Recently in Geeky Category

As I have probably mentioned this before, the academic year in Japan usually starts in April and ends in March. Many Japanese companies start their fiscal year in April. New graduates from college start working today with hope, smile and fear at the same time :) April is the new beginning. In the late of March and the early of April, the most common kind of flowers in Tokyo must be cherry blossoms. Cherry Blossoms are very important to a lot of us. Cherry Blossoms also represent a new beginning and farewell at the same time as they are seasonal. I am not gonna mention this in detail but I personally had my own adieu last month, and it was quite hard to absorb it. However, thanks to my Japanese DNAs as they automatically made me think this is a very fresh start. April is the new beginning. I am hopeful and looking forward to warm seasons ahead of us. In addition to that as a bonus, my favorite song for this week made Number 1 this week on the Japanese pop chart. This song is all about the "new beginning" like starting a new life. The title of today's post is the tile of the song as well. One room means "Studio" apartment in Japanese. I sing it every morning when I get ready for work. I quite like the song even though it's for younger Japanese people. My two other friends and I are practicing the choreography for this song just like them even though I didn't wanna but we will dance and sing in Karaoke BTW, my laptop computer got damaged last month, but I decided not to go for Windows as a replacement since I really hate Vista. So, I decided to do something geeky :) Why does this Mini Dell notebook have macintosh loaded? well, that must be a mystery :) hehe. IAnyway, have you started something new?
Happy new beginning to you, too! Disco!!

My cellular phone was more than 3 years old but didn't replace it because I like a cellular phone that is a "straight bar type" They haven't released anything like that for three years so I waited. From this month, they released something I wanted. It cost me a lot. 45000 Yen = US$404 = 276 Euros. Well, we don't have an iPhone here in Japan but I am okay with it because I feel this is so much better. This is from the "AU Design project" like the previous one I had. The concept for this new cell phone is "As if it is the melted candy in the mouth" I like how it feels against me but I don't rub it like I usually do every morning on something else. This phone comes with a debit card feature so if you have some credit on this cellular phone and put the phone over the ticket gate at the train station, the credit will be deducted from the phone and you don't have to buy a ticket. You can also buy things at convenience stores. But since I always have this "What if I lost my phone?", i don't have a lot of credit :-) Also, it has the 2.8Mbps internet connection with "PC Viewer" so that I can browse the internet with this phone without any stress. It has a camera but every one does recently. And and, it comes with a digital TV and an FM radio!!! I am sure some of you know I don't have a TV in my apartment. Now I do have a TV. I tried it and it looks pretty cool. In this photo, I was watching the national public television's TV show. Yay now I have a TV. :-) Though since I don't watch the TV much, I just use it when I am very bored. :-) Best thing about this cellular phone is the vibration is so strong and if you receive a call and have this phone in your pocket, it's like "oh, don't stop!" :-) if you know what I mean. Okay, my "mom, look look what I got!" moment is over. Thank you :) You have a fantastique weekend I have to work this weekend. damn it

So I went to the clinic and had my knee problem observed today. No problem knee-wise so far as I will get an MRI thingy tomorrow. But it occurred to me I once read the article that Japanese get the most amount of exposure to the X-ray radiation for lifetime. The research (in that article) also mentioned 3.5% of the Japanese cancer patients happened to have cancer due to too much X-ray radiation. True. We tend to get X-rayed so easily. Yesterday, I got 6 shots on my knee and right foot. It's always good to be healthy and it's always good not to have any need to get X-ray taken. But I had to go through that yesterday. Right now, I am not worried about the radiation exposure even though I may have had X-rays a lot like other Japanese. The thing was the orthopedic surgeon yesterday who touched my leg and foot was the hottest doctor I have ever seen! That was the first time ever when I thanked for my knee problem. By the way, while he had to touch my knee, thigh, and foot for legitimate purposes, I had to undo my pants for easy access :-). I am so glad I wore the non-agressive type of underwear today. And Shigeki Jr. behaved well during the thing. :-) Okay, I don't think I can ever become a pure innocent person like I used to be... but I had to have something to look forward to. :-) The hot doctor made my day pretty :-) You have a pretty day!

Finally, Japan has started selling my favorite sparking water on this planet. Gerolsteiner from Germany! This sparkling water is "very hard" 1400mg/L. Even though it's very hard (blush), it doesn't taste like it has a lot of mineral. I believe this is accomodated because it has fine bubbles :-) Water Hardness is determined by how much mineral there is per liter according to WHO. FYI, Evian's hardness is 291, Contrex's is 1500 while Volvic's is 60. So you can understand how hard my favorite sparkling water is. The harder, the better? Well, yes on a totally different topic I would love to elaborate but it doesn't mean the harder, the better in water. I prefer hard water when I drink though. Japan has relatively soft water. The best water considered in Japan is in Kyoto and it's ridiculously soft. (the 4th slide) Soft water is good for fixing Japnaese green tea, steaming rice (sticky kind), and Japanese soup stock (Dashi). Hard water is considered good for fixing/boiling meat, pasta and more mineral to consume after workout of course.

This article got my attention this morning when I was reading a newspaper. Japan Expo is held in Paris right now. To be honest, I really would like them to change the name of the expo as it's not about Japan. It's about Anime (Japanese Cartoons). You see, there are people who dress like those Anime characters and go there. I know there are people like that here in Japan, too. Some of them are definitely freaks unique. The word, "Otaku", which is a nerd or Anime nerd or whatever you wanna call it has been widely known outside of Japan. Anyway, it occrred to me when someone asks me what I do for living, I try to make it sound worse than it really is. "I do something so nerdy that you could vomit". The reason why I say this is because I used to be allergic to computers. Back in college, many friends around me were computer students and I used to make fun of them. They don't like to be outside. They don't play any sports. They don't care for what they wear. I was seriously worried that they might melt if they were exposed to the sunlight for more than 30 minutes. But they were very good friends so they knew I didn't say it in a hateful way. I didn't expect I'd become one of them though...When you think of nerds, you can never possibly imagine there are many musculine delish hunks. I think it's too judgemental. I am sure there are more hotties in this computer field than you think there are. Don't be too judgemental. So I just looked around me right now and tried to find one hottie. Okay...I soooo take that back. I guess it's safe to say there are less hotties in this field especially programmers than the fashion retailing field. And I must be one of those nerds... sigh... You have a wonderful day!

Yes, it's the pay day today. :-) Nothing fancy but since I got some extra, I thought I'd abuse my wallet a little bit. I bought this geeky stuff. An electronic dictionary. If you click the photo, the whole thing will appear. This dictionary is great becasue it's got English-Japanese, Japanese-English, English-English, Thesaurus, English-French, French-English, French-French, and other dictionaries. 17 dictionaries on this small thing. This dictionary's got the voice. It speaks expressions indicated on the display. Electronic dictionaries are essential for people who work for a foreign company. I saw a lot of colleagues with this thing. Why? I am not sure but it's safe to say we, Japanese, have this reputation that we are not good at foreign languages. I am sure there are many who are good at speaking them. But it's no surprise we suck at speaking foreign languages including English. There are reasons for it. I am not a linguist so I will keep it short. 1. an island country. 2. Japanese language is nowhere close to other languages (well, Korean might be close but), 3. English learning system here is not the greatest compared to northern European countries'. I am no exception. I too had struggled from learning English for a long time. I think confidence is another issue, too. Since we are afraid of making mistakes, we can never be good. However, this electronic dictionary gives us confidence. We can feel ease with this. If we went to another country without the electronic dictionary, we'd be uncomfy. Okay, that's exagerrating a little bit but you know what I mean. Of course, the first thing I did is to look up dirty words like every high school kid would do, and made it speak. :-) I love when this French guy in my dictionary says "What the fuc* is he doing here?" in French. Speak dirty to me... okie, I am having fun with this. Only if there was a real French person to speak things to me closely. :-) Until then, this is a good substitute. YOu have a fantastic day/night!

I am doing something very primitive right now... I am so sad. It's the first day of the holiday and all I did was getting boozed, getting frustrated with this, and got boozed again. I think I am ready to go to bed even though it's not 11p.m. yet. I am so sad. :-( On the other hand, you should enjoy your hump day! Good night! Please click the photo if you can't read it well as usual. :-)

I am not sure if I can explain this well in English but I will try. Internet is awesome. You already know that. You can look up anything. However, there is too much information in this world due to this. Do you sometimes run into "Where am I? What was I doing?" syndrome because of the Internet? I frequently do. I start to read one article and decide to read the second one on a different page after reading the first one. I finish reading the first article without problems but while reading it, some words or phrases in the first article interest me. So I research on them instead of reading the second one. While reading about the words I was interested in, I get e-mail from a friend. I rapidly finish reading the info I became interested in and retrieve the e-mail I received. Then, in that e-mail message, there are some words I don't understand so I google them. Sometimes, on a way to get to the results of the words I was going to look for, I get distracted by a half naked guy with great pecs on the side, and I want to know more about this gorgeous guy so I google about him. By the time I come to this point, I totally forget what I was going to do originally after reading the very first article. Then, I ask myself "Okay, where was I? What was I doing?". Even if I get back to the point where I was at, I already loose interest in reading the second article. I unconsciously think the half naked gorgeous guy is now more important than citric acid cycle... ....and I move onto the article about how to get great pecs. Internet is great anyway... Happy Internet Surfing w/o too much distraction. (^0^)V

I have been super busy lately... I missed another post yesterday.... damn. Anyway, when I was doing troubleshooting at work on behalf of a geek who is on vacation, I came up with this idea. Because I hate dealing with network stuff at work as it's not my job... I'd love to try this but I shouldn't.... It's been a while since I created a flash presenation last time. This is not a brilliant one but I hope you enjoy some computer "geekiness". Happy weekend! Don't work hard!

This is not a nice title to use on this happy day. Today, I wanted to cry so hard. It's not because "Oh, Jesus, this is the first boyfriend-less year in the last 10 years on St Valentine's day" I am so fine to be single. No, I am not gonna shoot any ridiculously happy looking couples on this particular day. I realized whenever I do something nice to someone, something horrible happens to me. 2 years ago in Stockholm, two gentlemen from Japan were lost and didn't know how to get to their hotel from the airport. Coincidentally, I was going to the same hotel. So I went there with them and even translated every single thing of what they wanted to say at the front desk. On the same day, I got mugged.... my VAIO got stolen, too... 1 year ago, I helped a sick woman who passed out at the station and called an ambulance. On the very same day, I broke my thumb.. There are more I could list but I should stop before I bore you to death. Though, today, I was asked by this person to help his niece in MA, U.S.A. for her project at school. She is a fourth grader and wanted information about Tokyo so I did the best for her project. It was 2 page long. In the afternoon, I accidentally spilled a half bottle of water onto my 2 year old VAIO which I bought as a replacement of the stolen one... Of course, it never started .... It's all my fault... but .... My pretty VAIO laptop.... My geeky valentine (a.k.a. my VAIO), stay little valentine stay... Obviously, it didn't. I literally sang it by watching the soaked VAIO. I am not going to do anything nice to someone for awhile... On the bright side, I now have an excuse to buy a new laptop. :) I wish you a happy Valentine's day for me though.