Chicks dig scars

So... once again, I find myself putting off blogging again and again, waiting until I can write that perfect blog post that at once wittily conveys deep insights about life while providing thoughtful commentary on subtle differences between Japanese and Western culture. And has cool pictures.

And once again, I find myself without the time to produce such a masterpiece, and thus my blog sits unbloggen.

I think the only way to start reversing this trend is to write lots of short, quick notes and intersperse them with the aforementioned masterpieces when time allows. Or when time is forced against its will to allow. Usually involving lack of sleep. :)

Somehow inspiration to do this seems to come only when I have Japanese homework to do for the following morning. If the human race could only learn to harness the energy of procrastination and use it to do good, we would be well along the road to world peace and universal prosperity.

So, anyway, this last month had a lot of major milestones for me. One biggie was that I paid off my credit card debt that I had accumulated over two years of looking for a robotics job in Boston! That was pretty sweet.

And I got to relive that feeling of accomplishment a second time, when I got my next credit card statement with a $4 finance charge based on my average daily blah blah blah, and I paid it off once and for all, once again.

Another big milestone: My first show with Utaurara 6! We performed up in Kita-Senri, and even though we only had time to perform 2.5 songs (there were some 40 groups performing at this event!), we were received well. Now I have a big pile of sheet music to learn for this weekend, when we're going to give a little informal show here at Takanohara for some of my friends from work.

Next milestone: Not final yet, but I'm planning to submit my first academic paper this coming week. It was supposed to be two days ago, but the deadline was extended. It's not such a big conference, but this could be the first step down a new career path for me, as the engineer within me and the scientist within me wrestle for domination.

Other... hmm, I wouldn't necessarily call them milestones, but a few of my good friends left over this past month or so. Linda went home to Canada about a month ago, and David and Olivier went back to France a couple days ago. I miss them all, but especially Linda - she'd been here since I first got here a year ago, and she was sort of the last one to leave from that first circle of friends I had. She gave me a bunch of her stuff while she was moving, and it's mostly still strewn about my apartment... gotta clean up and reorganize at some point. In fact, I ate some of her umeboshi tonight for dinner. I think I ate like 4 of them, so I'm REALLY thirsty right now! I estimate that it would take approximately six umeboshi to osmose all the water out of the dead sea.

Um, what else... working on a new arrangement for Osakapella. Not sure how it's going to turn out, but it's like the blogging thing: lots of imperfect arrangements is a surer path to improvement than saving it all up for one masterpiece. Wait, I think that's the case with academic papers too. And language learning (how many Japanese people have said, "Yes, I've been studying English for 11 years, but I'm not going to speak a word until I've learned it perfectly?"). You know, sometimes I wish I could just sit down and distill out the 86 Universal Patterns in life, which would be generally applicable to everything, and then just sit back and surf out the rest of my years, knowing I had figured everything out.

Maybe I should write a book.

Then again, maybe claiming at this point that I have everything figured out is a BIT premature, considering the number of expired things in my fridge that I have to keep throwing away. I sometimes feel like I throw away more stuff than I buy, a feeling I keep repressed due to my faith in the law of conservation of mass... but yet... it's as if it's ... reproducing..? euuu... maybe something's MUCH more expired than I thought!

What else did I do this month? Hmm... camping trip at Biwa-ko. We went to the same place we went to last September. It was awesome, except that the water was freezing. Didn't stop me from swimming though. I need to live it up before the suffocating heat of summer lowers its hazy and humid fist to crush the life out of me for the next 5 months. Already I've had a couple days this year with Japanese girls nearby shivering in their long-sleeved shirts while I'm dripping sweat in a T-shirt. Sometimes it really sucks that my body temperature's set point seems to be a few degrees off from everyone around me. And sometimes... it doesn't suck at all. :) I relished the moment, frolicking about with a polar bear's glee while my evolutionarily disadvantaged friends huddled together for warmth under their furs on the shoreline.

But seasons change, and Tsuyu has come. The Rainy Season. In fact, I feel inclined to quote a haiku from one of my wonderful students at Toyonaka. I believe it went something like this:

The rainy season
We have a lot of water
The rainy season

Biking to work this morning, I started noticing how little traction I had as my bike started skidding every time I tried to stop. Slowing down to a cautious roll... (bikes can't crawl... what's the word I'm looking for here?) I was crossing a pedestrian overpass and working my way down a winding ramp, when suddenly my bike shot out from under me and I found myself in the air, then skidding along the ground, trying to decide in real time which body parts and accessories I wanted to shred, and which to try to preserve. Head... that's a good one to save. Might need it for soccer sometime. Knee... um, tough one - gotta go with that or the arm. Guess I'll sacrifice some arm to keep the legs working... I can always bike with no hands. Can't really bike with no legs. Ok, arm down. Backpack... um, I guess I'll kinda roll halfway onto my side.. ok, time's up. BANG!

Damage report: big scrape down my lower arm by the elbow and a smaller one at the heel of my palm. Minor external knee damage... a little bit of a limp, but I mostly saved the knee, I think. Bike - a few things out of alignment. iPod, fortunately safe. Plastic case holding my Japanese homework, smashed into shards. Blood running all down my arm. No serious wounds as far as I can tell, but visually quite colorful.

The secretaries in my lab came running as soon as I got into work, and they patched me up with the help of a sketchy, ancient first-aid kit (expiration date on the antibiotic ointment: 1997...? puts my fridge to shame! And why are there calcium supplements in there?) and soon I was back up and running in the frantic pace of life on the edge.

Speaking of which, I'd better get back to my homework. :P