Transience

Of the fond memories of coming back to Sendai is remembering all the interesting people I've met over the years. Many of them where international students from all over the world, most of them have gone back to their home countries. All of the ones that I have met were really nice people.

And now that I think of it, I haven't been in contact with most of them since they left. It makes me wonder, what are the characteristics of person that would make them your friend. Perhaps, I didn't articulate that well enough, but I also wonder what is the characteristics of the friend relationship. I've never really thought this before, not until coming back to Sendai, where I used to know a lot of people.

There are still many people that I know here, but I would only call out a few to hang out with. Many of the people I knew, were people I've met up along the way attending events or going out to my favorite bars where there were people I knew. We were all friends in passing. I've realized that I don't live here any more and my connection with these people has gone, though I would say that knowing them has brought plenty of joy while I've been living in Sendai. I've also started wondering about who are the people that I really want to spend time with, the people that I want to do things together with.

After moving away to Atsugi, I've realized that there are not that many people that pops into mind when I do want to do something. Many of the things that I really do enjoying, like going out on random walks or drives are the kinds of things that I enjoy doing on my own.

I have not found many people suited to my style of adventuring or perhaps, pace. Many of the things that I do enjoy doing now are the kinds of things that I can do on my own. Perhaps through some unconcious choices, I've chosen to lead a more solitary lifestyle. A kind of lifestyle where I can go on my own pace. It isn't just pace that I often find myself alone with, but the things I do and the kinds of things I like to think or talk about.

After joining my company and meeting the many new recruits that joined during the same year, there aren't many that I find myself hanging out with. I did hang out with them from time to time the first few months while at work, but the more I hung out with them, the more I realized that I never really did fit in with their conversations.

I met up with a good friend of mine in Sendai just yesterday for brunch. This friend of mine is an older lady in her 50's perhaps close to her 60's (I've never really bothered to ask), but she's always been volunteering and helping out new international students get settled in Sendai. I've always enjoyed our conversations, we would always discuss about our current traveling adventures, the interesting foods or places we've found or any interesting topics about different cultures.

She told me that she always found herself bored when she spent time with other housewives as they spent most of their time talking about the latest sit-coms or the cute clothing they bought for their children. She could never find inspiration in those conversations, but when it came to volunteering and helping out with the international students, there would always be plenty of interesting and fresh ideas.

The people that I find myself connecting the best with were with the international students. This afternoon, I found myself talking with a Columbian friend that has been living in Japan for the past 7 years, that is looking to go back home after graduating.

At this point, he was a little home sick and felt that it was time to go back home. As much as he had enjoyed his time in Japan and how significantly more money he could make by working over here, the place he called home was still Columbia. It was interesting discussing the whole traveling phase, but I suppose, at one point in a person's life, people living abroad will eventually have to pick a time to finally settle down.

I guess it is topics such as these that I would not find myself talking about with people that haven't had the opportunity to live in a foreign country. Especially with a normal Japanese colleague.

I have also found that I don't look at world events or the way of life in a different country the same anymore. I guess I've become more accepting of the differences and become far less judgmental. There are, of course times when I do think when things are wrong, especially when it comes to people getting annoyed at some parts of their own culture... it can be interesting sometimes at what stupid or silly things people end up doing as a result of "tradition."

But anyways, back to the topic of friends. So many people I've met through my time over here have come and gone. Everything has been so transient and perhaps I am looking for something that lasts. The question that I still need to figure out is what is the important ingredient that creates a strong bond between people.

I will leave myself to ponder over it for the next while...

A Place Called Home

If there was a place in Japan where I could call home, that place would be Sendai. I left early on a Saturday morning, taking the bullet train out of the city traveling 300 km north to Sendai. Every time I get off the train at Sendai station, it feels like I've come back home.

Everything look familiar, every time I step out of the station. The stores, the bustling car and people walking through the city. I have many fond memories of this place. Manly because of all the people I know... or perhaps knew when they lived here.

Perhaps I wonder if it's nostalgia. Sort of like visiting your old high school or university years after graduating. It's like the place hasn't changed but the people are all different. The place feels familiar but yet somehow detached, it's like I am not a part of this city anymore.

Most of my friends in Sendai were students at the university, both the Japanese students and the foreign exchange students. Most of which have graduated and moved on since the era I was here. Still, some of my friends remain but my connection to people of this city feel diminished.

I do wonder, what is it about a place that you could call a "home" so special. I know for sure that I wouldn't call the place I live right now in Tokyo, home. It's just sort of a place to me. But Sendai is different. Is it the people? Is it the place? Is it what happens? I still can't put my finger on the specific reason behind it. But I believe that it is the combination of all 3 of these. Without the right people in the right place, I don't believe that I would have fond memories of this city. There are still people here that I know, perhaps like embers of the community that I used to be a part of.

I know for sure that a new group of international students move into this city every year as part of either their university program or through the Japanese run scholarship program. Most of them will live here for a year, some others will stay for a few years longer.

History will repeat itself. Students from around the world coming together to live at the international dorms. International culture exchange between each other, experiencing life in Japan, making friends, Christmas parties and exploration. New experiences almost everyday. The first time is always special and unfortunately, first time experiences only come once. If I did come back here, I know for sure that I wouldn't be able to join and experience life with these students in the same capacity as I did before. I know for sure that I would be taking part as a different role, probably as a facilitator. I guess that the saying is true and people do have to move on. It just isn't the same experiencing the same things over again.

It is great to experience something wonderful, but I also realize that is it important to know how to gracefully move on. No matter how wonderful, you can't allow yourself to be stuck in the past.

65 hours of over time

Been hell of a month, it's coming down to crunch time and we are finally starting to get into reliability testing. The problem is that development time wasn't properly allocated into reliability testing and things are in a complete pinch.

Just making something and having it come out pretty is one thing, but it's going to have to last if people are going to buy it.

Then I get suddenly thrown into the reliability testing group and will have to do a lot of redesign and testing to get things working right. According to the schedule, I have one shot to make the device and then hand it off to another division for some post processing (which they have one shot to get right) and then perform a 1000 hour lifetime test, where the the sample must pass.

I'm basically playing for a hole-in-one game here and the schedule is tight... actually, we are already behind schedule and it looks like I'll be puling 150 hours of over time in the span of 3 months. I'll be hitting the limit for overtime over a 3 month period.

Despite this, I keep my weekends busy with visiting friends and attending events. Ironically, I don't get much rest on weekends either.

It's easy to see how one's life turns into a work-rest-work cycle when doing these kinds of hours. You'll be old and nearly dead before you realize it. There are plenty of other things that I want to do but have absolutely no time to do them.

I'll be glad when this is all over.

Fortunately, I just got clearance to procure man-power from another division and will be roping in 2 people to help me and possibly getting one more person for some sort term experiments....

My supervisor is somewhat incompetent and scatter brained (lacking in good logical and planning skills) and unfortunately I don't have his experience with working on this project. Fortunately, he's going to be busy on another project and I'll be moving myself into managing the other guys coming in (whom are much older than I, but this will be interesting).

I've got a shot at making a name for myself if I can pull of a stunt to succeed at the reliability testing and crazy state that it is in right now. If it works out, I'll be asking the boss for a bonus for the winter and it'll be something nice to add to the resume.

Summarizing and organizing data is important

I'll be brief, because I am tired. Getting hauled into work on a Sunday and then working 3 subsequent 12 hour days is not my particular cup of tea. Especially while working under a supervisor that is scatter brained and with terrible decision making skills.

I've given up on trying to blend in by nodding my head and doing what I am told as I have had my ass handed to me by higher up managers for following someone else's bad train of thought. Allow me to summarize the situation:

I am pretty much working on a somewhat complicated process using semiconductor type fabrication technology to make micro-level devices. These devices are fabricated by depositing a variety of metals and semi-conductors in an arrangement of patterns. There are some complexities depending on the geometry of the patterns you deposit or etch out and there are inevitably design trade offs or risks that one might have to take when trying out a new process.

The problem is that the supervisor that I work under shows little sign of reasoning, nor does he do a good job of explaining his reasoning to me (which might be poor in the first place). The end result is that I have no clue on what this guy is basing his reasoning on and occasionally it seems that we are flailing a little bit when it comes to trying to be focused on getting a design challenged solved in a finite amount of time. The problem really kicks in when we have a upper level manager starts questioning our reasoning for the design and experimentation to which sometimes we cannot connect the dots to. This drives me utterly crazy because it feels like the work we do that can't be properly explained is time wasted.

Ugh.

I will admit that working on a somewhat complex device can be a little challenging, though I do not think the process is all that complicated. There are multiple ways of trying to fabricate a device and often a preliminary study is required to determine it's feasibility. The problem is that my supervisor is not particularly good at keeping track of what we don't know, what information is required and comparing them to our other options. The other problem is that I am still a little inexperienced and don't know how to work all the machines we use, meaning I just can't run off and do my own thing (yet).

Anyways, if you want to succeed at a project via making good decisions. Knowing the basics and summarizing the important details is vital and working with smart people is important. I think I am going to be pissed off working with this supervisor for the next few months.

Hot damn.

Farming out the work vs doing it yourself

I had a conversation with one of my coworkers yesterday with the difference between building equipment on your own or having an outside company do it for you or buying something ready made.

I am the kind of guy that likes to build things up on my own, especially if it's something likely to be expensive. For example, I'd much rather buy a few cheap chips and put together an electronic circuit to do some data logging or motor control instead of buying a full blown system that would run into a few hundred or thousands of dollars; especially for a personal project.

Working in a company, however, it isn't unusual to just go out and buy the equipment you need to get what you need done, freeing time up for yourself to stay focused on what you really need to do. But I find that there is a problem with this way of thinking however, especially when it comes to understanding the possibilities of what you can do with the right technologies or equipment put together.

Most people in my research group aren't technologically savvy. They know how to use the machines and the basic principles behind using them but that's about it. They don't know much about electronics or programming that might make their lives a whole lot easier. I have proposed in the past, cheap tunable circuits that could be used to drive some our devices while hooking up the outputs to a data logger to allow us to take detailed data. The circuits themselves would only cost about $10 each to make.

Unfortunately, some other person took over the project and elected to purchase a multi-channel driver circuit that costs about $100 to drive a single device. We are taking about an entire difference in magnitude in cost and massive parallelism is not possible because the driver circuit is the size of a brick where as mine is the size of a cell phone pad (and I can have several driving circuits on there too!). The system will also take a few months to procure too. I simply had to just shake my head at the whole ordeal.

The co-worker of mine has been needling me from time to time that it would be more expensive for the company, money wise to expend the cash for the development time of whatever I would be building instead of purchasing it.

For cheap devices, sure I can understand that of course, but when it comes to custom programs or equipment to help speed up the work I and others do, that kind of equipment just doesn't really exist as a prepackaged system and it's going to have to be assembled from the ground up. Having the work farmed out to an external company will at least costs in the $10,000 range if not in the $100,000 range and this is the kind of stuff that I would have a hell of a time getting approval from the higher ups for. I could do the whole thing for much cheaper, on my own without the excess bureaucracy. The problem is finding the time and the resources to pull it off, which sort of has me stuck.

The one other thing that I didn't like with my colleague's thinking is that I should let "pro's" handle work (ie circuits) that is outside one's expertise. I fully believe that that kind of thinking is wrong. This is coming from a guy that has ribbed me on making programs is "easy" and that if he wanted to, he could pick it up pretty fast. To put it honestly, I think he's full of shit.

I realize that having specialized skills is important, but having a lack of good understanding in different fields of knowledge is a fatal mistake. I've seen this plenty enough when researchers here screw up their spec sheets and they're not getting the expected response times from the custom made machines. I've had to step in a few times to devise work-arounds for whatever problems they were having.

Having a poor understanding of different fields is also a recipe for creative disaster and I believe it shows with the kinds of products I've seen from this company versus other companies. They've been off the ball when it comes to anticipating future teility to summarize my thoughts has gone to the crapper since my hiatus from writing. Ichnological trends and often plays catchup with other companies.

Anyways, it's been a while since the last time I did any sort of writing and my ab am going to have to rebuild these skills because I definitely feel that my cognitive skills have been in decline since stopping. Here is hopping that it gets better after I get back into the swing of things.