On a slightly related note to some current research thoughts, in December I received my first batch of 100 mooCards. My intentions were to use them as business cards. Given that I will not be at NTT forever, and not be at UBC forever (god I hope), I made them a generic Meghan card with my email address and a link to this site.
A few weeks ago I was at a meeting and was presented with my first opportunity to hand out my cool new cards but I totally couldn’t. Possibly because the meeting was fairly formal (I wore my new brown dress pants…I bought brown dress pants in Japan because…they fit…but they look the same as my highschool chemistry teacher’s) but this ran through my head: “which one do I give???!!! are there any vulgar pictures on them I can’t remember??? this might take too much time…I have to select!”.
MooCards are too personal for business-card-ing. Each one shows a little piece of what I have seen. The variety too. Different pictures have different meanings to me and choosing them can’t be random. The best thing for me to do would be to let the receiver choose but I don’t think that fits the business card exchange model. Perhaps I need an automatic MooCard dispenser. A small camera could detect the crispness of the receiver’s suit(clothing) and dispense a properly themed card.
Archive for Spend spend spend!
all i want for christmas
(BTW the girl in the photo, her name is Kristin according to the jpg filename. Just in case you were wondering.)
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my friendly neighborhood rice vending machine
I only noticed this a month ago and I jog by it every…day that I jog. Does the fact that I was blind to a large rice vending machine station sandwiched between apartment buildings mean that I am become desensitized to all the novelty around me? Hmm…
At least the idea is still novel so me and another Canadian intern decided that some night rice purchasing was in order. We walked to the rice station last night and being such rice connaisseurs, decided on bin #6. Money inserted, we press button #6 and a woman starts to tell us to push another button. She tells us over and over again and we don’t quite know which button she is talking about so we press #6 again and again.
Finally the recording stops and another starts. We can open a drawer to get out rice. “Please open the drawer…please open the drawer….please open the drawer…” They want to make sure that the whole neighborhood knows that we are buying rice.
Drawer opened, we find our rice, in a grocery bag, with receipt and a sample package of katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes…if you have had okonomiyaki you are likely familiar with this). Very sweet indeed. I would have taken more time to savour the moment but the recording was going off on how we should take our rice and get outta there. Ok probably not so rudely considering all the polite kudasai(s) and onegai shimasu(s) of Japanese requests that we heard.
what would I do without them
I bought three life improving technologies this weekend. Okay not all are technologies in the modern sense of the word but they are new things I will use in my life practices. Ha ha…life practices.
1) a new pillow: I have been waking up every second day with the most horrible knot in my neck/shoulder area. This knot also wakes me up during the night and last week I was sooo tired from it and of it. I blamed the cheap lumpy pillow I bought when I first came here. Was thinking the solution would be a 4000円 pillow that remembers the shape of your head but instead I chose a 500円 thin seat cushion. It is perfect! The last few nights I have had good deep sleeps and some very interesting dreams.
2) hair straightener: goodbye humidity hair woes, hello sunshine. I think I walk with better posture because of the inflated sense of self esteem.
3) Mario Kart DS: I was playing the downloaded Mario Kart with some people at lunch (using wifi) but I think it limits the levels we use and I cannot choose my character. Could only be this ghost guy who, although cute and wee, is very very slow. So I bought the game and now the cruising is much better although I am still not as good as all the other people : P Someday!!
This weekend was also bargain weekend (across Japan maybe?) so I attempted some shopping. Man…it was insane but actually, it was not even the customers that made it insane. It was the employees. I swear each store had three times more (salesgirls) than a Canadian store of similar size. Three times more young girls yelling prices and folding clothes so you can’t actually get in to look at them. When I did find some shirts to try on, I was told that you can only try on pants. It was too busy to have everyone trying on shirts. I was quite disappointed but did take a small risk with two tops and luckily they turned out alright. Now I think I’ve had enough mall for a while.
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Wednesday * Retail Therapy * Tennis
I was really bummed out when I woke up on Wednesday. Reasons why I won’t get into too much cause that’s just depressing but part of it was anxiety over a. holy crap this is life and how did I manage to get here? and b. it’s a holiday weekend and oh no how do I fully take advantage of it so that I can say, YES I appreciate this scary life and I am NOT going to waste it away. I was getting to the stage where hours were being wasted by my worrying about wasting hours and days. Somehow I managed to get showered and leave my apartment. I walked to the city centre thinking that maybe I just needed a good book to read and I remembered there being some English books at a store in More’s City (a department store next to the Yokosuka-Chuo station). Before the bookstore, I did the routine games & electronics store browse and guess what…
!!!
On Tuesday the same place was sold out but on this day I struck gold!! It took me five minutes to buy the DS Lite and that felt a little weird. Usually with electronics purchases over $100, you get bombarded with warranties and point systems and store credit cards. This was quick and easy. In five minutes I went from bummed to glowing. They didn’t have the main application I wanted in stock, so my plan for the day was set – I would go to Yokohama in search of this game. It’s not actually a game…it is a Japanese-English translation tool / electronic dictionary with kanji input by stylus and man does it ever rock!! The tetris game I bought on the side is also pretty good but not as good as old tetris. They made some changes that I`m not that into.
I love my DS lite to bits. It even already has a name, I was prompted to give it one as soon as I turned it on (I think…the prompt was in Japanese). The first thing that came to me was “PopTart!” and that stuck.
This purchase made me so happy and to make the day better, some friends invited me along to play tennis. So…I am not really that good at tennis. Actually, I am pretty horrible and this was only my third time on the court but they were so great!! They spent so much time giving me pointers and very useful ones too! Not just the “keep your eye on the ball” that is supposed to magically make me a pro. I don`t know if I made any progress during the practice but that would be through no fault of theirs. It was a very fun time!
On to Thursday…? (Or Tuesday if you are reading this the other way.)
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