So, my very first earthquake today. They claim it was stronger than the usual ones. I was sort of looking forward to it, for two reasons.

1. I hadn’t experienced one ever.

2. I wanted the experience once, so I didn’t panic if a “bad one” happened.

The bad news? I slept right through it. That just sums my life story up, right there. Blah! Better luck next time, me.

It’s summer vacation! Which means I’m going to spend the next few weeks catching up on everything in school. Lots and lots of studying. Yay!

My friend up in Hokkaido suggested I flee up there for a few days over the summer but I don’t even have cash for that, though it was very tempting.

I did go to Lake Biwa before with the school for a barbecue/swimming party thing. I paid 1500 yen to tag along for “food and drinks” and ended up getting four-five tiny pieces of probably-not-thoroughly-grilled meat and two beers. With 40 people going and 2 fires (tiny, weak fires — Japanese don’t seem to know how to make fires), and one retarded little man who brought his own meat and taking up one fifth of one of those two, it was more or less just a matter of standing around like a retard or giving up, and I don’t like looking like a retard.

Hope everyone else is having a good summer (too).

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!”.

In case you haven’t seen it, I moved back to my mom’s place at the end of January, where I will be living for the last two months before I move to Japan. Back in April 2007, I switched ISP and went with some offer they had. The offer unfortunately bound me to use their service for 12 months. That is, until the end of April. With my move to my mom’s place, I was more or less forced to take the ISP with me (or pay for February, March, and April without actually using the service).

So my mom canceled her internet and I requested that mine was moved to her apartment. This was to take place at February 1st (i.e. her expired “end of January” and the move was to take place “the first of February”). In theory, that was supposed to happen, but around noon, January 31st, the net connection went down. And didn’t get back up again until yesterday, roughly 2 weeks later.

During these 2 weeks I couldn’t do anything at all. So I played offline games, like Starcraft (good game), Diablo 2 (um. Obsolete version of WoW, at this point), and Neverwinter Nights (um. Deranged and buggy version of WoW, especially since I couldn’t grab any of the updates online, so I played the release-version). Let me tell you… my appreciation for World of Warcraft has taken on new levels after this experience. There are so many things in WoW that improve upon the things that exist in the older games. Despite that, once I got back into WoW, I kept trying to hit ‘r’ to rest, when I was wounded in WoW. I also tried clicking on spots on the ground to “go there”.

Starcraft was good fun though. I enjoyed the story line almost as much as I did when I played it for the first time. I played through the whole first game, and  got to the Terrans in Broodwar, but at that point I sort of lost interest. The repetitiveness of “take out the whole map which is filled with enemy bases” missions just got boring after 3-4 times in a row.

Once I got back online, I was struck, as always, by the “so what now?” daze. While offline there were so many things I wanted to do online, but when it came down to it, I only really checked email, talked to friends, played some WoW, and that’s about it. I was a bit worried about the visa application for my Japan trip (the school will receive the visa at the end of February, and will notify me shortly after, they say) and I was kind of concerned about the various projects I have going that need finishing before I leave Sweden.

I mostly slept. With all that time on my hands, I kind of lost the motivation to do anything useful. I did get most of my things packed away (the things I won’t bring with me to Japan) and I did some hiragana practice and so, but not as much as I could have. Nothing I’ll beat myself with a stick over, but still. I am ever reminded of the necessity to be busy, for me to be productive. If I end up not being overly busy, I seem to shut down or something.

Anyway, I’m back in case you wondered (but with the infrequency at which I blog, I highly doubt you did).

Last Monday, I sent my application to the school in Japan (Nihongo Center, 日本語センター), and yesterday I emailed them asking if they’d received my application. They had, and they told me the next step in the process is the visa processing fee (~$150 US or so) and the application for (December) and issuance of (March) my visa. That leaves me very little time for buying my plane ticket though, cause I leave April 4th!!

So I asked them about when I would know for sure if I was accepted, and got the reply that I am practically accepted already. “They were sure.” So here’s to hoping they’re right, because I’ll be buying plane tickets and such based on this assumption.

But yes, good news is that the school I’ve applied for has stated that I’ll be accepted for sure, which is a good sign, if you ask me. Very little stands in the way now. I’m a happy little clam.

I’d love to write a lengthy update about my surgery, especially as I’m sure others out there are considering, or about to, perform the same surgery and have a lot of questions (it’s a fairly common operation apparently). But I’m still not caught up on school-stuff, and I have a good bit of catching up to do before I’m comfortable sitting down and taking it easy.

But I’m doing okay. I still can’t chew like normal people, and eating takes a bit longer than normal, but the stitches are out of my mouth now at least, and the little rubber ring thingies will be gone soon too, I hope. I’ve moved back to my own place since about a week ago, and that felt really good too. As for whether the surgery actually “fixed me”, that remains to be seen. Some of the pain I felt before has returned, but I’m hopeful that this is more due to my teeth being “un-fixed” as yet. It’s not nearly as bad as it was, though it’s impossible to say how it’ll feel a year from now, or ten.

So the time has come, finally, for my surgery. I’ve been having preparations done since 2005 (august) and I currently mostly feel relieved about actually getting it done. The whole “sawing up my upper jaw in two parts and moving the two jaws around” doesn’t exactly make me feel cozy all over, and it’s also the first surgery in my life, so I admit it does scare me some.

And the fact there’s also the chance I throw up due to the, uh, “sleeping shot” (not “anesthetics” since I will be unconscious .. eh whatever). Throwing up + jaw surgery = not good, but the surgeon assured me they’ll take extra precautions to prevent that from happening.

I’m at my mom’s place right now. I went over here today with a bag of clothes and my lap top and tooth brush and shaving stuff and whatever else (and the papers from the hospital and the pain meds they told me to take in the morning before I go to the hospital), and I will be coming back here in 2-3 days once the hospital lets me go home. She promised to make me food that doesn’t need chewing and who can complain about that? Since I don’t know how I’ll feel at all (never having had surgery, never having had a bone broken in my life), I have no idea what to expect but I’m hopeful it won’t be too painful. For too long. So I chose to stay here for awhile and be pampered. Such a kid, I know.

Anyway, wish me good luck. And see you soon.

Checkers Solved.

“From the game’s 500 billion billion positions (5 * 10^20), ‘Chinook’ has determined which 100,000 billion (10^14) are needed for their proof, and run through all relevant decision trees.“

My ISP:

1. blocks outgoing port 25.
2. screws their own sendmail servers up and doesn’t manage to fix them in 24+ hours.

Go Bredbandsbolaget!

The midsummer weekend I ended up spending at my buddy’s place, playing GameCube games. I started out by wasting the Friday playing Resident Evil 4 which, in contrast to Eternal Darkness, pretty much sucked. A retarded story, the same old zombies, the same old dilemma (”oh no I don’t have any ammo…”). The only new part about it was the President’s daughter who followed you around. I accidentally stabbed her to death once, as I was trying to stab open a barrel (those barrels have stuff in ‘em, dude!)…

Then I went over to Eternal Darkness and ended up staying until I finished the game (with lots of hints from Kenneth). It’s a game based in the Lovecraft world, with the Ancients and all that. The main character is the granddaughter of an old lad who lived in an ancient mansion, who had been found dead as the game begins. Alex, the granddaughter, decides after two weeks that she’ll get to the bottom of it on her own, since the cops seem clueless, so she decides to explore the mansion and doing so, she finds the Tome of Eternal Darkness. As she reads on, the story unfolds, and you take on the roles of various people in various ages, starting with Pious Augustus in ancient Rome. Each character you play finds the Tome of Eternal Darkness, and thus “finds out” about all the things that happened up until that point. By doing so, each character gains the abilities that you have gained so far.

No game set in the Lovecraft world is complete without the aspect of insanity, and they really pulled that off awesomely in this game. You have “the usual” health and mana, and you also have sanity which “drops” as you encounter monsters or see/do things that affect the human mind. In the case of Alex, she gets more and more insane as she reads the Tome and the game story progresses. Luckily, you eventually get the ability to “recover” sanity using a magic spell.

As I played that game, I recalled hearing the Skotos people for Lovecraft Country talk about how Nintendo wanted to patent a game aspect for insanity. I’m pretty sure this is the game they were talking about, and as always when I hear things like that, I marvel at the stupidity of software patents. If it wasn’t for that, I’d definitely recommend this game to the Lovecraft guys, as it’s a huge source for inspiration, and made me want to jump in and start playing Lovecraft, for possibly the first time in my life (I’ve not been a fan, but I’m becoming one after this :P).

Then again, I’m sadly outdated in terms of the latest-and-greatest in game design, having been a linux user for a decade, and more or less abandoned hope on games entirely. This game is 3-4 years old I think, but to me it was a really cool experience. But if you haven’t tried this one out and if you have a GameCube OR a Wii with a GameCube controller (they’re compatible), I suggest you do!