on second thought

A word about the girlfriend bit earlier... after sleeping on it (ugh... that knot is telling me its still there)... figure having someone nag to me about overworking should be a job left to my parents. As for the massage bit... eh... its hit or miss with most people, I'd rather have guaranteed results with a professional. The other stuff (whatever it is =P) is more important anyways.

My sensei asked me a good question the other day. What's the difference between girlfriend and friend? I'm about as socially inept as he is... so I couldn't really answer. Where does this stem from you ask? We were all in a drunken stupor, and he was commenting that on my trip last week how my photos just so happened to be filled with girls (3 to be exact) coming to the conclusion that I am "mote mote" or "popular with the ladies". It was all in good fun, but if its true... obviously I'm look but don't touch material =P.

more computer woes

ugh.... laptop lcdscreen went haywire for good this morning

took the thing apart but it seems some connections in the actual lcd array itself are starting to go bad... sigh...

i just have to bear with it for about 3 more weeks. Unless I can pilfer a monitor from the lab... don't expect me to work on my photos in this condition.

now its time to find food... at 11pm. This is why I hate troubleshooting computers... my diet schedule gets out of whack. This is also why I need a girlfriend... so she can tell me when to eat when I concentrate too hard on a project. Also... so she can give me massages... cuz I carry my stress in two very specific locations in my back and they're kinda hard to reach on my own.

OMG

Wow... I've just been cleaning up for my pre-inspection, but like everything in life, due dates all come in unison so that I have to rush to try to meet all the deadlines. Aside from using the precious time I have left here to travel around Japan, I've also been prepping to leave. While I've still got a little less than a month here, I am forced to move out of my room in a few weeks starting with tomorrow's pre-inspection.

Meanwhile, my department (at UCSD) accounts are closing so I have to move out of that too. Its eerie. I've had this email account for the last 5 years, and while I write this listening to James Blunt, I can remember the days when I was living with John trying different configurations to make the most out of the shitty services we had back in those days. To the kids that got the sudden boost in space... make use of it... you can actually put up a half decent website or use it as a digital locker as opposed to the measly 20 megs that we had.

Wow... I suppose this really wraps up my UCSD experience. Losing the use of my UCSD email and having it relegated to mail forwarding only really hits home in an unexpected way. all that's left is to pray that all my paperwork goes through so I get my diploma come November, else I'll get stuck in this non-graduated limbo which will be a punk to get out of.

Sigh... Now comes the hard part... where to go.

Blogging from my browser

Checking out some new software and updating myself technologically. i've been running off of html based apps for the past few months... maybe this will help me blog a bit more.

Language

I just realized something... listening to the kids outside my window speak to each other in Japanese...

it must have been hard for my dad watching me (the only person he lived with for a long while) grow up speaking a foreign language... That's not something that had really ever occurred to me... seeing it from the other side. I mean, I always got the whole.. you should speak more Chinese because you are Chinese argument but that never really meant much to me. Perhaps it would have been more powerful to say... you should speak more Chinese so we can communicate our experiences, our history, our wisdom, legacy, heritage, culture... etc etc etc... and other complex things that can't be conveyed by half-assed attempts at breaking down a language barrier...

Sigh... it only took me a little more than a decade to figure this out.

Heisig

Just discovered a cool way to learn kanji. The goal of the course is to teach how to simply write kanji and associate it with a simple meaning. It is not intended to teach readings and stuff which is a much more complicated task... I'm excited about it as I feel like I might be able to learn how to write some 2000 kanji in about a month (I'm banking on 3 weeks... 100 kanji per day...) if I put the work into it...

Complications

heh... where should I start?

I've been in Sendai for a little over a month now and while I've more or less settled in I still feel like I don't quite fit in from time to time. Its a relatively common feeling for me, especially when I'm feeling hungry... but really,I'm not sure why it happens, but it does and it sucks... This most recent bout mostly had to do with not knowing what the heck I should be doing for the 6.5 units and some 20 or so weekly hours that accounts for my research, but after talking to my PI, things have settled down a bit. Apparently I've been placed into a project, the head of which is currently hiring postdocs in China...

My lack of posting these past 11 days has had more to do with constantly trying to adjust to my surrounding, and strengthening my resolve to improve. Things got a little hairy though when I spilled tea on my laptop and subsequently rendered it unusable... and irreparable while in Japan. In otherwords, I'll be without a computer at home in the long term for the first time in about 17 years. For some people, this might not be such a big deal, but it'll be interesting for a guy who usually spent the vast majority of his free time in front of his screen in the past. I have confidence that the experience will improve my life somehow as I have on many an occasion felt the need to throw my computer out the window but not having the courage to do so. The transition to a life where the hikkikomori lifestyle has been rendered virtually impossible (in a way, I was a weekend hikkikomori) hasn't been that easy so far. The general grumpiness associated with feeling too exposed to the world has more or less hit full force about now, except this time I don't have the ability or the social backstrength to withdraw into seclusion, with either my computer or a friend or two to keep me company. The outcome should be rather interesting...

There have been other complications, but I'll go ahead and call it a night for now, else I start sounding too whiny...

PS. your best bet to contact me now... email. if you want to feel like you're are able to talk to me anytime, please ask for the email associated with my cell.