Sayonara, Kai - Trip to Bucharest!!

"さよならは悲しい響きだけど 君とならば愛の言葉"

It's a verse in a song written by my favorite artist, Kazutoshi Sakurai. In translation, it means something like this.

"'Sayonara' is said with sad connotation, but between you and me it's a word of love."

OK, let's replace "Love" with "friendship" here and read on.

As the title of this post suggests, Kai Reimers of Germany finished his traineeship in Romania and flew back home this weekend. I met Kai last year in Atlanta while he was doing his study abroad in Jacksonville, Florida. He chaired our regional conference and it was great. And I still cannot believe the fact that he happened to be in the same place at the same time when I decided to take a traineeship in Galati. It was completely a coincidence! So I have no doubt that I'll see him again sometime in the future, so until then, SAYONARA Kai!

So on Saturday morning, Herman, Kai, and I left Galati with 1992 Dacia Supernova (again) to go to Bucharest. The trip was nice. The weather was perfect, Bucharest wasn't too far away, and we even had our first experience with Romania highway!



Normally the road in Romania is really bumpy, but this highway was really nice!

And then we arrived at Bucharest, met up with everyone else (Frank, Dirk, Dragos, Claudiu, and Martijn), tried to go inside of the Palace of Parliament but couldn't, so we visited a ruin. We payed 3 lei to get inside, and according to Frank, "there's nothing to see," and in fact he got that right. There wasn't much to see.



So we went on and walked around the city, walked around parks and drank some beer, went back to the hostel and drank some more beer, and we walked into the city again to eat dinner, drink some more and party. We met one guy from Whales and one guy from Canada, so we took them with us. I'm tired of pasting the pictures now, so go to my Picasa Album and see the pictures yourself.

We had a lot of fun but to make long story short, we went out clubbing and drank more beer. Club A was great although apparently it was too crowded for some people. When I got back to the hostel, it was past 5 A.M. and smelled like I was covered in tobacco for hours.

Then less than 4 hours later, Kai took off. We were sad, but I think were a bit sleepier than we were sad, so we went back to bed. Later we visited the Palace of Parliament and this time we succeeded to get in. The Palace was HUGE and gaudy. Many Romanian people don't like it for several reasons. And we got in for free, thanks to our student status.

After we toured around the city some more, we drove back to Galati. I ended up driving part of the way, and I must say that driving in Romania is different from what I'm used to. Fortunately, we all arrived home safely.

And here's the picture of the weekend. I'm tired of putting thumbnails now but this one deserved it.



Whoever ever drew this graffiti better be prepared to die at the hands of samurai.

Cinci mici, va rog.

Washing machine, in my opinion, is one of the most brilliant invention in history. For the most part of my life, I've taken the presence of washing machine for granted. Here in Galati, I washed my clothes a few times using the machine of Dirk's, but yesterday, I challenged myself to wash my clothes by hand. It took me well over an hour, and now my hands hurt from putting too much effort into it. Although I enjoy being low-tech, I can't wait to get a washing machine for the sake of time.

In the meat section at a supermarket, I found some raw mici, which is one of my favorite Romanian food. So I bought it to try to cook at home. I think it's best to cook it in open fire, but for obvious reasons I used a saucepan. I cooked two mici with olive oil and some salt for more than 10 minutes until the outside was almost completely blackened, then I removed them from the pan with joy and cut one of them in half to check how it is cooked. It was red. So I tried different methods and I think I cooked it for more than 30 minutes total, but the center of those mici never seemed to be cooked. So I got tired of it and ate them anyway. I don't feel anything wrong with my body yet. I don't know for sure, but according to wikipedia mici can contain paprika sometimes so I suspect that paprika made it look red. Today I'll cook it again and this time I'll try only 15 minutes or so of cooking. I hope it won't ruin my weekend.

I'm going to Bucharest this weekend with the trainees to see the city, and to send off Kai who is going back to Germany on Sunday :( I was in Bucharest for just a few hours carrying a heavy suitcase when I first arrived in Romania, so this time I should be able to enjoy it a bit more.

Walking on the street

On the last post, I said the soy sauce I bought at a supermarket doesn't taste so good. I was wrong. It tastes TERRIBLE. It totally ruined my boiled egg this morning.

When I walk on the streets of Galati, normally people just give me a look that says "hey, he's a foreigner" as I pass them by. But rarely some people, always a group of guys, say "China!" or "Chinese!" to me as if it is something to laugh about. I get a bit upset every time someone says it to me, not because I was mistakenly called a Chinese rather than Japanese or American or any other nationality for that matter, but because people like them tend to look down on foreigners for no reason. And probably one of the most weird thing that I find about language, is that when someone insults you, you would understand maybe not the literal meaning, but the fact that you are being insulted, no matter what the language is. I don't blame those guys, however, because sadly I think it's a human nature to reject people who are not like you.

I guess this is one of the reason why I am here in the first place, to fill in the gap between "foreigners" and "locals," little by little. But how? What needs to be done in order to fill in that gap? All I can do now is to walk away from them as swiftly as possible to avoid further troubles, which of course does nothing but leaving that gap open. But without a common language, I cannot establish any communication with them, therefore there is no way to understand each other. In Japan there is a saying that goes like this when it's translated: "Boxers converse with their fists." Maybe it is true, but this is not a feasible solution, obviously. Hmm, what can I do.

For something more exciting - I've been looking for a horizontal bar to do some pull ups on, and found many...in a playground. There's almost nobody in the playground in the morning when I exercise, so it's just perfect. A tall Asian guy doing pull ups on a swing in a playground at 6 in the morning...I can't get much more creative than this.

Things I need.

I just made a post on myaiesec.net and realized that I can't neither edit nor delete my post. I do partially regret that I did not wait for myself to "cool down" after reading new posts and did not spend enough time revising it afterward. Oh well, I guess you can't always be prepared when you make a confession.

There are some essential and non-essential things that I need to fully enjoy my life while I'm on my traineeship. The most essential is cooking utensil. I have plenty of plates and bowls for myself, one teaspoon, and a stainless saucepan...that's about all I have right now. I use my chopsticks that I brought for basically everything right now, but I'm not trained enough to cut fruits with chopsticks (I had to cut a kiwi in half the other day, and I had to get a bit creative on that one). Not enough training and discipline, I guess. So these are some things that I need to obtain soon from either stores or friends:

1 pot with cover
1 knife
1 cutting board
tapper ware, plastic wrap, etc.

Also it does not seem feasible to cook any Japanese food here. After searching through a supermarket I found a bottle of soy sauce so I bought it, but it does not really taste good. Maybe not enough salt? And that's the only thing that I found that even resembles Japanese food, other than rice. I have no problem eating food here, but for trainee's cooking night, I guess I'll just have to cook some hot dogs.

Non-essential needs...two things. Music and training equipments. I can listen to pretty much anything thanks to youtube and other websites with similar concept, but listening alone cannot satisfy me. I need to play music. Be it piano, guitar, harmonica, or something new. I should've brought my harmonica, but I did not think of it because I have been paying too much attention on piano and not so much about harmonica lately. I found a store for musical instrument very close to my apartment, so maybe I'll go check it out when I got a chance. And for training equipments...basically, I need a boxing gym :(

Last week I started to wake up at 5:40 A.M. to go for a run and do some basic training routine before going to work. You might say, "that's crazy." But this is the only way. I first anticipated to exercise after work but somehow it wasn't working. Besides, it feels nice to run on the riverside when the air is fresh (or fresher than normal) and there isn't many people to stare at you. I feel more energetic at work, so really the hardest part is just getting out of bed. I want everyone who is reading this to try it at least once and see how you'll feel. It's great. But don't blame me if it doesn't work for you!

Liberty Parade 2008!!

This past weekend, the trainees (Herman, Dirk, Kai, and myself), @ers, and former @ers visited the coast of Black Sea for Liberty Parade 2008!!

The trip was not planned very well in terms of accommodations, so I did not get almost any quality sleep for the entire weekend - except for the few hours of sleep in a car. We ended up getting a two-person hotel room for eight of us on Friday night, so Kai and I just chose to sleep in one of our car, which was fairly comfortable. But for Saturday night...we didn't even try too much to find a room, so some of us slept in our cars...and others slept outside. This was my second try of the lifetime to sleep in a public park, and I updated my personal record of sleeping duration in such conditions from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. As soon as the sun started rising, some of us moved to the beach to escape from all the insects, and there I managed to sleep for about two hours...until I felt myself burning in sunshine. So I didn't get much sleep this weekend, but as an @er I should be used to it.

And the Parade - To sum it up, location-awesome, atmosphere-great, music-could be better. The music was basically some techno beats repeated over and over and over...so basically this parade is just for partying and not really for listening to high-quality music. Honestly speaking, the parade itself would not be enough to make up for the effort it takes to actually get there and back. But when you go there with enough time to enjoy the beach and a lot of friends, the trip is totally worth its cost.

Another great weekend...this time I'll just attach a slideshow. For still pictures, just go to my Picasa album.

Weekend Trip to Piatra-Neamt!!

Frank, Dirk, and his colleagure and his girlfriend, and I took a roadtrip to Piatra-Neamt and its neighboring regions this past weekend. Again, beautiful pictures. I posted them on Picasa this time because I was getting a little frustrated with Yahoo! flickr. Eventually I'll replace photos from flickr to Picasa.

Some stories from the weekend...

Churches - we visited quite a few churches in the region, all of which were Eastern Orthodox, of course. There are not many catholic churches around here. And there are some significant differences between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox...you can google it to find out the details. One difference that I noticed was that there are no musical instrument used in Eastern Orthodix, at least from what I saw. Catholic churches normally have a pipe organ or something else to accompany the rituals, so I was quite surprised. And also, there is almost no seat inside the churches, and the space inside an Eastern Orthodox churches is much, much smaller than that of catholic churches. And most importantly, the paintings. Paintings on the walls. Look at the pictures.




Middle position - Frank, Dirk, and I were constantly fighting each other to avoid the "bitch seat" in the car. We ended up taking turns, but at night, we had the same issue with our bed (we only had one bed for three of us), and the same solution could not be applied. So we played the most classic test of luck on Earth to decide who gets to be in the glorious middle, and of course, Frank lost. So we slept in that order, but I was in constant fear of getting kicked out of bed by Frank while sleeping. And he almost did. I think next time I'll take the middle and kick both of them out for a good night sleep.




Flowers - I found out that my camera is extremely good at taking pictures of flowers.




Spineless Creature - We stopped by a restaurant, that has menus with English and French translations on them. But they must have used an online translation tool or something because the translation for mamaliguta was totally weird. Atole, maize, milksop, spineless creature, porridge. NONE OF THESE ARE ACTUALLY CORRECT! I had mamaliga before so I knew what it was, but when I saw the translation "spineless creature" it still made me hesitate to order it. I mean, what do you normally think of in your head for spineless creature? I thought of a jellyfish.

The menu -


The actual mamaliguta (the yellow stuff) -


Before I left for Romania, my good friend Kyle told me to be prepared to be stared at by a lot of people for really long time while I am in Romania. He was totally right. Because I'm an obvious foreigner to the people here, on the street, in the cafe or bars, or anywhere I go, I can sense the stare. I'm normally not so self-conscious so I don't care when people just stare at me for whatever reason, but to get that ALL THE TIME is something different. I used to do the same thing in Japan while I was growing up when I saw foreigners. Just stared at them thinking that they are somehow "different" from me. But as I grew up Japan became more and more touristic and it was not so weird to foreigners anymore, and I stopped seeing them as "different." But here, people have not gone through that process. They are not used to seeing foreigners. And therefore they need to observe...until they see no difference. And maybe when I come back here years from now...people won't stare at me anymore. MAYBE.

I need a punching bag

It sucks. Somehow I can't find time to do proper exercise these days, and I can feel my body slowly becoming less and less athletic. Maybe I need to stop taking naps after work.

So, I was reading the myaiesec.net forum, and saw one @er from Slovakia posting an interesting point. Here's a direct quote from his post.

"...
1. a lot of LCs in world dont want USA trainees
since my joining in 2001 (yes, that old) my LC had only bad experience with trainees from USA, we unofficially stopped matching with them in 2004. In my Slovakia AIESEC XP I have met ONE out of 5 AIESEC trainees who have been responsible and AIESEC friendly... and even he was not an AIESECer before coming to Slovakia.
My LC EPs=SNs have been also warned to avoid AIESEC US due to low quality internships.
I do not think at all that my LC was special, I have seen the same opinions in Pakistan (LC here had also a bad experience).
-> You will not keep on growing because You will miss the support from receiving countries.
..."

Is that really true? If it is, that explains why I had such a hard time getting replies from TN managers when I was applying for traineeship :p But seriously, if the quality of American trainees were known to be so low in the entire @ network, then I am very grateful for @Galati to have me here. I will try my best to prove that there are actually AIESECers in the US, and to ensure that @Galati will not regret their decision to do exchange with my LC.

I'm going to Piatra-Neamt this weekend with Frank, Dirk, and their colleagues, so expect great pictures. It'll take 5-6 hours of driving to get there, but compared to the roadtrips we took from Atlanta to Canada, this is nothing. The only thing is that we are leaving at 5 in the morning to compensate for the long drive...

This is where my photos are

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28118052@N05/

Maybe I have not made this clear in the past. Since facebook is not the most commonly used social network here, I chose to upload my photos onto yahoo flickr instead of facebook so that everyone can see them. I just uploaded some great photos from this past weekend so please take some time to browse through them.

And now for more serious matter... I hope you've been keeping up with what's going on in AIESEC US but if not, reading this may help you understand the situation.

Too bad my LC has been dissolved due to the whole situation regarding AIESEC US. Now I'm a trainee without an actual home LC. I was an EB member of my LC for the year 2007, and it hurts me to think that the LC is not there anymore, at least not officially approved by the MC. But something needed to happen. Sacrifices have been made, and the movement has called for a huge wave. Now I can't get my eyes off of this matter because I'm about to witness a change, hopefully a positive change at last. Who knows what future holds, but as @ers we are all striving towards the same ultimate goal, or at least we should be, hence I am not worried too much. We exist to prevent and resolve conflicts, and I want to believe that we are good at it.

And behold, it's more than three hours into my working hours and so far I've spent most of my precious time into @ stuffs, while I could have been doing a fatigue analysis of a pressure vessel using the finite element analysis using a demo version of a software!! Bad, bad Masato!

Weekend trip to DDS!!

Weekend is the time to relax and have some fun for everybody, and it is not an exception for trainees here at Galati. For this weekend, Herman rented a Dacia Supernova from his workplace to have a roadtrip to Dunavati (spelling is most definitely wrong) de Sus (DDS for the purpose of this blog). There we had a boattrip of the Delta for about 5 hours, and then we stayed at a hostel for the night. We had a great time, and since I cannot describe everything I want to say in words, I'll just upload some pictures from this weekend because "A picture is worth a thousand words."

I forgot to take a picture of this situation, but the number of mosquitos at the hostel was...amazing. There must have been a few hundreds of them there. So Kai and I started talking about inventing something in the future to kill all the mosquitos in the worlds. When I was living in Atlanta, I used to have a constant drive for inventing something in the future to kill all the roaches in the world, so this topic was quite interesting to talk about. As a result, we arrived at a conclusion that it is more reasonable to make humans immune to the itch caused by mosquitos by the mean of vaccine, and if were to control them by killing, we must kill mosquitos before roaches. I think I need to change my major chemical engineering.

Corgon???

Warning: somewhat technical content

Has anyone ever heard of a substance called "corgon"? It's not even on wikipedia, but it's one of the gases that CRIOMEC (the company I'm interning) manufactures containers for. Even Google could not give me an answer, so I visited my suprior Mr. Garcev today to ask him what it is. His English is decent but he's somehow difficult to communicate with, so it makes me nervous everytime I have to talk to him.

Well, he surely knew what his company offers.

Corgon is a mixture of argon and carbon dioxide, mostly used for gas metal arc welding. I should have been able to realize that much from its name. Who said Asians are smart?

So start taking note guys, a mixture of argon and carbon dioxide is called corgon, and since there are significan amount of argon and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we breathe corgon everyday. Corgon is in our system already. How does that sound to you?

Standard IM here is Yahoo!

A few years ago I quit instant messaging because despite the fact that I did not have that many friends on my IM list, I wasted so much time doing it. So I normally don't do IM back in the States, but I know that the most popular IM client there (arguably) is AOL (America Online). Here in Romania, the most popular one is Yahoo! Messenger. It's interesting that the popularity of the IM clients is different depending on the region. Anyway, I made a username for yahoo a few days ago, so if you have not added me yet, please do so now so that we can stay in touch :)

kan.masato@yahoo.com

what a creative username, right?

I finally move into an apartment! The rent is 200 euros, so that's cheaper than any apartment you can find in Atlanta, but here it's really expensive. It's about two thirds of my salary here, so good thing I brought some extra money with me. I'll upload some pictures of my place later.

Other than folding A1 and A2 size CAD drawings into A4 size and putting them into folders for use at construction sites, I haven't done any "real" tasks yet. I now have my own brand new computer to work with at work though. I've been told to study fatigue analysis for pressure vessels for it may help later, so for the last day and a half I've been studying the AD 2000 Code of Technical Rule for Pressure Vessels. But it's like reading a text book...I have no idea how to apply these theories. So maybe I should start working with somebody and actually see the jobs get done in front of me, but right now I'm just sitting on my desk, answering calls from time to time. Maybe I should ask my superior for tasks? Or should I wait until I study everything in AD 2000? Whether they use me like a slave or just let me play around with the computer all day, the company pays me the same amount of money. But the same applies to me too; I spend the same amount of time here no matter what I do. It is intimidating to ask for tasks simply because you do more work that way, but I think I'll have to do it eventually. We'll see.