kalamatagreen

[kalamatagreen]

Two weeks and some change 'til Christmas

I just finished a couple of MadFit dance workouts - one was the TikTok Dance Workout Pt. 1, and the other was Throwbacks. Afterwards I found a Reddit thread that confirmed my suspicion that Maddie likely works out at the gym outside of her at-home 15 to 30 minute workouts. I stopped working out at the gym partially to save time and money because both 24 Hour Fitnesses would take 20 minutes to get to and almost never had the squat rack available, so I needed to resort to the machines that were not as satisfactory. Working out was really satisfying and productive during the first couple of years of the pandemic, when I had Paula as my gym buddy to go to Foothill Gym in Monrovia, which is owned by an ex-body builder from Ireland. Paula eventually ended up leaving for Ireland to be with her Irish husband and came back two years later.

I'm finding it hard to focus my ambitions or wants outside of lesson planning for my middle school students, and attending church-related events and gatherings. Perhaps I need not be so greedy.

My ex-roommate Christopher contacted me via text out of the blue, the one who ended up leaving of his accord although everyone in the apartment wanted him out. He asked which church I had invited him to, so I freely told him. He said that maybe he'd see me there the next time he was in LA. I think he is back in Chicago.

I caught a good student saying that my kanji worksheet during the study hall (PAWS session) today kept her from doing "important work." I retorted that the kanji worksheet is important too (as far as her grade goes, it doesn't count at all, to be fair, but I want them all to use their PAWS time productively, especially since they generally don't seem to have much homework and just goof off the whole time otherwise). Her friends told her that I had "clocked" her.

My 6th graders did a bubble chart today on their favorite artist. I used Bjork as my example and modeled it for them. Then I walked around and helped them figure out what to write, as far as the "image/impression" of their artist, good things about their music such as if they write their own lyrics, and their personal life...in Japanese, of course. Some of the artists that came up: PSI (the friend of the student was surprised they had the guts to write that down, seeing as probably that artist has explicit content), Eminem, Drake, ACDC (by a girl who is going to go see them with her dad, dad's friend, and their kid?), Ariana Grande (who apparently is famous for her high ponytail, I did not know that was her call to fame), Olivia Rodrigo, Beethoven, Ryu Sakamoto (I showed his song "Ue wo muite arukou/Sukiyaki" as an EdPuzzle), a Ukulele player, K-pop groups like Les something, etc. A couple of kids said they didn't really listen to music! For one of them, her family all does sports (which I did not know precludes listening to music). The other said her brother listens to video game music while her mom listens to something she doesn't know.

When I came home, I saw there was Silverlake Ramen takeout containers on the kitchen table, that were empty. So I'm guessing one of the roommates worked from home today, which he does periodically, while the other worked from home as they always do.

The church Christmas potluck party is this coming Saturday and my friend on the singles chat asked if it would be casual or dressy, and I don't think anyone answered yet. It'll be at a guy's house that I've been to for the NFL football kickoff game back in September or so.

[kalamatagreen]

Third day in a row is the charm

I finally looked up an old flame (who I went on a grand total of five dates with I believe, including the infamous Magic Castle date which was our crash and burn night, even though I didn't fully realize it until the next night). They had posted a stand-up comedy routine about the breakup just within a couple of hours of actually going through with the breakup. What conviction and cajones. Somebody in the audience asked why he had chosen to break up, right before he had said "It was the first time I had stomach butterflies in a while." Now that I think of it, was it stomach butterflies over dating in general, or over having to break up? Anyhow he said what he had told me on the phone, which was that he didn't see me in his future, and that he didn't feel himself physically reaching out to me. Not sure why he had to emphasize "physically." Also he hash-tagged the post "situationship," a word that I physically abhor, but I don't even know if what we had would count for that, considering that he apparently had nothing in his mind regarding where it was going, and I had genuine hopes for it. There should be a more nuanced word for that. Maybe it's simply "female disappointment in males."

I treated myself to a chicken pho from Non La Vietnamese Cafe and a pistachio ricotta cake from Ugo, in downtown Culver City. I was in the area purportedly for the Christmas tree lighting, but after braving the crowd, I could not physically stand to stay there, so I retreated for good food. The server at the Vietnamese cafe said it would be 15 minutes, so I took the time to cross the street and order that dessert from the bartender at Ugo. The bartender told me that he made sure to get the best piece of the pistachio ricotta cake, which I actually saw him do, before he told me that. I told him that I'd saw that he did that and that I appreciated it. What a sweetheart. I gave him a dollar tip. For the Vietnamese cafe, since it was takeout and I had basically received no service yet, I gave no tip. And lo and behold, the server was super sweet anyway and looked out for my order after I came back, and made sure to give me all the sauces... chili garlic, hoisin, sriracha, and asked if I wanted utensils, which I didn't, because I was going to bring those babies home.

I called my dad to tell him that I'd pulled a daddy and retreated from a crowd. He said Lee the neighbor was encouraging him to put up some nails along the roof to put up Christmas lights. My dad is usually quite a grinch because of Pearl Harbor remembrance days and other reasons I'm sure, but he's put up lights in the bay window, and hanging string lights, and lights on the tree before. We'll see what happens. He's been pouring his energy into assembling a standing basketball hoop that is adjustable between 7.5 to 10 feet and will require 300 pounds of sand bags to weigh down? I don't know why he didn't take an easier route than that one. He did the same thing with the billiards table he ordered...that thing was hundreds of pounds and took up the whole living room, and had to be removed by professionals when he had it taken out. But not before playing every night faithfully for.... over a year, and then he kept playing fairly consistently. He could give you the exact numbers.

One of my stellar students asked me to write the kanji for "miryoku" (charm), which I could not remember off the top of my head, so instead of looking it up like a good teacher, I just wrote the hiragana for "mi" and the easy character of "strength" for "ryoku." A shining moment in my teaching career.

[kalamatagreen]

Making a habit

I started yesterday after 7 years of silence and decided to keep this going. I just looked up "Culver City Middle School Japanese teacher" just to see what would come up, and I do come up first in the search results, followed by a posting for the job that I replied to two years ago! At first I got scared that they were looking for someone to replace me! Ahaha. Sheesh.

Highlights from today...seeing one of my favorite Spanish immersion teachers at the electives department meeting, as the electives teachers are required to administer a Youth Truth survey to their classes to gauge how students are doing, mental health wise, most likely. I'll be administering this Friday, which will be nice since I won't have to fill the class with the usual review activities, and only need to supervise minimally. Teachers sure need that break. I asked that teacher Raul which class was his favorite to teach, and he replied eighth grade because he gets to teach subjects and clauses in detail, and I complimented him for how in detail he went even just teaching grammar to his 6th grade students, when I observed him as part of my new teacher induction program (I'm in the 2nd year of it). He parted ways with me just salivating over how much he likes teaching grammar, "yesss, yesss..." his eyes gleamed. He is a crack-up. He has long hair that he usually wears up, and he is normally wearing a mask.

Another highlight was in my 7th grade Japanese Language Arts class where one of the female students asked if they could teach the class if they came up with a lesson plan. My first gut reaction was annoyance at their being so supremely confident that they could teach the class. So half-sarcastically, I said they could do so, as long as they came up with a lesson plan. There were two of them, and their eyes lit up. "Really? really?" they asked repeatedly. Then sure enough, during the brain break, they came up to me showing me their plan. And to my pleasant surprise, it was a well-thought out plan, bringing together elements that I regularly incorporate into my classes, but putting more of the fun ones together in the same class. They had put in the Marugoto coursebook listening exercises, but adding time to go over it a second time, then Listen and Draw (which is something I do on Fridays as review and never grade, shhh), and Running Dictation (which they called "Run and Write"), where there's a runner who runs to a sentence on the wall, memorizes it, and says it to their partner who writes it down. I was heart-warmed that they paid homage to my activities and had paid enough attention to realize these were regular activities in my classes. I told them that they could do this next Monday and they genuinely seemed excited. These kids are the ones that seem to sometimes not take notes, or are extra chatty, and they did cheerleading last year. I believe one of them still plays soccer now. I had both of their older sisters in my 8th grade class in my first year of teaching.

I am currently baking sweet potato in slices in the oven, and the apartment is filling up with the smell of nutmeg, ginger, and cloves... I did NOT add cinnamon because I sprinkle that every day into my yogurt. <3

Planning on going to my mid-week gathering at the Culver-Palms United Methodist Church. Pastor CJ said he would give the Part 2 of his lesson that he started on Sunday. "Repent and to the things you did at first." He talked about how many Christians have come to think of their relationship with God as transactional, as "under," "over," "from", and "for" God, rather than "with" God. He asked us in closing to consider the "Ephesian"/transactional vs. "love" lens of quiet times, midweeks, pursuit of holiness, spiritual growth, and financial giving in small groups/pairs. Michele talked about how she could improve in her "love" lens of her quiet times, as she can think of it as a checklist item and not put in as much time as she would like. I said that I find quiet times to be fulfilling, but that I could improve in my view of "spiritual growth," whereby sometimes it can turn in an egotistical mission rather than for God. Alieze said that she wanted to make sure that she used what God gifted her with.

[kalamatagreen]

Hisashiburi

I was listening to a podcast called "You Do You," a Japanese language podcast that features two best friends, one in Australia. The one in Australia mentioned that she had revisited her old blog posts and was quite impressed with what she had written, and that the last one was in 2017! Much the same with me. I just logged on here to see that my last post had been in October-ish 2017. I had written about the wrap party in Santa Rosa for the WWE2K video games.

I don't think I'm ready to make this private, but it's a big deal to be sitting at my desk at all typing out my life. Some folks are smoking cigs outside and apparently celebrating a 21st birthday and it is really grinding my gears with this period-induced headache I've been nursing.

The Australian in the Japanese podcast said she had been ruminating on the quote, "If you think that sunshine brings you happiness, then you haven't danced in the rain." The quote hit her differently when she first blogged about it, thinking simply that it was a nod to having a shift in perspective to think more positively. But after experiencing more tragedy and loss and such, she's realized the deeper meaning of being able to find joy and meaning even within sad moments or pain or a state of tragedy.

Today, I asked my 6th period Japanese Language Arts 6th grade class what they had done during Thanksgiving. One student Enzo had gone to Austin and Houston, visiting his dad's cousin's family, as well as NASA headquarters. I immediately thought of my dad visiting NASA headquarters for his work but didn't mention that, just asked if Enzo had any family working for NASA, which he didn't. I did say that I'd also been to Austin over the Thanksgiving break. What a coincidence and small world. Enzo cracks me up because he talks in a stream-of-consciousness way in both his speaking up in class and his storyboards. I know his style of writing now.

At the AirBNB in Austin, there was a book in my bedroom titled "Write your novel in a month." I combed through it a bit. I believe the target was to get down on paper 50,000 words. I guess that's 500 times as much as 500 words, which is one to three pages? Doesn't sound insane. I think about all of the characters I've come across in my life, from my elementary, secondary school days, college life, JET Program life, Monterey Institute torture, 2K Games adventures, Tonko House stint, freelance and freeloading days back at my dad's, and now working as a full-time Japanese language teacher at Culver City Middle School in the immersion program! What are the odds??

I watched "The Gospel of John" on youtube for the second night in a row, and my roommate Jaspreet caught me watching it as I sat in my workout clothes (burgundy ribbed tank top and black pants). I felt a little self-conscious about it so I watched a few more minutes and then switched over to "Komi Can't Communicate," watching the last few minutes of the first episode. So you can see that I don't watch TV for extended periods of time, not since moving to this branch of Category/Common - Matteson, where I have two male roommates in their 20s, versus the rotating band of adventurers at Centinela, except for Terri who stayed firm through to the end, although she had moved in a couple of months after me originally. At Centinela, I had faithful TV-watching buddies in Terri and Ariel.

Lord, I find it hard to orient myself. The kids were singing "Country Roads," the English version, along to the Japanese version that I was showing them through an EdPuzzle. My favorite Ghibli movie of all time, though I usually publicly say it's "Princess Mononoke," is actually "Whisper of the Heart" - "Mimi wo Sumaseba." The theme song in that is "Country Roads," sung by the lead character and accompanied by her boyfriend on violin and his grandpa's string quartet. I found it so charming that the 6th graders knew "Country Roads." I asked them how they knew it, and they said they simply just did, because it's a song that people know, and that it's a classic. That means so much in this age where shared culture has been fragmented by the internet.

I was thinking that I've had the privilege to re-live my adolescence every half generation or so. I re-lived it once in Fukuyama, Japan, as I taught 5th- 9th graders as an assistant language on the JET Program, and now I'm re-living it in a more removed, reluctant way... I pretend I'm so much more experienced and wise than the kiddos, but really my most vulnerable experience happened in 8th grade, and that was losing my mom.

"Mimi wo Sumaseba" was a Studio Ghibli VHS tape that was part of a collection that Masayuki Ojisan, my mom's younger brother gave to us on our summer trip to Japan, probably between 5th and 6th grade. I remember watching that video tape and feeling so connected to the story - a young girl coming of age and falling in love and trying to find her gift of writing, and being inspired by the boy who made violins, and them performing "Country Roads" together and her following a random fat cat on a train and through town, and how charming it all was. I showed this to my Japanese classes last year, and my Japanese 1 class in particular seemed similarly charmed by it.

[kalamatagreen]

Copywriting

My eyes have gone blurry and fatigued skimming through the various copywriting positions available in the Bay Area. Some positions are unexpectedly interesting: one talked about having a keen interest in music and being up to date on the latest music trends, requiring knowledge of a foreign language, the laundry list in which they included Japanese. Another was for Fitt, a site I had never heard of, but was a part-time position writing about the fitness scene in San Francisco, which would require frequenting healthy eating establishments and gyms. I think I even saw an opening for Thrillist, where you’d have to be up on the latest eating, drinking and activity trends in SF.

I’ve been stalking the profiles of other copywriters just to get a sense of what they’re like. It’s just interesting to me that they pretty much started where I was after college, with a degree in English literature. However I took the route of jumping on a plane to Japan, whereas these people jumped into grad school straight away in a related field, or worked as interns at magazines, or popped into junior copywriting/social media/content design/editing positions. After a few jobs, they can rise to senior copywriter, maybe directing other copywriters, maybe also polishing up their proficiencies in web-based tools, video editing, photography, etc. They can go the full-on marketing route, pitching ideas to create the full background behind a given product line, progressing to marketing or creative director.

I realized that while I love skimming through buzzfeed articles that happen to be shared on facebook, or even perusing through grapee.jp or imgur or boredpanda articles as breaks during lunch; I have not been an avid or consistent reader of any particular publication. How am I supposed to expect to branch into the field of writing when I’m not even an active participant in the consumption of it? Therefore I want to pledge to myself to read, let’s say, three articles from three different established publications, like The New York Times, The Economist, and for kicks, something like Lifehacker, on a regular basis. 

[kalamatagreen]

Eyes opened

Jess sent me a picture today over Line of Parker with his eyes opened. I’m not sure exactly when he opened his eyes, but I know he was trying to when I went to visit her and Jason in the hospital on Monday night (two days ago). Jess and Jason had gone into the hospital at midnight on Sunday night, and Akane joined them an hour later. Fast forward to around 9 pm on Monday night, and Parker finally came out! They gave Jess an epidural around 11 in the morning, and Akane told me that Jess could press a button to keep sustaining her intake of it. Jess had been having contractions for 4 days and had already gone to Kaiser (in SF) twice on a false alarm.

The push started a little before 7 pm and apparently Jess did a great job, as all the nurses commented. Jason said she turned into a monster. They were projecting three hours, but Parker came out in about two.

Jess was debating with her mom throughout the day whether her mom and grandma should come that night or the next day. However since Parker came out before 10 pm, Jess’ mom decided she wanted to go see him. I’m sure Jess’ mom and grandma were waiting around all day anxiously at home. I was wondering about what to bring and whether to bring food because presumably everybody would be starving, but of course Jess’ mom had that covered with some great homemade food (including noodles, which Jess couldn’t eat for months so as not to increase the risk of diabetes in her child). I went to go pick up Jess’ mom and grandma to take them to the hospital around 10 pm, parked in the emergency room parking lot, and walked through the ICU to get to the delivery room area.

We got to the room but Akane said they were in the process of transferring Jess to another room. So we went up the stairs and waited for the room to be prepared. Finally the nurses came rolling Jess in with a wheelchair, and Parker. Jess kept commenting that it was weird for her to be rolled in (but I guess there probably wasn’t another choice). Jason was enthusiastic about how big Parker was - 8 pounds, 20.5 inches. Jess was enthusiastic about the hair - she kind of has thin hair, but that Parker had a full head of thick black hair.

I know it’s dumb but I guess I didn’t expect Parker’s fingers to look so developed. How could that little human have just been inside some amniotic fluid, and come out looking like that? He was trying to open his eyes and crying a lot. Jess did a good job bouncing him and soothing him. He had bright red ears, which we joked were from Jason...seemed like his other features were from Jess, though Jess’ mom commented on the way home that the eyes looked like Jason’s.

The nurses wrote some notes on a big whiteboard on the wall, including the reminder of needing to breastfeed at least every three hours.

Jess and Jason should be coming home with Parker on Thursday (tomorrow). I’m sure Jess’ mom and grandma will be eagerly waiting. At least they have Jess’ mom’s homecooked food, though I didn’t see a microwave or fridge in the room. There was a shower and an arm chair for Jason.

Jess will be taking three months off of work; Jason’s a bit of a workaholic so we’ll see how long he stays away from it... :)

[kalamatagreen]

My late friend’s birthday

Today Lidia would have turned 30. I have vivid flashbacks of stories she told me all the time, because her stories always made you feel like you were right there with her experiencing them. I pass by Claim Jumper on the freeway and think of her talking about how she ate a whole appetizer plate of onion rings and got sick. I’ve never been to Claim Jumper so that’s truly the only reference I have to it. 

Last weekend I drove home to Pasadena for a family gathering at Point Fermin Park. It was a birthday celebration for my dad, uncle, and their cousin Patti’s kids Kamryn and Kendall. My dad flipped the mango cream brulee cake from 85 degree Celsius bakery over while he was moving/lifting the ice chest. It was on its head inside the box on the ground. I was crushed. It really put a dark cloud over my head. It was already cold at the park and everyone was kind of tolerating it. But later when I looked at the pictures of my dad, uncle and the girls posing in front of the cake in my uncle/aunt’s kitchen, it really didn’t look all that bad. After all, we still sang the birthday song, and while we were singing the song, one of the girls hurt herself and started bawling. And the thing is, her sister went right ahead and blew out the candles like nothing had happened, without a care in the world. So we all need to be like that sister.

My old roommate/co-worker is having a baby soon! She took her first day of baby leave yesterday, unexpectedly early after going to the doctor with her fiance thinking it was time. Goodness. I’ve known her to be pregnant since Labor Day weekend when she finally told me, but am somehow still surprised that a baby is going to come out of her. She decorated the baby’s room with monkey stickers and knit a blanket for him, which we saw at her baby shower on the first weekend of this month.

My college roommate is having a baby shower soon too...I need to remember to RSVP to it. 

In other news, I’ve been hiking more this year...did Echo Mountain with my reluctant but triumphant sister on New Year’s Day, Mount Diablo loop trail with the meetup group on the last day of January, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll do Strawberry Canyon/Panoramic Hill/Chapparal Peak (let’s see if I actually remembered that right) tomorrow with Steph and her new boy (Anthony?). I’m also signed up for the Pleasanton Ridge hike on Sunday with the meetup group but as of now I’m on the waitlist.

I finally got a curtain in my office this week, and the honest impetus was wanting to do plank workouts in my office without caring about people looking in. :P I mean of course I’d been thinking about it for a while because I didn’t like the dim light in the hallway contrasting with the light in my room, but what actually instigated me to press the Buy button on amazon was that. However I have not done one plank workout yet. I’ve been getting my butt handed to me on a platter in the boot camp classes this week (Tuesday and Thursday). 

I’m signed up for the Marin 10 K race on 4/24, which will be my first 10 K race since 2011 in Fukuyama! I’m getting Ben to join me but I’m hoping he will make the right choice and do the half marathon because he is aeons ahead of me in the running arena. That guy ran 20 miles on a whim during Thanksgiving break. 

[kalamatagreen]

Today was a good day

I suppose three things set the tone for today- that I couldn’t find my Kate Spade glasses, which Kin had supposedly hockeyed somewhere last night, wearing this flowy button down navy blue floral print shirt made in India that I got in Fukuyama/Okayama, and putting on the necklace that Okayama baachan gave me.

I got to work and saw Liam coming up in a bright white T-shirt and black jersey shorts. In front of him were a few real-deal looking business men in full decked out suits. I mentioned to Liam that I remembered his first day and how he showed up in a suit and how different it was now, and he said he was thinking the same thing in looking at the businessmen.

At my desk, I got an e-mail stating that I’d gotten a package. But I was pretty sure that I hadn’t ordered anything from amazon...the last thing I ordered was a measure tape to measure my office for my curious father. So that was exciting. A gift!

I ended up working until about 2:20 somewhat unexpectedly- had to finish text strings that needed to be edited before Japan woke up. Even Yuri seemed apologetic in her phone call to me checking up on something and asking in passing if I had gone to lunch yet. I sat with the late lunchers - Akane and Jess. Before that I saw Josh in the kitchen with his usual assortment of veggies. I asked him if he grew his own veggies, and he said he didn’t, because what would he do with a crap ton of tomatoes (I’m paraphrasing). He asked where I lived so I said I lived two miles away and he wondered didn’t I get incredibly bored around here. Hahaha well at least people understand the plight of it.

Akane and Jess sat with me for maybe 15, 20 minutes before they got up and did their ritualistic ping pong playing. I could hear them shit talking each other in the background, Jess more ballistically and manically. 

I got back to work and finished up the rest of the into English e-mails. Then I figured I’d go pick up my package. It was a book! “Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee. It was a hardback book, which made me think it was my dad...also the fact that he is probably the only one that knows my work address, as I’ve had him send me stuff there before. I didn’t quite understand the choice, but I liked To Kill a Mockingbird in high school, and this was honestly a pleasant surprise! I texted around to see who’d given it to me - my dad, Paula, Ben...sure enough it was the daddy!

I got into the rhythm of translating bug reports afterwards. It was almost relaxing. Then Yuri called and I expected that peace to be destroyed but she was asking an English question! Arno had referred to a twitter account where the “very page stated that it was fan run” (paraphrasing slightly). She didn’t understand the “fan run” part so I told her that he should have put a dash in between “fan” and “run” but that it basically meant the page was managed by fans. She was grateful for the explanation and then re-capped that the “first page” mentioned that it was fan run, but she said it so fast, I just agreed since she seemed excited to understand, and just lynced her afterwards to explain to her the usage of “the very page,” meaning “the page itself.” Kind of outdated language, Arno.

Then Yuri called again when it came near to 7:30 when our weekly overtime dinner was due. Barbecue! She said to go ahead and get some food and just work a little bit more so that it doesn’t look like I’m eating and running, the way Andrew was instructing people not to. Sounded funny to hear that from her. For some things like that, she is surprisingly “lax.” 

Got in line for barbecue; Emily and Georgie were there before me. Georgie insisted that Emily and I get in front of him. Chivalry isn’t dead. I asked Jason where the food had come from, and he said, “I don’t know, a cow?” Akane laughed. Hannah told everyone to go rub their fingers on their keyboards after indulging in the ribs as a joke. I think Georgie took the last big paper plate, so Preet said there should be a rule where the person who takes the last plate eats all the rest of the food.

I got off at about 8:25, and rushed over to the gym and got a 2 mile hill treadmill workout in! I was getting pretty winded in the first three quarters of a mile, and was wondering why, when I realized the incline was at 3.5, and I’d put my initial workout level at 10 instead of 1 like I’d intended. So I put it back to 1, haha.

Got home, searched my house, found my glasses kind of tangled in my orange ethernet cord. Go figure.

[kalamatagreen]

Horrorshow

So near the end of the meeting, Vince mentioned that it felt like a torture chamber, with the perpetual high-pitched frequency of the teleconference system (ironically for an audio meeting), which Josh said would be intolerable for dogs (he has a very large Burmese mountain dog named Zog or something). Josh said it was like a Clockwork Orange where they keep your eyes open as they torture you.

That gets me to thinking about how much I should incorporate A Clockwork Orange terminology into my daily speech. :P I’ve looked up SparkNotes on it and will give you my three favorite words.

1. To govoreet- to talk, speak. It sounds like a hybrid of “to govern” and “to eat,” which seems appropriate because you are governing something when you’re speaking, perhaps governing the horizon of your future, or governing the sound waves of your peers, or governing the land of your psyche. And you’re eating too; you’re feeding your ego, you’re shaping who you are for yourself and peers, and you’re digesting what you’ve figured out from your words because sometimes you don’t know what you were thinking until you hear the sound of your own voice.

2. To viddy - to see. Sounds like “video” so you can just think of a moving picture in your mind, which I suppose is probably the best way to “see” anything.

3. “Horrorshow” is the word I remembered meaning “cool,” but according to these SparkNotes, it means “good.” 

[kalamatagreen]

Whew

Survived a two and a half hour meeting. It just grabbed us by the hair and swept us away. It seemed like everything was going down in a torrential downpour, with our usual meeting room’s teleconference system being revamped and all of the old data deleted, so we tried putting in all manner of IP addresses, and couldn’t connect and finally after holding up the Japanese team for 15 minutes, we went in the small cramped room that no one ever wants to have meetings in (which Yuri and Akane helped set up for us), and met the Japanese team there (virtually).

For the first item on the agenda, we called in Andrew who had been asking about the QTE schedule for the ratings build, which led to a shitstorm conversation about how his priorities did not match with the priorities Bryan S. had conveyed in the meeting last week. Andrew had said that he expected the in-game commentary to be implemented by 7/1; first we had to clarify that this commentary he referred to was not for the QTEs, but for in-game commentary, and second, we had to say where this 7/1 date came from...and when we checked the milestone build document, it said that the in-game commentary should be done by 7/16 (but there had been some comment stating that the in-game commentary would be done by the end of June or something). Then we kept pushing them to confirm that the in-game commentary be done 100% by 7/16 and they kept asking what exactly “done” entailed, and we just said that we wanted the commentary to trigger (because apparently it wasn’t triggering at all and was very noticeably barren). 

I suppose this all sounds very tedious...this was just the first item on the agenda and it took an hour and fifteen, by some people’s estimate. 

[kalamatagreen]

Bhi Bhiman

I had such a grand time at my 2nd Urban Adventure Club meet-up. After my kick in May of going to festival type events by myself (excepting Bottle Rock), it was nice to have a group outing with people for no other reason but for the pure reason that we wanted to. We ate together at Little Star Pizza near Alamo Square Park, which by the way has no damn parking contrary to what John, one of the guys, had suggested, thus causing me to be 30 minutes late trying that area in vain. 

The group had already started drinking when I arrived, having moved over to a bar while waiting for our table to be ready at Little Star Pizza.  Kristina had come back to the bay area after 11 years in Minneapolis, and works for the Cal Academy of Sciences as a writer/editor. Roz had suggested this concert; she is into concerts hosted at homes in SF. I didn’t know their names until later, but there was Daniel who enthusiastically hyped up going to these before-work no-alcohol dance parties that are hosted around the city, and Curtis who wondered whether Bhi Bhiman was actually the musician’s real name as it might be a name he’s given himself as done in certain religions...we figured out together that Muslims do that, as I remembered my piano teacher had a separate religious name separate from his birth name. Brett used to a Buddhist monk, as Andy the organizer announced to everyone, and is still a vegetarian. Lindsey used to live in Napa of all places and commuted to San Francisco from there; also she had a good date walking all around San Fran the other day.

Ash and John caught up with us at the concert, which was at a small joint called The Independent, where pretty much everyone was standing with the exception of some on the edges on the benches, and there was a little space on the second floor balconies. Ash brought a couple of his friends. There was a crass guy with long blond hair singing/screaming about money shots or something on his first song, but he had some good beats and was unashamed, so I liked him. He said one of his songs was a mosh pit song intended for 16-year olds but that he would play it anyway. The rented drummer with a slight afro good-humoredly accompanied him. That drummer was on stage later for Bhi Bhiman.

Bhi Bhiman was lovely. He had a great, rich voice and thoughtful lyrics. 

Afterwards I was leaning on going home, but everyone started walking towards Bar 821, where they were serving Amaros. I don’t remember having one before, but I got to share a sip of a few-  I guess we were all in a sharing mood. The Monto negro that Curtis got was interesting- it had a chamomile taste to it. Some folks decided to get Fernet shots (Andy, John, etc.) so I joined in on that and had one- it was very sweetly syrupy, but if you embrace it as a chocolaty minty treat, it is pretty good. I suppose those tastes were covering up the bitterness that Fernets are famous for.

I took my time finding my car afterwards, like half an hour, but it was nice to walk around in the cool night air and still see people milling around on Broderick where I’d parked, a residential street parallel to Divisadero, where the concert and pizza was. If you saw people milling around in Novato at that time of night, it’d probably be best not to stick around, but these people milling around in SF were just out and about enjoying the city. 

[kalamatagreen]

Joy of analog

I plugged my clock radio alarm clock again today after a hiatus. Kin had figured out how to press the Radio (On) button and was using it to wake me up in the middle of the night to feed him instead of his usual tactics of knocking push pins off the wall or lighting scratching the backs of my hands or pouncing on the bed. I figured I’d try to reduce his options by one...but last night I was thinking about how I never give my iPhone a rest...which is a ridiculous thing to worry about; it is just a machine regardless of how many apps and life-controlling features it has on it. So I thought I’d re-instate an alarm clock so that I could take my iPhone off duty.

I briefly checked out alarm clocks on Amazon thinking I’d see some charming, quaint, or pop-culture-themed ones. What was I smoking. Of course 99.9% of them were these square steely colored digital clocks. I figured if that was the case, I’m plenty happy with my clock radio alarm clock.

When I turned the radio on right before this post, it was playing “One in a Million” by Aaliyah, then followed up with “Funkytown”! This is why you listen to the radio. Now it’s playing “Mercy, Mercy Me.”

Even though you can so easily make a million personalized playlists of your own on iTunes or set up your own stations on Spotify/Pandora or watch whatever music video you want on YouTube, there is really nothing like just listening to a good radio station and getting the thrill of hearing a familiar song, a tune you’ve been waiting to experience again, or a completely new one that strikes a chord with you.

[kalamatagreen]

When the cat’s away

You know who’s been gone in Japan on business this week, so while the workload may have been heavier than usual, oh, the lightness of spirit and levity us little two minions felt. We played ping pong for a glorious half hour off the clock and reveled in our beaming sweat yesterday- I may have slammed the ball into my opponent a few times.

Today the three of us intended on going to a deli place that also serves Korean food for lunch, but it was closed, so we hit up Aurora on Commercial Drive, which we had passed on the way over. Two of us had gone once last year and sat out on the patio at that time. This time we sat inside and got served by the same waiter as last time I think, or maybe he just has one of those faces. Hot chai tea, special of the day- cappellini (angel hair pasta) with shrimp and lobster tail. It was chillied up just right. Photographs of domestic birds and the Golden Gate Bridge were on sale on the wall for between 500 and 1000. 

[kalamatagreen]

being an adult

I tend to be getting caught off guard a lot when I go to the gym these days. I go straight from work, so I stuff what I think I need in the morning into a bag and hope that it suffices when I get to the gym. I wore some leggings under a black summer dress I got from H&M today, so when I was changing in the locker room, I realized that I didn’t have a pair of socks.

Thus I kept the leggings on under my yoga capris (quite the fashion statement) while I ran on the treadmill and trudged through my abs of steel workout.

[kalamatagreen]

Another audio meeting

One phrase that our side has caught onto, in terms of Japanese in the audio teleconferences is Shou shou omachi kudasai. That’s what they say to ask us to wait a while, while they discuss stuff on their end. As soon as Takezawa-san said it, Bryan got a twinkle in his eye and was like, “Please wait,” while throwing down his forefinger emphatically. Sean commented that it was like, “Hurry up and wait,” and I said this wasn’t the army...but then retracted it and said...yeah it kinda is. Bryan said we should do a salute every time they said that phrase in the meeting.

[kalamatagreen]

Ping pong

I set aside 15 minutes from my lunch break to play ping pong with Laura. My boss had already awoken in Japan (she’s there to interpret meetings for this week), so I had a slight paranoia that she might try to Lync or e-mail me and then get on my case for not being available, despite it being a legitimate chunk of time that I am entitled to have (no one says you have to take your lunch break all in one block). Yes, she is like Javert from Les Miserables, except for a much more mundane cause. 

Laura seemed to be bent on slamming the ball, which I commented on, and she said she just couldn’t find anyone in the office to talk to about her subtitling work because they’re all in Japan. She asked me about how I learned Japanese - it is one of the languages she wants to learn; the other is German. I told her I did JET, which she liked hearing about. I’m not sure how we got on the topic of instruments, except that she was on a role about discussing the new things she wants to learn - and one of those desires was to play the cello, which made me think of Angela, my best friend from JET who in fact learned to play silent cello while there. 

The nice thing about ping pong is that it’s pretty easy to carry a conversation while doing it. Laura mentioned that her parents always had a lot of instruments lying around the house which encouraged her to play- she played flute and oboe in concert band. I asked her if she ever did marching band, and she said she tried it and it was awful- plus it was in tennis season, which she would not give up, being an enthusiastic tennis player...so then it came full circle for why she got so excited when she saw me and Cristo play ping pong randomly weeks ago and asked me to let her know if I wanted to play at any point.

[kalamatagreen]

Reclaiming my apartment

Having returned to Novato after a trip down south for Father’s Day, I felt the urge to reclaim my apartment, despite it being past 10 at night. Perhaps discussing it with the father and sister encouraged me to actually go ahead with my plan of obliterating all of the spiders! They’d set up camp in the far two corners of the living room. I got a long folded piece of cardboard from the closet and gently coerced one of them onto it, from its throne of dead little insects, hurriedly walked toward the front door while keeping it on the cardboard, and hit the cardboard against the ground outside to have it descend down by itself.

Repeated that step more or less for the second one. For the third, one I completely intended on letting it live, but it got off the cardboard in the last few feet before the door, so I tried to hit it to have it go flying out, but instead slammed it against the ridge of the doorway. Oops. So much for my Buddhist tendencies.

So after that, there was no mercy. I sprayed down the corners with apple cider vinegar to let them know that it was my territory and wiped up the rest of the cobwebs and whatever accompanying mosquito carcasses and spiders there were with them. After finishing the living room, I found more cobwebs in the hallway, and then another actual spider in the corner of my bedroom that I hadn’t realized before. I went to town on the spider in my room. No more gentle nudging, just pure spraying it in the face with acidic vinegar multiple times, and then squashed it with my paper towel.

I think my cat was terrified of the venom in my eyes.