Entryway to apartment. Big bedroom seen on right side.

Kitchen.

Uh.. that’s actually the only two places I took pictures of. I made a video too. Comment if you want link since I don’t want to post it in public.

A number of thoughts went through my head. I ultimately decided to turn around and walk back behind the corner and either call the cops or tell an employee to do so. One was actually standing right there so I walked up to her and calmly informed her that a robbery is in progress and to call the cops.

Her: “You’re joking, right?”
Me: “Nope, not joking. Please call the cops immediately.”
Her: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Yes, I’m sure.”

After that cozy conversation she went off and called the cops. Meanwhile, I decided to see what in that store could possibly be better than a big knife. I found a pair of scissors, and figured that was probably not going to work very well. A big rock or, hell, a baseball bat would have been ideal, but alas.

Ultimately the guy ran off and I paid for my beer. The cops arrived and there were others who’d gotten a better description of the guy than I, so I just went home.

Meanwhile, my sister’s in Turkey near where the suicide bombing occurred. She’s apparently fine, according to her husband, but we’re all sort of waiting for her to get back home in one piece. (Edit: sis landed at airport in Sweden earlier)

I’m not sure I like the direction the world is heading in…

The ads in Gmail sort of figure out what you “want” and show you ads related to that. If you have an email discussion talking about wanting to get a new BMW, Gmail will show you BMW retailer ads.

So when I the other day got ads about “Chinese women wanting a man”, it got me thinking. For one, I have no interests in Chinese women, whether they want a man or not, and I haven’t been talking about Chinese women anywhere either. Except for the fact I write and receive emails in Japanese.

Then earlier today I got an ad which reassured me that, “there are plenty of reasons why you can’t get an erection”. I’m fine with the emails, really, but when this kind of shit appears as a “legitimate” ad, it’s annoying on a new level.

I wonder if Google ever realized that the better their “targeted ads” become, the more hated they will be, because as they start to “hit home”, that’ll trigger some very sensitive buttons with people.

I mean, if I was having erection issues, do you think I’d be thrilled and excited and grateful that Google blares it in my face? I’m sure I could google it on my own, thanks.

I’m so happy I live in this country, where it’s possible to go to uni at the age of 30. In Japan, people start pressuring you about it at the age of, oh, 5. Months.

I digress. At uni, I’m now taking two courses — engineering methodology and linear algebra. The former is a pain, the latter is fun. The former mainly comprises of the following:

Be put into a group with 7 other people, plan and execute a fairly big project (1-2 months of 16 hours/week worth of “work”), and then present the results. And write a bunch of reports about how it all went.

Said project turned out to be assembling and programming a LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot. I was “fairly” lucky with my team mates, except that the majority want to “take the short cut” and sort of just pretend not to exist so they don’t have to do anything.

I don’t blame them, really. We were a pretty disorganized bunch from the get go, and it was really hard to get everyone things to do. There were only so many sub-components of the robot you could make before you ran out, and building the robot required at most two people — more, and there’re too many hands fidgeting.

I also don’t blame them for starting to talk shit about me behind my back. It happened after we had been sitting in a “seminar” which was obligatory, talking about a chapter in the engineering methodology book we had been required to read. First though, to get some perspective, this is the deal:

I’m working 50% plus attending school. That means I have 4 less hours each (week)day to studying or relaxing. This is considered normal in most countries, but in Sweden, being a uni student is considered the equivalent of working approximately 125%. In effect, I’m now occupied 175% with work and/or school. That’s 70 hour weeks.

So there we are in the seminar, and people haven’t done what they were supposed to. The assignment clearly said “read the book and then pick out stuff from parts 2-4 and bring to the seminar”, and people interpreted “parts 2-4″, conveniently, as “chapters 2-4″ (which were all in part 1). So we take 15 mins where people read up “real quick” on the other parts, and then discuss… and…

… it’s just retarded. Absolute, raw, unfiltered retardation. People were saying things like,

A. “Okay guys, so! The next item on the list goes: ensuring group unity. Anyone have anything to say?”
B. “Oh yeah, we totally need to have group unity. It’s like, super important. Without group unity we won’t be as effective and such.”
A. “That’s awesome, B. How do we ensure group unity?”
B. “You know, we have to stick together and shit. Back each other up.”
A. “Perfect.” (writes this whole thing down on lap top)

And it spirals downward from there. I’m sitting there watching these people with this empty, glazed over expression in my eyes, and at some point I just involuntarily start grunting agreement in an extremely sarcastic voice. I’m serious when I say I felt like someone was controlling me, because even though I knew how bad it was, I couldn’t stop myself.

Meanwhile someone pulls out their math book, walks over to me, and starts asking me questions about some problem. In the middle of the seminar. I look at the book for a brief moment, then turn back to the room and pretend nothing’s happened. So totally not me.

Then eventually I just stand up and say, “Well since you guys are doing math, I’m gonna head home and work.” and leave.

And that’s where it sort of started. People laughing for no reason when I say or do something. It bothered me initially, but then I stopped caring. I also stopped caring about courtesy in the group, coming at appointed times and leaving when we’re done, doing everything I can for the project, but nothing for the people in it. They’d stop talking when I came into the room, or even say things like “The group is already falling apart, *laugh laugh chuckle chuckle*” when I did. I always felt like confronting them when that happened, but instead I just grinned back and said something like “Yeah, me and (random name of person who’s also not there at the moment) have decided to dump you guys from the project.” And I realized it was because I actually don’t mind that they use me as “the bad guy” to talk about whenever I’m not around.

I’m comfortably fine being an asshole, and I know I’m being one. And I know it’s partly my fault. It feels good. It’s so unlike me, it’s as if it’s not me at all.

It’s partly my fault. When I started my classes I was determined at a completely separate level from the others in my group — all of them. I was dead set on doing everything in my power to get everything done as fast and efficiently as possible. I just came into it with this zero tolerance for “unnecessity” that made me lash out or do things I normally never would. The others ranged from “want to get grade” to “want to do something good with the time”, which I’d say is the healthy, normal state (or the latter, at least).

And I just don’t take bullshit the way I used to. At some point in the last couple of years, my patience has just… diminished.

Not great, perhaps. But there are other, good things too in this.

Throughout all of this, I realized something dark and dirty about myself. Throughout my life, I’ve loathed being hated. The mere thought of someone out there hating me, or even slightly disliking me, has always haunted me and affected my actions. Now, seeing these people around me being petty as they are (and they are; even if it is partly my fault), I’m struck by the realization that I absolutely couldn’t care less if they hate, or dislike, me, and if I don’t care about people I’ve been around 16 hours a week for the last two months, why on earth should I care what a stranger on the street thinks about me?

I should rather care about what those I care about think, or those I respect think, or not care about what anyone thinks and just do what I think is right. Not thinking about what other people think is a mindblowing concept, to me.

Late bloomer, what can I say.

I’ve been a linux user for the last decade. More, even. I’ve had brief encounters with Windows, most of them horrific, all of them resulting in me eventually giving up and going back to linux, and none of them in the last 5+ years. I hear Windows is getting better, but as we say in Sweden, “bränt barn skyr elden*,” and I’ve come to the realization that I will most likely never use Windows again, even though I’m pleased to hear it’s shapening up after all these years.

One might say I’m a hard-to-please customer. Some might even accuse me of being the worst kind ever. I whine about things that don’t do their jobs, and even if they’re open source and free as in liberty, it doesn’t mean I won’t complain when they can’t do their jobs properly. I recently spew pus over PulseAudio and Ubuntu 9.10 — the worst experience since 1990 — and I stand by what I said, but in the end, I love linux, and it’s unfair to blame it all on the system, when there are so many factors out of the developers’ control.

Hardware manufacturers couldn’t give less of a fuck about linux, unless they’re making server-specific hardware.
Software manufacturers couldn’t give less of a fuck about linux, unless they’re making server-specific software.

It makes for a really ugly scene, sometimes, and people have to jump through living lions while spinning firey globes of radioactive customs officers through quality assurance managers. It’s messy, and it takes hours and pain, lots of both.

And this is an ongoing perpetual circle, where new hardware and new software clashes and collides over and over, year in and year out, in the uphill battle that is the linux desktop scene.

One of the most annoying things about being a linux user isn’t necessarily that hardware and software manufacturers piss in your corn flakes. It can be really frustrating when you’re struggling to get something working and someone goes, “Why are you using that piece of shit anyway. Linux sucks man. Just install Windows.”

Twitch. I mean, dude. Twitch. I don’t think there’s anyone out there as defensive and protective of their operating system as the linux user. We’re the first to take offense when someone tells us linux sucks. You tell a Windows user that Windows sucks and the most probable reply you’ll get is, “Uh-huh, I know that.**”

Sigh. So retarded. Well, I’ve gotten better about that, and these days I don’t have an agenda against anyone. I just know what works for me and what doesn’t, and whatever works for you, you should stick to. I still get picked on for my choice of OS though, playfully of course, and so the last couple of weeks my guilty pleasure has been to say things like:

“Damn, handbrake seems full of win. And it’s available for linux too. (And Windows, but who cares..)”

on Twitter. Which is fed to Google’s Buzz, which appears for some of the people who tend to poke fun at me. Now I’m poking back.

Joke aside, it’s interesting how the tables have turned. One of my best friends who’s a hardcore Windows user (and a skilled tech guy at that) and I have been discussing the whole linux/Windows deal for more or less ten years, and suddenly I’m waving my i*s around and talking about the innovative and prosperous market, while he’s pointing to Android and upcoming tablets that will potentially turn the tide on Apple’s tidal wave of domination. He’s suddenly wielding the open source cap and I’m wielding the closed source proprietary cap. And it happened overnight! Granted, his change isn’t as dramatic as mine — he’s simply opposed to the Mac experience, and will grab at anything that means not having to use a Mac (including some of the Win7 devices that are closing in on the market). In my case it’s a little more extreme, but in the end, I’m just excited about a rare opportunity. In the end, I do not believe the i*s will control the market, but I believe they will lead the way, and I’m excited to be a part of that process, even if it’s an unsignificant part.

—

(* “burnt child fears fire”)

(** except for that one guy in Wisconsin who got real offensive about Windows when *I* said it sucked; never mind me being a hypocrite, but I was completely taken by surprise by this reaction, and immediately labeled him a confused patriot thinking Windows somehow was connected to the pride of America)

Update: timely — MS cancels their “iPad killer”: http://gizmodo.com/5527442/microsoft-cancels-innovative-courier-tablet-project

Good thing I can send things via boat from Japan (which you can’t from Sweden, for some reason). Takes months for the stuff to get to the destination but costs nearly nothing.

It struck me earlier — and I’m sure I’m not even remotely unique in this — that the evolution of a lie is every bit as real and every bit as applicable to Darwin’s laws as the evolution of a species, if not quite as complex, nor elegant.

To explain this further, let’s look at the points which make a lie a good lie, in no particular order. A good lie,

1. can be elaborated upon, even haphazardly so
2. is believable
3. is told with conviction
4. comes from a “reliable” source (the more reliable, the better)
5. cannot be (easily) disproven (the harder, the better)
   (beyond these basic points, there are two additional points which explicitly revolve around “keeping the lie alive”)
6. is interesting (people want it to be true)
7. can be successfully and simply (the simpler the better) “proven” through other lies (the more the better)

Let’s take a few (silly, perhaps) examples of lies which fail one or several of the above, making use of James and Hanna, a happy couple who happens to be lying to each other all the time.

James comes home at 1.30 am, and he got off work at 9.00 pm. He smells of alcohol.
James: Honey I’m home.
Hanna: Dude, where’ve you been? Work ended hours ago, didn’t it?
James: Yeah, well, I uh… was working… um… overtime…

The story in its simplicity is like something out of any couple’s lives. James is obviously lying, or hiding something, simply because he is speaking without conviction (#3). Without a background check we can’t say for sure, but there might be a case of breaking #4 (reliable source) as well, if James does this often enough. #2 (is believable) fails simply because #3 and #4 fails, but this isn’t always the case.

James, who in this scenario never, ever lies, comes home and excitedly opens his mouth.
James: Hanna, my god, you have no idea who I just met outside! I just met ELVIS, babe, can you BELIEVE it?
Hanna: Not really, no.

Here we have a more “solid” story, in a sense. It can be elaborated upon (#1), it’s definitely told with conviction (#3), it comes from a reliable source (#4), and it cannot be easily disproven (#5) (I mean, Elvis might not be there when Hanna takes a look, but that might just mean Elvis took off somewhere), it’s probably rather interesting (#6), and nothing is to say that Harry can’t “recall” having seen Elvis on other occasions, or that he might recall having heard someone else say THEY saw Elvis, etc (#7). It does however fail simply because it’s not believable (#2). It’d take an idiot, but I’m sort of excluding idiots from this. What’s more intriguing to me is when large numbers of intelligent people believe a lie, than when a bunch of drooling goons do.

Anyway, let’s look at another example.Here we’re also introducing Harry and Rebecca, and you’ll soon see why.

Rebecca and Harry are eating dinner.
Rebecca: Harry, there’s something I need to tell you.
Harry: What, dear?
Rebecca: Last night, I heard yelling coming from the neighbor.
Harry: Mmhm?
Rebecca: So I went and took a look through the window.
Harry: Oh? Did you see anything?
Rebecca: No, it was too dark, but I think the neighbor beat his wife.
Harry: Oh, really! That’s horrible!
Rebecca: Isn’t it though!

Later, Harry and Hanna at the office.
Harry: So it seems my neighbor is beating his wife.
Hanna: What? You serious? Did you call the police?
Harry: No, not yet, but I’m going to keep an eye out and if I see him do it I’m not going to hesitate.
Hanna: Damn bastard.

Later, at Hanna’s and James’s.
Hanna: Harry’s neighbor is a fucking wife beater.
James: What? This day and age, that kind of shit still goes on, huh?
Hanna: Oh yeah, apparently. Poor woman. And the kids must live a nightmare.
James: No doubt they must. Somebody should do something.

Sort of long, but the point is, we don’t know whether the neighbor is in fact beating his wife or not, since ultimately, Rebecca never actually did see anything. All she heard were yells, and yelling doesn’t equal domestic violence in any court anywhere (that I know of, but don’t quote me on that one). However, Rebecca didn’t really lie to Harry, and Harry didn’t really lie to Hanna, and Hanna didn’t really lie to James, but ultimately it might be one big fat lie altogether, and the neighbor is now painted a fucking wife beater because of it. Let’s propose this is a lie, and see 1) if and/or how it evolves, and 2) whether it “qualifies” according to the 7 rules I dictated above. Let’s start with the latter.

1. can be elaborated upon, even haphazardly so — definitely yes. More below.
2. is believable — check!
3. is told with conviction — check!
4. comes from a “reliable” source (the more reliable, the better) — well, presuming none of the involved happens to be a big liar, sure
5. cannot be (easily) disproven (the harder, the better) — this one is the weakest link in the chain, and will eventually be the demise of this lie’s evolution (or if it weren’t a lie, the confirmation of a truth). at some point, somebody will be calling the cops, or somebody will get really angry and confront someone and the thing will be resolved. In some rare instances it is never resolved, but those are rather rare.
6. is interesting — arguably but yes; for a boring office worker I’m sure it makes the day look a little more colorful, for a moment
7. can be successfully and simply (the simpler the better) “proven” through other lies (the more the better) — definitely yes; Rebecca and/or Harry could hear more sounds or see things that they weren’t entirely sure they saw, and they could retell that to everyone and the lie would evolve and grow.

And I believe that’s exactly what we see here. A lie that is evolving. But it’s evolving in a very simplistic fashion, and Darwin has very little to do with things. It’s got much more to do with people simply hearing what they want to hear, and people spicing up a story or skipping boring details from a past conversation just to have a more interesting story.

So with all this said, the life span of the lie in all the examples above is, well, extremely short. It’s a matter of minutes, hours, up to a few weeks, maybe a year at best. A really intriguing phenomenon to look at, however, is the evolution of a lie through years and years, decades, centuries, millennia, and how that lie gradually manifests into one, usually large, comprehensive lie with thousands of intertwined lies keeping its very core alive.

Let’s say that somebody in ancient times suddenly begins to tell people around him that the constellations in the sky are gods. Let’s say his story is very simple. He tells a simple story about how Teur, a god of lightning, lives in the sky and sees the people below. Maybe he tells this to a child who’s misbehaving, saying that the frightening big god Teur will eat him for breakfast if he doesn’t shapen up, and then perhaps others want to hear of the god and so he might suddenly find himself telling about Teur to the entire village by the fire late at night, pointing up at the constellation. The people might be skeptical about it, and give him weird looks, but the longer they look, the more they find that the constellation does indeed look a bit like a big person holding a lightning bolt. They might ask him where he found out about this god that they had heard nothing about before, and he might simply smile mysteriously at them and say nothing.

Then a thunderstorm arrives, and he shouts that the god Teur is angered at the people for not believing enough, and some might believe while others remain skeptical. But it’s so interesting the younger ones think, so they want to believe. As the years pass, and as this somebody who began talking about Teur has passed away, others step up and spin upon the tale, adding new heroes or villains to the story, and pointing their constellations out on the starry sky. This is truly where things become interesting, but I want to take a moment to look at the 7 rules first.

1. can be elaborated upon, even haphazardly so — hand in glove
2. is believable — well, with the human desire to understand the world around them, and the time setting (ancient time) and its inability to confirm how things really do work, yes, definitely pass
3. is told with conviction — this is simple: if it wasn’t told with conviction, nobody would listen, and the story would die with its storyteller. in this case, our somebody simply happened to be convincing in how he told his story, and through his conviction — and nothing else — did the story survive his passing
4. comes from a “reliable” source (the more reliable, the better) — I believe this ties firmly into #3 in this case — a person who is a known liar will simply not be believed, and in this case, the lie was believed, so we simply have to presume that our storyteller wasn’t the lying kind
5. cannot be (easily) disproven (the harder, the better) — said in #2, but the time setting makes it impossible to disprove — 100% passed
6. is interesting — absolutely. to draw a parallel — we, to this very day, find the Greek mythology quite interesting as a story all by itself, and this story happens to be quite similar to the Greek mythology (a rip-off, one might say).
7. can be successfully and simply (the simpler the better) “proven” through other lies (the more the better) — oh yes, and as I mentioned right at the end, the story was “spun upon” and elaborated from its simple core form into a bigger and more epic tale by other storytellers.

Now is where the true evolution begins. The story is now rather spread throughout not only the village where it originated, but to the surrounding villages as well, and now, people in various places are adding to the story from inspiration or boredom or whatever else. Now, people of ancient times might be gullible in comparison to people of our times — obviously — and one might even argue that people didin’t actually believe in their various gods or the various stories about said gods, but they simply listened because it was the entertainment of that time. I’d argue against that for various reasons* but regardless, the people might be gullible but they weren’t stupid. When someone stood up one evening and started telling about Teur’s pet dinosaur Hagrid the Muffin-muncher upon whom Teur rode about slaying bad people, the listeners most likely ignored the tale, or they might even get a little nervous about the disrespectful manner in which the storyteller lied about the god.

(* but the most prominent argument is simply that there were rules to follow and things to do to appease the gods, and whenever there was a particularly harsh winter or particularly dry spring, and greeds died and people starved, the people were blamed and did blame each other for their lack of faith or lack of sacrifices to their gods — so it doesn’t simply end at “entertainment”)

I’m sure that fairly soon after Teur’s epic tale (from here on referred to as TET) began spreading, people were beginning to be careful about what they said, so as to not upset their audience. Even still, a lot of “branches” of the imaginary tree which we call TET would end up “wilting” before long. They might survive a single night or a week or maybe even years, but as decades pass, and as people keep telling stories regarding TET, the most stable, the most successful, the most evolved stories would be the only ones left, and with time, the weak links would gradually be wittled away from a story that, at this point in time, many years after the last person who heard the very first story from TET told for the very first time had passed away, had become truth — undeniable truth — to the people.

The “truth” is undeniable not only because it is so damn rock solid at this point, with the evolution and refining process it’s been undergoing for, at this point, hundreds of years, but it’s also undeniable because it, in and of itself, requires that the people believe. It contains something outside of the 7 rules I put up above — namely the aspect of “requiring belief, or else”. If you don’t believe and then a week later, your pet pig Punky falls down from the hay stack and breaks his neck, everybody around you will point fingers and tell you, and everyone else, what happens to the disbeliever. Every misfortune, no matter how circumstantial or random, will be seen as a sign from Teur’s great palace up on the sky, that you be careful what you wish for. If, god forbid, a draught or other natural disaster would struck, ill-timed with your thoughtlessly spoken “I don’t really believe in a big dude in the sky holding a lightning and having 5 billion kids and whatever else”, you might find yourself sacrificed to pacify the very god you disbelieve in.

As a side note, one might wonder why a lie like this necessarily requires that people “must” believe or “must” do this and that in the “or else dot dot dot evil omen” fashion, and that’s simply out of two reasons. 1) It’s simply good for the survival of the lie itself — that one must believe in it, and 2) it’s great to make people do things; a parent who’s got an obnoxious kid might say that Teur has a habit of slapping inobedient kids over the head with his lightning bolt, leaving them bold like old men for the rest of their lives, simply to make their kid listen, and a ruler might say that Teur has a habit of slapping disloyal farmers over the head with his lightning bolt, leaving them, well, dead like a rock, simply to make the people more “tame”. Give a bag of candy to a kid and the bag won’t remain closed. Or full. It simply works that way.

Then one day, this undeniable “truth” prospers more than ever, as its grip on the people is stronger than ever, as it, in its natural progression through time, has evolved and evolved into this rock solid fact, is torn down, simply because someone somewhere made some calculation or realization that was revolutionary. But it doesn’t usually go down without a fight, this lie, because with its evolution through time, it’s no doubt encountered countless times where people have “refuted” it or where people have bumped into surrounding cultures with their own lies, wherein a “lie versus lie” epic battle occured and the lie somehow came out top-side. The lie isn’t new to fighting to survive, and it does so using any means possible. So this rather intelligent lass or lad who calculated or realized what would clearly mark the end of Teur’s reign, now probably finds her/him rather unwelcome in most places. People simply don’t want to listen. Even if they do, they would either get angry about the obviously disrespectful tone in which said scholar spoke about the gods, or they would get afraid, or whatever else, but who in their right mind would readily tear down the walls which contain their understanding of the universe, just because some freaking scholar said their universe is wrong. Noone. Not a soul.

But the lie would eventually and inevitably fall, as science took its place and explained what was unexplainable in the past. And this latter part is most likely quite close to how the Greek mythology was “ended” as an actual religion in the minds of the people (I’d have to look it up — it’s possible that the Greek mythology, just like the Norse mythology, was devoured by a more powerful and stable religion).

Even to this day, we see lies that have evolved through the millennia, simply because they cannot be proven in the same manner that Teur being a big giant glowing bunch of dots in the sky could be. Even if parts or huge chunks of one of these lies was frankly and flat out disproven, the core would remain, simply because it cannot with any amount of science or any amount of thinking, be logically or otherwise disproven. It’s a perfect lie, a lie evolved into a form that takes it beyond a lie into something much more, something much deeper — a religion.

This ought to be the shortest blog post I’ve done in years.

Rico was going back to Nagoya early this morning (the bus left at 7.30 am) so he had decided to simply be up all night partying and then sleep on the bus home. Me and Kim decided that we’d simply tag along until we got too tired, and in the end, we simply ended up staying up until Rico left for the bus.

It started out with us going to Kim’s place together with his girlfriend, where we had dinner and played Wii Sports with punishment game (the loser out of the 4 of us downs whiskey/coke) for awhile until Kim’s girlfriend had to go home. After that we went to Namba and walked around looking for places to hang at, went into some bar here and some other place there, met two guys from Texas of all places. The Texans proclaimed “we know a good place down the road”, so in blind faith we followed them around for about an hour or so before we realized they had no idea what they were doing, so I said “you guys go into this bar. we’ll be there later tonight”, and moved on. We walked around for some more, then went into McD’s and grabbed food, before we moved on to a karaoke place where we spent the remanining 2 hours.

I was originally intending on staying at Kim’s place over the night, but at this point it was 5.20 am, and the trains to Kyoto were in traffic at that point, so I got on the train home instead. For the record, trying to stay awake for a near 1 hour train ride when you woke up 21 hours earlier is tricky business, but I managed to get off at my stop. So I got back home around 7 am, went to bed and woke up at 4 pm. Usually I get up at 7 am every morning, holidays included, summer vacations included, so this was very unusual, and frankly, I’ve felt like the world is kind of glitched throughout the day. I used to do this all the time, but now that I haven’t in a long while, it really does affect me in ways it didn’t use to. Could be that I’m too old for this kind of stuff now, I don’t know. Walking outside and seeing the darkness really shocked me. I woke up 4 hours ago! And it’s dark?

How long will it take before I get my sleeping pattern straightened out again I wonder….