Ian Lewis' Blog

Yesterday, I found out the date that I'll be leaving for Japan. My apartment will be in Edogawa-ku and will be ready on the 25th. So I'll be leaving the 'States on the 24th. I'll start work on Oct. 2nd. I've got a lot of stuff to do to prepare before I leave, not the least of which is packing, so I'll be pretty busy between now and then. I'll probably be going to the Japanese Embassy tomorrow to apply for my Visa.

I just uploaded some pictures from Saturday's picnic with the Northern Virginia Japanese Language Group! It was a lot of fun, we packed up a bit early though

Anyway, check out the photos here.

Recently I feel like I've been pretty busy. Things have been going well with Reiko and I spend a good amount of time talking to her every day. Though because I'm talking to her a lot I'm not doing a whole lot else. I have been able to study Japanese some but working on jsXe and such has been pushed out.

There is also the problem with how we will be together and what to do in the future. My parents don't seem too keen on the idea of me going to Japan. And Reiko isn't in a situation where she could go to school here easily. Even if I wanted to go, I would have to find a job in Japan and I wouldn't have many guarantees that I would like it.

And that is all compounded by the fact that I have to move this weekend. So I'm frantically trying to organize so that I can move this weekend. It's also stressful because I like the place I am now and I don't want to move, and because where I'm moving is farther from work and most things that I do outside the house. I don't know what the commute will be like in the morning.

So currently I just have to work on the move since that is the most imminent thing. Working on one thing at a time is just so much easier.

Well, Reiko is back in Japan and I'm starting to get used to not having her around. Though we still e-mail and chat every day. She is still waiting to hear from GMU about her application. Even if everything goes smoothly with her application, she still has the finances to worry about.

It's hard not knowing when we will see each other again but I have faith that it will work out and we can see each other soon. Long distance relationships just seem to cause a lot of stress. I guess relationships in general can cause stress but this is different. I think I feel much better when there is a plan in place and I know when we will see each other again.

I guess at this point the only thing I can do is wait and see how her school situation turns out so for the time being that's what I'm doing.

Well Reiko is going back to Japan tomorrow morning

I'm really not sure how to feel. I am already so accustomed to having her around that it definitely won't be the same after she's gone. I suppose I'll be alright. Reiko and I have had our disagreements and we definitly have our differences. Our relationship hasn't worked out quite as perfectly as I had hoped. I sometimes do things that upset her, and I think that sometimes she over-reacts.

But still, our relationship seems solid and hopefully we will be able to see each other soon. I really don't know what the future holds for us but I can feel that it will be great. Whether she is able to come to school here in the 'states or whether I go to Japan, we'll find a way to make it work somehow.

Today Reiko and I are going into DC to go to Washington DC Japanese Meetup. Reiko seems excited about it so I'm looking forward to it. She seems to like meeting new people and making new friends. She seems to get along really well with my friends from the Northern Virginia Japanese Meetup group.

The last couple days Reiko seems to be happier than she was last week so I'm feeling up as well. She said the reason is that she feels like she knows me better now. We have talked a lot about just various things recently so I guess I can understand

Anyway, I hope to get the pics of Sunday's trip to DC with Wes and Kelly up on the website sometime tonight or tomorrow.

Ok, so Reiko arrives today.


I spent most of the last two days getting ready for her arrival. She'll be in Detroit at 1pm in about an hour and a half. She said she'll call but she only has a half an hour layover so, after customs and baggage I doubt she'll really have time.


She'll arrive at Dulles at about 3:30 or so so I'm taking off work for the afternoon to go and pick her up. I suppose she'll be tired so maybe we'll got something to eat and come home. Anyway, busy busy

日本語能力試験を合格した！！　やった！ I passed the level 3 of the JLPT that I took in December. I thought at first that I did well but I began to doubt myself

But I did a whole 10% better this time than when I took the level 4 (the JLPT has 4 levels. 4 being the easiest, 1 the hardest). I also managed to score better in every section than when I took the level 4 so I'm happy about that. Listening was still the hardest but at least I passed it this time with a 65/100 as opposed to my level 4 score of 56. Anyway here's the breakdown:

	文字・語彙 Writing-Vocabulary	聴解 Listening	読解・文法 Reading-Grammar	総合点 Total
Level 4	67/100	56/100	150/200	273/400
Level 3	91/100	65/100	161/200	317/400

Today we had a "wake" for Dave our business analyst at work. He's moving to another job at the same company but since he's leaving our team he's "dead to us" so we had a living wake for him. 'Course it wasn't anything like a wake,, we went out to eat lunch and then played pool. It was a lot of fun and I hope Dave has fun at his new job though I don't think the new guy will be as cool as he is

Anyway, we drank a litte bit later in the day so I'm going to go to bed soon,, peace,

I had a conversation with Reiko this morning that got me thinking about my long and short term goals. Since college I've had 2 main goals, learn Japanese, and go to graduate school. About 2 3/4 years ago I started learning Japanese with a casual desire to move to Japan. But since then my desire to learn more Japanese grew larger, while by contrast my desire to go to graduate school waned. Along with my desire to learn Japanese language, my desire to move to Japan grew as well. My thoughts being that I would never feel that I adequately learned the language without a stint of at least a couple years in Japan. You can't really learn any language very well outside of the native culture. Unfortunately, the two goals seem mutually exclusive and I've been toying with both for the last two years...


But my ultimate desire and motivation was to move to Japan. Even if I ultimately decided on graduate school, I wanted to move away from this area and take that on full time. I feel like either way I need a change of location. I've lived in the DC Area all my life and it's wearing on me that outside of a few key moments my life hasn't changed much since high school. It boiled down to the fact that I'm not happy here. While moving somewhere else in the U.S. would be new, the U.S. isn't really where my interests are and I don't think it would change my desire to go to Japan.


So, I had decided to try to move there this year. But the year hadn't even started before that was complicated by meeting Reiko. Immediately we hit it off and our emotional bond has grown significantly since. Having observed so many relationships, and having searched for someone for myself for a quite some time, and failing to find someone that fits so well, I feel strongly that I won't find someone else like her. While I'm nieve and we haven't been together very long, I think that I want to try my hardest to stay with her permanently. However, our goals and interests are almost polar opposites when it comes to where we want to live.


Reiko lived in the U.S. for about seven and a half or eight years during high school and college. So she's pretty familiar with U.S. culture and her English is near native level. She wants to finish school and live here very badly. But her interest in the U.S. is both brings us closer and drives us apart. My Japanese by comparison is beginner at worst and intermediate at best. It's pretty good having never taken a class or lived in Japan if I do say so myself but I feel that I will soon reach a point where I cannot improve my Japanese ability without living in Japan as I cannot use Japanese every day and even if I did I wouldn't really use it in a wide array of contexts. My experience has been that people's relative skill at Japanese dramatically improves if they've lived in Japan. With those that have never been there being far and away beginners to at most intermediate level.


Anyway, She really wants to live here but I'm afraid that if she does that we'll settle here in this area and I'll never be able to have the experience of living somewhere besides where I was born. Or, we spend some years together and somewhere down the line and I realize that I made a mistake. But I already feel love for her so the prospect of making these decisions is agonizing.

So Reiko is planning on coming from March 1st through March 31. So, I've been thinking about things I need to do before she comes and thinks we can do when she's here. I've already though doing some 観光 (sightseeing) in DC with Wes and Kelly. Wes seemed to think that was a good idea. Wes is is a good friend of mine so Reiko wants to meet him. Of course we'll probably do the Northern Virginia and/or Washington D.C. Japanese meetups. That way she can meet all of my Japanese and Japanese speaking friends. She'll probably meet my parents and sisters. There's also a concert put on by the Bridgewater College Choirs so we can go to that I think. If so she'd be able to meet my old mentor Dr. Hopkins. That would be pretty cool.


Anyway, She's going to be here for a full month so there's a lot of time to fill. I'll be working most of the time and I suspect she'll be exploring Fairfax a bit, looking at schools, and using the computer. But I should be able to see her at lunchtime most every day, as well as when I get home of course. Anyhow, hope everyone's well. Don't forget to leave me comments so I know you're reading!!

A co-worker of mine recently expressed his son's fascination with kami-robo. Kami-robo are robots made out of paper that wrestle each other like professional wrestlers. Their creator, Tomohiro Yasui, has created a number of original characters, back stories and organizations that the characters belong to. All in all it's pretty cool as the paper robots that he's made are really well constructed (he's had a lot of practice since he started at 10 years old and he's over 30 now) but at the same time it's kinda silly (scroll down and watch the movies).


Anyway, I picked up a couple toys for my co-worker's son while I was in Japan. They were part of a kit, so he had to put them together but it seems they turned out all right. The aren't exactly paper but they're more durable plastic for young hands and they look like they maintain the flexability/posability of the paper robots.

I'm finally getting back into the swing of things here. It's only been almost 2 weeks since I got back (already! jeez). I did have a bit of jet lag after coming back to the 'States and a I didn't feel well for a little while in there but I'm over all that now I think. I've still got a good amount of dirty laundry and tidying up to do around the house so I hope to get that done tonight along with some dinner and studying.


I've been talking to Reiko several times a day for the last couple weeks. We are still kind of trying to figure out how we can be together. We really hit it off when we met in Tokyo. We knew there was some potential there to begin with but there was no romantic relationship until Tokyo. Anyway, she wants to finish college (she went to school in the U.S. (Texas!) but never finished) so she'll be coming here soon hopefully. I'm not a master of relationships, not to mention cross-country/cultural LONG distance relationships, so it's a bit of a challenge. Not that we don't get along but that being apart can be pretty stressful.


Anyway, I'm done with work and talking to her (she's just starting work now) so I'm heading home.

I've decided that I want to get more involved in Ecology at a local level. I'm facinated by using the internet to organize people at a local level. Websites like Meetup.com, while I don't like how and how much they charge for the service, do well for organizing people with similar interests. Today I'm reading about Ecology and looking at a number of ways of helping out within the local area. The Sierra club has a local Virginia Chapter which looks interesting.


I think I'd like to start by really seriously changing my lifestyle to incorporate as much reuse/recycling/conservation as possible. This means making organizing recycled materials and making regular trips to the nearby waste drop off point for stuff they don't pick up on the curb. It also means recycling every piece of recyclable material. I think by doing this I'll learn a lot more about how to make it easier for people to do this. I think it would go a long way towards helping the environment if recycling was easier to do. Maybe I can help somehow in this regard.


Another issue I'd like to learn more about are using locally grown (reduces transportation waste/pollution) and organic food. While I am able to buy organic food easily in Fairfax, it's quite expensive and inconvenient. I think I'd like to figure out better ways for me to store food, and how to make food using ingredients that keep for a long time so that I make less trips to the supermarket.


I really believe that if people were more inclined to reduce/reuse/recycle, due to social pressure, and it was easier to do so, that people would do it and society would be a much more sustainable place for it. I suppose that improving conservation would be the most difficult change to enact since it requires social change that doesn't benefit people in terms of time/money. I suppose the only way to get people to conserve more would be to make it harder for them to buy things (by driving up the prices through stiffer government regulation perhaps). I don't know. I suppose if these were easy questions to answer or solve then they may have been solved already.

Well I'm back in the 'States. I got back from Japan on Saturday at midnight. The flight that I took from Narita airport was delayed by an hour causing me to miss my connecting flight in San Francisco. So, I had to take a flight to Chicago/Ohare and then take another flight from Chicago to D.C. That delayed me by about 3 and a half hours. So I arrived at midnight instead of 8:30. No big loss besides a bit of sleep I guess.


Reiko came to Kyushu for the last 2 days I was there and came back to Narita with me. That was really cool since Warren, Ikumi, Reiko and I got to hang out together. Played some pool and ate yakiniku. Though, we could only do that for one day since Reiko and I had a flight back to Narita really early on Saturday the 14th. We had to stay in Fukuoka the night before the flight. That was cool. We stayed in a nice hotel so we did some shopping and went out to eat. Pretty nice for my last night in Japan.


Anyway, check out the photos here. I will probably put up a few more photos soon as I get some from Reiko and/or Warren and Ikumi. Catch ya soon!

Hey, I'm in Japan!

I'm at Warren's house right now in 佐賀県(Saga ken) in 九州(Kyuushuu) but I was in Tokyo for 5 days (Dec 28th to Jan 2nd). Tokyo was great, I went to see a number of shrines at 代々木(Yoyogi), Togennuki, and Asakusa. I also went to Akihabara, Harajuku, 新宿(Shinjuku). But I spent the most about of time in 池袋(Ikebukuro). That's where the hotel was and where I ate most of the time. I met 玲子(Reiko) while I was there and we spent a lot of time together. She's really a unique person. She and I got along really well so we are sort of dating now. It's pretty tough because she lives in Japan for the moment but I think my heart's in the right place.

It's good this time around since I can be a bit more independent in Japan because my Japanese skill is better. But I still almost always have a Japanese friend around, be it Reiko or Ikumi, to lean on like a crutch. Maybe that hinders my learning. Still, I'm planning on going to Fukuoka, to visit a shrine by myself today. So I've gotta use the bus and subway by myself. Should be fun and interesting. Anyway, I've gotta get ready to go or I'll miss the bus. Peace,

Went to see Memoirs of a Geisha over the weekend. It's a story of a girl who is sold to a geisha house in Japan, becomes a very famous geisha in , and falls in a love with a dashing, handsome man known as "the chairman".

Well, I have to admit that I liked the movie a lot more than I thought that I would. The choice of Chinese actresses for many of the main roles didn't play out as badly as I thought it would. Though almost the entire film is in english. The movie is quite effective at portraying at presenting to westerners the lives of Geisha, their purpose, culture, rivalries etc, if you're willing to forgive that it shown from a somewhat western perspective.

Anyway, it's a good movie. If you haven't seen it I suggest you do though I believe the best way to understand Japan is to watch Japanese movies. Akira Kurasawa movies are a good place to start, as they are popular with western audiences (though they are mostly samurai movies). Shizuko Mishima at about.com has a a good set of movies with english subtitles. I've seen most of them are all are quite good though devoid of any geisha themed movies.

So I'm all set to go to Japan from Dec 27th to Jan 14. I'll be spending some time in Tokyo on my own before heading down to Kyuushuu to see Warren. I'll be staying around Ikebukuro station in Tokyo from the 28th to the 2nd of January. I don't know what I'm doing the entire time I'm there but I'll probably be visiting parks, shrines etc. Basically sightseeing stuff. I'm going to meet this chick, Reiko, that I met on Yahoo! Japan so that should be interesting. We're probably going to hang out out and go sightseeing a bit together. That should be cool since I'll have someone to help me get around.

I've been talking to Warren about a trip to Japan again and it seems to be settling around the same time as it did 2 years ago, after Christmas into January. Unfortunately that's a pretty expensive time to travel to Japan. I can handle it it just means there is a few hundred dollars more in travel costs.

This time I'm also planning to do a stop in the Tokyo area for a few days. Mostly just to check out the area, do some touristy kind of things. I've never been anywhere on Honshu so I'm looking forward to checking out the city.

I just got finished with a pretty busy weekend. Friday night was our regular Japanese meetup. A couple new Japanese folks came which was pretty cool. We can thank Yukari for posting on Kaigailink. She noticed that most new people were Americans (since our site is in english) and she wanted to increase our Japanese membership. Seems to have worked out pretty well.

Saturday was Chris Neil's wedding. That was pretty cool. I got to see some folks from college that I haven't seen in a while. Some of them seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. That's a good feeling. I saw Wes and Kelly (Wes' girlfriend). I see him all the time but it's still cool since he's a good friend of mine.

Sunday the meetup had another picnic at Lake Fairfax. It went about as well as the first. We met a few new people , again thanks to Yukari. I took very few pictures but I think I may put them up here anyway. I always hate to take pictures at events like that but I do like having them afterwards.

Warren never did get in touch with me so I'll have to ream him for that later. I guess he was pretty busy. I need to talk to him about another trip to Japan soon too since it's getting closer to the end of the year and we haven't planned anything.

Well, that's all for now.

Warren, my good bud from college should be in the States by now (he lives in Japan). I kinda wanted to throw a party at my place but I don't know enough about his schedule while he's here to really do that. I tried hard to get it out of him but I couldn't. Ah well.

He should call me sometime before he goes back so we can hang out. It'll be cool to hang out with him since we haven't seen eachother for a year and a half.

My gas milage for my 2003 Honda Civic. It's supposed to get 29 city, 38 Highway and I average somewhere in the middle. Makes sense right?

I was recently thinking about open source projects to contribute to and bouncing around in my head the idea an open source integrated library application. Something like a card catalog, database, check-in/check-out system. So I started pinging sourceforge to see if anything like that existed and was surprised that I found it nearly void of projects like that.

So I went to the wider world and found the Open Source Systems for Libraries which pointed me to the Evergreen and Koha projects. They both seemed pretty interesting. The Evergreen project seems to be just getting off the ground with an alpha release and is being maintained by the Georgia Public Library Service to be used by member libraries of the Georgia Library PINES Program.

Koha seems to be a bit farther along and has a number of users. It seems like a pretty cool project and I think I'll do a bit more research.

I like the idea of these open database applications but both Evergreen and Koha seem to base their web parts on mod_perl which I probably wouldn't do. I guess I'm biased against perl but I think I'd use something easier to use like Tomcat or even mod_python. Maybe they chose mod_perl because it's faster

I feel like I have a need to work on an open source database application that actually has users and a bit of structure. I want to actually help people acomplish goals. Interacting with people locally would be even better (Koha has some users in PA). Anyway, they seem like cool projects and could be a potential project to get involoved with.

I just found out that Sarah, one of my former co-workers, has a photo log!. I never pegged her as someone that would keep a website. That's awesome. I haven't talked to her in many months. I'm gonna e-mail her tonight to see what she's up to. Sarah's one of those folks that I got along with pretty well and I'll be interested in finding out how she's doing.

Update: Going back through my e-mail at work I realize that she told me her url when she left Datatel. Man is my face red

Just got finished with a couple busy weekends. Went to my friend Mitch's wedding on Saturday. The wedding was about 4 hours away so I spent most of Saturday Driving. It was good to see some old friends again and I wish Mitch and Beth the best.

My aunt just finished here undergraduate work so we had a graduation party on Sunday for her at my Grandfather's house. So I visited with my family a bit Sunday afternoon.

The previous Saturday and Sunday, I spent studying Japanese with Giovanni and hangin' out at King's Dominion with some friends from the Japanese Language Club. You can see the pictures here if you're so inclined (registration required, sorry) . Some of the pictures of me aren't so great so beware.

Tonight I'm gonna meet Doc. Hopkins for dinner. Should be fun. I haven't seen him in a while and I'm looking forward to talking to my college mentor.

This is the end so as Dan Rather would say... Courage. ??????

A few weeks ago I talked to my friend Warren about another trip to Japan. We talked about the August time frame but that might end up being not so great for me. The intern is here until the middle of the month and the August and maybe into September will be the tail end of a project that I'll be working on.

Hopefully, I can work until the intern leaves and then take off the last couple weeks of August even though we'll be busy. It is an issue since a trip to Japan is a long vacation. Two weeks at least. I've gotta let my boss know my plans soon but I'm not sure he's gonna like them.

So much like I was two years ago, I'm going to have an intern this summer. Well, I won't technically be his boss (that'll be my manager) but I'm mentoring him in the ways of the force, err programming at a software company. His first day here we went out to lunch on the company as is custom. At lunch he mentioned some stuff about progressive rock and Dream Theater. I knew immediately that he had read my who's who entry or profile at work (he's savy enough to look me up at work so he may even read this blog. I guess I don't care). What I didn't think about until later, when he came to my office and showed me a copy of the Wolf Trap summer program because it had a concert by the Moody Blues, was that he might have been trying to "get on my good side" so to speak.

He doesn't seem ingenuine so it might just be that he's nervous about the whole thing, I intimidate him, and/or he doesn't know how to act. Any way you look at it's pretty funny I thought. I'm like sooo not intimidating, and he doesn't have much to worry about besides doing a good job at work unless he's a total asshole or slob (which he's not).

So I was in an car accident last Friday. I rear ended another car in an exit lane. My fault of course. Fortunately, the woman that I hit was very easy to deal with as was the police. I know that sometimes people have trouble.

Unfortunately I was driving kinda fast and the airbag deployed. So they have to be replaced. If you've never been in an accident where the airbags deploy then let me tell you that it sounds like a small bomb going off in your car. And after they deploy, they smoke and kinda stink (well at least mine did) but they work perfectly.

This week I'm arranging to have the car repaired which has been an interesting experience. But the good news is that since the person I hit has the same insurance company as me, I don't have to pay the deductable! I know! I was shocked too. In fact the whole ordeal has been pretty painless. The insurance company takes care of almost everything. I'm dumbfounded. I guess that's why I pay them the big bucks.

Anyway, I'm borrowing my parent's car this week so I can go back and forth from work. More to come soon. Don't have any pictures unfortunately.

So I've invited that chick Akiko to hang out/got to parties two or three times but every time she's been busy. I know that always saying you're busy can sometimes be a way of blowing someone off (I'm sure I've done it a few times) but I don't think that's the case. She has so far seemed willing to go but had prior engagements, class, or work. Even still, I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure I should be devoting much energy to this. I mean, she's cool and all but if she's busy, she's busy. That and I don't know her that well so I've got to try to remain realistic here.

Sux though because she's the only potentially dateable girl I've met in a while. Well maybe a bit more than a while since I'm talking about since I graduated from college really. So, TWO STINKIN' YEARS. *sigh*. We'll see but it's not looking good at the moment.

So I've been going to a decent number of Japanese meetup events and such. It's good practice for me but I tend to get suckered into talking to the folks that don't know much Japanese. I hope that changes a bit in the future.

I'm also one of the members most interested in meetup but I'm not a great leader so I'm not terribly good at organizing events. The Sakura Matsuri in D.C. is coming up and I'm kind of in charge of trying to work out an event with the other local meetup groups. But I'm at a loss as to what I should organize. Given the number of events going on I would think that everyone would want to do their own thing. Anyway, Not sure what to do there.

The Japanese chick Akiko did write back so we've been exchanging e-mail and I've been trying to get her to come to meetup. She seems willing but her schedule is pretty busy. Classes, and work take up much of her time. She's pretty cool and I like her so maybe something can work out in the romance department. Who knows.

I finally got around to watching this classic film yesterday. I have to say. It does live up to the hype. What an excellent movie.

So enjoyable was it that the 203 or so minutes went by without so much as thought about the length. I was glued to my seat the entire time. I think part of the attractiveness of the film is the believability of the action sequences and the characters. While each character is unique in their own way it's not impossible to believe that the character could exist in real life.

I still deciding who my favorite character is between the wisdom, leadership, and experience of Kanbei and the skill, modesty, and sobriety of Kyuzo. My favorite scene is probably the one where Kyuzo sits under the tree waiting to ambush the bandit scouts while Katshushiro watches and Kikuchiyo keeps lookout.

A flawless film in almost every way. It stands the test of time being an old but excellent and highly influential film that you can watch today without it feeling dated. I can totally understand the #5 movie of all time rating on IMDB. I can't believe that I've waited this long to see it.

Even though most of the time I'm a pretty sober guy sometimes if I make a new friend or I'm excited about something I go a little overboard. For example, this one japanese chick that I met at a japanese club e-mails me late one night to say hi. It was a nice short e-mail in english. You know, friendly. I respond by immediately sending back an e-mail that's like (summarizing) Hey, I'm glad you e-mailed me. Thanks for saying that my japanese is good... You should go to this karaoke party that I'm going to next friday. *Some japanese written in romaji* Here's the address of the place... P.S. here's my cell number, *apology for writing in romaji*.

What was I thinking? It's like I was drunk or something. I woke up the next day and was like 'Jesus H. Christ! what a lousy e-mail'. Like a train wreck of the mind. First, what was I thinking writing in romaji? If I had to do it and then apologise for it, I shouldn't have done it! Duh! Not to mention the mistakes or potential mistakes I noticed after sending it. Second, WTF (why the f*@#) did I include my cell phone number?!?! Third, responding immediately after I got the original e-mail didn't help either. If I waited until morning I would have had the mind to create a much more coherent e-mail.

Course, here I go staying up late writing an incoherent blog entry. I'm sure I'll look at it tomorrow and say "I'm such a Tool".

Well, I haven't written here in a while. A lot has happened recently.

My domain python-powered.net passed back to the company that I registered it from since I couldn't remember the login/pass for the page where I could renew it. Now they want $160 to renew it. Ridiculous. Well, I'm not gonna do that so maybe I'll get python-powered.org from a different registrar.

I've been applying to graduate school and It's proven a challenge for me. I had real problems writing the statement of purpose essays for several reasons.

While writing the applications I realized another disadvantage to attending a small college. While I learned a lot in college (much of which had to do with my own efforts), one of the things I didn't learn is how graduate school "works". My college didn't have a graduate program so there was no program and no graduate students around. Because of this I learned zero, zilch, nada about applying to graduate school. Things about funding, research projects, professors, and the application process were all foreign to me. Researching these caused my applications to be finished later than I wanted them to be and not as solid/polished as I wanted them to be.

I also had a hard time finding professors that had research interests that were similar to mine. I'm interested in programming languages, specifically object oriented languages and component based design, reuse, databases (especially querying and/or reporting), and XML technologies. However, I found it hard to find professors that had the same interests as me. And when I did they had either moved on to other interests or the research projects in these areas weren't very active. This makes it hard for me to pursuade them to take me on as a student if I'm interested in inactive projects. I guess the exciting research in these areas has already been done.

The third (and maybe most important reason) is that I'm not sure my heart is in it. On top of being discouraged by the problems I encountered above, I'm realizing my potential for producing creative work. My small college experience has left me woefully lacking in writing skills, I have very little experience in the areas undergoing active research (graphics and distributed computing mostly), and I'm not much interested in those areas.

Another reason that my heart is not really in it is because currently I'm probably most interested in learning Japanese. I've invested quite a bit of time into learning it, especially recently, and because of my interest I've applied to JET and taken the JLPT. Just Lvl 4 though . It's been quite a struggle to decide what to do. All the while, my communication with my parents hasn't been great and, dispite that, my parents really seem to like having me around. This leaves me with a dilemma. If I go to Japan I'm not sure my parents would be somewhat dissappointed. First because I'm not going to grad. school and second because I'll be a 18 hr. direct flight away.

So I'm in somewhat of a quandry about what to do. I want to do what would make me most happy (going to Japan I think), but I don't want to ruin or mess up my relationship with my parents, and/or never go to grad school.

I just added a new recipe for Miso Soup. Not to fancy but if you're new to Japanese cooking or want something simple and good then check it out.

I just finished watching, for me, a rather inspirational show on MHz about an old Chinese barber. His clientelle were mostly other elderly Chinese men (one 96 years old) and the discussions they had during his visits were most interesting and inspirational. He would talk to them about their daily lives and give them advise on what things to do to stay active. Some of them, the 96 year old man (who was active and could walk around etc.) had some quite profound things to say.

It's these men who live their lives so humbly and know what it means to live a full life that inspire me the most. The idea of growing older, and then elderly, scares me somewhat, but as someone who's goal in life is to always improve, grow, and be progressive, I hope that I too can have wisdom. If I am to grow old then I hope that the time that I lived forms an example to others of how to live their lives with productivity, purpose, and understanding.

Whipped though the early chapters of the Kanji Book I've been studying from in the past week and a half. Most of the kanji I already knew or at least could recognise if I read them. So all I had to do was memorize the alternate readings and stroke order.

You see, kanji have different readings in different words or contexts. So you have to memorize all the readings for each kanji. One that reads 'ushi' (cow) in one context might be 'gyuu' in another context (like 'gyuunyuu' for cow's milk).

The Japanese meetup is a week from today so I need to get studying conversational stuff and listening to the companion CDs to my other book this week. I'd like to do better this meetup than last time. I felt like I didn't say much and didn't get much practice out of the last meeting.

Ok. It's late and I'm totally stressed out.

My Dad called me earlier tonight and asked if I wanted to go to dinner with them tomorrow for my Sister's birthday. This seems pretty harmless at first but let's examine the situation.

First, he calls me the day before to let me know that they're going out. I have more than a few hobbies that take up large amounts of time. Learning Japanese and a GNU project don't come cheap in the time department. Nor does cooking, maintaining my computer, maintaining friendships, or reading takea trivial amount of time. Let alone the other things I have to do on weekends like catch up on sleep, laundry, clean the appartment, try to relax, manage finances, stress out because I can't relax, put air in my tires, buy food, figure out where I'm going to live after January, etc. Normal life maintainance. I try to manage my time by planning but it throws a wrench in my plans when an unexpected 5 to 7 hours (2 of which are driving in the DC area around the belt way, a highly stressful activity) goes towards dinner with my folks.

Second. This is the second weekend in a row that they have done this. Last weekend my Mom calls me up and asks me to come to dinner. I say ok since I hadn't eaten over there in a while and I'm willing to put up with short notice every once in a while. My parents also enjoy that type of thing. It help de-stress them but I might not have agreed to spend a good portion of my weekend eating over if I realized that I'd be eating with them the next weekend for my Sister's birthday.

Third. Of the last 5 or six weekends, I've gone to my parent's house at least 4 times. Since I helped them build a couple computers I had to spend a good portion of time at their house helping them and getting set up, not to mention the time I spent buying the equipment etc. This stress is compounded by the fact that my parents don't know how to build a machine, really. I had to explain to them everything as I'm building it. On top of that the machine's had problems working after I built them so I have to spend more time helping them resolve issues (having to do with expensive equipment) that still are not resolved now.

Also, two weekends ago I went to Bridgewater to play games with friends. I know that this is fun time but maintaining friendships is part of life. Needless to say I was able to do absolutely NO productive activity that weekend.

On the other hand, my parent's life makes mine look like a walk in the sunshine. Not only was and is my father the executor of my Aunt's will after she passed away but he is also the executor of his mother's will. I shouldn't need to tell you how stressful this is for a family member to administer this kind of thing. Both of my sisters are college age which complicates my parent's finances. One of them lives at home and demands a large amount of my father's time with her activities in 4H.

On top of that my cousin, who is the daughter of the Aunt who passed away, is a bit of a troublemaker. She's 16 and after living with a friend of the family for about a year get's herself kicked out. Guess where she has to live now?? That's right! My parent's house. So not only is my father a executor of 2 wills, father of 2 college age girls (one who lives at home), and a 4H mentor for my sister, he's the gaurdian of my cousin. This has had my parents in court more than once. All of this on top of his own full time job.

So, I can't exactly say "I don't feel like coming home to eat dinner for my sister's birthday, because I'm feeling a little stressed out and I want to work on some of my hobbies (because I didn't have time to work on them last weekend because I was playing games with friends)" without feeling guilty. Not sure what I can do besides just grin and bear it. I enjoy spending time with my parents but I don't want to drive to their house every weekend.

I feel like an immature spoiled brat cry baby. I should try to destress myself by learning tai chi. Hmm. more time down the drain.

I just got into checking out Wikipedia again. It's a free (as in freedom and as in beer) online collaborative encyclodpedia. I contributed some articles on Design Patterns a while ago and was pleasantly surprised that the articles have remained largely intact for 2 years. It's nice to know that people think your contribution has enough merit to keep it there almost untouched. Additional content has been added to the articles of course but the text that I wrote remains.

I also started checking out Wiktionary also. The dictionary counterpart to Wikipedia. It's a little newer so there's much content to be added there.

I understand that change is necessary and good but I'm learning that some changes (especially ones that you don't control)can really require a lot from you both physically and emotionally. Changes at work, changes in your personal life, changes in living situations. These changes are very dependent on other peoples choices. I guess I feel that I'm dependent on other people's choices more than most. Without going into specifics, this has caused a great deal of stress on me in the last week or so. I feel that this is going to require more time to think through than I have. It seems like nothing is working out in the time frame I wish it would.

I've been studying Japanese, off and on, for maybe 2 years (seriously, only about 1 year). In that time I've had very little experience talking with other people in Japanese. Outside of my trip to Japan, I've had virtually none.

So I decided to try to meet other speakers through meetup.com. So after two meetups it seems like we are starting to have a pretty good group. The size is still small but the quality of the individuals is quite high.

After the last Japanese language meetup I was invited to a party at a member's house. Actually two members since they are married, Sonja and Yasumoto-san. This proved to be an invaluable experience as several of Yasumoto-san and Sonja's friends speak Japanese.

So basically, the Japanese language meetup turned out to be a much better asset than I had really hoped for. I hope that our group grows in size since we have a few consistently active members now.

I just finished going to the Japanese Meetup in northern Virginia. I'm trying this meetup thing where people in an area meet to talk about a particular subject once a month because I'm studying Japanese and I wanted to get more experience with spoken Japanese. Last month we only had 3 people show up, none of which were native speakers, but I met a pretty cool guy that I can interact with in Japanese.


The thing that's different about this month as opposed to last time was that we had two native speakers. It really makes the experience go better. We all seem to get along and I feel like I made a few new friends.


I quickly realized that between the two natives, the wife of one native, my friend, and me, I was the least skilled overall at Japanese. Kinda serves as a motivator for me to study more but I can't really gain speaking skills without speaking to anyone. I'm just not at the point where I can think fast enough for correct responses in Japanese. Well, hopefully I'll get there soon.

So I'm updating my blog now. My good friend Spiffo seemed to think that it needed updating. I'd like to say how glad I am that she said something. I was under the impression that noone, or close to noone, read my blog. It's good to know that at least Spiffo cares enough to read it. Thanks Spiffo!

Recently I've been working on some mods for Morrowind since I recently got it running on my new computer. Check out the BCGamers website later if you are interested in them.

A little less recently I have been spending time studying Japanese and gaining some more headway. I think I could definitly pass the level 4 proficiency test in December, but if I studied hard I might even be able to pass the level 3. It seems like level 4 would be well below my level by December but I'm not sure what the tests look like so I might have to be safe and just take the 4. Level 3 would be a decent amount more prestigious.

To work on my speaking and listening skills, I started going to japanese language meetups in Northern Virginia every month. I met this guy there that is on about my level. He seems to know more vocab but I think I know more context so I'm sure we can learn a lot from each other.

Jaa, Sore Dake. Later

I started putting recipies for some of the food I make in my gallery. Seemed like a pretty cool thing to do. Some of the food looks pretty good. Check it out, I added a new one today, Zaru Soba!.

I haven't felt well the last couple days. A flu bug has taken over the appartment. Wes, Kelly and I are all somewhat sick. I'm actually feeling better today. I had a fever yesterday which I broke last night but I'm still stuffed up and achy. Hopefully I'll be at 100% by monday but I wouldn't count on it.

Well... I royally screwed up my gallery. So now I need to recreate most of my albums. Hopefully no one will be looking at them this week.

So today I went to Dan Bremner's wedding. It was nice though I skipped out a little early with Sean and Sarah. After that Sean and Sarah and I hung out a little bit. Haven't seen Sean for a few months so that was cool.

I also went to visit Katy and Seth and then Amanda and Lucille. It's pretty crazy cuz I haven't seen Seth, Amanda, or Lucille in like almost a year! Time flies soo fast when you are working full time constantly. It just boggles my mind that it'll be a year since I graduated and started at Datatel in just 3 short months. *sigh*. Anyway it was great to see everyone again. I hope everyone was as happy to see me as I was to see them.

P.S., Lucille, if you read this then why don't you leave messages?!?

Today was my Grandmother's funeral. She died on the 20th. It turned out pretty well, the service was nice and everything went rather smoothly. Most of my family was in town so it was good to see everyone. Some I haven't seen for a while. I think this will be a good opportunity to keep in touch from now on.

I finally finished putting up my pictures from Japan. Check 'em out

My team at work recently went out to lunch and we took pictures.

I am really starting to become serious about learning japanese. I'm really interested in reading AND speaking japanese (both of which will require a lot of time to master). So I have resolved with myself that I will spend some of everyday studying japanese. I want to be able to speak fluently but I don't want to be one of those people that know how to speak well but can't read kanji very well. So much of my time studying will be spent on reading and writing.

Work is going good even though I'm back to the bane of every software developer's existance, estimating. There's nothing like spending a long time estimating a project just so you can point out that it's going to take way longer than is feasable.