A Very Random Day

Ok, it's been a long day, so I'll try to keep this short. However, let me preface this with my dream from last night:

I'll leave out the details, but I was afflicted with a bizarre condition (hazardous waste was involved) in which my hair would instantly grow out when cut, like a hydra. Except, only on the sides and back. The top grew like normal hair. So every time I would go to get my hair cut, they would buzz off the sides and trim the top a little. Then the sides grew out into a big bushy 'fro again within a day, and I would go back to get it cut again, developing a sort of artificial bald spot on top while never being able to escape the wild bushiness of my hair.

Anyway, waking up from that odd nightmare is how my day started. Now back to reality:

Today started out with two unexpected structural failures.

First, while I was dashing for the train (not very hard, mind you... just a light trot) my bag experienced a sudden double-failure, and I found myself carrying only a shoulder strap, with no bag attached. Now what are the chances that the seams would rip (yes, the seams... the buckles themselves didn't fail) on both sides simultaneously? Normally you would expect one side to fail before the other and the strap to go down with the bag. Here are the remains:



Fortunately nothing inside was damaged.

The next failure, this one even more bizarre, occurred sometime between boarding the bus and arriving at work. It seems that the tip of my umbrella somehow snagged on my shoelace, pulled out some threads, and unraveled it while I was walking. What? Here, let me show you:



I've never seen anything like that happen in my life.

In Japanese class, I got all the really hard kanji right, and I got all the really simple beginner stuff wrong. I blame it on the fact that today is Friday. Actually I blame everything on that.

The rest of the day was spent uneventfully programming. My current project is coming along nicely, and the interface I'm building is already starting to look cool.

The evening was spent at a kick-ass cool a cappella concert. It was a vocal band called "Naturally7" who use a lot of looping and effects, but end up producing an amazing R&B sound comparable to or cooler than similar bands that use instruments. It was a rockin' show.

Afterwards, Kern and I headed home while the more hardcore fans stayed to get autographs. I found myself walking into two convenience stores on the way home, searching for ... something. I felt somehow unsatisfied. Milk. Milk was on my list, so I grabbed a liter. I wandered around for another five minutes or so as I often do in life, searching... searching... not sure what it is I'm looking for. Finally I bought the milk and headed home, still feeling like I wanted something. The thing is, everything in the convenience store is either high-calorie, expensive, or porn. Or, I suppose, two of the three possible two-item combinations of the above list. Granted, things exist which are pornographic and high-calorie, but they don't sell them at Lawson. ;)

I took my milk up to the cashier, and I was somewhat distracted by the strange woman outside the door squatting and carefully making a dogfood pizza on the ground (with no dog in sight). As the cashier processed my carton of milk, by attention was torn between watching the woman outside and eyeing the little chocolates by the register. Cheese flavored. Cheese-flavored chocolate.. I tried to envision that. I like cheese, and I like chocolate, but ... um... is that actually good?

The cashier must have seen me eyeing the chocolates, because he asked me, "Is this the only thing you want to buy?" in a more inquisitive tone than the mindless confirmation that is usually spoken just as a formality. I asked him, "do these chocolate cheese things actually taste good?" and he sort of nervously replied, "um... I ... think they do...?".

Unconvincing.

"So would you like to buy one?"

"No, sorry ... I'm too scared."

On my way home I pondered my search for the elusive source of satisfaction which was not illegal, immoral, fattening, or expensive. By the time the elevator hit 23, I realized that there was in fact, at least one item which would fit that description. Before I could go grab it, though, I opened my bag from the convenience store.

The dude put a straw in there. Did he really expect me to drink an entire liter of milk from the carton with a straw? O_o



I laughed out loud.

Anyway, before sitting down to write this post, I took a few minutes out to enjoy the solution I came up with to the aforementioned satisfaction problem. I haven't pulled this out in months, but sometimes it feels really good to have your back mercilessly jackhammered. Especially at the end of a long week.



Have a good weekend, everyone.

Greatest Band of All Time

Thanks to the subtle suggestions of the shuffle function on my iPod, I was reminded again today that, considering all the genres of music that have and will be developed across all the history and future of humanity, and all the talented composers and performers who have ever lived or ever will, that there is a very high possibility that the greatest band of all time is, in fact, Rip Slyme.

T3A - Hisashiburi!

Yeah, it's been a while since I've done one of these...

#3 - Linkin Park.
Whenever things settle into a rut and life feels like it's starting to stagnate, leave it up to the shuffle function on my iPod to give life that caffeine kick it needs! While I was sitting on the train studying kanji, my iPod fished out some Linkin Park from the unfathomable gigabytes of eternity.

I remember being skeptical the first time I listened to them... I'm really not a fan of intentional misspellings. (This was the same reason I was slow to become a Def Leppard fan, although they later became one of my favorite bands.) Anyway, they quickly grew on me. The crisp sound engineering and delicate blend of light, warm, surrounding sounds with cold, hard, thrashing guitars really does it for me. They're kind of like a younger version of Faith No More.

Rejuvenated by this rediscovery, I dialed them up on my iPod after that and listened to them for most of the rest of the day. :)

#2 - Warm summer breeze.
Granted, the air has been getting warmer with the coming of "spring" (actually this is what most people from nations in temperate climates would call summer. As the Japanese are fond of saying, "Japan has four seasons". What they neglect to mention is that these seasons are not winter, spring, summer, and fall, but in fact dreary-and-miserable, summer, unbearable-humid-roasting-inferno, and summer-again-but-with-colorful-leaves-this-time.)

Anyway, the change I noticed today was that the wind on my knuckles as I biked home from the station was quite warm. Soothing. Enveloping. Like taking a long, warm shower after a day of hiking in the cold rain. Like rubbing warm lotion into dry, cracked skin. It was a wonderful feeling. A delicate balance point between the seasons, and I'm sure it won't last for long.

#1 - Anonymous encounter.
This morning on my commute to work, I looked up from my studying while we were stopped at one of the stations I never get off at. A troop of elementary school kids was walking along the platform, identical little yellow hats bobbing past the window.

I watched their faces as they passed, trying to imagine them later in life. Trying to read their thoughts, their opinions of Japanese society. Although a few were joking around and laughing, most of them had dull, uninspired looks in their eyes. They only looked forward and down, making sure they stayed in their proper place in line.

That seemed kind of sad to me, but about 3/4 of the way down the line, one little girl seemed different. She was bouncing along with a sparkle in her eye, and she was looking at the things around her. As the line shuffled past my car, she looked in and saw me. The expression on her face transformed instantly. She was so excited! A real, live foreigner! Our eyes met for a moment through the train window... the glance we exchanged was like a little secret between the two of us, and we smiled at each other for a moment. Then the line began to move again, and just before she was swept away from the window, she mouthed a word to me through the glass.

"Hello."

And she was gone.

Stillness

[Higashi-Osaka and Ikoma Mountain, just before sunrise]

I did a little bit of shopping after work today, (mostly due to the shocking fact I discovered yesterday that I was out of soy sauce!) and somehow I ended up catching a gap between trains after I finished. Normally I don't have to wait more than five minutes for a train, but right now I've been sitting here for about fifteen. The strange feeling of patience that you only see at the end of the line.

And yet... I have nothing to do here but wait. I finished dinner, finished shopping, and replied to a few of the outstanding mails on my phone. I guess I could dive into my kanji studying like I usually do, but it just isn't the same when the train isn't in motion. Maybe that's a bad thing. If I get too used to this, I won't be able to take the Japanese proficiency exam if I'm not in a moving vehicle...

Such a strange feeling, stillness... The train is just sitting here, a muted chorus of hums and hisses coming from above, below and all around me as its circulatory and respiratory systems idle away. Train conductors walk up and down the cars picking up the occasional forgotten wrapper or manga book left by the passengers on the way out here.

Work has been pretty intense lately. Intense in an off-season kind of way. The kind of intensity when you're struggling to put your head around a problem and learn what the last people did. Not the kind of heads-down, sprint-to-the-end intensity that characterized the last couple months. It's pretty exciting for me that I'm working with a team now. At the same time it's exhausting to sit through hours of meetings held completely in Japanese. My comprehension kind of saturates and then my mind just sits back and waves the words on through with a smile.

Been studying like mad lately, too. I realized last week that I'm going to have to cover three kanji lessons a week in order to be ready for the Level One test this December. That's a pretty ambitious goal, but I think I can keep it up as long as I study on the train every morning and most evenings. Feels like binge-and-purge education, but what else would be appropriate for this country?

My personal life has also been pretty eventful lately. The big news is that KIP and his friend Ryan came to visit over the weekend! It was sooo awesome to see him. We rented bicycles on Saturday and biked around Kyoto with Niklas and Keiko (yes... the girlfriend I've been hinting about for a couple of months), taking in some of the major sights and seeing some of the little back streets as well.


[Traffic hazards in Kyoto - Photo by Niklas]

Let me just say that this is THE best way to do Kyoto. I've ridden the crowded, stuffy buses, I've walked enormous distances, and I've taken overpriced taxis... but there is nothing like tearing across the city on a rented bike for 300 yen on a beautiful spring day!


[A beautiful afternoon at Kinkaku-ji - Photo by Niklas]

Although I have lots of photos from this trip, I won't have time to crop, resize, and upload them for a while. Fortunately, however, Niklas is a great photographer and is also diligent about uploading his pictures!

You can see his pics from our trip on his Flickr page, which has a cool slideshow function.

Yoriai 2007

I had a show on Sunday with Urara 6. We sang three songs at an annual event in Kita-Senri called Yoriai, where a huge number of amateur a cappella groups gather to perform, network, and enjoy the spring air.



Our performance was well-received. Our set was much tighter than it was last year, and I think we delivered a lot more energy than most of the Japanese groups. And really, it's hard to ignore the music and talk with your friends when Kern is rockin' the house with "Signed, Sealed, Delivered".



I've still got a lot of work to do on my solo, and we have some new songs in the pipeline for our upcoming summer concerts. On top of that, both Urara 6 and Osakapella are in the middle of recording projects, and I recently started taking voice lessons! Busy busy busy.



It sounds like we'll be taking some time off from performing after our summer shows are over, though, so things won't continue at this intensity forever. We need to make some time off for group bonding, I think. Personally I'm recommending paintball, although the ladies don't seem to be quite so enthusiastic about that suggestion. ;)

Roman Holiday

Well, not so much of a holiday as a business trip, but it was unquestionably Roman.

Last week I went to Rome for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (known as ICRA to those who have reason to abbreviate it). This was my first international conference, and only my second time ever to Europe, so it was pretty exciting for many reasons.



I can't possibly summarize my whole trip in one post, but I would be remiss to post nothing until I have time to write it all up. Here are a few snapshots from the trip, and I will hopefully have time to fill in the details later.

First, here's a shot of me with my snazzy new suit and cool new camera! I wasn't sure what to wear to this conference, and all my coworkers assured me that they'd be wearing suits. Later I found out that all the Japanese people wear suits, to make up for their bad English. (Honestly, most of the Japanese presentations were pretty painful to sit through. I feel really bad for them... even though I sort of understand the reasons for it, it's still unbearable to watch somebody standing up there awkwardly struggling to read his own powerpoint slides.) Among the non-Japanese, the dress code varied wildly, from suit-and-tie to old jeans. One dude was even wearing a Whitesnake t-shirt!! :)



By the way, the camera's pretty cool too... 10x optical zoom among other features, and I love the blue case!

One of the things I really enjoyed was wandering down random streets on the way from my hotel to the conference. I spent the evenings walking around the city, too. Here's a shot of one of the old cobblestone streets (kinda rough on the feet after walking on them for a few kilos).



And everywhere you go in the city, there are statues of gods and angels watching over you. It's like the entire city is one big open-air art museum. Absolutely overwhelming.



I'll try to process and post some of my night photos over the next few days. There's so much to write about. I've got an a cappella rehearsal tomorrow at my apartment, though, so I need to clean the place up a bit tonight. :)

The city is still awake.

The city is still awake.

I came home a little early today, having found myself dashing for my last bus home every other night this week. I've been working on a paper, which has been "almost done" for quite some time now. Funny, that is. The percentage of its lifespan that a project spends in the "almost done" phase probably exceeds that of any other phase. Except, of course the "yeah, I've really been meaning to get started on that" phase.

Dutifully typing away on my laptop as my train home rocketed through tunnel after tunnel, it didn't occur to me that she would still be awake when I got home.

But she is. From the vantage point of my 23rd-floor apartment, I can see her in all her beauty...

A gemstone. A vast, multifaceted blanket of brilliance. The phrase "a thousand points of light" comes to mind, and then a part of my memory wags its finger at the thought, telling it to go away because of some vague association with President Bush... what was that all about anyway? Another fleeting and forgotten catch-phrase for a fleeting and forgotten catch-thought, which probably changed the world in some irreparable way before it was forgotten.

The cars on the expressway below add their headlights and taillights to the spectacular cityscape. I was going to say dazzling, but really it isn't. The city exhibits her brilliance in many ways -- sometimes dazzling like the brilliance of a diamond, but sometimes deeply and subtly, like the mysterious cloudy lustre of the opal.

Off in the distance, islands of flashing strobes and neon lights mark pachinko parlors, a mating call to all the burnt-out businessmen who crave that kind of mindless sensory stimulation.

Below me, the lonely river plays its games, catching the orange light of a corner streetlamp and turning it into a shower of glimmering sparks floating on the water, seen by no one but me.

Like a very old string of Christmas lights with several odd-colored replacement bulbs, the occasional blue, red, or green light can be seen, but for the most part... white.

Oh, what amazing things the city does with white. In her hands, white is not a color but an entire medium for expression. The orderly yellow-white lights on that building there, with the soft shadows, bespeak a comfortable, structured, nurturing life for the families who live there. Off to the right, powerful industrial lamps give off a cold, harsh, impersonal, stern light suitable for doing construction work or loading heavy things onto trucks. Down and to the left, a dim, orange-tinted white glow rises up from obscured streetlamps, lighting an old and seldom-used street. Off in the distance, on the side of the mountain, the white lights carry a slight yellowish cast, a faraway field of pinpoints that feels like it came out of a fairy tale.

By the time I've written this, the city has already yawned a few times and is fluffing its pillow. Every time I look, more lights have gone out. Soon the traffic lights will switch to flashing red, and only taxis will be seen crawling the streets.

And the amazing thing is, the individuals who comprise this enormous, living, breathing being, .. are oblivious to it. The city goes through her day like a well-conducted symphony -- the carefully-orchestrated fourth movement is coming to an end right now -- and every day is played out according to the score. Granted, there are nuances of expression in the way each day is executed, and every listening brings out new subtleties and developments. But the individual people who drive their cars and bicycles through the city and turn out their lights at bedtime, are oblivious to the fact that they are just cells in the bloodstream of a mighty organism far larger than themselves.

Like the small puppy dancing around and nipping at its master's heels as the old man slowly and steadily trudges down the street, the lives of the people in the city move too fast for them to notice the slow dance of the city around them.

And yet, the symphony of the city dances frenetically like a sea of roiling flames, in comparison to the serene, majestic mountain behind it. Unmoving, deeply in thought, the great dark mass behind the light show watches silently. The moods of the mountain shift slowly across the seasons, and it cannot be troubled by the fickle whims of people and cities. We may drive over it, build on it, and tunnel through it, but like flies on a horse's back, the mountain can barely be troubled to notice.

After all, where will we be in ten million years? Long gone and forgotten.

Where will the mountain be? Right here. Deep in thought.

And on that note, I'll get back to writing the thrilling conclusion to my robotics paper.