Saturday 4 April 2009

New URL (Update your bookmarks)

Here is the link to the new site.

http://www.misspentlife.com

Thursday 2 April 2009

It's April yo

Got off the train and decided to go grab a beef bowl. The second I stepped out of the shop it started raining cats and dogs. Worst storm I have seen in a while. And of course I had no umbrella and was a good 10 minute walk from home. I contemplated stealing an umbrella from the nearest Konbini, but I refrained from doing so. There are enough umbrella thieves in this country as it is. I need to be part of the solution, not the problem…

The loud thunder was really scary. I had my curtains drawn and saw explosions of lighting in the sky that left me blinded for seconds. I was wondering if my TV would short circuit, or even worse if the earth was going to blow up eradicating all of mankind…

Despite the storm, I woke up today feeling great. I am not sure whether it is due to me actually getting some sleep this week, or from eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast. But at any rate, the feeling of walking under water is slowly subduing everyday that goes by.

Think I will make an effort to hit the gym this weekend. I busted my ankle in November and haven’t been since. However, they have still been taking like 10,000 out of my account every month LOL… How to hemorrhage money 101, starring Prometheus…

Apart from that not much to report. I looked at the calendar today and realized I got 4/ 1/2 weeks to go till payday… I think for my sanity I better just rip down all calendars that I come into contact with on a daily basis.

But on a happier note I finally downloaded Quantum of Solace in high definition last night. I woke up at around 4:30am today and was going to watch it but decided against it at the last moment. I guess that will give me something to do tonight. I have heard mixed reviews about the film. IT BETTER BE GOOD!!!!

But before viewing I am gonna have to do a little shopping when I get home. Me and my good old pal spaghetti are going to have to get reacquainted.. @_@

I have found myself a nice juicy project to sink my teeth into. Hopefully if things work out, there will be some big changes to this blog.

Until then!

Tuesday 31 March 2009

Re-Framing

It has been a crazy few months. One of my buddies came in October for a month, I busted my ankle, had a horrific wisdom tooth extraction, company woes, and my sister and friends came in March.

The schedule and routine I had going in September times is now non-existent. It is time to get it back!!

April is going to be a rough month. I am pretty sure I spent at least 200,000yen this month. I could look at the books to get an exact figure but I am too scared to…

It is payday tomorrow but most of the pay will be gone within a day or two with bills and other things I need to pay. This month I must show the discipline I once had.

First step is a budget. I am going to set myself a weekly budget of 10,000 a week. That means I have to start eating breakfast at home and cooking my lunch. That is what I used to do. But recently I have fallen back into the habit of spending 300yen+ on breakfast every morning and 1000yen+ on lunch at work.

If you do the math then that’s 26,000yen+ a month on food during the week. But wait, that does not include dinner or weekends. If you add those, I am probably spending something ridiculous like 50,000+ on food a month… LOL? I am pretty sure if I tried I should be able to cut that by half… All I need to do is take a little time to go shopping and cook.

I can use the extra money I save to fund my new habit :D

Because of the 10,000yen a week budget I will not be able to live how I am used to. In fact, it is going to be a pretty lame month. I am not looking forward to it at all...

But 2 odd years ago when I first came to Japan on my internship, after rent and bills I probably had less than 10,000 a week to live on every month. However, I still managed to live well and have fun every day.

It is funny how life is.

I wonder what changed…

Thursday 26 March 2009

New Hobby

I am a quarter century. Up until now I never really thought too much about how food tasted. Buy me a box of House Special Chinese Fried Rice and I would be the happiest man in the world.

My experience of dining in the UK was limited to a few local Chinese and Indian restaurants and maybe a few Thai places. I cannot really say I ever dined anywhere memorable or went to a restaurant that made me really feel anything.

Coming to Japan changed that slightly. There is a lot of eating out in this country. I have eaten in many different places and many different types of foods. The best places I have eaten at were mainly at company events. These would be at decent looking places where we would pay about 3000yen (21GBP/30usd) in advance and get a party course. The food was decent but nothing to really write home about, but probably better than anything I had experienced in the UK.

Sky Restaurant was a life changing experience for me. Paying that much for food, eating food that tasted that good, and dining with such a great view and environment has introduced me to a whole new world. The excitement and anticipation of waiting for each dish, wondering how it will be presented and how it would taste was really cool.

That restaurant was hands down the best one I have been to thus far. And to think the food only cost 10,000 yen (70gbp/100usd) and it does not even have any Michelin stars. There are a lot of 1-2 star restaurants in Tokyo and even 9 3-star ones where meals cost upwards of 20,000 yen (140gbp/ 200usd).

I think I might have just opened up Pandora’s box. Because my curiosity has got me wondering how good it can really get.

I now plan to go to somewhere nice once every 1-2 months. The only problem I foresee is finding a few lunatics willing to spend 100-300usd on a meal….

I might have to start up a society of high end diners who are willing to follow me on my quest to taste some of the best cuisine this planet has to offer.

Tuesday 24 March 2009

Sky Restaurants

Yesterday we went to eat at a high end restaurant. It was in an area called Ikebukuro, on the 58th floor of a department store called Sunshine City, at a place called Sky Restaurants. Sky restaurants are made up of three themes Japanese, French and Contemporary. They just opened last week, March 18th.

Why are they called Sky Restaurants? Because they are 210 Meters above ground and have a superb view. Take a look here:

http://www.ginza-cruise.co.jp/ikebukuro/index.html

Here is a picture I took of the scenery. I took it with a compact digital camera so I could not really get too good of a photo.



We reserved a table at the Contemporary restaurant at 8PM and ordered the Five Cuisine Course which consisted of:

Starters
Appetizers
Fish of the Day
Light appetizer featuring organic vegetables
Meat of the Day
Dessert

From each course you had a choice of 2-5 dishes.

Starters

This was not something you could choose. We received a form of Miso soup. It was bean based and came with a pea inside of it. It tasted ok. It did not have any fancy spices or seasoning inside it. It was just the bean in a mousse form. So it was either you like the taste of the bean or you didn’t.



Appetizer: Assortment of today’s hors d’oeuvre “Jubako Style”

With a choice of 5 appetizers I decided to go with the hors d’oeuvre. Three of the appetizers are within the cost of the course, but the other 2 cost extra money to order. The hor d’oeurve was the most expensive appetizer: P

My food came in a brown closed brown box. The waiter opened it up and there was food on the top and bottom. The presentation of the fish was beautiful. I was also impressed with the taste. It was fresh and seasoned to perfection. This was my 2nd favorite dish of the night.



The Fish: Tuna rare saut with various spices and Korean chilli burnt butter sauce

Ding ding!! And the winner is!!!!!!

This was hands down the best dish of the day. The tuna was so succulent and tasty. Below it was buttered risotto which was the best I have tasted in my life. The chilli sauce, while not hot, gave the tuna the extra zing that it needed. If we were at a cheaper restaurant I would have licked the whole plate. I wish I could have got more of that…




Light appetizer featuring organic vegetables:
Suruga bay sakura shrimp and spring cabbage salad, Chinovinaigrette

This dish was ok. Nothing great. I was expecting some juicy meaty shrimps, but to my disappointment it was tiny deep fried shrimps. They were really crispy and tasted nice. Along with the shrimp was some crispy deep fried seaweed. The shrimp and seaweed were salty and the cabbage was crispy and sweet. I felt that they complemented each other well. Also I have to say I never knew cabbage could ever taste so good.



The Meat: Smoked Lamb roast with bone, flavored with cherry blossom tree and with Kenji tomatoes

I found out last night that I am not too much of a fan of smoked meat. But even still, this was some good lamb. The best I have ever eaten. It was juicy, succulent and rich in taste. The red sauce it came with went really well with the lamb. I should have asked somebody what was in it. The green plant looking thing was also edible. It was thick and crunchy. The tomatoes were just regular baked tomatoes. This was the 3rd best dish I ate.



The Dessert: Fromage ~ selection of cheese with melba with a light honey scented pain d’ epics

With a choice of cheesecake and normal cake I decided to be adventurous and get the expensive cheese. I made a big mistake. It came with 2 crackers which were nice and 4 or so pieces of a gingery cake/bread. I don’t think the cake slices went well with the cheese. I regret ordering this. I should have just got the cheesecake. It was the only bad thing I ate all night.



During the night we were given freshly baked breads and drank different type of wine. I had strawberry plum wine, a sweet wine and some mango juice.

There was also a birthday cake for the birthday girl. Unfortunately we were all too stuffed to even eat it all…



The only bad experience was the floor staff. It was a lot of trouble trying to get someone to take your order. Almost as if they were not paying attention to the people dining. But the chefs were awesome.

Based on the people sitting around us, it seemed like we were the only people eating the course. Across from us was a group of three who ordered one plate of spaghetti between them and drank water all night. I am happy that not only were we able to experience such a nice restaurant, but that we also go to dine like kings. Total damage for the three of us was 30,000yen (208.8328 GBP or 306.499USD) .


In the coming months I plan to visit the remaining two Sky Restaurants. I think I have just found a new expensive hobby. If anybody has any dining recommendations, do drop me a line.

Thanks

Monday 23 March 2009

Staying OFF topic

To some people size matters, but to others it doesn’t. Size matters to me. In this day and age mine just does not cut it anymore. That’s why I am contemplating buying a bigger one. It seems like only yesterday I bought my 40 inch Full HD 1080 Sony TV. But 6 months down the line and a trip to the electronic store and my TV looks like a joke in comparison to the 50, 60 and 100 inch TVs. And yes this whole paragraph is about TVs and only TVs for anybody getting any weird ideas.


I used to laugh at the people who slept standing up on the rush hour trains. But today I took a note from their book and caught about 15 minutes of sleep on the way to work. Hopefully the 15 minutes of sleep plus the energy drink I bought will stop me from passing out over my keyboard. I am seriously sleep deprived and am once again feeling the walking under water sensation. We hit the town Saturday and got home 7am the next morning. I was awake at 9am for a laughable 2 hours of sleep after being up for 24hours plus and doing miles of walking. I predict my survival rate for today at somewhere around the 35% region.


Went to the airport on Thursday to get my sis. Within 2 minutes of my sister coming through the gate 3 police officers approached us.

Police: Thisssu issu randommu cheekkuu. See passuupootoo.

Funny that they just so happen to stop the only two black people in the airport and call it random. Especially since they did not stop anybody else before or after us. I think that the police just might need to check their random inspection algorithm (steps used to generate a random value) to see if it is working properly. We hit my place, went for ramen and had a sushi dinner. Next day was museums at Ueno, shopping at OIOI and dinner with friends at an izakaya (Japanese style restaurant). Saturday was a trip to Asakusa (temples) and Akihabara (electronics town) followed by some partying in Roppongi. Sunday was mainly down time. Everybody (except me) was down for the count and woke up around 3ish. We went to Ebisu for dinner. Tonight will be a big treat. But it is a secret. I will tell you guys about it soon.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

Linguistics

Do you ever do it? I do it sometimes. In fact I was doing it just the other day. Do you like music? I like music. You know, no music no life. I suppose I am first and foremost no PC no life, followed by no music no life.

So where was I going with this? I remember now. Do you ever just put on an album, go to a song you like, press the repeat button and listen to it like 100 times in a row?

I dunno maybe it is just weird little me that does it. But there is something weird about listening to the same thing over and over. It is like it does something to your brain. Like take the word “The”. Try and say it 20 times in a row and tell me if the word “The” still sounds like the word “The” or if it sounds completely different. Why is that? Any experts on the human language have an answer for me on this one?

But anyway forget about that gibberish. One more hour and work is officially finished for the day (although obviously I never actually leave at 5). Tomorrow is my Narita mission, followed by a much needed national holiday on Friday.

Work has been somewhat fun the past few days. I started a project using my own initiative and it started off pretty interesting. But after two days I am bored of it : (
Made me realize how fast time flies when you actually concentrate on real work…

But yeah I am pretty happy about my pending delivery. The stuff is slightly expensive, but THIS IS JAPAN. Nothing you can really do about it I guess. Thanks to Sixmats for telling me about this website:

The Flying Pig

It should come Sunday morning. All I need now is some good milk and I am in for a fun Sunday.

And I don’t think I ever thanked Brassfoot for making the banner for my blog. Thank you sir you have the skillz to pay the billz.


One last thing though. I needed some help with something. Anybody know any cool uncommon tourist attractions (in Tokyo), or really good specialty food places? Any help much appreciated.

Peace

Monday 16 March 2009

March

Living on little sleep makes time go faster. Well at least it seems so. Cause there is no way in the world it should be Monday morning already. But I guess getting only 1 hour sleep on Saturday night can do that to you.

This month has been crazy. Feels like I am 18 and in London again. I have hit the town and gone clubbing every week so far this month. And with the arrival of my sis on Thursday I foresee more clubbing coming the next two weekends.

This truly is March madness.

But wait. I can see something. I am having another vision.

I foresee that at the end of the month I will have more pockets with holes than a snooker table. This is due to the fact that I have been running through money like it is growing from a tree in my backyard.

But what can I say, I am having fun.

However, as they say, with a high there comes a low. I am experiencing the low now. I am sitting here at my desk staring at a familiar wall. It is the wall I spend most of my life looking at. It is the one behind my PC monitor at work. It is grayish, brown with a hint of cream. Or maybe it is just dirty? I can’t really tell.

I have started to think seriously about the short term future. First of all even though there are no jobs I am kind of happy that I have a skill set which allows me to work in multiple industries. The finance industry is in hell and it seems like things are only going to get worse. Well done me for picking the worse time in history to start working for a finance company.

The main thing on my mind though is the declaration of phase 3 at my company. What would you do? IT will probably be last to get chopped since nothing can run without us. And I have sunk my teeth into a project that is of high value so I am probably seen as somewhat valuable.

So even though I will probably be first IT member to get chopped (I am the newest) I think as things stand I will survive to the latter stages.

I am really lazy by nature. However, at crunch time I take care of things (pretty well in fact). I believe that is it crunch time now at work. However, something about wasted effort doesn’t sit well with me. Putting in 100%+ from now on only to get chopped in 6 months time is a lame prospect. Might as well just coast for 6 months and see what happens.

I guess this is the epitome of having 0 control of your life huh?

I am going to have to play this one by ear.

Thursday 12 March 2009

Harsh Times

Based on my last blog some of you might be thinking that I killed someone either recently or in the past. Please rest assured that, that is not the case. I was just flexing my creative muscles.

But let us return to the real world (the matrix).

Credit crunch, housing market collapse, bad economy, recession, homelessness, skyrocketing unemployment, the end of the world, armageddon, 666, blah, blah yeah, yeah etc, etc.

Ladies and gentlemen, it might just be the end of the world as we know it.

But screw that topic, lets go back to talking about me :).

So yeah, had a general meeting on Tuesday. Got some bad news. The good ol’ be careful what you wish for.

Lets go back, back in time. It was a stormy night, or was it a sunny day?

We were rounded up like cattle for the slaughter and summoned to the meeting room.

The business isn’t doing well. We are losing revenue. So here is the plan. Three phases. The final phase will result in jobs being lost based on how important you are to the business.

After the meeting we were told phase 1 has already commenced.

The next month (January 2009) got an email saying we are in phase 2.

Phase 2 was apparently room cuts and a few other things but nobody getting fired.
However nobody was actually informed as to the specifics that the declaration of phase 2 would entail.

After sweating for 2 months we were all once again summoned on Tuesday. Basically one person who works off site is getting the chop at the end of this month. In two months time 2 more people will be getting the chop once the CEO is back from a business trip. People who are least important to the company and don’t work hard enough will be prime candidates (and here I am writing blogs instead of doing work LOL).

It was pretty intense because the first hour of the meeting was boring slides. Everybody was falling asleep. Then BANG. He just started talking about firing people and betting the house on a new business model…

Two people were even called out by names stating that their roles have become redundant of late due to the market. So either find new roles and functions or get a pay reduction or even worse the chop.

Harsh times are upon us. It is survival of the fittest. Who will survive? Only time will tell.

Wednesday 11 March 2009

A short story

I grabbed her by the neck and pinned her against the wall. She was sweating and breathing heavily. In fact her heart was racing. I looked into her pupils, they were fully dilated.

I violently went for her neck, but pulled back at the last second. I love to tease my prey.

I stepped back, pulled it out, shot her in the face a few times, and then put it back into the holster. The bullets exploded on impact creating quite a mess.

I ran to the kitchen, grabbed some cleaning agents and got rid of any incriminating evidence that could link me to the act.

I then escaped out of the backdoor.

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Random Japan

I put up a photo in my last entry but had to take it down. I was suppose to re-upload another one yesterday but just did not get around to it. So I leave you with this picture.




So without further ado. Lets-a-go (Mario)!!!!!



Ouch that must have hurt. Your head is bleeding. You might need to get stitches for that. Do I feel sorry for you? Um no?
Leave your house 5 minutes earlier so that you don’t have to launch yourself like a torpedo into the closing doors of the train.



Woah that was a close call. Nearly stepped on a landmine. It is pretty dangerous at this station. Especially on a Friday night. Live landmines everywhere. This one still has steam coming out of it. It must have just been laid.
I see. He is the culprit. The man in his 50s who is wearing an Armani suit. He looks like he is about to lay another one. Pretty crazy that at your age you don’t know the limit on how much alcohol you can drink and walk around vomiting all over the station and the street.



Thanks for the dinner it tasted really good. I must be going now. Bye, bye now. I walk halfway down the road and look over my shoulder. They are still waving. What is up with that? Why have they been waving that long? Aren’t I going to see them next weekend? Or are they a family of psychics who have had a vision telling them that I will die in my sleep tonight; so they plan to keep on waving until I disappear into the sunset since they will never see me again? Or are they just super happy that I am leaving....


Been partying and drinking all night. I am about to collapse. Somehow make it onto the first train. It is 5am. Everybody on the train is sleeping or on the verge of passing out. Everybody but the teenage girl wearing a school uniform on her way to school at 5am on a Sunday…

Monday 9 March 2009

When the music stops

It has most definitely stopped. There is no doubt about it. I feel like I am walking underwater. The adrenaline rush that kept my sleep deprived body going for the past 3 days has disappeared along with my friends who are probably boarding the plane as I type this.

It was an awesome 3 days. It is up there with one of the best ever. I could not really ask for a better birthday bonanza. But as Soul II Soul sang it is “Back to life, back to reality”.

It is going to be a long week. I can feel it. I have looked at the clock 5 times already but unfortunately it is still only 10:07.

I am too tired and brain dead to think of anything interesting to write today. So instead of leaving you with a thousand words. I will leave you with one picture :)

Edit:

Had to take the photo down :( Will post a different one when I get home.

Friday 6 March 2009

Strangers from a far off land

I woke up on sunday and flew to Narita to pick them up. We then flew to their hotel to get them checked in. I wanted to take them sightseeing but first we needed to get some food.

I decided Shibuya would be best. They were all crying about how hungry they are and how much they could eat. I took them to a steak place where they had a huge hamburger steak with pilaf rice.

Their moans of hunger soon turned into moans of being stuffed. The share mass of the steak had TKO’d them.

I decided to take them to heaven. They were not sure what I meant by “Heaven” but as soon as I took them to the gates they understood. Any man who has been to Shibuya would understand why that building is heaven.

After running wild in heaven for a while we went to play some arcades to get rest, and then walked to Harajuku.

The group split and 3 of us went to an izakaya called Hanbei. I love the place, it is cheap and has an old Japan feeling to it.

However, one of the waiters was a dick. He spoke to us rudely, used rude hand gestures and even ignored us a few times.

The worse thing he did was give us a plate of Yakitori we didn’t order. I suspected I didn’t order it but ate it anyway since I wanted my friends to experience it. Then, 1 hour later he tried to stealthy slide another plate of the same dish on to our table. I saw it and called him out on it. He didn’t even say sorry or anything or insist that we did order it, he just walked away. Dude was a scumbag, I really wanted to **** him up.

Since then I have met them at lunch time and taken them to a chicken place near my work.

Last night we went to MO MO paradise. It is a sukiyaki and syabusyabu buffet. We must have eaten nearly half of the meat in the shop. Each one of us had about 2-3 bowls of rice and 4-5 drinks.

I have a new nickname for one of my friends. I call him "The Arsenic". He dropped his plastic chopsticks into the fire and nearly set the shop on fire. Funnily enough the same guy dropped his chopsticks on the floor 4 times and the waitress had to keep brining him new ones..

So, it is my birthday tomorrow. Tonight we will eat some yakiniku and play some Wii and poker in my house. After that hit Ageha where there is a Notorious BIG album release party.

Saturday is a 20 man food fest at TGI Fridays followed by some more clubbing and drinking.

Sunday will be their last day here before returning to their far off land. Will probably end up going out with them to do some stuff.

So old man, will your body be able to withstand the next 3 days of madness?

Thursday 5 March 2009

The Man Who Ruined My Life

I am a programmer by trade. Mainly .NET (for those of you familiar with the programming world). There are so many different domains of programming. Making websites, software packages to sell, programs that people use to do their work, internal stuff. There are many, many more but hopefully you get the general idea.

The stuff I am doing now is internal. While we do have a software package we offer to customers, hardly any work gets done on that. Main job for me is maintaining a staff intranet (internal use website for staff) and make a bunch of random tools. These tools are used at some point or another to help aid processing data.

So to put it in another way, internal stuff is mainly gluing and patching things together and improving and automating processes.

Boring zzzzz. Ok let me explain another concept. I call it the art of programming. When you make something, you need to think about its design. If you design something good then you can build it good and hopefully when something changes, because of your good design, upgrading and maintainance becomes easier.

However, with internal stuff, because most things are needed quite quickly there is no time for design. You just hack it out and make something that works. Because of this the design sucks, the code sucks it is all just a mess.

The only way you can get away with hacking stuff out and it still being good is if you have good skills in the first place.

When I came here I inherited work from some other dude. The way most of the stuff is written is beyond a disgrace. This causes trouble for me since trying to understand stuff that is poorly written and designed is a headache. Having to maintain it is even worse.

This is my third job here in Japan. My first job was awesome. I was making software for clients and the work was interesting. I was on my game in those days. I remember getting the train home and thinking about how I could make my code run faster or how to fix the problem I had been stuck on for the past few days.

However, there were two small problems. The politics and the money. A few dumb traditions of the company annoyed me and the money sucked for what I was doing. Because of that I left.

I joined the 2nd company. I was mainly making websites for clients. The work was too easy. Boring even. The rules of the company were ridiculous. They were breaking every law in the book in terms of workers’ rights. However, it was easy money and better than the company before so what did I have to complain about?

One day the most amazing thing happened. I moved desks. My desk was situated in a location that nobody could see my screen.

I remember watching the Matrix Trilogy at work the next day. Every day I would watch movies, TV shows, play poker and just browse the net.


It was the life. Or at least I thought it was. You see going to work and doing close to nothing everyday starts of fun. But after a few months the appeal wears off. Yeah, yeah so you can watch Youtube all day every day, but it still felt ridiculous. The companies culture was also starting to piss me off. They kept making more and more illegal rules. They tried to make a rule on lateness where if someone in your department came late every single person in the department would have to pay a fine. Are you kidding me?

So yeah I started feeling dissatisfied about the silliness and with doing nothing all day. I mean you might not believe me but how much browsing and movie watching can you really do without feeling like you are wasting your time and wasting away. I am working in a field where if you don’t keep on top of things your skill set will become useless and you will get left behind. And at that company I had probably been regressing and actually getting dumber and dumber.

So I left and came here. Money is better than the 2nd company, but still leaves me with the same dissatisfied feeling. Instead of complex and interesting work I do boring and frustrating work.

So what now? Time to join company number 4? Lol guess I kinda shot myself in the foot jumping from company to company.

Should have just stayed at the first company and worked hard until I got a pay rise. Oh well, I was young, greedy, and impatient. A recipe for disaster.

Tuesday 3 March 2009

Purpose

I have received some feedback from a few people about my blog. Pretty happy so far with people have said. So would I like to say thanks to the people who read it. Feel free to drop a comment if you find anything interesting, want to spark a discussion about something or have any suggestions about anything related to the blog. And if you have a Google account feel free to click the followers link on the right hand side and pledge your allegiance to A Misspent Life :P

If you did not know there is a feed link at the bottom of the page. If you click that you can subscribe to the blog and receive alerts when I update.

Also I am in need of a banner for the blog. If anybody is bored and wants to cook me up one it will be much appreciated

So without further ado lets get down to business.

Who am I? What am I? Where am I? Am I really in Tokyo? Am I even awake? Have the past few years been a dream and I am really in the UK sleeping in my house in London? Am I even alive? Am I dead and this is hell? Is this my first time on earth? Or was I here 300 years ago as an Indian guy with a turban and a red dot on my forehead?

Once in a while I just turn it all off. The music, TV, PC, phone, the lot. I sit there and I think. What the hell is going on around me? What is the meaning of it all?

This weekend I will turn 25. That is a quarter century. I have been on this planet for a decent amount of time now. Looking back at my parents, their generation and the generation before they probably all had kids and full families at my age.

I sometimes look in the mirror and ask myself what the hell could I do for a kid? What could I teach a kid that is looking up at me saying “Daddy. Daddy!”?

I think in terms of maturity our generation is doing pretty badly. We have all the things they never had. An abundant of resources and opportunities but too many people just take it for granted.

I sometimes just sit at my desk at work thinking what is the meaning of all this. The monotony of it all. Go to work, come home sleep, have a little fun on the weekend, rinse repeat, THIS IS YOUR LIFE. Maybe I am doing it wrong. Maybe I am not putting enough effort into life and that’s why I feel like I am wasting away at times. But one thing is for sure, there is no way I can bear this monotony until I hit retirement and end up spending the rest of my days in a bingo hall.

But maybe that is our purpose. When I was young my Pops said this to me “In this world ain’t nothing going on but the rent.” At the time I didn’t take much notice since I was living at home for free and going to school so it did not apply to me. But now I have gained 100% independence I feel the meaning of those words every day. So maybe that is the purpose. To live a life that revolves around paying the rent with a few hobbies thrown in here and there. At this moment I just don’t know.

A friend of mine once told me that it is our purpose to procreate. Procreate? A family, a family name, a family tree, a bloodline, a heritage, a lineage. These seemed to be quite important to the older generation. Especially to males. Keep the family name alive. Keep my blood line alive so even when I am gone I have left my mark on this earth and I will be remembered.

To tell the truth I couldn’t really care too much about leaving my mark or anything like that. Obviously I care about my actual family but the name and stuff like that is not something I am really bothered about. Who the hell cares what retards and strangers think of me when I am dead? As long as my reputation does not cause trouble for the people I left behind, I couldn’t really care.

Maybe our purpose was decided before we were even born.

I was a doctor, your granddad was a doctor, your great, great granddad’s pet fish was a doctor, so now you must also become a doctor. That kind of thinking is still around. You see it a lot. Sometimes you are bound to a certain type of occupation or life based on the sort of work thegenerations before you have done.

Or sometimes even worse you are entrusted with the broken dream of a parent or family member. The father who wants you to become a tennis player because he failed to make it as a pro. Now he needs you to become one so you can live the dream that he failed to live for him...

Oops didn’t realize how long this was getting lol. Guess I’ll come back to this topic again someday.

Peace

Monday 2 March 2009

My Curse

Man: So you are the guy who lives on the 8th floor!

I looked him up and down, left to right, and right through his soul. I didn’t know him. I had never seen him before in my life.

A better translation of what he was trying to say would look something like this:

Man: So you are the black guy who lives on the 8th floor.

That made me laugh a bit. The old folks in this country are not too used to seeing non-Japanese. My building is mainly full of old people and you know how old folks are. They have way too much time on their hands. Any ripples in the water will probably be the topic of discussion for the whole week and will reach every door in the building.

From my knowledge there are only two black people living in my 10 story building apartment and both of us have moved in quite recently.

The other person is called Brassfoot. He is my homey from London. He is running a movement called Tokyo Grindhouse. He makes good music. You should check it out (links).

He is a stand up guy. I like stand up guys. The other day I tried to cut my hair by myself again. It was probably the second time I have attempted to do it by myself. I went over to his place with a patch of hair that I had missed and he was kind enough to point it out.

Not everybody is like that. Some people would let me walk around with the patches in my hair all looking like looking like a terminally ill patient that is in their final stages.

I remember the other day going to the toilet at work at around 4pm. I looked in the mirror while washing my hands and saw some broccoli in my teeth. We had eaten at 12:30ish and been back in the office since 1:00ish. During that duration I had spoke to nearly everybody in my room and even did some teamwork with another person. But obviously nobody was nice enough to point it out, or even give me the Morse code signal for “you have something stuck in your teeth”. Fucking cunts. My bad. I swore. My aim was to keep this blog clean and use zero profanity. But sometimes it just can’t be helped I guess. I will try to control myself more in the future.

I smiled at the man and said “Yes”. We both got out of the elevator. Before I knew it I was back home.

Oh man, you have got to be kidding me right? I have had a shower, brushed my teeth, gone to the shop, eaten breakfast, watched a few episodes of Dragonball Z, played guitar hero, changed Midnights tank and it is still only 6:30AM??

There have been times when I looked at it as a blessing. But recently I look at is a as mainly as a curse.

It was ok when I was young. I was fit, healthy and full of energy. But now I am a tired old man. I don’t really take good enough care of myself. I need to eat better. Start exercising again.

Everyday I wake up between 4-5AM regardless of what time I go to sleep and regardless of the day. This is my curse. I wonder if one day I will be able to experience what normal people call a "Sleep in"....

Friday 27 February 2009

Crutch

Where would I be without you? What would I do without you?
You give me the strength to keep on going. Without you I would be hopeless…

I can't deny it. I would be lying if I said that there were not a few nights where I laid in bed thinking that you are the only thing I had to live for.

How did it come to this? I have let you become my life crutch. Most of my life is spent waiting for you to come. When you come I am happy and when you go I am back to sad.

I need to find a replacement. I need to replace you. You have been good to me, but I guess you are just not enough. You are way too short. You are only two days. Only a mere 48 hours. But that is not even an accurate representation. When you take away sleep time you are much, much less.

I hate sleep. We waste too much of our lives sleeping. It would be cool if the clock stopped while we slept, or if we only needed 1 hour of sleep to tie us over.

I really hope they invent it someday. I would prefer it to be sooner rather than later though. Would be pretty pointless once I am in my 50s or 60s. I need it now while I am still young.

Although I guess I am not really young anymore. I am at best relatively young. I am at a stage in my life where if I don’t stay on top of things, I might wake up tomorrow 50, broke, lonely, singing “No woman, No cry” on a rocking chair on my front lawn.

But it would still be really cool if they could invent it. You know, a sleep replacement pill. Instead of going to sleep at night you would take the pill and it would be the equivalent to one night of sleep. Pretty awesome idea huh? Get back from work at 6-7 and still have 12 hours left to do your own thing before having to resume the rat race.

But I doubt they would make something like that. Probably not in their best interests. Just like it is not in their interests to cure aids or any other serious diseases.

It is Friday again. It is about 13:03 now. Just a little bit more to go. A few more hours and we will be together again. In a couple more hours it will be the weekend again.

Pokemon Politics



Update soon to come.

Thursday 26 February 2009

A Day in The Life

2:30. That is the time I saw when I looked at my PC screen. I have a few different ways to find out the time in my house. My phone, PC, TV and laptop. But oddly enough I don’t actually have a clock in my house.

I was in a department store the other day. They actually had a floor dedicated to clocks. They had digital clocks, analogue clocks, clock radios, clocks of all different shapes, sizes and colors. There was one clock that did take my fancy though. It was a rectangular clock that had a map of the world on it. This clock could tell you the time in all the major cities in the world.

But on the downside the price tag was pretty ridiculous. It cost more than twice the amount of a more standard clock.

Buy a standard clock? Or spend a lot more on a clock that will do some pre-school arithmetic for me and tell me the difference between GMT 0 and GMT +9.

It is a toughie I tell you. But it makes me wonder what the world is coming to when it takes this much thought and deliberation to choose a clock to hang on the wall.

Before going to sleep I remembered glancing at the time on my PC and seeing 22:30. So boys and girls a quick pop quiz. If I went to bed at 22:30 and woke up at 2:30 how much sleep did I get (prizes if you guess correctly)?

My stomach started crying so I went over to the fridge. Midnight started getting excited. I threw three pellets into his cube and he devoured them promptly. Sometimes I envy you. The life of a fish must be stress free. Just swim around all day and wait for food. No bills, no problems, no nothing.

How many months have I had you for now? I guess you must be getting tired of pellets. It is all you have eaten since I brought you into my home. I guess I will run to the pet shop and see if I can get you some live feed as a treat.

That made me feel a little bit sad. Greed never got to experience anything other than pellets. RIP Greed. I am sorry I didn’t take better care of you…

I put my hand on my fridge door and was about to open it. Now boys and girls I have another pop quiz for you. I have not gone food shopping for 1 month. What is the chance (in percentage) that when I open my fridge I find any food?

I decided not to open the fridge. I am a bit of gambling man, but I did not fancy my odds on this one.

8:05 was the next time I saw a clock. It was displayed on the platform in the train station. My train is the 8:06. It was crowded as usual. I miss my old route. The train was not very crowded in the morning, although you would be hard pressed to find a seat. There was a guy that I called the scavenger who used to work my route. He would roam up and down the carriages looking for newspapers and mangas that people had left behind. I am assuming he would setup shop somewhere reselling them.

You have got to love the work ethic of the people in this country. Even the homeless are on their hustle.

My company is far from the station. The bigger slap in the face is that I have to walk up a steep hill. Walking up a steep hill first thing in the morning can be soul crushing. Especially when you have had close to no sleep. But yeah, I know, I know “It is good exercise”.

10:14. I am sitting at my desk writing this blog. Unfortunately, today I have to get some work done. Hopefully I can finish it really quickly and get back to writing blogs, speaking to people on msn/aim/skype/facebook and doing more constructive things with my time other than doing work at work.


I guess I should have titled this entry "Half A Day in The Life"...

Wednesday 25 February 2009

Good Timing

Good timing I guess. A few more minutes, or even seconds should I say, and it would have been too late. I would have been deep underground without a bar of signal on my phone.

But the timing was good and I was still at the ticket machine.

I whipped out my phone and looked at the screen. Plus something, something, super long number? A call from abroad? I don’t get too many of those.

Guess I should pick it up and see who it is.

Caller: Good afternoon, good evening.

That opening made me laugh. A lot of people I speak to don’t have a clue what time it is in my part of the world. But that’s GMT +9 for you.

The caller was my Pops. He was like, there is a pretty young lady who works in a bank he normally visits. Apparently he had been telling her that he has a son in Japan. To escalate things even further he had taken her number and told her that he will get me to call her…

Hearing that put an awkward smile on my face.

Although he probably meant well, he didn’t really need to do that. Besides, I have a hard enough time as it is fighting off the ladies when I go out (:P). And to be frank, I would rather eat my own shit than go to that country anyway…

So it looks like she will be waiting a long time for my call.

But I am slightly curious. My Pops blood is flowing through my veins. I wonder if we share the same taste in women. I wonder what my assessment of the banker would be…

Tuesday 24 February 2009

An Analyst's Tears

I am working at a small financial data provider firm at the moment. The room I am in has like 6-8 people depending on the day of the week.

On my right is a small Chinese woman with spectacles. She works as a financial analyst. We are actually doing a project together which involves calculating some financial data from spreadsheets. She is pretty cool.

The past few weeks have been pretty busy at work. I have found myself coming in on weekends, national holidays and getting home as late as 8-9pm. But things have calmed down slightly this week.

While sitting at my desk contemplating whether or not I should do any work today I heard a sound. I looked to my right and I saw the analyst take her spectacles off and start to breathe heavily. Something seemed weird. She then started crying pretty loudly.

I started thinking the worse. She has a small son who goes to nursery, did she get an email saying something happened to him? Did someone she know die or get hurt badly? From what I could tell her phone had not rang…

The four of us in the room went over to find out what had happened. I could not really make out what she was saying since English is not her first language, and she was crying pretty hard. However, I made out her saying the name of a worker in the company and point to an email on her screen.

The analyst had passed on some quality control work to a member of the data entry team next door. But the person next door had made some mistakes and there were some errors in the database. Because of this, a senior member of staff came down pretty hard on her in an email for passing off work saying the analyst should be doing this task herself and criticizing her general performance.

However, the analyst had done nothing wrong in passing it on. I guess since the world is coming to an end and the company is not doing well everybody is on edge.

The analyst’s tears made me sad for a couple of reasons.

As gay as this sounds, I think everyone should be nice to each other and treat each other the way they would like to be treated. And maybe it is just me, but there is always something annoying about seeing the most peaceful and cheerful person in the room getting shitted on.

While crying, the analysts said something along the lines of “I am doing my work properly and trying my best, but she (senior member of staff) is saying the work I do is not good!”

Her tears taught me something about her. She must really care and take pride in her work to get that worked up about it.

Makes me wonder what the fuck I am doing here. I spend half the day daydreaming and browsing the web and I couldn’t give two shits what anybody thinks about the work I produce…