Thanks Mom

Thanks for the postcard. I got it today (Christmas). Thanks for the wishes.

今年も頑張ります。皆お元気でね。

明けましておめでとう。よいお年を

From Japan with Love,

Justin

Merry Christmas from Sendai

Seasons greetings and Merry Christmas from Japan. All is going well here and I hope likewise is the same to all my readers.

This year, I hosted a big Christmas bash back at my place with my roommates and friends. We had a count of 27 people, plenty of food, presents and fun. Special thanks to Kana, that pulled off a turkey this year in the last minute. I wanted to pull off a turkey this year but decided I couldn't because I didn't have a large oven at home.

Kana heard this and pulled off the unimaginable; I got a phone call at 12:00 pm on the day of the party hearing that she was on the hunt for a turkey. She had already hit 2 places but they were sold out. I said that a chicken would be allright and she needed a hand cooking it, apparently she said that she could handle it. And so she did, with flying colors!


She came through with the turkey!

Wow, I was blown away. Out of nowhere, we had a turkey for the party. Kana is awesome!


Left: Party hat for good times
Right: Special surprise visit from a mini-santa!

Good times ensued!

Hope things are as eventful where ever you are!

Pictures, here!

Maps of War

There is a company on the net called Maps of War that does work making animated maps of global events. One of them includes a map of all American conflicts (separated into groups when Democrats and Republicans were in control) and a second one mapping the spread of various religions since inception and over time. Very fascinating stuff.

Take a look here for the map of war, and the map of religion.

How I'm Spending Valentine's Day

I've finished the paper work a few hours ago and it's official, I'm going to France for a week. I will be participating on a University exchange program to check out some of France's Universities and a few companies in Lyon and Paris. I depart on Valentine's day from Japan on a plane into Europe, my first trip ever to that part of the world.

I had an omen that I would be going to France since I busted ass working on trying to get results to apply for a conference in France and unfortunately that fell through. I took the next few weeks easy, bought a new computer and spent my free time relaxing. Then just last Friday a friend of mine drops a flyer on my desk about the France trip, the deadline to apply was Monday. After thinking it over the weekend, I decided to go. Got the paper work together and here's how it turned out. Yay, France!

Time to start learning some French!

Doh, I suck

I am finally finishing off the batch of seasons greetings that I was supposed to send a long while back. I kept on meaning to do them but either things kept popping up or I got distracted doing other things. I took the day off lab to stay at home and work on the cards and fire them off... as late as they are.

Well I know for sure that improving execution is going to be high on my New Year's Resolution list.

The schedule for this week:

Saturday - House Christmas Party
Sunday - Another Christmas Party (If I have time to make it)
Tuesday and Wednesday - Skiing
Thursday - Friend arrives from Mito
Saturday - Start 3 day Ski trip (return on new years)

And I have paper work due today for a surprise announcement I will make later on.

Christmas Lights in Sendai and Happy b-day to Mayuko!

As of Tuesday, the main boulevard in Sendai had the Christmas lights officially turned on. I skipped out of lab early (at 5 pm!) and made my way out to the main boulevard armed with my camera. The kicker was that I left my battery back at lab... after so diligently deciding that I would charge it for today's event.

Well I made the trip back anyhow and I'll let the results speak for themselves.


Santa in a pickup truck!


The streets lit up in lights!

I've also made a small album of the event here.

Also, last week was Mayuko's b-day and a good time was definitely had! More so for us because it was a surprise! Even I was surprised, because the party was put together just a day in advance!


Presents! Presents! All miiiiine!

Cheers all around!

Pictures from the event, here!

Funny statistics

I was staring out of a window while eating breakfast this morning at the University cafeteria and was considering statistics I've heard in my life. One of which is funny, the other is a scary kind of funny.

First the funny.

I was reading the newspaper back in Canada a long while back and found a survey column and the question was:

How many relationships have you had?

Men -- 7
Women -- 4

Now one would have thought that perhaps men were more active in the relationship department. But if you think about the data, something is seriously wrong (for staticians, the sample size was 1000).

Let's do the math. Suppose you had a world in which there were 3 guys and 3 girls. Suppose each guy dated the same girl.

The average number of relationships for the guys is 1. For the girls, it's (3 + 0 + 0)/3, which is also 1.

Right? We should expect that the number of relationships between male and females to be about equal. What might cause this discrepancy? Lots of gay men. There is another possibility but the gay men one is funnier.

Next the scary kind of funny.

It is oft quoted that 50% of all marrages end in divorce. As a result of this, most of us would think that we've got a coin-toss change of making it all the way to the end with a partner. Let's suppose that this 50% statistic is true.

Suppose that every married person gets divorced and remarries. Need I say more?

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
-- Mark Twain

Verizon offers refund, still doesn't admit mistake

I was surfing around and came across this, where the poster of the audio clip got an e-mail form customer support where they would offer him a 100% discount. Still no admission of their mistake what-so-ever (link here).

And I quote from the linked webpage.

In review of your account a previous representative has credited for the data charges in question for $71.79. You may take this amount off of your current amount due. In the future please keep in mind that it is .002 dollars per KB while in Canada.

I am still not impressed, or perhaps I am. Caught red handed on tape on youtube. It doesn't get anymore black and white. Not being able to learn from mistakes is one thing, if you can't admit to them... well, I'd just throw in the towel and walk away and let cold hard reality beat the crap out of them. The results speaks for it self.

"The truth hurts... only if you're stupid"
--Me

or the less crass version

"The truth hurts... only the ones that don't get it"
--Me

With context, the first one has more bite.

Verizon! 0.002 cent is not 0.002 dollars

Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to make you cry. Unfortunately Verizon does not know the difference between 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars. An audio recording of the support phone call was taken and posted on the net, link here. I am exceptionally glad that with technology even average people are capable of taking recordings of telephone conversations because things like these are exceptionally hard to prove otherwise.

There is no other way to put it but after hearing this I was incredibly horrified that people as stupid as this exist and yet they still claim that they are correct in claiming that 0.002 cents is the same as 0.002 dollars. From what I've seen on youtube, the stats as of this writing is that atleast 120,000 people have already listened to the audio.

Sometimes I really wonder how do people like these exist. The other scary thing is that these people can probably vote too. Hmm, might make for an interesting premise -- do stupid people vote stupid people into office? This might tell you plenty about governments if it is true.

More Life in Briefs

Thursday:

Went for dinner with a friend at a nice Italian restaurant. Oddly, there is a such thing as "high class pizza." It was quite good with specialty ingredients imported from all over Japan. hung out over salad, wine and pizza. I'll be adding that place to my repertoire of interesting places to eat.

Friday:

YMCA Christmas party. I teach at the YMCA and was invited out to an "international Christmas party," slight problem was that there were only but a handful of international students and a whole horde of Japanese people. Not bad though, I did manage to meet an interesting person that works at a bar in Sendai as a bartender. Apparently there will be a new place opening somewhere around the train station and will get a call when it opens.

Saturday:

Another Christmas party. I found an event online a while back and decided to participate. Turns out that the event was organized by an English school and for kicks they put it online to let anyone join. Interestingly out of the 50 or so people at the event, I knew about 10 of them. Sendai, despite having 1 million people, has a rather small community. Well, those of you living in Vancouver and Richmond should know about that.

After the party, I went up and met up with another friend for some food who was introduced through another friend. Apparently she knows one of my labmates as her friend is his ex. As an interesting aside, turns out that she also knows another drummer friend of mine. we came to that interesting conclusion when our mutual friend dropped in and we simultaneously blurted out his name and then gave each other an odd look in shock. Yep, Sendai is a pretty small place.

Sunday -- Went to a museum with 4 friends to check out a German art exhibit from a painter born 100 years ago. Strangely I still find it hard to appreciate certain kinds of art. Especially abstract. I could take pictures drawn from elementary students and put them in this exhibit and you'd never tell the difference. Hmmm... how'd someone like to play an April Fool's joke on a museum?

Coming up:

Wednesday -- Hot pot party at home

Friday -- An event will probably materialize

Saturday -- Christmas Party (2 of them)

"I teach logic mutha-fucker!"

All I have to say is go watch this video. I love this professor!

"I don't know about you man, but I didn't see anybody steal anything."
"Except for that guy's dignity"

Man, I miss one-liners!

Back in Business

2 months to wait for a computer repair isn't at all a reasonable time frame for me to work with. Despite the lab ordering a spare backup notebook for pubic use, I decided last weekend that I would fork out the cash and buy myself a new laptop.

After much consideration and walking around the electronics department of a Yodobashi electronics store, I settled on a acer Aspire 5102WLMi notebook. "An ACER!?" you might ask? Well, after poking around the store for about 2 days and researching a whole bunch of features online, I decided that this notebook gave me the best bang for the buck.

It's got a dual core of Turion processors, 120 GB HD, got a multilayer DVD-ROM writer and an ATi integrated graphics chip (unfortunately with no onboard memory, however). For about $1100, I decided that it wasn't a bad price considering that I'd have to spend about $600 for a repair. Why not get a better computer? And so I did.

The computer is equipped with a Japanese OS and a Japanese keyboard. For the most part, the keyboard has the same layout QWERTY layout as most north American keyboards. The subtle difference is that some of the punctuation keys have been moved around. The @ , ' , " , \ and a few other keys have been moved around. The enter and the backspace key are a little smaller to. I have gotten used to the keyboard layout for the most part already. I was rather surprised to find how quickly I was able to adapt to the new layout.

I am not sure how it is for current installations of Win XP, but I had the most unfortunate experience having the "Cleartype" fonts enabled by default. What this means is that the font used uses some sort of sub-pixel approximation to increase the resolution of your monitor, supposedly making text a little more crisper. That was not the case for me!

After suffering for exhausted eyes for littler over 2 days, I was determined to figure out the root of this problem. Initially, I spent most of my time trying to change font settings of the computer but that didn't work to no avail. There is a Microsoft webpage out there that you can use a directX plug in to deactivate the ClearType fonts. Doing that has made a world of difference for my eyes.

When I do have some spare time, I am going to disassemble the old laptop to try and find out what went wrong. If I am lucky, I might be able to find the problem and make a repair. If not, well it will be for an educational experience anyways. If I actually can get the other laptop going, I would definitely like to try and turn it into a Linux box if possible. We'll see how that goes.

You"ve got to be kidding me

MTV went off and banned this video for being too violent? You've got to be kidding me, it's actually well done, compared to the other stuff with scantly clad people just dancing around for no apparent reason. Get some brains.

Oh and on a side note, went and saw the new Bond Movie today. It was great! Total revival of the series. If you haven't seen it, go and see it!

That is all!

One more shot

Spent the entire night at the lab again... I can't wait for this to be over. Unfortunately working through the night today was not too fruitful as I noticed that one of the acids I was using dissolved some nanoparticles I wanted to deposit on some silicon tips. I got hold a chemical chart today and confirmed that it is true that iron nanoparticles don't hold up against HF acid. Of an interesting note, everytime I mention what I research to girls in Japan, they immediately ask me if I know about nanoparticles in makeup. Supposedly, they have some positive effect and makeup with nano particles are really expensive (I might be on to something here!)

The submission date is Friday at 23:59 Hawaiian time, the last time zone before the dateline. I have until 18:59 Japan time to make the submission. I have one last shot, but it's going to be a bit of a pull to make it. There is one other material I can use but I have no experimental data on it. Meaning it's going to be a crapshoot.

Well, I won't be put off it too much if I don't make it to the conference in the end, it might actually be better if I didn't since the device isn't fully complete and there is plenty of informational gaps I will need to fill along the way. I am not sure if it will be working by then either. One of my friends at lab has mentioned to me that he's done something like this before but wasn't able to get his device working in the end, which wasn't too good for the conference. There will be other conferences I can present at... but still, it *is* France, and I've never been to Europe.

One way or another, I am going to take a few days off after the end of this mad work schedule. 12~16 hours/day at lab isn't a healthy lifestyle and I should be doing other things rather than just working; people become boring if they work too hard anyways. I'd rather be out doing other things for variety.

That wish will likely be granted as my schedule for December is looking quite full:

-There will be a meeting of Japanese people and foreigners tomorrow for some kind of international relations building event.

-I will be organizing a hot-pot event with lab members at home.

-I will be planning a large scale Christmas party and will be roasting some turkeys.

-A friend from Mito will be coming out to visit me for 6 days and a ski trip is in the works.

-I've located a social group online for Sendai that will be hosing an event in a few weeks, which I will be attending.

-A Christmas party is being organized by a friend of mine.

There will be, of course, more events popping up throughout December. I won't know exactly when but I can already forecast a lab party fitting into the picture somewhere and probably more events along the way that I'll end up being roped into. December will be a busy month for me indeed.

Work hard, play hard!

Doors

I just relised today that doors to houses in Japan open differently as compared to those in Canada.

In Canada, you pull on the door to open it from the inside.
In Japan, you push on the door to open it from the inside.

This thought was inspired while I was waiting outside of my friend's house today when I noticed myself taking a few steps back from the door to avoid being hit as it opened, something I never used to do back in Canada.

Some additional information

The support center was called last Friday to get an idea of what it is going to take to have this ACER TravelMate 4000 laptop of mine repaired, the news is in and it isn't pretty.

The support center told me that because my laptop is an overseas model, they are going to have to have parts shipped in for the repair. Their eta on the job is between 1~2 months for the repair! This is also coming from a company which has kindly noted that they have an international network of repair centers for cases especially like these! I hardly can imagine how these ACER repair centers can at all address people that might need repairs while on travel with a 2 month repair window.

I am still going to have to figure out how much this is going to run me. $400~$600, I guess I can make a bite at it. If it's going to cost more, I think I can nab laptops for about $1000 and under in Japan. Probably even cheaper for desktops.

That said, because this particular experience, I am very inclined to say that having a laptop as your primary computer is not recommended because when it breaks down, you're a fish out of water and at the mercy of repair centers to get your computer working. If this were an ordinary PC, I would have already located the problem, swapped parts and been on my merry way.

Now the next interesting problem is if Laptops could be customizable like desktops-- now that would solve a lot of problems and make laptops upgradable!

The Bad, the Good and ...

The bad:

The cold got debilitatingly worse.

Spent $20 on medicine that doesn't really work.

The laptop died.

The Good:

Backed up all experimental data and personal data.

Roomies went on a mid-night run to buy ginger and lemons for some home-brew cold remedies.

The Ugly:

The laptop is out of warranty and I am betting that it's going to costly to fix (but I'm going to have to anyways).

Still at it...

Woke up at about midnight and was in lab by 1:00 am.. I'm pretty much working in Pacific Standard Time now. Been in lab for the past 10 hours working on my samples still... with a batch of 8 (actually 32) in an acid wash. After that's done, I'll be heading home to get some rest as I've managed to catch a mild cold-- just a cough and a sore throat that's been building through the weekend.

Kuni has mentioned to me that I can buy cold medicine from the University clinic for about $1. Incredibly cheap. Then there is breakfast, that goes for $3 for a full meal. I keep meaning to bring my camera to take pictures but I haven't remembered to so far.

The weekend was pretty good. Had a hot-pot dinner at home with friends Saturday night and then had a second hot-pot at another friend's for the Sunday night with the left overs I had from the previous day.

Unfortunately, I haven't been resting right since going on this nocturnal schedule-- I usually end up sleeping for 1.5 hours at 8:30 am, catch breakfast, then go home and sleep until about 4 pm. Wake up, go to University for a little bit... catch dinner, return home by about 8:00 pm, sleep till about midnight and then return again to lab at about 1 am to work a long haul through the night.

I've got about 10 days to pull something off (ie. get some results and write an abstract) for the conference in France. This is probably one of the biggest conferences for my field and it would definitely be cool if I can make it out there for about a week (perhaps, 5 days?) with expenses fully (mostly?) paid to hang out with smart people in France... in particular Lyon (which is well known for the food).

It's work that I have to get done anyways. Better now than later (with the bonus of the conference). I can even use the results for my Master thesis. It's win-win all around. Can't wait for all this to be over though, I could use a good break.

Highly Disturbing -- UCLA student Tazed while attempting to leave the building

This is an excerpt taken from the daily bruin here:

UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody.

No university police officers were available to comment further about the incident as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, and no Community Service Officers who were on duty at the time could be reached.

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.

The student began to yell "get off me," repeating himself several times.

It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.

UCPD officers confirmed that the man involved in the incident was a student, but did not give a name or any additional information about his identity.

If this were in the newspaper, how many of you would simply think "how horrible" and then just go about your day? Unfortunately, we live incredibly insulated lives. My interpretations about tragic/horrible events have changed after watching a video of the event here. It is excruciating to watch even once to say the least; I cannot watch it again but I suggest that any passer by watch it at least once.

Despite all the Hollywood violence you've ever seen, all the killings, injuries, blood and gore, I hardly doubt that any of that will ever desensitize a person from the above video. I suggest that you all see this at least once, if you want to understand the real depth of an event like this, nothing like the watered down things you'd see on TV. I can hardly think that people watch the television show COPS for entertainment.

From the video, there were a respectable number of students in the building, most watching in silent protest. There were the handful that demanded that officers provide identification, but refused to do so. I find this incredibly hypocritical because these officers are the people that decided to taser a student for not producing identification while working at the computer lab.

I am sure that there are good cops out there, but this isn't a case about them, because it is the bad ones that need to kept in check. This is a much more serious problem than it seems.

I have followed up on comments written on forums about this and the troubling question that needs to be answered is this: What would you do if you saw a man on the floor being tazed multiple times screaming in pain? For the case of this video, the actions of the other students were exceptionally civil as many approached these officers demanding identification. No violence what-so-ever broke out and even one officer threatened one of the students that he would taser him if he didn't back off near the end of this video.

Trust in law enforcement has taken a significant hit. Should an event like this be repeated in a future point in time and I have no doubt it will likely result in violence. Working environments for officers have just gotten more dangerous as the likelihood being confronted by bystanders has significantly increased. If officers want to keep their working environment safe, they had better keep their bad officers in check, else others will end up doing that, whether they like it or not.

If law enforcement cannot be trusted then justice will be taken into many personal hands-- combat and "citizen's arrest" of officers becomes a very viable option. It is incredibly easy to see how an event like this will play out-- other officers will be called out to retrieve detained officers and things will likely get ugly from there on in.

I do not believe in centralized (video) surveillance and I think a case like this proves a point-- invest in a good camera phone.

One man stands between me and going home

It's about 3:40 pm now, I've been at lab for about 11 hours... I took a 1.5 hour nap in the morning to get a bit of a recharge. And now, I am waiting for a guy using a machine that I want to use to finish off a few more silicon processing steps before I go home, catch some sleep and wake up at about 6 pm to make it to a hot-pot dinner with a volunteer friend of mine.

After using the machine, I have about another hour of work to go heading home. Perhaps I'll make it back by, say, 5 to catch all of 30 minutes of sleep? I've done worse actually, but more for fun than anything else when I did a scooter trip to a beach party in Iwaki, slept on the beach then scootered back starting at 4 am to make a beach BBQ starting at 9 am! I got all of 2 hours (maybe even less) sleep that day.

There are of course more useful things I could be doing instead of sitting here, surfing the net and typing on this blog; like doing a paper search and getting some background materials ready to try and cut down writing time for the submittal of an abstract. But that would require conscious brain power that I don't have at the moment so I will relegate myself to some easy mindless writing.

Anyways, I should keep a stopwatch on me and time how much time I waste waiting or doing non-work related stuff. The results might be quite stunning.

Ten to four

Ten to four am that is. I now sit infront of a computer inside a clean room (an envrionment which contains less dust particles than usual) cleaning a chromium mask used for optical lithography. In simple terms, I'm just washing a metal mask which is used to block light from hitting some parts of a film... made of a polymer that is used to make an image on silicon. Some parts of the silicon are exposed and some parts are not and from there, people like me in the nanotech world are free to etch holes or deposit materials on top of the silicon to make devices. Nanotech is not really that bad... we just make really small "pictures" of things on silicon that hopefully do useful things.

Anyways, there is a reason why I am not sleeping regular hours tonight (and possibly for the next 2 weeks) and that reason is to make it to France sometime in the spring to hit the Transducers conference... that is, if I can get some publishable results.

The one nice thing about working late at night is that all the machines here are available for use and I don't have other pesky people getting in the way. It is also a double edged sword in the sense I can't ask questions when I don't know when something goes wrong. Well, we'll see how things go.

Significant updates to come later while I'm working on long and boring processing steps...

A Short Week Review

It's been a rather interesting week, lots of things going on as usual.

Thursday, from a new group of friends I've met, the man that put it together, Aki, has left for Tokyo after moving the reminder of his belongings out of his apartment this weekend. The move was the result of his lab relocating to Tokyo University and him with it. He returned on Wednesday night and stayed over the weekend where he'd ride it back to Tokyo this morning. Interestingly, the group threw an impromptu BBQ by a river at 11:00 pm on a Thursday outside in the cold as a farewell party to the guy. I was informed about it at about 10:00 pm on that day. Interesting, to say the least!

Saturday was the lab meeting as usual and I confirmed to attend a "talking party" organized by an English school to drop in and chat with Japanese students studying English for an evening. I decided to go to hopefully meet some interesting people. There was one guy I gave my contact to who is an English teacher that came to Sendai from Montreal, we ended up exchanging contacts after some coffee and perhaps might arrange for a BBQ on a beach next weekend. Of an interesting note, it is quite easy for foreigners to make friends with other foreigners-- by default, we have lots in common.

Sunday (today), I was supposed to head South out of Sendai to a "Hawaiian" Spa Resort with a bunch of friends. Unfortunately that plan fell through because the guy that had originally agreed to give everyone a ride bailed. My friend noted to me that "well since we're Latino, things get planned and changed at the last minute... then there is my friends back in Vancouver which operate on the same basis. Anyways, the trip has hence been postponed.

I did arrange to meet up with another friend of mine for lunch and a short hike... unfortunately that too fell through when she took a nap and failed to wake up until 3:00 pm! We were supposed to meet up by noon. Actually I expected to meet at 1 pm because the friend of mine is perpetually late and when we arrange to meet at some time, she always arrives about an hour late! Sometimes I wonder if her clocks are set in the wrong time zone... but anyways, I still got my laundry done.

Anyways, we finally met up for some coffee, hit a hot spring (because today was terribly cold) and went for some yakiniku (fried meat) for the evening. Still, I wasn't entirely pleased with the schedule being pushed so far back, but a good time was had. I had originally arranged to meet up with some other friends of mine by 5 pm because one of them had just recently returned from New York and I hadn't seen them together in ages.

And so, there is my brief summary of what's been going on this week.

Entertainment Indeed

I was taking a break today and was flipping through the BBC to find some material to read. Then I stumbled upon this:


I guess the BBC (and plenty of other people) have an interesting taste of "entertainment."

University Management Issues

I had my scooter repaired today. The carburetor and spark plug has been replaced, I even got a short Japanese lesson while waiting. The mechanic I have is awesome, really great guy. I'll tell you this much, Japan like many countries has many cultures. Some people might know of the polite, formal side of Japan; then there is the really energetic, "genki" people; there are even groups of very broad horizoned, free spirited people out here too. I've come to talk about something else inspired from attending a Micro-Mechanical Machine forum held in Sendai organized by my professor including people from all around Japan and some international people. Sadly, I pity the international people for coming out, because I fear they got little out of it and the organizers in Japan had missed the boat in having international dialog.

The forum held in Sendai was well attended-- an entire hall was filled suit clad people indicative of people from Japanese institutions, whether it be University or industry; there must have been close to 200 people in the hall today. Unfortunate (or perhaps fortunately) I missed most of the morning presentations due to having my scooter fixed.

The interesting presentation of the day was the panel discussion that occurred between professors including 2 from Tohoku University, Tokyo University, Osaka and one from the biomedical division of Hitachi Corporation. What transpired what not very encouraging about the state of Japanese University education.

The conversation that happened was about trying to develop research research initiatives in Japan to narrow the gap in good research published in Japan and also encourage better innovation in Japan. There was talk about putting together new programs to train people in design, there was talk about getting companies more involved with Universities and that they needed people with a broader range of skills. I felt that they totally missed the point in their discussion because having more programs for students is irrelevant. I scoffed at the idea of listening to these professors talk about things like "why don't we add in a design course?"

Though I didn't understand the full details of the conversations between the professors due to my limited Japanese skills, I do know for certain that the way they are trying to solve this problem is incorrect-- I am afraid that these people have been institutionalized for too long (whether it be in companies or in Universities). Innovation something that cannot be institutionalized as it would be just as absurd as institutionalizing inspiration-- how can you expect to just throw programs together and expect people to become inspired? Innovation, like inspiration is a culture that requires inquisitive and aware people; and from what I have seen so far, institutions here are terrible at fostering both characteristics.

I have attended classes where not a soul asks a question nor people understand the context of their information. In order for innovation to happen, you need people to ask questions and you need people to challenge the stats quo. If you have neither, it is for damn sure that innovation is not going to happen. The problem is not the lack of good programs... it's the education system and the institutionalized culture-- conformalists make for horrible innovators.

There's more to this problem actually, I've also found that there is poor communication between professors and students compounding the problem too that needs to be addressed... but it's 2:30 am already and I've burned 2.5 hours trying to piece things together. I've got a long list of notes I've taken left in my scooter (oops). I ought to wake up at 8:00 am today so I'll have to save this for another time.

Too many things going on

Too many things going on. Well it's sort of, let's just say that I've been doing other things instead of writing here recently. There was the international festival, meeting new friends (and then hanging out with them), there's this research thing, then organizing a hot-pot party for the weekend and then forgetting that I double booked myself for a secretarie's farewell party... taking a walk around Sendai, doing a short road trip during a morning of a weekday, then there's taking pictures (and organizing them), making photo albums, going for walks, attending international cooking classes, other misc stuff and I need to take a break sometimes too!

Oi! What a run on sentence! But seriously that's how exactly things feel at the moment. Oh and by the way, the Canadian booth at the international festival was marginally profitable. We made about $100, I guess I can live with that. That cash is going to go towards throwing a little party for the people that worked with me for the event. Kudos to them for helping me out. Unfortunately we fell short of hitting our 400 dish mark... we only hit 180.

Had we made it to the 400 mark, I would have been looking at profits of approximately $500! We would maple syrup pancakes and smoked salmon cream cheese crackers (the cracker dish is a story unto it self actually, but that will be for another time... if I ever end up writing about it). When I do have some down time, I'll make a detailed post about the event. Well better than posting a loss though. So I have that atleast, I did tell you about the time I tried to sell X-boxes from Japan right? No? Haha... well that'll have to be a story for another time.

For the time being, assuming that "a picture is a thousand words," I have pictures that want to say about 70~80 "thousand words." I'll let them do the talking instead:

Autumn in Sendai
21st Tohoku International Festival

Random note:

I was interviewed while in Korea (several months ago) while attending a martial arts event and gave them greetings from Canada! Was it ever aired? I have no clue.

167 pages later

All done. Good read, off to bed.

The Alchemist

An unexpected surprise had arrived to me from Korea yesterday. I have a friend in Korea who might not be taller than I, but there is something that tells me that she is in reach of dreams...

"... so I can change those things that I don't want to happen"

"But then they wouldn't be a part of your future," the seer said.

"Well, maybe I just want to prepare myself for what's coming."

"If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise," said the seer. "If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur."

"I want to know about the future because I'm a man," the camel driver had said to the seer. "And men always live their lives based on the future."

--The Alchemist

I will finish this book tonight.

International Festival Report on the way

It's been a long day-- short on sleep and long on work with plenty to say about the international festival. I got a bunch of calculations to go through and I'll report in on that within the next few days. Learned plenty from the event despite having mixed results. Am I sounding vague? But of course, I'm saving the interesting analysis for the next post! Unlikely that the people that helped out are reading thus but many thanks to the lab members, my roomie and the volunteer that worked with us today.

Details to follow. Cheerio.

Oh and by the way...

It's been a while since I've updated. So many things going on that I haven't had the chance to do much updating as of recent. So today I was preparing some food at my friend's kitchen in a dorm with a bunch of other friends. This crowd of Japanese people come in all of a sudden and there was this one girl that I ended up just chatting with... turns out that she did a 1 year exchange in UBC and we got all riled up talking about UBC and Vancouver. Cool to boot too!

Had my hands in a smoked salmon cream cheese mix at the time and couldn't whip out my cell phone to exchange contacts. Was going to wash up but ended up telling her to contact a mutual friend we knew to get my info (don't even know if he still has my contact). Was in the process of washing my hands and the guard man came and interrupted us because we were talking too loud and they had to leave and I didn't end up getting her contact! Nooooooooooo! Bummer.

Oh and by the way... I've just been spending the last 2 weeks prepping for an international festival happening tomorrow where I'll be putting out a Canadian booth selling "Canadian food" and I have lofty goals to head out to France for a conference if I can get some results in 1 month.

Sigh... back to work, got posters to finish off making. If things go well, I'll be selling food for 400! Pictures to come later.

Why an Athesist Cares about Religion

I saw this video on YouTube just today on why Atheists and Agnostics should start keeping track of what is going on in the religious world. We are seeing people of religion influencing what others can or can't do. I ask you, who is it in the States are against stem cell research? Where does Conservative party in the States get a significant support from? Who is against the teaching of evolution in school? What significant faction opposes same sex marriage?

The point of these questions is not whether if they are correct or not, but it is important to realize that there is an institution behind this... and I'm afraid that this institution is not entirely backed up by rational thought. It's time to name names here and now, a considerable amount of policies are being driven into politics by Christian organizations.

I am not characteristically against religious organizations; I am more than happy to co-exist with the beliefs of others-- my friends can go ahead and pray before eating a meal, tell me that you can't eat pork or beef, whatever, it doesn't bother me. I have plenty of friends of different religious backgrounds. In Canada, I have Christian, Hindu and Islamic friends. We get along fine; it's not like we go jihadic when we sit down together for lunch. Unfortunately, there are groups of people that do not think that way and these groups have the influence to change the laws that affect people that aren't of their religious denomination. Is that right? I don't think so.

"Democracy is about way more than majority rule. Democracy is about minority rights, individual rights, restraints on power." -- President Clinton, interview on Fox News after he smacks down Chris Wallace (the host) down for partisan questioning (an interview very much worth watching by the way).

Since when do Christian (or other religious) groups have the right to impose their way of thinking on to other people? We have a group of people telling others what is right or wrong and trying to legislate that into law. This is a different ball game because there are active groups of people out there affecting the way other people go about their lives, especially when the affected group isn't doing anything to affect the active group's way of life.

Why should being Islamic threaten Christians? Is it right to for say Christians to legislate a ban on Islamic religion (even as a way of life)? Suppose even that Christians held a majority and "democratically" had the power to do this sort of thing, does is make it right still? No! And that is why democracy is just as much about minority rights as it is about majority rights. Because in the big picture of the world, we are all minorities. There are more non-Christians in the world than there are Christians and simply by majority rule it would be just as fair to legislate against them. But oh wait, the world is divided into countries and such, but the idea is still just as valid.

Religious group's have an asymmetric way of interacting with broader society; for example what if I made a deal to allow a religious organization to have their way with no stem cell research, but I want religious related activities in schools banned because, say other people might find it offensive.

You know what? There is no way that is going to happen. I've never seen any religious organizations make any concessions because they believe they are right and they want it their way. And the only time I've seen religious discourse happen is when they want to come talk to you and persuade you to let them have their way.

That's the asymmetry. If you have the right to change the way other people go about their lives, then others should have the right to influence the way you go about your life. This of course is an idealistic way of thinking-- in the sense that we live by fair rules (ie. what you can do, I can do). The reality is that the world isn't 100% fair, but we try to live by these ideals. If we don't, then all bets are off and everyone is going to be as unfair as possible to get their way... and you know what? That's also "fair" in a perverse kind of way... but this system would still be moral, in a different way where I described in a post I made more than a year ago. Summary point, Christian groups should also be willing to accept the influence of other groups if you are going to try and influence how others should be. As of this writing, I have yet to find much evidence of this happening.

I am sure that you and I can predict the headlines in the news if I actually made a deal as a above: "I'll let you have your way with no stem cell research, but I want religious activities in schools banned." We'd all hear how this would be called "religious discrimination," fine, so what do you call it and a religion discriminates against other people? So what about people or ideas not related to religion but challenged by religious groups? "Persecuted by religion?" I don't think we have a formal term to describe this and I think this is the problem--the problem is that a set of phrases don't exist to describe this persecution of ideas by religion. If a problem cannot be well defined, you're not going to have a very good chance of any sort of logical discourse (assuming that "logic" is a valid school of thought for this kind of "discourse"). But it's time to start the discourse because religious tolerance is coming to an end and ironically we are starting to see that it is those that are religious that are intolerant. I cannot tolerate the intolerant.

It might seem that I'm hitting hard at Christians, but that was not the point of this essay. I don't harbour any hate of them-- it so happens to be what I am the most versed in terms of what is going on, but the argument can be extended to other religions. If that is one things you should walk away from this, it is the broader picture of implications.

I am agnostic out of politeness (agnostic being that I have no belief or disbelief of supernatural religions) because I believe it's fine for people to believe anything they want so long as they are civil. I even entertain religious conversation and was perfectly fine with people telling me that they're happy to be religious. I've got no problem with people being happy, but when the things they do starts causing trouble to other people, it's time to take a look at what's going on and I mean so in a rational kind of way. Unfortunately, rationality and religion doesn't seem to co-exist and I have to make a stand for it and many others are starting to do likewise.

Religious and world peace is possible-- I've lived in an international dorm.

The simplest questions are sometimes the hardest

One of my labmates has a presentation this weekend in Korea and tonight he did a mock presentation to me and the assistant professor this evening. His presntation was on "At-Cut Quartz actuated resonators using plasma activated bonding." His presntation is still a work in progress but the professor had decided that he should practice tonight.

I sat through the presentation, it lack a clear defination of the objective and a clear picture of where "plasma activated bonding" fitted into the picture of the fabrication of this device. Dispite being here for a year, I still feel that my knowledge of material processing methods is rather limited. After the presentation, I decided to hold a mock question period where I popped the question "what is plasma activated bonding?" My friend, Takahashi looked back blankly... he started to try and formulate an answer... something about surface energy of a material being increased by application of a plasma, then he gave up to tell me "I really don't know and the mechanisms aren't well understood."

Why is it hard for people to admit what they don't know? One thing that annoys me the most is people pretending to know, because it's a waste of time. If there is one thing that annoys me even more, is watching 2 people that pretend to know something argue against each other (this is especially true in politics).

The simplest test of knowledge is the following... ask the person how do they know what they know. Drop'em like a sack of potatoes if they can't give a straight answer (and aren't willing to admit it) because there isn't a point continuing the conversation.

Fortunately Takahashi was able to admit it.

Farmer Justin 2!

Remember back in June when I made that post on planing rice? Yes? No? Maybe? Well, 4 months have passed since and it was time to make a return back to the fields and make the harvest. Me, Ono, Helen, Alex and Iinuma-san hopped into Iinuma-san's car and we were off at 8:30 to somewhere in Kawasaki-machi to head on over to Shigeo's farm to help out with the rice harvest. All by hand. I posted why Shigeo did everything by hand in the last post so if you're not entirely sure why, go back and visit the last post. He's a very interesting guy, from Economist to environmental conservator. He's working with a bunch of people to setup an NPO in the area for sustainable development and education.

His background in economics is quite fascinating with the combination of environmental conversation because he's explained to me how making a country more self relyant interms of energy and resources is quite important. Japan imports 60% of all it's food ant 97% of all it's energy. Comparing that to places like Germany where they produce 107% of their food and France is in the ball park of 200%. No, this wouldn't be a comment you'd hear from just your average farmer, he's an educated farmer!

This time around we spent most of the morning and afternoon harvesting rice all by hand. It was quite the work, but it went pretty fast. By lunch with about 10 people, we had harvested an entire rice field, tied the rice into many bushels and then hung them outside to dry.

Alex harvesting rice!

By noon, we were all crowed around nice wooden but worn benched outside snacking away at a hearty meal of rice balls, veggies and soup.

The wooden benches. Simple, yet functional.

By the afternoon, we started on another field and got 1/4 of the way though and called it a day.

The group of friends I was with got invited out to one of the volunteer's house to have coffee that afternoon. The guy is an architect who had completed his home by a very nice lake about a year ago, all out of wood harvested locally. The idea was to build a house using only local material and also very environmentally friendly.

The house! Looks like something you'd find in Canada!

I learned plenty about the design of the house that day. For example, beneath this house, is a very huge pit of charcoal. Charcoal is good at absorbing humid air and air filtration. If exterior humidity was 100% outside during heavy rain, the interior would remain at about 75% (all of this data was metered).

The house also has an open celining between the first and second floor, allowing hot air to escape from the bottom and rise to the top. A window at the top can be opened to let the hot air flow out of the house and small vents at the bottom are opened at the bottom to allow cooler air to flow in. During the hot summers the house can be kept at 28 C dispite the outdoor temperature of 35 C with no airconditioning.

The windows, while extremely big, are all quadrouple paned to prevent loss of heat during the frigid winters. The floor is heated with a water boiler during the winter. In addition, the house is also equiped with a very sweet home theater system with exceptionally big speakers. See the picture below.

That's Ono, sticking his head into the speaker system.

Fortunately the house is located in a remote section of the mountains and the neighbours only come to their cabin once in a while, leaving the owner of this place free to blast his music as loud as he wants, when he wants. It would be really neat to have a house like this.

I've also posted a photo album online. If you've got a chance, check it out!

Calgary: Sept 30 -- Oct 2, 2006

I know that Matt's been waiting for this post. It's 9:00 am at lab, been here since 8:00 am, just finished editing a few photos, exporting them, adding comments and uploaded the album to the net.

So here's me reporting in on my Calgary trip.

Sept 30 2006 -- Arrival in Calgary

I hopped off the plane and made my way straight past and out of baggage claim-- I was travelling with carry on luggage only for my Canadian trip. I'll have you know how nice it is to not spend 30 minutes at the conveyor belt of luggage claim waiting for a suitcase to pop out.

I strolled out past the exit of luggage claim to go find Matt somewhere near the exits. It was the other way around unforutnately as I walked right by him without noticing while he blurts "and he walks right by." So sue me, I had an early start that day and my brain wasn't running at full speed.

We jumped into Matt's car and beamed back to his place in all about 15 minutes. Calgary, like Toronto has lots of large highways running all over the place, though Toronto's highways are a plenty wider. I dropped my stuff back at his place and decided to hit the roads to Banff -- it was a beautiful day, why waste it chilling at home? And so, we were off.

After about 2 hours of driving (usually it takes about 1.5 hours to make it out there but traffic was a little bad that day) we made it to Banff. I'll let you guys know, Matt is turning into a Calgarian -- Country music has started creeping into his music mixes, I kid you not. I'll give him this much-- it isn't old school country music atleast.

Matt pumped the WRX up and through a small road off the high way to a lookout point looking down at a valley in Banff. The view was very impressive and unfortunately something that a camera fails to capture. If you want to call youself a Canadian, I sugges that you pay a visit to the Rockies atleast once, especially if you're a Vancouverite. Get a bunch of friends, get a car, drive from Vancouver to Calgary and check out the Rockies and Banff along the way. I assure you that it is something that you won't regret.


Plenty of nice pictures in Banff were taken, actually I'll let them speak for themselves:


Left: Matt's Subaru Wrx by the trees, Right: Matt by the trees


Close up of the leaves in change

These pictures were taken a during a drive around Kananaskis Country which is near by Banff. Nice pictures no? We also strolled around a river that runs near by and took a few shots over there. Which reminds me, Matt! Fire me over some pictures!

After our stint in Banff we headed back for Calgary, as for me I decided to catch up on sleep in the car since after flying in from Toronto, I'd be having a 26 hour day with the time zone change. In addition! That evening we would be heading off to the local casino for some poker action and I definately wanted to be in tip-top shape for the poker action.

By evening we made it back into Calgary, popped by the house to drop off some stuff and made a run to Matt's company where I'd get a tour of the hangar where the pretty planes are kept. The Jet, especially, that Matt now gets to fly. A picture of it right below actually!


Mmmm $14 million dollar jet!

Need to get around in style? Drop $1.4 into Matt's company to buy a share (refundable of course), it's only $2300/hour to operate the plane and I think it seats 6~8 people. Got cash to burn? Just drop Matt a line!

The jet was pretty darn cool. I got a chance to poke around the cabin, fully stocked with all sorts of goodies and took a seat in the cockpit. We popped open the cover to one of the engines for me to take a look. Pictures, of course are in the photo album. I also got to take a look at the turbo-prop plane that Matt used to fly. Well I even had a chance to poke around it once a long while back when I was in Vancouver. Planes are very cool machines. One day, I'd like to have a nice small one for myself. One day :)

Right after the hangar trip, we headed off to "Joey's Tomatoes,"to grab some dinner. I'll say that the waitress there are pretty darn good looking and you might end up taking your time eating because they also like coming by and chatting it up a little from time to time. The steak they make over there is just awesome. They have this great pepper sauce that goes with it and the steak was exceptionally tender. If you go to Calgary, be sure to get some grade A steak, you'll never regret it.

Finally, the poker action.

Matt has provided a short summary of our little poker stint here, but I'll tell my side of the story. Before we stepped into the casino, actually during the drive back from Banff, I told Matt that I had a feeling that I would win big that day. Actually, it's been a feeling I had since I knew that I would be coming to Calgary, about a month before I arrived.

We arrived at the "Cash Casino" a little casino somewhere in a semi-industrial/commercial area outside the heart of Calgary. It looked a little seedy, but none the less, it had the kind of poker and the limits we wanted to play. We'd be playing $1/$2 no limit Texas Hold'em that night. There were other places that were playing Texas Hold'em, but the buy-in's required were considerably higher, sitting at $300~$400+ required to have a respectable sized poker stack, an amount beyond I was willing to risk. The max buy-in for the place we were at was $200, which was the right range for me.

We walked through the doors, past a smokey room filled with slots and table games like pai-gow poker into the backrooms where the poker tables were. An added bonus is that the room was also a smoke free room! Yes! I hate being in a smoke filled room for extended periods of time.

We took our seats at a table together and we ended up pretending that we were strangers that evening. It just seemed safer to me. The table we sat at was pretty quiet, there wasn't much banter and people were pretty focused on the cards. There was one guy at the table that had a group of friends playing at various other tables which seemed to liven things up as they stopped by our table from time to time to chat with their other friend, but that was pretty much it. Small talk with the other players was... pretty small.

I played exceptionally tight the entire night. There were 8~10 players at the table the entire time and the players were pretty loose-- lots of callers. If that's the case, you're better off waiting for some pretty good hands before getting or else you risk losing too often-- part of poker is winning money, the other part is to not lose it. Not losing money in poker is exceptionally important... especially when you've got to make tough folds.

We started playing at about 11:00 pm, the night droned on for a few hours before Matt and I got moved to another table as the managers wanted to close our table. I won a few hands but ended up losing the extra cash because I was insistent on confirming my gut feeling that my opponent had me beat dispite me having some pretty decent cards. I was right, unfortunately.

Things got really interesting that night after a gruffy biker dude arrived in his suit and pulled out wad of cash where he tossed $200 on to the table (a small portion from a big wad). He got his chips and played incredibly agressive and like he didn't care about losing. Scared the crap out of many players at the table and within 1~2 hours, he had atleast $800 total in his stack from other players not willing to take him on... or the guy catching weird cards and taking them out. Very scary stuff.

As for me, I wasn't playing all that many hands that night and I would be down about $50 at one point since I'd keep missing the flop with decent hole cards. Things took a different turn after a while however. I had AQ one hand and flopped QQ6, there were about 4 other players that hand and Matt also stayed in after a bet of $6 preflop. Well Matt bets $20, I raise back to $40 to tell him that I've got something... then he raises me all in. Well what am I to do? I got a pretty good hand and if he even had a Q, I had him probably out kicked. Call! He flips over his cards to show 66. Crap, he had a full house on the flop!? Well the turn came, junk... the river? An ace hit's the table to give me the win and I end up cleaning out Matt for $88 bucks and he had to rebuy in for $400. Well alteast he lost the money to me, he'd get it back anyways.

So here I am sitting around with about a $300 stack. A guy that's been pushed around all night by the chip lead recently started making some big bets and taking down some nice large pots. I had an K-10 one hand with a 10 top pair after the flop. He keeps calling my bets on the flop and turn. By the time we get to the river. He bets $75 at me. What the hell? I didn't even bet that huge at him and now this? After thinking hard, I decided to take out $75 from my stack to call. He had nothing but low pair and was trying to push me out. Sweet, my stack is up to about $400! The best had yet to come.

I had a few good hands that night but I had very few of them actually, I was feeling that I was getting statistically too few of them; I had to get a good hand sometime soon! At one point, I thought exceptionally hard about getting AA, the best cards possible preflop. I stared down the cards flying at me and mentally willed each card that hit the table coming to me to be an ace. My gut feelings were exceptionally strong that hand, my gut was telling me that I'd hit it... exactly on this hand. I flip my cards over to find... 22. Somewhat anti-climatic, but still I had a good feeling about this hand. I called preflop and was in early position with 5 other players in. The flop hit, 10 7 2. A 2 hit the table!! I was sitting on a hidden set of 2's. Nobody would ever see this one coming. I was extactic... but of course, calm, cool and collected.

Light betting ensued on the flop and I decided to call a $5 bet-- I decided to slow play this hand and hoped to milk it for all it's worth. The next card hit, and it was a 9. Possible straight on the table but from my observation, it's be a gut shot draw. The probabilities were still in my favor. One player bets $20, I decide to raise to $40 and I get 2 callers. There's about $130 in the pot now. The last card comes out, a 10! I am now sitting on a full house! The biker dude before me checks the bet, I bet $40, the other guy calls and the biker dude tells us all that he's going "all in." My heart was skipping with joy. Gave it a second and called with the rest of my cash. The other guy backed out.

The biker flipped his cards over to reveal that he had 10-3, he caught triple 10's on the river. I look at him and told him "nice hand," paused... and then flipped over my 22 to reveal my full house. The players at the table gasp, yeah I took out 1/2 of Mr Crazy biker's $800 stack and my stack was over $900.

There is a bit of a taboo of leaving the table right after a big win so I decided to stick it out for a few more rotations. The biker dude transfered off the table after that crushing defeat, a few of the players were talking about how tight I played the entire night. I loosened up a little because everyone really tightened up and bluffed a few hands and showed off my cards to everyone a few times to loosen them up. My stack still commanded the respect of everyone at the table and very few were willing to take me on. After a few rotations, I decided end the night at about 5:00 am and cashed out for $912 and gave back Matt his $88 bucks which actually came in useful... because I got to use it to earn an extra $88 off the biker dude from that one hand.

I left the table, then Matt and I met up in the parking lot and then we were off. Matt was up $93 bucks and I was up about $600. Not bad, not bad at all.


The fan of cash at the top is mine, the one at the bottom is Matt's

We got back at 5:30 am, had a celebratory beer and headed off to sleep.

The next day? Well, I met up with an old friend Alan that moved to Calgary... Matt and Alan got me horrendously drunk along the 17th Ave strip otherwise known as the "Red Mile" in Calgary. I'd talk more but I think this post is long enough as it is. Waking up the next day, I caught breakfast with Matt and was off to Vancouver.

Calgary was great and if you want to see more pictures, they're of course here.

Old draft dates: Toronto

Oddly, I had the report on my Toronto leg on draft a few days ago and finally published it today. The only problem is that blogger decided to keep the original date of the entry. Scroll down for details.

Postcards

I bought a bunch of postcards in Canada to send to friends overseas. Each one costed me about 30 cents. To mail one of these postcards internationally costs $1.49 according to the Canada Post webpage (which is a very poorly designed webpage because it took me a little while to find the information I was looking for). Who would have thought that sending a postcard overseas costs times the price of buying a post card! Amazing.

Diamond Parking: Go To Hell!!

Today I went for lunch at Steveston, parked the car at the Riversong parking, went for lunch at the warf, bought a t-shirt then came back to the car to find a ticket for $50 which was issued 20 minutes right after I parked the car. The reason? I walked off the parking lot away from the set of stores right by and they had an under cover spy somewhere watching. The comment was even written on the ticket. Unbelievable, I had assumed that the set of stores that I would be going near by would be covered in the parking. Apparently not.

Things have changed since the last time I've been in Steveson, previously that parking lot could have been used for doing your shopping or whatever in the Steveston docks area. Unfortunately that isn't the case any more. My own fault for not reading the sign more carefully. Unfortunately I didn't see the ticket until I got home... had I seen it sooner, I would have quicky poped over to a coffee shop, got myself a coffee and sent a copy of the recipt to the company to contest the ticket.

The lot doesn't even charge for time, nor was it full at all. In the past that parking lot never had problems with it being overfull. No, apparently it seems to me that the stores around had decided to hire some company to track if people came to their stores and give them a ticket if they didn't. Anyways, watch out if you park in Steveston because it seems that the patrollers there are incredibly vigil. It's sad to think that people make money from a "service" like this, but there you have it.

Sept 28 - Sept 29: Niagra and Downtown Toronto

Sept 28th: Niagra with Drew

Woke up at 7:00 am dispite being jet lagged about 10 minutes ahead of Lily, to hear her alarm go off twice before she got out of bed :) It was rather amusing. We caught breakfast and after some milling about at her place, we were on our way on the subway system.

I made it to the Eaton's Center at about 9:00 am, the time I had the rental car reserved. The rental car place was supposedly on the roof of the building... a place that took me nearly 40 minutes to find after wandering the entire mall. All was good, after I found the roof top parkade and then after that, I would be off in a Hyundai car that handled pretty nicely, I thought.

After getting out of the parkade and getting lost and caught in downtown Toronto traffic for quite some time (missing plenty of turns and going the wrong ways countless times) I would finally make it to the 404 highway to head towards Drew's place (the 401 would have been significantly better, but I didn't know any better at the time).

The one nice thing about driving in Toronto is their large highways that go kind of everywhere at really high speeds. I was ripping through the highways at 140km/h without breaking a sweat! Sweet! After driving for about an hour, I made it to Drew's place. At that point, it struck me-- getting around this world is pretty amazing. Just over a few days, I would fly across the pacific and Canada to land in Toronto and then make my way about 100 km out of Toronto to a lot precisely somewhere in Mississauga where I've never been to. Global maps and addresses are quite something.

After picking Drew up we were off to a mall to hang out and grab some lunch!


Left: Drew, Right: Greek Lunch

After milling about the Mall for a little bit, we were off on the roads again for Niagra, about 120 km further away. Driving a car at 120~140km/h vs riding my scooter going at about 60km/h is a world of difference in travel. Just getting to Niagra falls from Toronto on scooter would be a day trip unto itself! Well, I gotta live with what I got in Japan.

We made a little pitstop in St. Catherines for me to pick up some presents for a few friends of mine in Japan. My roomie and one other person in Japan both did their homestay in St. Catherines and I think they'd have quite the kick getting something from the town they stayed in. After that pitstop, we were off to Niagra falls!


Left: Falls from the Top, Right: Falls from the front

I had the opportunity to ride the "Maid of the Mist" boat, a tour boat that roams near the bottom of the falls with a speaker blaring a recorded message with tidbits about the falls. Apparently, long ago, a 7 year old boy had once fallen off a boat, down the falls and managed to survive. I would hate to imagine being swept under all that falling water.

The falls themselves are very impressive-- it is something that you just have to be there to experience. The amount of mist gushing up from the falls is quite impressive and would look all the more impressive had it not been a cloudy that day. Never the less, the poncho I was wearing that day was quite soaked by the end of that boat ride.


Maid of the Mist snow globe

Sept 29th: Downtown Toronto

I got back the previous day at about 12:30 am to Ida's place... a little later than anticipated-- I got a little lost finding my way back to downtown Toronto after dropping Drew off. I crashed and wouldn't wake up till 10:00 am to find Ida's place empty (Ida had left at 6 am, dispite her noting that she was dropping utensils all over the place that morning... which I slept through). I gave Drew a ring that morning and we agreed to meet in the afternoon to hang out and do a photoshoot of downtown.

Inside the Eaton Center

We had quite the time running around downtown playing with our cameras. We did plenty that day. While walking around downtown we caught a Jamacian guy playing speed chess on the street. There were 2 challanges going that day. The Jamacian guy posted a note on the sidewalk saying that he was Jamacian's best speed chess player and said that he'd have a friendly game of speed chess where he'd handily beat anyone that played him. The second is that he was going to earn his plane ticket back to Jamaca from the donations of his spectators.
Speed chess in action

I even tried a game against this reknowned player and had my rear end handed to me in about 2 minutes of playing. Amazing. Of an interesting note, while watching this Jamacian guy go at it, Drew was approached by a amateur-professional photographer who opened up the conversation with "want to try this lens"? The lens Drew got to play with costs on the order of $1000! Nice. He also got lots of tips and pointers from the photographer. Unfortunately, this all started while I was elsewhere in the crowd taking pictures.

Infront of the Eaton's Center there was a street artist going at it on the sidewalk making a very nice picture from some sort of printed image had had on hand. A large crowd gathered around the man while they watched as his art took shape while using chalk! The control the guy had with chalk was simply amazing. I could not have imaged such a vivid image made from chalk.

A street artist and his picture in work

The evening came and thanks to Lily and her handy work, she had organized a dinner of friends in town to meet up with me. Drew and I headed off to Alice Fazooli's for dinner where I was greeted by Ida, Steve, Lily, Rich, Felix, Ben, Felix's g/f, Drew and Jess. It was quite the gathering and we had a good time chatting it up around the dinner table.

The Crew around for dinner

As an added bonus, the restaurant had tape going in the background to learn italian in the washroom. What a strange concept.

After dinner, a small bunch of us retreated to a near-by bar for some billards and drinks before winding down for the evening.

Ben and I

There are more pictures, of course and they are posted here. Enjoy the pictures!

Upnext, my trip to Calgary.

Toronto: Sept 27 -- Crash Landing at Lily's!

I'm saving my Korea report for a little later. I just downloaded all my photos from my trips to Toronto and Calgary and decided that I'll work on posting about those legs of my trip... starting with Toronto.

I reason to come out to Toronto, in particular to make good on my deal Ida that I would come out to visit her in Toronto after her visit to Sendai Japan. Deciding that I would visit her, I decided that I would visit as many friends as possible in Canada, turning my initial trip home to a tour of Canada. Toronto would be my first stop before hitting Calgary and home.

Day1 : Sept 27 -- Crash Landing at Lily's!

I actually arrived in Vancouver the day before on the 26th at about 11 am. I stayed one night in Vancouver to meet up with the family, grab some dinner then headed out the next day on my Westjet flight leaving at 8:45 am to Toronto.

Being back in Canada for just the first 2 days, I would realize how friendly everyone in Canada is. As I stepped through the security gate with no issues, the guy with the metal detector wand have me the funny eye and jokingly said "we'll get you some other time."

I settled down in the terminal and waited for my flight to arrive-- I arrived at 7:30 am and my plane hadn't arrived yet. Across from me was an unattended agenda book left on the table I decided to leave alone thinking that the person that owned it might come back. Some guy walked by me and promptly asked if it was my book to which I responded 'no.' He then immediately handed off to the attendants at the desk near by. What a friendly and civilized place this country is.

A flight to Montreal came and went while I was waiting for my Toronto flight in the span of an hour, I will have to say that WestJet runs a very tight operation when it comes to coordinating their flights. My flight arrived at the gate and I borded. The flight attendents were remarkably friendly and funny, something that seemed unthinkable to me from my time in Japan-- if you're dealing with customers, the empoyees always use very formal language. Nope, not in Canada.

As for the inflight safety instructions, the attendant first told us "in the unlikely event of a cabin pressure change first put your own oxygen mask first before assisting others... if you're travelling with 2 or more children, pick your favorite one first." We had a good laugh.

Looking out my window to the side at another WestJet plane
What Vancouver looks like from the Sky

Behind me, sat 2 people one back from Afganistand and another a girl that was in Vancouver for a high school reunion. Both strangers to each other but they chatted it up anyways. Something that I haven't commonly seen done in Japan. Yes, Canada is an incredibly friendly place, I never realized that I would miss that till I got back.

4 hours later (and + 3 from time zone differences) I finally arrived in Toronto at about 4 pm. Hopped on a bus then on a subway to make my way to Lily's in Mid-town Toronto. Lily met up with me at the subway station rather surpised I was without a suitcase. Yup, for these 6 days I decided I would travel light with only a backpack and a shoulder bag. I also didn't want to wait for check-in luggage at the airport neither... because it always takes about 30 minutes for me to get my luggage from baggage claim.

We walked a few blocks to Lily's place inside an old looking appartment complex with plenty of character. The interior was nice, neat and well kept. Nice job Lily! I was impressed.

Ida came out to meet us shortly after at the subway station and we were off to find a restaurant to find grab dinner together. After some walking down Younge street we settled down to a place called "The Green Mango" that served Thai food. We had a Green Mango salad, a chicken dish and a pork dish to share for dinner. By the end, we were pretty stuffed and the food was pretty good.

We walked after dinner to walk off the food. We started heading back to Lily's after it started drizzling rain. I showed off a few pictures of Korea that evening, Ida had to get back after being pooped from a long day of work. As for Lily and I, we chated for a bit (a little about world events) then worked on our respective computers for a bit before crashing for the night. The next day, I would make my way to Niagra Falls with Drew.

Canada, here I come!

Back in Japan, got back yesterday and caught a train back to my uncle's house where I stayed for a night. At Ueno station, a business man gave me a shout out to give me a hand to find the right platform I was to take to make it to my uncle's house. He bought me a coffee, chatted for a bit and exchanged contact information.

He gave me a call later to make sure I made it to my uncle's place ok. There some parts of Japan that catches me totaly off guard. As much as I sometimes complain about certain aspects of Japan, there are definately nice aspects to Japan.

When I have more time and my thoughts more clear, I will post more about them. But for now, I gotta get ready to touch Canadian soil again.

Chungnam University: Daejeon

I am now currently sitting in front of a computer in Chungnam university, where my friend Su I am currently visiting studies. I have so far crashed 2 classes with her (she is a Japanese major) and I got caught in one class, interestingly in a Japanese listening class. The teacher was pretty friendly... the first thing she said was "hmm, class seems a little bigger today" in Japanese. I did end up learning a little Japanese on this end as well. Hah, learning Japanese in Korea.

Outside of the cultural studies building, is some martial arts demonstration going on. I will have to leave this station soon to check it out. There is music blaring and men dressed up in white looking traditional clothing doing some kind of dance or something.

I stayed in downtown Daejeon last night, came to the university sat in on a few classes, hung out with a new friend I made from the Japanese class, where we played some basket ball and went out for some food and drinks in the evening. A great time was had!

What awaits for me today, I have no clue, but it will be fun anyways.

In korea

Well I am in Korea now, live and well. I stayed in a hotel for the first night with a lake side view... interestingly, I was provided with shampoo, a shaver and etc. I think I washed my hair with shaving cream. Damn it!

Life is good an interesting in Korea, I am having a great time none the less and as much as I would love to write a really long post on what I have been doing here but I'm kind of busy and it's getting late.

Well, this is only the beginnings of my interesting adventures in Korea. When I have another chance and time, I will post then.

Just letting you all know, I am alive and well on this end.

Cherrio.

Getting Ready for Korea and Canada

I've been busy and tired this weekend. While on internship, I was sleeping about 6~7 hours a day and getting by pretty fine on that. Weekend, I would be sleeping just as much, seemed like one of my dreams on cutting back on sleep was coming into effect. It didn't last by the time I got home.

Friday, the afternoon I arrived back into Sendai after a 200 km trip by bullet train back from Utsunomiya. I b-line'd back home dropped off my stuff unpacked and left immediately to lab to start working on a presentation I would give the next day. One of those scheduled lab presentation things where I would present 3 months worth of work and what I have been doing to everyone. Fortunately I had all 39 slides ready before I left and about 1/3 of my presention hand outs completed before I left for my internship. I started working at about 7:00 pm and worked till midnight to finish my handouts, had them printed and finished by mindnight. By lab standards, got my work done pretty fast-- it is not unusual for people to sleep over at lab preparing for their presentations. One of the 3 presenters did exactly that.

I gave my presentation the next day, updating everyone on my recent results, which were a mixed bag. Some good and some not good. Some techniques worked and some don't so well.. it's important to not let your pride get tangled with the results of experiments. Experiments are exactly that, you don't know what the outcome is going to be... if something works, it works, if it fails then it fails. What it has to do with you is nothing, the reason you are doing this is to figure things out. After spending 1.5 years here and watching everyone trying to say that they are doing a good job on their research or hiding things that didn't work, I got fed up-- there is nothing wrong with saying so.

I did my presentation that day and made absoultely clear of the things that did not work for me, I was blunt and even told them it could be poor handling or whatever and asked the audience directly if I was doing anything wrong or if anything could be improved. Maybe it will encourage these people to speak out more and not take things so hard if the professors rap on them a little. Didn't learn something right? Got advice from people and learned something new? Great! That's all you need.

My presentaiton was energetic and interactive, I was glad that nearly everyone was awake during my presentaiton. There was one guy that fell asleep and drooled over his shirt and we had a good chuckle out of that.

Got home after the presentation that day, crashed a little and went out for dinner with friends I promised to see right after getting back into Sendai.

The next day, met up with another friend from a volunteer group who is always gracious to invite me out to all sorts of events for lunch and got people together for a hotpot that evening that went till 2 am.

The next day, I would have to get my internship report done, do some shopping and get a lonely planet guide to Korea. I just finished all that and then mostly finished packing. It is 3 am and I am bushed. Just checked that I can have one carry on and one personal piece of luggage. Going to have an oversized shoulder bag and a backpack that I am going to bring.

Well, tomorrow I get up at 9:00 am. Hit the University to sign some documents then hit the bullet train out of here to Narita Airport then off to Korea I go. If I have net connection, I'll keep you people posted.

Bon Voyage to me!

Getting value out of work

I had a day scheduled to do nothing but data analysis, but it seems that my work went faster than anticipated and I finished about 4 hours early... leaving me the entire afternoon to myself. I could, of course notify my boss that I am done, but 1) he isn't around right now and 2) I have some internship reports that I need to work on.

So what happens when the boss isn't around? People fall asleep. 2~3 people in the group have already fallen asleep for the last 20 minutes. Kind of funny, but not really.

Actually, when I get back to the office after lunch, I see atleast 3-5 people either sleeping on their desk or playing the most popular PC game in the world "solitare". Really, if you find yourself playing solitare or sleeping at your place of work then I have the feeling that you don't really enjoy your work.

For a place like Japan, where most people today intend on working at the company they are at for life; I find this to be exceptionally freightening-- why would you want to be stuck to a job that you might not find particularly interesting for 40 years!? I personally could not fathom the thought. Actually, I should rephrase that argument with a little more detail.

You see, the place where I work, does research on materials for integrated circuit packaging. The experiments they run involve making samples, heating them up and taking data on how these samples expand or how their stiffness changes with temperature. After getting the data, people like me spend days hacking at Excel calculating and graphing data (Excel graphing is a real pain in the rear, because I haven't found a nice way of making batches of graphs all at once). It's fine to do this work for a little while but to do it for a few months or so and I'm going to have to take a hard look at it and ask myself, "what am I getting out of it?" And seriously, this is a question that you should *always* be asking yourself when you work... and I am not talking about the money (and in my case, I am getting nearly none).

What I realized, that to the success to anyone's personal carrer, is that you have to be getting something valuable out of your job. If not money then what else is there? Plenty.

It might not necessairly be obvious to you at first, but in general, we all extract something of tangible or intangible value when we do something whether if its playing a computer game for fun, exercising for fitness, helping that little old lady across the street because its nice, et cetra. Now when it comes to work, if you're working just for the (average) money and getting by on it, you're not getting any value; you're on life support--you are dead in the water if or when that job gets cut.

What do I mean by that? Suppose that you're an engineer or a person with a science degree working in a lab somewhere as a technician. It's a job that you have to do repetitive work but it need a little bit of special knowledge you picked up along the way through University. Unfortunately the work is kind of boring because you're doing the same thing over and over again, but it gets the bills paid. You might not realize it, but you are already in deep trouble and it's time to get out.

The problem working in jobs where you do not get prehipreal personal benetfits in term of skills, connections, resources or in general "anything that you can use" is that when you get cut, you're really left with nothing. If you leave your job and then realized that you left your job without anything worth noting, then you've really got nothing to say at your next interview for your next job or perhaps, promotion. When you get into a situtaion like that, you're going to be thinking like a union worker that needs job stability. Personally, I don't like relying on unions to keep me treated fairly-- if you got a skill that people need, then you will be able to find someone that will. Relyance comes from yourself in this case.

How do you get value out of work? It's a matter for you to find it. It could be finding efficient ways of getting work done, whether it be writing programs to do things or clever ways of speeding things up. Maybe you'll learn a few things along the way, maybe the company you'll work for will find value in what you do and get other people to do what you do. Maybe they won't but you can use the time you save to find other things to do.

There are lots of possibilities... and when you decide to go into a new field or job, you'll be a bag of ideas that someone will want to get their hands on. Now that's value.