Do you speak English?

Wow, I was impressed with the response to my last blog entry... I'll write more on that topic when I've tried out these systems for a bit longer.

Anyway, I just saw this. I have no idea where it's from, but ... well, maybe finding this as funny as I did means I need more sleep. Anyway, I thought I should share it with all y'all. :)

Bigger than my Pocketwatch

In many of my blog posts so far, I've mentioned how crushed I feel for time... there are simply too many things I want to do, and never enough time to do them - my eyes are bigger than my pocketwatch, so to speak.

Perhaps this failure is exemplified best by the fact that I didn't even have it together to get proper Xmas presents for my family this year. I used to come up with all sorts of random creative themes, or wrapping, or treasure hunts for presents, and this year I've done almost nothing. (Key word 'almost'... If I hadn't done anything at all I wouldn't still be up at 4am. ;)

So I've decided that this needs to end. It's not worth spending the rest of my life being stressed about time. To that end, I've been exploring various to-do list and time management tools.

Getting Things Done

I've been listening to an audiobook seminar series thing by David Allen, the "Getting Things Done" guy. I must say, he's a fantastic speaker. Very skilled with language and imagery. As for his message, I think I agree with it for the most part. One of his key ideas is to make lists and dump absolutely all of your unresolved issues and open mental loops out onto paper, in the form of action items.

His point is that if you can trust that the list contains EVERYTHING you need to worry about, you can then relax and simply execute the items on the list. I haven't finished the book, but ostensibly he has a system of lists that guarantees that, with appropriate processing, everything will get done.

I find it interesting that this is similar to the way a computer's architecture is structured, with data storage happening in a very different piece of hardware from where processing takes place.

Anyway, inspired by his words, I've begun dumping information out of my head and generating to-do lists. I've experimented with various media... I had a paper planner for a while, until I lost it(!) This is very unlike me... I don't usually lose things, so it's just ironic beyond words that the first important thing that I lose is the very thing that was supposed to guarantee my "together"ness. :P

However, I spend roughly 12 hours a day sitting in front of a computer, so I feel like an electronic medium would suit me better. Preferably web-based and accessible anywhere.

Tools for Organization

I've looked at a number of applications and services. Of these, the one I'm most excited about is stikkit.com, not because of its functionality (their beta is still pretty buggy, and they don't support multi-level to-do lists (which are absolutely essential, as far as I'm concerned)), but because I love their interface. You just type stickies in natural language, and it automagically generates to-do lists where necessary. Then you click on the items after you complete them, and they gray out and get crossed out! I'm really just all excited about that one feature, truth be told, because it's so nice to see my accomplishments crossed off! Other apps just erase them from your list or move them to the bottom or something...

I found one other app that I'd like to try out. It's called MyLifeOrganized, or MLO, and it's a lightweight app that you can put on a thumb drive and carry with you. A little more effort than automatically loading in one of my permanent tabs on Firefox, which I also have automatically load when I log in... but it seems like it's pretty powerful and simple to use. Maybe I'll try throwing my lists into that as well as stikkit, and I'll see which one survives longer.

There are a LOT of other tools out there too, but many of them are uber-configurable like ShadowPlan, the multitude of buttons and extensive color palette of which scared me into immediately uninstalling it... too many controls, and no obvious way to get started. Good reviews from users, but I suspect their sense of UI aesthetics differs from mine.

Also, this "LifeBalance" program seems interesting... apparently they use fuzzy logic or something to dynamically adjust your priorities on your action list and make your life better based on your values. I wonder how well it works... I've seen some good reviews of this too.

Of course, it's discouraging to be spending so much of my valuable time finding and setting up "productivity" tools, but if I can get any of these to work for me, the payoff will be more than worth the investment.

Anyway, I'll keep you guys updated on how the quest goes. Any recommendations on techniques and strategies for life management?

Why Computers Suck

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

--P. J. O'Rourke

Philo sent me a link to some P.J. O'Rourke quotes today, and although many are hilarious and insightful, that one stands out as my favorite.

But that's not what I want to write about today. I want to write about something that was on my bulleted list a couple posts ago: Usability.

iTunes 7.0.2 Sucks

In particular, I want to express my extreme disappointment with iTunes 7.02. And computers in general, but first let me slam Apple for a while.

First, let me explain about iTunes. I used to be an Apple user until around my second year of university, when I switched to Linux. It was only grudgingly that I allowed myself to get sucked into the world of Windows several years later, and I still have a soft spot in my heart for the cryptic elegance of Linux, as well as a deep and abiding respect for the unshakable, yet very expensive, standards of Apple.

To me, the message of Apple was always, "We will restrict our users to our hardware and our software, denying them choice and configurability, but in return, we will give them a quality, impeccably stable system with a slick user interface which is aesthetically unparalleled. And although we will charge them top dollar for it, it will be worth it to them, and they will be more than happy to pay."

I think there's a certain integrity to that statement, which, incidentally, has never been made by Apple in those words, but which they may license from me for an appropriate copyright fee. From graphic designers to "I don't want to know how a computer works" people, to astronomers, musicians, and black-coffee-drinking poets, they have amassed an enormous following that respects their "top dollar for top quality" policy.

I bought an iPod last year, and it has brought happiness to my life. The iPod is a beautiful object, and iTunes has, until now, been an excellent, or at least, stable and passable, software product.

Now fast-forward to September 12, 2006. Apple releases iTunes 7. With software from other makers, I often hesitate when upgrading and installing new versions, assuming that there will be unanticipated bugs, and instead wait a couple weeks to watch disaster strike the foolhardy. With Apple, though, things were different. Their entire business model was based on an unwavering commitment to quality and usability. Apple, I foolishly thought, is a company I can trust. Given that iTunes 6 was a touch on the slow side, I naively thought that iTunes 7 would be an improvement. And thus I clicked on the fateful "Download" button.

Now, when I run iTunes, my computer is unusable. Something that it does causes my "System" process to suck 50% of my CPU, and all of my applications hang for an indefinite amount of time when I click on things in iTunes. It is quite sporadic and difficult to pin down, but the effect is bad enough that I have had to give up using iTunes completely. Ironically, I actually listen to my iPod while sitting at my computer now.

Other people had worse problems, of course, and Apple released iTunes 7.0.1 to fix their issues. Then they released 7.0.2 to fix the rest of the problems. Then, apparently, enough of their customers were happy that they decided it was no longer cost-effective to respond to the desperate cries of users like me on their forums and actually fix their software any further.

So here I am, trying to make a CD for a friend, and barely able to use iTunes to do it. I have actually resorted to writing the track names down on paper to decide the order, which is what I used to do in junior high school when making mix tapes. Sad, sad, sad. It's not that I mind using a pencil and paper (even notepad hangs when iTunes is open), but my faith in Apple has been shattered forever. As soon as I get the time and energy, I will start exploring all of the iTunes clones and alternatives that are out there.

The Real Problem

But I'm not just talking about Apple and iTunes. This problem is much more endemic and sinister. What people need is stable, reliable, simple, and usable software. What the marketing people think people want is flashy, cool, new features and infinite configurability. Actually, that's also what the engineering people want to build. And perhaps it's even what some users think they need.

Unfortunately, all of this feature creep leads to memory-hogging programs that are unstable.

Now, instability is ok if we're talking about bleeding-edge technologies that people are playing with for fun. If you agree to beta-test some cool new software, the risk of instability is part of what you're signing up for. However, once you have valuable data entrusted to a computer, you want to believe that that data is safe. And yet the question no longer seems to be whether a Windows system will get gunked up, crash, and die, but rather, how long will it be safe to wait between full reinstalls?

Computers have made a transition from being high-tech toys to being a fundamental part of our lives. With that shift in roles comes a shift in responsibility. Microsoft and other developers of major applications now bear the responsibility to create systems where stability and security are the highest priorities. Of course this is a daunting task, but my point is that they shouldn't be putting their effort into adding bells, whistles, dynamic 3D shadows, and irritating talking paperclips to Word.

Here's a good example - the other day a friend of mine called me at 2:30am with a Blue Screen Of Death. What do you do when the computer bluescreens, will not boot in Safe Mode, and tells you only this?

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Technical Info:

*** STOP: 0x0000000A ( 0x 010007E8, 0x 0000001D, 0x 00000000, 0x 804D9D57 )

This is completely unhelpful to any normal person who's not a sysadmin and who doesn't have a second computer handy to search for the error message on the web.

The fact is, most people don't even know where their documents are, much less the relationship between the "My Documents" folder in Windows and their "C Drive". These are the people whose computers will fall victim to viruses and crapware, and they won't have the foggiest idea of how to back up their data. Especially when the HP support line gives, "Try reformatting your hard disk and reinstalling Windows" as a first resort. Yes, they said that to my sister, and she lost all her data!

This doesn't have to happen.

Computers should not be difficult to use.

Software and system stability should be a priority.

We, as engineers, need to consider that software is actually used by real people. And we, as consumers, need to hold software makers accountable for these things.

I feel very, very strongly about this. People think I'm joking when I say I hate computers, but I think it's tragic that we are so dependent on them while they persist in their current state of technological immaturity.

Enough for tonight. Good night, everyone, and don't forget to back up your data.

The Princess Bride

A few nights ago, I had some friends over to watch The Princess Bride. Although nearly every American and Canadian I know has seen it, my other friends had never heard of it before. I have, of course, seen the movie probably ten times or more, and I still find it thoroughly enjoyable.

To make things more interesting, I decided to introduce to them another concept that is fairly well-known in North America - the movie drinking game. If you do a Google search for "princess bride drinking game" you can see some examples. Essentially, this is how it works: you make a list of phrases or events that happen in the movie, and when those phrases are spoken or events happen, everybody watching the movie has to drink. Simple. There are more complex variations where each person chooses a character and whatnot, but this is the basic idea.

The list of phrases we used included such phrases as "true love", "man in black", "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die," and, of course, "humperdink". Those of you who are familiar with the Miracle Max scene can understand why most of us weren't able to keep the game up for the whole movie. :)

I noticed an interesting side effect, though. One of my guests was Japanese, and she really doesn't speak any English at all. Yet, given a sheet of phrases to look for, she was able to pick out when those lines were said in the movie, sometimes even before I noticed. I'm only speculating here, but I would guess that if she were to just watch the whole movie start to finish with no drinking game, she would have simply tuned out and stopped listening to the dialogue. I've certainly done that enough with Japanese movies.

Dylan's Brilliant Idea of the Week

I propose that movie drinking games like this be introduced to the high school English curriculum, for a number of reasons:

• Drinking games are available for hundreds of popular movies and TV shows, providing large amounts of culturally-relevant course material.


• The vocabulary list, which is studied beforehand, helps the listener focus on key parts of the dialogue. I've seen this technique used in class before, where essential words and phrases are presented before reading a passage, and it can be quite effective in priming the mind and increasing comprehension.


• The drinking game aspect of this activity scales the difficulty of the game proportionally to the player's success rate. The more words you correctly identify, the more times you drink, and the more difficult subsequent words become. This makes it particularly useful for classes where the students have a wide variety of skill levels.


• Conversely, false positives are punished as well: if you mistakenly think you hear a key word, you have to drink, which makes the game more difficult and thus serves as a small penalty for your mistake, encouraging you to pay better attention so as not to avoid future penalties.


• The alcohol also helps to reduce inhibitions about speaking English, which is one of the most difficult challenges facing Japanese students today.


• Finally, since high school students aren't generally allowed to drink alcohol, making it legal for English class could help instill a heightened interest in English and reduce the "ho, hum, when will English class be over" attitude that I've seen in many of my students.

I wonder if any Japanese Ministry of Education officials read my blog... ;)

Farewell, NaBloPoMo!

At last, the end has come. Thirty days of late nights, sleepy fingers pounding at the keys, blurry eyes proofreading pages and pages of similar-looking words. Had I been in high school, my English teacher would be proud. But now I am the English teacher. Or rather, I was. Now there is no English teacher. Perhaps that is the ultimate state of transcendence... First you are the student, then you are the teacher, and then you realize that there is no teacher.

Whoa.

So I thought it would be cool to present a bunch of funky graphs at the end of the month, colorfully presenting data and trends that meant next to nothing to next to no one. I was going to crank them out on Matlab at work before I came home tonight, but...

As I sleepily walked back up into my lab after a delicious meal of soboro ankake tofu, I was shocked to my senses by an acrid smell of burning electronics! If you know what that smells like, I'm sorry for you, because it almost inevitably means something very bad. However, it's one thing when it's a $300 stereo system or a $1000 home computer, but this was a lab full of $200,000 robots, and that smell could mean something very, very bad. What's worse, I was unable to identify which robot the smell was coming from. I cut the power to my two robots, but wasn't sure what to do with the others... I had never worked with those models before, and they were being frantically prepared for a demo, so I wasn't sure whether simply unplugging them wouldn't do irreversible damage.

Two of the other researchers were still downstairs eating, and three others were asleep at their desks, passed out after several days of sleep deprivation, no doubt. I roused one of them, explained the situation, and sprinted downstairs to alert the others. We came running back up to find the others crowded around two robots. Screwdrivers were already in hand, parts from inside the robot quickly accumulating on the floor, while one of the researchers was scanning the robots with an infrared video camera that I suspect is more expensive than any object I have ever owned.

Over time the acrid smell was vented away, and all of the robots had been off for long enough that it became a meticulous search through motherboards, power supplies, motor controller boards, and other parts to try to identify what had been burning. I went back to my robot and ran a few last tests of my code before I hopped on my bike and headed home through the rice fields, completely forgetting about my ambition of preparing cool Matlab graphs for my final NaBloPoMo post.

At home, without Matlab or Excel, I turned to some random web-based service that generates 3D graphs for you, and I put together but a single one of the many graphs I had in mind. I was thinking about plotting things like word count vs. day of the week, number of photos vs. number of comments, and things like that, but I decided to cut the scope down to just this graph:



I wanted to put in separate entries for Hong Kong and Germany, since some of my very good friends live there, but (a) the graph-making service limits you to six categories, and (b) they clearly don't read my blog as often as my AWESOME friends in Canada and France! :P

Haha, then again, it may have been just Kern's Canadian friends, and my Canadian friends don't love me anymore. Damn Canadians... you think they're your friends and then they turn around and stab you in the back. Okay, three deep breaths... ... ... I won't rip on Canada tonight, I won't rip on Canada tonight, I won't rip on Canada tonight.

Hehe, it would be awesome, though, if BC had a separate top-level domain from the rest of Canada. Then I could really know who was reading my blog and who was ignoring me. :P

Ok, so anyway, this is my last post of NaBloPoMo, and I (unlike Kern) haven't thought anything through, since I'm really concentrating on starting to organize all my stuff so that this move in January doesn't kill me. There were lots of things I was thinking of writing about. For example:

• Why iTunes 7.02 has destroyed any last shred of hope I ever had that there is any morality in the corporate world


• The deep significance of the analog and the digital, and how the desire of humanity to dominate nature blinds us to acceptance of true beauty and balance


• How the blind application of technology without deep thought to its consequences is inherently evil, and why we should reexamine the responsibilities of scientists and engineers


• The nasty gray fungus stuff that somehow invaded my apartment over the summer and got into everything, and how truly nasty it is, although I think I've finally cleaned up the last major infestations of it


• A rant on how computers are fundamentally unusable and some thoughts on how to help humanity deal with how much they suck


• A sappy reflection on how awesome my friends are, and a bunch of pictures of happy memories with them


• A slightly ironic reflection on how much I love singing with Utaurara 6, juxtaposed with the facts that our musical tastes are COMPLETELY contradictory to each other and the social dynamics of the group are so strange


• Some sort of soul-searching, wandering blabber about finding love, followed by some cynical comments that aren't bitter, but are somewhat less-than-optimistic


• Reflections on cleaning my room and uncovering bank statements, junk mail, and old love letters


• A bulleted list of meta-blog-posts, so that I don't actually have to post about all those things since you would all skim anyway!

I'm pretty certain everyone is skimming by this point, so I should probably do my homework and get some sleep. But for anyone who made it this far, I feel like I should reward you with another photo, because a picture is worth a thousand words, and word count blogged is the ultimate measure of the worth of a man's life.

Here is a picture of me, Kern, and Hiroko, from last fall. We're at the random aqueduct near ... Nanzen-ji? Eikan-do? Anyway, it's somewhere in that area. I'm including this photo because it's an example of something I could be doing INSTEAD OF BLOGGING!



I guess the thing I learned most from the NaBloPoMo experience is that I should cherish my free time and live life for the moment, rather than spending it all sitting in front of my computer. :)

And to all the NaBloPoMo'ers out there, ...

OTSUKARE!!!!!!

Got To Keep On Movin'

Once again it happens... I bike home frantically from a cappella rehearsal, hitting "new post" just as the clock on my computer flips to 12:00, hoping, hoping... and yes, Blogger's clock is a few seconds behind mine and I make it just under the line again.

So it's official... I started the paperwork for moving today. I don't think the two little beings hanging out on my shoulders are an angel and a devil, but one of them is going "yeeeeah!" and the other one has its face down in its hands, shaking its head as if to say "what have we gotten ourselves into now?"

Moving is going to be a real pain. But it will be worth it. You've got to keep on movin', I keep telling myself, as strains of Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride" well up from some unknown depths of my memory. I remember them singing that on "Kids Incorporated." Yes, I mean the Saturday morning kids' music show from the 80's sponsored by Jordache.

Anyway, all that aside, NaBloPoMo is nearly over. In reflection, I didn't achieve as much of my goal of catching up with things that I've done over the past year as I had hoped, but I did manage to post a few key events. After the 'Mo is over, I'm certainly going to cut down on my blog time, but as usual I hope to post once a week or so. If I start to go below once every two weeks, feel free to kick me (via email of course).

In the spirit of posting memories, here are a few more pics. And because it's starting to get damn cold here, I'm going to go with some pictures from the summer.

Let's see how many photos I can crop, tweak, and upload before I pass out from lack of sleep. :) By the way, in case you didn't know, you can click on the photo to go to its Flickr page, then click on "All Sizes" and choose a high-resolution version to download. I think most of these photos are in there at 1024x768.



First, a sailing picture. You have no idea how many awesome pictures we took on this sailing trip. It was my first time out on a boat this size, and it was a blast! Maybe I should save the stories for a blog post of their own.



Yodogawa hanabi! We had amazing seats, right under the center of it all. I'd never seen a fireworks display so spectacular or well-choreographed before!



Our wonderful seats were thanks to the connections of my soon-to-be-neighbor Peter. It was great to see him again too... it's sad how you can live so close to somebody and almost never see them.



The Ulfuls concert was awesome beyond words. Thank you so much to Yoko for the hook-up. These guys are my favorite band in Japan (sorry, Rip Slyme!) and mechamecha kandou shita! (By the way, they let you bring cameras in but ask you not to take photos during the show... so I took this photo just after the show was over. :)



To-kae, a light-up festival in Nara that has no deep meaning. Pretty, though.



This shot was also in Nara during To-kae. It's times like this when I guess I'll miss living so close to Nara. Not a lot of quiet, candlelit mountain paths in Morinomiya. :P



And this was our picnic to celebrate the end of summer. We had it in the park that sits upon the archaeological site of the ancient first capital of Japan.



Here we are moving the picnic to follow the shade. Even though this was in late September, it was still unpleasantly hot in the sun. I think it was my idea to just drag the entire picnic tarp... that turned into sort of a mini-disaster, but it got the job done. People kept telling me that it was a stupid idea, and we should just leave the tarp where it was, but something inside me kept telling me ... you've got to keep on movin'.

Confessions of a Digital Packrat

Nostalgia.



This is the week when I need to make my decision about moving in January. I'm really pretty sure I'm going to do it - I think I'll give them the final decision tomorrow. I can think of lots of reasons pro and con, but my heart has built up enough momentum in that direction that it would be pretty disappointing to back out now. I'll certainly miss this place, though... the enormous kitchen, the sunlight streaming through the sliding glass doors in the morning, the two wonderfully spacious balconies...

Standing out on my rear balcony tonight, looking up at the cold, sharp first-quarter moon between the smooth, high clouds of ice crystals, listening to the silence of the crickets and cicadas who serenaded me to sleep every evening and chanted louder than my alarm to wake me up in the summer mornings, looking out to the empty street, cold, still, devoid of cars, then stepping back into my tatami room that has been with me for the last year and a half, I am struck by wave after wave of nostalgia.



Just a few of the many memories from this apartment that come back to me, mostly parties and sickness:

Last summer, sweating profusely, curled up on my little tatami cushion thing, three bottles of Canada Dry Ginger Ale by my side, hardly able to sit up as I stayed home for three days with food poisoning, barely managing to stagger out and go see the Robocup for an hour, but mostly spending the intervening time throwing up or watching Full Metal Alchemist from my cushion on the floor.

A small Christmas party last December with Hiroko, Mitsuko, and Noda-kun, all of us sitting at my kotatsu, sharing stories and wine over a nice Italian dinner and some Christmas cake.



A weekend last winter when I suddenly came down with a terrible fever and stomach bug, and Linda came over to bring me some medicine and make me some hot lemonade... thank you, Linda! You're awesome.

The random night when Emma locked her house keys in her kendo dojo and had to crash at my place. We stayed up till 2am playing go. :)

David standing at my whiteboard, educating us about the geography of France.



The going-away party / hanami / not really sure what the excuse was party this past spring, when Masuda-san brought an entire branch of a cherry tree in full bloom.

And of course, my very first night here, dropped off around 11pm by Kanda-san, exhausted, hungry, with no food or knowledge of my surroundings, hoping that (a) all of the stuff in my luggage survived the flight unscathed, and (b) I would be able to find the bus to work in the morning...

I guess sadness is an essential part of awareness. I find that if I really open my mind and try to perceive everything without all the social guards we usually put up, I am overwhelmed by emotions of joy and sadness. I will really miss this apartment, but... is that a reason not to move? It's kind of like ending a relationship. It is ending a relationship. Inasmuch as people have relationships with inanimate things, the relationship with your home is a particularly intimate one.



But just because something is good doesn't mean it has to be perpetuated forever. This is where my "meaning of life" instincts start getting confused. For example, if you were to go to the pile of my stuff that still sits in my parents' basement, you would find a lot of things that aren't essential at all. Old binders from elementary school, t-shirts from high school, an old fish tank I had many years ago... a lot of that stuff is junk, and has no practical value. Its only value is to be a vessel for memories. How can I possibly part with my "Cobleskill College Math Team - We strive to be number -eⁱπ" shirt? (Yes, that's what it says, rather than the correct -e^iπ) And yet... when would I ever wear it again? What would I do with it?



A few years ago I came up with the idea of taking digital photos of things like that and then throwing away the originals. That way the memories would still be retrievable. I haven't done it so much yet, though. Which is probably good considering my personal history with hard drives.




But where does the value in life lie? Is it in our memories? Memories fade. They can only be kept alive with the taking of photos and the retelling of stories. Even so, "living in the past" is something most people consider negative.


Ok, is it just me, or do we all look SUPER young in this picture?

On the other hand, "living for the present" can also be taken to excess. How would you rate the quality of life of somebody who, say, spent every waking hour drugged out and happy, staring blankly (yet contentedly) at the TV as the days pass unnoticed? Something tells me that is "bad".

Yet someone who moves from town to town, job to job, building no lasting relationships, is living in the present and staying active.. and yet still it seems to me that something is missing. Memories, history, and deep relationships are important.



I think Philo mentioned something today about how taking photographs is unnatural. Looking at the images artificially reinforces insignificant memories in our minds, and thus alters our structure of memory, which, I would add, fundamentally changes who we are, since memories are a significant part of our identity.

It's a difficult balance, trying to preserve memories that are important to us, and yet trying to avoid being a packrat and keeping boxes and boxes stuffed with baubles and trinkets with no significant meaning to us. Do we really need to commemorate every single week of our lives?



I wonder if our generation is seeing the birth of a new breed of "digital packrat", an obsessive personality type hoarding gigabytes and gigabytes of personal history, from blogs and digital photos, to archives of old emails, office documents, chat histories, ... and descending into the realm of neurosis, how about even keeping web history files, system error logs, old bookmarks files, and obsolete software? I have a few old Infocom games from the mid-80's for the Apple IIGS in my parents' basement... it's hard to part with games like that when I poured so many hours of my life into them.

I guess it's a subconscious pursuit of immortality. By keeping an exact record of everything we ever did, we can preserve our lives forever. The only problem is that documenting this information and sorting through this information takes time. Blogging itself has taken up approximately three full days of my time over this past month. That's time when I could have been living life instead of documenting it. But what is the worth of a life not shared?



As for sorting through and weeding out the valuable from the worthless, I often brush off this responsibility, saving it for this imaginary time "when I'm 75 years old and bored, sitting in a rocking chair and staring out my picture window all day", but I wonder whether that day will ever come.

Just like that old bag of gummi Ninja Turtles candies from Spain from 1990 and that nasty old box of Ghostbusters Cereal with the hologram on it from who knows when, I guess it's time to part with this apartment. It's sad to say goodbye, but sometimes you know that it's time to move on.



I'll miss the balconies, though.