It's 2005. Now when people ask for my age I say 35.
My days old counter
still can't do predictive calculations; I have to make guesses to
figure out when people will be certain ages in the future.
I'm still living near Motosumiyoshi in (Tokyo) Japan.
Millenium House #20. Jen still lives there, but there has been some
turnover recently. Riki is gone; Jo is gone; Gus is gone.
Living in the building now: Jen, Roger, Katrina, Shoko, Jeff,
Colin, Dean, Richard, Jackie, Dave, Yuki, Ikumi, Aaron, me, and one
new guy who moved in between Dean and me.
I'm still working in the quintark industry on weekends and
working at Gaba three days a week. I have a few favorite students at
Gaba who have been coming consistently: Naotoshi, Makiko, Kozue,
Mari, Kyoko, Mieko and maybe others who have slipped my mind.
Just yesterday I told Kozue that I'll be leaving in March. She
seemed a bit shocked and said she would have no teacher after that
time. I was touched.
Hitomi and I have broken up. We had a problem during the
holidays and I used it as an opportunity to just say no. I offered
to be just friends with her, but that is difficult for me.
Right now we are in a bit of a fight I think because I fucked
up and tried to hide from Jen that Hitomi and I are meeting today.
Hitomi, I imagine, felt marginalized, and, I believe, is now angry
about it. I offered to talk about it tonight with her if she wants; I
know I errd.
I feel sad about it; this (work) is not a safe place to cry. I
think I'll go get some chocolate to change that.
5:28pm
(update)
All has been forgiven.
I've still got my PowerBook G4 with 30 gig hard drive (1.5 gigs
free) 512 megs ram, 14 inch screen (with dirty scrapes from the
keyboard) and a short-lasting battery and bent power supply connector.
I won't likely consider getting a new computer until I get resettled
somewhere next year.
On my computer, I've got 6 gigs of video taken by Jesse's video
camera when he, Takako and I went riding our bikes out at a park near
our neighborhood. Kawasaki Todoroki something something I think is
the name. I've been working on editing it into a movie of sorts, and
have converted some of the clips nearly into a something with a
plot.
I'm using Firefox as my primary web browser and gmail as my
primary email account. I've used 48megs used in gmail. Firefox is
pretty kick-ass in its interface. Gmail's interface kicks ass, too.
Since its inception in April 2004, it offers 1 gig of space at no
charge but to place email-targetted ads in the border of the page. I
rarely notice them.
All my journal entries are indexed automagically with the core
code that Fred wrote into different categories. These are currently
used: runes, dreams, excited, sleepy, nihongo, gateway_data (not
listed in the index). These are not really, but were important to me
in the past: ultimate (frisbee), YRUU, KTRU, skate.
This is a couple weeks after the monster earthquake-induced
tsunami smashed cities around the Bay of Bengal. I am greatly
planning to go to one or more of those cities starting on 26
March.
I have no pets, except Spot in Houston, who, as far as I know,
is fine.
I officially have no girlfriend, but Hitomi is still helping
me study on occasion, which means I am still choosing to deal with the
choice between sex or not. Argh.
I've been listening to Hemisynch CDs in the Gateway series from
The Monroe Institute. So far, I've been able to consistently find
Focus 10 (mind awake, body asleep) pretty quickly. A few times I have
felt an expanded awareness that he calls Focus 12, and sortakinda I
have felt hints of vibrational body-leaving feelings.
I haven't listened to any of the exercises past Wave III / Freedom
4: Five Questions, which I pretty much slept through. I zipped
through Wave II more quickly than Wave I.
I've found that doing exercises in the morning, soon after I've
woken up from a good sleep, results in the most consciously coherent
experiences.
Recently, I've been in touch with janette more than before
recently. We both definitely still miss each other. I believe that
if I just "give up and go back to the US now" that I won't feel
fulfilled or something. But there is definitely a big urge to do
that; to go back to that (near) unconditional love situation with
janette.
I'd also like to go back to Virginia and West Virginia for an
extended period. I love the energy of my family there.
At 2 week to 1 month intervals, I've been hanging out
(individually) with KG Miki and Satoko. I know them both from Nova.
KG Miki and I went out a lot last year, but didn't go out with Satoko
at all last year (due to her having moved to LA for the
year).
I've been in pretty close email contact with Fred. I talked
to Ma recently, and to dad, but overall recently, I've chatted more
with Ma than dad.
I wonder if I can use a different part of my brain to find
suitable mates. Or run a different filter. Instead of is-she-cute
filter, use the does-she-lighten-my-spirit filter or something more
awesomely worded than that.
I'm planning to go to Hokkaido with Hitomi in February. Today
(10 January), I came one inch away from telling her to cancel the trip
after we were sending pointless emails back and forth about watching a
fucking movie that we've both seen before. I just pinned down a time
(1pm) to meet Miki on Wednesday so I offered to meet Hitomi at 7pm
that day.
I've just been searching for ways to volunteer for the
tsunami. I've found only two so far:
i-to-i
Global Crossroads
And I found two notlong.com shortcuts that were already taken. As
I write this, I haven't seen them yet.
maps
videos
(4:05am JST Tuesday 11 January 2005: I've seen them
now)
Most recently I've read Bill Bryson's _A short history of
nearly everything_. Next I'll read Dan Brown's _The Da Vinci
Code_.
The quintark business is struggling. OM may have to shut down
operations while things are retooled.
The building across the street has been unveiled, but isn't
completely complete yet. It's no longer hidden behind the big canvas
sheets, though.
Jen reckons that it's ugly. I think one wall is boring (solid
white brick with a single small window per floor) and another face is
pretty cool; (doors and staircases angling down in a stack. The top
staircase is actually a slide. I'm going to slide down that slide.)
I haven't really seen the other two sides.
I'm getting overall sick of Japan. I'm ready to
leave.