are not a bunch of random occurrences thrown together, rather, they happen for specific reasons and because certain links are present, for which the enrichment of our lives can be seen as... at the very least, a side result.

The actual trip was a result of a desire to go visit my grandmother as I hadn't seen her a few years. After my grandfather passed away Veteran's day of 2003, I had been reunited with my mother's family; a family that I thought had more or less excommunicated me and had not seen for a period of nearly 10 years. After handing out my number (and not getting any in return as my mother's family is huge), I never heard from them again. At some point a year or two down the line, we visited my grandmother who had been bouncing around from family member to family member and she seemed to be doing fine. Several years pass and I graduate college (as noted in my previous posts), and finding and visiting the grandmother seemed like a good idea with me being unemployed and all. While I had wanted to go during December of 2008, my parents and I set January 3, 2009 to be the day we were to go to meet their rather busy schedules. Due to yet another scheduling conflict the date got pushed back to New Years. At one point after Christmas, I wasn't even sure if we were going to go as my family was undergoing some domestic problems and we just happened to solve them in time to make the trip happen.

New Years Eve, I got out of a party early so I could catch an hour or two of sleep before making the journey back to what I like to call the 'homeland' as Arizona holds a rather special place in my heart. I gave a short prayer to Buddha at 2:30am, and we set out. We did the usual. Visited my old home, which is now an empty lot in a rural town full of ridiculously large yards. Our neighbor and close family friend had become doting grandparents over the course of 2008. We visited my mother. My Aunt and Uncle were healthy... and as we were closing our extended lunch (we were supposed to finish by 2pm, but lunch lasted till 4pm), my mom and I figured we didn't have enough time to find my grandmother as the day had passed, and we needed to be back in California that day. The moment we step out of the restaurant to part with my aunt and uncle, my dad gets the phone call. She had passed away early that morning, at about 2am (remember when this whole journey began?).

At this point I was really fatigued from all the driving. There had been a nasty car accident right by my house that morning, and dealing with Arizona traffic and unfamiliar terrain, along with my dad was a taxing event. We dropped back by my aunt and uncle's place, as my parents were both wearing red in celebration for New Years before heading to my mother's family's place. There were a few notable emotions amongst the emotional torrent that strikes a person when someone dies. The first was regret. Regret that I had failed as a grandson. I didn't quite feel this when my grandfather passed away as at that time my view on that side of the family was different. My indifference to his passing was a result of ignorance or a sort of denial that I was part of their family. After that event, I had made the decision that his surviving wife should see her grandson from time to time, even if that grandson was one among many grandchildren, and one who's connection to the family had largely been neglected for at the time of this writing, about 15 years (to be fair, I am probably the grandchild that most resembles her daughter as I got my looks from my mother, who I assume got her looks from her father as we look nothing like my grandmother). What hurt the most was that I had come a day too late. The second notable emotion was a small flame of anger; anger at the family for not encouraging me to visit her sooner as a sign that she might die at any time. In retrospect this anger was unjustified as I had assumed her cause of death was illness, which it was not.

Needless to say, this was the most emotional I've been since... I don't know when to be honest. Not to sound heartless or anything, but I was not as emotional about the passing of my grandfather in 2007. He was a great man whom I deeply respect and love, but I did not feel the need to feel regret or grief about this loss. He had lived a fulfilled and for the most part happy life and I had taken every effort to be a part of that, and while his passing was certainly sad and a loss to this part of my family, one that my generation of cousins have not really felt before, I could only appreciate that he had died naturally in a dignified manner with little suffering on everyone's part. In his case, he lives on in his survivors, ie. me. Unfortunately, that is not really the case for my late grandmother.

Thinking about it, I no longer have a direct blood connection to this family, and in that sense, this may be my last opportunity to reclaim my position as the 4th grandson. As small a position as it may be, it is the symbol of my heritage, my root as a human being. Perhaps in reclaiming this part of my identity, I can revive more memories of my ancestry, mostly, memories of my dearly departed mother. I leave for Arizona on the 4th.


Moving on to a lighter note... I guess I'll put up my New Years Resolution... we'll see how much of it I can keep.

Exercise more
Meditate more
Eat better
Play more Taiko
Get a job
Get a girlfriend
Study more
Write more

I'll refine them later... =P