happylife

A witness testimony

It was eight o'clock in the evening on March 20. When I was walking back from library I witnessed the car accident on Smithe Street between Howe and Granville. A car came out of a side street and turned to the right on Smithe Street, which is a wrong way because it is a one-way street. The driver soon noticed his mistake and began to make a U-turn, but just at that time, a yellow cab came from Granville at a fast speed and hit the right front side of the car with its left front side. Fortunately, no one seemed to have got injured and there were some eyewitnesses except for me. I don't know what happened next because I soon left the scene because of rain. From the circumstantial evidence, the driver of the first car would be blamed way more than the yellow cab driver. However, from my point of view who was watching the accident from the beginning to the end, the yellow cab driver has as much responsibility as the first car driver because this accident should have been avoided if he was driving slower or he was looking ahead more carefully. The road sign in Vancouver is hard to see especially in darkness and I used to make the same mistake a few years ago. I have to say I was lucky and the first car driver was unlucky.

Between the sun and clouds

It had been cloudy with some showers all day long yesterday, but the sun shone for a minute before it set and fortunately, just at that time, I was walking around Downtown and could come across this beautiful rainbow. It was a perfect circle drawn by the Nature bordering the bright inner part and the dark outer world. This seems to be a natural law and a rainbow always has a gradation of purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red from center to surrounding. -- We Japanese set indigo between blue and purple and call them seven colors of rainbow. --  I can't explain well the reason for this appearance of a rainbow, but it must be related to the refractive index of sunlights. According to my research, a rainbow is often accompanied with a sub-rainbow which is larger than the main one and interestingly which has the reverse order of six or seven rainbow colors. Can you recognize it in this picture?

Midnight walking

Walking around the town after midnight is my recent fun. I usually finish my work by the time when the date changes and look out of the window. If it is not raining, I decide to go for a walk wearing earphones of an iPod. The course depends on my mood at that time; sometimes a 30 minute walk just in Downtown and sometimes a 3 hour walk around Downtown. I have once walked about 15 km for almost 5 hours until dawn. You might think what is interesting. Most stores are lit up as bright as in evening as if it is still open and there are few people. It's just like a ghost town. It's difficult to explain the charm of midnight walking, but I can say if you try it by yourself, you would understand it and you might as well be addicted to it. Looking out over the world, I have to say it is a very happy thing that we can walk around after midnight without any problems. Curfews are in effect in some countries and it is almost a suicide act in most areas. I can say through out of my experience, Vancouver is a safe city except for particular districts and you would be safe if you are not a super attractive young lady.

Speed test

As I mentioned before, I was annoyed with frequent troubles of my Internet provider several months ago, but they seem to have been settled and I am now satisfied with the quality of the Internet connection environment except for its cost. I sometimes use "speedtest.net" which measures the download and upload speed of the line between your server and any other site all over the world with a cool graphical interface. In terms of the download speed, it has been improved since a few months ago and the figure almost reaches 10Mbps, which is the average level in Japan. As you might know, the most important factor of line speed is money. The provider which has more customer can afford faster lines. Comparing the population in Vancouver with the one in Tokyo, Vancouver is at a disadvantage and I have to admit that my provider is doing well. Anyway, I'm thinking about switching into faster optical link from ADSL after going back to Tokyo next month. I'm looking forward to it very much because I can do a lot of things by setting up a new personal server in my home with the fast line 10 times faster than the present.

Rain after rain

It has been raining day after day and the forecast is repeating the same weather. I've found that I have never been out of my room for more than two days. I am staying in my room just sitting towards my PC, lying on the bed or walking around like a bear. I'm not sure whether it is common to say "walking like a bear" in English, but you might be able to understand what I mean if you have seen bears in a zoo. They walk in a circle without any purpose. I'm living an unhealthy life like a bear in hibernation. Only the difference is that my fingers and brain are working, but it doesn't consume much energy and therefore my weight is gradually increasing. I know I need more exercises but this rain and the cold weather prevent me from it. I really understand why the people in cold and rainy countries such as Canada and Russia are obese. Doing exercises is difficult there both mentally and physically. At least, I have to take care of my food not to take so much calories.

Not a show

I came across this scene of a car accident on W 4th street when I was cycling around Kitsilano. One car was stuck with its hood open and the other was turned on its left side. It must have been a high speed crash, but fortunately no one seemed to be injured. Two driver-like man and woman were standing by the car and talking with an officer. The road was fully closed and no cars except for buses could go through. As I had both time and a camera, I tried to get close to the damaged cars but the officer's sharp eyes checked my advance. His eyes were telling me "this isn't a show!" though he didn't say anything. He looked so fierce that I could only take this one picture from a distance. Personally I come across accident scenes more often in Vancouver than in Tokyo and I think that is a matter of course; the traffic system including the traffic signals, 4 way rule and drivers' license system has plenty of scope for improvement. The old good system is not going to work well for the rapidly increasing cars and population.

Cherry trees for Japanese

As I mentioned before, we Japanese have special emotions for cherry trees. It used to be virtue to die like cherry blossoms. Different from Vancouver, Cherry blossoms in Japan fall in one breath in a very gorgeous way. We call it "sakura fubuki" which means a flower blizzard. A lot of soldiers are said to have adored to die in such a way in the World War II. Baka bomb or Kamikaze is the ultimate style of that way of thinking. Of course few Japanese are now thinking like that and most of us know the importance of our lives, but I think it is important not to forget the fact that most of us were possessed by the stupid thought. We tend to think and act in one direction. It might be because we are almost ethnically homogeneous or it might be because Japan has a large population in a small, isolated land. This characteristic of Japanese people and Japan sometimes works effectively; we couldn't have developed in such a way for the past 60 years after the war if we were multi-ethnic. However, we always have the danger to rush into a death procession by only one powerful dictator. It might be lucky that almost all the politicians had been dull since the end of the war.

Coke & Pork

A terrible short movie has taken away my appetite. It was a simple movie in which a piece of pork was soaked in Coke. As you might know, a pork pig has a lot of worms in it and all of them came out of the flesh one after another stimulated by Coke. I got goose bumps and regretted to have watched such a horrible movie. I don't like to have pork any more as well as Coke, but what should I eat then? Chicken is notorious for the flu, beef is still in danger of BSE and salmon has more bugs than pork. It's kind of an ultimate decision. I know we have to ignore such small problems in order to survive. We can't perfectly get rid of bugs or any other poisonous materials from our daily food. It is a compromise we need to have as a human being standing on the top of the food chains. I understand that in my brain, but my emotion does not accept it yet. It seems to take a time until I forget the shocking images, but I don't blame for the movie because I can diet. It might be the most effective dieting method to watch shocking movies like this coke & pork.

Mariokart DS

Nintendo Mariokart DS is much better than I had expected. I have never seen such an exciting racing game. It is so exciting that I am now annoyed with the pain in my thumbs and eyes. I have decided not to play it more than 30 minutes a day. It is similar to the the rule that mothers and fathers impose on their children, however I would waste my precious hours unlimitedly without it. The most addictive point of this game is of course the network competition in which we can race with human opponents on the Internet. Competing with machine opponents is more or less empty because their strategy is in one pattern and they wouldn't excite if we provoked them. Everyone would prefer to play with human opponents but it is rather difficult for mature people to gather in one place with the same game systems. With the WiFi connection system of DS, we can always enjoy the racing game with human opponents automatically searched on the Internet. If I made an opponent slip by putting a banana skin on the course, he or she would chase me to get their revenge on me. It's really exciting. My last 30 minutes before going to bed is reserved for the world grand prix every night.

eBay

"eBay" is the most successful Internet auction site all over the world except for in Japan where Yahoo Auction drove it away several years ago. I would often use Yahoo Auction in Japan both as a buyer and a seller. It was very useful to get some products which are in shortage of stock in shops or to make some money from unnecessary gadgets. I have once sold my used motorcycle in Yahoo Auction for the price six times as expensive as the dealer estimated value. Since I came to Vancouver, I have become stingier and have used less money for gadgets, therefore I have not used Internet auction service so often, but now that I have decided to leave Vancouver, I have started making good use of it again. I have put some items on display including a digital camera and a controller for a flight simulator. It was my first experience to sell something on eBay and I'm now looking forward to them to be bid at a good price. In my impression, the system of eBay is a little bit confusing for me after taking the language problem into account: The procedures for linking eBay account and PayPal account was so difficult to understand that I had to ask the help counter, why we have to wait for a few hours after putting our items before they appear in the searching list, and why the freight charge cannot be calculated automatically?