April 4th, 2005
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Uninteresting status updates
I’m a little too burned out and overwhelmed to write anything other than a laundry list of assorted details in my life, though it may not make a difference as my web hosting supposedly expires tomorrow and I’m waiting on credit card verification so I can migrate all of this lovely mess to a server which I have no idea as to its actual physical location. If you can’t get to the site for a couple days, don’t run away screaming or think I’ve died or something. It’s just migration (which is popular in many forms this time of year).
My company is changing offices this week, so I lose another weekend, but instead of bug fixes I’ll be ripping and folding cardboard boxes. We have some sort of blessing by a priest on Wednesday at the new place, if it’s not too indecent I might take some pictures. In any case starting next week I’ll be physically closer to my home, but the commute will actually be a lot more of a pain. I may just end up riding my bicycle half the time.
Speaking of my poor bicycle (which is the subject of a top secret project I’ve been cooking up, only secret because I have no time to work on it), I was pulled over for the first time EVER in Japan on Friday night. The problem apparently was that I didn’t have my light turned on, and this is unsafe, or illegal in some very minor way. So I had a nice conversation with my neighborhood patrolman (I’m not being sarcastic, law enforcement officers here are friendly, jovial, and half the time a little portly). But it was a quaint little chat. Turns out the cop was the same age as me (something I still can’t rationalize in my mind as I honest to God still instinctively see myself as a juvenile), and we traded the traditional foreigner topics of conversation, do I like Japan, can I eat raw fish, etc. I had my information taken down (for community safety reasons supposedly); I’m sure some crazy nuts would love to start screaming about authoritarian governments and the human right to anonymity etc., etc., but it’s not like the government doesn’t know I exist anyway. And if it helps me get ID’d faster when I fall off my roof hanging carp-shaped windsocks, great.
I went to the first hanami (cherry blossom viewing party) of the season on Saturday, which was actually a matchmaking event for unmarried singles (average age about thirty-nine). It was nice, and I got to relax a little with my friend Yamamoto-san, who’s been doing his best to support my professional endeavours lately.
There was something else I was going to say, but I’m pretty damn tired and have to once again make a pitiful attempt at cleaning my poor house (either after midnight or before seven a.m.) tomorrow, in addition to preparing my window box gardens for the spring season. I have unofficial goals of a 100% increase in production of tasty, organic vegetables this year so I best be planting.
Oh, I started reading Big Sur for about the fourth time, splicing it together with my samurai proverbs, mainly because the degenerative slide experienced by Kerouac is not so different from my life right now. (Constant drinking: check. Swelling general distrust of people: check. Lack of foreseeable success: check.)
Ah, yes! The chuckle of the day is that the new business card proofs just came in and now I carry a “Senior Class” moniker under my title of Software Engineer, which seems to mean that I’ve survived for two years, so I carry some enhanced level of dignity/responsibility/authority perhaps? I bet your business card doesn’t say that. [Actually it probably says "executive" or "manager" or something to that effect by now.]
You know, I’m well-acquainted with all the ridiculous ego-pushing politics that come with job titles, and I’ve overheard enough obnoxious, phony conversations at trade conferences to absolutely loathe and revile business cards. What I’ll do is, if you don’t scare the living daylights out of me, is just take your picture with my cell phone so I can remember your name later until we actually become friends. All that industrial self-worth nonsense is just that– one more thing for people to push on folks they meet to feel important. What do I do? I make video games (and very little else). How exactly am I doing that? I make the screen light up. That’s all there really is to say. [Don't be surprised, I told you I was reading Kerouac again.]
