lingqi's Journal: November 15, 2002 - See y'all monday.

November 15, 2002 (4:50pm)

Hmm... tomorrow is tha hiking trip. Definitely looking forward to it.
Definitely not ready I think.

Tonight I will go buy some cheap food - riceballs for tomorrow lunch etc, and some other stuff for breakfast. If you guys don't hear from me within a reasonable amount of time, though - be worried. :-)

Now, about other fairly random stuff:

1) Last weekend when I was walking around, I found some christmas trees on sale. (And a lot of singing-dancing-santas, but that's a different story) The trees were not the "fake evergreen" kind, but completely made of white / shiny plastic parts, and is pretty much white all-over. It would definitely be considered a "new-age" design.

The neat thing is, though, they used a bundle of optic fibers about 1 1/2 inches thick (from the base) that are spread out into the branches and a large bundle went into the "star" on top. There is a light at the bottom that turned / changed color so the christmas tree likewise sparkled.

The first thing I thought about at the time was "I wonder how much bandwidth is in this tree here?" Testement to geekiness, eh?

As christmas is drawing near, I will be making more comments on it as we go - so I will save some christmas related stuff for later.

2) This morning I wore one of my "not-so-good" socks. they keep slipping down and gets crumbled up inside my shoe, which is very uncomfortable and I have to stop every once in a while to pull it out / straight again.

It momemtarily occured to me that it would be possible to use the gluestick (remember? school girls?) to attach the socks. And then I wondered if it would pull off your hair later when you wanted to detach the said socks.

I shuddered thereafter at the thought of *me* applying glue to myself on train stations.

3) I also got another letter from the bank via registered mail. This is not fun anymore. I am fairly sure that this is for the internet banking. However, it would be a serious pain in the butt if everything they send is via registered mail. I will get the letter tonight and maybe next week onward I can do internet banking in Japan (and brag about it over the net).

4) within my pile of junk that I sent from the states, my bicycle is included. This I will say about it: In the US, bicycles are mostly a thing for recreation, and it shows. Bicycles in Japan really remind me of the bicycles in china - they are 100% steel, only 1 gear, have basket on front and "platform" (I don't know what you call them) on the back for carrying stuff, and have other conveniences like water / mud guard over the tires, and integrated locks and bike-stands. Very practical transportation devices, instead of recreational devices.

They seem taller than the US ones, though - and nobody EVER raise their seats from the base levels. They also have a lot of foldable bicycles. It's pretty neat. Not quite sure what's the benefit quite yet, though.

5) Very unrelated to Japan - but I was pinging a server in Burlington, VT today, and I was getting a 200ms response time. Considering that light takes 140ms or so to go once around the world, I figured that we are breaking some laws of physics. Please remember that:
*) in fibre-optic cables, light travel at 2/3 the speed since it's going through glass / plastic / whatever. Over copper, the speed of signal propogation is even slower (about 40%)
*) there are additive latencies from all the routers, repeaters, switches, whatever, that the ping packet will encounter along the way.

I thought it was really impressive - since a few days ago I was getting like one and half seconds. If I did actually break anykind of law of physics - this journal be my witness, I want my million dollars (Nobel Prize).

6) and last: I got this bug bite near my left knee. It is very swollen and it hurts. Right now I am considering the possibility and remedies if I am having an alergic or inflammatory condition that may affect the operation of my knee. Hiking with a inproperly configured knee is a bad idea.

Now, If I remember right, I think back when I moved to the Us about 10 years ago, I had similar reactions to the indiginous bugs there too, but it (the strong reaction) eventually subsided. I think it might be that my body is not used to the kind of chemicals the bugs use in this geographical area, and is reacting strongly to it.

Of course, there is probabbly nothing you can do beside really being careful about getting bitten / stinged / whatever, but as a word of caution, getting bitten in a forign land might cause more discomfort than getting bit by a bug your body's learned to deal with. For those that plan to travel, stock up on med-kits.

Have fun man!

[Quass]

Been reading your journal for a few weeks now. (hope that doesn't freak you out..)

Good luck on your hiking trip..
oh, just wanted to let you know.. my girlfriend, who is Japanese, says that the reason for the short skirts is fashion, as you thought. But one thing you didn't get right is about the big socks.. they are there because apparantly (ask her.. not me) Japanese girls don't have shapely legs that are skinny at the ankles.. so the socks cover that up. Thus showing as much leg as possible, along with the sock, renders the most sexually appealing leg. lol

Well there you go.
Talk to you when you get back perhaps.. later!

Re:Have fun man!

[lingqi]

heh... I guess it's like in the old days when the chinese found small feet erotic and women bound their feet. (thank God (or communists / nationalists, actually) that such is not in fashion anymore) Beauty is in the eye(s) of the beholder for sure - but where they even start to get that kind of ideas, is really way beyond me. (I can imagine somebody in their afterlife chuckling "yeah that was *my* idea! I started it! spread like wildfire!" Damn bastard. :-)