Why so blunt?

Last week (because I'm so good at adhering to schedules) my senior talked to me about my report. He taught me a few pointers, which are really helpful and kind of lame on my part because I was not being careful and doing the job for the job's sake.

What struct me though, is how he started the conversion: "Did you go to college?". And then as the talk went on, we went to various topics about reporting, dropping a few pointers here and there, explaining why simple things such as content formatting is important, and other things. But why the first question? It led me to believe that it was an attack to my ego, or at least that's how I felt it was because of the language barrier, not reading the mood of the conversation. In reality, he's just trying to point out that as a college graduate, I should've known better and did the format correctly from the beginning.

But then he blurted out "see, your ability kind of got worse". Savage.

Another thing is how he explained the importance of what he taught. I think it's my third time being lightly scolded by him, and on all instance he's throwing the word "customer", in the context that wherever I'd be, coughing out results like the one I did would probably lead to confused customers. A really good point, since we're client based. I'm kind of grateful, since most of my work experience I'm just behind the scenes. The couple of times I need to face clients I'm either sleepy in the middle of a meeting, or being blamed in a database discrepancy that I didn't even caused. So getting pointers like these makes me learn more. I should learn more.

My fault? Basically putting everything on the "Conclusion" part. I really should've known better.

Catching Up

Yeah, I missed the mark. Again. Maybe it's because I can't keep up with myself. Most probably it's my inability to keep up with everything. Projects get delayed, tutorials untouched, diet not maintained...

I kept thinking that I can control my time, that somehow I can always pursue my goals even if I miss a couple of deadlines. Most of these deadlines I set up myself, so I don't have a tiny bit of excuse for missing them.

I set the up the blog so I can chronicle what I've been doing, but lately I've just been writing about the results of my procrastination. Will I be able to catch up? Will I be able to fill this tiny corner of my thoughts with bright light? I have a feeling that if I tried looking back at this a few months or years into the future, I might be depressed. Or I might laugh at it and see it as a phase.

But you know, five years is too long to be a phase.

If anything, I might not even need to catch up. I just need to fix my pacing.

My random musings suddenly isn't so random after all.

Missing The Mark

Just last week, I was blabbering about making things happen and getting to publish a blog every week. My cutoff was every Sunday. It's now Monday. Hence this post.

I think it's fine to miss the mark sometimes. But when it becomes a habit, it's dangerous. I've missed a lot of time the years before. I've been missing the mark my whole adult life so far when it comes to being active and eating right. I've been missing deadlines left and right. I've been missing the timelines I've made for myself. I'm almost thirty. That game project is still a brain fart. It's not healthy.

Let's be healthy this year.

Obligatory New Year post and stuff

It's been a great year, this 2015. Career-wise, it's been a dive, thanks to a lethal combination of lack of task and procrastination. It's also a pause on my social-media posting. It marked a start of writing in the form of this blog that, considering the pageviews, should not be existing at all. But heck, I'm not writing for an audience. It's basically just a channel of brainfarts, to keep my writing skills from getting dull (as if it exists, meh). Otherwise, it's a very good year. It's been a year of travels - with tired feet and emptied wallets, we've travelled to Osaka and Kyoto. With frustration running on max doing a 7-hour travel to Sendai to catch the Tanabata and missing out on seats for several hours, we survived. And then travelling to Yamanashi the morning after, we enjoyed our wedding anniversary eating a huge amount of grapes (a first for me, since I don't really like fruits) and seeing a huge field of sunflowers. Ate the best ear of corn as well. It's awesome, but it's underwhelmed by the fact that my excessive procrastination overwhelmed most of the year. Not cool. Looking at my "Goals for 2015" list, it makes me cry seeing that I finished NONE of it. I think there's a checked item off the list, about levelling up my nihongo skill, which is cool, but it's mandatory as well. So yeah, enough of being lazy.

This year will be different. 2016 will be a year of making things happen. I plan to work hard on every aspect of this life of mine. I plan on making this blog sing. A weekly post would do, but it's better if I can write more.

Writing that "Goals in 2016" list is daunting, as I'm afraid I won't be able to do anything again. But there's no harm in trying, and at least I have a concrete list to look forward to. As a morale booster, I have this post finished. That's one check mark on the "do a weekly post" off.

Happy new year to all.

Segues and Segways.

As I was reading a tutorial regarding iOS application development through storyboards, I came across the word segue, which is the term used by Apple for how the screen transitions when using storyboards. I know the word segue, so there's nothing special about it, until I read the part where it says "(pronounce:seg-way)".

And all this time I thought the Filipino colloquialism came from the self-balancing scooter, because it can "segway" (transition) to the "sidewalk" (a sub-topic). It's not even a colloquialism at all. It's just a case of Taglish (Tagalog-English).

I was dumbfounded. A chunk of my life was a lie. Ignorance ain't blissful after all. The dictionary is a great ally, especially when you don't skip the pronunciation part.

Suddenly having a renewed interest with Segways because of this topic, as well as the rise of self-balancing scooters as of late, I visited their website, and found this on Segway's Company Milestones page:

The Company adopted and trademarked the name Segway®, from the word segue, which means 'to transition smoothly from one state to another'.

That drives down the point so bad I'm embarrassed with myself.

Funny remarks on gaijin during a meeting

A disclaimer: I don't understand Japanese fully...yet.

On our regular meeting last week (Aug. 5), while waiting for the AC to kick, they talked about random things to pass up the heat to. One of the things talked about was how some places like Asakusa had more tourists than ever before. And while they talk about it, they kept using the word "gaijin", which meant foreigner. Like how gaijin people would be walking around Asakusa where one of my seniors's (I think everybody's a senior, since I'm the only young one here. Not so young, but still in my 20s.) parents apparently lives. The next one I'm not really sure if I get it right, but it's either gaijin travelers sell things on a used shop before they go back, or gaijin residents bring big backpacks to buy things on a thrift shop. Then they proceed to talk about gaijin traits while on the trains, like being noisy and inconsiderate and stuff. Like how Joshikosei are as well. 

 The one thing that I find funny in all of this, is how we're just five people in the meeting, two of us are gaijin, and the grass is still green. I don't feel offended, they don't feel like being offensive, and somehow I agree with what they're talking about. It gives a different perspective on gaijin people from a native's point of view. 

To add to the curiosity, last Friday when we had a nomikai (drinking party), the shop's head lady mistook me for an Okinawan. I'm not sure if it's just refusing to believe a gaijin can be among a group of Japanese people, or if I'm starting to integrate with the society. The latter's hard to believe though, with my weak Japanese language skills and whatnot. Searching for "Okinawa people" on Google though, and she has a point.

I can't put a conclusion for all of this. It might take a while, but it's better to keep tabs at my observation.

Testing the waters...

About four years ago (at the time of this writing), my life had a turning point: Japan, the subject of my numerous fantasies, is finally at reach. I've been accepted in a small Japanese company. After years of watching anime, dreaming of buying CDs of my favorite JPop artists, playing JRPGs, and slurping cup noodles brought from Japan by my father, I'd be living with them. I'd be facing the trials and tribulations of being an expatriate.

How does that relate to this blog? It does, and doesn't.

It's been four years, so posting about whatever the heck happened during those four years would be dumb and pointless, and focusing on just everyday life would be even dumber (since a. I missed my chance already and b. I don't think a salaryman's life is interesting save for the private matters). So while I'll do posts about some of the more interesting aspects of my daily life in Japan, it wouldn't be the sole focus. But I thought I'd include it, since it's a way to show my perspective on things, being a gaijin and whatnot.

So what's the purpose of this blog then? To chronicle things that I've been up to, so that I can keep up with myself, I guess. You see, there's this thing called "ningas-kugon", a Filipino idiom that pertains to losing enthusiasm, sort of. I think the idiom points out to how the flame (ningas) from a cogon grass (kugon) is bright but short-lived signifying the early eagerness to do something and then it dies out just as fast. Anyways this trait is one of the things I just can't shake off my system. I admit that I'm a somewhat lazy, unfocused individual that loses sight on stuff currently being done in favor of another interesting albeit unrelated stuff. For example, you can find me studying programming and then a minute later making bread, and then while waiting for the dough to ferment I would do the dishes, watch TV, play video games, completely forgetting about the programming stuff. Even now, while working I suddenly go back to doing this first blog post that I'm actually drafting for the past two weeks now.

One of the things I've been doing a lot before was writing. So another purpose of blogging for me is to sharpen the thought process, at least in writing. I've never been good with communicating, but ever since I've been here in Japan my English have been worse. Not that I'm actually good at it, I can't even remember the grammatical rules. But my thought process in English became worse, like I can't respond as quickly as before. But to keep my writing in point is better than nothing.

TL;DR - I'm a lazy, out-of-focus expat writing about my random musings and daily life in Japan, along with some of the things I've been working on, so that I can keep a tab on myself and not lose my grip.

I just realized how all of that sounded narcissistic, at least for me. But no matter. I just hope that whatever I put out in this blog, it will resonate with someone somewhere out there.

Have a good day.