Entries this day: AM State_of_My_Life_Address

AM

8:26am JST Sunday 12 September 2004

*just* made the train today; I was up late last night going through my handspring visor's memory, removing lots of stuff that had been designed as steps to do to get me to Japan. Oh, and jobs to look for when I was jobless in Houston. I removed all of those; I'm in Japan and I don't need a job in Houston.

This morning I bought 11 tickets for the price of 10 that will get me to Yokohama from Motosumiyoshi. And back. Woah; those will be good for a while, since I only go 2 times per week. I think they're overkill to get me to Shibuya.

Yesterday (I just remembered this while I was considering writing, "I think it's time for a State of My Life Address," and then how it would look with that text and then the next text line would be the same, but in H1 font), I was taken by a couple on a train. Taken by the heart. They had an infant between them, and he was blissfully sucking his thumb, flopped over on his dad's lap, and patting/pawing his mom's arm (like a kitten nursing). He woke himself up from this state and (oops I gotta get the train soon) was blissfully flopping around between them, with full attention from both parents.

We arrived at Yokohama, or were arriving at Yokohama when the mom had to get up, carrying the baby. As the train's acceleration shifted non-uniformly, she lost her balance toward me, and certainly could have recovered, but with her precious cargo, I thought it would be okay to help insure she was okay. I put my hand up and kind blocked her shoulder, giving her some support, and she regained balance easily. (It was a simple gesture and I offer this support routinely to people who are tipping toward me on the train. Usually they recover before contact is made, and usually (therefore) they never know I have offered such support, especially since it happens most of the time to peole who are tipping backwards as opposed to forwards, for people more readily recover from forward-tilting moments than backward-tilting moments.) After the train fully stopped (a few seconds later) she said, "thank you for helping me."

"No problem."

And bang; I was gone out the door, wondering if it would have been useful to say something else, quickly discounting any variants of "take care (of yourself/your baby)" and settled upon a variant of "thank you for taking care of your baby." So I sent her a mental postcard in e-mail (ether-mail).

8:42am

I think it's time for a State of My Life Address.

oops, gotta get the next train.

State of My Life Address

6:06pm JST Sunday 12 September 2004

State of My Life Address

1. I'm doing computer work for Jen's uncle, OM(!) instead of working at Gaba on weekends. The work is easier, the dress code is more relaxed, the pay is higher and the hours are shorter. Awright.

   (!) don't tell him that OM stands for Orange Man

2. I have made great progress in a relatively short time (by just getting off my mental duff and doing it) on preparing for my bike tour. It seems that the following things may be true:

   1. While in China, I can't easily legally broadcast my location; I need a radio permit, and to get that I must be a resident for a year and be a member of a club, etc. So I will probably get a Geko 301 (includes compass and barometric altimeter (I may not use/care about the altimeter, but it could be cool.)) GPS, and upload my coordinates that way.
   2. There is a complicated way to use cell phones to do it, but I don't understand the way well enough to implement it.
   3. I can just store my tracklog and upload it once I get to an internet access point. To do that, though, I still need to figure out how to interface my Mac or my Handspring to the GPS to get the data out.

3. I own the domain chatbotchats.com, but I haven't put any content there yet. I'm a little bit stagnant on it because it is still taking a while for the domain to be ssh enabled. I don't want to use it unless I have shell access. Come on stupid nomonthlyfees.com. Don't suck, please.

4. I also own thunderrabbit.com, but I haven't really added any content there recently. I don't know if I'll keep on keeping it past the byebye date. It could be interesting though to write in a different style about my bicycle tour, like in a child-story style and post those entries on thunderrabbit.com

5. I also own robnugen.com, where this post is intended to go.

6. I write in my journal basically every day, multiple times a day.

7. I live in Motosumiyoshi in Millenium House, basically in Tokyo, Japan. Shoko and Jen have been my primary buds who also live there.

8. Hitomi has been my girlfriend for a while.

9. I've climbed Mt Fuji, and I've considered riding my bike to fifth station and then hiking the rest of the way to the top. That could be a cool thing to do next year.

10. My basic plan that I've been developing (2 weeks ago I didn't even know realtime tracking was rather common online) my plan to be realtime tracked during my trip around China. Turns out doing it in China would be hard due to licensing restrictions. It's super common in the US and in Europe, though. I may hook it up once I arrive there. I don't know about Japan.

11. So my plan is basically to buy a bike, buy GPS equipment (Garmin's Geko 301 is what I've been looking at with interest), practice riding on longer and longer rides from Tokyo, and then in March heading off for a rather long ride to Hokkaido and back. Then I can go to Kyushu and back or go to Kyushu and beyond, rocking out to Korea and then south along East China and then southeast Asia and then north along West China and then into Russia or Mongolia and then Eastern Europe and Western Europe. And then across the US (with a big big stop in Virgina and West Virginia to see my family) and then Texas.

12. I'm working at Gaba 3 days during the week (月火金), and at OM on weekends. OM is easier and fewer hours and mo money.

13. I don't know how to scuba dive.

14. I haven't been north of Nikko in Japan. Haven't been south of Hiroshima.

15. Haven't been out of Japan since I arrived 19ish months ago.

16. In two weeks I'll teach Masashi's last lesson with me in Japan. He's taking the opportunity to work in the US for two years starting next month. (Actually the lesson starts in 2 weeks and 45 minutes)