13 posts tagged “random thoughts”

[Dear international readers; I'm going to write complete nonsense in my mother tongue here, the first time for me. Yes, I'm a bit tipsy. You won't be missing anything if you don't understand Japanese (^o^)]

かなり前に、このブログのバーチャルお隣さんであるソフィアさんに教えて頂いてアクセスカウンター（僕のブログを読んで下さってる方が、どこの国から何人くらいいるのか、が分かるやつです）を設置して以来、ずっと不思議に思っていることがあるのです。アクセス数１位は常に日本で、２位がアメリカなんですよね。アメリカが多いのは分るとして（ほぼ一貫して英語で書いてることもありますし）、日本が何で一番多いのだろう？と。日本人の方が辞書を引きながら読んで下さっているとは思えないし、（辞書引いてまで読みたくなるようなこと書いてないです(笑)）辞書引かずにこのブログ読める人はもっと面白いもんがネットにはいくらでも転がってるし。と、考えると、恐らく日本に現在在住の外国の方が多いんではないかなー、と何となく想像してます。

てことは、多分このブログの読者で日本語のポストを読んでくださるのはバーチャルお隣さんのWHさんを含めても３人くらいでしょうね(^o^) そう考えると何か楽しいな、好き勝手なごたくを並べてもほとんどの人には単なる文字化けにしか見えねーんだよなきっと、うひゃひゃ、とか思っているんですが(笑)　（実は最初のころ、ブログ自体をバイリンガルにしようと思って同じことを日本語と英語で書いたこともあるのですが、すぐにそんなめんどっちいことはやめちまいましたー）、まあ、日本語のポストを見て何かリアクションがあるかな、というのを見よう、というのがこのポストの趣旨なのです（何だそりゃ）。でも日本語でブログ書くなんてめんどくさいね。英語の世界より礼儀とかうるさいし（だからミクシィが嫌いなのです。いちいち全ての書き込みにレスなんてつけてられません）、しょせん「日本語のアタマで考える人たち」より外の世界の人々の考えに触れる機会はほぼゼロだし。まあ六本木エリアで働いてると、そこらへんのアフォな日本人よりよっぽど美しい日本語を話す外国の方が以外と多くてびっくりするんですけどね。

と、六本木の話を書いたら六本木で飲んでる知り合いから携帯にメールが飛んできました。これからスイス人の女の子をナンパするそうです。何でスイス人でなきゃいけないんでしょうね。まあ、このメールの書き方が悪いだけで、既に特定の女の子に照準は定められ、巡航ミサイルにはGPSの座標も入力済み、グラスに残った酒を空けたら発射スイッチに手を伸ばすだけ、と言いたいのでしょう、きっと（イチイチこんなメールを書いてる間に口説けばよさそうなもんですが。成功の確立は推して知るべしですね）。今は東京時間で夜中の１時半です（金曜の深夜っつーか土曜の早朝っつーか、そんな感じです）。退屈な連中（最近の俺とかさ(笑)）はとっくに終電で街から姿を消し、六本木交差点の周辺が悪い子たちの色気でグルーヴし始める時間ですね。六本木のグルーヴ、というと僕はニューヨークやらベルリンやらサンクトペテルブルグやらからこの東京の不夜城に流れついた醒めた目のバーテンダーが、ちょっとシックなバーカウンターの後ろで卑猥なほど手慣れた手つきでシェイクするカクテルシェーカーを思い浮かべます。どこか遠い異国から輸入された訳ありビンテージのお酒を、２４時間ぎらぎらネオンが輝くコンビニで最安値で叩き売られるチープなミネラルウォーターで割って、隠し味として過ぎゆく人生の時間と気付かぬ内に失われゆく若さの苦い風味を甘い毒のようにたらしこんだカクテル。上澄みの味に浮かれて死神とダンスできる間に心ゆくまで楽しむべきですね。隠し味の苦さが口に残るようになってきたら、もう苦笑いと共に卒業の潮時か、迎え酒をあおってピエロのふりを続けるか、選択することになるでしょう。
まあ、巡航ミサイルの狙いが逸れないことを願いましょう。そして最近は割と空車だらけの渋谷行きタクシーと、少子化と男子の草食化(笑)のせいで以前ほど盛況ではない様子の道玄坂のラブホテルにわずかでも客足が戻ることを祈りましょう。私はこのポストを保存したら「チャイルド４４」て小説をもう少し読んで寝ますけどね。（この小説は超面白いです。日本語訳のできは知りませんが）
長文駄文で失礼しました。次回から普段どおり、英語の長文駄文に戻ります（苦笑）。ではまたー。

The first week of May is known as "Golden Week" in Japan. There are several national holidays scattered around on the last week of April and the first week of May. Although exactly how many days off you'd get depends on the calendar of that year, you'd get at least several extra days off. Which is always nice.

According to this supposedly important scholar specializing in social studies, only 3.5% of single men in Japan earn more than 6 million Yen per year (that's about 60,000 USD). Which is about how much single Japanese women want their future husband to be earning- about 80% of them do, also according to this guy.

If you have ever lived in Japan or stayed here for some time, sooner or later you must have tried stuff they sell at our convenience store. Aside from sandwiches and Onigiri (rice balls) you can get all kinds of microwave friendly food there (and then some, like Oden they sell at the counter). Although some are just not the kind of invention intended for human beings to eat... :-P

The Newsweek magazine is calling the current unwinding of the whole leveraged economy as "de-leveraging". But you know, any business or economy related magazines have been basically saying the same thing for a month or so; the party's over, there's gonna be a whole new era coming on and the transition will be brutal, etc.

Man, last two weeks have been crazy. Me catching cold didn't help either....

The U.S. federal government and FRB may now have something to regret in weeks/months to come by letting Lehman Brothers to go belly up and file for bankruptcy while saving AIG because it's "too big to fail" without showing any criteria as to how big a financial institution has to be to be saved. If Lehman is not big enough, then most of them would be not big enough. Their reason for bailing AIG seems to be primarily the "influence", but what's gonna happen if an insurance company smaller than Lehman (how you compare the size of an insurance company and an investment bank is another problem) goes into crisis mode? Is it all up to the feds to decide? A bit too much of unpredictability... But I guess they don't want their hands tied as they can't predict what kind of situation they will be facing in the (probably near) future.

Watching the U.S. Republican National Convention on CNN, some random thoughts went through my head, such as-

Usually, I don't like authors who kind of ramble on. I love well-thought out structures and simplicity in choice of words. I also suspect the authors who only write about their own lives may not have the real talent of making up good stories out of thin air (I realize every author takes her own life as material, and their lives will always be a part of their works, but you know what I mean).

So I feel a bit irritated to read Henry Miller (although I think Marguerite Duras is a fantastic writer- she did write a lot about her own life, but she manages to filter it down to create a good fiction). He clearly has a lot of talent, he's funny and describes things in very original way. But overall impression I get is that he probably won't end up on my list of favorite writers (funny as Anais Nin, his muse, mentor, lover and sexual obession, will be on it).
For me, Henry Miller is emotional even when writing rationally about his telegraph company job or whatever; Anais Nin is rational even when writing about the most intimate details of her hyperactive sex life. Her diaries see life, her own and in general, in cold, detached observation. And her style suits me better. I'm not saying Miller is a bad writer, I am enjoying reading him, but I keep finding myself wishing he wrote a bit more like his muse.

I was reading this horror story about a guy whose hard drive suddenly broke down, and how hard it was for him to try to get his computing environment back on. He would bitch a lot about not having backed up his emails and stuff.

Then it occured to me; I don't even have a single e-mail on my local hard drive. They are all on my Hotmail/ Yahoo/ Gmail account. Instead of burning my writing files and stuff to a CD-R or copying them to another hard drive, I simply attach stuff I want to back up and send it to my Gmail address. As for as my correspondence is concerned, I won't lose a thing if my hard drive goes FUBAR right this moment. And with service like Flickr and SkyDrive, you have many options to keep your stuff anywhere other than your local hard drive.

So for non-gaming people, I guess the biggest thing to lose in a crisis like that may be their music collection. (though if you use iPod, I think you can transfer the songs from it to a new PC? is there any restriction doing that??) And if Google Office keeps evloving, I may not even need MS Office sitting on my local drive. Real-time spell checking is a must feature for me and Google Office doesn't seem to have it. Once they do, I would probably go that way. And with frightening speed with which hard drives are getting cheaper and its capacitiy getting ever bigger, the day may come when all you music would end up online, from where you could stream your stuff to your PC or transfer to your portable device.

This trend will change a lot of things; first it spells trouble for Microsoft- MS Office and Windows OS will lose its relevance, as you can do more stuff online and all you need is whatever can get you online (yes, I know all about browser difference when reading HTML/CSS code and all, but you get the basic idea). Also, the notion of privacy will change dramatically, as it's already been happening. I don't think the term completely lose its significance like some nerds claim, but people of the future will certainly see what's private and what's public. It may be a great news for criminals as well- you bust a suspected drug dealer or a yakuza hitman and confiscate his computer, but you can't find a single e-mail to back up your case; he may have an online account he only uses from various netcafes, whose existence he conveniently forgets to mention to the cops. And if you do find out where his e-mails are, you're gonna have to spend some time to secure a warrant if the server exists on a different country (which means his pals have time to erase said e-mails don't you think)...

Primary function of my C drive is to keep my music and games, which it will keep doing for any forseeable future, but it's interesting how SaaS explosion will change the way people work, play and save stuff. I wonder what the "average" computing life will be in ten years.