September 2007
F-the Police
Sun, 2007-09-30 01:14 | by Erin
Today on the way to work the police stopped me. My crime WWW. Walking while white.
As I walked toward the station a small Japanese man politely stepped in front of me and said "Excuse me.." and reached for my hand with his while with his other hand he produced a badge. If it wasn't for the badge I would have just kept walking. I knew what he wanted and as he spoke I dug into my pocket and got out my wallet and fumbled while attempting to produce my gajin torokosho. Ya my alien registration card. It took about 10 minutes for him to copy my information down and ask a series of questions, that by the third one he realized he could ask in Japanese and I would still be able to answers in Japanese no less.
I tried hard not to look at him. I did not want him to see the pure outrage in my eyes. I am no saint, but I still go with the idea of innocent until proven guilty, and the police do not have the right to stop you and ask for ID with out a reason.
Any ways I have Japanese Lesson homework to work on.
E./
Stress
Fri, 2007-09-28 11:46 | by Erin
Some people I know have been complaining that they are under alot of stress. Co-workers my wife and others. I am wondering if it is just cause they are all associtated with me or it is just a stressful time of the year for them?
Either way I think that since most of them are Japanese I was wondering what kinda stress they could feel, cause I think I have a lock on stress and still seem to handle it pretty well.
I live in Japan. People here speak/read/write Japanese. They think like Japanese and they are Japanese.
I am not.
I only understand 1/3 of what people are saying. I can read very little and write even less. I have stress. I can not preform my job as good as I like because of these things and that causes me more stress.
Outside of work, I can not depend on family to full fill my simplest requests in a timely manner if at all. My life seems constantly more fucked up then anyone I know because, "if I want something done I have to do it myself". I have no team, no one on my side to help me. More stress.... constant stress....
I know a lot of people in Japan with similar situations to mine, and they feel it too, but do not spend all day complaining about it. Stress is a part of life, if you can not deal with the stress in your life then do something to change it so you can live a bit more STRESS FREE!
Death of the old... servers.
Thu, 2007-09-27 10:43 | by Erin
I have written in the past about the set of old old servers that I maintain. It is not always easy to keep things that went out of warranty 6 years ago up and running. This weekend we had something called a "teidenn" basically they turned off the power to the entire building to preform some maintenance on the power system of the building.
When the power gets turned off, so do all the servers. So from about 7 am a co-worker and I began powering off servers. This was the easy part. We went our seperate ways and waited for the Building manager to call us back and say the power was back on.
When he did that is when the fun began. We arrived and there were still 2 guys from the power firm working on 1 plug in our building. I made myself busy by switching on machines and logging into the console server and trying to get them to start. The list of problems evolved from there beginning with the fact that I had left the root password list at the office. With most of the machines needing disc maintenance and/or fsck. It was not a good start.
After the acquisition of the passwords most things rolled along nicely with a few exceptions, One server that held a few servers specialized functions would not start, completely dead. To complicate matters further there was no "easy" replacement for that server and I was stuck as for what to do with it. Another server was extremely fickle and kept pushing an impossible amount of errors to the terminal. A few break commands and a quick re-mount of the /usr slice and it was back in action.
All in all we were there till about 8 pm and when I left there was still one server down. I skipped rugby practice and went to the "Data Center" and tried my best to get the server up and running up again to no avail. A whole day wasted for just one server. ERRRRRR I do not mind this is my job, but every year we say .... "dont worry we will be out of here by next year" and we never are. Next year I hope that we are right, but we probably wont be.
Bicycle BICYCLE
Thu, 2007-09-27 10:32 | by Erin
Bicycle BICYCLE!
So after 10 years of faithful service I am officially retiring my Gary Fisher Kai Tai. We had some good times but now it is time for a change. Both rims are bent beyond repair and the crank-arm is so rounded out that it makes a sickening sound with every peddle. The brakes still provide adequate stopping power, barely. I would like to fix it up and ride it for another 10 years, but that would cost more than a new bike. So for no thanks for all the memory's.
The Kai Tai's replacement will be this.
Specilized HRXT2 It is kind of a sport tourer bike and while I still crave getting out there and having a fun run down a hill or riding a groomed piece of single track some where I am pretty sure my days of racing are over. Too bad but the Specialized will see most of its duty in ferrying me and Eric back and forth to home and the station.
Special thanks to Katu-san for hooking me up with a sweet deal and taking care to get all of the little things straightened out, like putting the brakes on American style [right to back & left to front] getting my old peddles and Erics seat put on. If your looking for a good deal on a bike in Japan/Tokyo and want some one who can speak English, and wont screw you around stop by cycle works in Kichijoji and check him out.
Finally EXTRA SPECIAL thanks to my little sister Mary. She broke me off a good chunk of her inheritance from my mom that I know she could have used for something else. Thanks Mary.
The Kai Tai's replacement will be this.
Specilized HRXT2 It is kind of a sport tourer bike and while I still crave getting out there and having a fun run down a hill or riding a groomed piece of single track some where I am pretty sure my days of racing are over. Too bad but the Specialized will see most of its duty in ferrying me and Eric back and forth to home and the station.
Special thanks to Katu-san for hooking me up with a sweet deal and taking care to get all of the little things straightened out, like putting the brakes on American style [right to back & left to front] getting my old peddles and Erics seat put on. If your looking for a good deal on a bike in Japan/Tokyo and want some one who can speak English, and wont screw you around stop by cycle works in Kichijoji and check him out.
Finally EXTRA SPECIAL thanks to my little sister Mary. She broke me off a good chunk of her inheritance from my mom that I know she could have used for something else. Thanks Mary.
Winners and loosers
Wed, 2007-09-12 21:01 | by Erin
1st game of the year. (JAPAN) Tokyo Gaijin VS The Crusaders. (WIN)
I woke up in the morning and I just didn't feel right. I felt weak and constipated and just generally not in good health for a day of rugby. I did some last minute finishing touches to the fliers and then woke up Eric so he could watch some cartoons while I got our gear ready.
After calling and waking the team manager Joffa up we aranged a time to meet and Eric and I were off to print some more fliers. We went back to Gera Gera where Eric refused to sit down and refused to be quite but I got the rest of them printed and we headed out to meet Joffa.
After hooking up with Joffa his wife and Dave we got on the road, or the train so to speak and made our way to the meeting point. When we arrived at the station within a few minutes almost the whole team was there. It was awesome there was 15 guys at the station and when we got to the field there were another 5 at least. I started to feel a little better knowing I would not have to play a full game.
We warmed up and practiced a bit and to quote Muz I felt a bit more "switched on" then normal. Still far from what I needed to be but playing defense against my own team in line outs and scrums helped me realize what my job was gonna be when I was in. If I got in.
Practice finished up and I the starting line up was called out. I was not on it. I was a little bummed out not to be starting, because over the break I put a lot of work in for the team getting myself in shape, I ran about 10 times and I can feel my legs getting stronger. In addition to trying to improve my fitness, I have also been studying the game of rugby. Finally I have been working on the team site allot and been the pain in the ass that has gotten it up to date. I should have been carried around the rugby pitch by two of my team mates instead of having to run and get all sweaty.
Eric's 日本語 (Japanese) to English and Back again
Wed, 2007-09-12 20:42 | by Erin
So EVERY night I can muster up the strength I read to Eric one of three books.
Where the wild things are.
One fish. Two fish
or my least favorite ABCs with Mickey Mouse.
Since we all started living together again Eric's English has improved allot, but after reading these stories to him I constantly wondered how much does he really understand. Last night I found out.
100%
I was blown away when I asked him to read the story back to me....... in Japanese and he was able to do it with almost no hesitation at all.
When I read some parts from "Where the Wild Things Are". I get pretty into that and tend to be pretty animated about the whole thing.
Particularly "And when he came to the place where the wild things are the ROARED their terrible ROARS and GNASHED their terrible TEETH and ROOOLLLLEDD their terrible eyes and SHOWED!!! their terrible CLAAAAAAWWWWWSSSS!
Eric's reading was right on! Although I did not know all the words he uses I could tell by the tone and inflection of his voice what parts he was reading. It was truly a great moment in my life.