Archive for Mundane
February 7, 2008 at 10:38 am · Filed under Mundane
I enjoyed buying groceries, cleaning, doing laundry. I baked sour cream-maple bread and it turned out a bit crumbly, but moist and not too sweet. I picked out a book to read while eating soup and then I went to bed at 9pm. All done without the hot breath of guilt on my neck.
I slept 10 hours and woke up with a sore throat. A mix of feeling quite better and a lot worse. I went for a run to shake out a cold possibly coming along. Then I went to a job interview and the fact that I stayed engaged despite drowsiness and sore throat and even had ideas firing off in my head told me that it would potentially be a good position for me.
I came home and read again, enjoying Nabokov as I did before. His descriptions of things are still so satisfying. Then I slept more and more. I think I might be able to avoid that cold. And after a taste of freedom, I must return to the thesis and work on my defense presentation.
I I I I I
am feeling too self-absorbed and am looking forward to seeing girlfriends next week as they make me laugh so hard that I can’t think about myself for very long.
January 10, 2008 at 4:08 pm · Filed under Mundane
I didn’t explode but what did I do?
- rushed to finish work before going home for the holidays
- got really sick on my final day in Vancouver and in fever flew home under a pile of airplane blankets and parka
- saw much missed family and friends
- drove to Humboldt, SK for a bitingly cold but beautiful white and shimmery day and a short night to see my grandmother
- finished my thesis draft
- ate some delicious meals made by my sister
- went to two CrossFit classes with Kim
- basked in excitement and anticipation of Kim’s upcoming wedding with the arrival of bridesmaid dresses and a wedding shower
- got a new pair of running shoes and the Nike + iPod Sport Kit to jog into the new year with (it’s been great and motivational to track my runs)
- came back to Vancouver before the new year and spent the eve on the couch
- to wake up the next morning and have a super productive day
- started karate practice again and I think my kata is getting a little better
- watched a lot of Buffy
- found a Book Off in Vancouver and felt like I was in Japan again
- bought a textbook in intermediate Japanese, 星の王子さま (the Little Prince), and Murakami’s first book, 風の歌を聴け (Hear the Wind Sing) to motivate a return to my Japanese studies
Among other things, this is what I am remembering for now.
Why have I not been writing? I don’t really know.
But I have some ideas. There is so much that I want to do, that I need to be doing now that when I come to this Box, I feel like I can’t justify the time to write something. I’m also in a period of transition; I’m trying to ground myself and days are flying by. All the little things that I might comment on here slip away as I rush to the next thought of how I must proceed.
How am I proceeding?
- This week I have finally started to really truly get my hands dirty in the job searching process.
- I am finishing up my work at UBC from last fall so that by next week I can concentrate 60% on thesis revisions
- The other 40% will go towards a conference submission due early February and applying for jobs
- Break time involves karate, studying Japanese, testing my cooking skills, trying to get out more than in the fall, and watching the final season of the Buffy series
And…I should probably be writing more. I will try. And taking pictures.
But for now, back to work.
September 18, 2007 at 8:36 am · Filed under Mundane, Travels
Moving involves a series of things that are done for the last time. These are everyday things that will obtain new context and method in their transfer to the new place.
I notice myself ignoring the last minutes of things I enjoy. I focus on noting the last time I must do a less enjoyable task such as cleaning the floor drain in my washroom or wiping up water trapped in the tight space between my kitchen sink faucet and the wall.
They will come and take my Internet soon. I might write before leaving Japan. I might not. So if not - goodbye for now.
July 30, 2007 at 1:05 am · Filed under Mundane
This is my spider friend:
I think I told you about him. I’m trying to learn that spiders are good because they balance out insect ecosystems in homes. So he lives. Every morning for the past week he has come out of hiding while I get ready for work. He crawls along the same path on the wall over my desk. Hangs out by the keyboard for a bit and then some days makes it to the curtains. My questions:
What does he think of me and does he see me mostly or hear me?
What should his name be?
Why do I assume it is a male spider?
Will he grow?
Where does he go when I cannot see him?
While I am here - how is everyone in Vancouver doing with the trash deal? Is it…a bad situation?
July 9, 2007 at 8:23 am · Filed under Mundane
Now I can check the weather in the morning from a source other than my mobile. If I want details there I think I have to subscribe to something. So I checked the weather this morning and well, I’ve mentioned the laundry index before - the weather reports here include estimations of how long it takes to dry your laundry. That makes total sense. So does the umbrella index. Today it is 10 - it is okay not to bring an umbrella with you even though it is cloudy outside. My new finds this morning also make sense but they are still amusing.
The ice cream index. Today it is 60 - we should use ice cream to get over the heat. Tomorrow it is only 50. We only want to eat ice cream but whether or not it is necessary is questionable.
The sweat index. Today if you walk, you will gradually start to sweat.
I’m gonna be running (and sweating) to the bus stop at the rate I’m going here. Got out of bed in a weird way today. Probably because I was startled last night. I had fallen asleep for only a while when my mind decided to wake itself up with a spider hallucination/dream. This one seemed so real that I leapt off of my bed pulling my blankets with me. Good thing because even with the extra padding my hip was still bruised a little. I kind of wish I had it on camera. It was totally an action movie reflex.
July 7, 2007 at 4:29 am · Filed under Mundane
I can’t believe this. After more than a year, since March of 2006, I am once again the proud owner of home Internet. They hooked me up this morning but I had no chance to try. Now, 18 hours later, I have plugged waffles in and she is really back.
What will this mean for the course of the next 2 months? I can write to you I really can. Because it is times like this, 4:30am after いろいろな drinks that it feels comfortable. Not jotted down and then written in a rush at work.
Last night there was a birthday party at an onsen (hot spring) / unagi restaurant. On the way home I spotted these shoes in Yokosuka-chuo. Nice shoes, abandonned, by a bicycle, not really around anything else. Do they belong to the rider of the bicycle? Is there a man walking around barefoot? Are they my size?
Mystery shoes they are.
June 15, 2007 at 3:17 pm · Filed under Dreams, Lists, Mundane
waking up first thoughts:
- someone’s phone is ringing, no that’s my alarm
- wait a minute, I can’t leave this dream I wasn’t done that conversation
- my face feels greasy
- my teeth are wearing sweaters
- am I hot or cold?
- my mind is here my vision is not
- was I going to wake up today?
- is that really sunshine or is the day just happy to see me?
- how can I get coffee?
- have I changed position since I fell asleep?
- is someone expecting me?
- where am I?
- did I say bye before I left my dream?
- are there really bugs crawling on my ceiling or are those eye spots?
- where is food?
- this seems to be my reality. What if one day it is not?
- uuuuuuuuuuuuuggggh………
- (…)
Continue the list in the comments or share your related story.
May 28, 2007 at 6:02 pm · Filed under Mundane
I guess this is how these things work. Cut and paste from a file on my desktop, thingsiforgot.txt:
I forgot…
M 05.21.2007 …to take out the PET bottle recycling in the morning
T 05.22.2007 …to bring my wallet downstairs at lunch in order to recharge my lunchcard and as a consequence I had to borrow money
Since 05.22.2007 …my thingsiforgot list
May 9, 2007 at 11:42 am · Filed under Mundane
Just came back from the can on the 2nd floor and they have a new Toto apparatus installed. The controller for this one (for the bidet, massage, heated seat, etc.) indicates the time. I looked at that time…11:30am…and realized that I never see the time from the can. I not only do not see the time, I don’t think of it and in fact, I think of the bathroom/washroom as a timeless space.
Ok so maybe that doesn’t completely work because over the time the washroom is the room that becomes the most noticeably dirty (to me). It is the blue stripe on the toothbrush or that band on the battery telling you when time is up, something needs to be changed, cleaned, done.
But - we can put clocks in anything computer controlled so why not? It is cheap and it adds an extra function to advertise. But when is time an uninvited guest? Like in the bathroom stall where the time reminds me of the world outside almost like it is a person standing outside the door making sure that I come out in due time.
April 25, 2007 at 10:49 am · Filed under Mundane
I bought toothpaste before leaving Canada. Still had some Japanese toothpaste left but for some reason toothpaste here (Japan) doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t seem potent enough. Sometimes I almost think there is sugar in it (but probably not). In Shopper’s a tube of Crest Pro-Health toothpaste caught my eye. The packaging claimed:
CAVITIES | GINGIVITIS | PLAQUE | SENSITIVITY | TARTAR | WHITENING | FRESHENS BREATH
as in avoids the first 5 and promotes the last 2.
I don’t quite understand the “Pro-Health” name. I mean…isn’t brushing your teeth in general…pro-health. The name didn’t do it for me and in fact it bothers me slightly whenever I go to brush my teeth.
I bought the cinnamon flavour. It doesn’t taste that great but it tastes like something that is cleaning my mouth, not candy, and that is good. The texture though…the texture might make me by this toothpaste again. Early this morning I fantasized about Pro-Health as the cookie dough of toothpastes.
Why am I talking about toothpaste?
Back safely and enjoying things a lot. Went to get groceries last night and there was an old man practicing nun chucks outside of the supermarket. No I don’t think this is a common occurrence so I wish I had my camera but…
April 23, 2007 at 3:27 am · Filed under Computers, Mundane
Leaving Vancouver. So tired, so full, so…I can’t feel the difference. I am going through the motions of my relationship with flying to Japan. This is the third time now. Only three times but it already feels regular. Sitting on a stool at a bar in the gate area cafeteria. A couple is sitting at the other end and when the guy taps the metal foot rest bar the vibrations travel to my end and remind me that other people are around me.
I’ve been wishing for things to find some stability. Wishing to remind myself of responsibility and what I need to do to…keep living? And live happy? But wishing for what I don’t have but want…I can’t do that. Ok I’d be lying if I said I never ever ever did that but really…I have so much. Vancouver reminds me of that. The flowers and the trees and the greenness remind me. The large houses and bright colours remind me. The encounters with people asking for money remind me. The choice…the choice I can slip into feeling like I need more and feeling unhappy for what I have but now, at this point I am reminded that I am lucky to have the choice.
A monitor hanging over the cafeteria area is showing a hockey game. Brought to us with Microsoft technology. It looks like an application on the computer showing the game is not responding. I wonder how long it has been like that and when someone will notice it and who that is and if they will worry about fixing it or if it is just routine. These moments of error and unresponsiveness are strange because had that blue/white/and grey box not been there, I would not have known that the hockey video was running on Windows. I would have glanced at that monitor and thought “a tv showing hockey”. But now I know which operating system and I wonder what other processes are currently running, what applications are installed, and what information is stored be it something important or something like web browsing history to find help on that problem causing an unresponsive program. The possibilities, the story behind the “thing” showing this hockey game has expanded. It is another world like the world I have on waffles here but full of foreign things and with its own purpose and history YET…it is built with familiar structure and interface.
When in my daily life am I an unresponsive program?
Across from me is a duty free hops with perfume and purses and watches and it’s funny how those products are valuable and the brands are up there but being in the duty free shop…they seem so cheap to me. Not cheap money-wise and hey! let’s go buy some but…tacky cheap. Why? When did I establish this idea? I’m always in airports alone so it is not from anyone else.
Well…it is time for me to wander somewhere else.
January 31, 2007 at 4:03 pm · Filed under Mundane
I just realized that in my whole time here I have not looked up at the ceiling directly above me. Not once! I don’t know…there could have been a spider there or something. What other spaces do I not look at?
Reminds me of something that amused me as a child. That game of put something in an obvious place that might possibly be overlooked by people on a regular basis and then be amused by the length of time it takes for people to notice. Most commonly spaghetti on the wall.
I am a little stumped on summarizing something at work at the moment. I could do something else but knoooow I should finish this. Oh but if one of those tiles dropped down followed by three people in purple glittered spandex I would be so entertained.
October 20, 2006 at 8:42 pm · Filed under Mundane, Work
I have a lot to do at work. A lot. Sometimes my brain hurts but I think it is from learning. So, when I feel discouraged, I just remember that day after day I gain experience bit by bit. I am overcoming the “this is too hard” freeze-up which feels really good.
Today I realized that it was time face character encoding hell. Making an application for Japanese mobile phones so it has to handle Japanese characters of course. This is not always so easy. It feels like it should almost be easy, but it is not completely. Many attempts result in screens showing mojibake. If you don’t know, mojibake is a term borrowed from Japanese to refer to garbled appearance of characters that your computer cannot support (or is not configured to support). Moji = character, bake = appear in disguise. I like it - mostly because before reading that bake is “to appear in disguise” roughly, I thought of bake as in baked, broken, toast, kaput.
After a day of surfing the Japanese Java forum, using rikaichan for rough translations, trying, testing and seeing a lot of mojibake and question marks, I finally added something to my database that phpMyAdmin showed as being really, truly, Japanese script. Yay! There is still the other half to deal with - assuring that I can retrieve text from the database and present it non-mojibaked but I don’t think that will be too hard.
Not much else going on but work. Yesterday was another intern’s birthday and a number of us went for supper in Yokohama followed by delicious delicious ice cream. This weekend I have work to do, and likely next weekend too, but sometime in November I will travel somewhere. Where, I don’t know yet.
Oh, and I think I might like earthquakes too much. Last weekend early Saturday morning we had one a bit bigger than the normal little ones. I woke up, felt it, had some half-asleep thoughts of my apartment building tumbling over, smiled, went back to sleep. Forgot about it until someone mentioned it later that day. I know earthquakes are scary, kill, cause damage, etc….but it just feels so incredible when something that seems so sure and constant (the earth below you) shakes. I might become an earthquake chaser. Like that movie…with the cyclones…but not them…
outta here!
September 20, 2006 at 1:01 pm · Filed under Mundane
I pace…
…or I just realized that I pace when alone in the washroom at work, I was brushing my teeth and pacing and I almost ran into another woman when she walked in. I don’t pace when there are other people around. I stand at the sink and feel awkward and uncomfortable. I don’t know what to do with my non-brushing hand. Sometimes I rest it on my left hip (it is my left hand) but that seems like such a power stance. Sometimes it hangs uselessly, palm facing up, and it looks a little pathetic. I feel relief when I can reach for the tap and give it something to do. That is why, when by myself, I pace.
September 12, 2006 at 5:34 pm · Filed under Mundane, Thinking, Words
I just ran into a guy in the hallway at work, or rather, he ran past me then stopped and looked back. My first thought was “yes, I know I am beautiful but you don’t have to stare” (kidding) and then he said “remember me?” That certainly pulled me from my vanity - {oh crap I totally don’t remember} “yeeee..eeesss…” {did I meet him last week at the conference?} “your face looks familiar but…” {I don’t remember his face, usually I remember faces} “…I don’t remember your name”.
“More’s…” {???} “…you were there with my girlfriend for supper.”
Then I remembered, but still couldn’t place his face. I think he was wearing a suit that time and today he was in casual clothes. The suit transforms the man.
Crazy though, I met him during my first week in Japan. I met a lot of people then and have met many people since. Many I remember but there are people who slip through the mind’s cracks. I feel horrible when I realize I have given them blank stares of nonrecognition. When that happens my reaction is to (for the next day or so) smile at everyone like we had lunch the day before and talked about so many things that there isn’t much sense in starting a conversation at that particular moment or even saying ‘hi’.
On another note, I was sending an email to my Japanese teacher and couldn’t remember how to say “anytime” so while searching I came across this:
無芸大食
むげいたいしょく
mugeitaishoku
meaning: lacking the talent to do anything but eat, a noun I think…mugei is lacking talent, taishoku is gluttony. I like it.
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