Entries this day: Key_copy Marble_track Work

Key copy

1:46pm JST Friday 1 December 2006 (day 13400)

The key to our apartment uses magnets and holes instead of just bumps. More secure, and more expensive to copy.

Yesterday, for the mere price of 3999 yen, I got a copy made of the key.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't work. The guy had selected a blank that was slightly larger than the one we have. They both have a ridge, and the new ridge was too tall to fit in the keyhole.

Brought both keys back and crudely explained the problem. I don't know the word for ridge.

He made another copy on a new blank. This one without a ridge whatsoever. I hope that ridge isn't part of the tumblertainment.

Just asked Victor what to call the ridge. He doesn't know.

1:57pm JST

Just asked Reiko what to call the ridge. She doesn't know either. HAhahahaa

Marble track

5:54pm JST Friday 1 December 2006 (day 13400)

I'm pretty pumped about my marble track. I've *basically* gotten the switch designed and tested. Just got to build its support system and we'll be all good.

*and*, I recently decided to renew progress on a previously abandoned idea, right in the middle there will be a little twisty track for small marbles. Twisty cause there's not a lotta room to build. I had been discussing the idea with a student who seemed pretty interested in the project; during that time I told him about the abandoned idea (in terms of how I basically don't have a plan for anything, and some plans are abandoned) and I decided to disabandon it. "Ya know, I should do it because it will be difficult."

He agreed.

Work

5:50pm JST Friday 1 December 2006 (day 13400)

Just had my favorite Yuki at work. Her English class watched Dead Poets' Society (in four parts) and she wrote a paper on it. I read it, trying to coax as many corrections out of her as possible, instead of just giving the "right" answers.

I love when she smiles. I'm thinking I'll do anything to see you smile.

- - - -

The woman who wrote the scathing letter about my lesson was out in the waiting area when I walked out to go on break. She made eye contact with me and I pleasantly said HI before 100% noticing who she was.

10:23pm JST

Fun in the final lessons today; had Ami for an hour; she was too tired to focus on the book, so we had a free(style) conversation about her fire drill today (walking down from the 42nd floor), her nails (which have grown out almost beyond recognition), my budget, Francois getting 5000 yen donation after I gave it to her if she would paint her nails brown on one hand, and on the other hand, red.

Before that lesson was a killer lesson which turned good at the end when she told me she used to do glass blowing as her job for 7 years until it proved to be too stressful on her body. (1400 degrees C...) That was after we struggled to communicate about her company making pachinko machines; some parts were okay, like the price and the noise levels in pachinko parlors, but when she said her company planned to have quiet, smoke-free pachinko parlors, I couldn't get her to tell me either (1) why don't they just open one parlor (2) why the estimated time is either 45 or 10 years away (perhaps she meant 4-5, and then changed to 10) (3) how many quiet smoke-free parlors they planned to open.

She told me new pachinko machines cost about 500,000 yen ($5000). Used ones are sold for 200,000 or 300,000 yen. But that price is to parlors; she didn't know the price to sell to an individual. Her job is licensing of characters that appear on machines. They recently made a machine featuring Rocky (as in Sylvester Stallone), but I couldn't understand why she said it was just one machine (I couldn't get across the difference between one style of machine and 1 actual unit), and they create 1 new machine per month. "How many machines do you sell per month?" (no answer)

Only one machine a month? Each machine is custom? I don't know shit about pachinko parlors (except they smell like shit (smoke) and are louder than shit (1 million decibels) and the outside sometimes smell like shit (piss), depending on the area of town), but upon glancing inside, I see rows of machines that all look identical, so I was pretty confused about the conversation above.

The last lesson was with the woman who I've thought was from Taiwan, but turns out she's from Shanghai (yes I know the difference between Taiwan and China), but when she says she's from Shanghai, she means her city is a 5 hour drive from Shanghai. I guess it's just that I don't know shit about cities in China, so Shanghai is the closest one I've heard of.

She asked me to read an article about Bush and Maliki's recent meeting in Amman.