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July 26: Finally

The "finally" that is the title of this post actually refers to two things.  The first is that I actually finally ran to work this morning.  It was absolutely horrid, because I didn't get to sleep when I wanted to last night, and thus I not only slept in a little and thus didn't have hte 40 minutes I wanted to leave to digest, but I was very sleepy as well.  I was quite tired of myself making excuses for not doing it though, so I just went and did it and made it to the office in like, 26 minutes, with copious amounts of walking and feeling rather queasy distributed throughout.  As it turns out, a full stomach of salted fish and miso soup is not a good thing to have when going for a 20 minute uphill jog. D:  Oh well, once I got there and used the shower in the basement locker room, I felt rather wonderful, actually, and I was very alert for almost the whole day.

The second is that I finally gave my damn presentation!  It was kind of torturous... for all parties involved. >_<  I had 60 slides, pretty much entirely composed of math, and that meant my presentation clocked in at just over ONE AND A HALF HOURS. D:  People were trying so hard not to fall asleep, and I was trying equally hard to provide useful insight into rather hectic ratios of gamma functions as quickly as possible, while speaking slowly to make myself understandable for my audience of non-native English speakers.  I felt horrible (not in an ill way, in a "I am really not making their day" kind of way) just about the whole time. D:  I mean, isn't it everyone's nightmare, watching someone run over pre-prepared slides literally containing 8 different products-over-gamma-functions per line about a probabilistic model you aren't familiar with in a foreign language for 1.5 hours?  What?  You HAVEN'T had that one?  Fine then...

Despite all that I just said, I do feel that my presentation, as unpalatable as it turned out to be, fulfilled its purpose.  There is now a set of slides that are basically THIS IS HOW YOU DO LDA WITH CGS EZPZ 1 2 3 on the lab's fileserver.  Nakatsuji-san thanked me for the presentation, and said that he is interested in having the slides to work from, and Kabutoya-san said that he was pleased with how I answered the questions that were posed, but I am not entirely sure if they were serious or if I wasn't hiding my "I just ran over a puppy" face very well.  In the interest of not exhibiting symptoms characteristic of paranoia, I will be taking their comments at face value, but I have a suspicion that they are just being infinitely gracious. >_<  Oh well, it is what it is, and I did my job (decently well, I think...), but unfortunately the material was ill-conditioned to being engaging, and the requirements laid out for my presentation necessitated the length and detail.  Sigh...

Whew.  With the frivolous parts of the day out of the way, I can move on to the important stuff! ;D  Dorm breakfast today was salted salmon and a bean sprout mixture (dangerous! D:) with miso soup and rice.  After eating I got my backpack ready and changed into running gear before setting out.  Calling my "run" to work is kind of an inappropriate usage of the term, as it was like, 30% walking to prevent a spontaneous revistation of breakfast. >_<  The rest of the time I was not going too much faster, because running uphill is not a skill I have great proficiency in yet.  Oh well, the point is that I did it, and if I exhibit slightly more self-control than I normally do, it will become part of my routine. ;D

The morning was devoted to making sure I was ready for my presentation, as well as some review of Variational Bayes, which was apparently a tangent that is going to be dropped now, as it was only to occupy me until the Kyoto trip, when I will get an honest-to-gosh research topic.

At lunch I ate tsuke-men and talked about Canada with Nakatsuji-san and Fujimura-san.  I am glad that I payed attention in Social Studies, as I was able to tell them about the Winnipeg General Strike, the fur trade, the colonization of Canada, the fact that the Canadian Shield comprises some of the oldest rock in the world, the history of Steveston as a fishing village, the internment of Japanese-Canadians during WWII, and the reparation payments made to them in the 80's. >_<  I'm glad that my coworkers seem to be interested in Canadian history (even the ugly bits), and that I'm prepared to answer haha.  I also got a bunch of people mentioning the University of Toronto today for some odd reason, and so I wiki'ed it when I got home.  I guess that it's a valid topic of conversation, as it was the birthplace of things ranging from stem cell research to the notion of NP-completeness. O_O  No idea why it was such a popular topic today though...

After eating I played handiball, and I was actually able to serve overhead again for the first time.  If I get sloppy on the follow-through, my shoulder definitely lets me know, but if I do it properly, it's totally comfortable.  I'm glad that's over, because it means I actually got to touch the goddamn ball today! D:<  I am going to have to work on shoulder-flexibility somehow.

The early afternoon was occupied by my presentation, which I've already detailed.  After that Kabutoya-san came to sit at my desk while we went over his upcoming research paper.  It's written in English, so my purpose was to make sure that the sentences sounded natural and had unambiguous meaning.  It was actually quite fun, haha.  It helped that I can now understand his research, and that it's kinda neat.  Anything involving an algorithm called "the Chinese Restaurant Process" loses points for Orientalism (oh god what have I become!?), but wins major one for extreme deliciousness.  When I get back to Canada, I absolutely must must must eat Chinese food again.  As I am writing this, I am thinking about crispy-noodle seafood chow mein and I am just about ready to make animal sacrifices to get my hands on some.

Tuesday is "refresh day", so I left the office at 6:05.  I walked home, and I am very happy that I did, because there were falcons or something wheeling and ducking and twirling around in the parking lot of a glasses store by the road.  It's amazing how graceful and beautiful birds of prey are up close.  If I tried to describe it, it would border dangerously on the dread realm of fanfic, so I will just ask you to trust me that it was really damn cool.  I didn't see what they were up to, but it had to be something out the ordinary, because I do not recall falcons being common parking lot dwellers. ;D

Back at the dorm I ate dorm supper of Japanese mapo-tofu and some kind of chilli beef, with miso soup and rice.  It was all pretty good, and very not-fish flavoured, which was nice to have after my lovely jogging experience this morning.  At dinner I ran into Yasuhiro-san (that's Yao the Dominion guy), who said that he was having trouble finding people to play Dominion with, as the other dorm residents work more typical Japanese (read: insane) hours.  I told him that 2 people works too, and so we played dominion for like 2 hours after he was done eating.  After that I browsed TL forever, and then wrote up this blog when Kevin politely brought my attention to the (rather appaling) time.  Damn you TL and your quality content... >_<

Anyways, I think tomorrow will be a stay-at-home day, where I'll do a sheets wash, a towel wash, a slacks wash, a shirts wash and a bit of vacuuming.  I sure know how to have fun, eh?  Oh well, Thursday will be an Akiba day, although I will have to cut it short, as I will need to get up at like, 6:30 on Friday.

PS: I believe listening to Groovin' Magic on repeat for several days may qualify as a disorder...  Whoever invented sugary/funky/discofabulous pop should give me my damn life back! D:<