Tim’s Ramblings

Just an update after my last post.

Everything went fine afterwards and I am now in Japan. The flight took far far longer than usual. 14 hours. And this time I was more north than ever before. Last trip was the first time we really flew over Alaska in a flight I was on. This trip, not only did we fly over Alaska but we were probably just a 100 miles or so shy of the North Pole. We actually took off from Newark going East a bit, then once past Quebec we turned West a bit but continued to go North until we were far above Canada.

Anyway, this trip we are staying in a town about 20 minutes away from Kawasaki where I usually stay. And the training center where I will be translating technical training is another 30 minute train ride away plus a 10 minute walk. Fun….

But yeah. All is well. It’s past 9 and I am about to pass out…but it’s a good thing since I have to get up at 6 anyway and be out the door by 7.

Gonna be a busy week….a busy 2 weeks for sure.

Wish me luck!

Well…ok. The subject is a bit melodramatic. I’m fine. I’m sitting in the lounge in Newark along with the coworker who is going to be doing API training which I will be translating.

However, around 4:30am, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be at the airport let alone going to Japan and was rapidly trying to figure out how I was going to give instructions to my coworker who has never ever been to Japan, how to get to the hotel he’s staying in by taking 3 different trains….

The taxi came to pick me up at 4:15am. It was steadily snowing all night but only about an inch on the ground. However, since the roads weren’t salted at all it was a bit slick. Nothing major though. She decided to take the highway since it would be in better condition. Alas…it was pretty spotty. But again, no big deal.

Then, around the exit we were going to get off of, we hit a patch of black ice. Well…not really BLACK ice. Just white ice. Ice with snow on top. Needless to say, the taxi went into a skid. We weren’t going very fast but fast enough that, while we were doing a 180, we traveled quite a bit… In the end, we slammed into the median back first and then bounced off and finished with another 180 effectively coming to a stop facing forward. It was a pretty strong jolt but thankfully we saw it coming and I braced for it and so, no injuries. Of course the cabbie was pretty freaked but once she settled down, she called dispatch and proceeded to get off the highway.

A car was going to come to get us but then we realized, much to MY horror…the trunk was jammed. Due to the impact, it was pretty much jammed shut. Great. My luggage is in there. Both of them. Contains my clothes, my suits, everything except my laptop. Kinda need that….

So she called dispatch again and we headed to the garage. There, we got a crowbar and tried to break open the trunk. Actually, as a passenger, I did not participate since the last thing I needed was the cab company to sue ME for breaking their car… The people there had no luck until the other cabbie came. He seemed more experienced in this and in about 30 seconds, managed to break open the trunk (while also effectively destroying the bumper that he was using as leverage). We got the luggage. I filled out a form saying no one was injured and it was purely an accident due to weather. And managed to make it to the airport just in the nick of time.

Hopefully my luggage made it on the plane. Hopefully.

Oddly, I was pretty calm throughout the entire ordeal. Even after impact, I was the first one to ask if she was ok and just kind of calmed the situation down. Even now it seems a bit surreal that all of this happened. Of course this might all be due to the fact that even now I’m half asleep due to getting up at 3:30am….

Anyway, I’m hoping that this one big problem will make up for any other possible small problems and from here all the way to the hotel things will be issue free. So far so good (though the restaurant at the airport took 40 minutes to bring our frickin’ OMLET).

Wish me luck!! (^_^)

This is just a link to a hillarious post by Mike Lynch, a cartoonist, on his blog about one of those kids books from 1961 that shows little Gordon’s first airplane flight.

Unintentionally funny though I THINK I may have had this book when I was a child….

I present to you (care of Mike Lynch) - Gordon’s Jet Flight!

Mike Lynch Cartoons

What do they have to do with each other? Absolutely nothing.

First off, once again, I am back at the NW Lounge in Narita. I like this place. The food is really good and the place is quiet and clean. Much better than the older lounge on the other side of the terminal.

I’ll be coming home on Saturday night and I will be in the US until Friday when I fly out again this time for 2 weeks. Ugh. Trust me. I don’t like to do it but I did so what can I do?

On a different note, I don’t really know how he did it but the new guy here in Japan managed to get us seats at the current sumo tournament going on in Tokyo. Not just any seats but the box seats by the ring! They are typically not for sale to the general public! Lucky me :)

So, here is a kick ass shot of the end of the final match between the current champion, Asashoryu, flipping over a considerably bigger opponent, Miyabiyama. However, Asashoryu is still one win behind the #2 guy Hakuho. Oh the drama.

This is with my point and click and with zoom and from near the back of the reserve seats with low light… but still, came out pretty good huh? :)

Now to get on my flight. Fun times…fun times…

Well, it’s 7:30am on Thursday here in Japan. Tokyo got their first ever snowfall late last night (a few weeks late from the average) and it’s a chilly chilly day of about a high of 7 degrees C (44.6F - For Cleveland? Warm. For Tokyo? Cold…). And for any of you that’s going to call me a wuss for saying 7C is cold, keep in mind. We have to walk everywhere. Hotel to the office. Hotel to train to another train to office. Etc… So yeah…it’s a bit chilly. And in the city, for any of you that live or work downtown may know, you get pretty strong winds down certain streets that are bordered by highrises. So yeah. Chilly.

Anyway, not much to report really. The week has been just work and that’s about it. Monday I went to my parent’s to pick up my stuff since it was a holiday in Japan. The 2 people here with me went to Kamakura with a new employee of ours who lives here in Tokyo and did some sight seeing themselves. Since the next time I come back (next Friday…ugh….) I will be with a coworker that has never been here to teach a training class, can’t go to my parent’s place so I had to pick up my underwear and stuff that I usually leave there. Gonna be a heavy load going home….

Tuesday was meetings all day. Lots of translation. LOTS. Then yesterday we had meetings in the morning with…you guessed it…LOTS of translation. And in the afternoon we had a big seminar. I have to say at this juncture that I hate hate HAAAAAAATE being an on the spot secretary. Any change of schedule, any new info, anything that has to do with the people here with me comes through me. I’m not only the translator, the director of international product development, tour guide, and consierge but I am also a secretary/executive assistant/information desk/etc… Ugh. I have a hard enough time arranging my OWN schedule (I have booked so many meetings at the same time even when using Outlook it’s ridiculous…) let alone everyone elses.

Oh well. I hate to complain so I will stop here. Ultimately it’s a role that i have to fill since no one else can do it and frankly, IF someone else was doing it or someone in the US was doing it, I would worry even more… Sad? Yes…

So anyway, yesterday afternoon was a big seminar on ECM and our CTO was the guest speaker and, you guessed it, I was the translator. One thing kind of peeved me though. I am not JUST a translator but since this is Japan and since he is the CTO, I am basically tossed aside as “the dude that translates his english”. So needless to say, when we meet afterwards and I whip out my business card, many people are surprised. Oh well…

The talk was an hour and a half. That is a LONG time to have total focus on every single word he says and translate on the spot in front of about 100 people. Thankfully I am used to him and I am at least somewhat familiar with his presentation so it went well. However he does ad lib a lot and such so I have to keep up. And many times, he will talk for up to 2 minutes or more at a time so I have to concentrate on what he is saying and also, in my mind, build a virtual “tree” of his points so when I, then, start the translation, I don’t lose anything he said.

This is the difference between me and a real translator. Real time translators will focus on the points get the thoughts across whle the other continues to talk. Translators for presentations typically ask for a script or the power points ahead of time and ask you to stick with the script as they are prepared ahead of time. Other translators will tell you to not talk for more than a sentence at a time so they can do a direct one to one translation.

Me? I will hear what they say, then when I translate, I will not do a direct one to one. They will know what he said. They will get the point. But I may change the order or sometimes translate the analogy but then explain it so they understand. I don’t add anything that the person didn’t say. But I may expand on it because I know what they know and what they don’t….

It works. And if I need to do a direct one to one I can. I’ve done that when our CEO is meeting with our partner’s CEO and such where a one to one translation is expected and required. But for a presentation? I have to be animated. I have to keep the majority of the audience from falling asleep (it’s such a dry subject, you’re bound to have about a 2% nap rate…). Japanese presentation style is very to the point and formal. Screw that. Both myself and my CTO and everyone else from the US is trained on the US style of presenting. If he gets excited, I get excited. If he raises his voice on an important topic, so do I.

But anyway, due to all of this, and also the fact that there was an hour and 15 minute discussion panel at the end where I HAD to do real time simultaneous translation of what the people on the panel were saying since…well…we were on the panel too, I was dead. DEAD. Alas, there was a dinner afterwards so had to work that too and then a nice long (eh…about 40 min. door to door with 3 transfers) train ride back. Then I worked for a while before going to bed.

Woo.

Ok…it’s 7:52. Hm…this post devolved into a “transation explanation”… Sorry… Anyway, time to take a shower, get in my suit, go get breakfast, then face the day. Today I actually have a meeting in downtown Tokyo at 8pm. Yes…EIGHT PM!! So it’s going to be an even longer day… Woooooohoo…

Something I kinda needed. I know I know, it’s only been a few days since the New Year and such but I don’t know…been a bit tired lately. Probably doesn’t help that, by January 2nd, I already knew what the year had in store for me and it’s a lot… Lots of traveling, lots of things to plan and do and work on. And already more stuff has been added to the original list. Some people might like knowing kind of what’s in store in their life, even if it’s work. But at the same time, there are some times when I miss the unpredictable. Not that I won’t have enough unpredictable stuff that will happen this year too. Oh well…I guess I get to experience both in extremes! Woo.

So, true to this blog’s name, this will basically be a rambling of random stuff.

Yesterday, while on the plane, I was reading the latest Terry Pratchett book and started to think about the latest rise in popularity of e-books. Amazon released their own reader while Sony has one as well. Both lighter than a paper back. Both easy on the eyes. And they will definitely not take up as much space or weight as a real book, especially when it’s in hardcover (like the book I have now). Also, since I tend to finish reading the book either on the plane ride over or while here, on the way back home it’s just dead weight.

But then I started to think about what it’ll be like to read an e-book. There’s something to be said about the feeling of a BOOK in your hands. The feel of the paper. The physical aspect, I think, is just as important as the content. I LIKE knowing how many actual pages I have until the end of the chapter. Or even how many pages I have left in the book. I like knowing that I am nearing the end. Sometimes it works out. Other times, I get dismayed that the end of the book is only a few pages more and nothing is resolved (aka Spook Country by William Gibson…for godsakes…). Also, some books have bigger fonts. Some have smaller. I like that. And in cases like the current book by Pratchett, Making Money, at the beginning of each chapter is a small little graphic and some fancy font work. Necessary? No. But I like the touch and it gives the book more character. Something I don’t think these readers can do.

Maybe I’ll give it a shot. They are becoming more affordable at under $300 and god knows it’ll make my life easier as my luggage is already pretty damn heavy as it is. But yeah…we’ll see. What they SHOULD do is what I also think the music industry should do too. When you buy the book, allow me to pay a little bit extra, maybe $3 or so, and give me the thing electronically too! That way I have the book for my bookshelf and when I’m at home and the e-book for my reader for when I travel. That would be awesome. At least with CD’s I can toss them onto my mp3 player myself but you just can’t do it with books you know? I can see why you can’t do this with audio books…costs too much to record. But come on. Doing it this way for e-books would be great!!

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Moving on, today was “go buy stuff” day again. Went to Akihabara to stock up on some comic books and CD’s. First off, I picked up some stuff for people at work who asked for stuff. Then moved on to a giant manga store to pick up the first 4 volumes of the manga Detroit Metal City. It’s funny. It’s well written. I love it :)

Detroit Metal City is a story about a kid who came out to Tokyo to go to college. He plays guitar and one day hoped to form a band to play Swedish pop music. Somehow though…5 years after he came out to Tokyo…he now finds himself in a death metal band named Detroit Metal City, or DMC for short, as the lead singer named Krauser II singing songs about killing/maiming/raping people and other death metal stuff. No one knows it’s him because he’s in full make up but soon his calm normal life outside of DMC starts to fall apart as the band starts to make it big time. Surrounding him making his life hell is the band’s manager who is a drug addicted alcoholic crazy woman that wants him to live like his alter ego to further the band’s cause, the bassist who, with his A-type personality, bullys him into doing things he doesn’t want to do, and the drummer who in real life is big time geek and has no social skills.

Bit time parody of the death metal world. Everything from fans of the band who take things waaaaay too seriously to trying to hide his on stage persona from the girl he likes who only likes more softer music like pop and folk.

The manga is getting quite popular in Japan since it came out in 2006 and has gotten some people to even do some cosplay!

Needless to say, the one on the cover and to the left in the photograph is the lead. Not sure if it’ll ever make it to the US or not but, yeah, it’s good.

Oh, and also picked up 2 volumes of a Gundam parody manga. Funny stuff..funny funny stuff.

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I love how some musical styles keep coming back and refuses to die. Thankfully disco is not one of them…though I will admit…I always thought the disco version of Beethoven’s 5th was catchy (…did I just admit this???). Especially the style of music that, to this day, I still enjoy. Metal. But not hair metal. No no no. I’m talking about Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metalica, Megadeth, Helloween, and such. First off, these bands themselves refuses to die and I never ever thought that, as a 30 year old, I would have gone to see Iron Maiden live and enjoy it immensely.

But now, newer bands have picked up where they left off. Forget the recent trend where metal means machine gun drumming and growling vocals and no guitar solo. It’s back to the good old days with double guitars and time changes and melodies and vocals that you can understand.

I think I may have mentioned the band Hammerfall before here. And recently the name Dragonforce kept popping up but I never got around to picking up their stuff. First off…the name…I mean…come on. It sounds like a name some 13 year old Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master gives to a mystical sword that the group is questing for or something (and let the record show that, as a D&D player I think it’s a kick ass name). Then there is the name of the songs such as “Invocation of Apocalyptic Evil”, “Heart of a Dragon”, “Through the Fire and Flames”, and my favorite “Revolution Deathsquad”. So yeah…I never took them seriously.

Then I finally heard one of their songs, the above mentioned “Through the Fire and Flames”, when it was choses as the ending song for the Playstation 3 game, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. A bit too much of the machine gun drumming but the song was very good. Fast. Melodic. And some kick ass guitar solos that goes on and on and on. Incredibly difficult to play in Guitar Hero and considered one of the hardest to do (for good reason). But I liked it.

Then the move happened and this and that so I never got around to picking up the album again. So today, after shopping, I stopped by Tower Records and finally picked up two CD’s here Valley of the Damned and Inhuman Rampage.

from http://www.dragonforce.com/main.html

Awesome. I mean look at the cover for Valley of the Damned. Chariots! They have chariots and a valkyrie on the cover! Oh, and they also include video game sounds and such and some of the themes are intentionally very similar to some video game soundtracks. They know what we like (^_^) Apparently they call their music “Extreme Power Metal”. Gotta love that.

Oh, it also helps that they are with Sactuary Records which is a label started by Rod Smallwood and Andy Taylor who, for anyone who is an Iron Maiden fan will know (anyone?? anyone????) were the managers of Iron Maiden since the beginning and the name of the label is from Iron Maiden’s song Sanctuary from their debut album. So yeah…it at least made me go “huh…well then I will definitely give them a try” after seeing it on the back of the CD.

I have to admit…there’s a version of myself deep in my mind that sometimes thinks “I’m 32…what the hell am I doing listening to songs like this…for godsakes…” especially since this is sometimes called “epic metal” due to the style and themes of the songs (warriors, dragons, quests, etc…)…I mean, Hammerfall has a song titled “Templars of Steel”… But honestly? Screw it. I like it :) I only HOPE that at the age of 70, I will still be able to rock out to Iron Maiden’s The Trooper and sing every word without shame (^_^)

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Tomorrow I’m off to my parents (Monday is a holiday here in Japan) to pick up some of my clothes and my laptop bag and such and also deliver their X-mas present from my sister. Fun.

Hope you all are having/had a good weekend!

For anyone who thinks I live the glamorous life of a traveller, here was my 13+ hour flight from Newark.

1. Screaming and crying and generally fussy baby right behind me who basically either screamed or cried once an hour or more.

2. Screaming and crying and generally fussy baby 2 rows diagonally behind me who basically either screamed or cried once an hour or more.

3. Abnormally gassy older woman across the aisle from me who enjoyed standing facing her seat…which meant her butt was pointed directly at my head. Did I mention she was gassy???……….

4. Gassy lady stink mixed with the nasty odor of airline food.

5. Once again, a flight attendant who’s hip width is far wider than the aisle…and enjoyed whacking me in the head as she walks by…over and over again…

The only good thing was the seat next to me was empty. That was nice.

Aaaaaanyway, only here for a week. Then I come back for a week and leave again for 2. Woooo. Tired but I just had a quick dinner and I’m going to watch this TV show to try to stay awake until at least 9.

(-_-)

On G4 they are doing some documentary about Japan and sex…

Some lady confidently claims, “In Japan, a man can have sex with a woman outside of marriage as long as he pays with money and not love.”

Mmmhmm.

Just like all Americans are crazy religious nuts right?

…and I wonder why I sometimes hear people make these wild claims about Japan… Great…

Don’t get me wrong…we have our seedy side too. But hell…doesn’t every country?

Yup. Still around.

The move to my new townhouse last Friday went well. Sister’s fiancee D helped me out. I rented a moving truck and we proceeded to start moving. Beforehand I packed up my books and DVD’s and cleared out the big desk and such but my apartment was still a huuuuuge mess.

I won’t get into details but we eventually packed up the couch, desk, bookshelf, bed, dresser, entertainment set, DVD’s, crap from the desk, computer, suit cases, and other stuff. It filled up a good amount of the truck. Basically it took all day… Stated at 10am. We drove to the townhouse around 2:30. Ate a late lunch. Then started to unpack. Finished that around 4:30. Went to my sister’s to pick her up after she got back from work, took her Explorer, returned the truck, moved the plasma TV, then the 3 of us and her new dog hanged out at the new townhouse for a while and I bought them dinner.

But man…it just took forever…

Saturday my sister and I went shopping for stuff at Target and such. Man…money just flies out of you when you get a new place huh? For godsakes. Close to $300 worth of stuff that you can’t really see… Stuff like garbage can, lamp, hand towels, bathroom mats, just simple stuff like that can add up even if you’re going for the cheap stuff. Eeeesh.

We also went looking for furniture but didn’t buy anything yet. I realized I know next to NOTHING about furnishing a house… I think my sister was getting a bit frustrated when she asked me what I wanted my “theme” to be and while she was talking about style and wood and color, I was thinking “…theme? Huh? Like a carnival or Noah’s Ark or something??”. Yeah… When she asked what kind of wood I liked my answer was “…um…a real one?”

Yeah…

Anyway, still on the lookout for a good living room set (coffee table and 2 end tables) and a nice dining room set (basically just a dinner table and 4 to 6 chairs). Bedroom set and other stuff like that can come later. Just those are going to hit the $1000+ range anyway even at a place like Value City Furniture.

I still need to move the kitchen, the closets, the art on the walls, random other stuff. My apartment looks like a bomb went off of it right now since it’s just a big big big mess. I will be filling up more dumpsters I think. Well, it’s more than “I think”. It’s more of an “I know”….

The problem is, I’m starting to get comfortable here. Setting in. So I’m losing serious motivation to finish moving. Sitting here going “hmmm…if the apartment burns down…will I miss anything?” But of course I have to move out so I will. Tomorrow, after going to the West Side Market with A, I will go back to Lakewood and do more packing and then go to the White Elephant party in the evening since that’s in Lakewood anyway.

I also now have cable and internet. Cable is not complete… Because of X-mas season and everyone buying HD TV’s, Time Warner “ran out” of HD cable boxes and also HD DVR’s. For godsakes… So right now all I have is a basic digital cable box. Oh well… They are supposed to get more but apparently I am like 1 out of over 60 people waiting for HD DVR’s. *sigh*… It’s like no one was ready for the big X-mas season. Microsoft has acknowledged that they were not ready for the huge influx of users on X-box Live (I can’t log in myself), Playstation Network is slow too. Oh well.

I also bought and setup 2 cheap but good looking DVD shelves. Each holds 250 DVD’s. I filled up one with just movies and another with anime… I’m also missing a few… I’m missing Ah My Goddess disk 5 and also the original Vampire Hunter D… Did I lend these to anyone?

Well, off to do more laundry. I think that’s the thing I love most about my new place. My own washer and dryer!!! I no longer have to go to the laundry service OR use the apartment machines that was 4 flights down and across the hall and almost always had a wait. So…so…nice!

Once everything is in place I’ll post pictures :)

I hope you all are having a good start to the New Year!

Just wanted to pop in here quickly and wish everyone a very happy New Year!!

あけましておめでとうおざいます！！！

(^_^)