Archive for March, 2007
March 30, 2007 at 6:48 pm · Filed under One tear wipe
Monday Tuesday I stare at Powerpoint and chew on thick anxiety that I hope turns into intelligent phrases come Wednesday’s presentation.
Wednesday I present “what I did in a year” and am left in a “what did I do?” state but people ask questions and give advice and an hour later I am still engaged in discussion about the subject. My design may have flaws, my goals and framework may be shaky, my application might be impractical, but it made people imagine and that is what I am going to take away from this. My success exists in being able to propose engaging ideas.
Still Wednesday I am left with…I don’t know. Without words. It is not my mouth that is tired, not my body, not my brain (okay my brain a bit) but…maybe I am not tired. I just…I just want to wade around in a small lake hidden by green lushness of some sort on a thirty degree day.
Wednesday we have a project group end of year party and farewells are said.
Thursday my group end of year party and a farewell to my supervisor. Audience switch - because you might read this: thank you again so much for bringing me here, for all the work you did and help you gave, for your advice, conversation, and friendship.
Today is Friday and my last day here. In the morning I go to the Immigration Office to handle some business and as they hand me my passport I think - crap I am leaving Japan! But I am coming back. Why do I feel like things are so intense? It’s like I am living with these ghost feelings from myself back in October and that self only knows life where she leaves Japan forever in March.
After lunch we all go outside of the building to see the cherry blossoms. Spring is here. The air is warm, sweet and the breeze cool. I sit on the ground during the group picture. Two of my coworkers point out the various mini-things in the grass scaled world. We watch a brown worm with shiny red ends quickly squirm its way along. That worm sings a tune for me. It is spring and we have to stretch out our winter crippled limbs and do…something.
Tomorrow I will have a Japanese lesson and then I will pack.
Sunday I will clean and wait for my baggage to be picked up. Then, maybe I will go wander around somewhere but I am not sure yet. I don’t know if I want to be around people or not.
I feel kind of speechless. I feel like the only thing that could come out with honesty right now is laughter and tears. Everything else is strained and forced.
And I don’t really know why. Maybe I don’t want to know why. I could accept these emotions for what they are and not try to find where they came from and where they are going. This is a feeling that one could enjoy. The one where you become aware of the presence of your heart in your chest like it’s another person who has been watching your dreams over your shoulder the whole time.
March 27, 2007 at 12:41 pm · Filed under Thinking
The feet again. Because I have been thinking a lot about where I am going. On Monday it will be back to Vancouver for 3 weeks. I can buy new shoes. The ones in this picture were bought right before coming to Japan. Both have toe area holes and an elastic in one has snapped so lately they have stayed at home but I don’t think I will throw them out. They were (are) my Japan shoes.
I came here a year ago today (if I remember correctly). It is a little scary. I am happy about the ways I have grown and what I have learned but I have also realized about 30% of my adultness to bring me to a current total of about 55%. All rough calculations of course. Based on an average number of sighs in response to things people younger than me do per week.
Then there are ways in which I have not changed and vicious circles I still walk. They’ve been heavily on the mind in these past months. Sometimes I have felt like I might explode. And maybe I thought that by thinking about it, and analyzing what I do - I can find a solution and change myself and make it better.
On the other hand. Maybe there is no real problem besides me declaring problems.
Today I am baffled by what the mind can up.
March 26, 2007 at 6:20 pm · Filed under Experiences, Music
For 30 seconds my microphone wielding hand shook uncontrollably but that was just me doing my Janis Joplin going through withdrawal impression. High tension. The word that I learnt this weekend was “kincho” (緊張) - tension.
After “Move Over” I felt better and I actually had a little fun. No - it was a lot of fun. Moments where I could break through nervousness to be a little expressive. Yuuki-chan sang the fifth song and I didn’t get around to learning the chorus part. During practice the day before I sat there listening and useless. Will I do this on stage too? But the song - it made me want to run somewhere, do something crazy. So I decided I would throw candy out to the audience while she sang.
Besides providing sweetness to people’s mouth (side note: “sweet sunday lather” was the live show’s name), the candy giving totally helped me get over a lot of my kincho. Often the cause is performing in front of people who stand or sit with no reaction (possibly because they are afraid of dancing, expressing, performing). Attempting or forcing (who’s gonna say no to candy??) a reaction from people helps me find out what they are feeling so that I can learn from/adjust to/feed off of that.
March 22, 2007 at 1:43 pm · Filed under Dreams
How does one manage to get anything accomplished when day after day you learn more and the work of yesterday seems juvenile and unfounded. This is why I have these reoccurring dreams where I am trying to get somewhere but anytime I try to button my jacket up, I am always one button off. Usually the only way to proceed is to go out jacketless. A similar thing happens with pants but that is more about my fear of being abandoned then it is about my ability to maintain confidence in my ideas and thoughts. But I guess…I guess I could go out with my jacket buttoned in a one-button-off style and just get the work done.
March 21, 2007 at 3:35 pm · Filed under Dreams
It is this kind of picture that will make me miss Japan when I go.
Last night I dreamt that I was on Elm Street as in Nightmare on Elm Street but it wasn’t quite the suburban street it is in the movies. More a small beachside condo area with fog and white sand. There wasn’t too much Freddy either. At one point the dream atmosphere got a little scary and there was some dude in a red and black striped shirt riding a huge tractor along the beach but then the tractor fell over and all I could see was one stripped arm sticking out from underneath. I think it was an Elm Street, the Simpsons, the Wizard of Oz mix with a hint of Point Break.
March 20, 2007 at 5:48 pm · Filed under Music, Thinking
On Sunday afternoon we have a live and once again I must attempt my best Janis Joplin. We recorded our last practice and the files were posted today. I had a listen. Ouch. I probably shouldn’t have. Ok no my singing is not horrible but…it does not seem worthy of doing lead vocals. I lack a lot of control. Sometimes I sound like a woman singing and sometimes a girl in a church choir. I can carry most of my notes but some places get stressed more than others. I can’t hear this while I sing…where does it come from? It is possible for me to sound less nasally?
One of the things I am learning from this is how much my voice depends on my emotions or energy. I might start a song pumped up but halfway through I lose attention and get all spacey and I am sure my singing does too.
Ugh…I probably should not have listened to those recordings. It was equivalent to the times I have bent over and looked at my makeup-less face in a mirror on the floor after a heavy night of drinking. Oh well. While I can’t change this head I can possibly listen to the recordings again, practice, and get a little bit better (can I?)
March 20, 2007 at 5:06 pm · Filed under Technology & Effects
One of the projects I enjoyed at Interaction 2007 - this dynamic soft picture book. It is not so much a book but a play area for children. I think the gist of it is that children can play with removal parts, moving them around and placing them in different places on the map. Locations of the (I call them “story bits”) are sensed and a computer application uses this to dynamically create some narrative. I might have that last part wrong. I never got the chance to ask for details and it is possible (if I am to speak honestly) that I wasn’t caring so much about how the system worked. I was mostly thinking “OH sweEET Reeses how I LOVE felt!!!”
No really…this got me thinking about interfaces/toys for children and the difficulties of designing computing systems that will be used in child play. I was wondering how much the dynamic soft picture book relies on a certain style of interaction from a child. Could it handle the case of say, story bits thrown across the room or stashed in a honey pot?
What if a child’s toy could sense these “misuses”? Would the information be used for the child’s benefit (ie. more and better play) or for the parent’s benefit (ie. she’s beheading her barbie dolls again, you might be spending too much time at the office). How could toy location information be used? (Actually screw people finding…thinking back to when I was four I would have LOVED an interactive toy map.) What about the relationship between a child and his or her favorite toy? Which toys get pocket privileges and how could tracking this favoritism help parents understand their child?
March 19, 2007 at 11:36 am · Filed under Social Technology
As I learn more and more kanji I become braver surfing the menus from my keitai’s web browser. The other night I ventured into the horoscopes area. Expecting to find a write up for Capricorns or for my blood type (A…yes people are categorized by their blood types here), I instead found a fortune telling system based on my phone’s extended moji (characters) or character icons. That day I was asked to choose one moji from a given set of transportation related moji (icons of a train, bus, ship, car, etc.). I chose the truck and received my fortune in return. I couldn’t really understand the fortune but I did get the advice that if I used the truck icon in an email sent to a friend at 8:30pm it would be a good thing. Oh I love how bytes can be cosmic too.
March 19, 2007 at 10:36 am · Filed under On the Train / Bus
I almost boarded one the other day but decided not to. I don’t feel comfortable with the pink signs and the flowers. The gesture is nice, but I feel like accepting it is saying “I don’t want to be around men” when that is far from the truth. Of course I support their existence. They provide a safe place for the many women who have been put in unnecessarily uncomfortable situations on the train. But I don’t mind the regular cars.
Then Friday night in Shibuya station I walked into a car headed to Yokohama and as the doors closed I looked around, “wait a minute…” Sure enough there were pink signs, a woman to man ratio I have only encountered at onsens and the air had a slightly more fruity aroma. It was a strange atmosphere. The car was completely quiet yet there seemed to be a certain tension among all the women. Like we all knew that we took a step past mixed and equality into a “no men allowed” zone. Or maybe it was just me who felt that and I wondered if others did too.
I asked myself what kind of statement I was making. But I wasn’t making one - I came here by accident! Stopping at stations along the way I watched the men waiting on the platform as the train crept forward. The train walls and windows seemed miles thick. “I’m here by accident!”, I wanted to say but then really…it didn’t matter. I became curious - how did they see this car?
Further along the way I starting feeling out of place. I’ve possibly written about it before but if not - a quick introduction to my complex: I was a big, tall kid and the girls I grew up with were small and in dance classes. I felt out of place and thought that girls should be that size - not my size. So that was 20 years ago and I’ve grown up since then and so have those tiny girls and for the most part, I have gotten over the idea that women must be small. But sometimes…sometimes it comes back in form of a disconnection I feel from groups of women. Especially when you are in Japan and some of the women cast glances because…well gee I would look at me too if I were from here seeing someone who looks like me from let’s guess where. Anyway back to the point, I felt out of place - like the car was for a class of women that I did not belong to.
Then, snapping me away from stirring my bowl of self-dough, I saw the most amusing thing. An obviously foreign man standing in the middle of the women only car. I watched him for a few moments, wondering if he felt uncomfortable. Did not appear to be. I was happy that he was there. It was an amusing contrast. And I feel bad saying it because the cause of the women’s only cars is important considering the assaults that many women have had to experience but, I was sort of happy that pink signs were not a total wall between me and the other half of humans.
March 16, 2007 at 3:25 pm · Filed under Thinking
I am at a domestic conference - Interaction 2007 - in Tokyo. Yesterday I presented a demo on my work and today I get to see the other batch of demos (which seem to be more the highlight of this conference then the actually presentations).
I wlil try to post more pictures cause there is some cool stuff here. Refreshing to be around all these students and projects that are not business driven…it feels like some of these people have a lot of room to play and they do.
The bear is from a demo on a 3D model -> sewing pattern for making stuff animals application.
March 12, 2007 at 7:21 pm · Filed under Words, Work
How do I say that I want to create something that people become attached to without sounding like I’m from marketing or dealing in the streets?
March 9, 2007 at 5:37 pm · Filed under Dreams
Dream last night:
New Years Eve and I am in the strangest Japan/Vancouver/Regina mashup with the girls off to some party. We are walking down a narrow street with high buildings like in Japan but the architecture and sunshine is from Regina and the smell and fashion from Vancouver. I realize that I forgot to wear shoes and say that I am going to head back for a moment. Some guy offers to lend me the yellow plastic slippers he is wearing but I decline. His feet might get cold in the slush on the ground. I will catch up. I turn around and head back to where? I guess home as I walk and walk and walk the things around me become more and more Regina and there is more and more snow. Then I am home, at my home in Regina but possibly structured a little differently. In the basement/garage/crawlspace I find a suitcase of clothes, a bath and a mirror. I should shower. Then change clothes. I spend a lot of dream time doing this and eventually realize that time is getting later and later and later and how will I get to that party. I don’t know if I ever find my shoes. I call someone on their cell - actually, people are leaving. OK - that is okay it is just confirming that New Year’s Eve is not my thing. It is a time for me to step back, step outside the world and wait until the celebrations are done. That’s what the dream felt like. I met up with Kim and Jemma later and we were walking down a Vancouver street at 3am and someone suggested we enter this one cafe for a slice of wheat cake that I thought was much too expensive ($8.50) even if we shared the price. No I can’t pay $8.50 for a piece of cake that is trying to be healthy! They had the cake’s recipe printed on the menu (too bad I can never really focus on those things in dreams…it’s possible that was some tasty cake). I think I eventually made it home. I sat on the floor in the living room. My mother was sleeping on the couch, my sister watching a movie and laughing and after all that walking around 3 different places I have lived with some anxiety over what to do about my shoes - I felt really really comfortable.
I have not had a long-strong dream in a while but I did last night. It might be this chest cold, a little hard to breath now and it wakes me up at night. It might be the chest cold medication I took before bed that still has my head in the clouds today. Whatever…it was nice.
March 5, 2007 at 9:52 am · Filed under Words
some really sweet things about japanese:
- you don’t need to think about capital letters. it would be especially great if i could make my powerpoint presentations in japanese so that i could avoid the philosophical arguments about capitalization that i get into with myself
- the word など (nado) to indicate that a list of stated things is not complete. used in a similar fashion to “etc.”
apples and oranges nado…
but it is a really word. ok - so, i have a hard time accepted “etc.” as a really word even in its expanded form which i will leave you to look up because i cannot remember the spelling. i cannot use “etc.” without being aware that i am using it. just like how now, i am trying to be on strike from capital letters but i am entirely aware of it and might just go back and capitalize before i post this.
which is making me wonder - what does it say when a person avoids capital letters? are they in a hurry - they can’t take the time to hit shift? is it a coolness that is being projected? is it modesty? they do not want to capitalize “I->i” but then they realize that de-capitalizing i while keeping all other capital letters makes it look like they are trying too hard so they de-capitalize everything. and then someone’s name comes up and you have to question your relationship with them - “is it appropriate for me to not spell their name with a big first letter?” and sometimes, even if their name would look way cooler all lowercase, you just have to capitalize.
and because i am working in all lowercase here and because it is saturday night and i am working on a presentation but also working through huge frustrations at myself for how much i don’t express because i am too scared about what people will think of me and finally because you might not ever ever hear me actually sing it, i will share with you the words to a song I wrote (and no not while brainstorming for thesis ideas):
glass plate in my throat
rubber tube in my stomach
i am searching for the words
from the eloquence machine
to explain why i can’t digest you
these robotic legs
can’t take me fast enough
from the magnetic pull
between you and me
that promises destruction within us
and i can say that i’d take the chance
with every implant in me
that could process my thoughts of you
and make my actions the same
who knows where i would go
if i could disappear
when i catch sight of you
with my cyber gear
body’s all plastic now
so that you can’t grow on me
i am multi-coloured themed
my template fits the scene
and i hope it makes you jealous
don’t worry, i won’t make this poetry corner (sort of speaking for myself because my poem/mediaspace maximum is about three. any more than that and my eyes crust over and i can’t see the point). i just need to put it…somewhere.
March 3, 2007 at 2:26 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts
I am in a nearby Internet cafe but it is more of a manga hut. This is my room. The windows are frosted so minimal daylight enters. I feel like I am in a movie. I guess that is one thing I miss from Canada. A cafe, with wifi (free or not), people, good coffee, and no feeling that you should hurry up, get up, and leave.
I am searching for pictures on flickr and I wish that they had some filter for search results coming from one person who has taken 20 shots of the same thing.
Sorry - not too exciting but given my Internet access outside of the usual, I feel like I should be writing. It might also be because last night in my dream I had a few people tell me how great my blog was to read. Seriously! Hahaha.
Oh geez. I think this whole browsing flickr thing is getting to me. Many personal photos with little explanation and people you don’t know. My mind goes on autopilot with the story making and now I have a wee bit of a headache.
Hope you are all having a good weekend. Despite working for most of it, I am. Sleeping is good ; )
