Entries this day: Mornin Pre_work Work state_of_My_Life_Address

Mornin

1:26pm JST Tuesday 21 November 2006 (day 13390)

I haven't noticed my age the past week or so; I guess being sick just made it seem uninteresting.

Tomorrow I'd like to get the textbook, or perhaps get 武川先生の input on getting another textbook vs just using the book I have already, etc etc.

And I need to go to the embassy to get my work visa sorted.

1:31pm JST

Man, this dumb train is a 6 door train, which means each car features 6 doors on each side, and, therefore, only 30 seats in the entire car. This is great for rush hour, but terrible for daytime usage; there's practically no one on the train! But there's more than 30 people per car; I had to stand for a bit until a seat opened up.

- - - -

Today I think I start at 2:20pm at work, but I'm getting there at 2 just in case. Actually I'll be plenty early, so I can get some foodage from the conveni, and wait around outside the elevator and out onto the staircase landing talking to whoever else shows up until Reiko arrives unless she gets there early as well, which happens on occassion.

Then no break unless I have a cancellation or no-show (please oh please) until 7pm, at which time 亜美 will come by with Francois; she forgot him yesterday, and has to cancel our lesson on Friday, so I was like, "it will be a week until I can see Francois again???" .. so we coordinated a rabbit-return during my break.

My sense is that it's been a while since I've done a State of My Life Address; I don't really have battery-life available to do a real one (nor much actual time before work), but perhaps I'll do one tomorrow.

Shibuya now. peace.

Pre work

1:48pm JST Tuesday 21 November 2006 (day 13390)

What I will do, however, is make a State of My Life topics list, and perhaps even a template.

Template created:  1:49pm JST Tuesday 21 November 2006 (day 13390)

State of My Life (template; see below)

1. I live

2. I work

3. My finances

4. girlfriend

5. My computer

6. Internet access

7. My roommate

8. I-group

9. personal work

10. volunteer

11. language study

12. programming

13. website

14. pets

15. marble track

16. music

17. art

Work

10:15pm JST Tuesday 21 November 2006 (day 13390)

Work was pretty cool today, though I misremembered my age as 13380 for one of my students, but I'm sure it's of limited consequence, though it would please me to no end if she emailed me of the mistake.

Anyways, I determined one of my students was like 13032 days old today, and will be 13333 days old on 18 September 2007.

Met 亜美 during my break; she returned Francois (who I jokingly sniffed a few times in a suspicious manner) and joined me for 12 minutes during my break while I chowed in the back of Lawson's next door.

I had Yuka, who's worked for Google Japan for 4 years; I was happy that she scheduled 80 minutes worth of lesson with me, and we ran through several different topics, including Google, my marble track, her upcoming business trip to Mountain View, her husband's job, ways she can study, etc etc. Good times.

My last student is a guy who at first I didn't really know how to handle, but have got lessons with him figured out. He loves to just read the book and I make corrections while working on my marble track. It's a perfect system.

He stayed several of the minutes I had free after the lesson and asked questions about the marble track as I worked on it.

A different woman I'm growing to like; at our first lesson she told me about a disease she had that disabled her extremities for like 6 months, but now she's basically fully recovered, though there is still some residual damage to her fingernails. She's been writing diary entries and bringing them to lessons for correction; the stories are generally interesting and/or hilarious; really fun to teach. She told me she gained weight during her malady; I think she's quite optimal now, though she still wants to lose some.

(( I'm reminded of the time Fricke looked down at Spot, not knowing he was my cat, and said, "that cat is of optimal weight." Awesome. ))

Overall pretty good day today.

state of My Life Address

10:37pm JST Tuesday 21 November 2006 (day 13390)

State of My Life Address

1. I live with Michael in Sakurashinmachi, 4 local stops from Shibuya, a popular station on the Yamanote Line in Tokyo, Japan. Rent is 80,000 yen per month (each) and about 7,000 yen in utilities (each)

2. I work at EV, a company I'm not mentioning because I didn't have a work visa when I first started working for them. At this point, I still haven't finalized the work visa procurement

3. I'm currently about $4000 in debt, mostly due to breaking my shoulder in May (fun times) and not having insurance to pay for it. (oops). Now that my work and budget have stabilized, I have been paying about 60,000 yen back per month (since last month).

4. I'm currently girlfriendless, but I am dating a woman who has asked for anonymity in here.

5. I am currently interested in dating Aiko, a woman who lives in Okinawa.

6. My computer is my white MacBook with 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo, 1 GB of SDRAM, 75 GB HD (7 Gigs free), running OS X 10.4.8

7. Internet access is pretty high speed at the apartment. Our fiber is pretty fast; mostly it's the speed of the server we're talking to that is the limiting factor. Regularly get 150KB/s download and sometimes 1MB/s download

8. I-group meets twice a month, but I fucked up and didn't request the days off at work, so I've had to work this month instead of attend I-group. Damn.

9. I just finished being sick last week though; I cancelled everything and *could* have gone to I-group, but I wasn't in the mood to do diddly squat.

10. I've been working with Kim Sawyer, and have finally gotten to a stable pattern of meeting him once a month over Skype.

    We will meet for three more months, during which time we hope to get my next couple of life steps mapped out, and hopefully a 10 year plan as well.

11. I have not done any volunteer work recently.

12. My Japanese study has hit a wall of sorts; I'm pissed at it and ready to stop and ready to start over, but this time actually study. It's weird; I think I now know, after all this time, what it will take to learn this crazy language. Am I ready to do it? Hmmmm>

13. I have been working on a Flash game for Michael's friend of a friend's project thing-a-ma-job dealio. Can't go into much more detail than that. But it's called pic-words.

14. My website is robnugen.com, and I've been consistently journaling for quite a while on it. Like nearly 10 years. (Haven't really checked recently). Have semi-short-term plans to get my TJ Bike trip mapped out, and then semi-long term plans to get my images easily viewable, and then past that, plans to re-do how my journal entries are indexed.

15. I don't have any pets, though Spot is still kickin' it in the US with Jennifer from Paint This!

16. My marble track II is now like 23 days old; I need to take some pictures of it soon to keep up my consistent picture takin'. It's coming along nicely, and has plans for its first two switches, but neither of them have been actualized yet.

17. Otherwise I'm not really doing any art projects (unless I count my website as art, which I do).

18. I currently like Japan, and part of me could see me living here for a while, but I miss my family and would like to go back to school to become a psychologist and get some skizzles in the mind-helping department.