Japan

News article on Mainichi
(Via http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/11/26/2138205.shtml)

The only great thing I found about that article is the fact that I was in Kumamoto just a few weeks ago!

And I’m also surprised that something, if anything, happened there. It’s a small town that would really remind you of Moncton, NB!

I bought this box of chocolate dango in Nara, Japan, a town near Kyoto. A dango is a famous sweet in Japan. They are dumplings made of rice flour and often has a sweet bean paste filling. The chocolate kind has a chocolate filling rather than bean paste. They’re not as good, but I just bought it because of the drawing.

This box suggests that the dango inside are made from the feces of the deers in the park of Nara. My father and I used to joke about Whoppers being made of rabbit turd. (And we love Whoppers!) Maybe it’s true!

Okay, I’m writing something in English to let everyone know what’s going on with me recently. A friend of mine was complaining that I was writing too much in Japanese. Pfffffrrrr…

My parents came here to visit me last week. We did many things together during the long weekend. (Not the last weekend, but the one before.) Including a short visit to the Le Château Montebello and Manoir Papineau. They also had a chance to see and walk on the rooftop of the Rideau Centre mall, which looks like a park. It’s impressive for something installed on the roof! I also had a chance to eat something I missed for so long: good ol’ mom’s cooking.

They are still considering moving to Edmonton, like my sister, but obviously they’re not ready yet. They’re still debating about this. They do have a lot of possessions where they live. A house, a large land… What they have there is nothing compared to what homeowners have here in Ottawa. And they have it all there for just a fraction of what it would cost here. But there’s one thing: they work just for living. The house, even if cheaper than if it would be here, still needs to be paid. There’s also nothing to do there. The other thing is, what if they move in Edmonton and it gets worst instead of better?

I spoke to a friend I haven’t spoke with since months. We ended previous last conversation on a sour note, because of how basically I became really anti-social and pessimistic because of the workplace, which was in the call centre back then. The roles have switched now. I’m the happy guy and he’s the one stuck in a call centre. I guess he now understands how call centres screws up people. And it doesn’t comfort me to see him stuck in such a place. But at least talking with the guy yesterday made it better.

There’s only 7 days left, before I leave for Japan. Now I’m worried about just one thing: since two days, I got a cold. I really hope that I’ll recover from it before I go. I’ve been waiting for so long for my trip; I’m doing anything I can to make my recovery quicker. I even took some time off yesterday and slept almost for 12 hours. How come I wake up in a worsen state?

I remember seeing that homepage before, I just didn’t remember of who it was about.

The homepage of the new prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, is quite clear about how he will compile a new Japan from his branch in SVN:

[css@05JAPAN]$ cd 3rd_gen_koizumi_cabinet
[css@05JAPAN]$ svn co https://jp.bluequartz.org/seisaku/proud .
[css@05JAPAN]$ ./configure --with-passion=/home/abe/blood
[css@05JAPAN]$ make proud_japan ; make check
[css@05JAPAN]$ su
Password:***********
[root@05JAPAN]# make install
[root@05JAPAN]# ln -s /usr/local/bin/proud_japan /usr/bin/proud_japan
[root@05JAPAN]# cp ./proud_japan.cfg /etc/new_japan.cfg
[root@05JAPAN]# chkconfig --level 5 new_japan
[root@05JAPAN]# /etc/init.d/new_japan_seisaku/new_japan_seisakud
[root@05JAPAN]# top

Though, the guy’s head is convering the last few lines, which I had to extrapolate, and they seem to have a few discrepencies. But other than that, his computer humour amused me. Any computer humour amuses me. I just think he got lucky to not get any compile errors while compiling the proud_japan binary. And no word from him yet about open-source software.

Talking of him, it reminds me… I think New Brunswick should have elected Abbé Lanteigne as its premiere. With William Bourque for sidekick, Abbé can kick anybody’s ass with his afro!

Update (Oct. 11): What gives?! They changed the text to a shorter meaningless Linux-talk blurb! Pffff… Now I don’t like the page. (Pouts.)

I can’t express my feelings of anticipation and excitement at this point. Japan is all I can think of recently. It’s so bad, that even sometimes I answer my colleagues or my friends in Japanese. It’s crazy!

I’ve been so busy planning for it that I just couldn’t do anything else.

And I can’t sleep also… I need sleep… Badly… Sleep… Oh yeah…

http://uqmgp.hp.infoseek.co.jp/

Children say all of what they’re being taught. Seeing racism like that worries me the most, because seeing children already thinking like this, I wonder what kind of parents they may have.

The page linked above seems to be a copy of a posting and its pictures posted before on AoG.2y.net.

An entry on http://bicring.spaces.live.com/blog/
(Posted on July 13.)

I found that news article posted by a Japanese person on her journal. I guess you have descrimination everywhere in the world. A former roommate of mine was telling me about Indian convienience stores in the US that would charge less to Indian people than anyone else.

It also reminds me when I was a kid, I went to the Magnetic Hill Zoo in Moncton, NB with my aunt and I told her about the price sign. There was a special discount for children. However, in English, it said “For younger than 8” and in French, « 7 ans et moins. » (“For 7 and younger.”) It seemed unfair at first, so my aunt complained to the zoo clerk at the front. Though, it is technically equal. Both “Younger than 8” and “For 7 and younger” mean that only children seven-years-old or younger will have the discount, excluding 8-year-old kids. However, the twist on the words, or rather the digits, could have been better translated and represented.

Anyway, I doubt they still have the same sign today!

At our Meetup yesterday, someone came who didn’t come since a while. That guy always complained about the lack of Japanese people coming. Complained quite more bluntly than I did. Each time he would see someone who is Asian, a big smile would be drawn on his face! “Ah, finally,” he says sometimes. And then when I tell him that the person is not Japanese, he is deceived again. That makes me laugh inside.

Most of the Japanese people coming are girls. (Though the regular ones who come back more often are usually guys.) I told him yesterday that if he stays long enough, you can always hope for some girls to come. And there I exagerate again, jokingly, saying “I wish for some girls to come!”

The assistant organiser, as much as “perverted” (as some would say while I disagree) as I am, decided to jump in and say, “You don’t need to sound all creepy about it!” That also made me laugh, because 1) he’s no one better to talk, 2) I guess he wants me to wish for more guys to come instead, and 3) for the rare, rare times he comments on anything I say, he decided to comment on that particular exageration of mine.

I’m supposed to in Japan with that guy and maybe even work with him soon. I don’t mind, really. I just think it was a misunderstanding.

Anyway, you all make me sick. Go chew on some wasabi and choke yourselves.

While I’m still trying to find way to make Hotmail understand that mail coming from me is not spam, I’m fighting their system against their poor way of converting e-mails encoded using UTF-8.

I usually encode my messages using UTF-8, unless the message is only in English. But here’s something I discovered: the default page encoding of Hotmail depends on the user’s default interface language. Great…

If a Japanese user gets my UTF-8 Japanese mail while using Hotmail, it will display properly. If encoded using ISO-2022-JP (an often used encoding for Japanese-only text), it also displays fine.

But if the user’s interface is in Japanese, ISO-2022-JP-encoded messages will display fine automatically, but not messages using UTF-8 encoding. Even when the user chooses the UTF-8 page encoding in their browser, the message will still look garbled! The only way to see the message properly is to view the source code of the message and select the UTF-8 encoding manually.

So, when using Mutt, after composing my message in JOE, I hit Ctrl-T to manually change the encoding to ISO-2022-JP. (But this won’t work if I write an e-mail that has parts in Japanese and parts in French, because of the letter accents!)

I certainly hope Windows Live will fix all that…

I finally convinced myself on my way home after work to stop by the grocery
store, buy some chicken, and cook it myself, ith rice. I had no difficulty
doing it this time. (I guess I’m finally getting better.) Though, when I
prepared my plate, OW!, it’s like if someone would have stabbed me in
the back.

I just sat down and enjoyed my meal. The chicken was really good, but I
could have been better with the rice… (Why am I always cooking that
bad-taste brown rice anyway?)

After applying some pain-relief gel in my back, I went to bed and I thought
it will be all over tomorrow morning.

Ends up that I could barely sleep throughout the night. I woke up at 6, and
I didn’t dare to move because of the pain. Laid on my back, I just reached
the laptop with my hand, brought it on me, and sent a quick e-mail to my
manager with it, stating that I can’t work today.

I really hate not working because of “sickness”. I don’t like to say I’m
“sick” either, because I always have that mental picture in my head about a
person who’s coughing, has a fever, shivers, and thinks death is soon to
come. It’s not my case, but the fact that I can barely move impairs my work.
And because of that, well, I’m losing money.

With courage, I decided to stop complaining, grabbed my laptop, and went
downstairs. (Where I am now.) At the moment I’ve turned on the TV and
switched to a French news network, Japan jumped in my face again with images
of geisha with the words “Artists or sophisticated prostitutes? The secret
life of the Geisha. Tonight at 8.” I think it’s at 8. Oh well, I’ll just
record it with my trusty Linux video recorded, which has been encountering
strange video overflow problems recently.

I’m seriously worried that I’ll never have enough money to go in Japan.
However, I’ve been really severe toward myself recently about my expenses,
and I think it’s working.

Though, what I don’t like, is the attitude of the people coming with me in
Japan. They make quite more money than I do, so they really don’t think
about that much. Just Sunday, they want to have a meeting about our trip by
going at a restaurant. Of course, we can’t just order something cheap or eat
at home prior the meeting! That would be too cheap!

There’s the Japanese language meetup tomorrow. I recently have less and less
interest for the group. I’m a hypocrite — I’m the one who suggested to do
it twice per month instead of just once, but that was months ago, before I
was getting tired of it. Everything seems to go better there when I’m not
present anyways, so why should I bother.