NO ???, NO LIFE

All of you patriotic Americans who cares about the future of our country, don't forget to vote next Tuesday! Unfortunately I didn't have enough time and resources to arrange my absentee ballot, so if Obama loses by one vote, it would be my fault. Watch the video below to encourage yourself to vote! It's actually a good strategy to make people vote for Obama...



Tower Records, a retail music chain based in Sacramento, California, had a great marketing success in Japan by using the phrase "no music, no life." It is a simple yet brilliant phrase to make people go crazy about music (and buy CDs from them). Recently there was an interesting internet-based survey done, asking people what they would put into this phrase instead of music. Here is the result.

1. No Music, No Life
2. No Money, No Life
3. No Love, No Life
4. No Internet, No Life
5. No Rice, No Life
6. No Sweets, No Life
6. No Book, No Life
8. No Coffee, No Life
9. No Trip, No Life
10. No Mobile, No Life
11. No Sports, No Life
12. No Pet, No Life
13. No Game, No Life
14. No Meat, No Life
15. No Curry, No Life
16. No Anime, No Life
17. No Ramen, No Life
18. No Karaoke, No Life
19. No Dress, No Life
20. No 2Channel, No Life (2 channel is an infamous Japanese internet forum for any topics that you can think of)

Personally, I am surprised by the fact that curry (15th) beat ramen (17th)...I would definitely vote for ramen in this case. For those of you who never even heard about ramen, it's an extremely tasty yet inexpensive Japanese noodle soup, which originated in China. Instant ramens sold in American supermarkets taste absolutely terrible, but the kind you can get from a good ramen restaurant in Japan is priceless. I'm even considering to go back to Japan for my future career only to gain an easy access to tasty Japanese food like ramen.

And it's kinda sad that Money took the second place over Love, isn't it?

Quick trip to Iasi

This past weekend, I paid a quick visit to Iasi, where my fellow @er Kyle went for a traineeship last year.

Before leaving Galati on Friday night, I played some poker with my friends in Galati until 1:30 AM or so. Luck was not with me that night. I kept losing even when I had good hands, and on my last game, I had a full house with a pair of ace. So I went all in, and then I was countered by Liviu who had four of a kind and a pair of ace. I was totally KOed that night.

I went home after poker, slept for about two hours, and woke up to prepare myself for the trip to Iasi. After four month of working for a company with no designated lunch break and no where to eat around, now I have a habit of cooking my lunch in the morning to bring with me to work. So I effortlessly prepared my lunch for the day, which greatly helped me later since I didn't get to eat anything else after I left my apartment until 7 PM. I walked to the bus station to make up for the lack of running for the morning, and arrived there on time. With the help of Roxana and Adi, I found the right bus to Iasi and got on, but there was no seat left for me. It's truly like a workout when you are standing in a big bus running on poorly conditioned road in Romanian countryside with nothing to hang on. Luckily I was tall enough to hang on to the luggage storage above the seats, but an old woman in front of me was definitely flying around every time the bus ran over a bump or a hole.

Then the bus stopped at a cafe-restaurant place in the middle of nowhere to take a stretch break. Normally for a break like this there is a public toilet that you can use for free, so I followed other passengers to join the group effort to take care of business. What I didn't know at the time was that it was my lucky day to finally encounter the infamous countryside-style toilet of Europe: a rectangular hole on the ground with odor coming up from hell. I wanted to take a picture of it but I reconsidered because my camera may turn into a useless piece of metal after it is exposed to such atmosphere.

Shortly after the break, the bus arrived at its second stop where more than half of the passengers got off. So I finally got a seat to myself and a chance to take a nap. Well, apparently there was a group of enthusiastic musicians in the bus and one of them started playing his accordion right next to me. Great. Definitely not the kind of lullaby that I like to sleep to.

And just like that, the 6 hour bus ride was over and I was in Iasi. An energetic @er from Iasi, Alexandru, picked me up from the bus station. He told me that he has a surprise for me, and I asked him what it was. He said that there is going to be a training for high school students in Iasi (an exchange-based project called "Start Me", probably the one that Kyle participated last year), and he wanted me to help with the trainings. I said, why not. So about 30 minutes after I arrived in Iasi I was in a high school where I met the trainees of Iasi, Laura from Italy, Yasser from Morocco, and Ryohei from Japan. So I helped with the Japanese guy's session. Luckily for me, it was only the first session out of the series of training, so the session was about getting to know each other, which meant I did not have to know anything. I still believe that the quality of a session depends on the the amount preparation, so it may not have been the best session since it was all improvised, but I think the students still enjoyed it.

After all the trainings, we went to Moldova Mall for a drink (and quick food for me), where I got to talk with Ryouhei quite a bit. He sounded like he was having some hard time adapting to his surrounding after his first three weeks in Romania, but he was so happy that he finally found someone to speak with in Japanese. His English is pretty good compared to my friends in Japan, but it was a typical textbook English and was not really effective in communication. He was impressed with my English proficiency and asked me how I managed to learn it so well (though my English is far from being native). Well, if you are thrown into an American middle school where nobody around you speaks Japanese, you'd have to learn something in order to survive. Survival is essentially what is really needed for any kind of learning, I suppose.

At the same place I met Sami, an Egyptian trainee, and Phillip, a German trainee. And that night, I ended up going to a beer fest and a club with them (Ryohei isn't really a party-goer). It was a great night, and I got free accommodation in Bogdan's dorm room because both of his roommates were out of town. Free accommodation and company, that's one of many benefits of being a part of the global network.

The next day, I went to the same high school to see more of the trainings. The sessions were about country presentations from the trainees, and I helped Ryohei again to present Japan to the high school kids (I somehow end up representing Japan more than US here). Afterward Alexandru took me out for a super-quick tour of Iasi, along with Sami and two new members of @Iasi, Stephanie and Mia.







And then I caught the last maxi taxi to Galati, and got back to Galati safely at 8 PM.

I really liked Iasi. Great places, great people. I wish I get a chance to go there again before I leave Romania in December.

Again, no photos...

This morning, I was out of time and could not prepare my photos to be uploaded, so I will make a post tomorrow (I promise) about my visit to Iasi this weekend. Let me just say for now that although the trip was planned at the last minute, it turned out pretty awesome.

This summer, on our way to @GT camping in Suches, Georgia, Kyle and I were talking about ecologically friendly ways to fuel cars. He mentioned something about engines driven by compressed-air, and since then it was like an itch in my brain that I could not get rid of unless I researched more about it. And today, I got rid of that itch.



These vehicles are called L'AIRPod, developed by a French company, MDI, whose research is supported by TATA. Amazingly, the only thing that comes out of them is air, cooler and cleaner than the incoming air. Air Cars are aimed to become available in 2009 for European countries, and 2010 for USA, priced around $17,800. Now I'm seriously considering.

And something else I found interesting...Chess-Boxing.



Apparently someone made up a new sport back in 2003, combining chess and boxing. Here's how the game works:

...competitors alternate between three-minute rounds of boxing and four-minute rounds of speed chess with one-minute breaks in between to get the gloves off and hunker down at the chess table. The winner is determined by knockout, checkmate, or referee decision.

Again, now I'm seriously considering.

Welcome to the real world

This morning, as I was jayrunning (faster version of jaywalking) across a street by faleza, the riverside park that I always run in, I saw a dog crossing too only a few meters down the street. But the strange thing was that it was using a crosswalk and I wasn't. Then the dog stopped at the centerline of the street and looked at me, as if it was saying "use the crosswalk, dumb @$$." Ya know, Romanian street dogs are smarter than you think.

I don't use any king of planning tool to keep my schedule. I used to, when I was provided with a free planner and repeatedly recommended to use it by GT Athletics. But lately, I have made a mistake by not using planner. Last Saturday was my mother's birthday but I didn't remember until Tuesday...that's bad. I noticed a few times in my life that women are especially sensitive about days of celebration, and I know for a fact that my mother isn't an exception. Bad, bad Masato...

My colleague who works next to me rushed into our office this afternoon and told me that we have a problem to solve. Apparently our boss has a son who goes to a university in Great Brittain, and he had a problem with his homework. So I guess he sent the problem all the way to his mother, who then gave it to my colleague. Then it finally came down to me to solve. Luckily the problem only took me about five minutes to solve so I succeeded to maintain the reputation of Georgia Tech. The thing that I found interesting was that my colleague actually has a master's degree in that field of engineering (strength of materials) yet he had no idea where to start. I guess theories and textbook procedures don't mean much in the real world.

It's better to be prepared

I must have printed over 500 pages worth of stuff at work today. I haven't heard much about recycling since I arrived in Romania, so I didn't feel so eco-friendly.

I had my first nervous wreck for the first time in a long time today. I was a "guest speaker" at a recruitment event, but I had nothing prepared for it because I didn't know about it until yesterday afternoon. There was no time to prepare, so I just decided to wing it on the spot, which was a bad idea. I was talking too fast, and noticeably stiff. Apparently I wasn't the worst speaker at this event because there was a lady who advocated against internationalism, use of English, and claimed that it's better for students to stay in Romania to learn and promote Romanian culture. I don't know who invited her to the event, but I think that was the last time for her to speak at an AIESEC event, or to attend such an event at all.

I haven't been able to post on this blog lately, mainly because I'm too busy to post anything during work. So here's a brief summary of what happened in the past week.

1.) Global Village - I hosted a table to represent Japan at the global village, which was a part of @12/60. I did have a flag for USA as well but I noticed that I don't have much else to represent America, plus there were American Mormon missionary guys invited to do the job, so I decided to just represent Japan. Everyone seemed to like rice balls and origami pieces that I made. As Vlad said, "we should do this more often to attract girls" (with slightly different wording). I guess people found my table more exotic than the others because the only countries represented there were Romania, Italy, Hungary, Ukraine, USA, and Japan (Hungary and Ukraine are neighboring countries, Italy is almost there, and everyone outside of US knows more about US than the actual US citizens), and others didn't much to offer...only some books and not-so-creative food options (local pizza delivery for Italian table and Lay's potato chips and Coca-Cola for American table). Soon we moved AIESEC info desk next to my Japanese table so that we can sell AIESEC more effectively. I am glad that it went well, at least for my table.

From AIESEC 12/60

Masato's rice balls are hazardous

From AIESEC 12/60

2.) AIESEC 12/60 Award Gala - This is very close to what we call "end of year banquet" at @GT. Giving out awards to our alumni and partners. The entire event was in Romanian so I was challenged to stay awake after a busy day of work, but I managed. Besides, the after party was a ton of fun.

From AIESEC 12/60

Food!

From AIESEC 12/60

Cake!

3.) Barbeque - we bbqed. Was awesomely awesome. One dozen of 2-litre Timisoreana. My jacket still smells like bbqed mici. End of story.

4.) Phone call from US - around 7:30 AM on Sunday morning after a great night of bbq, I got a call from Tiffany Curtiss of US. She was apparently at a gathering with other @ers at the time. I think her first question was "do you have a girlfriend yet?" ...oh Tiffany, I guess we never change. She also told me that she may run for MCP position for @US. That means I'll attend @US's Winter National Conference in December where voting for MCP is most likely to take place, to support the most amazing @er I know and my precious friend. Then it means on the 23rd I'll arrive in Atlanta, on the 24th/25th I'll celebrate Christmas with my family, and head to St. Louis on the 26th for the conference and stay there until the new year. That's kinda rough.

5.) GTT's teambuilding - GTT (Galati Trainers Team) had a team building night at my apartment for luck of better place, so I became a part of GTT for one night. We played the "mob" game, and it was great. Definitely something to take home to GT (Georgia Tech).

Right now my dilemma is to decide whether I should attend RTS (a local conference with 2 other LCs mainly for newies) or Romania's biggest national conference, or both. If I attend both I'd have to take about 5 days off from work...decisions, decisions...

That's Kinki

One private university in Japan is considering to change its English name because its actual Japanese name written in English alphabet sounds a bit perverted. The university is called "Kinki University (近畿大学)", the word Kinki is just a name of the region. If you can read Japanese, you can go here to read the article by MSN. Or visit their website here.



According to the article, a girl who plays base guitar in the accompanying band for Beyonce asked Kinki University send her a t-shirt with their English logo so that she can wear it while touring around for concerts.

This isn't mentioned in the article, but there's a group of singers in Japan called "Kinki Kids" whose members are all from Kinki region. But if you are from English-speaking region, they sound like a group of perverted kids. Times like this I really hate and love the language barrier at the same time.

I want to punch the people who decided to build Tower of Babel.

Power of Google

Yes, I do realize that I have not made a post for more than a week. I actually made a few attempts, but all of them ended up being "drafts" and did not make their way to public cyberworld. I'm planning on getting them out there soon. And I decided to upload pictures that I promised to my picasa later, since there are a lot of them.

Today I wasn't so busy (again) because I finished dealing with EIGA documents yet my manager just keeps disappearing. So I played around with Google Sketchup (again) to polish my 3-D CAD skill. I made a tire, though the idea of the design was mostly taken from designs that are already in existence. The logo in the center is just initials of my name.



Then I couldn't help but to install this to an actual model of a car.

Mazada 6
...with M.C.K. tire.

I didn't actually draw the car...it would take me more than a day to do that.

AIESEC Galati is holding a series of events called @12/60, celebrating 12 years of AIESEC Galati and 60 years of AIESEC Interational. There will be a global village, and I'll be responsible for Japan/US table (somehow I think they don't go together very well). I need to prepare some kind of food for this, because without it nobody would show any interest for my table. And there won't be too many tables I presume because of lack of diversity and trainees (I'm the only one at this point) in Galati, so if my table looks bad, it'll bring down the quality of this event as a whole. But what can I cook when there's nothing Japanese around me other than Kikkoman Soy Sauce?

I almost gave up on this, but yesterday I came up with an idea. In Japan there are numerous ways to cook rice, and there's one method called "takikomi (炊き込み)" which is a way of steaming rice with some ingredients to give flavor to the rice. I can make this into rice balls for easy distribution at the table. I made some last night with chicken, and it was pretty ok. I'm planning to make this one more time, probably tomorrow, to make sure it tastes ok when it's cold because I was too hungry last night to wait until it cools down.

In memory of Zach

This morning, as I was thinking about my future after my traineeship, I visited the web page of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Georgia Tech to learn more about their program because of my increasing interest toward environmental studies. Instead of finding what I wanted, I found something I did not want - passing of my friend, Zach Wansley.

I met him during the first team meeting of GT Cross Country in 2005, which was the prime time of my running career. The kid sure had the endurance of a runner, but there was something that he lacked in order to qualify to be competitive at collegiate level - speed. He may have been able to beat most of my teammates for distances over half-marathon (13.1 km), but cross country (5-10 km) was too short for him. So he left the team, but we met each other quite often while running on campus. When runners pass by each other, there's not much you can say to each other... you only have a split second and one short breath to say something. Zach Wansley, however, used to always shout out "hey Masato!" when we passed by, even across from the street. We weren't really a friend, for we never hang out or did anything together that normal friends do. But somehow we were connected, and his shout still seems to be echoing in my ears as I write.

And it saddens me greatly to hear about this news.

According to the CEE website, he passed away while on a 20 mile (32 kilometer) run in preparation for an upcoming marathon. Reminds me of my first boxing instructor, who passed after a bout in Golden Glove Championship league. Their passing is truly sorrowful, but at least they passed while doing something they loved. I'm going to continue running and boxing on their behalf, and hopefully when I pass, I'll be doing something I love as well.

Rest In Peace, Zach. I hope running shoes are free where you are going.