Summer before Life

Well, this is it.  Last period of free time I will have in the forseeable future until retirement.  How am I spending it?  Mostly doing nothing. Some hiking, some weight lifting, a little studying Japanese, little bit of reading, but mostly spending a lot of time doing nothing worthwhile.

How do I feel about that?  Not really that great, but the problem is: I have no money.  Until my salary starts coming in, I can’t really do that much anyway.  I guess that’s the point of retirement is that you’re supposed to have free time and extra cash.  Dad seems to be enjoying it so far, for the week he’s been retired.

Yargh?

I have to write 15 EFL Lesson plans.  I had a cool idea.  The lessons would all by connected by means of an interactive narrative that would last through the entire series of lessons.  They go in the following order:

Attention, Decision making, and leading an efficient life

So as I write this I recognize that in the short run it is negatively impacting my efficiency because I have other priorities that should come first, however in the long run writing this, and concretely formulating my thoughts may be beneficial to my ability to maintain and increase work efficiency.

Efficiency is very important to me in my life right now because I frequently have quite a variety of things to accomplish and I need to squeeze some of those accomplishments into small time-frames.  I’m not particularly skilled in segmenting my work into multiple sessions, instead I prefer to totally complete it in one or two sittings.  If possible I like those to be a draft and revision sequence.

I’m reading about a cognitive science approach right now which led me down a tangential boulevard of consideration: How do I make sure what my mind is attending to is most beneficial towards accomplishing my current goal? The concept of continuously thinking about your goal is detrimental in that it absorbs attentive resources that you could use in order to better accomplish the immediate step towards that goal.  So then is it best to avoid tangents?  I’m not sure that this is true either because in many cases for myself I am so worn out from working continously on the same project for more than an hour that I end up losing productivity or quality.  However tangents that chain to other tangents and go off on a one-way train are clearly detrimental.  So then I have to cut myself off from my tangents to be effective.  Lately I’ve found that if I have multiple projects to work on simultaneously, which I usually do, then I can use the different projects as my breaks.  When I tire of reading a journal article I can outline a speech.  When I run out of ideas for an analytical paper I can go through a dataset of Korean and do glosses.  When everything else is dreary I can turn to personal goals like working on my screenplay.  Overall I’ve found this to be a fairly effective means of accomplishing large amounts of work in the smallest time frame available and still keep my sanity (and get some sleep, unlike freshman year).

My biggest setback is external distractions: other people, their music, their conversations, sometimes even their proximity.  However when a small group of people are all serious about getting work accomplished around me, I find that my productivity goes up.  Instead of considering a mental tangent and gazing off into space I see them working beside me and quickly return to my own efforts.  So then I have to find an environment that consistently fosters this sort of work attitude and provides me with necessary physical resources I require to work, namely an electrical socket for my laptop, a comfortable desk with a lot of space to spread out on, and an appropriate chair that’s not too comfortable and inspires at least decent posture.  On that note too, I’ve found that maintaining good sitting posture, or at least acceptable sitting posture while working greatly improves my efficiency.  Thanks to observing the Japanese for 4 months for that one.

Going back to what I mentioned before, maintaing proper mental attentiveness to my projects with my goals in mind doesn’t really get easier.  I just hope that I can enter into the appropriate atmosphere, with the appropriate resources, and the least distractions possible so that my opportunity for focus and efficacy are maximized.

Business

I am busy.

I will first admit that the primary reason that I am busy is because I’m attempting to balance a social life in with my academic life and future preparations.

Now I will relate to you, faithful reader, some of what I’m busy with:

1.)  A paper on something about Connectionism and Language Learning (12-15pages)
2.)  Reading and an assignment/paper for my Language Attitudes class, every Tuesday and Thursday.
3.)  Reading for my East Asian Cinema class, every Monday and Wednesday.
4.)  Compiling a linguistic description of the Korean spoken language.
5.)  Preparatory work for my Public Speaking class, which sometimes involves rehearsing speeches.
6.)  Doing paperwork, talking to various people, and running around trying to get my credits from Keio University approved and accepted into my William and Mary transcript and graduation credit total.
7.)  Trying to do ground work for my Language Attitudes Research Project.
8.)  Finding out how to apply, and applying to English Teaching Abroad programs like JET.
9.)  Working 10-20 hours a week as a keyholder (supervisory position) at the candy shop.
10.)  Trying to get letters of recommendation for various applications.
11.)  Figuring out how to get certified for TEFL/TESL/TESOL.
12.)  Buying groceries, cooking, eating.
13.)  Keeping myself clothed with clean clothes.
14.)  Keeping my living environment somewhat clean and orderly.
15.)  Trying to maintain friendships.
16.)  Trying to maintain active participation in extra curricular groups like FASA, ASC, and JCA.
17.)  Occasionally I sleep.

USA vs. Japan

In my retrospective lens I see myself liking the USA a lot more than Japan.  My experience was very skewed by being more or less stuck in Tokyo for my entire time there.  Lack of free time and funding prevented me from getting outside of the greater Tokyo area.  Tokyo is amazing, don’t get me wrong.  I’d love to return, just not for longer than a week or two.  I already miss Japanese food and service, but I loved the fresh air when I got back home so much that I forgot about those things pretty fast.

My experience in Japan would’ve been a lot better if I hadn’t been so far separated from my friends there.  I really didn’t appreciate how far apart the Keio international housing was from each other… I really wasn’t expecting that before I left.

It was really nice in Japan how everyone in public minds their own business for the most part, despite the occasional trouble that can cause.  I felt like I had my privacy even on crowded streets and trains.  I miss the trains too… It would be so much better in the US if we had public transit like Japan.  Come on mass rail!

Tinea Versicolor

My new self-diagnosis is not eczema but Tinea Versicolor.  It fits the symptoms much much better.  Apparently it’s easily treatable with some selson-blue like creams or antifungal stuff.  Woohoo!  Maybe this will be totally gone in a month!

Fuji-san: Check.

That’s one of those lifetime accomplishments.  It took about 12 hours of hiking, a range of feelings such as lack of oxygen, freezing temperature, biting winds, waiting in line for slow people to reach the summit, massive amounts of dust, walking through clouds, getting scorched by the sun, seeing a sunrise I can’t even describe at the same time as the stars and moon were still bright in the sky, and being so exhausted I could barely move.

But it’s DONE BITCH! WOOHOOO.

P.S. Not Volcanoes are better than Volcanoes.

True Evil

That’s the meaning of the kanji I chose the other day for my name. I realized that I can write them both from memory because they’re elementary level. My name in japanese is pronounced maaku. The kanji are 真悪. The first is ma, the second is aku. The most literal translation is in fact true evil.

Update wise: Monday I went to the theme park at Tokyo dome with one of my conversation partners named Mariko. We bought free-ride passes and rode all the rides, some multiple times. After that we went to Shibuya and ate at an awesome izakaya and had a couple drinks. Eventually went our separate ways at shibuya.

Tuesday I went to Minato Mirai yet again, this time for a dinner with my language class. It ended up just being Santos, Balkis, Jera, her boyfriend, and me. But we had a great 90 minute buffet dinner for 20 bucks and enjoyed our selves quite a lot. After that I hung around the lounge of the dorm chatting with Willing folks for a few hours.

Today I had what’s probably my last meeting with my conversation partners. We went to Ginza, had sashimi don or something to that effect which was delicious. Then went to a fun toy shop down the road. Eventually we took a train to Asakusa and walked around the popular tourist spot. I bought some souvineers that I thought were pretty worthwhile. Sad to say goodbye to these folks so instead we said, see ya later, except in Japanese.

Tomorrow is the Willing dorm party at Tamagawa, which has been opened up to anyone who wants to come. Should be fun. Maybe I won’t spend so much money tomorrow… that would be good.

Dr. Horrible

OMG New Joss Whedon Musical.

By the time you read this it probably won’t be free anyone, but OMG it’s amazing.

www.drhorrible.com

p.s. I <3 Joss Whedon Musicals

Been A while

Well I guess I got a bit caught up in exams and such.

The past few days have been a lot of fun, since I finished school.  Two days ago I went to a place called Kouenji, it was pretty nice, quiet, and full of really good looking restaurants, without so many extremely tall buildings.  There I tried a pretty good peach flavored alcohol drink.  Yesterday I had Mr Donut donuts (macha “green tea” flavor) for the first time, had some iced coffee with soy milk at a really nice cafe nearby, then went to a wonderful Choral Performance at the Tokyo Opera House.  After that Jannis, his girlfriend Yuko and I went to a really great Indian restaurant in Shibuya.  From there we went to do Karaoke (on Saturday night… a time I would avoid if possible).  It was however an incredibly good time.

Today I met up with my conversation partners, for a not quite last time (hopefully).  I had a message from Jin who usually organizes it that involved something with a coven of witches.  So I didn’t really know what that was about, and still don’t clearly… unfortunately we didn’t meet up with the coven, maybe they’re in China right now?  I’m not sure.  Anyway we met at Shibuya and ate at a good but expensive cafe called Cheesecake Cafe or something of that sort.  I had a really amazing salad and a tiny pudding for breakfast there   After that we chatted for a long while and eventually Jin and I went to Minato Mirai for the Fireworks show that they put on there this time every year.  We went to a building there on the floor of some japanese language school I think called IUC.  I don’t know what it stands for though.  Anyway it was a few floors above the ground maybe 5-6 so we had a wonderful view from the outside balcony.  It’s similar to the view from Odaiba except from the other side of Rainbow Bridge.  The fireworks were spectacular.  After that we fought the masses and returned to Shibuya, and I came back to Sancha.  I tried some Gobou, which is apparently burdock root.  It’s interesting, but I think the ones I bought were a little moldy so I did not eat them all.  Now I will eat for the 2nd time today (seriously eat) my last pouch of curry with my last bit of rice.