Web 2.0 vs ABC and CNN

I find it ironic that western news often complains about censorship in Chinese media, at least the Chinese are straight forward about it. In America, you don't get censored, you get ignored or manipulated. Which is worse? You tell me.

As of this moment the two most popular candidates making their rounds on the internet are Ron Paul (Republican) and Mike Gavel (Democrat) as a result from their excellent showing at their respective presidential debates. Unfortunately, it seems that because they aren't the main-stream media's favorite candidates, they have been getting less than fair treatment for reasons beyond me.

Ron Paul has been doing exceptionally well on the internet, thanks to sites like youtube hosting clips of him in action at the presidential debates. Though I have not watched much of the other candidate's performance at the debates, what I have seen so far pales compares to the brutal honesty and truthfulness of Ron Paul's comments. If you have not seen this man in action, I recommend that you watch one of his debates. There is plenty more material of him at youtube and I also highly recommend that you watch some of his other debates.

As a result of Ron Paul's excellent showing at the debates, Ron Paul's website has been fielding the most internet traffic to his website according to alexa, an internet traffic tracking page, as the figure below indicates (data current as of June 6th).

Despite his strong showing at the debates and the internet, the traditional media-sites such as CNN and ABC news have been actively trying to limit his success by deleting comments relating to Ron Paul on their websites. In addition to this, a CNN political blog is attempting to downplay his successes in online polls which have been hosted at CNN, ABC and a variety of other sites by mentioning that

"For the three GOP debates so far, Paul has won or placed high in most of the unscientific online surveys including ABC’s, MSNBC’s, FOX’s, and unscientific polls conducted on a number of blogs...

In virtually every scientific national poll — generally regarded as the best measurement of public support for a political candidate — Paul registers, at most, between 1 and 2 percent. Do the debate numbers reflect something different than the national polls? Is it too early to tell?"- CNN Political Ticker Blog

This is the first time I have ever heard the term of an "unscientific online survey" versus a "scientific national poll," it makes me wonder how is an online survey not national or how a national poll is more scientific. In so far as that I am aware, these sites have never mentioned the "unscientificness" of these poll until this circumstance and online polls on other topics are often included in television broadcasts. The slant these websites present to the news and the candidates that they subliminally support is disturbing.

Mike Gravel, the Democratic presidential candidate has been facing similar issues with the media. After his good showing at the first Democratic debate (I also recommend watching his debate videos), he too also had a surge of traffic and publicity on the internet in May. CNN attempted to exclude Gravel from the debate which caused an online uproar and various online petitions to finally have him included in the New Hampshire debate hosted on June 3rd. Despite this, Gravel was shafted for debate and answering time from the 2 hour debate as indicated in the following graph.

I would find it rather suspicious that CNN is giving the most time to the tier 1 candidates instead of allowing all other candidates to have a equal amount of speaking time. It should be evidently clear about the bias and the control that the media on information and presidential candidates.

Fortunately, for us, we do have the internet, where the dissemination of information is not centralized and open to everyone that has an opinion to make it heard. It cannot be as easily filtered like the news that we see on TV. Despite all the filtering, video clips of Ron Paul and Mike Gravel have been making the rounds on the internet thanks to youtube and other video hosting sites, in addition to all the user aggregated news sites and blogs.

It is ironic to think that, the internet is far more democratic than the traditional democratic process. This is web 2.0, run by the people... and I believe, that this is the future of democracy.

Oh Canada! Having some problems are better than others

I stopped by an interesting site just today regarding some points on Canadian politics. I am not a huge fan of politics because there is a whole lot of people that talk about things that they don't understand, and the discussions often go unmeasured and nowhere. Listening to conversations on important topics that go nowhere is a pet-peeve of mine, just because it's a waste of time. Sure, I don't mind banter as long as it is interesting (which is the point of banter after all), but when you've got important things to be decided, I don't want to waste my time running around in circles. But anyways, back to the interesting things I've read...

So, there is this article at the Seminal, which brands it's self as an "Independent Media + Politics" blog called "Oh! Canada?? Their Version of Liberal and Conservative vs. Ours," which has an interesting take on the problems that Canadian politicians deal from the point of view of an American. Considering that hot-topics in Canadian politics include, reducing wait times for medical treatment, improved gun control for a country with a low crime rate, debating whether if marijuana possession should be an offense where a person gets fined or sent to jail and same-sex marriage (where even Harper has gone in so far as to accept same-sex civil unions). As the writer of the mentioned article quotes from a friend:

"I wish we had those problems. Reducing wait lines for health care probably doesn’t even crack the top 100 problems facing America, and that’s just thinking about domestic policy."

It's interesting to think this way, but I would rather be facing these problems instead of a foreign war, weakening economy, poor international image and more. The author muses on moving to Canada and notes how easy it is to move North, which costs all of $200 to get Canadian citizenship after a 3 year permanent residency, which is listed at the Canadian government webpage. Of an interesting note, being born to a Canadian born parent automatically entitles the child to Canadian citizenship, wherever in the world was born (naturalized people, however need to fill out some paper work before the 28th birthday of the child, but these are minor details).

As annoying as it is listening to hot political problems, when compared to others, the ones we have in Canada isn't so bad at all.

On my way to Graduating

This weekend was a 2-for-1 deal in terms of making presentations. I did my 4 month presentation on what I have been doing and at the same time, did my mid-term presentation for my graduate thesis. All in all, both presentations went well, with the mid-term going exceptionally well.

The annoying thing is that in reality, I am closer to graduating than I realize; I have to make my final graduation presentation at the end of July and after that, I am technically done. I still have some experimentation that I need to get done before that time and also produce a 50 page report on what I have been doing for the past 2 years. I still have yet to start writing this document.

I got contacted by Sony just recently about my start date and it seems that they want me to join them in April at *their leisure* since Japanese people typically graduate in April as opposed to me graduating in October... and for the fact that I am the only person out of the 400 people they hired that is graduating in October. In short, this means that I have 6 months of free time!

So, what am I going to do during these 6 months? The possibilities are numerous and I know for that I will be planning on doing some traveling. Where I will go and for how long has yet to be determined but rest assured that big plans will be made. I will be reporting in on those at a later date.

Some Humor

I was taking to a friend of mine, Hiroko on the phone yesterday and she was telling me about one of her mis-adventures in English. Apparently one day, she got an e-mail from a friend of hers that was pretty good in Japanese. He sent off an e-mail in Japanese to her and ended it with "talk to you soon" which she didn't understand at first. After doing a word for word translation, she thought that he was going to call, kept the phone near-by and patiently waited for the phone call that never came. I thought that was kind of cute.

I was also just reading a webpage recently with a funny piece of humor. A guy traveling to Australia was asked by the custom's officer if he had any past criminal records. The guy responded with "I didn't know that it was a requirement to get in." Haha!

The birth of multi-touch technology and a matter of application

This is post 300 of this blog, I am quite amazed at the number of posts I have made thus far over my 2 year span of running this blog. The amount of content I have written for this blog is likely sufficient to fill a book or two if it were ever printed. An interesting thought, but anyways, back to the main post.

Approximately a year ago, a man by the name of Jeff Han at New York University made his pioneering presentation of multi-touch technology in February of 2006 at the TED talks conference which blew the audience away. Interestingly, multi-touch technology is nothing new as known experimental work on this technology dates back to 2001 under the auspices of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, branded as DiamondTouch. Unfortunately, DiamondTouch never made the same level of impact as Jeff Han's presentation.

An important lesson to learn here is that technology is only as valuable as it's usefulness; and it's usefulness is defined by it's application (or it's perceived application, "coolness" counts as an application). Where Mitsubishi failed, Jeff Han has done an exemplary job of making multi-touch technology useful as it is cool, as witnessed by his TED presentation (which I highly recommend you to see). It's applications include fast manipulation of satellite images, planetary topographical maps and a variety of entertainment applications. Of course, a 5 year late start might have provided Jeff Han with an edge over Mitsubishi in computing power, in addition to the current availability of satellite data and CPU processing power.

The application possibilities for this technology is exciting and nearly a year after that presentation, Microsoft has moved into developing multi-touch systems christened Surface, which is pretty much a carbon copy of Jeff Han's technology. Perhaps they've got a licensing deal with Jeff Han? I'll leave that up to speculation.

The only drawback to the current state of multi-touch technology is that it can possibly somewhat unwieldy when it comes to manipulating data on a full screen. Considering that I can use a mouse to access the full range of my monitor on a surface area less than 1/5 of my screen, access time to manipulating data on a large screen will be significantly slower. I do believe that there are ways of speeding up how our ability to interact with these systems. I will predict that touch screen technology will become mainstream in the next 7~8 years.

Still got my poker skills

I have been meaning to make a post since last year that I have quit playing online poker, despite being consistently profitable every month. I have raked in over $2000 in a single month playing online poker at my peak, usually I averaged $400~$500 ish but I have since quit playing after making my move to Japan. There are people that can't walk away from a game after losing, but you'd think I would be crazy for walking away from a winning game, especially where I can make $20~$30/hr playing-- and there is a reason for that.

Since moving to Japan, I have dabbled with online poker from time to time, but I ultimately decided to drop it. I reasoned that I would be losing so much out of my Japan experience if I spent most of my free time inside my room just making cash online. Then it dawned on me, that there is more to life than just making money. Considering the adventures I've done and the people I've met, a few extra thousand dollars could not even come close to replacing these experiences. I spend most of my time outside now with people or traveling around. Money alone, does not bring a quality of life, though often is it only a tool to allow you to do things. Like many tools, it does not have to be necessary to realize your end product-- and I think that there are many that don't realize that.

But still, I do play poker from time to time just socially. The last time I played was in September where I had the opportunity to play with Matt in Calgary and walked out with a whopping $600 in profits, it was certainly a great poker game. Since my return to Canada on Tuesday, I have only ventured out to the casino just once to try my hand at the poker tables and after a 5 hour stint at Riverrock, I can say that I still have it because I played my cards and the people right.

I played at the $1/$2 no limit tables and made some great plays, (despite losing a few hands at first) where I put a player on nothing with my AK after a hefty preflop bet. The flop and turn was junk and I was betting the crap out of him and yet he still called to catch something on the river. Out of my $200 buy in, I managed to lose $120 and brought myself down to $80 in about 2.5 hours. Fortunately, I had a great QQ pocket pair and people were betting it up preflop (2 people at $30 and a few others at about $15 each and some extra cash in the pot) where I just took the remainder of my cash for an all in and took the pot down to bring myself to about $235.

I was thinking of quitting after a few more revolutions because I was back up and wanted to quite while I was ahead (and keep my record of never losing cash at a casino) . But then I was on the button and then I got Q9 suited hearts on big blind with barely over $200 at this point.The flop came out with a J74 with 2 hearts and I was on the flush draw. There were a few players left at the time and there was a $20 bet which me and a one other player called. The turn was an Ace of diamonds where my opponent decided to bet $40. I put my opponent on the J trying to force the other players and me out. I reraised to $80 to put pressure on the better and represent that I had something, like a J or just hit the A. The river came with a 5 clubs.

My opponent checks the bet to me and after considering that I had a tight image the whole game, I decided to take my remaining $140 and put myself all in on a bluff. My opponent had more than enough to cover my bet. Should he have called, I would have lost everything. He hummed and hawed at me and even called out that I was playing like I was on a flush draw but missed (which was exactly right), but everytime I got called that game, I had something pretty good, even when I lost. I shot back at him that I was reading him playing on the Jack pair, but he had to fear me playing on the Ace... and my gut knew that I was right about what he had. The problem was if this guy would back down and let me take the pot; my heart was racing.

Given my poker image and that he would have to risk $140 to make the call, he backed off letting me take an additional $100 in profits after that hand. I played one more hand which I immediately folded preflop, which was unfortunate because I would have hit a straight on the flop but hey, I was just happy to end the game in the black with an additional $100 in my pocket. I cashed out after 5 hours of play, putting my hourly rate at $20/hr and headed home.

Even after my poker exodus, it looks like I still have my skills.

It is nice to see my university in the news sometimes

I just read this article at Arstechnica today with the university I attend in Japan, (Tohoku University) in the news after developing technology that can improve the data density of hard drives. It's the first time to see my university in the news in an English site, so kudos to them.

You don't need reviews to tell if a movie is good

I noticed something interesting today while I was out with my friend, Kayo, at the movie theaters. We made plans to catch Spiderman 3 since last week since the both of us were rather busy and we like action movies.

Anyways not to give anything away, other than I would give a positive recommendation on the movie, that you can tell how good a movie is by the reactions of the viewers. By the end of the movie, there was plenty of reactions, especially from the girls whom were crying (but I am not going to say if they were happy or not). Actually, Kayo, who I was with ended up crying and had to run to the washroom before the end of the credits. I spent a while outside in the lobby watching people as they came out of the theater with the same reaction too. I do personally have to say that the story was well played and that you can probably tell how good a movie is by the reactions of the people leaving the theater.

On traveling and marrage

I started using this thing called Facebook just recently which is a social networking website where friends link to friends and share information. It's a rather fascinating webpage as I have found many old acquaintances I used to know dating back all the way back to my elementary school era. It's rather fascinating to see how many of my old friends are doing, all of them seem to be doing pretty well.

One interesting thing I noticed, is a growing number of acquaintances and friends getting married or have gotten married. I have a feeling in the next 3~4 years that there will be a boom of marriages within my circle of friends as people start heading towards the end of their 20's. As for me, I too have begun contemplating the idea of getting married but I am also cautious of not rushing myself to anything because everyone else is doing something. Things will happen, when or if there is a right time, but not sooner.

Living in a place like Japan with strong ties to a community of foreigners I have noticed that most people that travel aren't married. I have met countless numbers of foreign teachers and international students doing their masters, Ph.D's or postdocs out here and nearly none of them are married, despite many of them being in the latter half of their 20's. I doubt any of them are getting married anytime soon.

Life in Japan is incredibly interesting and fun, especially living as a foreigner. There is a sort of a character that many people become while traveling. It is the kind of outgoing adventurous character you become when you travel to a different country. It is, in effect a collection of your desire to make the best of your limited time somewhere. You say 'hi' to random people, sometimes you might get yourself into or start a random conversation with someone on street, you end up trying as many new things as possible or going to as many places as possible, you want to be nice and make friends while in a different place. This is what I call "the spirit of a traveler." I hope that when I do come back to Canada, I remain as a traveler for time to come.

The problem is that being a traveler has certain problems when it comes to relationships, that problem is not knowing where you'll be in the future. You might be living in a certain city for a few years before moving on to somewhere else, you might go home to your home country eventually. Obviously, it is a matter of knowing when you will be settling down. Travelers, unfortunately, won't be settling down for a while, but even if I end up marrying late, I will have no regrets about going off on my adventures, because it is something that I will likely never experience if I had done otherwise.

I wish I went traveling a little earlier, but it really depends on when you are ready to go.

The Wii

It has been almost exactly 1 year since I first heard real news about the Wii. No one had a real clue what it was exactly like until E3 2006 last year where news of gamers lined up at the Nintendo booth addicted to the Wii console. I knew from the start that the Playstation 3 to be released by Sony would be a flop, despite that I decided to apply for a job with them.

I bought into Nintendo stock at about $20 USD after I read the reviews of the systems and what was going around the net. The X-box and the PS3 would be going head to head, but the Wii was cheap and something refreshingly different. I bought some more at $26 and the price has been on a steady climb since then. As of today, the stock stands at about $41 and I think it will continue to rise for a while longer.

I've never touched the Wii since buying stocks, not until yesterday while at a friend's house when I tried the system for the first time. The system is simple yet ingenious and I loved it to bits. I played bowling, boxing, tennis and all sorts of silly games on the system. Buying extra stuff like extra controllers for system will run a small change of cash and the games also run for about $50 each.

The prices for the games on the Wii are somewhat cheaper than those on the X-Box and the PS3 but still close to par, but graphics wise, they are incredibly simpler compared to the more serious gaming consoles; it is insane how beautiful the graphics are on the PS3 for example.

I do know from my gut feelings that Wii sales will be strong for a while since supply is still tight and they are selling out. Couple that with game sales that will also be turning a profit for Nintendo, I think that these guys will be in good shape and growing for a good time to come. I intend to at least double up on my stock with them.

That is not to say that every investment I have made was successful. I have lost approximately 50% of invested money in a company developing LED lighting systems which I felt that would be the future of lighting. LEDs are exceptionally efficient compared to their incandescent counter parts. However, they haven't taken off yet I still don't exactly know why.

I have taken a position with Apple on their upcoming iPhone. I watched Apple's stock ever since the iPod era and always though that they were going to max out at some point, but they kept on going. I do know for sure that I am not as confident on the upcoming iPhone as I was for Nintendo's Wii because there is a lot of built in hype in the iPhone and I already know that the iPhone is going to be expensive, in addition to the service costs to run the iPhone. But somehow, when I compare the iPhone to the expensive blackberry when that came through, they might still pull through, but I think their stock price is rather inflated.

A unoffical 2 week holiday~

The one thing I enjoy most about being a grad student is that I work at my own pace; basically I get to come and go as I please. The good thing about this lab, is that so long as you have some results to present at the bi-monthly lab meetings, you won't get into any trouble. Fortunately for me, I have some spare results from working rather efficiently for the past month that I can use to take it easy for the next 2 weeks. Been working pretty hard for the past month that I need some time to wind down.

I have a feeling that it will be pretty tricky to take time off from work the way I can take time off from going to lab-- I just don't go and I like it like that.

Where are the boundaries of your world?

While looking for a place to sit at the cafeteria today, a Bolivian friend of mine waved me down and I joined him for lunch. We started chatting about the world and his country. He told me that he used to work for the government in Bolivia but it kept changing so much... now Bolivia seems to be making a transition to socialism, which unfortunately doesn't seem like a good solution for a country with a wide disparity between the rich and the poor.

He told me that one of the biggest problems about Bolivia is that everyone in Bolivia thinks that Bolivia is the world. Though profound by itself at the time, I don't see the connection between that statement and solving their problems, but still sometimes I wonder for how many people, the boundaries of their world stop at the borders of their own country.

When I talk about boundaries, I don't mean just being outside of your own country, but really understanding what living in another country and culture is like. There is much to learn from people in different parts of the world, things that you or your people that might have never even thought of before.

I realize that sometimes making change happen can be incredibly tough. It could be inside the structure of an organization, a government or culture. Sometimes the system does not work and it is incredibly tough to change, as some systems are like bulky machinery running with a heavily in one direction. Why fight to change everything when you could also just go somewhere that suits you better? There will be, of course, times when you should fight for change... but only when you are in a position to make it happen.

Sendai Art City Project

I am a sucker for city events and shows, whether it be an art show, music, dance whatever. Where ever there is a collection of people out together showing stuff off, I want to be there to take a look.

I really enjoy going to these events because I can learn a whole lot of things that I would never encounter in my normal daily life and it is always interesting to me to go out an experience new things. Who knows what you might learn!

And it always makes for interesting stories, like just yesterday, I had my portrait done by a street artist. The first time I ever had something like that done. While watching the street artist draw other people, I had a chance to meet a really nice lady who was very friendly and we ended up chatting for a little while. I even snapped some nice pictures of her getting her portrait done which I will be sending to her by e-mail.

I also managed to meet a couple, where the guy was from Vancouver hanging out in Sendai after his wedding that day, his wife is from Sendai and they were out visiting her family. I talked to the guy and he told me that he lived in Burnaby and worked in Richmond... at MDA, the company where I had an interview with right before coming to Japan. Had I not gotten the scholarship to come out to Japan, I would have likely been working there after I finished my contract job at some other company where I was doing really boring work. The world is really a small place sometimes. I have more stories to tell about how small this world is, but perhaps another time.

But for now, click on the photo to check out the album and enjoy the pictures.

Hm, not too bad of a week!

Well things seem to be going fairly OK. My professors are currently happy with my work and I'll get to finally publish a research paper on my work and do a presentation somewhere. Right now, I am aiming for Copenhagen, Denmark. If I am doubly lucky, I might hit another, perhaps San Fransisco too for another conference. There are a few other things in the works as well, but I'll announce them when they become more solid.

I also passed my interviews with Sony Japan and it seems like I'll be joining them in doing R&D for display systems. Sony just recently put out a 3 mm thick display system that has many people drooling and it seems like that these guys want me to work on fine tuning their manufacturing processes. It will be interesting to see how things go. Unfortunately, I will be based in Atsugi which is about 50 km South and West of Tokyo (in other words, a 1 hour train ride in). I just called a friend asking her about the city and the first thing she said to me was think "Country side." Doh! But I hear that there is some decent surfing in the area too!

I told my professor about my new job opportunity and he quipped that "it seems that all the students are leaving the lab for work." My supervising professor is a really nice guy (exceptionally patient too) and it's pretty obvious that he would like more students to stick around to do their Ph.Ds. For me, I just want a change of pace outside of a lab and my Saturdays back instead of going to my lab meetings on the weekends.

This next year is going to be rather interesting!

The recent downturn in posts

According to my logs, my posting rate has gone down significantly for the past month. I'm probably down to a post once a week which is quite slow for my posting pace.

Lab life for the past few months have been quite busy, but it's more of a self imposed kind of busy. March was spring break where students at the University graduate and there is a month lull before the new students come in. During this time, I have free reign over all the silicon wafer processing equipment. It was great, I was up to the point where I was running several machines in parallel all at once while doing multiple experiments.

The electron beam microscope was available about 90% of the time and I'd even just pop in on a whim to take some pictures of new samples. Usually I'd have to put reservations in 1~2 days in advance to take data! What a difference in turn around time.

Unfortunately, all that hard work comes at a cost and I think I'm facing sort of a mild burn out. I've been pulling 8~12 hours at the lab and working in the clean room doing experiments straight. We also have weekend meetings on Saturdays from 9 am to 4 pm usually. As of this moment, I have fairly little motivation to do experiments. A chance of pace would be nice, and I will be having a chance of pace happening in the next few months!

If things go well, I might be able to head to Denmark for a few days to do a research presentation at a conference. I am crossing my fingers that I will get accepted (because the trip will be all expenses paid by the lab :)

Aside from that, I will be taking up a new hobby in my spare time, a little something called "Poi" which a New Zealand art were you spin tethered balls to strings. I saw a demonstration a few days back and it was pretty cool. Looking forward to picking up some gear in the near future.

How do you even begin to choreograph this!?

I came across this CG fight movie using the main Halo character and Metroid and damn it is so beautiful. I just can't explain the sheer awesomeness of the moves, how do you even come up with stuff like that!? I have no clue but the guy that put this CG movie together is pure genius and hilarious! Awww man, I've seen it 5 times over and I still can't stop watching it.

Thoughts of the day

I met some people the other day that I thought were kind of boring, all talk and no action. They told me that they were too busy to do much other than work. I vowed that I'd never want to be like them.

What is it that you live for?

What will you make time for?

Have you the guts to take a chance?

Lily and Richard was Here!

Last weekend I had the honor of Lily and Richard visiting me in Sendai while they were in Japan doing their tour. They arrived on Saturday at noon where I took them around for a packed day of events. I even skipped out on the later half of my lab meeting to meet up with them at the train station.

There were 2 different exits to the bullet train section and I was waiting at the wrong end exit and caught sight of them from across the station, (a good 200 meters?). Spotting them was easy... there was something distinctly Canadian about their appearance that made them stand out of the crowd. I don't know how to put it, but North American clothing is distinctly different from Asian style.

After picking them up at the station, the first thing we did was take a 20 minute walk back to my place to drop off their stuff. After a bit of unpacking, our first stop was my lab's sakura party at one of the local parks. The meeting was going to end a little early today and everyone at lab came out to the park with food and drinks to hang out. One of my labmates brought out a good bottle of sake to drink, pretty strong but really smooth. Unfortunately, it was a little strong for Richard and Lily.

The one thing I realized at that point about Japan is how prevalent their drinking culture. Back when I was in Canada, I would hardly drink at all. I'd have a drink probably 4~5 times a year. Since coming to Japan, I could easily do that in 2 weeks depending on the season (Christmas and New Year's is especially bad on the liver).


Labmates at the park for our Sakura party

Next stop on the list after the party would be some Yakiniku at a restaurant on a recommendation from a friend. I thought it was Japanese yakiniku but it was more like a Japanese-Korean style yakiniku restaurant. $25 for all you can eat fried meat! Ever thought that you could do that in Japan?


Me, Lily, Mari and Benoit (France) together at yakiniku


Richard and Joe on the other side of the table having a good time!

We totally gorged ourselves on food that evening, it wasn't funny how hard we were trying to finish all the meat we ordered. Of an interesting note, Japan recently started using all sorts of parts of an animal for their fried meat dishes. In Japanese, they call it "horu-mon." In the Osaka dialect "Horu" means to "throw away" and in standard Japanese "mon" means "thing." Put the 2 words together, you get "throw away things," in other words, parts of an animal that are usually thrown away, like intestines, stomach lining and etc.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of explaining everything too far in advance because apparently Joe, isn't a big fan of eating misc. meat parts. Ooops. Whenever I took friends to Chinese restaurants in Canada that have never been before, I had a policy of "eat first, ask later," because some people are grossed out too easily before trying something out! Ah well. We had a pretty good time eating all sorts of food... and way too much of it.

To top off the evening, a Venezuelan friend of mine was performing at the local Irish pub in Sendai, which is a hang out or many international students and Japanese friends of mine. I decided that this would be a great opportunity to introduce Lily and Richard to Japanese people and people living in Japan! We walked across the downtown from the yakiniku restaurant to the Irish pub where my Venezuelan friend was in the process of bringing down the house!


Javier and friend rocking it at the Irish Pub

The concert that evening was just great. Javier sent word out to all his friends and there were at least 100 people out there that evening listening, cheering, singing and dancing. This was the biggest crowd that I've seen at the pub and it was simply great to see so many friends out that evening. Actually, Lily and Richard was kind of surprised at the number of people I knew at the pub that evening as I was greeting lots of people that evening. I do drop in from time to time and know some of the regulars, the rest are either part of the international crew or friends of the group. It's small world in the Irish Pub.


The crowd hanging out up front.

As for me and my crew, we settled near the back of the pub where there was only but a single table open that we took over. We ordered a few drinks and hung out chatting with the people around. Mari invited a few of her friends out to hang out with us, namely Mayuko and Yukie.


Joe, Richard, Lily and Mayuko hanging out at the table

Of course, since I was at the Irish pub, I had to order some Guinness beer.


A nice tall one of Guinness

While at the pub I invited a few friends to come out and meet Lily and Richard, which was pretty cool. Actually, one of things I like most about the Irish Pub here is that the community of people that come out are incredibly open. I could sit down at the bar and say hi to someone while they're getting a drink and then get invited over to their table. Sometimes there are people at different tables just drinking and they'll say "hi" and start chatting. I personally love friendly environments like these. Perhaps the pubs in Ireland are just like this? One of these days, I'll have to go and find out!

We hung out at the bar for quite some time and I was playing around with my camera and came out with a few pretty good pictures. Unfortunately, my hand wasn't so steady and there is a bit of blur in these pictures. But I thought they came out pretty good anyways. I'll have to invest in some mini tripod one of these days.


Left: Lily Portrait
Right: Yukie and Lily

We wrapped up the evening at about midnight where I took them for a night stroll around the Arcade street of Sendai (sort of like an outdoor mall) where the night musicians were playing music (but there weren't many that evening).

While walking home, we saw some girls walking home along the streets at night and mentioned to me that girls back in Canada would at least think twice before walking home alone at night. I was caught somewhat off guard because after living here for 2 years, I had become quite accustomed to seeing girls walk home alone at night. It's interesting how I've gotten so used to living in Japan that it's become hard to for me make comparisons between Japan and home. I guess that is what 2 years does to you.

The next day was the Sunday and their last day in Sendai. It seemed that Rich and Lily were in need of some souvenirs so we went shopping during the day downtown for friends back in Canada. I hadn't gone shopping in forever but it was refreshing going into town to take a look at the stores. It's been at least a month since the last time I was downtown doing any shopping.


Lily and I at the entrance of the shopping arcade

Apparently her stay in Japan and looking at Japanese clothing, Lily was hooked onto getting a trench coat which was so prevalent in Japan. To be honest, a good trench coat on a girl is quite classy so I was all for that. We went from store to store looking for a good coat (they were some that were good and cheap too! Like $40 bucks cheap!) but we couldn't find one that suited her well enough. Hopefully she had the chance to find one in Tokyo before going back to Canada.

It was nearly time for them to head off to Tokyo where they would say for their last night in Japan. Lily really wanted to take a spin on my scooter but unfortunately we didn't have time for that. But the day before, we did take a picture of her and my scooter together. I hope she buys one, scooters are a lot of fun, especially in the spring and summer. Scooters aren't very expensive either!


Lily riding on my scooter. Her jacket matches with it pretty nicely!

We got to Sendai station with barely any time to spare. Actually we had to sprint from the subway station to the bullet train section, which was quite a sprint. I even ended taking Lily's backpack half of the way. My bad on the timing. As a result, we said our short adieus and then they were off. I hope they caught their train OK... I just got an e-mail from Lily yesterday, so it seems they made it back to Canada in one piece. And so, Lily and Richard was Here and had a great time. And so can you!

Kudos to Kate Walsh

It goes to show that you don't need to have a huge marketing and distribution company behind you to get music out. The songbird by the name of Kate Walsh recorded her latest music album from a recording studio made in a friend's place for less than $200 and recently made it to the top of Apple's iTunes store. All without the help of a huge music label.

I sincerely hope that this is the direction the business of music goes in the future and the RIAA and MPAA are left behind in the dust as they should be. No more greasy recording labels lobbying to restrict rights of people all for the sake of their profits and thievery from their own artists. I would be more than happy to see my money go directly to the artists, especially to the real ones like Kate Walsh.

If you want to read a news article on her, the link is right here.

Some nice guys have guts: Mr. Rogers in the Senate

I was poking around youtube recently to find a very interesting video of Mr. Rogers talking in the US Senate fighting (if you could even call it that) to get back cut funding for educational TV shows. It took him 7 minutes get $20 million in 1969 dollars. For a very simple sounding guy, he is incredibly deep with knowledge.

A video of Mr. Rogers on the Senate floor, here.

A video of Mr. Rogers getting a lifetime award, here.

Wish there was more of him.

Jack is Back!

And I am not talking about Jack Bauer! Nope, nope not at all. It's You don't know Jack! I love this game! And for the intellectually inclined, I suggest you take their test on counting to two!

Enjoy.

How I can't be sympathetic to people that make excuses

I have a friend who's been living in Japan for the last 2 years. She's the kind of person that complains and is picky about everything. I live with this person and she is one of my 2 room mates. We get along fine; we've never argued or been mad about anything before, but there are things about her that irritates me, but from those irritations I have learned a few things about being successful in life.

She's the kind of person that complains about a lot of things. For example, we had a few conversations on why she can't speak Japanese well and that "Japanese is so hard," which is practically her introduction all the people she meets in Japan. She also complains that her Japanese friends don't speak to her in Japanese (they try speaking in English!) so she isn't getting any practice. In my own eyes, it seems that she is causing her own problems by just complaining about things.

A few nights ago was sort of a therapy session where she needed some sympathy. She told me that Japanese was hard and that after being in Japan for 2 years, her Japanese level hadn't improved to the point where she could speak very well. She accredited the problems to being an English teacher in Japan and the environment she lives and works in is predominantly English.

To try and cheer her up, I've told her that there are many international students (whom are my friends) that come to Japan and become quite good after a year of living in Japan; if those people could do it, so could she. She then promptly mentioned that most these students probably started studying Japanese before coming to Japan, as opposed to her coming to Japan with no Japanese experience. This is true to some extent, but I had to rebuke that there were also a significant number of international students that came to Japan with no Japanese experience whom are learning pretty well.

For every point I made to try and make learning Japanese well a possibility she would come up with some kind of excuse. I would have conversations like:

"Try hanging out with Japanese friends"
"But it's so much work to try and invite them out"

"Try reading Japanese comic books"
"But there's so much kanji"

"Have you tried using that computer dictionary I gave you?"
"I've been so busy to do that"

"These Japanese people keep using informal Japanese that I've never learned in class and I don't understand!"
"How about asking them to explain it to you using simple Japanese? What about writing notes?"

and so on...

She then tells me "that [I] must be pretty tough for any girl to have a relationship with." I knew exactly that she was looking for sympathy from me but wasn't getting any of it.

To be honest, I am quite sympathetic to people that seriously put in an effort but ended up failing. These are the people that you might not usually hear about because they don't end up succeeding in the end, but I have a lot of respect for the work they do to try and succeed in the process. But the irony of it is the people that don't make excuses are the ones that need sympathy the least; they just suck it up and find other ways to try and succeed. The point is that I will be sympathetic if a person does put out a serious effort to tackle some challenges and if the challenge is really tough I will, on occasion, go out of my way to help.

But the problem is, how can you be sympathetic to someone that doesn't step up to a challenge? I am not saying that complaining is bad, complaining helps us identify things for improvement. The problem is not doing anything about it. Success is a frame of mind; a hurdle is something you overcome, not something you stop at.

Alive but working on experiments

Been a while since my last real post. Lots of things going on but haven't been updating. Right now, I am working on experiments for the most part. I hopefully will have some publishable results within the next month. The goal will be to put out 1 or 2 papers out before I graduate and make a presentation at a conference.

Things will be getting busy for the next 3 months as I have to get results, start writing my thesis, prepare a presentation, job hunt and more.

If I have time later today, I'll post some pictures of what has been going on recently. Actually, my labmates have been bugging me to even just upload the pictures to the server over here for them to download it. I've been that bad.

I've been doing nothing much other than research for the last few months and I think it's taken a toll on my hobbies... in the sense that I don't have any at the moment and I think I've gotten quite boring which is scary, but that will be a story for another time.

It's 7 am here at lab, woke up at 6... because the sun was out early. It's good to know that spring is on it's way... because without the sun, I have a hell of a time waking up.

Lacking Details: The BBC reporting on world technology

The BBC is reporting that the "The US has lost its position as the world's primary engine of technology innovation, according to a report by the World Economic Forum," from their article here. The other point of interest, is that Denmark is ranked first, which was rather interesting. Though this might sound like big news, it is important to check the fact instead of just taking everything at face value. The first thing that must be asked is "what were the evaluated factors?" If you don't know how these people are evaluating the countries then everything is pretty much meaningless. Besides, I was keen on trying to find out what put Denmark in first!

I popped by the World Economic Forum webpage get further details on this report, which is actually the Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007. After reading the report title, I am not very happy about the BBC's reporting! The BBC said "Technology innovation" which can mean, electronic devices, computers, jet engines, high-tech cars, whatever right? But the report they are talking about is "information technology," which means communication, data indexing, storage, computing (some) and etc. Obviously this is a misrepresentation of the report.

I've tried to find a copy of the report but couldn't find anything more than a ranked list here. No criteria, nothing. I am afraid that the report is available for purchase and no detailed information is available (other than a table of contents). Sure, I could write up a report on "Oranges are scientifically proven to be better on apples" and then charge, say $100 for it and then just say, "Oranges are better than apples for fluid content." The possibilities are dubious.

Word to the wise: If someone makes a claim, always be demanding of evidence.

New roommate

As of yesterday, my roommate Kuni, has moved out of the apartment as he moves to Nagoya to start work with "Brother," a printer manufacturing company. Originally they started with building sewing machines and manged to move into the market. It seems that many Japanese companies have interesting beginnings.

A new roommate by the name of Hiro will be moving in to take Kuni's place. It will be interesting to see how this works out. The nice thing about Kuni, was that he lived in Canada for about a year and has become quite laid back as a result of his living experience. We just sort of stick things in to the fridge where ever there is space and do a generally good job of keeping track of where we put our stuff. There has been the occasional scenario when someone forgets whose is what and sometimes we end up leaving stuff in the fridge longer than it should be there. Yes, we've had a few "biohazard" incidents.

Well this time, it looks like it is going to be a little different. The new roomie seems to be more comfortable with his own rack in the fridge, as opposed to the haphazard way we've been doing things... same thing for the shoe rack. As long as this "organized" thing doesn't got overboard, then I should be fine. Is it really a Japanese thing? I wouldn't say so... I have met some neat-freak Canadians before. Sometimes, the idea that some behavior is "culture" based is not always the best way to describe things... sometimes, it ends up being the easiest excuse.

Anyways, it was nice living with Kuni. Best wishes to him and hopefully our paths will cross again in the future.

Essays, Cover Letters and Google Translate

Today was the submission due-date for the online "entry sheet" papers (read: glorified cover letter) for Sony. I spent nearly 4 days working on writing out short essays in English that I would translate into Japanese for the questions I had to answer and I am going about doing this in a pretty interesting way.

Essays and Google Translate

Enter my friend, Google Translate, the best tool I have for writing essays. Though I haven't mentioned it, I have started translating some of the essays I post in to Japanese. It is no easy task for me to translate my essays in to Japanese, because the sentence structures I use in English are much more complicated compared to what I use in Japanese. This naturally poses limitations on what I am able to say in Japanese. While I may say that the translations that come out of google translate are not perfect, they more than suffice to provide me with a framework of text to fix and modify to create my Japanese version. Along the way, I learn new Japanese equivalents of the English expressions and vocabulary I use.

The fixing I do from the what I get from Google translate usually involves me moving statements around, changing predicates and reworking the essay. Google translate's main problem is that it sometimes has problems choosing the correct meaning of a word during translation. I have occasionally written the "internet" as the abbreviated "net" and what comes out is the literal translation of a "fish net" in Japanese. Suffice to say that some sentences read rather funny when it comes to "I was surfing the 'fish net' the other day..."

The other problem that Google translate has is that sometimes the translations are very literal and come off as unnatural in Japanese (when translating from English to Japanese). For example, in Japanese the main subject is often omitted and often assumed to be understood (which can make for interesting misunderstandings sometimes). When I write in English, especially in first person, I generally use the word "I" quite often to reinforce the first person point of view. Repetition of "I" multiple times in Japanese sentences is sometimes unnatural. There are of course other points I could point out but discussing all those points will take this post on a drawn out tangent. (Side note: I threw the last sentence into Google Translate and it did an OK job of differentiating the meanings of the words "point" and "points" which I used in different context, the sentence was kind of jumbled, however.)

Getting a job and why new grads in Japan don't use cover letters

So back to the cover letter for Sony. Recruitment into large companies in Japan (Toshiba, Sony, Hitachi and more) consists of writing a Japanese style cover letter, taking a "Standard Proficiency Index" (SPI) test and then going through several interviews with the company. Currently I am at cover letter stage.

The thing about applying for Japanese companies, is that you *don't* know exactly what you will be doing when you get hired. When you get hired, they may show you around the many different branches of the company, have you try out several different field or fling you to somewhere where they need people. It all depends on the company, but the main point is that you will not know what you will be doing at first.

This is quite different from the way Western countries work when it comes to getting a job -- a full job description is posted complete with a list of responsibilities and required skills and then you apply directly for those kinds of jobs. If there is a electrical engineering position for MP3 players and my responsibilities will be to do the circuit design, I would naturally highlight whatever experience I have working on circuit/hardware design (I have very little experience by the way), this might include what you did designing, making and testing the device. Hopefully you would also be able to say that what you made, worked!

The problem about writing cover letters for Japanese companies is that you can't be particularly concrete about what you write because you are not applying for a specific job position. What you are instead applying to is the company entity and what you write is based on your impression of what you think they might be doing or what the company might have told during one of their information sessions which many students attend.

This is a result of the company not expecting the students to enter the company with any skills or proficiencies, because job training happens after you get into the company. What happens is that the successful applicant picks a field that they think they are interested in and start from there. Since no job descriptions are provided, it is obvious that the usual cover letter method doesn't work. So how does a company get to know who you are?

Enter the Entry Sheet

The company wants to get to know their applicants a little before having both sides spend their time and money to come out to an interview. The best way for a company to get a first impression is in writing, but if there aren't any direct job positions for the applicant to apply for, what are they going to write about? The solution is to provide a form with questions for applicants to answer, and the name of this form is called "The Entry Sheet." So what do they ask ?

Q1. "What are your goals and dreams you wish to realize at our company?"
Q2. "What is your first choice for a department to join and why?"
Q3. "What is your second choice and why?"
Q4. "What research projects did you do at University?"
Q5. "What did you work towards to when you were at school?"

Aside from Q4, I thought that these questions were very open-ended and when you don't have concrete questions, it becomes hard to give concrete answers. What I think happens, is that people end up giving very abstract answers. You might as well be answering "what is your dream" at a beauty pageant and answering "world peace" (for those of you that catch the Miss Congeniality movie reference).

So, how would you answer open-ended questions, especially in a manner to make an impact on the reader (likely the human resources manager)? I will leave it to you as an interesting exercise.

And, fear not, I am not coping out. I put quite a lot of thought into these questions and already submitted my answers. Actually, my lab members were quite shocked/impressed at how I went about answering these questions. How my writing fell into the public domain of the lab was a result of me asking some of my Japanese friends to double check my Japanese and it became quite the spectacle, but that will be a talk for another time. I have still have much to write about but it is almost 2 am, time to sleep.

Open-ended questions are tough to answer... think about how you would answer them. If you want a challenge, post your answers in the comments section.

Hopefully, my next post will be a contrast between my answering style and what my peers wrote. They told me "no one in Japan would write the way you do, but it's pretty good! It must be the western influence in you" I still need to read what they wrote to compare the difference between me and them. I wouldn't accredit my writing style to writing cover letters as a result of "western culture," it's more like practice from all the cover letters I used to write (back in university for Co-op) that helped me get better. I know that I am considerably better than how I was before... but that too is a topic for another discussion.

Hmm, it seems that I have a lot of pending things to talk about just from this post. I also have about 5 other pending essay topics to write about as stored on a list on my computer. I'll get around to it... when I have time again. Now time to really stop. I've already written 3~4 more paragraphs compared to when I said I would stop, else I'll just go on forever.

200% more interesting, in English

A friend of mine came back to Sendai from Vancouver just recently. It's an interesting story, but she studied at UBC while I was there but we never met up, but we became friends in Japan instead. She went over to Vancouver just recently to visit to visit friends right after finishing her masters. When I got wind of this, I promptly asked her to grab me a bag of dried mangoes from Costco. I am a sucker for that stuff!

After spending 3 weeks in Vancouver and polishing up her English, she paid me a visit yesterday to catch up, where I got to listen in on stories on a few things going on in Vancouver. Apparently, I heard that Stanley park got sort of a flood recently and a bunch of trees were knocked down during a wind-storm? The details were kind of hazy but all I know that a bunch of trees in Stanley park fell down during some kind of storm. There was supposedly a bit of a mud-slide up the highway on the way to Whistler so I heard.

Anyways, after my friend came back to Japan, we chatted in English for the most part. I do a fairly good job of bantering in English, leading to a few good laughs. My friend promptly told me that "You're much more interesting when you speak English." And yes, that is true.

I am not particularly well versed in Japanese when it comes to making funny quips or side remarks. It ends up that my Japanese is a little on the dry side because I haven't developed a sense of humor in Japanese. I speak quite logically or only about interesting ideas that pop up. But I'm not too good at interjecting humor into a Japanese conversation yet and I still need to work on making small talk in Japanese.

And so, I spent the evening listening to stories of Vancouver and cracking jokes in English. One day, I'll be listening to stories of Japan and cracking jokes in Japanese. But that'll have to wait until I make my return to Vancouver.

Cultural Mis-interpretations?

I spent most of the day researching Japanese management and corporate culture as I am currently job hunting for a position after I graduate. The most interesting I've realized after poking around plenty of English pages about Japanese work culture, is that I can easily find huge slews of analysis and explanations about Japanese corporate culture. Much of these webpages talk about significant differences between Japanese and Westernized business culture, things such as group-think, fitting in (and then doing your own thing privately), over-time, seniority pay- structure, how things are decided top-town (and even possibly bottom up!?) and more.

Then I started thinking about how some Japanese people view Western culture. For example, I've heard from some that it's to competitive and jobs can be quite insecure, or even University life is very competitive since students can fail courses (professors in Japan pretty much pass all students in their classes).　I am quite certain that not 100% of the views my Japanese peers have of western culture is not entirely correct, so I am willing to venture a guess that perhaps not 100% of the Western views of Japanese culture is correct either. I am wondering, if this is the case? It's hard to tell.

After doing all this research on Japanese culture from a Western perspective. I am rather curious to figure out what is the Japanese view of Western culture and if they line up with my own perspectives.

I have on occasion, tried talking to some Japanese friends on their views of Japanese culture and I haven't been able to get consistent answers from different people. Seems to me that many people have different views of their own culture. My conversations in the past (more like about 6 months to a year ago) have been quite numerous and varied that even I have a hard time keeping track of what I've heard. Even now, I can't think of anything concrete.

When I have some more time, I will spend some time scouring Japanese webpages on their opinions of western culture.

Looking Forward to Visitors in Sendai

Looks like I'll be looking forward to some friends coming to Japan next month. As one of my friends put it "everyone fulfills their promises." Sort of an interesting story behind that one, Ida came out to check out Japan and visit me in Sendai for several days. I ended up making a promise to visiting her back in Canada the next time I returned... and so I did, turning my 10 day stay in Canada into a whirlwind tour of Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary to visit friends all around Canada.

Before leaving, I left an open invitation for friends to come out to Japan to visit me. Much of it at first was talk at first but now, I have the wonderful opportunity to welcome more Canadian friends to Sendai during their 10 day tour of Japan. Will be looking forward to it.

Rather interesting to think that the world isn't such a huge place. A German friend of mine has returned to Sendai to visit his girlfriend and he'll be staying here for month. Friends from America, Sweden, Taiwan and China have made special appearances in Japan. I've also had the chance to visit friends in Taiwan, Korea and now France.

It's nice having friends all around the world, makes the world feel like a friendly place.

This guy is obviously on to something

"The problem with everything is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?"

--Xterm (on IRC)

Brilliant!

A well done discussion on atheism and morality

In the USA, atheists are among the least trusted groups of people in America as only 45% of them would vote an Atheist into office (source). In the same survey, 55% of them would not have problems voting a homosexual as president nor would 67% of them have any problems voting in a person on their 3rd marriage. I find it disconcerting to see such a distrust or discrimination of atheists among religious Americans.

Is it often quoted that atheists are not trusted because they have little or no sense of morals because they do not derive their morals from a scripture such as the bible. The argument goes that since atheists no beliefs in a heaven or hell, there is nothing that prevents atheists from acting immorally. I find this view to be quite unfortunate.

Just recently, I have stumbled across a very well thought out video posting on youTube discussing morality as derived from an atheist's perspective. The video goes on to make some interesting points that many of the moral rules derived are similar to those of in several different scriptures. I definitely recommend this 9 minute video by Albert Sweigart for viewing because it very thoughtfully done and non-confrontational, as opposed to many discussions that occur on religion. The video can be viewed by clicking on this link. If you did enjoy this video I fully recommend his other works as they too are very thoughtfully done. This should be the standard on how discussions should definitely be done.

Pictures of France!

So I finally did it, I got the album made and uploaded the pictures. I took most of the better ones which were about 83 of them and uploaded them to my Picasa account. Click on the bale of French bread to see my photos of France! Also Kai-Ling was ever so kind to also upload her pictures to Picasa and made an album of her own, click on the Eiffel tower and me for her album.



This is a shout out to Nadege and Kai-Ling two very amazing friends that took the time out of their weekend to come out and visit me in Paris. They came a long way from the west coast of France, a 2 hour express train ride, to come and meet up with me. You two are awesome.

All the best and merci. We will meet again!

Long Term Thinking and Aging

I am a long term thinker, especially when it comes to life planning. My start into this mind set originated just before graduating from Undergraduate life where I was faced with making the decision between going into the work force or continuing with a Masters. During this time, I had the opportunity to attend events where the alumni of the Engineering Physics program returned to the University for a dinner. The event was staged as a chance for the old alumni to meet up with their old friends and a chance for the current students could meet the alumni to see what future prospects hold for them. My views on the next 40 years of life was molded since that dinner.

During my time at the dinner, I spoke with many graduates that went straight into the work force. I asked several of them "Is there anything that you regretted not doing before you started working?" and several of them told me that they regretted not traveling more and one told me to "enjoy these years of your life because they will be freest years of your life." I took that comment to heart especially after he told me that after you get a job, you'll be climbing the career ladder, then you'll get married, buy a house and so on. I realize then that a person's life was generally charted out after they started working, since then I became very fascinated with financial planning and began making financial calculations and projections from the age of 23 till I retired at 65.

These weren't simple financial calculations either. I made these calculations as in depth as possible, accounting for all sorts of living expenses including transportation, rent, home purchase, living expenses, RRSP and tax calculations. My objective was simple, to be financially stable and free to do the things I wanted to do in life. My modeling also included information on how long it would take to fully pay off a house (about 25~30 years!) and to retire with at least $1 million in RRSP savings and with additional funds in my savings account. Many people go onwards in life without knowing these things until it's too late. Just saving $1 million ~ $2 million and paying off a house is a 30 ~ 40 year endeavor! If you want to do things right, then you you have to start now.

This also leads me to another interesting topic of aging. That one conversation I had with the engineer also made me realize that life is a set of transitions; your 20's is not going to be like your 30's nor your 40's. I also came to the realization that once you start your career and get married and etc, the next time that you will be free is after you retire. when you're 65. When I'm 60's, I am surely not going to be able to live it up like my 20's. The moral of the story I learned is to live up now, because time is limited!

If there is one unfortunate thing about my youth, I would have to say it was attending grade school. The earlier years of grade school falls incredibly short for preparing a person with real world knowledge and skills. I would have really liked to have picked up some real skills earlier on when it comes to solving "real world problems," the kind of problems you get to solve as a job. I could have probably started working on various things when I was 13~14, figured what exactly I liked by the time I was 17 and attend university to learn more about the things that interested me and immediately use them.

But no, this isn't how things work. We don't start learning how to solve "real world" problems until we start working, by the time we graduate out of University at ages 22~25 depending if you just did your 4 years, or +1 year for co-op and/or +2 years for a Masters. Then we try and get into a company and then start learning what jobs we might like and the skills we need to do them, while getting paid and finally starting your own life. Isn't it a bit of a late start?

It is rather interesting to realize that in the Middle Ages, children became of age by the time they were 13 ~ 14. Legally, people don't become adults until 19 and many don't experience real life by the time they are 25. I find it interesting how times have changed.

Quality of Life (I had so many other titles)

How would I titled this post? There were so many possibilities...

1. What's the difference between slavery and employment? (A. Employees get paid)
2. What you do if you didn't have to work?
3. My robot army.

Actually, I just changed the title again after writing this essay. You're going to have to read to the end for everything to make sense.

Nano-technology is tedious, incredibly tedious. The processing steps are long and it's hard to keep a straight head when working on these projects. After 1~2 straight days of work I get tired of it, then I take a break and then forget what exactly I was doing in the "grand scheme of things." There are lots of little problems that pop up that needs to be addressed and these problems are addressed usually through experimentation. Experimentation is when you do something new, unfortunately we spend most of our time fine tuning processing steps to get what we want; and what a pain it is.

As a result, I have been dreaming of my own robotic army to do my bidding. What if I had robots to do all the tedious work? What if I could spend my time dreaming up experiments and have my robot army do the experimental work while I check on the experimental results? Wow, this would be excellent! I've been dreaming about this for the last half year!

I've been thinking of all the boring jobs I could automate. Seriously, have you ever done a boring job before? It rots the brain and I can't believe how many of these jobs are out there. I often feel terrible for all the people that work the registers, the store stockers, the bank tellers, the cell phone customer support people and more. As hard as I think about these jobs, I could never find any sort of satisfaction from of these kinds of jobs. I also think that many people think the same way... but it's what pays the bills. I even used to do a few!

So where does job satisfaction come from? I have no clue where it comes from for other people but I do know where I can find it for me; and in a single word, the answer is simply impact. I would be incredibly happy if I was the first to discover canned foods, find a simple way of mass producing them and selling them to sailors or travelers on the first long distance boat rides across the Atlantic. It would be incredibly satisfying for me to find a way to improve or change the way things are done and can easily imagine others feeling the same way. It would be like taking a challenging task and make it simple or finding something that we abhor doing and finding a way of doing less of it. The greatness of the impact is proportional to the degree of improvement!

This innate desire to for me to find better ways of doing things has been with me since birth. As a baby, I would chew off a chunk of the rubble nipple of a baby bottle to guzzle the milk instead of just sucking the whole time. By the age of 4 I did math drills (simple addition and subtraction) but I hated counting with my fingers to solve these problems, so I devised a clever trick of looking for all the problems that were the same, solving it once and writing the same answer for all of them! It worked great... until I got caught when I wrote the wrong answer for all of the same problem.

In grade 9, our math teacher would always give us loads upon loads of math questions... and what we didn't finish in class, we would end up doing at home. My friends and I would race each other in class to find out who could finish the fastest and I would always be looking for faster ways of getting my math work done. We all agreed at that "Math hell" would be nothing but "Tedious math!" I still think that statement rings true today and the most generalized rule would be to drop the "math" and you'd get "hell" = "tedious."

Perhaps the invention of the first cash register and the first people that used them was satisfying, but I am sure that nobody now finds any satisfaction using them (unless, you're the business owner!). Perhaps we will all be happy with the first reliable automated check out so we can move on and do better things. When thinking like this, it becomes evident to me that "quality of life" means "improving quality of life."

So what is "quality of life" anyways? I think that's an answer you're going to have to find yourself and ironically it's an answer lies within itself.

For you mathematicians and engineers out there, quality of life is a "first order differential equation!" And make sure the derivative is positive!

Tax calculation updates to follow

I've received some comments recently noting some calculation misses and factors to calculator. I will be updating the graph and incorporating "basic exemptions" and "Employment insurance" taxes. The graph will be updated over the next few days.

As of current, the the previous graph posted does have some errors in the Japanese tax rates as I misinterpreted the lump sum numbers in each tax brackets. So take it as a grain of salt for the time being.

Salaries and Taxes in Japan vs Canada

Right now, I am in the midst of trying to determine which country I intend on working in. My current plans as of the moment are to work in Japan for a few years. The salaries between Japan and Canada seem to be rather different.

Engineering Salaries in Japan

The starting pay for an Engineering graduate (Masters) is approximately $2,200 / month. Japanese companies pay out salary bonuses twice a year valued at 1 ~ 3 months worth of pay. Assuming that I get 5 months worth of bonuses, the total works out to about $37,400 yearly. In addition, Japanese companies usually provide dormitory housing for their engineering employees at a very cheap rate, somewhere in the ball park of $150/month. Depending on the region, rent can cost in the ball park of $500 to $700. Let's assume I save $400/month in rent leading to $4,800 in savings. The starting benefits a starting engineering person receives is in the ball-park of $40,000/year.

According to the numbers I have found on the net at www.payscale.com, Electrical Engineers with 1~4 years of experience make $56,000/year. There is a $16,000 discrepancy between starting Japanese salaries and Canadian salaries.

The discrepancy comes from the attitudes of Japanese companies that recent graduates need to be retrained to be able to work for the company. They don't assume you have any skill and will proceed to train you for approximately a year. I am not particularly happy with that kind of mind set, so it will be in my best interest to find a company that operates on the concept of a meritocracy (people are paid increasingly with skill or productivity). I have heard that foreign companies are best for this kind of mindset.

I would like to stick around Japan for a few years and eventually reposition myself back into Canada or a westernized country for the long term. The asian work ethic of just working perpetually hard does not seem appealing to me (especially with poor incentives). However, I do value the international experience and my ability to live in a different country. Perhaps for external reasons, one day we might find ourselves required to relocate to different parts of the world to pursue opportunities in different countries that offer them.

Taxation in Japan and Canada

I've spent the morning comparing taxation rates between Canada and Japan. Unfortunately there is little published information online except for the raw marginal tax rates offered in both countries. I have decided to run calculations to determine the percentage of money a person pays depending on yearly income.

The calculations for Canadian taxes was based on information provided by a government of Canada website located here and is current for 2007. The Japanese marginal tax rate information was calculated from here and is also current for 2007.

2 calculations were performed, one calculation accounting only for income taxes and a second calculation including sales tax. It is important to note that Japanese sales tax is 5% and Canadian sales tax in BC is 14%, meaning that sales tax does have a significant effect on the purchasing power of money. The calculations were performed in Excel and the the following graph below was produced (click on the image for a larger view).


Graph of percent income paid as tax as a function of income and also the adjusted amount of tax paid accounting for sales taxes.

Without accounting for sales taxes, it is quite obvious that Canadian taxes are lower then that of Japanese taxes. The Japanese system taxes people at 33% to 40% in the upper tax brackets of above $90k and $180k respectively. In addition to these taxes, when you get into the higher tax brackets, you are also charged a flat lump sum fee dependent on the tax bracket which accounts for the "steps" seen in the Japanese tax graphs. It is also quite evident that Japanese people pay more taxes when in tax brackets above the $80,000 mark.

When the purchasing power of money is accounted for after the addition of sales taxes for both countries, the tax rates in Japan is cheaper compared to Canada when earnings are below $60,000, above that, the Japanese tax system becomes more expensive. In the range between $40,000 to $60,000 the difference in taxation between the 2 systems is negligible. Unfortunately, this data doesn't tell the whole story.

In the Canadian system, (if you make more than $30,000) you have more cash on hand before being hit with the sales tax, this is advantageous if you plan to move money out of a country because the money isn't heavily taxed unless you spend it in the country. In the Japanese system, you are more heavily taxed on your income leaving resulting in less cash on hand.

The conclusion to this analysis is that if you're an Engineer, you're probably better off financially in Canada.

Exchange Rate Robbery at the Airport

Doing a little accounting from European trip. I just double checked the exchange rate of the yen to the Euro online and compared it to the price I paid at the airport. The results are rather startling.

The online rates as posted at www.xe.com as of this posting is 158 yen / Euro. The rate I got at the airport was 175 yen / Euro. The difference means that I paid an extra 17 yen per Euro at the airport (10% of my cash). To add insult to injury, they also charged a commission of an additional 17.11 Euros.

WHAT!? They give me a shitty rate and then charge me for their effort? What a rip-off. With the additional charge, the exchange rate goes up to 184 yen / Euro. They ripped a whole 16% off me (I exchanged about $600, meaning they stole about $100)!

This is the first time I really double checked the exchange rate so this might be not indicative of all airports, but this experience will keep me on my toes. Generally, I've been told that you usually get the best rates when exchanging money in the host country of the currency. This might be true, so long as it isn't at the airport or a hotel.

A few shots of France

Still in France at the moment. I'll be coming back to Japan tomorrow. I've been pretty busy attending all sorts of meetings and presentations. I am still busy at the moment so I can't talk much but I will present a few pictures.


A haphazard shot of me in Lyon.


The Eiffel Tower really doesn't look that big ~

Enjoy the pics. More after I get back to Japan. I leave tomorrow!

Bon Voyage!

As of tomorrow, I'll be flying over Russia, into Germany and transfering into France. I still haven7t packed and I've come down with a cold. It's almost 6:40 pm, I need to teach English at 7:00, attend a b-day party at 8:30 and then attend a gathering with the masters students.... and then I can start packing.

It's going to be crazy. My next post, hopefully, will be from the Europe!

The US has lost the War on Terror

Do you know exactly what year 9/11 happened? Probably you could, but 30% of Americans years on after that event don't remember. Years after Bush had once acclaimed "Mission Accomplished" upon the deck of an aircraft carrier, the fighting in Iraq still continues. Iraqi civilian deaths at the minimum is said to be at about 56,000 as of this posting. Did you know that? Did you even hear about it on the news? Likely not, because it seems that the majority of Americans are either ignorant or simply don't care because this information hardly appears in the news. The numbers that they do care is the 2,973 people perished during the aftermath of 9/11 and since the US invaded Iraq and the over 3,000 that have died in active duty.

To date, the US has already spent over $360 billion dollars funding this war and spends approximately $200 million/day to fund operations in Iraq with costs projected to reach at least $1 trillion. The US dollar has depreciated incredibly as results of this and already, nations around the world are considering diversifying their bank holdings to reduce the effects of devaluation of the US dollar (which in turn, also causes more devaluation). The Euro, as a result, has increased in value significantly.

What started all this? 2 planes flew into the World Trade Center towers demolishing those buildings completely. The world gave sympathy and support to the Americans immediately in an attempt to bring down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Then next came Iraq, whose connection to 9/11 is vague to non-existent at best. Yet they went anyways, against the will of the UN while thumbing their noses at everyone that didn't join; telling them that they would not get lucrative construction contracts during the reconstruction of Iraq. It seems to me that the joke's on the Americans because they can't stabilize Iraq, nor can they do any reconstruction. The world must be laughing at them. The US went alone and they are going to pay the price for it, very alone.

To what benefit did the US wage their "War on Terror?" I can't think of any thing positive. To be honest, it would have been cheaper to let a second 9/11 attack happen and pocket the $360 billion they would have spent and save the 56,000 Iraqi civilians that died during this conflict. If this solution sounds absurd then you've only just begun understanding the absurdity of America's "War on Terror."

Do they Deserve This?

The answer to this question in my mind is a most affirmative "Yes, they do." The US is a democracy is it not? They elected the likes of Bush and Cheney into the White House, for a second term even after their "War on Terror" had begun. It would be not until 4 years later that people would finally realize that this was a mistake, where by Bush's approval rating would drop to less than 30%. More than half of the nation thinks that Bush is doing a terrible job and just as many think likewise of the war in Iraq.

And yet, somehow, despite the majority of Americans thinking this way, they can't get him to stop or kick him out of office. I sometimes wonder if this is how a democracy is supposed to work; if this is this the same "democracy and freedom" that they are trying to spread to the Middle-East. The American people can't even get a handle on their own government.

A democracy means that you have a say for how your country is run-- your representatives take responsibility for the things they do and in turn, you take responsibility for your representatives. It seems to me that nobody takes any responsibility for anything and as a result, the current state of America is what you get.

But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself here, all this intellectual discourse means nothing if there are too few brains out there understand it. Have you ever seen a video called "Why People Believe Americans are Stupid"? I suggest that you watch it... and then after, realize that these people are eligible to vote.

After writing this, I've come to the realization that a democracy only works if your country isn't stupid. If it is, I can only suggest that you move out.

Indonesian Cooking Class

I attended a cooking last Sunday, which took place at the Sendai International Community center, hosted by a few volunteer students from my University. The week before was Chinese food, this week is Indonesian Cooking. Excellent, because I've never eaten Indonesian food before so I was up for this new experience.

I had such a great time the last time around during the Chinese cooking class that I seriously regretted not brining my camera to take pictures of the event. This time, I was sure to not repeat that mistake!

To the left, is some of the ingredients we used to make a type of Indonesian dessert (the name eludes me at the moment as it was rather hard to pronounce and thus I had no clue how to spell).

On the plate, there are bananas, a Japanese pumpkin, sweet potatoes and some coconut milk that will be going into the mix. In the back, a bowl of brown sugar sits on a tray somewhere that is added at the end.



The completed dessert is depicted below:

Mmm... delicious Indonesian dessert

We definitely had a lot of fun cooking. Most of the people at the event were amateur chefs with no professional training, but just out to learn something new. All of us worked in groups of 2~3 people, taking turns at chopping food, washing dishes and doing the cooking.


Left: Ms. Oota flipping in some Indonesian style Tempura into hot oil
Right: Our cooking teacher for the day explaining a few points on hot peppers

I could of course, write a long post about the cooking class but I'll let the photo album do most of the explaining. Click on the group picture below to view the album.



For 750 yen (about $7.5 CAD), I am absolutely confident that I'm getting the best entertainment mileage for the money I spend. When a movie costs about $12~$15 (+more if you want food) for 1.5 hour of entertainment. I can do the same thing for half the price, learn a new skill, get something to eat and possibly make new friends. I'd be hard pressed to find a sweeter deal!

Head-hunted?

I just got a random phone call from Toyko today. Seems that one of the Semiconductor divisions wants me to attend one of their company presentations happening in Sendai next week. Am I being head hunted? I doubt it because I'm not famous (yet!).

I've registered on a job finding forum in Japan as it is currently job hunting season in Japan to check out my options. My current game plan entails working in Japan for a few years to gain some international experience and then probably making a return move to North America in the future.

The current working culture of Japan is that most people graduating out of universities tend to aim for large corporations for stability. These corporations end up training graduated in trade and in turn providing them with life long employment. This is (was?) the career life of your usual Japanese graduate.

I have already spent 3 weeks at a Japanese corporation known as Sumitomo Bakelite. I've commented about my experiences previously, doing rather boring work for 3 weeks and I have seen what boring work does to people-- it leads to mental decay. Hopefully in my search for a job, I will find an interesting place to work at. Over the next few weeks and months, it will be necessary for me to hash out a general work mind set to accomplish a set of general goals over throughout my working career.

The fundamental premises are:

Rule #1: never get stuck in a dead end job.
Rule #2: observe rule #1.

The long term plan will be to break the work clock-- I don't want to be paid by the hour, I want to be paid for by productivity. This too, I've mentioned previously during my internship post.

Some Friends are Hilarious!

Just got back from the cooking lesson today, pictures will be up soon. I was walking home when I ran into a Chinese friend of mine (very good at English) and we started chatting on the way home and I invited her over to see the new place I was living at since we haven't met in a long while.

There were plenty of good quotables but my favorites for the evening were:

N: So you're going to France?
J: Yeah, I arrive on Valentine's day.
N: Are you going with a girlfriend?
J: I haven't one.
N: Oh that sounds kind of pathetic. Like you're in the most romantic city in the world on the most romantic day of the year, but you're going to be alone.
J: Heh, my sentiments exactly.
N: Did you know that French people smell bad?
J: Why is that?
N: My mom just tells me that because they have to make really good perfume or else without it they kind of stink. That's why they make the best perfume in the world!
J: An interesting hypothesis.

N: (looks into my roomie's room). Is that a snowboard? Does he snowboard?
J: Yeah, he's pretty good!
N: People that snowboard are pretty cool. So he must be pretty cool! Does he have a girlfriend?
J: Yeah, he does.
N: Oh, that doesn't matter?
J: What!?
N: Yeah, because I have a boyfriend.

Obviously the nuances are off in the last paragraph, but I thought that was incredibly funny. I like 'N,' just because she's incredibly blunt.