I like lightning
August 2008
A better rv
I don't get out much recently, but this Saturday I finally managed to get up from my lazy ass to see if I could get my bicycle fixed. I drove all the way to the shop, but the repairman told me it would take a couple of days to fix my brakes, which had been a bit off ever since I bought the bicycle. I couldn't wait that long, but just as I was about to leave the guy offered to fix it for me in the same day. I could pick up the bicycle after 6PM, which left me with a whole afternoon of free time. And I forgot my iPod.
After a while I got fed up with camera stores and wandered into a book store. I planned to buy a random book to keep myself busy until my bicycle was repaired, and by pure chance I came upon a book called 'The last lecture'. The concept is that professors are asked to speak to their class and pretend that this is the last thing they will ever be able to say to them. To teach them. rv Pausch, the author of the book, died of cancer less than two months after the book was published, and less than one year after he gave his last lecture.
There is no doubt in my mind that, had I known of this rv sooner, I would have applied to Carnegie Mellon University after I had graduated as a Bachelor. But even now I am deeply impressed by the final words of rv Pausch. He is without a doubt the coolest rv I know. I feel completely comfortable in his attitude towards life, and I feel that I think the same way as he does about a lot of things. For the longest time I've been thinking about writing something myself, but after reading his book I don't see a need for it anymore. This guy puts into words everything that I would have wanted to say, and more.
I'm really impressed at how he lived, and how he managed to stay so positive until the end. As his namesake, I feel obliged to put in at least as much effort as he did, and to become as skilled in my job as he was. He has given me a new motivation. It's not quite a new goal yet, but it's a big step in the right direction. I'm only 24 years old, I can become a lot better than I am now.
And for anyone reading this: here is a link to rv's final lecture on Google Video. Trust me, it's worth 2 hours of your time.
The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
On a side note: people are disappearing all around me! This morning Kamil went back to London, and I saw him off in the pouring rain. I saw Mika for the last time! Well, the last time for a while at least. Last Thursday Youngki left, and shortly before that Brian and Hung Lung left. Alvaro's been gone too, but he'll be back eventually. I'm looking forward to meeting all these people again five or ten years from now. Which one of them will be saving people in Africa? Who will start his own company? Who will become a professor and teach the new generation? Who will still be working in Japan? I have no answers, but it doesn't matter. I know everything will turn out great. Looking forward to seeing you guys again! Mata ne.
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An extra-ordinary ordinary day
It's a strange life indeed when you start to call a day like today ordinary. A lot out-of-the-ordinary things happened today, and yet somehow when they all come together it's like any other ordinary day. Well, perhaps not ordinary. I wish every working day could be like this.
In the morning I went cycling. It's been months since I was last able to get myself to wake up at 7AM, but this morning I had to, because Marco wanted to go cycling too. He is fast! It was a good ride, and we took it easy on the way back. There is about a 50% chance that I will be sleepy for the whole day if I go cycling in the morning, but today was lucky; I managed to stay awake for the whole day :D
At work I was organizing a tiny meeting, and things did not go as planned. Half an hour before the meeting I found out that my program was broken at a critical spot, and I had to fix it. It was broken in many critical spots, actually >_<; but I managed to fix the most critical error just before the meeting. Lucky again.
After work we were planning to meet up in the city center to go out for Youngki's farewell dinner. Youngki is leaving this Saturday, which after three years has become quite ordinary to me, but at the same time it will always be quite special to see a friend leave. Just before I was about to leave for the dinner the worst weather ever hit Atsugi, and I couldn't even have made it to my bicycle without getting soaked. So... took the bus.
... and bought an umbrella at the station. Around the station puddles of 20-30cms deep were already formed and I soaked my shoes trying to get to the McD to meet with Junko. It was still thundering heavily outside, and not long after i entered the store the power went down and the lights went out, elliciting high-pitched screams from every schoolgirl in the store at that moment (about nine million in total). Great. And then the fire alarm went off >:D It's amazing how loud high-pitched Japanese schoolgirls' voices can become.
We walked through the rain to the actual restaurant where we were supposed to meet (a very nice Thai restaurant), and we enjoyed a great dinner. Until all too soon it was time to leave.. One year really is too short. What a year. Again! And there is more to come. I haven't quite decided what to do with my life yet, but I am learning to be comfortable with the choices I make, and not to regret possible chances that I've missed. I'm happy with my life, and I plan on staying that way.
Off to bed. Work tomorrow.
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The Friend'Ship and the Wind'Chime
[gallery]
Internet is terribly slow here (or is it WordPress? never had problems at Blogger!), and it's this time of the year again, so I'm not feeling too happy. The last two weeks have been really crazy, and I still find new things that I have never done in my life (like swimming near-naked in a river at night with all my colleagues :D), but somehow they don't manage to top the best experiences I've had two years ago. I have definitely become more cynical this year.
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Older
Suddenly I became 24. I didn't care much for my birthday. I don't mind celebrating an important event, but I don't think my birthday is important. It's not important to me, because I don't feel particularly older or wiser on that specific day. I do have days that I want to celebrate this feeling, but then I do it by myself. Well, the birthday is still an interesting happening, and it does make me think a bit. I really had a great time having a very tiny celebration with my closest friends here, and some of them I will miss dearly as many of them will be leaving very soon, either permanently or temporarily. Such is the way of AK. I think I've finally gotten used to it after three years, and I'm getting a more stable group of people that I can be around with even after all the interns go back to their own country.
Things are good. Really good. I normal person couldn't find any reason for complaining. As Alvaro often points out, I do often find something to complain about, though, and I seem to be quite good at complaining o_0. I don't think I'm a negative person. I think my views about life in general are somewhere between euphoric and nihilistic, but I tend to be a bit more serious about work, and I always want to create the best possible situation I can imagine. It does tend to annoy me if there are things that don't go my way, both inside and outside of work. I can honestly say that I have achieved all the goals I have set so far in my life, or I am well on my way to attaining them. Except one. This frustrates me to no end, and I cannot stop thinking about it. I can never give up on it, but I have learned to accept that I cannot always get what I want. It's not in my nature to give up on something I care about though.
Getting older! Many people ask me about my future plans, and if I'm planning to stay in Japan longer. I always give them the same answer: "Why not? I definitely don't want to go back to work in Europe". I can't exclude any possibility, but I would prefer to stay in Japan. I am considering making one more venture to another foreign country, perhaps Australia, but I would not mind settling down in Japan. I've grown accustomed to daily life here, and I feel that I can lead my own life here. Out of all the countries that I've been to or know of, Japan is the least worst country that I know.
Thank you everyone! For your kind words and happy birthday messages. I look forward to seeing you all again some day, and to see what great things we will all have accomplished in our lives.
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Neural not-works
It's been a while since a made a tech post. This might even be the first one o_0. Recently I've been looking into neural networks a bit out of personal interest, but I never really got started on it cause I thought it was too complicated and I could never find a nice easy way of sliding into it. And then I found this brilliant tutorial online, which taught me that neural networks are really not all that complicated. The tutorial starts from the basics and teaches step by step how to set up a simple neural network. It has source code in C++ which is very easy to read. I translated the source to Java, which showed me the step-by-step process and helped me understand every part of it. To top it all off there's some interesting stuff about genetic algorithms in there as well. I'll be experimenting with this for the next couple of weeks ^_^
On a completely different note: we had a huge thunderstorm today! I'm so happy. It was crazy hot again today, until mid-day, when suddenly haildrops started to fall from a clear sky. Shortly thereafter rain started to pour down as if it was doomsday, and a thunderstorm hung above the youth heim for hours. The power went out for three times in less than one hour... In other words: great! I really enjoyed my afternoon, and it was much better than boring sunshine. I hope there will be more interesting weather soon. Or disasters. Disasters are fun too.
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Welcome to summer
Hello everyone, it's August again. The days are scorching hot. It's almost impossible to walk around during the daytime, and I prefer the cool, air-conditioned room to the sweaty humid outside on most days. I do go out a bit though, last Saturday I cycled to the beach, as I usually do on weekends lately. I'm too lazy to get up early during weekdays, but I compromise by doing some exercise in the weekend instead. Last Saturday during the scorching heat I managed to set a new record: I made it back from the seaside to the youth heim in 29 minutes. Granted, I got lucky with the traffic lights, but it's not bad considering it used to take me 40 minutes last year.
Summer in Japan means bugs. Big ones. Dragonflies, huge weird stingy bee-like insects, and cicada, also knows as semi. These huge creatures like to pretend they're dead and lie on their back at random places until you come near and wake them up. Then they fly around like crazy and make a huge noise. These things are so loud that they drown out the noise from nearby roads.
Last Saturday was also the time of the annual Atsugi fireworks festival. I didn't feel like going so I stayed at the youth heim. In fact, I went to sit outside my room at my private roof terrace and I had a perfect view of the fireworks, although it was a bit far away. It was quite enjoyable, and I was later joined by a whole bunch of friends who had also finished watching the fireworks, and we had a nice roof party. Hung Lun brought some fireworks of his own and we had our own private little fireworks party on the roof. A very enjoyable evening indeed.
I don't like August. It's too hot for me, and too busy. And it's no fun at all when I don't have holidays myself but everyone else does. I can't wait for September and October. To be honest I am quite disappointed. Disappointed that I did not find a good goal here, and disappointed in the people of whom I expected more, the people who I thought could give me a goal. I should learn to be less naive, but it's really my only redeeming quality :P Well, I'm looking forward to a new life and in search of a new goal, as always. let the summer come, it will not bother me.
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How to live
Many people that the way to live a happy life is to always set a higher goal for yourself. Think of something you want to achieve, strive for it, and once you have it, set a higher goal for yourself. It doesn't have to be big, it can be as little as doing 6 instead of 5 push-ups a day, as long as it makes you happy and you can see yourself improving. Humanity strives for this feeling that makes them feel good about themselves. The feeling that makes them think that they are better now than they were yesterday. Is it because they feel that there is no point to live if they were worse today than they were yesterday? Is that what life is all about? Being better every day at something? I'd like to think it's not.
Is it innate to human beings to feel that they need to improve themselves, or is it just a fad that's going over the world right now? Evolution is pushing humans in a direction that requires them to continually improve themselves, but our current situation is very far away from regular evolution. Mankind does not evolve because everyone tries very very hard, it's because nature or science creates a better, smarter, stronger person, who happens to die 9 times out of 10, but in 1 situation manages to have children who are also better, smarter or stronger. That is evolution, but mankind's obsession with gaining skill points has nothing to do with it. Great achievements are made by outliers. People peaking at the edge of the probability curve. It doesn't matter if the curve is narrow or wide, the peak end moves according to evolution, not effort. So why bother?
Can you imagine how it feels if you wake up one morning and you don't have a goal? If you already have everything you want? What is there to live for? Many people ask themselves this question. The people who usually don't ask themselves this question are truly happy. But then, the people who feel the most 'at peace' with the world are probably religious people who believe that their god is the most important thing in the world, and they cannot attain anything more in this earthly life because earthly life itself is unimportant compared to the afterlife. Well, that's one way of looking at it. I know many religious people don't think this way, but this is the dead end I reach when I think about religion. It's an annoying problem for me; I believe that my goal should not be to continually improve myself and to just be happy with who I am right now, but the only people I know who are truly happy with themselves are religious, a path I could never follow. There must be another way, a path even higher than religion, a path higher than god, if you will. A path to becoming god, perhaps?
I don't know what this path is. I know I can never truly reconcile myself with either one of the lifestyles that I described here. I am convinced that there is something higher. Something more worthy to live for. I guess in this way I am deeply religious myself.
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