Entries this day: AM_ready Doeth! Good_CSR Kagoshima_airport Our_last_meal Room Room_invaders Tired ZZ_almost serpo.org

AM ready

7:09am JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

I am basically ready; the kitchen is basically clean; my desk is cleaner than normal; the living room has enough space available that Michael can get to his computer if he comes home before me. And if I get my ass out the door, I'll be on time.

Doeth!

7:29am JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

D'oh!

basically, I forgot my tickets.

But

I imagine I can just look up the number online when I get to the airport.

Good CSR

8:54am JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

No worries; they looked up my なんとか and confirmed my birthdate and flight time and return date.

Kagoshima airport

11:35am JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

Chatted with a Canadian traveler named Jeff, who recently finished making a documentary of/during/about his travels in India. He had done plenty of traveling and basically wondered if they could make it into something more than just memories and stories. Now there's video to boot (*).

(*) this is the second time I've used "to boot" recently; I wonder why.

Interestingly, he said a documentary about them making a documentary would have been more interesting than the documentary they produced.

He said he's interested in doing the Vipassana meditation, and even knew the name of it before I mentioned it. I was like, "if you are interested in doing it, you *have* to do it."

I'm looking forward to seeing his documentary. He said, "when people see it, they're like 'oh, it looks like you had a lot of fun!'" when actually his experience was a lot of difficult work, but great memories.

Our last meal

2:19pm JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

Just finished our "last meal" before going into a fast for tonight and then apparently limited chowing in the hospital during the next week. I actually have a bit of breakfast that I cooked this morning: roboyaki in a plastic container.

Now taxi-time to the clinic

Conversation included Borat, penguins blowing seals, food, life in Japan, stories from past drug trials, Mike's stories from working in a host bar, and as a juggler.

Room

2:39pm JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

No internet access from my bed, but there's a loose signal at one end of the room in which we're all in. We go downstairs in 10 minutes for the orientation.

Room invaders

4:04pm JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

I am here to take part in a drug trial. This is a drug that has been tested in the US, and is now being tested in Japan. Basically the drug company is testing the drug on Japanese men and foreign (caucasian) men. We foreign men were all chillin' in our room (large hospital room with separate beds) and then all these Japanese guys came shuffling in. It feels a bit spookier to me because they're all quiet. Granted, we were quiet when they came in. But as we came in, we were loud.

Tired

4:57pm JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

I've just been reading about GTDGmail (Getting Things Done (with) GMail), which looks like it might be a pretty cool thing to help with productivity. But I'm basically falling asleep now. I slept about 2 hours this morning, and can sleep three hours now until dinner.

ZZ almost

10:41pm JST Sunday 4 February 2007 (day 13465)

Fun times here; I could definitely get in to this. Unless it's just terrible to have nurses fussing over us all day tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing Jeff's documentary of travelin' across India; he has a copy and may show us tomorrow. He's actually a reserve candidate, so will probably have to go home shortly.

- - -

Something is causing brutal slowness on my machine. I think it has to do with FireFox, but there are two large variables: 1 is flaky internet access, and 2 is the GTDGmail extension that I installed earlier. I have a guess it's the latter, but I'm not yet sure.

Also weird: even emacs is slow (perhaps just at disk-access time), which basically has never happened before. My CPU is chillin' with 80% free time and the HD is quiet. The system seems to be running at a low intensity. Not sure what's the dealio.

- - - -

I've enjoyed being silly here. Just not really caring what people think of me or whatever. Acting sorta clowny wearing PJs all old-man-wedgie style, or all low ridin' hip hop style. Maybe it's cause there are no girls to impress. We're just guys and I don't care what they think.

- - - -

Also of note: Ryan, whose name I have learned and forgotten af few times over the first two years I was in Japan, and then he just quit telling me anymore.... and I thought I had seen the last of him at Carla and Maria's byebye party in Shibuya (I only see him at parties Carla attends).. well, he's here at the trial. Amazing.

I was like, "well, the good thing is, I'll never forget your name again."

He said he was also bad at names, but that he remembered mine because I was famous. "what???"

"Yeah, with your dancing, and your reputation at NOVA.."

What???

Hmmmmm.

serpo.org

12:12am JST Monday 5 February 2007 (day 13466)

This is so so so so interesting!

I hereby volunteer to visit the planet of the Ebes.