Baseball Game

Went to a baseball game with Kayne the other night. Neither of us know or care much about baseball, but we had never been, so we just wanted to go for the experience. My Japanese teacher had told me that it was a really good time, because the crowd gets so into it. And if the home team wins, fireworks go off!

Details were pretty blurry. Mostly we just got drunk and talked about unrelated stuff surrounded by the ambience of 30,000 shrieking Japanese baseball fans. We we spilled a beer that leaked down to the seats below us, which didn't do much to ingratiate us to the surrounding audience. But from what I gathered through the haze, the Fukuoka team, the Softbank Hawks, were playing the Hokkaido team, the Japan Ham Falcons (Back home the say, Toronto team is known as the Toronto Blue Jays. Here, they're known by the companies that own/sponsor them, which if you ask me is just a wee bit crass. I mean seriously, how much fear does the name "Japan Ham Fighters" strike in your heart? Good thing they weren't bought by Huggies Diapers. Now that would really be a drag).

This much I do know- Fukuoka was getting its ass kicked, literally 9-0 6 or 7 innings in. No fireworks tonight. Many fans started to leave, and Kayne took the opportunity to go to the bathroom, thereby missing the two most memorable events of the night.

I was typing a mail on my phone when I felt something speed past my knee. Someone had chucked a beer can through the crowd and it had landed in the aisle. The guy in front of me was standing up, and locking eyes with a younger guy about 4 seats over, who had apparently chucked the can. Then they ran into each other and started to shove. The guy in front of them moved in to break it up, and the first guy left.

I have no clue what it was about. The only thing I can think of was that guy 1 was leaving because the Hawks were losing, and guy 2 chucked the can at him out of disgust for his disloyalty. I have no idea what set him off. Hell, maybe he was aiming at me. At any rate, for the rest of the game the beer chucker just stared straight ahead at the field, wrestling with his inner demons and anger issues.

And then, as if to appease the home crowd for their dissappointment and frustration, the Hawks knocked the ball into the bleachers for a home run. Some lucky fan a few aisles over caught it, and everyone on my side let go of their balloons and sent them shooting through the air.



Unrelated "productive summer" update- started the Japanese lessons, doing swimming, getting office by Bike, but not as often as I'd like. Yesterday I was there from 2 til 10 last night and didn't get home til 11. I'm starting to realize I could use 2 summers to do everything I could be doing in terms of research. Actually feeling some pressure to get it all done.

School's Out

Today marks my first summer of paid summer vacation. Next term doesn't start up until mid-September, giving me just under 2 months.

You'd think having that much time off would be incredible, but its amazing how quickly it can pass if you get lazy. Having a lot of unstructured time is difficult to manage if you don't have any fixed responsibilities or places to be. You imagine all the fun/productive things you can do, but start off by spending a few days just kicking around, and next thing you know it's over.

I'm determined to master the art of using a huge chunk of free time productively. Phil Greenspun in the right-hand blog roll, made millions with an internet start-up and found that semi-retirement was actually difficult to manage. He recommended listing off things you plan to do over the free time in a blog, so as to publically shame yourself if you don't do it (actually he advocated blogging daily reports, so that you'd want something to show for yourself each day. But even I can't keep a blog as boring as that). So anyway, as a one-time thing to mark the beginning of the season, here's my list of stuff I want to get done over the summer.

-Testing class at Temple. 7 hours a week, meets Fridays and Saturdays. Should go on until mid-August.

-Japanese lessons. Want at least 10 90-minute meetings between now and September. Will meet Mondays and Wednesdays, starting tomorrow. I want some solid goals on studying for the Level 2 proficiency test in November. (Just realized I need to sign up to take the test by the end of August).

-Get whatever homework that class requires done.

-Go to the gym and/or swimming at least twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays before the Japanese lessons.

-Mark 100 active vocabulary tests by hand, collect results from my two co-writers, then work out inter-rater reliability.

-Scan the several hundred tests I collected over the semester, do rasch analysis on all of them, check internal reliability

-Re-submit my paper for publication.

-Get presentation I'm doing with Nick in Tokyo in November ready. Scan zillions of student surveys.

-Work out master wordlist for next semester.

-Prepare semester's homework schedule for all my classes. Put Audio online. Work out pre-tests.

-Meet with P and work out curriculum for CALL class I'll (probably) be doing with Nick next year.

-Make a point of going into the office to get all the above work done, so as not to get distracted at home.

-Make a point of biking into the office (a 45 minute trip) every day for the exercise.

Finally-

Take a one-way plane trip to Taiwan. Stay a couple days, then take the Ferry to the southernmost Okinawa island, and slowly weave my way up north and back to Kyushu via boats, hitting up as many islands as possible. Hitchhike across the islands if necessary.

Doing that will ideally take a couple weeks. So I'll have to buckle down and get everything else done soon in order to have time for that.

A free alternative to Parallels just came out for Mac

The more I have to do, the less I have to talk about on this blog. Missed Kayne's return party last night because I had to get ready for a presentation I'm giving at Colloquium here in Fukuoka today. From the looks of it I'll be pretty busy over the summer even without any classes to teach.

Anyway, if you have an intel Mac, but haven't gotten around to installing Parallels for it yet, a free alternative just came out that seems to be identical, Virtual Box from Sun. Here's a video demonstrating it and showing how to install it.


I know a lot of people with Macs that have been interested in Parallels, but just couldn't be bothered to buy it. But if you can download it now for free...why not? It also supports Linux OSs like Ubuntu, so it might even let you run Windows XP copies before service Pack 2, which would be a huge improvement over what Bootcamp demands.

The iPhone Hits Japan

iPhone came to Japan yesterday. I walked by Yodobashi Camera around 7:20 AM, and there was already a line. In Tokyo, the line at one outlet numbered 1500 people at one point.

Pretty typical for iPhone launches around the world, I guess. But the surprise here is that many people didn't believe that an American product could be so popular here. Japan is the birthplace of the modern cell-phone. Phones have had POP3 email addresses since the late 90's, Cameras since 2000 and video-conferencing since 2001. These days, nearly every phone you can pick up for $50 with a short contract already has a music player, and cell phones with TV tuners and wide screens that can flip to landscape mode are becoming common.

But in some ways, the iphone is more Japanese than the Japanese offerings. Its a slick, stylish device that beats Japan at its own game, which is actually pretty worrying for the electronic industry here.

The media has shown a lot of excitement, and the response has been strong. I know someone who went to 7 locations and couldn't find one, all sold out. The shortage might be manufactured to create hype, but the lines aren't.

I want to spend half my year in Thailand

When I left Thailand to move to Japan I felt some regret. For a while I had this fantasy about spending winters in Thailand and spring/summer in Japan, but of course that just wasn't practical. Where are you going to find places that will employ you for half the year?

4 years later though, I have my answer to that rhetorical question- Universities will. I get 5 months vacation with my current job, 3 in the middle of winter (January, February, March), and two in Summer (mid-july to mid-september).

This summer is the middle of the term and I have a lot of stuff to do. But why not spend an extended period in Thailand over the winter? I can bring my laptop and books, work mornings, and relax afternoons and evenings. I can stay in touch with everyone for work via email.

I emailed Kevin today for advice on where I can get a good one or two month lease on a good place with air conditioning, satellite TV, a pool and all that, and he got back to me with a bunch of suggestions. I'm gonna make this work damn it!

EDIT- Okay, here's where I'm thinking of staying. About $425 for the month-




Details here.

Has cable, 21" TV (Normally I don't watch much TV, but in Thailand they get BBC, HBO and other stuff that's nowhere to be found in Japan), Wireless internet. No pool, which sucks. But they have a "Fitness room".

Or I can get a bigger room which is more or less a full-size apartment with a much larger living room and a kitchen and dining room, but its like $750, which is getting kind of steep. I could use the money I'd save on the cheaper room to eat out every night.

Osaka

When I started this blog I decided I was going to keep my work life out of it. Only problem? These days my whole life is my work life, and so I have nothing to write about. For the sake of doing a new entry I'll make an exception.

I've been doing a lot of presentations and conferences lately. Yesterday I got on the bullet train early in the morning and went 600km out to Osaka to give a half hour presentation. I noticed that one of the other presenters was a novelist who had a book based in Japan out a few years back on HarperCollins, and I was really curious to meet him. After my presentation he came up and introduced himself and told me how much he liked it. It turns out he's doing the same kind of research, and is getting his Phd from a University in New Zealand (I think I might apply for the same program).

He told me about getting published. Apparently the director of the Bourne Identity/Ultimatum movies optioned the rights to it, and he has another one in the pipes. He's getting on with his day job in the meantime, but what a cool side job. One of these days I want to write a childrens' book, so it was really interesting to hear. It was actually kind of weird how much we had in common.

I had to get back to Fukuoka, but it seemed like a shame to trek all the way back so soon so I stayed for the afterparty. It turned out that one of the guys in my audience who kept firing off questions and comments was the director of the program at the university the conference was held at, and during the party asked me if I wanted a job there! It turns out he uses the conference as a bit of a scouting ground. Nothing official of course, but he gave me his card, told me to send my resume, said he was interested etc. I'm happy where I am, but still, nice to know I'm appreciated.

Then to top it all off, that night I got acceptance letters for not one, but two different presentations at a national conference in Tokyo this fall, one solo and one with Nick. I get 2 months vacation for summer, but at this rate, between the research I'm doing and the Japanese and Testing classes I'm taking, I'll basically be working full time throughout the break.