Depdending on the situation, I think that I am fairly decent at small talk, especially if it's crazy talk.. the kind where I start spouting crazy ideas and watch as my listeners react with strange faces to my strange ideas.... but that's another story.
Recently, I've realized that I'm starting to face a problem with talking in a non-native language. Which is that I can't really be that funny and I have problems sometime making idle chatter. I have already been labeled as interesting by my friends since I can have discussions atlength, but most of my discussions in Japanese are kind of serious unfortunately... (well there was this supposed conversation where I was gathering information about "love hotels" in Japan which I was reminded of but I cannot recollect anything about... and I don't think I was that drunk at the time.. since I remember everything else about the party... and waking up alone in *my* bed.. but that's another story :P).
The problem is that I gotten tired of talking about serious topics... things like the differences in cultures of Canada and Japan, my opinions of the Japanese education system, my thoughts about working life in Japan, etc etc. I really enjoyed it at first because I was collecting all sorts of information and making lots of contrasts.. but, seriously (excuse the pun), after a while I am kind of bored of it and I'm sure if I meet random people for the first time, I doubt that they'd be interested in talking about serious topics such as these. So the question is, what else do you talk about?
I started thinking about Seinfield... you know, a show just about silly funny things. But wait, I know what the silly and funny things are in English (most of them involves me!). The problem is that the Japanese have a slightly different "funny bone" compared to us Westerners. As some of you know, I do enjoy my sarcasm. The problem is that I have learned recently, if I translate my sarcasm in to Japanese, that I'd have a high probability of pissing guys off and making girls cry (sometimes it can be the other way around too!). The trick is understanding the "spot" for Japanese people (translation note: in Japanese the "spot" is like the humor "spot" or something like that). Meaning I need to know what is interesting for these people to talk about.
So far, I do know what I mainly talk about while I'm in Japan.--it's 1. What I like doing in my spare time (hanging out, cooking with friends, attending events,etc.), 2. Lab life, 3. Japanese life in contrast to Western life and 4. How it's not hard to learn a second language (everyone in Japan has to study English from middle school till high school (6 years) and most of them can't speak at all meaning they are quite envious that I can speak Engish... ) Usually I tend to stay away from topics 3 and 4 since I've talked about them to death. I don't talk much about 2 since I think it's not that interesting and it leaves me with 1. But the problem is that I don't have all that much spare time and while I can say that I attend many "parties," talking about "parties" in the general sense while not being in one is not so interesting.
This leaves me with my hobbies and interests... which include sports, food and events. Now I have a bit of a problem about talking about sports and events. For sports (which are like events) I don't talk about sports in the sense of watching them, I try to *play* them instead (I do make the unfortunate analogy sometimes when talking about porn: "What's so interesting about watching it? It's like watching or playing baseball. I'd rather play baseball-- you get exercise, it's healthy and you might make a few friends out of it!"... right... bad analogy [in more ways than one :)] ). So back to the problem, you know, about talking about sports and events. The thing is that I have a dislike of just talking about the things I do because it creates a disconnect, in other words, a barrier. I much prefer to invite people out and do things instead. Why talk about playing tennis? Let's go for a game and have frozen yogurt after instead!
Well great, the problem is that it doesn't work for certain situations-- for example: professors, superiors, and if you're working in a real busy lab to make much more time to go out and do things with people. So great, what does that leave with me left to talk about? Not a whole lot... which is the problem. So let's cross that topic out. Which leaves me with nothing to talk about.
So how does one talk about nothing? But it brings me back to the Seinfeld episode-- wave your hands, say something silly and people start laughing or something. Perhaps I've missed a topic or something... but there should always be something to talk about.
So what do *you* talk about? Have you ever wondered (and wondered why)? It's says a lot (again, in more ways than one... haha!)
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
1 Year's worth of Expenses
As of the end of March, I logged one full year's worth of living expenses information. At first I wasn't entirely sure that I'd be able to keep up collecting all this data, but it seemed interesting enough to me that I kept updating my spreadsheet every so often with new purchases. The results are posted below:
Figure 1. Spreadsheet of total categorized costs
If the numbers on the pie chart are too small for you, the numbers are provided below:
Food 23%
Goods 27%
Transport 7%
Service 14%
Room 20%
Entertainment 9%
What is interesting to note is that my significant living expenses of living are food, goods and rooming fees which are all in the 20% range. Of an interesting note is that the amount of money I pay for services, like cell phone, gym subscription and etc. is low compared to the rest of my expenses. Now for those of you people that think I'm a total party animal, look at my entertainment expenses which sit at 9% of my total expenses. Considering that 2 days out of 7 are weekends, you'd expect a little more right? Perhaps I'm easily amused. But anyways, just as a note to everyone, it doesn't necessairly have to cost a lot of money to have fun. Just about $1,460 CAD over the course of a year (that equates to about ~$100/month in entertainment).
There is one jewel of information in this report that I should mention-- my transportation costs. Now compared to most people living in Vancouver my mode of transportation is totally differeny from what you guys are doing -- ie. I scooter! Now I did a short analysis of what is costs to have a car in Japan (link). My calculations showed that it costs an average of $200/month (including maintenance and not including costs to own!).
In Japan scootering costs me approximately $30~40/month including fuel, insurance and tire change (no maintenance for scooter yet). If you're wondering, I spend $20 on gas/month for transportation. I travel about 25 km/day, which is about a one way trip to UBC from Richmond. Of an interesting note, for a car, I spent $80/month going to and from UBC per month and other misc travels. To be fair, doubling my gas costs for my scooter will put it at $40/month for the same distance. --> scooters are considerably cheaper than a car just gas wise... but I made that point already after I gathered a month's data on my scooter and it's fuel efficiency :) With maintenance included that costs goes up to approximately $50/month. In comparison to a car, it's 1/4 the cost of maintaining a car for a similar level of mobility. Just as a note I have rented a car on several occasions for road trips and I have found that renting a car for when I needed is cheaper than owning one just from a maintenance perspective.
So let me make some more comments about my finances and the interesting things that I've learned... let's take a look at the next figure:
Figure 3 . Categorized costs by month
Figure 1. Spreadsheet of total categorized costsTotal money spent: 1,626,189 Yen = 16,142.66 CAD (April 25, 2006. Source)
Annual costs in yen (divide by 100 for approximate costs in CAD)
Food = 369,667
Goods = 446,661
Transport = 113,246
Service = 226,081
Room = 324,560
Entertainment = 145,974
If there is one important number to look at it's the number in bold, that's how much in a year I spent-- that's $16k in a year. Actually this number should be closer to $20k because I was living somewhere really cheap, but this is approximately what it costs to live on your own. If you live at home and pay for 1/2 of your food then your yearly costs would be in the ball park of $11.5k/year. Yes, I am willing to bet that although you might not notice it, that you are spending around $10,000 a year in personal living expenses. A lot of money right? This includes dining out with friends, going on adventures, trips and buying stuff, add it all up and this is what it costs.
Personally, knowing the amount of money needed to survive at home isn't all that interesting. It's easy to survive when living at home, the real trick is determining how much money you need to make and how much is costs to live on your own. This essay would have been a little more provocative sounding had I said things in reverse... that you spend $10k living at home and mused at the question of the costs of living on your own. Too late, I've already said it backwards and I'm not too interested in reversing the order (I've already spent a considerable amount of time typing this log as it is already... and no, I didn't write this linearly [actually this was the last paragraph I wrote] :P).
So I served the main dish first. Prepare yourselves for appitizer and dessert next!
Up next, a pie chart of expenses:
Annual costs in yen (divide by 100 for approximate costs in CAD)
Food = 369,667
Goods = 446,661
Transport = 113,246
Service = 226,081
Room = 324,560
Entertainment = 145,974
If there is one important number to look at it's the number in bold, that's how much in a year I spent-- that's $16k in a year. Actually this number should be closer to $20k because I was living somewhere really cheap, but this is approximately what it costs to live on your own. If you live at home and pay for 1/2 of your food then your yearly costs would be in the ball park of $11.5k/year. Yes, I am willing to bet that although you might not notice it, that you are spending around $10,000 a year in personal living expenses. A lot of money right? This includes dining out with friends, going on adventures, trips and buying stuff, add it all up and this is what it costs.
Personally, knowing the amount of money needed to survive at home isn't all that interesting. It's easy to survive when living at home, the real trick is determining how much money you need to make and how much is costs to live on your own. This essay would have been a little more provocative sounding had I said things in reverse... that you spend $10k living at home and mused at the question of the costs of living on your own. Too late, I've already said it backwards and I'm not too interested in reversing the order (I've already spent a considerable amount of time typing this log as it is already... and no, I didn't write this linearly [actually this was the last paragraph I wrote] :P).
So I served the main dish first. Prepare yourselves for appitizer and dessert next!
Up next, a pie chart of expenses:
Figure 2. Percentage break down of expenses
Food 23%
Goods 27%
Transport 7%
Service 14%
Room 20%
Entertainment 9%
What is interesting to note is that my significant living expenses of living are food, goods and rooming fees which are all in the 20% range. Of an interesting note is that the amount of money I pay for services, like cell phone, gym subscription and etc. is low compared to the rest of my expenses. Now for those of you people that think I'm a total party animal, look at my entertainment expenses which sit at 9% of my total expenses. Considering that 2 days out of 7 are weekends, you'd expect a little more right? Perhaps I'm easily amused. But anyways, just as a note to everyone, it doesn't necessairly have to cost a lot of money to have fun. Just about $1,460 CAD over the course of a year (that equates to about ~$100/month in entertainment).
There is one jewel of information in this report that I should mention-- my transportation costs. Now compared to most people living in Vancouver my mode of transportation is totally differeny from what you guys are doing -- ie. I scooter! Now I did a short analysis of what is costs to have a car in Japan (link). My calculations showed that it costs an average of $200/month (including maintenance and not including costs to own!).
In Japan scootering costs me approximately $30~40/month including fuel, insurance and tire change (no maintenance for scooter yet). If you're wondering, I spend $20 on gas/month for transportation. I travel about 25 km/day, which is about a one way trip to UBC from Richmond. Of an interesting note, for a car, I spent $80/month going to and from UBC per month and other misc travels. To be fair, doubling my gas costs for my scooter will put it at $40/month for the same distance. --> scooters are considerably cheaper than a car just gas wise... but I made that point already after I gathered a month's data on my scooter and it's fuel efficiency :) With maintenance included that costs goes up to approximately $50/month. In comparison to a car, it's 1/4 the cost of maintaining a car for a similar level of mobility. Just as a note I have rented a car on several occasions for road trips and I have found that renting a car for when I needed is cheaper than owning one just from a maintenance perspective.
So let me make some more comments about my finances and the interesting things that I've learned... let's take a look at the next figure:
Figure 3 . Categorized costs by monthFigure 3. is where some deep information is; "pay" close attention. If you look at my data, you'll see that my food costs and rooming fees remained relatively constant over the entire year. The room fees took a huge spike in the last month due to me moving. The costs incured were paying down the first month's rent, 2 months worth of deposit and one more month's worth of money as the real estate's agent's cut for "finding" us the place and doing some of the paper work for us.
My food costs remained at about $300/month and rental costs remained at $150/month (utils included). These are fixed living expenses and the important thing is that fixed expenses are uninteresting parts of finance. But in finance *boring* is good, because it means stability! Now for the interesting stuff-- variable costs.
Now if you looked at my data, you will notice some blips in my chart. Those blips come from large purchases, in particular my trip to Taiwan ($500), my new camera ($1000), scooter ($600) and moving into a new appartment ($1200). These are my most notable expenses from my speadsheets. Adding these together the total becomes $3300. Now if you compare this expense with my total fiscal expenses of $16,000 you'd see that these 4 significant expenses made up 20% of my total expenses!
Compare this data to my expenses and you'll be able to notice that that's equivalent to an entire year's supply of food! That's how significant how a few big price tag items can inflate yearly expenses. I most humbly believe that if there was something overlooked, it's the variable costs when it comes to financial managment because you're never going to know how much these things are going to cost. Now, over a long enough time span, you'd should be able to determine on average how much extra cash you should expect to spend in variable costs (ie random large purchases or expenses).
I should also comment that making large purchases does not happen randomly! Actually, the size of a random large purchase is proportional to the amount of money you have saved and the amount of money to expect to earn (hence, it determines how willing you are to spending it!). I fully expect that my expenses to change with time if/when I start making more money (or when I have more money available). This means that your finances will change over time as your income changes... but that should be obvious. The intereting question is, "how does it change?" (Assuming your living conditions stays fairly consistent). The question boils down to.. if you had more (or less) money, what would you do? And that's a question that many economists ask themselves and a question that (maybe) Apple's iPod is answering (as a random example).
So there you have it. $16k in a year of living expenses (not including savings), aim higher everyone because you need savings and more. That's it for me. Comments welcome.
Note to self: 1,400 words written in 3 hours.
Now if you looked at my data, you will notice some blips in my chart. Those blips come from large purchases, in particular my trip to Taiwan ($500), my new camera ($1000), scooter ($600) and moving into a new appartment ($1200). These are my most notable expenses from my speadsheets. Adding these together the total becomes $3300. Now if you compare this expense with my total fiscal expenses of $16,000 you'd see that these 4 significant expenses made up 20% of my total expenses!
Compare this data to my expenses and you'll be able to notice that that's equivalent to an entire year's supply of food! That's how significant how a few big price tag items can inflate yearly expenses. I most humbly believe that if there was something overlooked, it's the variable costs when it comes to financial managment because you're never going to know how much these things are going to cost. Now, over a long enough time span, you'd should be able to determine on average how much extra cash you should expect to spend in variable costs (ie random large purchases or expenses).
I should also comment that making large purchases does not happen randomly! Actually, the size of a random large purchase is proportional to the amount of money you have saved and the amount of money to expect to earn (hence, it determines how willing you are to spending it!). I fully expect that my expenses to change with time if/when I start making more money (or when I have more money available). This means that your finances will change over time as your income changes... but that should be obvious. The intereting question is, "how does it change?" (Assuming your living conditions stays fairly consistent). The question boils down to.. if you had more (or less) money, what would you do? And that's a question that many economists ask themselves and a question that (maybe) Apple's iPod is answering (as a random example).
So there you have it. $16k in a year of living expenses (not including savings), aim higher everyone because you need savings and more. That's it for me. Comments welcome.
Note to self: 1,400 words written in 3 hours.
Spring is here!
Spring has finally arrived in Sendai! The flowers are out and the scenery is looking alive again. I don't know how I survived the winter but I did (and it was quite brutal at times :P). I spent part of the weekend out and about taking photos of the trees and blossoming flowers. What a sight, not a single cloud in the sky.
Spring in Sendai is immensely important, it's the best season I think that Sendai has to offer. The only problem is that it's too short lived. After the second week of May, most of Japan goes into the rainy season for 1~2 months then we head into the dead of summer which is smouldering hot (with high humidity). I've only got 2~3 weeks to enjoy this... live it up!
The sun on white flowers in full bloom
Sendai's Boulevard. In 3 weeks, it'll be all green!
Trees sprouting green. People at play in the fields
In front of the library in town
More pictures to come! Got class in 10 minutes, gotta scoot!
Spring in Sendai is immensely important, it's the best season I think that Sendai has to offer. The only problem is that it's too short lived. After the second week of May, most of Japan goes into the rainy season for 1~2 months then we head into the dead of summer which is smouldering hot (with high humidity). I've only got 2~3 weeks to enjoy this... live it up!
The sun on white flowers in full bloom
Sendai's Boulevard. In 3 weeks, it'll be all green!
Trees sprouting green. People at play in the fields
In front of the library in town
More pictures to come! Got class in 10 minutes, gotta scoot!
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Who do you think we are?
I am having a few small parts built for one of the vacuum machines. The problem, I think are the ceramic insulating spacers are coated with carbon depostis (conductive) causing sparking and messing up the plasma. Also one of the insulating spacers got cracked, meaning that some sparking is happening through the cracks which is also screwing with my plasma. If you want to know what a plasma looks like, here's what it looks like:
I am currently using a vacuum chamber, pumped out to about .01 Pascals and then hydrogen gas is flown in to the chamber till about 1 kiloPascal. A votlage of about 600V is applied between the red hot stage below and the electrodes on top, resulting in the purple plasma. Currently, systems like these are used to grow Carbon Nanotubes, which are up there in tensile strength in comparison to diamond (actually, even stronger).
Anyways, the long and short of the story is that I finished the mechanical drawings of the new spacers today (after much pain... CAD is not a friendly tool for a beginner). I picked up the phone and made a call to Tokyo, "Hi I'm from Tohoku University, I'd like to place an order." I hear a noisy background and the person on the other side of the phone tells me "one moment please." I get switched over and start talking again, "Hi, I'd like to place an order for some insulating ceramics."
"Huh?"
"Insulating ceramics? You know, against electricity and heat?"
The guy on the other side of the phone tells me "what kind of store do you think we are? This is a *RAMEN* (noodle) shop!" and the phone gets hung up with a clank.
Whoops, looks like I dialed the wrong number. I dialed again and got the right number and faxed off my drawings to the company. That little event made my day!
I am currently using a vacuum chamber, pumped out to about .01 Pascals and then hydrogen gas is flown in to the chamber till about 1 kiloPascal. A votlage of about 600V is applied between the red hot stage below and the electrodes on top, resulting in the purple plasma. Currently, systems like these are used to grow Carbon Nanotubes, which are up there in tensile strength in comparison to diamond (actually, even stronger).Anyways, the long and short of the story is that I finished the mechanical drawings of the new spacers today (after much pain... CAD is not a friendly tool for a beginner). I picked up the phone and made a call to Tokyo, "Hi I'm from Tohoku University, I'd like to place an order." I hear a noisy background and the person on the other side of the phone tells me "one moment please." I get switched over and start talking again, "Hi, I'd like to place an order for some insulating ceramics."
"Huh?"
"Insulating ceramics? You know, against electricity and heat?"
The guy on the other side of the phone tells me "what kind of store do you think we are? This is a *RAMEN* (noodle) shop!" and the phone gets hung up with a clank.
Whoops, looks like I dialed the wrong number. I dialed again and got the right number and faxed off my drawings to the company. That little event made my day!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
First Week!
First weeks for all Universities are always the most lively. All students come out to attend classes, the clubs are out soliciting for members and showing off, events and more. I guess it is a universal truth for Univesities around the world.
University life in Japan is quite different where students spend more of their focus on joining clubs intead of doing their work in class. Actually, joining a club is really like a class-- you're expected to put a lot of effort in to the club, attend events and more. In a club, everyone's a core member. For people that aren't into the hardcore-ness of a club, there exists "circles" where things are much more loose and people can come and go as they please.
Though most students that join clubs are undergrads (because they have more free time), most grad students don't have the time to come out and join these clubs (these clubs are also mainly located at the undergrad campus of the University). Dispite this, I decided to head down from the Engineering campus (which is only a little ways off from the undergrad campus) to check out the lively undergrad campus.
I caught a jazz band performing on campus which were pretty good. Actually there are plenty of musical groups on campus. From Jazz, rock & punk, classical and more.
Actually what struck me most was a mandolin-banjo club who were quite talented playing the sort of music you'd hear in comical old cowboy-flicks. I hung out and had a pretty good laugh as I'd never expect to see something like this in Japan-- always be prepared to see something unexpected!
Well, I was quite right about seeing the unexpected. Now, during my time at UBC, I've never seen a guy in an old looking suit with a top hat riding through campus. I saw exactly that at the undergrad campus. The people from the horse riding club at Tohoku University brought out a horse and took a little walk around campus drawing much attention. Once thing's for certain, they have very intersting clubs at Tohoku University, probably more interesting than the clubs I've seen back home. I've even seen a gliding club where members actually fly in large gliders. I have no clue how these guys get the money to do things like this.
When I went out to check out the campus on Wedensday and it was particularly warm. What I always used to do when I was studying Japanese at the undergrad campus, was have lunch outside with my friends in front of the International Exchange Building. The secretaries would always go in and out during lunch time. So we'd invite them over to have lunch with us it it used to be a sort of a tradition since the summer. I had since stopped taking the Japanese course so I have rarely seen the secretaries since then and only sporatically over the course of the year. I decided to drop by the office to say hi and invited Hiroko (one of the secretaries) out for lunch.
Left: Me, Right: Hiroko
Hiroko's taken the international students out from time to time to the mountains and more. I had the chance to hop into a trip to a big acquarium a whiles out of Sendai and she'd drop by a few events at the old dorm. To put it short, she's pretty damn awesome and I think that the international students are quite lucky to have her as the Exchange Division secretary because she does a ton load of things to help out the students.
After lunch, I headed out to check out the Sakura blossoming around campus. Unfortunately it was still a little early at the time and most trees on campus were not in full bloom yet. But they will be in a matter of days. At 1:30 pm, I headed back into lab to continue my unfruitful work in trying to do a simple CAD drawing. (I've got no CAD experience!)
University life in Japan is quite different where students spend more of their focus on joining clubs intead of doing their work in class. Actually, joining a club is really like a class-- you're expected to put a lot of effort in to the club, attend events and more. In a club, everyone's a core member. For people that aren't into the hardcore-ness of a club, there exists "circles" where things are much more loose and people can come and go as they please.
Though most students that join clubs are undergrads (because they have more free time), most grad students don't have the time to come out and join these clubs (these clubs are also mainly located at the undergrad campus of the University). Dispite this, I decided to head down from the Engineering campus (which is only a little ways off from the undergrad campus) to check out the lively undergrad campus.
I caught a jazz band performing on campus which were pretty good. Actually there are plenty of musical groups on campus. From Jazz, rock & punk, classical and more.
Actually what struck me most was a mandolin-banjo club who were quite talented playing the sort of music you'd hear in comical old cowboy-flicks. I hung out and had a pretty good laugh as I'd never expect to see something like this in Japan-- always be prepared to see something unexpected!
Well, I was quite right about seeing the unexpected. Now, during my time at UBC, I've never seen a guy in an old looking suit with a top hat riding through campus. I saw exactly that at the undergrad campus. The people from the horse riding club at Tohoku University brought out a horse and took a little walk around campus drawing much attention. Once thing's for certain, they have very intersting clubs at Tohoku University, probably more interesting than the clubs I've seen back home. I've even seen a gliding club where members actually fly in large gliders. I have no clue how these guys get the money to do things like this.
When I went out to check out the campus on Wedensday and it was particularly warm. What I always used to do when I was studying Japanese at the undergrad campus, was have lunch outside with my friends in front of the International Exchange Building. The secretaries would always go in and out during lunch time. So we'd invite them over to have lunch with us it it used to be a sort of a tradition since the summer. I had since stopped taking the Japanese course so I have rarely seen the secretaries since then and only sporatically over the course of the year. I decided to drop by the office to say hi and invited Hiroko (one of the secretaries) out for lunch.
Left: Me, Right: Hiroko
Hiroko's taken the international students out from time to time to the mountains and more. I had the chance to hop into a trip to a big acquarium a whiles out of Sendai and she'd drop by a few events at the old dorm. To put it short, she's pretty damn awesome and I think that the international students are quite lucky to have her as the Exchange Division secretary because she does a ton load of things to help out the students.
After lunch, I headed out to check out the Sakura blossoming around campus. Unfortunately it was still a little early at the time and most trees on campus were not in full bloom yet. But they will be in a matter of days. At 1:30 pm, I headed back into lab to continue my unfruitful work in trying to do a simple CAD drawing. (I've got no CAD experience!)
More life in Briefs
Last Friday-- Impromptu drinking party at home
Sachie, a friend of mine had some spare time Friday night and dropped by the home to hang out. We ended up making a big batch of bean dip to go with some nachos. Oh how I missed good bean dip. We got a call later on that some of her friends were planning on going drinking. So we said that's we'd be in if anything transpired. What transpired was that a horde of people appeared at my doorstep with booze and we all hung out till about 4:00 am drinking and talking (well, it wasn't solid drinking).
Olympia, my roomie was sort of complaining before that she didn't have enough Japanese friends. Looks like she has a fan club now since she can also teach English. Some people ended up staying over because they had a few too many drinks.
One guy ended up telling us that he recently got a girlfriend so everyone ended up asking how did he ask her out. His response was "Well when you meet someone as nice as that, it's as natural as the sun rising and the moon revolving around the earth." I'm really glad to finally meet a Japanese guy with some nice wit :)
Saturday-- International student party, Master Student drinking party and Clubbing
International Party:
Allright so I sound like a party animal right about now. But... let's say that I'm living the busy life. Recently a new batch of international students on a scholarship like mine have arrived in Japan and the foreign student organization hosted a welcome party for these people at the dorm. Meaning food and dancing. I only stayed for the food however since I had to attend a drinking outing with the masters student that time (we tried to go out and do something 3 times and all were failures because we were all to busy!).
I hung out at the international party for about an hour to meet the new international students. No other Canadians arrived however. I did meet a person at the party that caught my attention. I was sitting down at the reception desk with a few friends when a girl goes by me and tells me " I remember you" and goes off to tell me "you're the guy that learned Japanese from video games right? I met you last year here" I was thinking, "oh crap" because I didn't know anything about her and she was pretty cute (d'oh!) and how did she remember about me for so long!?!? We end chatting for a bit and I had to run off to meet up with the Masters students for our drinking outing.
Drinks:
I meet up with the people near the Disney Store in Sendai, which is one of the major meeting spots for all people preparing to head out to a group outing. 7:00, I was late for about 10 mins. That's what happens when you have too many people to catch up with.
The 7 of us met up and then headed out to this old fashioned bar with sort of a 50's feel to it. The food and everything was pretty damn great and we spent atleast 3 hours on 20 bucks. Not bad at all. We had a great time and everything talking about whatever. According to my friends, they're wondring why I wasn't labeled as a "dangerous chemical" and included in a "how to handle dangerous chemical" presentation at lab! Who meeee? Who'd get the crazy idea that I'd be dangerous? Muah ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Where ever I go, some parts of my life always stays the same. Especially when it comes to the girls and rumors. In high school there were 4 rumors about me going out with different girls (for those that know me, you know that I ain't a player). I denied everything... a 5th rumor emerged-- that I was gay. There's just no winning in life sometimes eh?
Anyways, I'm pretty friendly with one of the master’s students at lab and stuff like that. Anyways she's from China, real nice person too. She really likes spicy food and when ordering some friends asked the waiter "what the spiciest food you got for her." I blurt out "just get her some raw chili peppers and she'll be happy." Some of my friends give me an odd glare for a second and I tell them "what? You should see the walls in her room, they're covered in dried chili peppers!" *D'oh!* My friends look back at me "Oh the walls in her room eh???" Great, so another rumor is born. The difference with these people is that they're a lot more forward which kind of put me on the spot. After some jabbing, we pretty much got to the point where they said, "well why don't the two of you go out?" Whoa. Dangerous stuff!
Well we're good friends so there'd be none of that. That and since we're in the same lab and knowing how news and rumors fly around I'm kind of against that. Hahaha, I got the response from my friend who told me "you'd be fun to go out with but there'd be no way I'd marry you because you play too much!" We had a good laugh over that, I never heard a person be so direct but it was true in a sense. I do my best to have fun! The real magic is to do good work and have fun...the ideal world would be the marriage of the two. Perhaps they'll learn the secret someday... either that or I have my formula wrong, but I'm willing to see if my objectives work out for me. Drinking ended at about 11:00 pm.
Clubbing:
The international party ended by about now and the people from the party (I knew) would be relocating from the dorms to the city. I was already in the city (takes only a little bit to get out to the city from the dorms fortunately) so it would only be a matter of waiting. A sub group was already down there at Karaoke but I didn't know where. I tried calling a few people but the singing must have been a little loud for people to pick up the phones. After about 30 mins of trying, I decided to give up and head into a club and hang out. Not to self. The club was dead at 11:30 pm! It didn't start picking up until 12:00 pm! In Canada it's pretty filled by atleast 10:00 pm! Well after milling about at the club for about 15 mins, I thought I'd jet from the place (and take the club entry as a loss). I picked up a drink from my drink ticket and decided to have a short drink... right after finishing my drink, hordes of people started coming in and the place got pretty damn lively.
A bunch of friends also came in that evening so I ended up spending the evening having a few drinks, chatting and dancing with them. I didn't get home till about 3:30 am. Long day indeed.
Sunday-- Work!
Slept in, but that should've been obvious. I woke up and scratched out 2~3 essay topic over a few essays in a notebook over a few hours. I'll write about them later on when I can put them all together. Taught English in the morning, went to lab in the afternoon till the evening to run some experiments before out bi-weekly meeting happening on Monday. Dropped a friend a line to see if I could catch dinner with her in the evening after I finished experimentation (turned out she was busy). Dinner got postponed till Monday at 9:30 pm.
I came home that evening famished. I dropped by the grocery store and bought tons of food. Cooked fried pork with bean sprouts, chicken and fried scallops in butter and soy sauce. I made a ton of food that evening thinking that my roomie would be back and we could have some dinner together. She never showed, turned out that she was out with friends at a going away party for one of her colleagues. I had a great dinner however (and more scallops for me).
Monday-- Labs and Drinks
Lab life as usual, classes in the morning, experiments in the afternoon and lab meeting in the evening starting from 6:30 till 9:30 pm. I left the lab to catch up with my friend to catch up over some dinner at this really interesting Japanese bar/restaurant. Things are kind of miniature, made of wood and stuff. As an interesting note, the places in Sendai do have really nice interior design!
My friend works as a make up artist for hostess (no, they don't usually sleep with their clients... some do however) so I got to learn a little about that world. It seems that these hostess for expensive bars are really for higher up people to show off (to which I think is kind of stupid, but that’s the culture). So anyways, what happens, a pretty and dressed up lady joins a group of well of businessmen recommending expensive drinks to them. The idea is that the expensive things that you buy shows off the amount of money you have. At the same time, the hostess also requests drinks for herself (of the expensive variety) and so since the guys also want to keep her pleased, will end up buying the drinks for her. In the end the restaurant makes a bundle of cash for selling expensive drinks and the hostess gets a cut. Something like could never exist in Canada; it's a cultural thing (well for some people atleast over here).
Future Outlook:
Friday -- Probably will be going out with friends again
Saturday -- Lab party under the Sakura
Sunday -- Olympia's B-day party, need to reschedule another party to the week after
Week after Friday -- Lab New Student party
Huh... so fine, I might be a party animal! :P
Monday, April 17, 2006
Through another pair of eyes!
Still no internet at home so, posting has been a little sporatic. Hopefuly I'll have internet this Wedensday perhaps? Here's hoping.
Of an interesiting note, Ida has finished and posted her travel logs of Japan on the net (yes and including the little bit of visiting Sendai and me) right here. And no, I didn't think my room was *that* messy :P Also, another travel log that I've been flipping through from time to time is another one going by the name "Justin in Japan" right here. He doesn't update any more since his adventures are over I believe but read it if you've got the time-- it's a pretty good read (and looks like he spent his time in Japan very well :P)
Pictures? Um...er... ah.. well... later :P
Of an interesiting note, Ida has finished and posted her travel logs of Japan on the net (yes and including the little bit of visiting Sendai and me) right here. And no, I didn't think my room was *that* messy :P Also, another travel log that I've been flipping through from time to time is another one going by the name "Justin in Japan" right here. He doesn't update any more since his adventures are over I believe but read it if you've got the time-- it's a pretty good read (and looks like he spent his time in Japan very well :P)
Pictures? Um...er... ah.. well... later :P
Thursday, April 13, 2006
How Embarrassing (Whoops!)
There are some people out there that think I'm really smart. I studied Engineering Physics, finished it in the standard 5 years (dispite losing a year when I transfered departments) and then I came to Japan to study Nanotechnology. Some of my friends "oooh-ahhh" at me when I tell them my background. Today, I intend to dispel all notions that I am an intelligent being.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. --Einstien
What did I do today? I screwed up one of the electron-microscopes at lab by putting in the sample holder in upside down, sliding it past the stage holder and then unscrewing it with it fall ing off somewhere unretrievable with the samples I made today still stuck to it. The machine a $500k+ machine; and yes, after a series of unfortunate events requiring a degree of stupidity to pull off in direct sequence, I have managed to screw the machine up. The best part, it is one of the most used machines at lab. I am feeling particulary clever right now.
The best part is that I've just finish sending an e-mail to oh.. about 100 people that use the machine that "A sample holder is stuck in the machine." Sigh.
In honesty I don't mind screwing up. I revel in my mistakes... and I have a most interesting history of them. The only mistakes that I care about are the ones that screw other people up... if it screws me up, well~ that doesn't change things that much now does it? (ha~ha!)
Ces't la vive.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. --Einstien
What did I do today? I screwed up one of the electron-microscopes at lab by putting in the sample holder in upside down, sliding it past the stage holder and then unscrewing it with it fall ing off somewhere unretrievable with the samples I made today still stuck to it. The machine a $500k+ machine; and yes, after a series of unfortunate events requiring a degree of stupidity to pull off in direct sequence, I have managed to screw the machine up. The best part, it is one of the most used machines at lab. I am feeling particulary clever right now.
The best part is that I've just finish sending an e-mail to oh.. about 100 people that use the machine that "A sample holder is stuck in the machine." Sigh.
In honesty I don't mind screwing up. I revel in my mistakes... and I have a most interesting history of them. The only mistakes that I care about are the ones that screw other people up... if it screws me up, well~ that doesn't change things that much now does it? (ha~ha!)
Ces't la vive.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Hell of an Awesome weekend
Friday:
Got invited to a friend's performance at country pub and hung out listening to him and a guitarist perform a bunch of old songs from the Eagles, Beatles etc etc. I called out a few friends to come out and join for the evening. Had a few beers, nachos and good coversation. What else could I want?
After the performance was done we headed outside to visit a baloon artist my friend, Kayo, knew. I got an Elmo made and we hung out with the other street artists for the evening. I ended up buying a book of poems from a nice guy that's got some disease (unforutnately I couldn't make out what), so he spends most of the week at home in bed and only comes out for the weekends. During the weekdays, he spends his time thinking and writing from bed. He writes 3 kinds of poems, encouragement (green), caution (yellow) and warnings (red). I'll be looking forward to reading them soon.
I headed out to grab a few more drinks with Kayo to warm up from after hanging out outside for so long. It is still *cold* in Sendai, even though it's about 500 km south of Vancouver. Doesn't make sense but we had snow on April 1st (and no, that isn't a joke!). My Japanese friends laughed that Vancouver is having the cherry blossoms bloom several weeks in advance compared to Sendai (nothing's started budding yet!). Crazy eh?
Well the good thing was that we found an all you can drink bar for only 6 bucks. We did have to order some food however (well just one order and it wasn't expensive anyways) and ended the evening at 2:00 am before parting ways. A good evening was had.
Saturday -- House warming
We held the house warming party about 3 weeks after moving in. We finished settling in after about 2 weeks and we spent the rest of the time trying to figure out when we'd be able to do house warming. It is tough trying to coordinate the schedules of 3 busy people!
So, we finally pulled it off about last weekend. We decided that we'd call up 5 friends each and invtie them over and have a potluck party (I ended up calling up 7.. but that's a different story :P). A good time was had and we did have the chance to meet each other's respective friends.
We started at about 8:00 pm, Kuni was off at his friend's place with his bunch of friends cooking food. I was at the home cooking with my friends... and Olympia? Well... she had work that evening and couldn't do any cooking. There was the "Chili incident" but that (again) is another story :P.
The other plus about having the party was that it gave me the right excuse to do some more cleaning in my room to have it fit for people to crash... and crash they did!
The food!
I decided on making mashed potatoes, fried spaghetti, spinach salmon salad and mango pudding for dessert. Kuni brought in tempura and stuffed peppers. The rest of the friends brought drinks, beer and etc.
A few pictures below :)
Me, Tetsuya and Youn ji
People crashing on my bed!
Friends making friends (cell number exchange!)
The party lasted until about 2:00 am. I really hope we didn't piss off our neighbours. It'd be kind of ironic to get complaints to get kicked out from the house warming party... but it seemed that things were pretty allright. I should have taken a picture of all the shoes at the entrance since they were all over the place, but I was too busy having a good time :).
The next day was Kuni's b-day... and we went motorcycle touring with friends the next day in the morning. Bikeless people would go by car as we headed out to the ocean to the fish market to get ingredients for his B-day BBQ (try and say that fast 3 times over).
I'll save the rest of that story for my next post. As much as I would like to spend more time writing up these posts, I'm still at lab and got work to do unforutnately, so that'll have to wait until next time. Going to get hooked up into an optical fiber network (ie. Internet on crack!) on the 16th. I'll be pretty happy when that happens.
Cheerio!
Got invited to a friend's performance at country pub and hung out listening to him and a guitarist perform a bunch of old songs from the Eagles, Beatles etc etc. I called out a few friends to come out and join for the evening. Had a few beers, nachos and good coversation. What else could I want?
After the performance was done we headed outside to visit a baloon artist my friend, Kayo, knew. I got an Elmo made and we hung out with the other street artists for the evening. I ended up buying a book of poems from a nice guy that's got some disease (unforutnately I couldn't make out what), so he spends most of the week at home in bed and only comes out for the weekends. During the weekdays, he spends his time thinking and writing from bed. He writes 3 kinds of poems, encouragement (green), caution (yellow) and warnings (red). I'll be looking forward to reading them soon.
I headed out to grab a few more drinks with Kayo to warm up from after hanging out outside for so long. It is still *cold* in Sendai, even though it's about 500 km south of Vancouver. Doesn't make sense but we had snow on April 1st (and no, that isn't a joke!). My Japanese friends laughed that Vancouver is having the cherry blossoms bloom several weeks in advance compared to Sendai (nothing's started budding yet!). Crazy eh?
Well the good thing was that we found an all you can drink bar for only 6 bucks. We did have to order some food however (well just one order and it wasn't expensive anyways) and ended the evening at 2:00 am before parting ways. A good evening was had.
Saturday -- House warming
We held the house warming party about 3 weeks after moving in. We finished settling in after about 2 weeks and we spent the rest of the time trying to figure out when we'd be able to do house warming. It is tough trying to coordinate the schedules of 3 busy people!
So, we finally pulled it off about last weekend. We decided that we'd call up 5 friends each and invtie them over and have a potluck party (I ended up calling up 7.. but that's a different story :P). A good time was had and we did have the chance to meet each other's respective friends.
We started at about 8:00 pm, Kuni was off at his friend's place with his bunch of friends cooking food. I was at the home cooking with my friends... and Olympia? Well... she had work that evening and couldn't do any cooking. There was the "Chili incident" but that (again) is another story :P.
The other plus about having the party was that it gave me the right excuse to do some more cleaning in my room to have it fit for people to crash... and crash they did!
The food!I decided on making mashed potatoes, fried spaghetti, spinach salmon salad and mango pudding for dessert. Kuni brought in tempura and stuffed peppers. The rest of the friends brought drinks, beer and etc.
A few pictures below :)
Me, Tetsuya and Youn ji
People crashing on my bed!
Friends making friends (cell number exchange!)The party lasted until about 2:00 am. I really hope we didn't piss off our neighbours. It'd be kind of ironic to get complaints to get kicked out from the house warming party... but it seemed that things were pretty allright. I should have taken a picture of all the shoes at the entrance since they were all over the place, but I was too busy having a good time :).
The next day was Kuni's b-day... and we went motorcycle touring with friends the next day in the morning. Bikeless people would go by car as we headed out to the ocean to the fish market to get ingredients for his B-day BBQ (try and say that fast 3 times over).
I'll save the rest of that story for my next post. As much as I would like to spend more time writing up these posts, I'm still at lab and got work to do unforutnately, so that'll have to wait until next time. Going to get hooked up into an optical fiber network (ie. Internet on crack!) on the 16th. I'll be pretty happy when that happens.
Cheerio!
Thursday, April 06, 2006
The world is small
2 weeks ago, at a festival I met a guy from Victoria BC and a long lost friend of about 8 years that lives in a town outside of Sendai. Last weekend, I meet a lab mate who is on travel in Tokyo by chance with his family (1 person out of 10 million) and today I get an e-mail from a Japanese English teacher that did an exchange in Vancouver and had friends from Steveston High and Richmond High (though I probably wouldn't know them). Um... wow.
On a side note. As of April 5, I had 129 posts on this blog. On average, I make a post once every 3 days.
On a side note. As of April 5, I had 129 posts on this blog. On average, I make a post once every 3 days.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Moving (Happy Anniversary Me!)
As of today, I have spent 365 days in Japan. Where did the time go? Nobody knows. Since October, I have been keeping track of most events things I've been doing on my computer calendar. It's it's quite interesting to see what I've been up to for the last year. I guess it's true-- time does fly when you're having fun.
It's been about 3 weeks since I've moved into my new place. Now that things have finally settled down, in terms of lab work. I've got a little free time to post about the moving process.
We were officially tenants of our new place on the 18th of March. We rented an open back truck (one day for about $70 bucks) to load our goods and have it shipped over to the new appartment.
Oh I should mention a little about my roomies. One of them is Kuni, Japanese master's student the same age as I that went to Canada for a year. He speaks pretty good English just your all-round awesome good guy. My other roomie is Olympia from (dum dum dum) Calgary, who came to Japan to teach English and plans on staying over in Japan for a few more years before moving on to see other countries such as France. Now that I've introduced the cast a little (pictures another day), I'll post a bit about my moving experience.
Boxing match!
I started boxing my belongings the night before the move. Started at about 10:00 pm and kept going till about 3:00 am. The only real things I needed to box were my cutlary, spices and goods. Clothes went into suit cases, most large belongings had boxed they came in and I threw all of my smaller things into plastic bags.
Moving in; boxes all over the floor
Most of those were things scrambled all over the kitchen floor. For the most part, our kitchen looked something like this for about a week while we slowly started migrating our belongings into our respective rooms. It took about a few good evenings of work to get the boxes unpacked and put away. To be honest, not a whole lot of my stuff went into my room-- most of my stuff were cooking utensils so those were unpacked and stayed in the kitchen.
My room before
Actually this is a bit of a lie. This picture is quite similar to my room but it's actually a room from another unit within the building I took while looking for a new appartment. I didn't have an exact before picture of my room so I posted this one instead (note that the window is in a different position!)
The "after" picture!
The room was still quite bare after moving most of my basic belongings into the room. At this point I hadn't moved put my books away nor had the curtains in my room been installed. Of an interesting note, the rooms we had didn't come with light fixtures included. I spent a week using my heat dish and Chrismas lights to keep keep my room illuminated.
I have since moved all of my belongings into the room however and things are looking a little more cozy. The bed I have there, I bought from a other people that were moving out for $40, the desk and book case I got free from other people leaving Sendai.
The last day of my life in the dorms ended on March 31st. I had officially moved out by 1:00 pm after having my room inspected. Apparently the inspection people that came by were surprised at how clean my kitchen was that they asked me if I didn't cook. Well, that was sort of a back-handed compliment.
For comparison, this is what my desk looked like before and after moving out. Striking difference no? I spent an entire day on Saturday cleaning from about 10:00 pm till 5:00 am. I hucked lots of misc. things like quarter full bottles of soy sauce, misc dirty tupperware, left over sheets of paper, unused tissue paper and such. Felt kind of wasteful but it wasn't worth the effort to carry the stuff to the new place. Many kilos of garbage was thrown away.
I ended giving away atleast 5 kg of flour, several kgs of sugar, powered cream and much more to one of my friends in the dorm as a going away gift. Atleast 10 kg of cooking material (yeah, I had crap loads of stuff!)
Looks like I was never there!
After all the cleaning this what what my room looked like. It's kind of amazing, the difference. I have since returned to the dorms on a few occasion and noticed that a Chinese student had moved into the room. Perhaps I'll meet the guy one day.
This is Kuni, one of my roomies working in bed.
That's it for now!
It's been about 3 weeks since I've moved into my new place. Now that things have finally settled down, in terms of lab work. I've got a little free time to post about the moving process.
We were officially tenants of our new place on the 18th of March. We rented an open back truck (one day for about $70 bucks) to load our goods and have it shipped over to the new appartment.
Oh I should mention a little about my roomies. One of them is Kuni, Japanese master's student the same age as I that went to Canada for a year. He speaks pretty good English just your all-round awesome good guy. My other roomie is Olympia from (dum dum dum) Calgary, who came to Japan to teach English and plans on staying over in Japan for a few more years before moving on to see other countries such as France. Now that I've introduced the cast a little (pictures another day), I'll post a bit about my moving experience.
Boxing match!I started boxing my belongings the night before the move. Started at about 10:00 pm and kept going till about 3:00 am. The only real things I needed to box were my cutlary, spices and goods. Clothes went into suit cases, most large belongings had boxed they came in and I threw all of my smaller things into plastic bags.
Moving in; boxes all over the floorMost of those were things scrambled all over the kitchen floor. For the most part, our kitchen looked something like this for about a week while we slowly started migrating our belongings into our respective rooms. It took about a few good evenings of work to get the boxes unpacked and put away. To be honest, not a whole lot of my stuff went into my room-- most of my stuff were cooking utensils so those were unpacked and stayed in the kitchen.
My room beforeActually this is a bit of a lie. This picture is quite similar to my room but it's actually a room from another unit within the building I took while looking for a new appartment. I didn't have an exact before picture of my room so I posted this one instead (note that the window is in a different position!)
The "after" picture!The room was still quite bare after moving most of my basic belongings into the room. At this point I hadn't moved put my books away nor had the curtains in my room been installed. Of an interesting note, the rooms we had didn't come with light fixtures included. I spent a week using my heat dish and Chrismas lights to keep keep my room illuminated.
I have since moved all of my belongings into the room however and things are looking a little more cozy. The bed I have there, I bought from a other people that were moving out for $40, the desk and book case I got free from other people leaving Sendai.
The last day of my life in the dorms ended on March 31st. I had officially moved out by 1:00 pm after having my room inspected. Apparently the inspection people that came by were surprised at how clean my kitchen was that they asked me if I didn't cook. Well, that was sort of a back-handed compliment.
For comparison, this is what my desk looked like before and after moving out. Striking difference no? I spent an entire day on Saturday cleaning from about 10:00 pm till 5:00 am. I hucked lots of misc. things like quarter full bottles of soy sauce, misc dirty tupperware, left over sheets of paper, unused tissue paper and such. Felt kind of wasteful but it wasn't worth the effort to carry the stuff to the new place. Many kilos of garbage was thrown away.
I ended giving away atleast 5 kg of flour, several kgs of sugar, powered cream and much more to one of my friends in the dorm as a going away gift. Atleast 10 kg of cooking material (yeah, I had crap loads of stuff!)
Looks like I was never there!After all the cleaning this what what my room looked like. It's kind of amazing, the difference. I have since returned to the dorms on a few occasion and noticed that a Chinese student had moved into the room. Perhaps I'll meet the guy one day.
This is Kuni, one of my roomies working in bed.That's it for now!
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Dilemma
House warming party Saturday. I've already told about 8~10 people that I'd invite them over. The problem is that my roomies have decided to limit the number of guests that we each can bring down to 5. Crap! Now how the hell am I going to choose?
In other news. I bombed my presentation, but that's OK. One of the professors had a great time chewing me out but I could care less (and there is a bit of a story behind that too). I now have a reputation for good and horrible presentations. I couldn't care less.
I learned far more by bombing then I did by doing a "good job." Presentations here are rather formal in the sense that people seem to expect that they are to know the answer; anything less is embarrasing. Not knowing isn't embarrasing, not learning is embarrasing. I think that is the subtle difference.
Pictures of the home later on. Will post some pictures of the new place later on. Will start working on my moving in experience post later on (and will post plenty of pictures :)
In other news. I bombed my presentation, but that's OK. One of the professors had a great time chewing me out but I could care less (and there is a bit of a story behind that too). I now have a reputation for good and horrible presentations. I couldn't care less.
I learned far more by bombing then I did by doing a "good job." Presentations here are rather formal in the sense that people seem to expect that they are to know the answer; anything less is embarrasing. Not knowing isn't embarrasing, not learning is embarrasing. I think that is the subtle difference.
Pictures of the home later on. Will post some pictures of the new place later on. Will start working on my moving in experience post later on (and will post plenty of pictures :)
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