Archive for April, 2005
April 30, 2005 – 8:00 pm
On 417 Day, it was announced that Hekiru would be having a film concert and mini live event two weeks hence, at Shibuya On Air East (a live hall). The film concert would be a repeat of the one shown in Osaka and Nagoya last year, featuring past opening and closing staff credits, and clips used during the break portion of concerts, back in 1998. Last was some unreleased concert video, the highlight of which was probably the CHANGE tour, as a video of that tour was never put out.
The tickets for this event went on sale right after the 417 Day show ended, and my friends and I snagged 15, starting at no.8. We all wound up on the right side of the hall, in front of Ken-chan. No surprise, eh.
Despite the less than comfortable circumstances (standing for 2 hours straight, craning our necks to watch either of two screens way off to the sides, I really enjoyed the film concert. It started with the 1999 Face to Face tour CG opening, which was only filmed for that tour’s video but never included in its raw form. This was followed by clips of Hekiru in Okinawa for her 1998 shoot of the Dakishimete jacket and summer tour pamphlet, then closing clips from 1998 to 2003. There were shots of Hekiru playing samurai with light sabers, and also riding the snakeboard through the corridors.
I haven’t seen that old stuff in a long time, and it envoke both nostalgia and longing, for 1998 was the year I became a Hekiru fan, and more than any other time, that is the “face” of Hekiru (in the literal sense) that I like best of all.
The in-concert video material was of the Kuma Hekiru (at her Fukuoka concert, Hekiru dressed up in a bear costume and handed out flyers to an unsuspecting public, who were later pretty horrified to discover the true identity of the bear), weird sentai posing by Hekiru and her band, and the infamous Nazsha parody (where Hekiru and other band/staff members with long hair were reinacting Shazna’s group for Countdown TV). Nazsha was the very first concert I saw… and probably contributed more than a little to my liking of Hekiru as a cool but whacky and fun-loving girl.
The 98 in-concert material featured a few “Heki-chan no Kyou mo Eizou!”, of the manager from the concert hall staffing Hondake company, Kiokawa-san from Create Osaka who designs Hekiru’s stages, the guerilla live by Yousuke, Yoshiaki and Komatsu-san, to Tairaku-san. I was there for that last concert, and it marked the end of my whirlwind first Hekiru summer.
The thing that struck me was how in-control Hekiru seemed in those early clips. She really had the sense of a leader, and you know how they say only those with real confidence are able to make from of themselves. There was real strength in those BBE clips…
Last was the Niigata Business School TV commercials and the Sugoku Tanoshii Sora in Naru no ni video clip.
Hekiru and Tairaku talked in the parts between the the clips, giving comments and reflecting at the stuff that went on during the times. Like good grown-ups, they accepted what were embarassing but ultimately good ol’ times. I liked them a lot better today than during the 417 Day FC event.
Hekiru’s changed a lot over the years, both in appearance and mentality, but surprisingly I am quite used to what she is now. I no longer think that she should be “stronger” or “more ambitious” or “cooler”… well, okay I wish she would dress better :P Hekiru’s Hekiru, and I still like her, probably will for as long as she’s around, and longer!
The mini-live was performed by Hekiru in her mini-skirt.
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April 27, 2005 – 5:57 am
Now that Mai-Hime has ended, I’m somewhat at a loss as to what to do with my anime blogging. To be honest, although I enjoy some of the new stuff this season, such as SPEED GRAPHER and Gokujyou Seitokai, I don’t really have any particular urge to write about or screen cap anything. I think when it comes to stuff I simply like, I’m pretty much a consumer; I only rave about what captures my obsessive fancies. So, I guess there’s not going to be any blogging on new stuff for a while.
To make up for lack of fresh useful content, I decided to compile a nanchatte list of Shizuru x Natsuki resources, mostly fanart and fanfic. I can’t describe how thrilled I am that this is a major anime getting some major fan coverage, and internationally to boot. We have a bunch of great English language fics, a load of absolutely awesome Japanese fanart, highly talented doujin comics by a Chinese artist, and even some nice one shot scenes in Thai!
The way I see things, the net has really started to come into its own for fandom. Forums all over allow some brilliant (and not so brilliant) discussions, plus specialized resource sites gather people of like interests. The only problem is that it’s pretty disorderly. I mean, 2ch threads just disappear into nowhere, and it’s pretty damn hard to track down sources for the material. I want to create a universal forum where people in all languages can gather and discuss, and whatever content they post gets indexed and stored for anyone to browse easily. Fanart is of course a major target, but doujin and fanfic also deserve some kind of ordered virtual library where fans can append translations onto each piece.
I want to make fan-created media not just available at a mouse-click, I want want to make anything and everything accessible across language boundaries – boundaries not just in the content itself, but boundaries that prevent people from hunting down great works simply because they are unable to navigate links and search results in a foreign language.
I think the key to this is a professionally created site with specific features aimed towards the perculiarities of anime/manga creative fandom. In fact, a doujinshi trading site is one of the ideas my company is bouncing around for when we have a cash and resource windfall (hah… as if that ever happens to IT companies…). If I could tie all these strings together into a business model that actually delivers some reasonable ROI, dang, I think I’d be able to die happy :P
Uh, that list of SxN resources, gotta wait.
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April 26, 2005 – 3:12 am
Company trip… one of those strange beasts that Japanese culture has birthed, where an entire company (or division, if the company is too large) heads into the mountains for a day or two of “togetherness” and “bonding” and “company spirit education and appreciation”.
What this translates into is usually a weekend opened by a half-hearted attempt to convey company values, vision and strategy, before everyone dives into an all-out frenzy of boozing and mayhem. The top guns, if they are good sports, will proceed to humiliate themselves utterly by stripping down and performing numerous lewd embarassing acts as other staff go around encouraging key members to down cups of sake and what not in escalating quantities. In the end, you get about 5% passed out stone cold, while the rest retire to the hot baths to lounge around, gossip and drink some more.
Although it sounds like Japanese madness, given the right type of company and Company, it’s actually pretty darn amusing, and crazily enough it’s a great bonding experience. It’s the one night where the superiors are subject to the whims of the common staff, and everyone is equal in that wacky half-perverted state of lecherous but ultimate harmless revelry.
Of course, my company isn’t quite normal, so in additional to all of the above, we also had one of the VPs trundle around in a fluffy green godzilla suit, throughout the Waterfalls of Kegon and the Temples and Shrines of Nikko, and another VP showed up cosplaying the pink Ranger after the skits were over. He was summarily ignored.
Oh yeah, the skits. We had been divided into 6 teams, and had to put on a 5-10 min skit, losing team subject to some other form of horrible abject humiliation. My team came in second, perhaps because we were tasteful – all g-string clad members (male, of course) came complete with aprons, and we actually had a series of stories comprising picking up schoolgirls for one-night stands, and a guy ravaging underwear after reading a porn mag.
Yes, the rest are too indecent to actually put down in writing. Except for the last one, which was a reinactment of various commercials and Matrix sequences. This deserved won first prize.
We finished off the trip with a run through some cultural sex museum. The green godzilla once again made its appearance.
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April 22, 2005 – 5:45 am
A week or so ago, I wrote about a minor housing emergency. The update is that my friend spoke to the housing agent and the landlady that very day, and they gave me permission to stay until the day I told them I would leave ie April 25th. Of course, I had all intention of staying until my friend got back from Moscow in September, and only said “April 25th” because they looked extremely pissed, and I figured since I was leaving for home for a week on that day… eh, quick thinking under panic conditions.
My friend of course wants me to stay the whole time (since she’s getting rent), and I of course want to stay, since this arrangement not only let me stay in a nice place for cheap, it also allows me to defer cash outlay for both contracting into a place and buying everything necessary, such as bedding, washing machine, fridge etc etc. This could easily have run me 400,000yen, money which I certainly do not have at the moment.
Ah well, all good things must come to and end. This one happened a bit prematurely, but in the end one copes. I have since gone to look at seven places, and decided on one today, almost immediately. Rent at 65,000yen was cheap, place at 21.45 sq m was pretty big by Japanese standards, it’s near Tokyo University and nearer to work than my current place. The place is really old (the floor plan didn’t even have the date of construction!) but it’s a second floor corner room and the inside is in decent condition. Got just about everything I need, although it would be very cold in winter (just like my old place), I’d probably hear the neighbours (just like my old place), and if a big earthquake every happened I’d be buried in a pile of matchsticks (just like my old place…).
The “complex” is basically a line of 2 storey houses joined together, or one long house partitioned into rooms, if you want to think of it that way. When I went to look, there was a woman coming out of one of the 1F rooms, and she helped us find the 2F room I was supposed to look at. She was very very very friendly, but in a nice way, and a little old lady lives under my apartment. The place is very quiet, very quaint. You can’t find something like this is Tokyo anymore, except in Bunkyo-Ku and some shitamachi parts where old houses are still left over from the incessant march of development.
I’m pretty happy with my pick. I had seen something earlier, for 73,000yen, which was quite spacious (um, 22 sq m) and in a quiet neighbourhood as a 2F in a standalone house, also another place for 72,000yen about 2 mins walk from work (scary, eh?). But this one, price was right. Guess it helps to be a little enamoured with “traditional Japanese-ness”. No young working single woman in her right mind would choose such an old-fashioned run-down block. Me, I think it’s the most atmospheric place I’ve seen aside from that massive house with the black shingles next to my office.
Posted in MISC. RAMBLINGS | 2 Comments »
April 19, 2005 – 6:44 am
I should be working now, but I think I need a break, and a chance to get slightly introspective. To be honest, I don’t really know what I’m doing here. It’s just pure blind luck I love my job, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if I should be concerned about “wasting my potential”. Just read a friend’s blog, and what she said about “workaholic but totally ambitionless” rings so true. I do wish I had a more “ambitious” job. I mean, what I essentially do is site design for public consumption, in a small company. Yet, I love this job like nothing I’ve ever done… it’s basically living my hobby, and I get to do all the cool stuff like think up functions and ideas and how things should work, minus all the dirty work of actually doing the design and coding. It’s absolute top level in the creativity field, and I revel in being able to dictate exactly how a website (kinda like the equivalent of Linked-In or Friendster, but better of course, heheh) is gonna work. And knowing that 100,000 people are going to be communicating and exchanging ideas based on a system I had a major hand in designing.
But, I’m not leading any companies, I’m not running a 100 person department, I’m definitely not buying and selling any companies either… And I absolutely have no desire to. And yet, somehow I am bothered. And I don’t know why, either, except for the vague notion that my career isn’t as grand as it should be. If I think about the future and what I will be doing in 5 years, I start to get nervous. As much as this is the perfect job now, I think I would feel rather underachieved if I didn’t somehow “advance” into top management.
So people can be really stupid about work too, not just love, and work is far less emotional and chaotic. What’s scarier is to become numb, and let go, and forget about caring about why you care, because it’s easier not to care and think. I spent a week at the beginning of March on the verge of crying, out of sheer frustration at not knowing what I should do, and not being to have what I wanted even though I didn’t really know what I wanted, and wanting things I had no hope of having.
I think my saving grace is that I always seem to be in motion, and so it passes or becomes something else, or I find something else which fills it in. And it’s always the small little pointless things which bring the most happiness.
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April 17, 2005 – 10:10 am
It’s the 17th of April, 417 Day. A special day for Hekiru fans.
Last year was a handshake event, this year was the 10th year fanclub event and a live. I’m way too tired to think, but I have to list the highlights. Way too much news.
FC Event
- Tairaku-san got married! Two weeks ago! On this birthday! Not to Hekiru!
- He was hospitalized last week
- Q&A corner with questions from fans. One question was, what would you want to be if you were reincarnated? Hekiru said, “A man.” But before she could elaborate, Tairaku cut her off.
- This time Tairaku-san took over the whole show, from the opening singing Stand By to the Hetare Band, to the talk and everything. Hekiru didn’t get much airtime, which is probably best given her tendency to ramble on and on, but at the same time, I thought it was boring as hell, and I felt nothing, even standing right there in front. Bleh.
Live
- Was #35, grabbed a spot with some friends on the right side in front of Ken-chan
- Drummer was Mitsuru, who replaced Be-an for this day as Be-an was off with TM Network
- Mitsuru was awesome; absolutely utterly amazing. He memorized like 23 songs for this one day, and hammered them out like no tomorrow. A couple songs got some extra super fast drumming in too. Real nice earnest guy too. It’s good to have some fresh wind, the members at least didn’t treat this like some throwaway job.
- Loved Jumping Slash, really got the blood pumping!
- Kimi no tsuyosa was… my god… way too good. Hekiru was soooo cool. I love it when she sings all serious! I found the FC event a bore, even with her right in front of me, but dang when she starts singing serious rock, I just drown in her. I couldn’t help but gaze in some trance. This song gets my top marks!
- ROCK STAR was awesome too, as usual.
- New song Black Money is serious rock metal. I love it! Ending is way too drawn out though.
- Dakishimete, just sang through it, loved it how Hekiru would look this way and it feels like she’s looking at you. I could drown in that look. Yep.
In conclusion, extremely fun despite my severe sleep-deprived state. I totally woke up from the get-go at Love Jet Coaster (even though I don’t care for that song at all), and I enjoyed myself thoroughly whenever a good song came on. Brilliant! I guess Hekiru’s only good for concerts? That’s kinda sad… Sadder, perhaps, that I still really really like her. It’s been over seven years, and to be honest, that’s kinda a long time to be holding the torch for someone, even if it’s just idol worship.
Extra event on April 30 and May 1. 15 tickets right in front (they were sold right after the concert ended, and my friends were second in line to grab a bunch for the whole gang. Unfortunately, happens to be the day I’m outta town to get my work visa. Dang.
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April 13, 2005 – 7:45 pm
Ugh, it was too good a deal to last. In March, right before I signed, I had been looking for a place to stay. A friend of mine had to go to Moscow for a six month stint, in two days. She left, I moved in. I paid cheap rent for an awesome place, she got some money and someone to forward her mail.
She never told the landlord. Youch. This morning they finally spoke up, and boy were they upset. Anyway, looks like I’ll be looking for another place, pronto. It’s quite inconvenient… not to mention that I don’t have enough cash to pay the $3,000 or so that would be forthcoming in key money and deposit for signing a rental contract.
On the other hand, it would be nice to get my own place. Bunkyo-ku is pretty nice. Friend of mine got kicked out of his place too, he crashed with me two nights ago and that was probably the straw that broke the camel’s (uh, bent over li’l ol’ landlady, rather) back. Maybe we can go house-hunting together :P
Okay, back to work. Dang, 417 Day is close and I have made no preparations… -_-;;
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April 10, 2005 – 7:43 pm
It’s spring, the sakura have blossomed and fallen, the sun occasionally gives way to rain, people long for love and romance but remain stuck in the office for the final push before Golden Week…
And of course, we have a brand spanking new anime season. Trouble is, the lineup just didn’t look very interesting to me – the only ones I really wanted to check out were Speed Grapher and Tsubasa Chronicle, anyway. Anyway, a quick review of the 4 shows I have seen the premiers for.
Speed Grapher
The reason I was interested was because the character designs look great. No idea about plot, and certainly more than a little wary because it was a Gonzo anime. Also, the premise has the main lead as a male war photographer relegated to taking paparazzi shots after his tour-of-duty; he discovers a highly exclusive club that hides some sort of supernatural secret. It’s hard to say if this story will sink or swim.
Well, after ep 1, I have to say this gets my thumbs up, in a major way. Gritty, dark, adult-themed, washed out color scheme and stylized spartan delivery… I think it hits all the right buttons for me. The main guy narrates the story and we see most of the episode from his point of view, which is more than a little twisted. Cynical, disillusioned, and also perverted in the real sense of the word – the guy gets off of photographing violent deaths. The voice acting is excellent and totally carries the show. There is a girl who appears in promos as another main character (I like her design a lot), but so far she’s not even in the show yet. We’ll see how this one unfolds.
Gokujyou Seitokai
Erm, and then on the other side of the spectrum, we have this show about a girl who is transfering to a new school, and I don’t really know what’s going on except it’s an all-girls school with a student council made up of some rather maladjusted personalities, and everyone has some sort of fighting technique (yo-yos? martial arts?), and the main girl talks to her hand puppet… who really packs a real whallop of a punch…
Yeah, this one is like cotton candy to Speed Grapher’s triple-brewed black coffee sludge. I’m not sure how I even sat through it, but it’s just so whacked it’s entertaining. This one’s on my list of things to watch when I need to turn off my brain for a bit.
Tsubasa Chronicle
It’s the ultimate CLAMP crossover. Never read the original manga, since I’ve given up on CLAMP after vol 1xxx of X. Personally, I love CLAMP art and I think they design great characters and interesting scenarios… but everything after Tokyo Babylon and RG Veda was just an executional mess. With the exception of Clover, perhaps. CLAMP is best if you limit their manga to like 6 volumes and force them to actually wrap up, otherwise make it into an anime but give the director full reign to readapt, ala Rayearth.
So anyway, went into this on pretty much a clean slate. I have no hangups about manga-to-anime faithfulness… actually, the reverse might be true – I love BeeTrain and Kajiura Yuki, and I despair that creating a CLAMP anime for NHK strips the studio of their trademark style and execution.
After ep 1, I think the jury is still out on this show. I found the voices a little strange, not because I’d seen the original Card Captor Sakura, but because I think the voice acting is just damn awkward. Sakura has a nice voice, but I don’t think the actress is very good. Hope she settles into the role, or perhaps ep 1 is all the screen time she gets! Shaoran, I never liked in CCS, but he’s okay here. Typical CLAMP lead. More interested in the other female characters, who unfortunately don’t have much screen time yet. Cool that Souma shows up (not my favourite of the RG Veda cast, but not my most hated, either), Tomoyo seems to have some bit part, need to brush up on XXXholic, still want to smear Mokona across a thousand alternate worlds.
Art’s okay, music is frickin’ absolutely amazing (but seems to jar with the animation style), animation when Yukito first starts his magic is cool.
I’ll buy the soundtrack the very second it’s out, but unless Arashi or Umi or some really cool female character shows up or Souma fulfills that role, I don’t think I would have the patience for this.
Futakoi Alternative
Spastic anime. I don’t feel like spending too much time on this write-up. Not bad, really. But male lead has my warning flags up. Again, awaits cool female character to show up.
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April 10, 2005 – 12:31 am
It’s almost like a dream, stepping out of my office today.
The sun is bright in the sky overhead and the street is silent, no sounds of traffic at all even though we are less than 20 minutes away from Tokyo Dome. My office is a small three-storey building with a clinic to its left, a large construction site (just a big hole in the ground at the moment) in front, and a sprawling traditional Japanese home right out of 19th century Kyoto to its right.
A couple pushing a baby pram strolls along. I feel a breeze, and suddenly ahead of me, cherry blossom petals from the tree in the park flutter across.
After the massive crowds of people pushing their way throughUeno Park, this scene is something out of a fairytale – fleeting, illusionary, so peaceful it doesn’t seem real at all. 50 paces later, I am on the main road and everything is back to normal.
Currently:-
Checking out – Gokujyou Seitokai, Futakoi Alternative, Tsubasa Chronicle, Speed Grapher, LOVELESS, Elemental Gerad
Reading – Pumpkin Scissors, Rozen Maiden, Bakuretsu Tenshi, XXXholic (ugh, I can’t believe I’m reading CLAMP again)
Eating – 7-11 Ooiri nikuman
Drinking – Georgia non-sugar Cafe Latte, ice water with a bit of Ooi Ocha Koi Aji, ginger tea
Sitting – Exercise ball (they are multiplying in the office!!)
Mistakes:-
- Not reporting to M-san about the HR thing. Should have sent an update, even if I was too busy to get anything done (which in itself was a bad thing). Always keep people updated on the status of work.
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April 7, 2005 – 9:10 pm
If your browser shows the title to be a mess of characters, it’s because you don’t have Japanese encoding installed.
Anyway, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom. It’s been years since I’ve spent spring in Japan, and I’d forgotten how pretty they are. If you haven’t seen sakura in real life, you’d probably think, well, I suppose blooming flowers would be pretty, and have it at that. It’s not until you actually see a real sakura tree right in front of you that you can appreciate just how nice it looks. Like fluffy light pink cloud on a tree with beautifully fractal horizontal branches.
Uh, well, anyway, you know what I’m trying to say. When I used to stay in Hiyoshi, I would pass through Keio University every day to get from my house to the train station. They had a big plot full of sakura trees that was incredibly pretty. But then they cut it all down to put up a new building. *sigh*
Upcoming events
- Informal company hanami (euphemism for “sitting in the park and getting drunk”) tomorrow
- Yuricon on 4/16 (I did some translation work)
- Hekiru live next Sunday 4/17
- Company retreat 4/23-24 (euphemism for “getting drunk in the company of your company”)
Time to start drawing up function sheet for access logs…
You know, it’s kinda lonely now that Mai-HiME has ended. The various blogs have probably settled down by now. I need to find a new anime to watch. I really like the chara designs for Speed Grapher, but it’s a GONZO anime, and the premise looks wierd. I think I’ll be watching Tsubasa Chronicle, check out the other Kajiura Yuki anime, and whatever.
In the meantime, Mai-HiME fanart and fanfic will keep us mildly entertained. Point your browsers to the Shoujoai.com forum to pick up your copy :P
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April 5, 2005 – 10:30 am
00:10 on Tuesday. How many people are there in the office? Scarily enough, there’s probably about 15 or so, out of 50-some regular folks, and dude it’s pretty much the same people every time.
I’m one of them. Whoopee.
One of the founders has just walked in, with another engineer. He was here before 10am, and he’s still in his suit so I guess they’ve been out and about to meetings. The founder guy is always here late, so at least you get the feeling that everyone is equivalently burdened.
Well, I dunno if it’s because I just started work and it’s all fresh, or perhaps it’s because I don’t have internet at home, but I don’t mind staying back. Last week I was designing User Interfaces for RSS readers, now I’m designing and documenting a blog function for an community site. It’s pretty cool to be able to make stuff, really… The plus side being I don’t actually have to make the dang it, I just have to write out what it’s supposed to do. Which is fun.
Really. Even at 00:15. What, you don’t believe me?
I only regret that I can’t browse any of the Shizuru x Natsuki pics I’ve been collecting. Definitely, not work-safe!!
BTW, Yaplog, a Japanese blogging site, is an incredible showcase of cutting edge web app. Wowza, browsers sure have come a long way.
Posted in MISC. RAMBLINGS | 1 Comment »
April 4, 2005 – 6:17 am
I think this was an anime, then they had the manga. The artist is Murao Minoru – he’s originally an anime artist and this is his first manga work. All I can say is the art is gorgeous and the action is dynamic and very easy to follow.
I’ve heard the anime wasn’t that well executed, even though it looked nice. I only saw one episode but yes it bored me to tears, and I loved the character designs too. Thank goodness the manga is an excellent read. Definitely one of the most enjoyable I’ve had the pleasure of coming across in the last few weeks. No deep stuff, just straightforward awesome gunfighting action with an absolutely cool-as-hell and tough-as-nails female character.
The story revolves around two girls, Jo (the stoic fighter who can’t remember her past) and Meg (the cute sidekick who’s infatuated with Joe). The setting is a lawless Tokyo of the near future. The plot… um… yeah, Jo fights. Jo wants to regain her memory. Signs point to Jo being “engineered”… Enemies from the past show up, blah blah, and why are you interested in plot anyway? :P
I must be utterly spoiled by the recent yuri boom. I can’t imagine liking this even a tenth as much if it Jo was a guy. To clarify, however, I don’t like BakuTen for the yuri (although I’m certainly not complaining), I like BakuTen because the art rocks and Jo is just the most incredible coolest female character (of her genre) since Arashi, or something. I think I need to collect BakuTen art. Lots and lots of BakuTen art.
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April 4, 2005 – 3:40 am
Well, now that Shizuru and Natsuki are well on their way to being immortalized in fanfiction and doujinshi, I suppose I should turn a teeny weeny bit of my mental faculties to self-improvement as opposed to self-gratification.
Mistakes made in the last few days:-
- Drifting off in the middle of a meeting. No matter how pointless the conversation, and how hung over you are, that’s definitely a no-no. I vow to at least pretend to pay attention from now on.
- Interrupting somebody else’s meeting to greet one of the participants. Even if it was in good faith towards that party, it’s rude to everyone else. Ouch, kicking myself for this one. My only excuse is that my brain is fried from writing program design.
Things to do:-
- Think hard about what sort of projects I want to do, so that I can grow
- When asked for advice on a topic, at least find out the big picture first, before giving an answer
Now, back to our regularly scheduled raving-about-Shizuru programming.
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April 1, 2005 – 1:30 am
I now have two major projects, one being the HR/compensation scheme, and the other as a planning/program design member on a SNS (means social network or community) project.
HR/Comp Scheme
VP and I hashed out a really rough structure today, deciding upon the main areas we wanted to focus on:-
- defining and assigning positions
- deciding pay scales based on jobs
- evaluation methodology for employees within those pay scales
- pay-for-performance structure and metrics
- incentive plan as a device to infuse a human adjustment element into the above rule-based systems
My company (let’s call it T-LAB) has its financial year from August to July, and the VP wants to implement the scheme for the new year. That gives me about 2-3 months to fix the system, and 1 month to set it up.
Project G
Huge industry leader wants to redo its website and add a community site and a recommendations site. We’ve got the job for this. It’s the biggest project we’ve ever had, fee-wise anyway, and everything is highly planned out and documented. I like this. It’s a ton of upfront work but it appeals to my desire for order. I’m currently assigned documentation creation for functions. I would have been assigned revision and edit work too, but that requires taking notes at client review meetings, and language-wise it just wasn’t feasible. Actually, I also hate that sort of work, so in this case I’m glad for this little handicap.
Things to do better:-
- When proposing something, like an HR system, it is not only necessary to know what’s good and bad about the proposed method, you must also remember that there are always alternatives. You must know these alternatives, and their own pros and cons – so the reason why you picked a certain method is because, in the balance, your way appears better than the other ways.
Things to keep in mind:-
- Do not be afraid of appearing more human, but always be fair and professional in your dealings with work colleagues.
- See the big picture. I think it was quite important that I find out who was running the other parts of Project G. That tells us where we stand, and also lets us understand why we didn’t get, and don’t want to do, those portions. In this instance, the other sections were very massive and strategic, and had been taken by the two biggest SI and design firms in Japan.
In random news:-
- I have now implemented the balance ball at work, and garnered significant interest. Perhaps T-LAB will become a balance-ball environment :)
- Went to an anime fair for work purposes. Gah, I’m an otaku. Bought KnM shitajiki.
- Chat with S-san on anime project. This one’s a personal, for the time being. T-LAB doesn’t start up a project unless there’s a sponsor and it can see the money. Will think about this in my spare time, but anyway I think it’s good for *ahem* personal growth too. In more ways than one.
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