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a l r e a d y : hatachi Monthly Archives
恋愛の考え Monday November 28
私は恋愛について意見や概念がいろいろあるが、若いので恐らく恋愛のことはよく分からないであろう。一方、若者は恋愛の「危険」を知らぬ、あるいは知っても愛する覚悟を決める。いずれにしても、恋愛なら幸せも悲しさもあるのだ。しかし、確かに悲しい面があっても、その面もなければ恋愛の幸せも知れないと信じる人もいる。つまり、人間の幸せは相対的なもので、悪い経験もあれば良いことを体験したら、比較的な差が分かってしばらく幸せだ。
しかし、そういう一般的、理論的な意見があっても、私はいつも論じたりなどするこというわけではない。現場で女性に対して戦略を立てていないわけではない。私は恋愛に心の気持ちも必要だということが分かるが、辛い失恋の経験があるので、恋愛関係に対して頭を使わないといけないことも分かる。人生の全部のように、バランスを取ろうとしなければうまくいけない。
私はこれからある程度までそのバランスを取るための戦略を説明しておく。まず、人間感情に関する話。大勢の人は周りの人に自由に感情を言わないので、相手の気持ちが完全に分かることはないと思う。なぜかというと、人々は相手の立場や前提を無意識にも考えながら言い方を変える。 もちろん、言った事実は事実だが、強調することあるいは言葉の選択によって相手に取られた意味が変わる可能性がある。つまり、感情に言葉が足りない場合もある。殊に好きな人との話だったら、自分が狙っていることが気がつかなくても邪魔するのである。
だから、なるべく好きな人に恋愛のことを話さない方が良いと思う。早すぎる告白はほとんどの場合に失敗になるので、何も言わない方が良いのは明白のはずだ。もちろん、何も言わないと何も出来ないのか、という疑問を持っている人もいるが、少し考えてみたら、もし「言わなければ何もならない」というケースだったら、言ってもならないことが当然ではないかと思う。つまり、言葉が足りなくて、自然に体の動き方、態度や表情が恋愛の気持ちを伝える機能を果たす。言い返せば、自分の体でも支配できなく、一言も言わないで気持ちが相手に伝わることだと思う。
もちろん、関係に好きな人の考え、価値観、または趣味も大切だ。お互いに話している時に面白い話や趣味などを言うと、友達の環境内でだんだん相手の性格が知れて、関係の将来に関してもっと客観的な決断が出来る。このように、結局、相手の気持ちが当然になるはずだ。性格が合わない場合もあってがっかりする時もある。だが、友達だけの関係だったから、「君好きだ」という気持ちをすぐ忘れておくことが出来るはずだ。
やはり、この方法には時間がかかる。しかし、一発に情熱に燃えている恋愛関係が一発に消えるのだ。一歩一歩して我慢すると、結局、一生の恋愛の代償は暑い恋愛小説のような重なった経験の利益と比較が出来なくなるのである。
All fired up
Today's post is, in part, courtesy of Cake's most recent album Pressure Chief.
In New York City, the air isn't particularly great. Of course, it's a major city with taxis, traffic, buses, and plenty of trucks driving to and fro. However, I didn't really notice it when I was living there; I was usually taking the subway.
In Yokohama, I ride my bicycle. Many times, I literally have to hold my breath because the air is so thick with exhaust (I often am behind buses, the worst offenders). Today, for class I'm reading an article about the Kyoto Protocol meetings in the late nineties. Air pollution.
Now, I'm not going to hate on the automobile unnecessarily. It is, or should I say, the gasoline engine is, one of the most useful inventions in the modern era. However, I also encourage you to find another technology -- over 100 years old -- that is still more-or-less the same today. Telegraph? I don't think you can even get a telegraph line anymore. Telephone? We don't use operators, we have long distance codes; it's all automated. Recently, digital telephony even threatens the basic old POTS service we all know and love.
Competition, in a capitalist society, sparks innovation. New companies introduce new methodologies, improved products, and better ideas to gain market share. Old companies fight back by improving their products and slashing prices. Everyone is supposed to win: high-quality goods for cheap prices. Let's close our America Is Great textbooks for a moment and look at the real situation: the gasoline/diesel engine model is over 100 years old, and we still rely on it for most of our vehicles.
Certainly, efficiency has made great strides in recent decades -- but the major market force in that development was the cost of fuel in the latter 1970s. As my Dad has said about the days before that: "Gas was cheap."
I'm not necessarily saying that we should all go hybrid or natural gas tomorrow -- and I know there are huge barriers to entry. There are gas stations at every major intersection across America -- but there are relatively few natural gas or hydrogen stations. Those technologies have mostly taken off with public transportation units, which is a good start. Natural gas prices do not fluctuate the way that gasoline prices do, and thus it makes economic sense for a metropolitan entity to convert their transportation systems. Anyhow, that's a different conversation.
Let's return to the telephone industry for a moment. There was also a large barrier to entry for companies prior to the 1980s: AT&T owned everything, and thus could undersell everyone. The government stepped in to break up the madness, and now I can call people at home from Japan -- using a British company accessed through the Internet -- for less than 2 cents per minute. This is what I'm talking about: progress with a low cost. Don't hate on globalization -- it has positive influences, too.
America's land mass is too large to implement a full-scale, reliable rail system that would preclude consumers from needing their own vehicles (most other small, post-industrial nations can afford this luxury). America could eventually, and that's a different topic entirely, but I'd love to take it on. For the time being, we must focus on alternative energy technologies for the automobile: that's our current infrastructure.
As you can see, this isn't just about my lungs. It's about a lot of things, mostly political.
Why did we invade a country to ensure a consistent oil supply for both our economy and defense system? The costs of doing so have been tremendous: outrageous defense spending, political repercussions worldwide, and, naturally, over 2,000 American lives and the uncountable number of Iraqi citizens (estimates exceed 20,000) who perished in the "War on Terra", as President Bush would have you believe it is pronounced.
Forget the moral standpoint, I'm talking economics here. For the billions of dollars (soon to be trillions?) we've invested there, imagine the amount of government subsidies and incentives that could have been offered to both the oil and automobile industries to (1) promote new, efficient engine technologies, and (2) promote delivery of these new fuels and systems to places across the country?
Let's also not forget that those incentives would, in some cases, lead to the redeveloping of tens of thousands of gas stations: spending in local economies across the country. Sure, there's an inflationary risk, but in a post-9/11 economy, America could have used the injection of capital.
Am I having an "Emperor's New Clothes" moment here? Hasn't anyone else thought of this? Imagine the political image: "We're reducing America's dependence on foreign governments for oil, creating jobs at home by redeveloping our energy delivery infrastructure, and stabilizing energy prices that will help every hard-working American family save their hard-earned income." Tell me that doesn't appeal to the left and the right. Of course, the part that isn't included in that last bit is "...save their hard earned income for rising education and health care costs", but we'll tackle one issue at a time.
Let's not forget the environmental issue, too. We've already destroyed enough, haven't we? I'm not quite ready to colonize another planet just yet; I've grown quite fond of this world, actually. They've got some great food here.
So, I now leave you with my favorite lines from the Cake song "Carbon Dioxide":
I wish I was in that Mercedes Benz
Sealed away from my sins
I'd have the music high, going ninety-five
Aaaaahhh
Too much, Too much
Too much carbon dioxide for me to bear
I was honked at by a Mercedes the other day. I caught up to him in traffic a few kilometers down the road. I sneered as I passed him, and I certainly hope he saw me. I regularly beat cars because of the traffic and stoplights -- motorbikes usually beat me, though -- they carry the same advantage of being able to weave through stopped cars at red lights.
Peddling uphill Friday November 25
The following is a metaphor which will be employed later in this post. You have been warned.
Every day I ride my bike home, and on the very last stretch, I have to peddle uphill to get to my apartment. It's defintely not a small affair, but I've gotten used to it. Of course, this means that I get to cruise freely in the morning all the way down; wind in my hair, sun on my face. In terms of physics, it's a zero-sum energy game, but because I view the uphill work as a requirement for the downhill fun, I think of it as a positive-sum game. I'm working for something.
Two and a half years ago, I had to choose between going to Japan for a full year my senior year of college and staying in Champaign. If I stayed in Champaign, I reasoned, I could move to Japan after graduation, and that I could stay as long as I felt was necessary to be fluent. Ten months in the middle of college, or even a year, might not be enough, I thought, and I didn't want to be forced to go back to UIUC before I felt ready.
There were many factors influencing the decision then; the main one being the above logic. Yet, smaller, illogical components also contributed. My attachment to Cara (and presuming her eventual return to Champaign), my desire to spend senior year with my friends, and, possibly the silliest reason of all to anyone but Todd, Alissa, or myself, I wanted to live at 603 West Nevada.
It seems delay was the best decision. Without that delay, I would have never taken Professor Abelmann's ethnography course. I would have missed a key year at Foellinger, and thus likely not succeeded Monika last December. I would have not met some of the people I've met, and I would not have made some of the mistakes that I have made.
Of course, on the other hand, you can't always think this way about life. No matter which path I chose, there would have been new people, new experience, and new lessons. What I can say, however, is that the types of experiences I had in Champaign that year were, essentially, what I needed. And not all of them were good. It was a good decision. My momma likes to say that you do the most growing when things aren't going your way.
Anyhow, back to the present.
In life, every time I don't know where to turn next, I have these uphill moments. I drop everything going on in my life, focus entirely on the issue at hand, and work out some sort of solution. I did that for the above, and I did that when I determined whether or not to spend last summer in New York. Again, last fall, when I applied for JET, and subsequently this program, I did it again.
Of course, my path (to move here) was more-or-less decided last fall, so I didn't have too much trouble filling out the details. I did have to, though, decide between coming here now and trying to defer for a year, only to save more money from the Foellinger job. This time I opted for action over delay. You have to mix it up, you know?
Now, it's late November and I've been wrestling with the graduate school question for a few weeks. I intended to start the application process much sooner, but I, simply stated, became caught up here. With the workload, I assure you that this is quite possible. It'll be June before I know it.
In a flurry of "what am I going to do next year", I have researched information about graduate programs, spent hours upon hours crafting e-mails to say exactly what I wanted to say to professors, talked with students at the Center who are older than I am and interested in similar topics, sought the advice of my family and friends, and, of course, thought about it a lot. Those thoughts follow below in the form of a cost/benefit analysis.
A master's degree in the liberal arts (particularly, East Asian Studies or Cultural Anthropology) sounds great to me, and it would be a very good "shallow end" approach to jumping into the pool of academia. Moreover, since I do not have an anthropological background, I believe it would be a good opportunity to learn the "science" in an academic environment.
However, most programs offered by decent schools in this field are PhD programs. PhD programs, at a minimum, take at least five or six years to complete. I have been told that I have the intelligence, academic background, and connections to be able to pursue a PhD successfully, and I don't doubt that. What I do doubt is my ability to make an unwavering five-to-six year commitment to a field that I know that I like -- but actually have very little experience in.
Also, master's students in this field don't usually get any sort of funding. It would cost me a lot of money. In Mike's case, it's an investment that has a solid return -- if you invest in an MBA and are reasonably proactive in jobseeking, you will be able to repay that debt within a decade easily. Even three-four years, depending on your money management policies.
PhD students are different creatures entirely; they TA courses, and thus are more-or-less supported by the department which they are under. There are cases of master's students TAing courses -- Ashley does this, Sara K does this. However, their fields are larger, and thus there is a greater demand for these positions.
When I couple the above pros and cons together, it occurs to me that if, or maybe I should say when, I apply for that kind of graduate school, it will be a PhD track program. I have known for some time that I would like to have a PhD. However, with such a lifetime commitment involvement, it is a mistake to commit to something like that without the knowledge that it is exactly what one wants to do.
This is why I wanted to stay here for an extra year next year. Not only for the experience and the language, but to bring my goals into clearer focus. By virtue of going through the motions this week of preparing for graduate school applications, I've generated a list of things I need, I've made contact with some important people, I've receive a few "book lists". As Helen said in a comment below, since I've seriously thought about it, the application process next year would become much easier. And I'll have had a year to consider everything I should have been considering before I came. I was too focused on just getting to Japan, but this was unavoidable, I think. Moving abroad did take a significant amount of planning. I've always known it was the right decision.
I'm going to go on a short tangent, but will come back to the point of my graduate school decisions. My three favorite classes in college were Professor Abelmann's ethnography course, sophomore year differential equations, and the international relations course I took in the summer of 2003. Possibly, I put the most work into these classes, and thus got the most out of them. These three mirror my interests quite well.
Anthropology. Learning about people. Writing about people. Understanding. Teaching to other people. Working for a better Earth.
Political Science. Learning about entities, organizations, and individuals. Analyzing. Recommending policy. Working for a better Earth.
Differential Equations: mathmatical abstraction. A metaphor for computer programming, finance, business, and economics. Working for a better self.
I'm aware of the disparity between my judgements about who I'd be "working for", but the truth of the matter is that one of the more rewarding aspects of, say, my coding work is seeing the results of my own actions immediately, right in front of me. People exchange money (generally, value) for what I do, and thus this equates what I write to having value. If I could work for myself (or in a young company) for a few years, build up some base wealth to work with, work in the public sector for another few years, and then become a professor, I'd have the best life ever.
This leaves me with one remaining option for this year. There are master's programs that focus on East Asia while keeping true to their political and economic bases. Graduates from these programs seem to seek employment in government service, business, or even academic matters relating to East Asia. I could see myself doing this for awhile, like I said, acquiring experience and wisdom, and then taking that and running with it towards a PhD eventually.
This may be a bit of a pipe dream. By the time all of that happens, I might be married and/or have children, and I can't necessarily take 5 years "off" to become a professor when I have a family to support. Or can I? Rick did it, except that he is doing a business rather than academia.
Either way, pipe dream or not, I believe that the final word on this year is that. I will not apply to any PhD programs. I will stay in much better contact with my University contacts, and outside of the academic realm, learn more about the fields that have interested me up until now. I will continue to reevaluate their place in my life as I learn more, and as I experience more in my own life.
I will look into these joint programs that I just mentioned above, and I will likely apply to a few this year. If this doesn't work out, or there is some very, very good opportunity here upon graduation, I will either defer or change my mind. Next year, I will apply to the academic PhD programs if the research that I am challenging myself to do in the coming year compels me to do so.
That's what I've decided. Man, that took like, a whole week. I feel like I just peddled up a huge hill. We'll have to see what the other side looks like.
So inconsiderate Thursday November 17
Click the picture for an enlarged versionSome jackal threw trash in my bicycle basket yesterday while it was parked at the Center. The Center has a private parking place for it and the few offices around it, so it's a relatively small environment. Simply stated, not just anyone did this, but one of about sixty people did it.
I refuse to be outdone. This aggression cannot stand. The trash is not the issue -- the issue, here, man, is unchecked aggression. If I just let them throw trash in my basket without doing anything, they're going to do it again. I am drawing a line in the sand, and saying, "across this line, you do not cross."
As such, showing my snarky side, I made a sign last night and taped it to my bike this morning when I came to school. It says, in so many words:
"To the person who threw trash in this bicycle's basket yesterday: this bicycle, while it seems like a trash can, is in actuality a bicycle. There is a trash can at the Daily Yamazaki; please use that. I appreciate your cooperation. -The Bicycle God"
Am I wrong? I mean, am I wrong? Huah. Ok, then.
The Score Monday November 14
This is actually last month's Challengers.
Indian Curry and Pizza have been carried over,
but there is a new November list.I've wanted to talk about The Score for awhile now, but haven't had the opportunity. The Score started being kept the same night that Stamina Ramen came to fruition. Earlier that same week, I had attempted to make deviled eggs, but that experiment ended in failure. Living alone will make one crazy, and following the ramen success, I addressed my kitchen. I believe I said: "How you like THEM apples?", followed by a David Duchovney "Yeah".
That same night, I decided that competing against an anthropomorphic kitchen was way more fun than just cooking, so I sat down and composed two sheets of paper: The Score, which is simply divided into Me, The Kitchen, and Draw / Rematch, and the other sheet of paper lists The Challengers. The competition was born.
I haven't lost since Miso Soup. No matter how hard I try, I can't make a good miso. I have all the proper ingredients; I don't know what the problem is. I had a close call with a stirfry about three weeks ago, but I rematched it and put another mark in the 'W' column.
As you can see above, I'm doing rather well. I judge a success by my desire to eat the result, and my confidence in presenting the result to a third party as a dish. Clearly, this is subjective, but that's all that really matters here. It's my game, I make the rules. Still, the threat of failure is always present, and hubris will only feed the garbage can.
Now that you know about The Score, it's time for today's story. I'm so ecstatic at the moment I can't function properly. I have to get this out of my system so I can do other things this evening.
I ate a decent salad for lunch an hour and a half ago. My stomach was not content with that, though: "Feeeed meeee, Mark... Feeeeeed me CARBS, fattie!" At least, I think that's what it was saying. At the time, I was planning my meal schedule for next week; that's what really hit me.
When I make my meal schedule each week, I incorporate items from The Challengers. Certain nights are more convenient for cooking more complex meals, and I know that certain recipes will require certain foods -- so I have to leave myself time to shop.
While I was looking at the list today, though, my eye kept pulling to "Cookies". Japanese kitchens rarely have conventional ovens, and all I have is a Microwave-slash-Toaster-Oven-slash-so-called-Oven. I had been meaning to give it a whirl to see just what kind of "oven" this microwave-ish box on top of my mini-fridge is.
"Perfect," I thought. "If I lose, I can blame it on inadequate equipment."
I mixed up some normal cookie ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs, shortening, salt, corn starch (I don't have any baking soda), mirin (combination of sugar and Japanese rice cooking wine; I don't have vanilla extract). At first, the mixture resembled vanilla pudding, and I tasted it. Yup, if you add sugar to anything... tasty.
I then took my toaster oven pan, greased it, and dolloped the mixture into five lumps. Setting the oven to 200° Celsius, for which I don't even know the temperature, I baked these little guys for about 15 minutes. They started to brown like normal.
However, when I pulled them out, I realized one fundamental difference between my impromptu recipe and real cookies. Real cookies use baking soda, baking powder, or some other leavening element that makes them, well, cookie-like. I had used corn starch for lack of those other ingredients. This made my recipe a lot more cornbread-ish, but still sweet due to the sugar.
If you can't see the forest for the trees here, what I'm saying is that I unwittingly made scones. Scones! Unbelievable. Tasted the exact same as Espresso's. I ate all five in quick succession.
Mark another entry in the 'W' column, ladies and gentlemen. When I perfect the recipe with fruit and such, I will post it.
Moderation Friday November 11
Ben Franklin is credited with some very quotable quotes (isn't that from Reader's Digest, "quotable quotes"? I don't know, whatever). I say "is credited"; he may have simply just been the first to publish them. The most clever people I meet aren't the most clever people; they're the best at amalgamating the clever things they've heard elsewhere.
Anyway, as a result of the thirteen virtues he published in his late 20s, Ben Franklin is credited with the expression about practicing everything, including moderation, in moderation. Logically, this expression has no meaning, or rather, infinite meaning; expressions are only useful if they can be interpreted, applied, or understood.
As I type that, I start to think about music and art. Art isn't particularly applicable to every day life, for whatever life that may be. Interpretations are usually based on the personality of the observer, and to say we understand art is just outright pretentious. Yet, everywhere in the world, there is music, and there is some form of art. These things aren't "useful" as I have stated above. It seems that there are limitations to saying something is only "useful if it is applicable to life".
This last paragraph is only mentioned as a means to explain the greater issue I've been struggling with. Give me any topic (in this case, it was my desire to talk about moderation and absolutes), and I can find one or more loopholes that must first be discussed. I don't do this merely to prove that a loophole exists, but I am driven by the desire to nail down the "answer". I feel that if I chase the ends of each statement, very logically, I can pin down the assumptions to the extent where I can actually make some statement of value.
Yet, whenever I try this approach, I get lost in the process of tying down those ends. Luckily, this time, I stopped; I was merely exploring it for the sake of example. I've thought that possibly I just need to state my assumptions and traverse from there, but everything becomes the Mandlebrot set: the more you zoom in and look at it, the more complex it becomes. Conversely, the more one zooms out, the more it all comes together. Is this like a zen thing?
There are only two places left for me to go: one, to go mad, which I already slightly am, or two, to find some sort of line of thinking I can manipulate that, by definition, embodies this inability to ever accurately define reality. The latter really sounds appealing, and I really hope it includes my love of claiming that there is only one absolute, and that is that there are no absolutes. We can only take absolutes as such in moderation.
(Ed. note: I realize the logical disjunction that arises from saying "there are no absolutes", and if you post a comment about that, I will fly back and maim you.)
Second quarter Tuesday November 8
We've just started the second quarter of school. I'm still having a little trouble figuring out where the first one went. A lot of stuff has been going down recently; I caught a cold over the weekend. I'm currently winning the battle against it, but I should probably go home soon as to keep it at bay.
I will report back later this week with details of camping, as well as another recipe, I think.
キャンプ場
実は、先週末までキャンプ場に行ったことがなかった。でも、断りにくい友達に誘われたから、今キャンプした経験あるって言える。思ったより寒かった。１１月なら当然じゃないのかと言われるけど、横浜の天気はまだいい。そこで、寝袋、シャツ二枚、セーター、軽いコートを持って行くことにした。昼間、暖かかったー 一枚しか着ていなかった僕は大丈夫だった。でもさ、太陽が下がってから急にサブサブになってしまった。
それに対して、ビールを飲むことにした。効果的な対策だけど、外のいやな結果もあったー かぜをひいてしまった。きのう、午後のクラスを休んだほどひどかった。もう、風邪薬を飲んで、そしたら、一泊の後完全に治ったみたい。でも、薬の影響で元気でも、自然に治ったぐらいまで大事にしないと。
