Hey folks, I just thought I’d drop a line now that I’ve finally gotten things set up so that I can blog. I’d love to sit and write about all the things I’ve seen for hours, but I’ve gotta study. Long story that I’ll write about later, that.
In any case, I’m in Japan, the plane didn’t crash, everything is quite a bit overwhelming, and I’ve eaten the organ in which fish keep their eggs. Knowing Japan, it was most likely raw too.
More soon. I’m alive anyway, in case you wondered.
So, 6 days from now (on Friday), I toddle aboard a plane that goes to Istanbul, Turkey. Then I sit there and stare at a wall for 5 hours or so, after which I trundle aboard a second plane that goes to Osaka, Japan. Gee, I’m finally going.
I for one am amazed that I *am* going. So many hurdles in the way of my trip that could’ve prevented me from pulling it off, like government aid restrictions and the like (say “CSN!” to an unsuspecting Swede and they’ll react about the same way another human would, if you were to exclaim “Blood, blood, blood!” (Hitchhiker’s Guide reference, there…!)). For the record, this is the itinerary: Stockholm, Sweden 02:10 PM on April 4th —> Istanbul, Turkey 06:35 PM; Istanbul, Turkey 11:55 PM on April 4th –> Osaka Kansai, Japan 04:55 PM on April 5th. Aside from the 5 hour wait in Istanbul, looks good to me!
My mother keeps harassing me about preparing for my journey, and has been doing so now for the last 7 or so days. Admittedly, I’m moving outside the country and will be there for 2 years, but how can you possibly prepare for such a journey 2 weeks before the plane leaves? I’m not shipping anything there since Sweden has no affordable plans for such things (you wanna send something FROM Sweden, you gotta send it express, no cheap boat routes available, whereas sending stuff TO Sweden, you have those options — it makes no sense).
(returns after doing some packing — decided to start today, and take things slow — how on earth am I going to fit it all in there?!)
Speaking of the aforementioned in-parenthesis problem, I have one big trunk (150-something litres, i.e. 35-something US ounces (non-liquid)), one big backpack (75 litres, i.e. 17 US ounces (non-liquid)), my lap top (in its own case), and a carry-on bag that won’t be nearly as big as the trunk/backpack. So if I guess the carry-on bag will be something like 10 litres, that puts me at around 240 litres or so. In there I intend to fit all necessary clothing, a bunch of books, the more expensive parts of my computer (CPU, RAM, MB, 3 HDD’s — not because drives are expensive, but because the drives have tons of stuff on them that I’d like to have available), and, more importantly, gifts. Yeap, mostly got chocolate but got something else too for my girlfriend (she might be reading so won’t tell you what it is!). I think the limit per bag is 20 kgs… or was it 40 kgs…? Gah. *checks*
… 20! Figures. But if I pack right, each bag may weigh 20 kgs so I’ve got 40 kgs to play with (that’s about 100 lbs in total, unless I’m mistaken), and the carry-on may weigh up to 8 kgs. Don’t really wanna lug around 8 kgs but hey. (Does that include my lap top’s weight? I guess I won’t go too close to the 8 kg limit or I might find that out the hard way.)
Oh well. Today’s a sort of farewell party for me with the family. It started out well with my mom being grumpy this morning and tossing vacuum cleaners at me while I slept (seriously…!), and then she lumped the cooking chores upon me and went out to help my brother with something he needed help with. The party is in over 4 hours so I’m not sweating it just yet, though. Thought I’d take it easy, pack some, write on my blog-gone-extinct, and I guess start working on dinner once we’re a little closer to dinner-time.
Tomorrow, in fact, is also a farewell-thingie for me but at lunch time. My sister has kind of excommunicated herself from our family — at least during the bigger gatherings — so she tends to come visit for lunch the day after we have some big party. I suppose that sounds worse than it is, but is worse than it appears. The result, in any regard, is waffles. Lots and lots of waffles. With varying flavors of jam and whipped cream. Waffles are not a dessert in Sweden, for your information. It’s a perfectly normal thing to have for lunch, and even dinner.
Speaking of days, I’ve noticed that every single day, there’s something I have to do that is at least semi-important. Last week I had TWO things every day that I had to do. I was so sure I’d miss some appointment somewhere, but so far it seems like I’ve pulled it all off — embassy visits, dentist appointments, etc. And the only day I don’t have anything planned for now is Tuesday. Monday I gotta go to the Japanese Embassy to get my visa, and I am also meeting up with old friends from high school, and on Wednesday I gotta go to the dentist AND I gotta go to another dentist. Yep, two dentists, one day. Dentist-ophobes beware! (I know “dentist-ophobe” isn’t a real word, but I can’t recall what the real word is right now). On Thursday… I gotta pack whatever’s left! And on Friday the plane leaves.
You know, the more I type, the more I realize that there was a lot to be said after all. I keep thinking I don’t have anything I want to blog about, but once I sit down, all kinds of stuff just sort of pop up. I guess a “real” blogger would have simply written one of the many things I’ve written above, posted it, then written the others and kept them unpublished and then published them one at a time with a couple of days in between. Good to keep the audience listening, and all that (I think Technorati, for example, only considers a blog active if it is posted to once a week at a minimum — boy I’m lucky if I post once a MONTH to this thing).
Speaking of “popping up”, the word for “appear” (as in “come out”) in Japanese is “deru” (出る). I went out to grab lunch a few days ago with a former teacher of mine who happens to be American, which has somehow lead to us speaking English when we talk (both in emails and in person). When I switch languages like that, though, I tend to get confused sometimes, and at some point I ended up responding to her in Swedish. Realizing that I was suddenly speaking Swedish, I wanted to say “Swedish is ‘coming out’” (not sure why I wanted to word it that way), and what I ended up saying was “Swedish is der-ing!” Der-ing? Talk about bastardizing languages in general. Was fun at the time though, but she probably didn’t get the reference and I didn’t explain.
In any case, I can’t wait to get started, both on seeing Japan in general, and in learning Japanese, and actually being able to socialize with my girlfriend. But I think one of the things I look forward to the most is seeing the people, as I think there’s a lot to be discovered about humanity in examining cultural differences. I do intend to blog more, especially once I get a new digital camera (expect lots of pictures!), so don’t unsubscribe now, despite my incomprehensive, rather-too-large and sporadic-to-the-point-of-true-randomness blog post titled “About time!”.
My bro sent me this video clip link whatever. It looks pre-arranged, but maybe not. If not, awesome guy. I wanna be like that when I grow up.
http://www.fileradar.net/files/view/World-of-Warcraft_World-of-Warcraft-Nude-Mod/493
I just *had* to find out if there was one (and there seem to be quite a few). Tried it out and made a couple of (female, admittedly) chars of different race and checked it out. It’s quite well made, actually, and I’m sure the WoW TS’ers (are there such a thing? IIRC there were TS’ers in Everquest so why not WoW) will be quite pleased with that mod.
So I’m an ‘80-er. Not sure if that’s how you even say it, but being born between 1980-1989 I am thus an ‘80-er. My nephew and niece are both ‘90-ers (except my youngest niece, who’s a ‘00-er, born last year in fact). When I was a kid there were expressions and cool words we all used and understood that the old folks just didn’t get. I guess this is sort of where I’m headed now — into the old folks parking lot, I mean.
I mean, seriously. My nephew keeps saying “lol” and “col” all the time. I thought only the most self-loathing nerds *said* “lol” in real life. And what’s up with “col” anyway? I asked, and was informed it stands for “crying out loud” (I suggested maybe it should be “fcol” since one usually says “for crying out loud”, and was met with eye-glittering respect for this lingo-level-up, for 5 seconds, after which they realized *saying* “fcol” is impossible).
But yeah, I’m not cool in the eyes of an 11-year old anymore. Not something I strive for, so all is good, but it’s more that I’m entering the “kids say odd things” stage in life. Do mommies and daddies feel like that, or do they (are they forced to) keep up with all the slang and new words. Failing that, they might suddenly wake up and find their kid speaking a completely different language, maybe. Part of the process, I guess, and I guess 10-15 years from now, people will say “lol” in business meetings without being met with a single raised eyebrow.
ttylm8s
I just received the approval from the government to receive student aid for my studies in Japan. Only one thing left is the visa, then I’m good to go. The school claims that won’t be an issue so I guess I’m all set! 
Been a hectic day today, because it was the last day this year that I could get my grades printed out (and signed by principals and such) unless I wanted to wait until January. Which I can’t, really. I told the school in Japan that I was going to send them my grades at the end of December, so I hurried a bit to wrap things up (had some leftovers from past terms and such), and today I was supposed to go pick my grades up.
The problem is that I took classes at two separate schools in two separate municipalities. For this reason, I had to “manually” get the grades from the one school, have them signed and stamped, then scurry over to the other school where they “imported” the grades into their system. To make matters worse, I have grades from two different schools “from before”. And to top it all, my chemistry teacher misunderstood everything and didn’t hand my grades in in time.
So I had the option of skipping my chemistry (top) grade just to get my grades out, or wait. I emailed her a couple of times and called a couple of times and didn’t get a response, so I sort of gave up. The one school had opening hours between 10a-12p, and around 10.15 am I get an email from my chemistry teacher saying “you can pick up the grades now”. So I scampered out the door and scampered the 30 minutes to the school, got lost, cause the reception desk is at a different place, found my way, and as I got in line to get my grades my cell rings. It’s the student councilor from the other school saying “Hi there, you were supposed to have been here at 11 am.” Told her I was just now in line for my grades and that it’d taken longer than expected, I asked if I could come in later and she said “Luckily, I canceled a meeting this afternoon so you can come in at 1.15 pm. Does that work for you?” Fuck yeah!
Got my grades, went home, ate lunch (which consisted of bread and cheese — god I’m tired of bread and cheese) and then I ran off to the other school with my glittering grades in hand. Once there, a group of 4-5 people were literally waiting for me to arrive, since they were all needed to get stuff arranged for me (eep!). So we sat down and did some rearranging (cause I had 3200 points and only needed 2300 — which gave us the opportunity to remove some of the bad grades from my old grades), and then we were all done. Wow, imagine that. My screw-up background has been repaired, and it took 18 months to pull off.
I removed my “personal number”. It’s not that bad if people know it (it’s not like a social security number or anything), but better safe than sorry, eh?
Some time ago, August 2006 to be exact, I wrote about going back to school to “fix” my high school grades. Well, today I got my last grade. Here’s some facts about what I took and how it went (explanations below) — and yes, I am bragging!
Fall, 2006
Spring, 2007
Fall, 2007
A 3-year high school education (in Sweden) is ~2100h, and I did 1450h in 1.5 years. The grades are IG (failed), G (passed), VG (passed, did well), MVG (passed, did very well). I guess the translation into U.S. grades would be something like F=IG, C=G, B=VG, A=MVG. In any case, I’m proud of myself.
It snowed last night. Not the “first first” snow, but it was the first snow that actually stuck. Lookit:
Not impressive, I know, but it’s snow, and I’ve actually wanted snow. My last winter in Sweden for some time, so I’m going to cherish it.
I hate simply posting a link in a blog entry but it deserves it! 
