The News is Largely Useless

8 years ago in high school, I was posed with this essay topic for my philosophy class:

(Paraphrased) "The usefulness of knowledge is its ability to be used"

I never did end up writing an essay on this because I thought that the statement was inherently obvious. I looked at it, it was obvious and there was nothing more for me to say. But it seems today, years later that I've come back to visit this statement.

In my spare time (when ever I have 15~30 minutes to kill) I find myself popping on to places like the BBC, slashdot or Canada.com to read up on news in general. The sad thing is that most of the time I spent reading was largely wasted.

If you were to pick up a cookbook, found a recipe for cheese cake and by the end of the day made a nice batch of cheese cake to share would you call that useful? I would-- you picked up a book, read it and acquired a new skill (what you do with it, of course is a different story, but let us not go off in that direction because it is beyond the scope of this essay). You could do the same for many different things from home maintenance to solid state physics. Sure you might not use everything that you learn, but the character of the information learned is the type of information that is ment to be used.

The nature of news on the other hand is different, in that the knowledge presented is descriptive (and ideally, unbiased). I could tell you right now, that I have a bottle of orange juice on my desk along side several trays of processed silicon wafers. The information I provided you with just right now, would be an example of that kind of descriptive information. I could tell you that yesterday I went home early (about 8:00 pm) because I was tired and needed to catch up on sleep, that would be no less descriptive either. The news is more or less the same, just the events and topics are different. Instead of you guys reading about my life in Japan, you might be reading about the world events such as British politics or more local things like "Radio chips [keeping] track of citizens [in Canada]".

For the most of you readers out there today, let me ask you a question: given the news that you read, what are *you* going to do or can *you* do about the things you read? My guess at the answer is that +95% of the time we can't do anything or don't do anything about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a defeatist, quite the opposite actually, but the for the most part, what we read in the news is quite and completely useless.

Take for example of the radio chip article I posted from Canada.com webpage. Go read it and come back if you like. It's quite typical for as the news you might read. Interestingly the news always talk about problems of some sort, whether if it's murder, crime, politics, taxes or whatever. The news seems to be all about complaining.

The radio chip article? Well the long and short of the story is that some "large Canadian" companies have started using these chips to track people in their stores. The article doesn't go directly to say which companies are doing it, nor do they talk about any direct sources from Industry that mention about it. They just say that the Canadian privacy commissioner is looking into it and an interview of some random marketing professors are going off on how useful information could be for these large companies and some "privacy expert" is talking about the problems of these tags being used to track customers.

After reading this article, I'd like to ask you-- was this information useful? Sure, most of us probably don't like the idea of being tracked by a large corporation without knowing how exactly RFID tracking information can be used and sure it may instill an uneasy feeling for you readers and you might end up complaining/talking about it to friends... but is there something that you can do about it? are you going to do something about it? If the answer is "no" to both questions then you've just been a victim to useless information. I'm so sorry, but the time you've wasted reading that article (and many articles like that) has been irrevocably lost. If you want to read useful information, do something with it.

I hope you found this essay useful :)

Endnote: There is also the class of information that you might read about now and use later on that I didn't talk about (ie. knowledge becoming useful later). For the most part, the news doesn't even fall into that category either so I've left out that part of this discussion.

Sidenote: Curious about how I get my ideas? I try applying what I think to different topics and look at the implications. My next potential essay could be on "what makes a useful person" (this is an interesting topic and probably has plenty of interesting implications). If you've got the time, try writing about it and post it somewhere. I may write my own when I'm in the mood.

The most interesting e-mail I've gotten yet

I just got this e-mail on my cell phone just minutes ago (translated from Japanese):

"Hey are you that sexy girl in black from last night? Sorry if I sent this msg to the wrong person"

I raised my eyebrow at this one for a good minute before responding to tell the guy that I met him at a friend's b-day party about 4 months ago :P

Seriuously, can't Japanese people tell that "Justin" is a guy's name??

Sunday == Zoom

Still busy this Sunday. Blew the morning teaching and trying to get my solid state physics homework done. I got some comprehensive notes off the web on how to solve my problem... took me the entire day to finally figure it out. Fell asleep a few times during the afternoon reading and writing out equations...

I keep meaning to do some updating with pictures and stuff (and even write essays from time to time) but things just keep poping up. By evening, an inpromptu dinner with friends occured with me as head chef for the evening. We didn't finish untill about 11:30 and finished cleaning by about midnight. Spent another 2 and a half hours to finally finish off my problem set and now it's almost 3. I have class at 8:50 am tomorrow. Where does my time go? I need to work hard this week to get some results for next week to present at my lab meeting.

When you're busy, it is sometimes hard to make time for certain things, but when there's a will, there's always a way. Gotta work on that "will" part a little more... (it's the small things that suck up my time... like reading news, pockets of goofing off... etc etc etc).

What a day...

When you meet the right group of people in Japan, they can become incredibly close friends. Kuni, my roomie, has many of them. For the past few days, he's been working on a gift album for 2 of his friends, putting together a page of comments and pictures and coordinating with other friends to have them make a page of personal comments to the lucky b-day people. The book was printed a few days ago. The party occured tonight at some restaurant. I'm not really apart of that group, but I do know the people. That and I had other things to do that day that I'll post about later when I've downloaded pictures off the camera.

They dropped by the appartment to have an after party (ie. more drinking). I played poker with a few of them and caught up with a few others. By midnight, 2 of Kuni's friends fell asleep in his room. By 2:00 am, one of them puked on the floor. It's the first time I've ever seen someone puke from drinking too much. I am happy to say that I've never had that experience and intend on keeping it that way.

Kuni, had passed out on my bed so I was left to clean up the mess-- a kitchen towel, a bucket of water and dish soap seemed to get the stuff out pretty well. The guy (the b-day guy, actually) after 15 minutes went off to the washroom where he holed up for about 20 minutes, pumping more fluids out of his mouth. They've already left but I have to take a leak right now but I'm not terribly fond of the smell in the washroom at this moment.

One of Kuni's remaining friends that managed to sober up, helped me relocate Kuni off my bed into his futon. Some resistance was met but Kuni at the end was ultimately pacified.

I laugh to think sometimes that Kuni on his Japanese blog (yes, it is funny that we both write about each other) calls me his younger brother (technically, Kuni is about 3 months older than I). Supposedly he's always wanted to have a younger sibiling, for he's the youngest out of 3. Ironically, I've occasionally end up taking care of him and his friends in cases such as these. I thought the elder brother are supposed to be the more responsible one? Ah well... I wouldn't say that I'm pissed at having to deal with this, it's sort of an interesting experience.

Tomorrow, I wake at 9:00 to teach English for an hour. It is now 3 am... good night.

Hokkaido pictures Day 1&2

Comments: 28 liters of fuel expended @ 25km/l (mostly highway scootering) I travelled a total of 700 km during my golden week trip.

I've uploaded days 1&2 of my Hokkaido trip to imagestation and they can be accessed here. My thoughts on Hokkaido? Big and spaceous. My friends from Hokkaido tell me it's a lot like Canada... and they were right. Click through to take a peek at my aventures.

4:47 am... took atnap at 10:00 pm and woke at 3 am. Sometimes it sucks going to bed too early :P

I am a bad bad man, but to hell with it

I had some fortunate luck today. Today was the engineering sports day, meaning that the homework I had due to day is due next week and though I was a volunteer for the sports day event, I didn't do a thing.

That is because I misread the task list and didn't meet up with the students this morning. The afternoon came and I tried to meet up with them but to no avail. I did find out where one of the guys were but he was none to friendly. I couldn't give a damn so I left and never returned.

From the start, this whole volunteering with the sports day event was pretty much a bust. I signed up for this because I thought it would be a nice way to meet people and make friends. I attended one of the meetings and they turned out to be the most glum people there, leadership sucked and the atmosphere resembled a funeral. I was going to volunteer in a group like this? In a situation like this there are 3 choices: 1. Step up, 2. Walk. or 3. Bite it. Personally I never pick 3 because it's a waste of time.

There was a second meeting held that I missed by accident because I was working on experients. One of the people from the meeting came out and got one of my other lab mates to attend and he had the exact samething... the people were the most serious looking people out there. From there on in I'd recieve a few e-mails, the job for me to run the after party got userped to someone else and that was that. I was still on the mailing list but never showed. Heh, I'm a bad bad man.

A few goals

The meeting finished at about 10:30 yesterday. I was pretty thrashed and hungry at the sametime after the meeting. After going on about 4~5 hours of sleep for about 3~4 days, that began to take it's toll on me. I had a bad headache, fast heart rate, went a bit feverish and felt fairly dizzy for most of the evening.

I headed home and hit the grocery store on the way back. Steak slices were on sale, I bought those, vegetables, bananas and some sports drink to bring home. Whipped up some food in about 15~20 minutes wolfed them down. Had the sports drink (which did wonders making me feel better) and then had a glass or 2 of Shochu (wine made from potatoe :P) with my roomie, Kuni.

Shortly after that I collapsed into bed, to wake up at 9:00 am after I heard my other roomie, Olympia wake up so I could go and bug her to say "wow, this is like the first time I've ever seen you awake in the moring" before heading back to bed.. to wake at 10:15. Left the house at 10:20 and made it into class by 10:32 going full bore on my scooter.

Classes ended at noon and the cafeteria is busy and I'd rather not wait in line so I'm here instead.

Last night on my way home in my stupor I thought of a few long term goals I have as of current:

1. Start a Japanese blog (already done, but there's a story behind that)
2. Attend and present results at atleast 1 research conference
3. Attempt to publish 2 research papers
4. Read a book in Japanese (novels and text books count)

Bonus 5: Exercise

My head wants to explode

Lab meeting started today at about 6:30 pm. Spent the day going through old data to prepare for the bi-monthly status meeting. The problem is that there are about 15 people in the group and each person is taking about 15 mins per presentation... making for about a 4 hour meeting. I currently suffer from a lack of sleep... meaning that I am sleepy and my head feels like it wants to explode.

I'm still in the meeting now... just a little more till it ends, perhaps another 5~10 minutes I hope? I just get home and drop on to my bed like a brick... perhaps after getting a small snack. I haven't felt this horrid in a while. Uuunnnnnngggghhhh.

Must survive past Thursday.....!

Busy Busy

Last week was fairly busy, this week looks like still more of the same. Current objective is to survive till Wedensday:

Today-- Group meeting from 6:30 pm till about 9:00 pm, need to prepare data for presentation

Tuesday -- Complete "Control Systems" homework (Due the next day)

Wedensday -- Vounteer most of day at Engineering Sports day

Thursday -- Hand in a short article for publication on Nanotechnology (In Japanese) for publication in a Magazine.

In other random news here are a few interesting things that happened to me last week:

Last Thursday -- Dinner out with a "Slow food" group (group that specializes in food and drink. I ate a cow's heart and had 4~5 different wines that evening)

Friday -- Long Boat competition practice. My entire team sleeps in, we arrive at the practice place and can't practice because of lack of time (grr!)

Saturday -- Long boat competition. One of my team members gets sick, we replace him with big strong American guy named Mike. We do a practice right before the race and rip excellent speed. The race begins and 1/4 of the way through (after we were kicking ass) my rowing seat comes apart! My attempts to repair the seat were futile. Grrr!

In the Evening, we head out to a place for drinks for Mona's farewell party. Mona was in early on Saturday from Kyoto (came by bus) and at the lab. One of the professors came in and the first thing he says is "oh, are you doing more experiments?" Riiight, the correct comment should have been "it was nice having you at the lab" or something.

Sunday -- Slept and woke up at 9, tutored at 10. Went out for a BBQ party at 11 until 2. Thuoughly exhausted.

It's been quite a full week... this week is going to be quite busy too.

I got paced by an old man

I got a phone call today at about 2:00 pm from the YMCA that I teach at; they told me that a student joining my class for the day for a trial class. I was intrigued and refreshed that a new student would be joining. I ran experiments through out the afternoon, breaked at 5:30 pm to grab a bite, returned to the lab and started working on a homework assignment for class tomorrow. At 6:50, I was off to my evening job, teaching English.

I stepped into the office that day to grab my folder. One of the receptionists came to me and told me that the student was in his 50's. I came into the class about 3 minutes late today, the other students were in the hall chatting on a sofa and inside the room, I would find a greyed old man sitting in a corner with his head down... isolated in an empty room.

I called him out and asked him to join us. He was hesitant and shy at first but he finally made his way to the table to where all the students sat. I decided that we would introduce ourselves to him. I asked my other students to start with their introductions... they went on to tell him about their hobbies and work. The time came to the old man, whose family name is Onodera to introduce himself. At first I thought he was a total beginner because of his shyness... how wrong I was.

Words came gushing out from this old man, like water from a gyser. He went on to tell us that the things that he did in his spare time were not hobbies but were his "pass-time" activities. He went on to discuss how "hobbies" are sort of an amateur activity where one does things just for fun. This man does things and gets really good at them. I was rather amazed that he understood the nauances of English to that degree. He also told me to explain the difference of a "pass-time" and a "hobby" while telling me, "no offence"-- I was amused.

I asked him what did he do for a living? He told me that he worked as a construction worker, more specifically as a "hard-hat". How does a construction worker get good at English? Would a construction worker have any sort of interest in English as all usually? I didn't think so. I was rather confused.

After a short period of conversation, he would reveal to us that he had only studied English for half a year, starting in December and that he was 73 and that he was born in the 1930's and that he'd never been out of the country before. My students whom have been studing Japanese for more than 5~6 years are not even half as good as this man's English. Enthrallemnt ensued.

We would touch on topics on such as politics and history. He would make rather thought provoking comments, for example that he was glad that the Americans occupied Japan instead of the Russians (who were part of the Allied forces)... because Japan would probably not be anywhere as near as economically well off had the Russians occupied Japan.

He would go on and tell me how he's dropped out of school after Junior High because times were hard and he needed to work to earn a living. His regret is that he was never able to return to school and continue learning. Apparently, he studied German for 26 years and that German and English are similar (they have the same roots as he would tell me). He would tell me that when he was 14 and he met the G.I.'s ("government issues" ie. US government forces... an acronym that I even didn't know) and was fascinated with their English.

For 74 years old, the man is remarkably intelligent. In 6 months, his English out paces the Japanese I've learned over 4 years. I would not say that I've been put to any shame... more importantly, I've been inspired.

Giving up 1/4 of my Fridays

I just got contacted by a volunteer friend of mine saying that they've got a job for me. Grade 12 student that needs an English tutor for a Friday once a month. 6:30 pm till 9:00 pm. Teaching starts at 7:00 pm, dinner included. The pay is $50 for the session. Subway travel time is about 10 mins one way (20 mins total). Would you take this job?

I was borderline on taking this job-- the lab is usually quite busy and I generally don't allow myself to work Friday evenings. The timing of the job isn't horrible, in Japan, parties and events go well past 9:00 pm in the evenings so I wouldn't be missing too much.

I will likely be taking the subway there (unless if scootering isn't there isn't so bad), round trip is $4. They will be throwing in a dinner along for the lesson to me, which is worth $6 to me. Assuming that the total time spent on this lesson is 3 hours, I'm making a $17/hour for this gig. All things considered, this is on the low side for me... I charge $25/hour for my time and most of my work takes about 10 minutes round trip... either that or my work is on the way out from school.

This student lives out in a place I've never been to, a bit north of central Sendai, it might be an interesting adventure to take a look out there. That and I've never taught a Gr. 12 student in Japan. It might be interesting to see what kind of students these people are. The family could be interesting too... There are more things to judging work than just the salary. It could be interesting... but then I'm giving up some free time (for research or play) for this. But you know what? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We'll see how it goes.

A small world called Sendai

Saturday, was one of my roomie's friend's going away party. I told my roomie that I was game and so off I went. The party was for an English teacher going back to Australia and the person going away is Andrea. Most of her friends going to the party were her workmates -- English teachers mainly.

Me looking asian, I decided to pretend that I was Japanese friend comming out to the party to play around with these English teachers. It would be hella fun! You guys out there know how much I love impersonating different accents, so I decided to put it to the test (and no, I was not drunk). We met in front of the store on the Saturday night, I told them my name was "Yuji" (wasn't lying there) and started off with my thick Japanese accent.

There was one slight problem however, one of the Japanese friends one of the English teachers brought out thought that I wasn't Japanese. Oh CRAP, could my cover be blown? Well I faked good enough Japanese for atleast 1.5 hours to pass as Japanese and kept the skeptable Japanese girl at bay.

We got into the restaruant and started drinking and eating. I started chatting with the other English teacher and tried my best to act stupid in the kind of nieve and linguistic way. It worked out for a while, the problem was that some of the English teachers caught on that I could understand English... I was understanding much more that the average Japanese English student does-- seriously, it's kind of tough acting dumb!

Eventually, my cover was blown when some people throught it was too suspicous that I understood too much English and then gave up the game and returned to my "normal self"... whatever that might be.

Of an interesting note, I did meet a nice waitress at the restraunt that spoke really good English and I was really intreagued that she could speak so well so I had to ask how did she manage to learn such good English (the part that caught me was that she was taking orders in English from the English teachers). Turns out that she lived in Canada for 4 years in a place called St. Catherine's. The interesting part was that my other room mate Kuni (Japanese guy) spent a year in Canada for about a year... I just had to ask the girl if she knew a guy named Kuni... turns out that she did... that she would be seeing him tomorrow. Kuni, my roomie had been going on and on all week about going on a date with some girl this weekend... lo and behold that I'd meet this girl.

I told her that my roomie "likes a good spanking from time to time so feel free to give him a whack or few," that and he really likes spicy "Chili" (my other roomie, Olympia made this really spicy Chili... after putting 100 ml of chili powder into the vat.. nearly killed Kuni while at it... hehehe... the things I do for personal entertainment, mwah ha ha ha ha ha).

Kuni is kind of a shy guy when it comes to his dates and his outings with his girls.. so I made for good effect to leave my number with the waitress gal and asked her to send me her number and e-mail sometimes so I could interrogate her with the details of the date (she had forgotten her cell at the time). Unfortunately she never did contact me later on. Damn, I was so looking forward to hearing what happened. As for Kuni... all he told me was that he and her "went out to a few secret places." Riiight.

Been kind of busy and will be looking busy through the week.

Wedensday: Club night themed at a place where the theme is "Cool and Sexy" (really curious what Japanese people consider "Cool and Sexy")

Thursday: Yakiniku --> fried meat party with friends

Saturday: Long boat competition and possibility of a BBQ.

In between the fun, I'm working at the lab :P

Pictures from Hokkaido later!

Getting Physical (1 Year Later)

As per usual, I took the physical examination for students at Tohoku University yesterday. The results are the following:

BPM= 69/min
BMI: 21.5
Blood pressure=118/69

Last year's results are the following (link)

BPM=60/min
BMI:21.5
Blood Pressure=107/63

Comments: This year's physical condition is worse than last year's, my resting heart rate increased and so did my blood pressure, though my blood pressure is still in the healthy range. I can probably explain the origins of these physical changes.

Last year, since comming to Japan, I was without scooter for atleast a month and cooked all of my own meals (all of which were light in oils and fat). In my first month in Japan, I determined that I walked approximately 4km/day and averaged it out to about 100km in a month. Back then, my physical condition was reasonably good, in the sense that I could easily run 2 km straight from the dorms I lived straight into class. However, since last year, my physical fittness has deteriorated.

Since last year, I have acquired a scooter and use it almost everyday. At current, I only ride my bycicle on average 1 every 1~2 months and go to the gym with that kind of frequency. I went to Hokkaido last week and decided to do some light hiking and realized that after running 500 meters that I broke out gasping for air rather quickly and a power walk up a mountain was very straining on the legs and body. My former physical condition (the healthier one after a month comming into Japan) was likely achieved after 1 month's worth of consistent of exercise... I hypothesize that my current physical state is the usual state I am when in University.

As for increased blood pressure, I think I can pin that down to my change in diet since entering University. Since my current diet currently consists of 2 meal/day at the university cafeteria consisting of tofu, salad, rice and a fried dish of some sort has led to my increased blood pressure with my increased in take of greasy foods.

Updates on Hokkaido pending. Some company people are comming on Friday and I need to get some material prepared for a meeting with them --> some joint research might ensue.

Where'd I go?

The blog's been unusually quiet for the last week. There's a reason for that-- I've been out of town and without internet connection. Today, right now would be the first time I connected to the net since last Wedensday night. To be honest, it's not so bad living without an internet connection for a week, especially when you have fun things to do.

So gone for a week, how did I manage that for the first week of May? Did I skip classes and lab? Nope I didn't. There's something called "golden week" in Japan which is a string of 3 holidays during the week. The other 2 weekdays are unfortunately normal days but students have a tendency to take them off anyways (well, I didn't).

Last year, my adventures during golden week took me to Nagoya to visit my current roomie's home town in Nagoya. This year, I took the ferry in the opposite direction to Hokkaido, Japan's Northen most island. My roomie's friend was heading back there for the next few weeks and kindly passed me the invite to stay over at his place should I head there. I took him up on that offer.

Hap-hazardly, I booked my ferry ride to and from Sendai 2 days before I left. This being the busy travelling season, would be an impossibility, but this year, as with last year, luck was on my side. Hokkaido is a very big and Japan's least developed island out of the 4 main islands. I read on the internet that public transport was somewhat sparse and travelling long distances would be quite expensive. I made a snap decision that I'd bring my scooter to the island to aid me in my travels. It'd cost me about 60 bucks extra on the round trip but I thought it was worth it.... it was *so* worth it. I got a booking on the ferry and was off to Hokkaido on Wedensday evening. See the map below for my ferry route.


By Thursday morning I arrived at Tomakomai ferry terminal, my vacation began. 4 days and 200 pictures later I returned to Sendai on a Monday morning and went straight to lab. Stories on my adventures in Hokkaido later on.