GenesisDreams

Right Now

Japan - Metaposts I can't publish my blog. I haven't been able to publish my blog for almost two weeks. I've written a couple of entires, but I've been too busy lately to actually sit down and work out what the problem is. I'll fix it soon, and then you will have a sudden hit of blog goodness. I've been spending way too much money playing Initial D - Project D recently. I bought a new card Friday, a new car, an AE86 this time, and started from scratch building up the upgrades. I'm about 10000 points away from getting the Group A Engine for it, which is really when it comes into its own (I can't drift like Takumi, I need the speed). So I pumped in close to $40 and played for about two hours. I've been practicing Akina downhill, but I don't come anywhere close to Fragma's best time on that track, which is around 3:07. I really need to start writing my thesis ^_^ Right now I'm listening to Van Halen's "Right Now".

Miles to go before I sleep...

Personal I've been slowly turning nocturnal this past month. In Japan I had to keep fairly normal hours. Most of the youth hostels we stayed in had some sort of curfew, and we usually had to be out by a certain time the next day. Since getting back I average about eight hours sleep a night, which is a lot compared to what I usually get, however those eight hours usually start at 3 AM and run through till 11, sometimes even till midday. Of course the days I actually have to go to Uni prompt me to get up earlier, however in general I work at night and sleep most of the day. I am productive, I get stuff done, I have responsibilities and I fill them. I just do so as a creature of the night. There are fewer distractions this way as well.

Benkyo! Benkyo! Benkyo!

Personal - University I did some work today. For the first time since getting back I actually sat down and spent a good couple of hours studying. Caught up on all the Business Policy and Strategy work I needed to do, and read through my Advanced Database Systems lecture notes as well. I've now pretty much broken even for the first three weeks of Uni, am up to date with everything I need to be up to date with... except for my thesis. Well not so much my thesis itself, but rather the project I'm supposed to be writing about. My topic sounds good in concept, and it actually works surprisingly enough, but I'm really struggling to find the energy (or concentration) to sit down and write some code to take all these digital signals processing algorithms we've created and combine them into one single application. I'll get around to doing it sometime, just not today. For those who don't know, I'm currently enrolled in a dual degree, a Bachelor of Engineering (majoring in Software Engineering) and a Bachelor of Business Management (most probably majoring in Electronic Business, but maybe just Business Economics) at the University of Queensland. I'm currently in my fourth year, and as a result of some serious subject overloading along with some rather specific subject choices, I will have completed all the requirements needed to graduate from my BE at the end of this semester. That will still leave me with another year to do in order to finish off my BBusMan degree, but I will be on exchange then, so I'm not really thinking about that at the moment. It's funny to think that come the end of the year, I'll be a qualified engineer (though of course not professionally accredited by the Institute of Engineers until I've got a couple of years experience under my belt). It's even stranger to think about still attending full time Uni, studying like everyone else, but having the qualifications I need to get a great engineering job. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Of course if I get a great job offer overseas I might just ditch Business, or at least only do it part-time. It's only really going to come in handy five years down the track (when I'm hopefully fast-tracking it up the management ladder). Of course then there is always the possibility of further post-graduate study. Assuming I don't royally stuff up my Thesis and I graduate with first class honours, I can pretty much walk onto the PhD program at UQ (and presumably most other places). Nash is has just started his Doctorate, so he is committed for another two years at least. I'm not sure how I feel about adding another couple of years to the five I will have spent if I graduate from everything I'm enrolled in at the moment. I've been in some form of formal education for more than 15 years; do I really want to push that towards the 20 year mark? Some people only do the 10 minimum required by law. All of these questions I'm putting off thinking about for the moment. I need to finish this semester first. I'll worry about them when I have to make the decisions. For now I'm just going to get stuck into my work. Study! Study! Study! Actually maybe I'll just watch some more anime ^_^

We're all going to die!

General [nashdj ] wha [nashdj ] aparantly an asteroid has been found heading for earth [nashdj ] ~800 years away [nashdj ] first i've heard of it [rurouni ] kewl [rurouni ] will kill earth? :D [Wulfen ] well I will be nice and boney by then [rurouni ] boney! Well ok so we are all going to die... someday.

With or without you...

Friends I'm going to miss my friends. The last five days are among the most enjoyable I've had in a very long time. They didn't start out too well though. I got home from Uni Thursday afternoon, came online, and the topic of our IRC channel was: (Fragma) Lisa and I are no more. Lisa being Fragma's girlfriend for the past three and a half years. I gave him a call on his mobile, he was still at work, and he sounded ok. I invited him over to my place to crash for the night (he had been living with his girlfriend) and he said 'cool', and asked what the rest of the guys were doing. I said I would find out and that I would see him later that night. So I asked around on IRC, rang a few people and before long I had six of the guys who could pop round on short notice coming (Dublex, nash, adante, LittleWing, rurouni, Wulfen). Fragma showed up after work, most of the guys around seven-ish, and we sat around, talked, drank, and basically just hung out. LittleWing rang around 11 needing to be picked up from work, I was still sober, so I took Fragma's 180sx for a spin up the road to pick her up. When we got back I broke open what was left of my duty-free alcohol and the fun continued. All up it was just a really good night, the mood was light, we all enjoyed ourselves and I think Fragma really appreciated us all being there. Most of the guys left around 2am, but Fragma, LittleWing and I stayed up talking through till about 5 am. I had gotten pretty drunk for some reason (the other two were quite sober) so they proceeded to try and pry Japan stories out of me (some of what happens on camp, stays on camp!). I can't remember much of what I told them, I was pretty stuffed by that stage. Eventually though I crashed, I had an 8am lecture to go to Friday so I needed some sleep. I think the others crashed around the same time as well (LW had work Friday, though Fragma had a rostered day off). I woke up around 8, so much for going to that lecture, got out of bed feeling really seedy, had a shower, cleaned up a little, checked on the other guys, and got ready to go to Uni. Fragma said he had things to do that day, and he was ready to go, so he gave LW a lift home. He said he would be back that afternoon. I chucked my stuff in the car and headed off to Uni. I had missed my policy and strategy lecture, but I had a compulsory tut for it I needed to attend, and I also had to see my thesis coordinator (for the first time in about 8 weeks) to talk about the progress of my project. I really didn't feel like it, but I couldn't afford to ditch it. It was raining. Fuck. Anyway I got home in the afternoon, Fragma showed up, and he said that LW was going to call later that night and come around again. We were both feeling like crap, tired, rundown. We talked about Lisa for a bit (didn't actually do that much the night before) then killed a couple of hours playing multiplayer Civilization 3. LW called early, she didn't have to work late, so around 10 we went to pick her up (in my car this time). There were a lot of cars outside of where she worked that night, so we parked a little down the road. She came out and saw us, exclaimed "Oh you walked!" and then proceeded to power-walk down the hill towards my place (it's a fairly long walk). She was a good 15 meters down the hill away from us when Fragma and I just turned the other way and started walking (towards my car), LW thought were we just taking the long way around. Anyway she eventually saw the car, and we drove home. It was just the three of us that night, so we moved upstairs and got the heater out (it was really cold). After Thursday night I didn't really feel like getting drunk (I had way too much to drink the night before), but we opened a bottle of red wine and sat around for some more trips down memory lane (Fragma, LW and I all went to primary school together, I've known them since I was 8). Fragma and I raided my liquor cabinet and brought the interesting stuff upstairs, LW commented that she had never drunk tequila before, so we poured her a shot from an almost empty bottle I had. I got some salt, didn't have any lemon, but had a thing of lemon juice for her to use. She licked, shot, and slurped, and the look on her face was priceless. Tequila and red wine is a strange mix, but then LW proceeded to have a shot of vodka followed by a shot of bourbon in the space of about 5 minutes after the tequila shot. She seemed all right, for about 10 minutes, and then she went spastic. She doesn't drink very often and is a self confessed Cadbury. Fragma and I thought it was pretty funny. She didn't drink anything more after that. The conversation drifted over a lot of different things, we talked about where were we going, where we would like to be a year from now. Each of us are completely different, but extremely similar in some respects. I remember waking up on the carpet upstairs around 4am, the others had gone to bed, so I dragged myself downstairs for some sleep as well. Ah Saturday (hmm this is going to be a long entry). I had nothing planned, nothing to do, a free day. LW had to go into the city around midday so Fragma ended up dropping her to the station (though we tried our best to convince her to come to Chermside with us), then the two of us cruised down to the shops in his 180. We were starving, no one had done the shopping and my place was totally devoid of food. We wandered around the shops for a while, got some food, went to check if Calvin was working (he wasn't) and then finally went to the arcade to play some Initial D. Between us we managed to kill three hours, pumping about $60 into those two machines. Fragma drives a 180 (of course), I use the LanEvo. Having wasted far too much money we decided to go for a proper drive, so we headed out to Mt Glorious, but this time went further across to Mt Nebo as well. We paced a couple of bikes up the mountain, but on the downwards trip we got stuck behind this shitty Rav4, so it ended up taking us about five times as long to get down as it did to get up the mountain. All this driving got to us though, so on the way back home we decided to pop by rurouni's place and see if he was up for an Initial D marathon (rurouni had the CDs with the show on it). He was shoveling dirt when we arrived, so we supervised for a bit until he was finished, and then got organised. We spread the word, let everyone know what was happening, then headed back to my place. There was still no food at my place, so when everyone arrived we went down to the foreshore to get some fish and chips. It was the usual crowd; Fragma, Wulfen, nashdj, rurouni and myself, so when we got back to my place we sat around, talked, tried to defend our fish from my cat and then eventually put on the first episode of Initial D. It had been ages since I last watched any, and the first episode had all the energy that I remembered from the series. Everyone was restless though, so we headed back down to Chermisde to play some more Initial D! (a money sink if ever I saw one). I played a few more games, smacked rurouni down, got challenged to a race by this real loser, wanted to play some DDR but this annoying girls hogged the machine, and then realized that it was past 10 and we really needed to get home because LW would be calling soon, wanting to be picked up from work. I sped home (no drifting in the Commodore I'm afraid) and got back before LW rang. The other guys set themselves up for some more Initial D, I went and picked LW up and then we settled down and watched a good four hours of anime. Eventually the other guys got tired and went home (so much for a long marathon) so it was jus LW, Fragma and myself left again. We stayed up for another couple of hours, watched some AMVs I had on CD, plus the Evangelion RE:Death fandub, which was insanely amusing at 3 am in the morning when you are seriously in need of sleep. At some point we all crashed again, another day over. Sunday we all slept in. I got up around 11, had a shower, cleaned up a bit, had a chat to the others about our plans for the day. I had to go and pick my mother up from the airport at 1 and there was still absolutely no food in the house, so we decided to go to Toombul and have something to eat before I picked her up. Mmm hot cinnamon doughnuts, a terrific lunch. After picking mum up and dropping her home we all piled into Fragma's 180 again and went back up to Mt Glorious and Mt Nebo. LW had never been our driving, so we decided to show her what it is like. (For those reading this blog; lately it may seem like we go cruising all the time, but in reality I've gone more in these past two weeks than the twenty before them). LW got scared, I got scared at one point, Fragma almost lost control around one corner, in the end it was all fun though, and we had a much better run than the previous day. We were all very tired though, and both LW and I fell asleep on the way back. Fragma dropped me home, and I was alone. There was nobody about for the first time in days. Even though I was totally exhausted I didn't really want to be alone, so I jumped online and caught up on everything I had missed over the previous three days. LW came on and we talked into the night, but eventually sleep claimed both of us. Monday I slept. Monday night Calvin came over. We had organised the previous Thursday at Uni (before this story began) to get together for the screening of the last Buffy episode ever. He arrived late, just in time for the episode to start, but instead I taped Buffy and we watched the Soprano's. Once that was finished we got lots of popcorn (which I had hideously burnt accidentally) and settled down to watch the final episode uninterrupted. I'm not going to talk about the ending here, suffice to say that I'm sad it's all over. Afterwards I showed Calvin the first episodes of a whole different assortment of anime series (Haibane Renmei, SaiKano, Chobits, Azumanga Dioh). He isn't as immersed in anime as I am, but he really loved what I showed him. We talked about shit, bitching about our lives, lots of teen angst crap that is fun to dwell on at 3am in the morning, and finally went to bed. The next morning we woke up in time for lunch, which just happened to be chips and calamari (we both had a craving for it). We went for a walk along the foreshore, Calvin got a call from LW asking what's up, we bummed around a bit more, bugging the seagulls, and then finally went home. Decided to watch Battle Royale, which Calvin thought was really cool. Eventually Calvin went home, and I sat down to read the script for a play he wrote that is going to be performed at Uni next month. It was really good, very Calvin, and it actually made me reassess some of the stuff we had talked about over the past couple of days. After that I made some dinner (there was actually food at my place by this point) and then Fragma showed up. He watched to go over to his place to watch all of the Alien movies (he had gotten the boxset) and also needed some help moving some of his stuff around. I was just about to walk out the door with him then my stupid nagging sense of responsibility kicked in and I told him I couldn't. I had just killed a five-day block of my life hanging out (or recovering from it). I had neglected completely my studies (ahhh thesis!) and all the other commitments I had. So I said I couldn't go, and now I'm alone again. I'm currently listening to the mix CD that Calvin put together for me, and trying to get my head around the past couple of days. I'm really going to miss these guys. My standard week involves Uni, work, and sleep. I get to see some of my friends are Uni, others when we organise to do something for the weekend, or to meet up during a free hour in the week. We usually make time to all get together for a couple of hours at least once a week (inevitably it seems to watch some cheesy reality TV show) but often (particularly last semester) it was a struggle to get that to happen. I haven't felt like I did over the past couple of days since highschool, where you saw your friends everyday and knew everything that was happening to them. We all have vastly different lives now, we can't possibly keep in as close contact as we did back then, I accept and understand that. I'm happy with what we have at the moment; the last couple of days were just like a super concentrated dose of that. I wish I could put it in little bottles, so I could take a swig whenever I an missing my friends, because despite all the great fun I know I'm going to have 6 months from now, and all the new friends I'm sure to make, I really am going to miss everyone I leave behind. P.S. This is long, and I haven't had a chance to edit it, and it is probably a total rambling semi-comprehensible mess, but then that suits my life right now, so please bear with it everyone ^_^

A 65-litre life

Travel My trusty backpack. It served me well on my travels. I certainly wouldn't have wanted anything bigger.

Thirty days

Travel The following is a brief rundown of where we were for each of the the thirty days that comprised our trip to Japan. I will expand on this, with descriptions and pictures and rants and stories and other fun things, but for the moment this is it. Enjoy ^^ 01 - Saturday 28th June - Gold Coast to Cairns to Osaka to Kyoto 02 - Sunday 29th June - Kyoto to Obama 03 - Monday 30th June - Obama 04 - Tuesday 1st July - Obama 05 - Wednesday 2nd July - Obama 06 - Thursday 3rd July - Obama (Nash left for Kobe) 07 - Friday 4th July - Obama to Tokyo 08 - Saturday 5th July - Tokyo 09 - Sunday 6th July - Tokyo 10 - Monday 7th July - Tokyo (Star Festival) 11 - Tuesday 8th July - Tokyo 12 - Wednesday 9th July - Tokyo 13 - Thursday 10th July - Tokyo to Mt Fugi 14 - Friday 11th July - Mt Fugi to Kyoto 15 - Saturday 12th July - Kyoto 16 - Sunday 13th July - Kyoto to Nara 17 - Monday 14th July - Nara 18 - Tuesday 15th July - Nara to Kyoto 19 - Wednesday 16th July - Kyoto 20 - Thursday 17th July - Kyoto (Gion Festival) 21 - Friday 18th July - Kyoto to Hiroshima 22 - Saturday 18th July - Hiroshima 23 - Sunday 20th July - Hiroshima to Tokyo 24 - Monday 21st July - Tokyo 25 - Tuesday 22nd July - Tokyo to Obama 26 - Wednesday 23rd July - Obama 27 - Thursday 24th July - Obama 28 - Friday 25th July - Obama 29 - Saturday 26th July - Obama to Osaka 30 - Sunday 27th July - Osaka to Cairns to Gold Coast

Moving, just keep moving...

Friends Fragma came and picked me up Friday night. I hadn't seen him for months (even before I went away), so it was good to catch up. I brought along my premium duty-free alcohol, he bought some really cheap stuff, and we sat around drinking, watching anime, and swapping stories well into the night. Nothing much had changed in his world these past months so I did most of the talking. Sometime later that night (or the next morning) we crashed. I had forgotten how good it is just to hang out. On Saturday we met up with Mr G, picked up Nash, and went cruising out to Mt Glorious. Fragma had some boost problems with his 180sx, but G's seemed to be running fine. Both 180's made short work of the mountain road, with the only problem being caused by a big ditch across the driveway into the park at the top of the mountain, which scraped up the front of Fragma's car as it came in. The drive was refreshing, and it really drove home how different Japan is to Australia (excuse the pun). Fifteen minutes out from Mr G's place, over a small mountain, and we were driving through farmland. Along great stretches of grassland with cattle grazing, then up through hills covered with Aussie scrub. I think I am going to miss this place after all. Today was a day of getting organised. Cleaning up, finally putting away my backpack (which has been sitting on the floor of my room since I got back), and throwing away all the junk that accumulated while I was away. I'm tying up all the loose ends that resulted becuase of the trip, and I hopefully should have it all done before I go to bed tonight. I also should have a brief outline up of where I went while in Japan. It won't have pictures, it won't have big descriptions, but it will be something.