Oh no!!! Internship bust

What horrible luck, probably serves me right.

Today was the "Paper scissors rock" tournament to decide where people would be going for their internship. To put it bluntly, I got screwed.

My number 1 and 2 choices were Sharp and Fujitsu. 6 people for 2 positions at Sharp... suffice to say, I was one of the first losers from that round leaving me with Fujitsu in Tokyo. For Fujitsu I would face one other person for the position. It didn't end well in my favor.

With most companies already picked out by other companies, I was left with places that either wouldn't take foreign students or in places that were in Sendai (I wanted to get out of Sendai for my internship). I got stuck with a polymer research institute in Utsunomiya. Atleast the Gyoza there is good... but the 10 day term that I'll be working there at will have me miss the Jazz Festival in Sendai. It ends on the 15th of Sept.

Well, consolation is that the Gyoza is good...

It's going to be busy for the next little while

This next month is going to be a little busy for me; and here are the reasons why:

Comming Tuesday -- Fluid Mechanics Test (in Japanese)

The exam itself isn't going to be too hard. There are no equations or anything. We are presented with a bunch of data and points that the teacher made in classes an are expected to answer some thinking questions for the test. The trick is to be able to read the Japanese, understand it and make myself understood. Got the practice plan down... read the material, write out notes in Japanese and write out mock questions for myself and answer them in Japanese. Hoepfully I can have this down in a week.

Numerical Analysis

I got a few projects to finish before August. One of them is to make a model of a spring system and determine it's equilibrium point in software. A second project is to either make or use a differential equation solver and solve some kind of boundary value problem. I'm working on the latter at the moment, looking on the web for a solver. I have a problem that I want to solve which is to calulate the electric field concentration that occurs at the tip of a carbon-nano tube. My gut is telling me that the smaller the nano-tubes are the more intense the electrical field magnification.

The interesting thing is that Richard Feynman had problems explaining this phenomina a long time ago in his lecture series. The answer should pop out from modelling the solution... that's what I'm hoping atleast. We'll have to see where this goes.

Control Systems:

A walk in the park. I remember the first time I took the course; I hated it with a passion. The book wasn't enlightening and the professor was horrid. I ended up skipping classes from time to time after facing mental break downs from listening to stuff that made no sense to me.

Round 2 of control systems... after studying differential equations from other parts of physics and math, everything started making sense. Matlab and Mathematica users, eat your heart out! I've been able to model differential equations in Excel in less than half the time. Quick and dirty.

Today my labmates used matlab to model a differential equation representing a swinging pendulum with friction. With no friction, you expect the total energy of the system to stay constant with time. But add increading friction, you expect the system to come to a stop sooner. The problem is that the kids are just playing with the number to see what happens... I saw one guy use the program to automatically generate 400 plots simultaneiously and doesn't understand the results. The computer/calculator is both a blessing and a curse.

Oxidization:

It's criminal the way this course is run. The teacher picks a book in English (and photocopies it for everyone) and makes everyone in class present a chapter in English. It's supposed to be to help train Japanese students for presentations in English. What a mess, no one knows what is going on in class. Either I'm sleeping or working on my laptop doing homework for a different class. I'll be looking forward to my presentation... heh heh heh

Research:

I have a lab presentation comming up in Sept, that and I have an internship thing to do for 2~3 weeks over the summer which means that it's going to cut time out from me to get some appreciable results for my next in lab presentation. That and I want to travel for a few weeks for my up comming summer vacation. Here's hoping that I get some nice results soon.

It's 2:00 am now and I'm getting tired... a little. Time to get some rest.

Welcome to Lab part 2

Another summer student arrived at the lab today from Oxford University. I spent most of the afternoon getting him up to speed with registration and such. We went off to meet the head professor. At the most basic level, he's a really nice guy. He just needs a life.

"Welcome to the lab... here are some tour books of Sendai and the Tohoku region"
"Thanks"
"You might not be able to use the Tohoku region though... I think you're going to be busy here"

And the professor said it with a smile. I don't think all of Japan is like this, but this is supposition at the moment. I'll see about it when I start my internship later next month. The company I'll be working at for 2~3 weeks will be finalized tomorrow. Wish me luck, I'm going after Sharp and Fujitsu.

I have to go pee

So I'm in lab meeting now and it's about 8:45 pm and we have another 2~3 more people to go for presentation. Started at 6:30 pm today. Oddly, I'm not as tired as usual going through this meeting. Seriously, we're looking at a 2.5~3 hour meeting every 2 weeks.

So here's today's punch line. Just last week, we have had the arrival of an exchange student that will be here for the next 2 months from California (UC Santa Barbra [sp?]). 2 hours into the meeting he asks me... "do these guys take a break?"
"Nope... they keep on going. You might notice sometimes that the professors fall asleep from time to time"
"Ummm... well I have to go pee"

Welcome to Esashi lab buddy :)

Setting up for Canada Day

Kuni and I are spearheading an operation to setup the biggest party we can put together to celebrate Canada Day in Japan. Kuni spent about a year in St. Katherines Ontario and had many fond memories of Canada. He still really likes Canada and you can tell by the look of his room, he even hangs a Canadian flag on the wall (not even using a tack to keep the flag pristine).

Our plan is to start in the evening at a park by a river. We'll be setting up a fire and bringing out meats and food for people to fry over the flames. Frisbee, light sports and fireworks for people to enjoy and bring out as many people as possible. I've been getting e-mails for the past week as people are confirming to see if they come out. I have no clue how many people are comming out but we are pretty excited about getting this thing going.

Pictures to follow, it's only but a week away.

UBC Geers got Slashdotted!

Check it out! The UBC geers got 3145 mpg in the supermileage competition, enough for Vancouver to Halifax on less than $5 bucks. The only problem is that these cars aren't all that fast!

Things that go "bump" in the night

3 am, I hear a loud thump from the kitchen of my room. Kuni are both awoken startled and proceed to investigate. Fortunately it wasn't a burgler, but a bag of apples that managed to fall from the top of the microwave (which was on top of the fridge) that hit the floor. Odd, I don't remember apples having feet or any sort of moving appendages that would give them any sort of mobility.

With that resolved, we return to our rooms... which are right beside each other and are only separated by a set of sliding doors through the middle. Neither of us could sleep so we spent the next hour chatting. By 4 am, I attempted to try and get some sleep... unfortunately it wasn't so "fruitful".

By 5 am, I had given up on the sleep, got out of bed (rather easily, I am surprised), cooked gyoza (probably woke up Kuni in the process) proceeded to eat breakfast and packed lunch for school. I departed and arrived at the lab by 6:00 am. Right as I arrived, I just realized that I forgot my student ID card that would let me get access to the building, just for kickes, I decided to check the side door into the lab and through the window, I found one of my colleagues at his desk half awake-- he spent the entire night at the lab running a process. Suffice to say, that he let me in.

After that, I grabed, my samples and was off to the electron beam microscope to take a look at a few samples I had made a week back. Took some pictures, returned to the lab... and goofed off for a little before heading into one of the laboratory rooms to get an experiment setup using an atomic force microscope.

I returned back into lab by 9:00 am because I am supposed to meet with a new guy that will be spending a month here from the US that will be working sort of under me for the next month. Unfortunately, the person hasn't showed yet so I am here waiting at my desk for him... and right now I am starting to get super sleepy. I think I'll be going home early tonight.

Time for a diet?

There comes a time, when youthful skinny person's metabolizm wears out. That time often occurs somewhere right after getting your undergraduate degree. There were some articles I read back in my unversity days that guys start gaining weight yearly at some point in their lives at approximately 1~2 pounds/year.

Since getting in to lab, my body mass has been increasing. I arrived into lab at 63 kg (139 lb) and weighed in at 69 kg (151 lb). To be honest, 151 lb is my average body weight during school so this shouldn't be much of a surprise, but one day, my usual "in school" and "out of school" mass won't be so cyclic; but instead, take a climb like a plane at lift off.

I should take a note that when I am talking about mass, I'm talking about fat. Take heed that fat and muscles are different things entirely, you can be heavy with muscles or fat. The point is that one looks better. I have to explain this point most oftenly when I invite girls (no offence if you know this already) to go work out with me when they think they're getting flabby (and no, I don't use it as a pick up line :P But *you* could if you like :P).

Well, in the face of tons of things to do... I'll make a post about that later on, it's time for me to hit the gym for a little.

Did you write on your blog?

Hehehe, Kuni just asked me seconds ago: "Did you write on your blog?" Heh turns out that he's reading my most recent entry. Hahaha, I'm writing on it again... wonder if he'll notice :P As big as the internet is, sometimes it's a small place :)

Roomies

I came home at about 10:00 tonight, kind of glad to see my roomies. The night before was a disaster. I destroyed atleast $300 worth of equipment and a week's worth of work, possibly more if things get screwed up. This is a life story but today I ain't going to get into it.

I had some left over Korean seaweed. Let me get of saying that the stuff is great. I had it before from another friend that left Japan and another friend heard that I loved the stuff gave it to me as a birtheday present to me... and I still love it. I gave a slice to Kuni and he told me right off... "this would be great with some alcohol"... nuff said, I bought a bottle of alcohol and we took it down tonight and as of this moment I am tipsy as a result of it.

Many things were said tonight and I realize today, that roomies are just like family. Essentially, we are family. It's great to have friends that I can call a family. Sometimes not everything can be said, but sometimes there are times when tough things things the can be said.

It's funny to think that I got a random phone call one day from Kuni asking me if I would be interested in sharing an appartment together with another roomie. The ball was set in motion and I haven't regreted it since. Today Kuni's even offered to correct the little mistakes I make in my normal Japanese speech... the kind of things that normal Japanese people won't do for me because even if I do make mistakes, I am understood; the biggest barrier to becoming fluent in any language.

Kuni has to move out in less than a year, Olympia is still going to be around.. but to be honest, nothing is going to match this house's dynamics. I am going to miss the guy when he is gone, but for the mean time, we are going to have such a kick ass time. I've wanted to see what was life like with roomies since almost graduating out of university, that wish has been granted to me.

A Picture Update

Here's a picture update of life in Japan:

October (sometime) -- Got my brain scanned (fRMI) and got paid $100 for it!


Results: 100% Sane, 99% genius + 1% uber-genius (red parts indicate brain parts in use)

Actually, it was for an experiment comparing there difference between a native speaker of English vs a non-native (ie Japanese) person interpreting English. I signed up for the experiment solely to get a picture of my brain, the money was a bonus. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the machine. But it was very cool none the less.

A big machine, powerful magnetic fields and all. I laid down read stuff in English and responded to a test by pushing buttons. 2 hours for $100 and a picture of my brain. Priceless!

May 20th Boat Races:

The lab put together 4 teams for long boat races, I was on one of them. We were looking pretty good with our timing and had plenty of speed at our practice (right before the race). The only problem is that my row seat fell off during the race causing us to lose. Ugh... next time gadget... next time!

The topless dude is me!
Yep, that's me!

May 26th -- Safety Training

What else do I do in my spare time? Well I'm a super hero of course! I jump out of buildings, save babies and put out fires.


Left :Me getting ready to jump out of a building (after noticing something wrong)
Right: Landing to safety

What I learned: Don't jump off the 3rd floor of a building with slack in the rope. Duh! Especially with 3 floor's worth of slack. I was hanging off the building because I just noticed a crap load of slack in the rope... stupid saftey people! I should also mention that bungie jumping with a rope that doesn't stretch is also a bad idea. :)

I'm a fireman! Does it mean that I'm hot now?

June 4th -- My Birthday Party:

Why is it that everyone has an infatuation with spelling out my name with random things?
The gang at the party!
What could this be?
Hey it's a French dessert cook book!

That's all for now :)

Oh the pain! Japan vs Austrailia: World Cup

I left lab at about 8:30 yesterday to hit the bar with friends to catch the world cup game with Japan vs Austrailia. There were TV crews at the bar to film everyone's reactions while the game raged on... and so it raged. Lots of cheering, chanting and singing. It especially wild when Japan smacked a goal in the net during the first half of the game. The crowd went wild, my cell was ringing with instant messeges from friends watching the game at other places. I hugged atleast 3~4 random people. Crazy stuff.

In the second half during the last 10 minutes, Austrailia scores a goal when the goalie comes a little too far out to try to knock out a ball during a corner kick. What happens next is unbelieveable-- Austrailia comes back with 2 goals in the last 8 minutes to take Japan down 3-1. Suffice to say that everyone in the bar was heart broken to see the game end like this. It would have been a sure victory. Anyways, a good time was had. Next game, Saturday Japan vs Croatia.

I headed out for coffee with friends after the game at midnight... of an interesting note something of a "do you know Joe in Canada" event happened. Recently, I've been having lots of chance meetings where people know people. Last night, turns out one of the gals in the group heard that I was a student... promptly asks me:

"Are you in Tohoku University?"
"Yes"
"Are you in Engineering?"
"Yeah"
"Are you in Esashi Lab?"
"Um... yeah?"
"Do you know... (such and such)"
"Holy cow! Yeah"
We then shake hands.

Small world... small world indeed. I've also met a friend's date randomly and also met a long lost friend of 7 years in Sendai by chance too. Life never ceases to be interesting.

Ask a ninja...

Wanna know what a ninja thinks about tiered internet? Look no further than here. Watch it, it's funny. Serious :)

A Quarter Century

My second birthday away from home, but with friends dropping wishing me well from back home, it feels like part of that home also moved with me to Japan.

I did my b-day party at my place in Japan on Sunday. Invited out the international students and friends over... and the nice thing about having roomies is that they're already at the party. Well that's not entirely true, we still have to coordinate our schedules; for we are busy people.

All in all, there were about 14~15 people that day. I whipped up some honey lemon chicken, soy-sauce style chicken (there was a deal on chicken at the grocery store that day), humus, seafood pasta and a Banana-Pineapple cake for dessert.

If there was one problem for the party, it's that I didn't make enough food. All of the main dishes were gone in the first 30~45 minutes. The international students crowded around the food table and the rest of the other people not too keen on "fighting" with the crowd hung back and didn't end up with much food to eat.

I did get a nice T-shirt, a huge round thing of chocolate, a French dessert cookbook with extra recipes from Nadege (my very cool French friend) and a bottle of 10-year-old port wine (that tasted ever so good). I started preparing for the party at 1 pm that day; it was worth the effort.

On Tuesday, the eve of my birthday, I dropped home right after teaching English in the evening to catch some sleep. At 11:30 pm, Kuni and I headed off to the local convenience store to pick up some booze at the dollar store (crazy no? And they're open 24/7!!!). When I returned, I was surprised to find Sachie over as well with a bottle of Champagne. We popped the Champagne at midnight and celebrated my birthday at midnight. I got a dessert cookbook :) I couldn't have asked for more...

But wait! There's more!

On the Wednesday, we had a lab meeting scheduled and I asked the assistant professor if I could sit this one out and report in the day before. At first he told me that the main professor might not be happy about it... the problem was that the meeting was scheduled with 2 days notice... but I managed to book it off anyways. These guys ought to learn to take it easy sometimes; then again, I might be taking it too easy but that's a different story.

So I did take the evening off, came home and went out with Kuni, Olympia and Sachie for dinner at an Italian restaurant for a b-day dinner. 3 birthday parties!?? Wow, I've aged 3 years in the span of a week! Sachie made me a cake and I got a really nice white-green sports jacket. Awesome.

So now, I'm 25-- quarter of a century old and half way through my twenties. Another 5 more years and I'll be 30. Back home, I used to worry a little about what I might be when I got to 30. I'm now in Japan and people could be 29,30 or 31 and more and you couldn't tell. Age is a relative thing and all that matters is how you feel. And today, I feel great!

What I did last week -- Farmer Justin

So finally I've come around to what I've been wanting to write about since last week but never had the time to do. So here I go....

So last week, I was invited out by a volunteer friend of mine to hit the rice fields and go plant rice. What a trip! My friend, as it turns out knows another friend that is the owner of a rice paddy and is currently going through the planting process (as it is rice planting season now in Japan). The interesting thing about this place is that they do all their work by hand!

From what I am told, nearly 99% of all rice fields in Japan are mechanically planted. The rice field that I went to is sort of different, in that it isn't a commercial production place. The owner of this rice field, Shigeo, plants the rice here purely for self consumption. He does it with friends and I believe they get a cut too.

Shigeo is a very interesting person, somewhat shorter than I and weighing at only 100 pounds, if you were to look at him, you could never guess that he was underweight. He looks incredibly fit. Trained as an economist at university, he worked in Germany for several years getting developers permits to build golf courses-- the kind of things that would get enviromnentalists screaming in a rage. Yet, I have a guy that worked in a development firm running in his own rice field.

Actually, Shigeo also runs a bit of a club called (translated from Japanese) "Let's plant rice" and his motto is to "think in 100 year terms." Quite a contrast between a guy that worked at a company developing golf courses and the same one running a rice field, no?


So this is me with my hands and feet dirty in the rice field with the rest of them.

Let me explain a little about the rice planting process.

After the winter season, the rice paddies are drained and from October till about the end of April the fields are often left alone with vegetation growing in it. Before planing, the excess vegetation is removed to allow for the rice plants to get the most nutrients out of the ground.

In the old days, removal of plants was done by hand and that's the way Shigeo does it. In the present, it's done by tilling and chemicals. The reason being it's more efficient (a word that "work" has a love affair with). In the modern rice fields, the paddy is pumped full of fertilzer and growth chemicals to get the rice to grow big and into a snice grain shape. The telling price we pay is that because of the chemical contents of the paddy, the farmers them selves don't enter their own paddies in bare foot like the way we are in the picture above. The long term effects of these chemicals to the rice aren't well understood and could take many years before anyone notices. What I do know however, is that there is a multitude of life in rice fields that I was planting in... like snails and small bugs... in the other rice fields, there aren't any.

So I ask Shigeio what are the advantages of farming in this manner since it takes longer to plant the rice, he tells me that the taste is a little better (but that could be a subjective thing) but the most important thing is that he tells me that, safety of the food is the most important property. Unfortunatly, the economics of producing safer foods don't play to a farmer's hand. The farmers want efficiency, whatever health problems that might develop long after you've been eating the rice for a long time is the price that the consumers might end up paying for later on.

I did learn something interesting from Shigeo that day, something that I've never considered before... he told me that "that trying to find ways of doing things in the most efficient way possible isn't necessarly the best." The thought more correctly summed up in my opinion is that "other important properties/qualities should not be sacrificed for efficiency."

So that concludes the rice planting talk, so on to other things.

The other interesting things that Shigeo does is that he also grows Shitake mushrooms. Ever wonder how they're grown? First you take some fallen trees, drill holes in them and put in bits of Shitake mushroom spores in. Close up the hole with some styrofoam and in about 8 months you've got Shitake to eat!

Shitake, this one's ahead of the pack.

What a farm of Shitake mushrooms looks like.

Shigeo's living room:

His house designed by his wife


Lunch at Shigeo's: Farmed rice and veggies picked from the forest. Delish!


The farming gang. The guy to the most left is Shigeo.

Aftre getting home, the birthday party where a few people got plastered occured, but in general we all had a good time.


Left: People hanging out in Kuni's Room
Right: Crap, I forgot her name! Note, it's very bad to forget a girl's name!


Toshi falling asleep on my bed after too many drinks.

Well that sums up a little of what went on last week... here comes another weekend! :)