BBQで上司に説教されて、あの時は全然気にしてなかったんだけど、the more I think about it, the more I wonder… what the hell am I doing? Where is my life going?

I know my blog entries tend to centre around the same topics over and over again. I understand how boring and dull my life must seem to you all. I wish I could write about something more interesting. I wish I could be more positive.

I like to think I used to be an outgoing, happy kid… but to be honest, that happy self probably went into hibernation a long long time ago. 最近は本当に楽しいって思ったのは何度も歩けど、正直those happy times are so shortlived, it scares me. The moment, we 解散, all that happiness slips aways って感じ。超情けないな。

These moments of fragility are so frequent these days, it seriously adds to the never-ending stresses that I seem to create for myself. It’s a vicious circle.

In my life, I like to think that I have priorities… family, friends, work, etc, etc… but then, sometimes I think, what the hell is the point of having priorities if they don’t make me happy. Seriously, I can’t explain this.

Does being a 社会人 mean that conversation revolves around work, weekend plans, romantic happenings (if any), vacation plans… ok, I have no idea what other conversation there is, but life feels a little stale recently. I think I need a little more excitement… nothing crazy, but to be honest, I think I need something that really gets my heart racing.

You know, sometimes when you have that feeling of wanting to let your frustration out by punching something? or maybe, screaming at the top of your voice. The feeling of being trapped in this shell, self created or imposed by the environment I’m in, it’s tiring.

Honestly, I do not regret for a single minute the decision to come over here. I just want to be able to show that my life is just as great, if not better, than everybody that remained in London. At the moment, the only reason for my life being better is, I’m in Tokyo, you lot aren’t. But seriously, that’s shallow… The screaming I want to do… I don’t want it to be about frustration, stresses, etc.. I want it to be about my fantastic life… the awesome things I’m doing…

I’d hoped the past week would kick start something, change something… all the events I went to, all the people I met up with, everything… and nothing. Meeting up with new friends, friends from work, uni friends, old friends from 5-10 years ago…. all of it was fantastic! I really did enjoy seeing everyone. Catching up, shooting the breeze, whatever. I hate to say this, but I want more.

Unsatisfactory.

In Other News

In other news, I bought a new laptop. After 5 years of serving me extremely well, my laptop finally died. Over the years, I’ve made some adjustments like, adding new RAM, remapping my keyboard to work around broken keys, putting up with a dodgy sound system, living with an extremely noisy, most likely loose, fan…. and the final straw… the screen losing all brightness – not completely dark but, so dark that you can just about see the outline of a window.

Anyway, I bought the new studio xps 13. It’s snazzy, yes. But I still miss my old laptop. I mean, after 5 years, I had it set up near perfectly. Shortcuts, applications, settings, etc. I have to redo all of that.

I previously spoke up having near everything backed up online. Admittedly, I started that as I forsaw the day that my laptop would die. However, getting my new laptop I was faced with a difficult choice. After near 4 years working, studying and living on Ubuntu… was I going to install it on my new laptop or not? I mean, study is no more – work is at work, and living? well, living is just the internet, email and the occasional editing of some document. I don’t play games on my laptop these days… programming is mainly limited to work… I’m going to try migrating back to Windows. A heavily modified Windows environment obviously. Trying to integrate as much of the best features of linux into Windows is going to a mighty difficult task, but it’s a challenge I’m going to attempt to tackle. To be honest, being such a new computer, I reckon Ubuntu would still have a few quirks it would need to sort out… plus, the latest release has been full of bugs. In a few months time, either I would have successfully migrated to the cloud, or I’ll be installing the next release of Ubuntu, or maybe 7?

Either way, it looks like it’ll take me a few weeks to get used to this new machine.

Anyway, to all the geeks out there, I’d just like to say…

svn-ing your entire computer has its challenges and is frustrating at times, but it can be worthwhile. Admittedly, it’s near impossible to have compatibility with Windows and Linux on the same repository, plus, I have yet to successfully test this out across multiple machines, but it’s a lot easier than the stupid network drive set up. The damn thing keeps losing connection every time I try to bloody copy a large file and it’s too damn laggy to stream media off!

Finally…

I’m currently in the middle of watching the Robocop: Prime Directives mini tv series. It’s メチャ懐かしい！ I think I’m turning to the past more and more often these days…. so not good.

In similar news… I was talking with a friend about actresses that are our types… we couldn’t really name any recent ones *shock* we realised that we’re old enough to have lived through more than one ‘era’ … are we from the Bullock, Kidman, Aniston, Ryan, Roberts era? Does that era include Portman, Johannson, Jolie, etc? Either way, to have lived through more than one era for anything, be it movies, tv series, politics, music… that is a scary thought!

I had a bit of a shopping spree last week. Kind of retail therapy but not really, as it wasn’t very theraputic… I bought 4 new games:

1. No More Heroes (Wii)
2. Wii Sport Resort (Wii)
3. Pikmin 2 (Wii)
4. InFamous (PS3)

I have yet to play anything other than 1. but I’m really looking forward to inviting some friends round to test out the Motion Plus thing on Resort. Will most likely blog about it once I do. But yeah, No More Heroes is turning out to be pretty interesting.. will review that too soon!

Anyway, last words…

Who the hell reads my blog these days anyway?

I haven’t really posted recently – from time to time I can think of topics I’d like to blog about but then by the time I actually sit in front of my computer I can’t really remember what I wanted to discuss.

Today, I went skiing again with the usual group. It was actually the first blue-sky skiing trip this season! It was so hot that I actually had to remove a layer before my first run. The flip-side to the sunny, wind-free weather was that the slopes got incredibly icy in the afternoon and also the risk of goggle-tan-lines.

Anyway, near the end I discovered the waves on one of the slopes – a series of consecutive bumps for jumping I guess – they were sooo much fun! I mean, just hitting air on the slopes is exhilarating! But then again, the rest of the course was icy and irregularly bumpy making it difficult to relax and enjoy the incredible weather and scenery.

So yeah, that was my day today.

I also been thinking I really miss my days of travelling. I think I really could do with one of those trips away from it all; I wonder where my next destination could be~

I could lead this entry on to the usual topics of work stress, my career prospects, my stagnant social life, my long term future, my life, my happiness….. but I think I’m all over the place recently. A lot of things need sorting out; I really don’t want to end up in a rut having settled for the status quo.

Some things just don’t feel right at the moment.

It’s been a long week; as work gets busier, life gets simpler. The day to day stresses have morphed from those that will burn me out to those that seem more manageable. Thinking back the hellish week before my vacation, I remember how stressed out I was – honestly, I can’t really explain the reasons behind the manageability.

I think with work as well as with life, it’s the simple fact of being acknowledged. It doesn’t matter how simple the task, all that matters is the people around you appreciating your presence and effort.

In this era of economic uncertainty, the simple fact of having a decent income and decent work to do is something to be thankful for. Admittedly, this doesn’t stop anyone from complaining about everything and anything.

The pursuit of happiness; happiness is sometimes painted as this grand idea but it can really come from the smallest things.

When your heart and your head are in different places, or even the same place, it can be confusing. Man should never give up that pursuit.

You know it’s nearly 6 months since I moved to Japan. Questions such as what I have achieved, what I still need to achieve and all that need answers….

I think life is all about the balance between contemplation and conversation.

I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Let the count down begin

This week has been an intense week. So much has happened since my last entry.

The Presentation

First of all, I had my final presentation for my project on Tuesday. I had run through it a number of times before the real thing and I tried to psyche myself up for it. It didn’t start off great with me spending a few minutes attempting to set up the projector correctly. Stupid thing didn’t want to display my whole screen so I spent a few minutes fiddling about with that.

Once I got started, I think it went well. I’m not entirely sure how the assessors viewed my project but I think I answered the questions pretty well. The demo was not the most spectacular but I think it showed off enough of what I had achieved.

It did actually crash though Ah well…

Last night was billed by IC as the biggest Summer Ball in London. For me, the Summer Ball was probably the last night I’d see many of my friends. Since receiving the confirmation email for my flight to Japan I’ve felt somewhat unsettled. Unsettled, neither in a good or bad way. Just unsure as to how to feel about all of this. Even though I live for this life changing moments and cherish them deeply when they do happen, it’s never easy to actually go through one; not that I’ve lived a turbulent lifestyle.

On the contrary, I probably have had one of the least turbulent lifestyles imaginable. Looking back over the years, I suppose the major events of my life would include:

• going to Japan for a term and living in Hokkaido when I was 9 or 10
• starting DC life
• ending DC life
• the world tour
• starting uni
• the 6 month summer of last year

and now, ending uni. But, it’s not just ending university. It’s ending the educational part of my life. It’s leaving the London life behind. It’s starting from scratch. It’s scary.

Less than 2 months to go until I leave for Tokyo. Less than a month of experiencing London. Less than a week of the student life.