Aquarium
March 26, 2003
Seeing how this will be one of the last, full weekends that I will see Eri for awhile, we went for one of our complete day adventures. She starts her job in April and she’ll have a normal Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 job while I am still stuck with my fucked up schedule. The best case scenario will be my request gets approved for May and I’ll be working Sunday to Thursday, finishing mostly at 3pm
We decided to go to the Osaka Aquarium today because I’ve never been there and some people told me it’s kinda fun. Well, it was fun. We took a scenic train line that went through a part of town I’ve never been in. The aquarium sits on the harbour and the air in that nook of the city is much fresher and has that nice sea salt smell. The aquarium itself knocks the pants off the Vancouver one. First you go up an escalator and the entire tour is over 500m long. You wind down these paths all the while fish are swimming beside you. The lighting is fabulous. Most of the tanks have that nice UV light that make the colors illuminate moreso than in nature.
There were fish there that I’ve only seen on the Discovery Channel. Their theme is the Ring of Fire and as you wind down through the place, you see signs of where these fish came from - all from places on the Ring of Fire. The coolest things I saw today was a 4m long whale shark (the sucker grows up to 12m long), an ocean sun fish (looks like a tire with fins on top and bottom), some dolphins, and GIANT SPIDER CRABS. Those crabs stood probably two feet high - the body was the size of a watermelon and the legs when stretched out probably were 3 feet long (possibly more). I took tonnes of pictures and filled up an 8mb memory card and had to resort to my phone for the spillover. I wish I could just post every picture I’ve ever taken online - maybe one of these days I will
But for now, enjoy some pictures from the aquarium’s webpage. Sorry Dennis for not replying when you messaged. I was being mesmerized by the ocean sun fish’s rhythmic waving of its top and bottom fins.
Hello World
March 25, 2003
I read my last update and thought maybe people might think the world was ending. Well, I didn’t mean that humanity as a whole would end because of an isolated conflict in a region of the world that most people don’t know shit about. I just meant this war paves way for other countries to attack other countries, citing this war as precedent. And if no one else approves it, who the fuck cares? No doubt that this war is getting me down because it’s simply ridiculous and completely uncalled for. Where are those fabled chemical, biological, and shudder, nuclear weapons that Iraq was supposed to have? Where are the terrorists that they were supposed to be sponsoring? All in all, this war is a crock and Bush is the cause of all this shit. The sad part is, this war, which is supposed to secure freedom and democracy will only breed hatred against Americans and other people in the western world. It’s not fair to hate these people because most of them didn’t want this war. Blame Bush. Blame that moron that was “voted” into office. Had he lost the election, I highly doubt this war would’ve come to be.
There. I will try to hold any more charged opinions from my updates because the world doesn’t need another lunatic spurring crazy thoughts. There are plenty running countries around the world.
I want to congratulate Michelle for getting that position in the UNDP (what does it stand for again?) Thailand seems so close to here so Mich, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, let me know. I know I’d sure love to visit Thailand! (I just invited myself to stay at your place, if you weren’t sure what I meant - beers on me).
And I finally stepped out of the stone age around here and got myself a cell phone. The thing with cell phones in this crazy country is that they are so technologically advanced that my nokia 3190 is like a typewriter compared to a vaio notebook. My phone has TWO fucking cameras, one facing forward and another facing myself for self portraits, IR, two ways to charge it, full color and great resolution on the display, internet, email, voicemail, and tonnes of programs to download and install ALL in the phone. Plus there’s a cool button that automatically flips the phone open. It’s so cool I want to just call people randomly just so I can use it.
Um. I feel out of touch with everyone that lives in Vancouver so I’m sorry. Bah.
Goodbye World
March 20, 2003
The deadline for a certain dictator’s ultimatum will be here in a few hours. Goodbye world! It was fun living in you. Sorry for blowing you to hell and back. Dear God I hate this creepy feeling I’m getting.
And…
March 18, 2003
Welcome new girl who is living in my old room back home. Whoever you are.
Better not touch my stash.
Apples and Oranges and Applish Oranges
When compact flash came out, it set the standard for portable, micro storage devices. The number of devices that used CF was prolific. Everyone was happy as companies pushed the limit of the number megabytes from 2 to 4 to 8 to a whopping 16. 16Mb was a lot of 640×480 pictures.
Somewhere along the road, Smartmedia and Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick were introduced. Now device makers were confused as to which standard to follow (except for Sony, they didn’t have a choice).
A few years later MMC and then its faster cousin SD came along. Now, XD, Memory Stick Duo, and the next generation CF are slowly taking form. Boasting 4Gb of space, you’ll need that one card only, for life.
I am utterly perplexed on why so many formats were introduced and why one can’t be adopted by everyone. There are printers that have 2 or 3 slots for different cards- where do we draw the line?
I’m sympathetic right now to the SD format because my handy palm uses it (this update is being written on a doc file on an SD card in my palm as we speak). All the cool cameras here are with SD and it’s small enough to conceal in many unsightly places. Not that I’ve had to shove an SD card into my ear (or worse), it’s nice to know if I had some sensitive information, I could shove it in my ear.
Soon, wireless access will have just as many standards: Bluetooth, WiFi, and 820.015 or something like that.
Repeat
March 14, 2003
Let’s start with a Happy Birthday to Dennis and Justin. Happy Birthday!
I had this whole update written in my head this morning as I was contemplating whether to wake up or sleep some more. It was going to be about the inevitable war. It was not a war between two countries, but a war instigated by one country and the other was forced to fight. It’s about the failing, corrupt, selfish, lying, discriminating policy of that bigger country versus the collective opinion of many many many countries. I am glad one outspoken country has vehemently been opposing the whole shebang because otherwise, it would set precedent for many other countries to blow up other countries.
And to top things off, the Serbian PM was assassinated. Wasn’t this how WW1 began?
Pencil Carving
March 11, 2003
Pencils that become art. This so cool. The skill involved with creating something like this must be amazing. I bet they go through half a dozen attempts before getting one right.
My Baby Can Graduate
She found out today - she had been working on her thesis for a long long time. Woohoo!
Glory
Tonight I finally finished Grand Theft Auto 3. I mean finally! I didn’t achieve 100%, not even close. I did all the career missions, found 100 hidden packages, did all police, firetruck, and ambulance missions, and all the payphone missions. I didn’t do any of the jumps, rampages, 4×4’s and didn’t finish the import/export ones. Those would take forever. I’m happy just to see the ending. AND I finally got to drive my very own Rhino Tank around tonight… very nice. Its turret destroys something instaneously. It’s like someone mounted an instaneous rocket launcher atop a garbage truck. Oh it’s so great. It’s terrific.
I’ve Been Meaning To Update
March 10, 2003
I just couldn’t think of anything relevant to say. I have a word doc in my palm titled, “Webpage Updates” and I try to write in it at work and upload it onto here when I get home. I stared at this empty file about 5 or 6 times in the past few days and just didn’t know what to say.
I found out why my palm get dying. I installed Insaniquarium for Palm and the program ran fine. It’s just that everytime I exited the game, a fatal error would force my palm to reset. After booting up again, it would ask if I wanted to delete everything. I choose no, it would reset again and just keep looping until I press yes, delete everything. Then I did delete everything and tried to have the desktop overwite the palm but they wouldn’t talk anymore. So I just fudged it and reinstalled it all. I actually enjoy my palm again now because it seems so much better without a bunch of garbage leftover from old programs. It’s like working with a fresh install of Windows.
Anyway I’m deciding that this update just be a random thought update, much like the ones before. I really wanted to write thought provoking issues on here and have you think about it and perhaps even respond. It seems thought provoking issues come rare in my mind so you get what you pay for huh?
Today is our two and a half year anniversary. Last night we figured out that in our 2.5 years together, we have been apart for at least 1 year. Also, we have never been with each other in May and June. How fucked up is that?
Work has been a tad irritating because it’s been getting busy again. Today I actually had the full 8 lessons. I was pretty frustrated because my day started out with 5 lessons and I watched as “they” filled each free block up. Others had 5 or 6. What a bitch. And to spit on my neck while I’m down, my shift change request has been turned down until next month. That means in April, when Eri starts working, we will see each other about 2 hours a week or something. Assuming my request gets approved for May, it won’t be too bad but they have prickly prick(s) in charge of shifts. I mean, if they reject my request, as long as they(he) is/are courteous about it, i would completely understand and respect it. No. No way… they(he) must be pompous and arrogant and carry a holier than thou attitude. I hate that.
I had a thrilling dream last night. I was in the castle scene from LoTR. I was helping them fend off orcs. How cool is that? I saw them catapulting giant hunks of coal and then giant hunks of lit firestarter onto the walls, trying to set shit on fire. I had to help pick up these gianto coals and throw them back down. Then I used a mini bow and shot pencil sized arrows at them. I think I killed a few. Cool huh?
I am slowly learning Japanese AND Mandarin here. I am going to come back a very linguistic, tempered youth.
Someone update for the love of [insert your deity]. I’m getting bored.
Fuck 2
March 06, 2003
For starters, Eri had a wisdom tooth removed and she’s been in pain all night. Then my webpage doesn’t work and hence I can’t get any email. I think it’s not my isp this time because even Blogger seems to have trouble posting this. So by the time you read this, it’ll probably be way after I wrote it. Lastly, my Palm suddenly fucked and destroyed itself. I lost all my data on it. I tried synching it to my computer but it wouldn’t connect for some reason so I just backed up all my crucial info and reinstalled it all.
If it gets worse, my whole computer will die and I’ll have to reinstall which will be scary. I haven’t reinstalled XP yet and I’m not even sure if I brought all the cds and documents I need to Japan.
Fuck eh?
Fuck
March 04, 2003
I opened the door to the balcony and saw that it was snowing today. It wasn’t a blizzard but enough flurries to make me excited. It was the first snow I have seen in a very long time. Supposedly it snowed in early January but I missed it or it turned to rain or something. Anyway, I went to brush my teeth and then picked up my camera to take a picture. I think snow scenes are beautiful, even in a nature-less place like Osaka. I open the door again and see that it’s sunny and all the snow stopped. It stopped in literally five minutes. Fucking luck. So much for a new webcam pic.
Did it snow in Vancouver this winter?
I’m sick too!
March 01, 2003
Actually, I’m at the brink of being sick. Eri is the one who is sick. She had a sore throat, runny nose, and a slight fever. I’ve been feeling that itch in my throat and I’ve been hocking nonexistent loogies. A lot of people at work are sick too. It’s a pandemic!
