The Soul that Regrets in Silence

Well… It’s 7:30 am and I’ve been just writing reports and stuff non-stop since yesterday. It’s not like I’m being enslaved by the reports or anything. Actually I could’ve finished the reports several days ago already, is just that these reports are particularly… fun (yeah… call me weird ), and I feel like making them as good as possible. Anyway, no matter how much I like my reports, it’s also important to take a break every once in a while. So I’m taking this chance to get some stuff that has been bugging me for a while out of my head.

I’m in Japan as you know already, and life is great here; got lots of good friends, got a nice apartment near the university, have enough money to survive, etc… In other words, so far so good. If you were to ask me, I would say that this country is just awesome. Some stuff could be better of course, but… it’s awesome still. Yet, even though life is so much fun… there are a couple of things that make me regret the fact I ever came here.

One of the things I regret… are weddings. No, I’m not getting married or anything, and there’re no plans for that… at least not for now that is (don’t worry mom, I’m just teasing you a bit ). But, since I came here, I’ve already missed five weddings of friends/relatives. It’s like… everybody was just waiting for me to leave, so that they could get married once and for all or something. It’s not like it’s such a big deal or anything to miss 5 or 10 weddings while I’m here, but it would’ve been nice to share those moments with family and friends on such unique occasions you know? Those moments will never come back… and I just missed them.

There are many other things I regret… failing the entrance exam the first time, not being able to see or talk with my family and friends in my country, etc… But probably the one I regret the most is not having been able to be at my grandpa’s funeral. It’s been almost one year since that day… and I still haven’t paid my respects. With all that was going on with the entrance exams and the high price of the plane tickets, I just couldn’t afford to go… and still can’t. My grandpa was a very special person to me… He would often complain about things, like most old men do, but would always help you if you asked him. Harsh… but gentle, that’s probably the best way to describe him. Yet, for such a person who helped me and taught me so much, I still haven’t gone to his grave even once… as if I was being oblivious to his death.

There are so many words I wish I had said… so many things I wish I had done… so many moments I wish I could’ve shared… and I just couldn’t… Will God ever forgive such impotence?

Even so… after one whole year… I still remember you grandpa… in every single day… and every single smile. Even though you are no longer around… I’ll make sure I make it up to you somehow… someday… I promise.

Stupidity…

I’ve got no additional comments for this…

Blog Maintenance in Progress…

Sorry for not writing for so long, but since I have been pretty much busy these days I just haven’t had the time to come here and post anything new.

In the next few days (hopefully), I’ll be doing some maintenance on the blog (removing stuff, adding stuff, etc…), especially on the photos section.

You might have noticed that if you go to the Photos page there’s several photo pages missing. Also, some photo pages have no pictures at all because my previous online storage service, MediaMax, changed its service from free storage to monthly paid (first was extremely bad service and now this… damn you bastards!! DAMN YOU!!!).

I’ve managed to upload several picture sets to Flickr instead (thank God I switched before it was too late… friggin’ MediaMax bastards ), but there’s still lots of stuff to do. There are even some pictures I won’t be able to reupload because I don’t have a backup of them at the moment (Screw you MEDIAMAX!!!!).

You Suck at Photoshop

Best way to learn Photoshop ever!!

http://www.mydamnchannel.com/Big_Fat_Brain/You_Suck_at_Photoshop__Season_1/YouSuckatPhotoshop1_398.aspx

I personally like numbers 3 and 4.

Hope you don’t suck too much at Photoshop anymore after watching this

How to Wake Up Without Feeling Like Crap Every Single Morning

The Problem

I have always had a problem ever since I was in high school, for some reason I always woke up extremely tired and feeling like my head would blow anytime.

The consequences were that I would always end up sleeping in the middle of classes, even when I was sitting in the front of the whole class so the teachers could even see me clearly, and most of my ex-classmates can account for that, they called it “falling into trance“.

So, I spent the rest of my high school life, university life and even professional life falling into unexpected trances every once in a while. Nobody really complained that much since my grades were really good and my performance in work was actually pretty good.

Also, I felt I couldn’t think properly and had problems to concentrate properly while studying or having conversations.

Sometimes I even felt like life was a complete pain because of this. I wasn’t feeling depressed or anything at all but certainly I wasn’t the happiest person in the world.

So It Got Even Worse…

The situation worsened when I got a job at one of these computer technical support call centers (that job was hell itself, if you have the opportunity to work in a call center just do it if you are enough a masochist). With completely irregular schedules that changed every month and having to work until 1:00 or 2:00 am I was feeling like crap even more. The situation continued even after I quit working at that hellhole.

Then I came to Japan, and I noticed that, even though I wasn’t feeling homesick or anything, I was feeling like crap even more and it looked like this would just get worse over the time and I didn’t know why.

NANA

Yesterday, we were watching this movie called NANA on the lobby, which was highly recommended by Shi and Sophia (thanks!). At first I was a little bit skeptical about watching this movie, but after the first 10 minutes I was proved wrong.

Good Bye Grandpa…

During these past few days my grandfather had been very ill in the hospital, it wasn’t the first time but still, I was praying in order for him to recover quickly.

So, very early this morning, I was woken up by a call I received from my mother, telling me that he had just passed away. When I picked up the phone and saw the number on the caller ID, I sort of knew right away what had happened before asking anything.

And the thing is that, I surely wasn’t expecting this to happen 4 months ago when I came to this country. As I said in previous posts, I knew that things will never be the same when I get back to Panama, I just didn’t know how different they were gonna be.

I have many memories with him.

Whenever we spent weekends together on my parents farm we would play dominoes with my brothers until very late in the night.

We used to go almost every Sunday to his house when I was a kid and he would cook for us, my grandpa was the best cook ever, I missed his food a lot when he stopped cooking.

He used to tell stories all the time from when he was working at the Panama Canal zone, that I really didn’t pay much attention to because I always felt I had heard them thousands of times.

My grandpa was really good at drawing, painting and many other things.

He was 84 years old, the next month was his birthday. Over the past few years he had spent a lot of time on hospitals, but always recovered somehow, and I sort of thought it was going to be the same this time.

I’m really going to miss you grandpa, and I’m terribly sorry for not being able to be there in your last moments. I can’t even go to your funeral because the plane ticket costs three times the money I have saved until now, please forgive me.

I know you must be in a much better place right now, so please rest, and watch from there.

Photo Storage Service Change

Since my previous online storage service is really bad (if you noticed, there are some dead links whenever you go to the photo pages), well it’s not that bad, it gives some huge 25 GB storage space, which is really good, but everything else just sucks, so I’ve given up already, and decided to change to Flickr like almost everyone else.

I’ll be uploading everything in the next few days, so I hope I can share my pictures with you anytime soon.

Natural Disaster – 天災

Nature was acting a little bit crazy last week. First was the Typhoon. Typhoon Man-Yi hit Okinawa (沖縄) and many other parts of southern Japan very badly. Lucky for me, it didn’t reach Tokyo (東京), but I hear that there were many injured and some fatalities as well.

And then, on Marine Day (海の日) , a national holiday, at around 10:30 a.m., disaster struck again, the huge earthquake at Niigata (新潟) took place. Niigata isn’t that close to here, but still, it could be felt in Tokyo. There were 3 earthquakes that day. People died, a lot of people was injured and many houses, roads and bridges were damaged.

Japanese Subways

My daily nightmare.

Densha Otoko – 電車男

Yesterday night, I was at the lobby with Minerva, Thiago, Ben and Baska, watching Densha Otoko (電車男), a japanese movie about an otaku (a japanese geek) who saves some women from a drunk guy at a train, and ends up dating one of those women.

Of Parties, Studies and Typhoons

I’ve been really busy lately so that’s why I haven’t written anything these past few weeks.

Well, last week was our friend Tonu‘s birthday, so in order to celebrate we went to have all you can eat yakiniku (焼肉) at a restaurant in Shimokitazawa (下北沢). It was sort of okay, even when we had to cook our own food (which kinda beats the purpose of going to a restaurant for that matter, but it was interesting). After that we just spent some time around Shimokitazawa.

I took some pictures from that day, but probably won’t be able to post them here any time soon since my online storage service provider has been acting weird these last few days.

Next day, after saying good bye and stuff, Nam and Tonu went back to Thailand, since they have to attend the graduation ceremony of their university, so this week we have been feeling kinda lonely in the classroom. Hopefully, they’ll come back next week.

The Reason She Got Mad at Me

Another one.

Matrix Ping Pong

This video is a classic.

Japanese Midterm Exam

So well, another week has passed again with nothing but study. This week was the japanese course midterm exam, so I was terribly busy these days. Since I’m quite stupid myself, I have to study twice as hard as everyone else or else I won’t make it. Japanese learning is quite difficult since I can’t even read long paragraphs, because there’s a hell lot of kanjis （漢字）, I can barely read kids tales, and not even as fast as a 5 year old japanese kid.

They say that, in order to properly read the newspaper, you need to learn at least 2000 kanjis (that amount is just freaking insane). I can read and write up to 150 to 200 of those at the moment and still can’t understand even the shortest articles. And also, since most kanjis have more than one way to be read, that makes it quite hard to learn words.

Conversation (会話) is really problematic for me at this moment, I can understand most of what people say at least, but when is time to talk back is a real pain, since it takes much more time to remember all the words and stuff.

The Truth About Japanese Food

OBAACHAAAAAAN!!!!

Retrospection…

Well, this week was another of those not so interesting weeks. On Monday, I went with Maite to the panamanian consulate in Tokyo, finally, to get registered over there. The task was supposed to be something extremely easy, and it was… except for just a tiny detail. We were supposed to get to Roppongi station, which we did (after taking a while to look for the correct route to get there), and once we got there we had to just walk a little from there to the place, that in theory.

The thing is, that we panamanians really suck at giving directions, and don’t even mention about making maps because we suck at drawing too. The directions we got were sorta wrong, the place was somewhat near Roppongi station, yeah, but everything else was just damn wrong. The consulate was nowhere to be found and we didn’t even have the tiniest idea of what to do or where to go.

Well, in the end we managed to get there safely. Maite saved the day again (you’re my hero you know ), she asked a police officer in the station nearby, and he kindly showed us the way in the map. If I was to be alone, I would have probably done the same, but about an hour later or so, or simply would have decided to come back again some other time, after checking the address properly.

It’s Tickle Me EMO!!!

I know of 3 or 4 people that could really make very good use of something like this.

Festivals, Karaoke, TOEFL Update and more

Well, a lot has happened these past few days, so that’s why I haven’t been able to write that often here.

First of all, I joined the university gym last week. I got a one-year pass, it costs 8000 yen, which is surprisingly cheap, it’s even cheaper than the one I used to go to back in Panama (and a lot much better as well). There’s tons of machines, basketball courts, a pool and a lot of different classes like yoga and the sort, and I can do or use any of them whenever I want to without any additional cost.

Last week’s Saturday (not yesterday), I went with Gaik Theng, Shiyon (a friend from Korea), Baska, Ben and Junko (our first japanese friend here) to the Asian Festival at the International Students House. It was pretty nice, there were a lot of different foods from many countries, presentations of traditional dances and even a fashion display of asian costumes. I ate some malaysian food, which was very nice, but also very spicy.