Archive for the ‘MISC. RAMBLINGS’ Category
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.
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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 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 – 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.
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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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March 30, 2005 – 1:27 am
We continue with compensation/evaluation concepts and RSS reader ideas. I think I quite like my job at the moment.
What I hope to accomplish, Beta Version:-
1) I’d like to be more involved with management, strategy, structure and growth. I believe that growing people is one of the most important things a company can do, aside from the obvious fact that it has to be profitable and deliver products and services the customer wants. A fulfilment of my dream would be to say, “I was the main driver in shaping this company into the success it is now.”
2) I have a lot of ideas about the net, communities etc. For example, how things should work, how we can change things to make it work better or easier or more effectively. I love the potential of the net, and how much freedom and power it gives individuals, not only to broadcast their own ideas and retrieve information, but also to amalgate and remix and grow and create. I hope to be able to implement some of these ideas while at My Company.
I hope to development these thoughts as I go on. The greatest threat is that I get too busy to reflect on myself and the company, that I get too caught up in the day-to-day firefighting details and can’t see the Big Picture.
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March 29, 2005 – 4:41 am
I just turned down an offer by a Proper Company for a QA Engineer position… I really liked the folks and the atmosphere (for a Proper Company), but things were too late, or something, I dunno, but anyway I’m here at The Venture and not there, so…
A headhunting firm introduced us. I just spoke to the guy in charge of me. Turning down this offer feels like I’ve dumped a really nice guy *sigh*
Dude, I dunno what’s right. But then again, I wasn’t terribly excited about the actual work there too. The learning prospects seemed very good, and I would have had a lot of experience running teams in a structured but growing environment with a lot of support. Basically, a venture company on steroids.
Instead I chose the “easy” path, flitting into a small company that may not have many great prospects for success, that’s got real growing pains with headcount and profitability, where they work you to the bone and beyond… Does it have a future? What would I learn? Should I have gone for more “education” and then zip back into a venture atmosphere (keeping in mind that this company really is trying to break beyond venture and into proper company zone)?
I guess the biggest question is, when will I finally decide to go back home? And what would I do then?
So, I guess I should write up what I’ve done, and what results I expect from this decision, in 6 months time.
Ah hell, who knows what you’ve lost in the road not taken? If I had gone to the other place, I would have been wondering what I was missing here.
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March 28, 2005 – 12:45 am
What I should have done better:-
- Talk to Joe about compensation and evaluation schemes and ideas about how the Company works
- Think more about the basic concepts and purposes of compensation and evaluation schemes, and recognize immediately that profitability, aligning company goals, and compensation are in a sense really separate goals, even though they impact one another
What I did that was right:-
- Speak to O-san about compensation
Thought of the Day
Because your value stems not from what you know, but what you can amalgate from your resources.
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March 25, 2005 – 10:19 pm
Yep, I’m in the office now, kinda chilling before the management meeting at 1pm. I was here till 11pm last night, and had no intention of waking up before 12pm… but it was so damn cold I was awake at 7:30am and shivering, even with three blankets and a T-shirt over my head. Needless to say, I was not happy. On the other hand, once I finally accepted the fact that I was not going to get back to sleep, I actually became productive – cleaned up the place, backed up some files, and bought myself a clothes hanger thingy. Feels good.
Yesterday I had to rack my brains pretty hard of a “What I should have done better”, but I finally got one.
I was asked, just before I left, to help think up an incentive plan slash evaluation policy for the company. That’s pretty cool if you think about it… being involved in that aspect of running a company makes me feel as if, well, I’m actually doing a bit more. Guess the MBA is worth something *laugh*.
So where’s this leading. Well, I had been complaining a little about paying people what they are worth, and did kinda shoot off on how cheap I’m getting paid at this job, and how the company really should pay its guys more if they want more good people. Anyway, what I realized was, I shouldn’t have just been complaining about the situation, I should have been thinking, okay, so what do I have to change about the situation to make it better? I should have been thinking about how people should get paid. In other words, I should have been thinking about improvements to the incentive policy.
So, that’s my lesson for today. Next, I gotta do up a post on Shizuru and Natsuki.
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March 23, 2005 – 10:23 pm
They say the best way to improve yourself is if, at the end of every day, you stand in front of the mirror and think over what you did, and think of what you should have done better. Or, at least that’s what Jack Welch or someone or other wrote.
I figure it’s worth a go, so I’ll try to type something up every evening.
Things I did right:
- Buy the umbrella
- Eat my veggies!
- Start listing up the features of Job Log
- Sent out all the stuff I had to do for Jun and Emi, early
Things I did wrong:
- Eat rice crackers
- Left work early? No, the problem was leaving work before H-san came back
Things I should have done better:
- Asked earlier about the installer for Job Log ie take the initiative faster
- Asked H-san when the Job Log feature list was due
- Do the feature list, even if it wouldn’t have been perfect – not everything has to be right the first time, it’s sometimes as important to have a rough idea up for discussion
- Be less anti-social at my desk ie don’t rely on H-san
- Ask how I should have set myself up for mail, Cyboze, printers etc
- Think about the role I want to play in this company
- Consider sitting down and talking to the guys up there… after all, I’m going to be one of them, right? So I should start acting like one of them
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