Entries this day: Dream Lists Productive Productive_dream evening_with_Fatima_and_Sayaka

Dream

9:11am JST Saturday 22 November 2008 (day 14122)

To give the cow a taste of her own medicine, he gently pushed with the two scoops of a front loader on the cow's butt, making the cow lean closer toward the fire. The cow started to squeal like a cat, but was no match for the mass and strength of the front loader. He then pulled the cow back, equally far away from the fire, and the cow continued to squeal like a cat. Because moving the cow away from the fire was less dangerous than toward the fire, he kept pulling until the cow was forced to sit down on its haunches like a dog. Then with the front loader, he gently lifted it back up to its feet.

Lists

2:13pm JST Saturday 22 November 2008 (day 14122)

Saturday, according to my religion, includes some inner contemplation on the topic, "what to do, oh what to do?"

I made a little list, but more like a table, of Unfinished Projects that can be finished

And another list: Projects that take time over time

Productive

2:53pm JST Saturday 22 November 2008 (day 14122)

So, the first thing I did was come back and clean my room a tiny tiny tiny tiny bit. Basically, in the past 2 hours, I have thrown away three magazines (got at the "Healing Fair" back in August(?) and never read), AND I spent some quality time by the "creek" (drainage ditch) collecting soil for a plant that has been slowly growing for a bit over a year now (in harsh conditions).

I uploaded the pic to Flickr and Smugmug. The Smugmug version hasn't shown up yet.

Okay, time to clean my room some more.

Productive dream

7:46pm JST Saturday 22 November 2008 (day 14122)

I ate a sandwich (thereby cleaning up the remaining two slices of bread and accompanying bag from my floor) and fell asleep.

I noticed the DJs on the radio were trying to get th caller to correctly pronounce "linux" and he was like, "lie-nux", "linus", and they were like, "um, we should just give it to him anyway... Okay, caller, just say 'Have a great day!'" but the caller wouldn't even respond to that, so I was like, "I'ma call them right now and actually give them some answers!"

I turned to my desk and was trying to remember the phone number of the station, and trying to remember what station it was. I picked up the phone and a voice said, "HI!" before I dialed any digits.

I was like, "hello?" and I heard in the background, "station Melchisedek" or at least I thought I did, so I was like, "um, hello, how are you?" and getting interesting tingles in my body to think about how this could have possibly happened. A man on the other end of the line picked up and said, "hello?", and I was like, "what station is this?" and he said, "you don't want to know; I can't tell you." I was like, "if I can tell *you*, will you let me know if I'm right?" and before he could answer, "is it station Melchisedek?" and he visibly relaxed and said, "yes."

I visibly un-relaxed and got even more tingly excited, wanting to keep the connection, but not sure how. I said, "wow; it's really interesting how this happened because I was going to call a radio station, and when I picked up the phone I was connected to you, litereally before I dialed any numbers."

The man to whom I was speaking didn't really comment, so I just enjoyed the connection for a bit until I woke up.

Oh! That's how it happened!

evening with Fatima and Sayaka

12:19am JST Sunday 23 November 2008 (day 14123)

I heard some activity downstairs (a bit rare for this apartment), so I went down and found Fatima cooking dinner. I had been cleaning my room, and went down to wash the jar of tahini and honey that I got from Helma. (The tahini oil had seeped a bit.) I chatted with Fatima a bit in a hybrid mostly based on English, but with some Japanese and occassional French and Spanish words for punctuation. The basic topic, "I'll miss you so much!" because Fatima is leaving in a week; her byebye party is this Friday.

Her best friend Sayaka was over from せたま (Fatima's pronunciation). I was like, "where?" and eventually realized, "ohhhh! さいたま!" and eventually Sayaka came out of Fatima's room, lured by the (mis)pronunciation of her prefecture.

"Saitama? Saitama? My name is Sayaka; nice to meet you." her English is a level or two above Fatima's. We all chatted a bit; it was probably more conversation than I had had with Fatima ever, combined. Sayaka told me she learned her English through TV and movies; she had the occassional plural mistake and missing some vocabulary, but I was generally impressed; I thought she had lived overseas to achieve her level of chatability.

Sayaka lives with her parental units in Saitama, but wants to move closer to Tokyo. Fatima mentioned U-Cow and I headed upstairs to get him, and ended up telling a brief story of Francois in Japanese. Hmmm; my Japanese is getting better.

Fatima cooked what amounted to hearty vegetable stew with chicken, and handily fed Sayaka and I as well. Wow! I had thought the finishing of cooking would mean they two would eat and I would retire to my room. I offered some tahini (they both hated it, so it was a good thing I had said, "just try a bit first! you might hate it..")

Fatima and Sayaka met via Fatima's work at GAS PANIC in Roppongi; a lot of the conversation centered around the pros and cons of working there. Apparently people in Gas Panic Club are drunker than in Gas Panic Bar, so Fatima would regularly find money (thousands of yen (tens of dollars) in bills on the floor) when she worked in the club. She's not that big of a girl though, so she eventually got moved to the bar, where it was less crowded, but unfortunately fewer cash perks.

Sayaka got cold, so Fatima offered her Zima to warm her up. "Alcohol?" no, Fatima has a Zima-branded suit that I'd guess is Power Rangers, but bet more money that I'm wrong. Got some pictures of her with U-Cow.

Ulrike came home and sat with us; I was a good enough host to unfold the chair that had been leaning against the wall. Her parents are coming to town tomorrow(!) for two weeks, and her boyfriend Florian will be here on February 8, and then they'll go home to Germany on March 1, but on separate flights.

When Ulrike left, the party finished itself.