dear 2008, get fucked.

Wow. That year warn't no good. "2008: Plague Year"

No point in laying out all the bad stuff that went down. Instead, lets just call it a potent dose of reality that put me a little closer to "my place".

I had a bunch of goals, as listed in this here post. This year I came really close on the fitness ones (and blew the pull-ups away); barely even thought about the study goals; read about 1/3 of the books (got a couple days left to add to the tally there); and the other four were a failure too.

So with a little further ado, my last resolution list! Like I said in the last post, I'm closing up shop here. From here on, I'll probably make occasional photo posts from my phone or somethin... but don't expect any more of my sloppily written blather. I'm putting that somewhere else, somewhere anonymous. Needless to say, I'm not gonna point the way.

/ado.

I'll fill these in as a think them out, but here's the broad outline for the year's goal.

Fitness:
100 pushups in one go (doing about 45 right now).
50 pull ups
10 pull ups with 40kg burden
15k in 1 hr (Ive never run more than 10k).
110 or 120kg bench press x 1o (I was doing 90kg x 5 two weeks ago).

Japanese:
Kanji Kentei 3kyuu (gotta make a realistic goal here, or never succeed).
Something else concrete.

More alcohol:
learn to drink wine
drink some scotch... learn to drink it?

Housekeeping:
something concrete

Grooming:
one haircut every month
Something else concrete

Savings:
A set number for the year... but I'm not sharing that with yall.

Re-stop biting my nails.

Books, English:
Henry James (something)
Saul Bellow (something)
King James Bible
Ulysees
I, Claudius
Catch 22
rabbit, run
thomas mann (death in venice + something else)
faulkner (something)
100 years of solitude

Books, Japanese:
More Dazai (I like him quite a bit)
koizora
The last 2 akutagawa winners
kokoro
a modernized tale of Genji
some women's manga (what the fudge are they thinking?)
more to follow


I'll fill in the concrete parts as I think them up

Turn out the lights, set yourself on fire, say goodnight.

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see.
But, if I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can't change.

Bye, bye, its been a sweet love.
Though this feeling I can't change.
But please don't take it badly,
'Cause Lord knows I'm to blame.
But, if I stayed here with you girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you'll never change.
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows, I can't change.
Lord help me, I can't change.







Saa, 'bout time we packed it in, don't ya reckon? Lately, I have felt a bit like blogging, but I done wrecked this one up. Next blog, I'ma try to put a bit more effort and a bit more "me" into my writing... and a bit more stuff I don't necessarily want my acquaintances to know about.

I believe I'll make one last entry on this ol' feller, before sending him to a big farm upstate.

One last "resolutions/ resolve" post.

Can't sleep

Testing out iPhone features instead.

The new Oscar Wilde.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/phil_collins.html

choice bits include:

"When I go on Japanese Airlines, I really love it because I like Japanese food."

and

"Another time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock."

It's like a whole new Phil Collins has been opened up.

a happy note in the mail.

My former landlord = a dick.

The story is long and makes me grumpy to retell, but it looks like I'm gonna pull out the win on this one.


The second to last chapter of this overlong story looks like this:

I got a request for payment today in the mail. She's taking my whole deposit and want $300 bucks on top of that.

But, I've got the receipts for the stuff she threw away and lied and lied and lied about. ($220)
I believe I have the receipt for cleaning the air conditioner on the way in, to make her claim on cleaning it on the way out totally unreasonable ($50)
And the Toshima Tax office has pretty solid evidence that the cleaning company threw out government mail (prison = checkmate).

I believe that there is also at least one more false charge in that bill ($80), on top of the totally trumped up story that I put all the marks in the floor. If I had been more careful on the way in and taken some pictures, I'd be able to shoot that one down in an instant.


Just to make sure that there's no confusion, I think I'm going to issue my landlord a
bill for the missing stuff, including the day I had to take off to go to the tax office because my government mail had been thrown out.
Anyway, a win for the good guys... or at least "my team".

taking a break from igoogle.

So, they've got all these neat new features for igoogle... if you don't mind giving up a third of your page to a navigation system that adds nothing. I do mind.

I'm gonna spend some time looking at alternatives, but my hopes aren't high. I expect in the end that I'll have to put up with google's igoogle usability downgrade just because the next best thing is still lightyears behind.

One other thought on the matter. With a less usable iGoogle, Gmail is no longer as valuable to me. you can get your gmail via pop, right? Which is to say that "the cloud" looks a lot less appealing to me all of a sudden. If I can't rely on my information and interfaces being stored remotely, I'd much rather have them on my side.

Just so we're clear...

I appreciate order. But I keep a messy house most of the time... doesn't bother me.

My coworkers are for the most part meticulously neat, because they are Japanese. And their idea of a logical structure makes wonder if there wasn't peyote in the water supply they grew up with.

It's amazing the questions that don't get asked.

So, am I complaining about my job on my blog? Perhaps.

perhaps

who is it you think you're talking to?

I cherish advice from people who are better at things than I am.

Less so from people who aren't.

Not at all from people who haven't even got an idea what I'm up to.


That's why I really resent lessons on how to live from older folks... especially those whose lessons include "you can't just have fun all the time".

coldcoldcold

So this guy, lets call him my coworker and fellow translator, calls in sick to his job. The boss makes a show of his missing a day at a meeting of the whole company. This being Japan, he is advised that he should go an apologize. Knowing how little rocking the boat pays here, he goes and apologizes... and is told that apologies aren't enough and that he was sick because of what he was doing on the weekend.

Man, you've got to be kidding.

I've been told that I need to take better care of myself too. For the record,

I drink about once a month, and usually limit it to 2 or 3 drinks. I'd estimate that to be about 1/10 of what my average male coworker drinks.

I don't smoke. again different from most of my coworkers

I visit a gym regularly. I know of 2 coworkers that do, in a company of 70 people.

I sleep 6-8 hours a day on average.

I have low blood pressure.

Hell, I have regular, well-formed bowel movements.

I really hope I don't get confronted in a similar way by the boss any time soon. Because asking "In what way specifically does any person here take better care of themselves than I do?" is not going to endear me to him.

IMG_9125

IMG_9125, originally uploaded by ZiggyB.

SVGL. At a certain period in my life, this was everything.

BBC: "people who are good at stuff are gay"

I took this test.

And it tells me that my brain is gender neutral. I scored horribly low on the empathizing scale (a puportedly masculine thing), and showed a preference for female faces (also masculine).

But! I did pretty well on all the ability tests, and half of them are supposed to be men's forte, half women's. Evidently being skilled with words, and being good at "spot the difference" puzzles gets you labeled a chick(-like thinker), regardless of how unempathetic you are.

also, my ring finger seems to be unmasculine in length...

So here's my plan. I'm going to start failing to notice changes in the world around me, I start to not writng very goodly, and get my ring finger removed. That'll drive the ladies up a tree... of LUST!
Also, it can never hurt to be less empathetic. (Your problems are your fault! and you smell)

10 things of 2008

These are more for me than you, dear reader.

1: Run like hell:
I'm shooting for a 10k time of 40:00, a mile time of 5:10, and I hope to just plain run the distance of a marathon without stopping.
2: Push/Pull weight:
I kind of accomplished my goal of bench pressing my own body weight ten times, this year, I'm gonna shoot for 90kg x10. And 10 pull-ups.
3: Write right:
Pass pre level 2 of the Kanji Kentei.
4: I like tests:
I haven't yet decided whether to shoot for a high score on the JTest or the Japanese Business Tests. Will change this when I have decided.
5: Search for Truth, in wine:
Yeah, I can't stand wine. I managed to learn to drink beer and coffee in the last year, now to slay the last of those demons.
6: Reading books, like on paper (english version)
I'm too old to read as little as I do. I'm working on a list of 10 english language books to read this year. So far, I have: Mason Dixon and Against the Day from Pynchon; The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money from Keynes; Demons and Dogs; The Odysee and the Illiad; Ulysees from Joyce; a book on japanese laws I happen to own, entitled "Japanese Law"; and three additional books: one major work of a living philosopher, one more serious book on Japan, and one self improvement/management book of reasonable repute.
7: Reading books, like on paper (Japanese version)
This is probably my the gap in my studies thus far. I've chosen three of the books already, Tsugaru from Dazai, Kokka no Hinkaku (from that math prof guy), and something something Nearly Transparent Blue from Murakami Ryu. For the remainder, I've chosen what kind of stuff to read moreso than what specific books to read: 1 more by dazai, 1 by murakami haruki, 2 by mishima, a non-fiction book on the economic stratification of japan, something with a bunch of slang, and something dirty.
8,9,10: workmoneyfun
The last three relate to private stuff.

dear god

dear god I'm exhausted.

year of the drowned rat.

Hi. It's 2008 here, and pretty much everywhere else now too.

I made an arbitrary run down of things from two007 in the last entry, so I figure I should make an arbitrary run up of 2008 here.

I turn 29 in April, so I can spend 8 months of 2008 wondering what happened to my 20's... something I've been doing as long as I can remember. It also means it just about the last chance to get my books in order before I'm just plain old (30).

So what books are there to get in order? Well,
1. learn to speak the damned language of the country I live in.
I've spent the last half year saving a little too aggressively for my own good. I finally got it through my thick thick skull that busting my ass at saving and wearing my clothes until I'm embarrassed by them is not the most effective way to ensure my future. No amount of investing in a stock market I still don't understand too well is going to make me filthy unbearably rich.
"Investing in myself" as trite as it sounds, has an enormous upside. If I can boost my Japanese language ability another couple of notches, a lot of things change. My job gets easier, and I can begin making myself much more useful. Life outside work, including the social aspect gets that much easier too. And most importantly, it puts me in much better stead for whatever's coming down the pipe over the next 40+ years in this country.
I'm setting aside a whole mess of money to study this year.

2. be a man. on my terms.
I may have made a blog entry to this effect, but I really resent that women are allowed to blithely announce what becomes and doesn't become a man. However, I do have my own ideas about what a "man" is, does, can do.
I'm pretty good about most of the things on my list. There is however on big nasty omission from that list. I'm horrible at even the most mundane encounters with people, personally or professionally. Being conscious of the fact doesn't help. I'm not sure how to explain it so that my solution makes the least bit of sense, but:
I'm gonna go into the lion's den, and learn to go toe to toe with people in the literal and figurative sense at a boxing gym.

3. be a rat (or a pig, or a dog). on my terms.
Everyone hates a nice guy. EVERYONE.
So rather than failing at being nice all the time, I'm going to succeed at being nice sometimes, and a right selfish prick at other times. I'm gonna presume that other people know what they're getting into, and look out for number one. I'm gonna be 50% more of an asshole, and forgive myself 90% more.
However, I'm not so callous as to have a concrete plan for becoming an asshole. (Step 1: push over an old lady)

4. stick to the program.
Last year, I made a list of several goals, and managed to accomplish just about all of them. There were many more that weren't on the public list. Some of those got accomplished, some not. Enough were accomplsished, and the benefit of those goals was good enough that I'm gonna make another list. In the next entry.

5. Almost never write in my blog.
Just like anyone else who has something worth doing with their time, I don't plan on writing here very often.