My Room, as Viewed by Picasso

It's good to have the laptop back, with Windows XP up and running once again. Time to fumble around!

First project was to check out Radio Blog. Found Zendurl, a free web host that supports php and xml file types and got my radio blog running. But then, there's this issue with bandwidth (it takes quite some time to load). So, cool as it may be, the project is suspended indefinitely nevertheless.

So, instead, spent the morning editing some photos again. Photos of my room, taken from different angles but nonetheless, patched together.

It probably won't give you any better idea on how my room looks like but I call it a work of art because it actually reminds me of Picasso's drawings. (Everything's out of place as if you're viewing one object from different points of view.) The only thing I'm unsatisfied of is that, there's no way to fit in the photos of the kitchen and the toilet, as much as I'd like to. (The latter may not sound like such a good idea to some people but rest assured that I clean my toilet regularly. To begin with, the colour of the toilet bowl and the bath tub is such that any possible mold stain would easily go unnoticed to the untrained eye.)

PS: Uh-oh, sorry about the messy bed. Why bother to make the bed when you're sleeping in it again slightly more than half a day after waking up?

People of All Smells of Life

The man sitting next to me is struggling with the wrapper of an ice-cream. He gives it more than a couple of twists and tries to pull it apart but it just won't give way. He then bites it with his teeth to tear it open (reminding me of National Geographic documentaries). Finally, the wrapper gives in - but not without retaliation as it angrily squirts some of its content at the perpetrator. But, bad aiming; a couple of us unfortunate ones nearby fall victim. The lady next to me gives the man a quick, irritated look but couldn't be more annoyed when she's totally ignored. The man acts as if nothing happened and triumphantly sucks on his ice-cream, which retorts with obscene slurps.

Such was the episode I encountered on the train this evening.

If you're a tourist visiting Japan and would like to have a general idea of the Japanese society, what's a better place to make your observations, than on a train? It is after all the most convenient means of transportation; you meet people from all walks of life in the train.

There are oddballs...

If you've been on a train in Japan, you'd have noticed that out of ten persons, three would be listening to their mp3 players, three probably fiddling with the cellphone, two taking a nap and two reading. But, meeting someone who reads aloud his novel, I suppose, is a rare case.

Nevertheless, I met one. A rotund guy in chequered shirt, reading aloud the lines in rising and falling tones as if he was practising for a stage act. In fact, he was so absorbed in it that he was totally oblivion of the stares from the other passengers...

There are pathetic drunkards... For some reasons, nomikai's seem to be a favourite Japanese past-time. Friday nights especially, are spent in izakaya. More often than not, they tend to drink more than they can handle, turn red and start spouting nonsense. There was this apparently drunk old man who shouted at strangers, probably to entertain himself. Sometimes, the air in the train is so saturated with alcoholic breath that you can tell that someone on board had too much beer. Sometimes, you see a guy sleeping in one corner in the train station, a hand still clutching to an empty beer can. I once saw a guy who refused to leave the train at the last stop when someone woke him up from his sleep. He mumbled something unintelligible and just went on sleeping...

Then, there are otaku's... Most of the time, they look just like you and me but sometimes, you can identify one, normally by their sense of fashion. But some people can smell one. A friend of mine - ironically a self-professed otaku - complains that otaku's smell bad. Something in between a rotten egg and vinegar. You can't be too careful, he said, especially when you're in Akihabara - the famed Otaku-land - where it stinks so badly that you have to pinch your nose and risk suffocation when you're walking through the crowd. Though he has the uncanny tendency of over-exaggerating even the most minute of things, I thank god that I'm not endowed with such a sensitive sense of smell. Still, I did have a bad experience sitting next to a guy who stunk to the high heavens. The poor guy must have had an unfortunate accident in the toilet...

So the next time you take a train, look around and you'll see people from all walks of life, or even of all smells of life - you can never get bored. Every time taking the train may be a new experience.

Taking the Bike Out for a Walk

The big parcel arrived Sunday afternoon. It was my new bike! Took a sweaty hour to assemble it and it was finally done.

Seat is way too low even at maximum height but you bet it looks way more macho than the typical aunty-ish bikes.

Now, excuse me. I need to take the bike out for a walk.

Oh and one more thing. Curse the idiot who took my old bike!

I know I said it already but it doesn't hurt to say it a second time, eh?

Stupid Things Do Happen

Stupid things do happen - things that could have been avoided if I could have been less stupid.

First of all, the OS thingy problem. I've been using Ubuntu/Linux for more than a week now (See: Linux and Peanuts, Monday, August 06, 2007) and am going peanuts over it. I don't want GIMP; I want my Adobe Photoshop back! I don't want Open Office (which turns certain Japanese characters into incomprehensible hieroglyphs); I want Microsoft Office! I don't want the stupid Totem Player; I want WMP!

I'm suffering from Windows withdrawal symptoms!

I'm sorry to say this to the wonderful folks who developed Ubuntu. But I want to revert to Windows! Because I'm just a regular idiot who has totally got used to Windows and has no patience to spend time learning a totally new operating system.

But hell, after sneaking into my friend's room to retrieve his copy of Windows XP and had it reinstalled, I realized that the speakers and the modem weren't working... Oh great, the drivers! And they are were in the recovery disk that I wiped out!

Okay, I need to get the recovery disk restored.

So, I called up Toshiba customer service. After explaining at great length what I presumed was the stupid-est case the operator had ever come upon, "In that case, the warranty isn't valid. Kick yourself in the ass because it was you who were stupid enough to be capable of such an idiocy." Of course, she said it with such subtlety and politeness which are regrettably lost through my curt translation.

So, that's going to cost me five grand and a week, computer-less.

Then, there was this ridiculous episode with the vacuum cleaner.

It was a warm Thursday afternoon. After cleaning up the room, I decided to clean the keyboard as well, with the vacuum cleaner.

As I was inspecting at close scrutiny, determined to get rid of the tiniest speck of dust I could find...

Horror of all horrors! Where is my right arrow key?

Right at the bottom-right-hand corner of the keyboard - where the right arrow key formerly was - all that was left was some black thingy sticking up like a perched nipple.

Oh my gawd! It can't be... in the vacuum cleaner?

Okay, all I have to do is to sort through the bag, right?

But, uh... I then recalled that besides your typical household dirt and rubbish I had a couple of cockroaches in the vacuum cleaner as well (See: War Propaganda, Thursday, July 26, 2007). The mere image of them making themselves at home, having cookie crumbs as lunch and dust-balls as dinner was enough to stir up a certain uncomfortable feeling - as if you have some cockroaches writhing in the stomach...

Oh, holy nipples!

However much I hated to do it, there was no other choice. Found the missing key alright but also made an interesting discovery: cockroaches can't survive in the vacuum cleaner - I found the dead bodies (with some limbs going unaccounted, though) of the poor fellows I acquainted throughout the summer... Well, at least, another nagging question laid to rest!

And then, this morning, something else happened, which among the others, pissed me off the most. Left my bike near the train station before leaving for work this morning, came back four hours later in the noon, just to find that it was missing!

It was a scorching summer noon but the bike shouldn't have just evaporated into thin air. It was either stolen, or taken away... for illegal parking - the place is only meant for registered bikes. To hell with whoever took my bike! I don't care if the bloody fool stole it or stowed it away because of illegal parking. Whoever it was shall get a wart in his asshole for pissing me off!

Note to myself: Need to get a new bike...

I can't help but wonder if I'm hexed or is it just to make atonement for my karma. And I don't know whether to kick myself in the ass - though I'm not sure if it is physically possible; or to jump off from my balcony - uh, no, I need to get to somewhere higher than the first floor...

Anyway, stupid things do happen. But, had I not screwed up my computer, I wouldn't have tried out Linux; had the vacuum cleaner episode not happened, I wouldn't have discovered that the vacuum cleaner isn't such a cozy place for cockroaches after all; had my bike not disappeared, I wouldn't have got the excuse to get a new bike to replace the old junk!

平静で「さようなら」って言えるよう

「おれ、先週彼女とわかれたよ。」

「まじで？振られたの？」今さら考えると、悪かったと思うけど、そのときは冗談つもりで、言っちゃったのだ。

「そうとは言えないけど。」

「ショックだったよね…」

「いや、別に。前からわかってたから。三ヶ月前ごろからかな、予想したんだもん。でっ、わかれようって言われても、なんか、あっ、やっぱりそうだね、見たいな感じで…」

どうも平気な顔をしていたけど、その裏はいかに切ないのだろう？「さようなら」って言われても、平静で受け止められるのは、決して容易なことじゃない。

先日、友達とネットでチャットしたら、話はなぜかあのことの方にいっちゃった。最近、夜さびしくなる余裕はあまりないけど、不意に聞かれると、記憶の隅に埋めようとしたことはまた蘇って、心は再び空虚のように感じられた。遠くまで漂ってゆったはずの過去なのに。

おれも、いつか平静で「さようなら」って言えるよう…

Linux and Peanuts

You see, I had this crazy idea of installing an OS on the MP3 player. So that the next time I go to the computer lab, I can just plug in the player and voila! I have all my works with me! Now, this is portability.

So, is it possible to run an OS from the MP3 player?

Only one way to find out. This called for an experiment.

Firstly, the experiment subjects.

MP3 player: Creative Zen Vision: M, with 8GB partitioned
Operating System: Ubuntu/Linux 7.04

A note for the not-so-enlightened: I know it sounds "Maorish" but Ubuntu isn't KOJA's long-lost sibling. In fact, the word is of African origin, meaning "humanity to others". It's a Linux distribution based on Debian. Okay, that's all I can tell you; because like most of the rest of the world, I've been using solely Windows and even the mere task of pronouncing "Linux" is an incredible tongue twister to me.

But, I digressed.

Anyway, quite to my expectation, the installation did work.

Now, the moment of truth: to see if it is possible to boot from the MP3 player.

If the installation took "almost an eternity", the startup took "an eternity"; I had to give up half-way before the player decided to explode due to overheating. And so, the experiment ended without a result.

Nah, big deal. As if I didn't see that coming.

But, things started getting worse after that. What I really didn't see coming was that I messed up the boot loader. For some reason, I could no longer boot the computer without connecting the player.

Shucks, that's ridiculous! I'm screwed...

Then, I started my feeble attempts to fix the computer.

The first attempt was to revert the to out-of-the-box settings but that failed because I couldn't call up Disk Recovery.

The second attempt was to format the disk and install a fresh copy; that should've worked but the problem is, the laptop doesn't come with an installation disk. Everything necessary for installation is backed up in hard disk partitions called HDDRECOVERY and DATA; as if those people from Toshiba didn't anticipate something stupid like this to happen.

The third attempt was to use the installation disk borrowed from J. In fact, that was the only thing that worked so far but I couldn't satisfy myself with an illegal copy of Windows, which was why I eventually decided to go ahead with installing Ubuntu instead. That took another few tries. And by the n-th try, I've effectively wiped out HDDRECOVERY; by the (n+1)-th try, I went, "What the heck!" and decided to wipe out DATA as well.

Hah, now no turning back. I'm stuck with Linux!

...Which was rather a bad idea for someone who can't tell apart Linux from peanuts: I have to start from scratch. Sigh.

Peanuts, anyone?