July 19: I'm Sorry, I Misspelled "TYPOON"
This morning I got up and ate dorm breakfast of some kind of weiner-hash business, wakame with eggs, and some siu mai (with miso soup and rice). I left for work and when I got on the bus it was kind of drizzling a bit. By the time I had gotten to the office, it had changed into a total wind-driven downpour with sheets of rain flying around visibly. Whoa! I found out from my coworkers that apparently one of the strongest typhoons in the last few years is going to be coming through. At the present moment, it's not raining, but considering how quickly it changed from Vancouver Sunshine to Holy Crap, I'm guessing that it'd be smart to bring an umbrella wherever I go for the next few days.
At work I just worked on my presentation and went over the papers for LDA, PLSA and CGS like, a billion times. I'm not sure how else to make sure I know the details of them without actually using them (and I'm still kind of freaking out about it). The morning went relatively quickly, as I was able to spend a lot of it typing up stuff for my presentation.
At lunch I ate hiyashi wakame soba (chilled seaweed on noodles in broth), which was mysteriously difficult to order (I am exaggerating massively when I say that haha). I asked for "hiyashi wakame soba", and the server lady was like "...soba?" and I was like "yeah....?" and she was like "OK... tsumetai?" (cold) and I was like "...yeah....?" (I don't think there's even an option for it not to be cold, who has ever heard of hot hiyashi anything soba). I guess she was probably trying to make sure I knew what I was ordering, but she only succeeded in freaking me out and making me think that I had mispronounced something and had tried to order fried children or something. When I took my seat next to my co-workers, Nishida-san said "Oh, Robert, you like hiyashi wakame soba?" I was was just like RRRRRAGE!!! Yes, Nishida-san, yes I do. It was delicious, by the way.
After eating I played handiball, and I am very displeased to announce that my shoulder is still gibbled. I have no idea what I've done to it or how to fix it, because nothing was wrong with it until it just started hurting! I didn't fall or wrench it in any other way, and I don't even put the strap of my messenger bag on that side. >_< Can Jiuna bring Nancy Drew here to investigate my shoulder-mystery? (I just about said Nancy Greene, who, although a rather cool lady, I suspect would be not so useful for solving mysteries. "Oh hey Nancy, what do you think is up with my shoulder?" "I dunno, but I like to go fast." And in a flash she'd be a speck on the horizon and that'd be the last I see of her.)
In the afternoon I read the LDA and CGS papers pretty much start to finish 2 or 3 times trying to iteratively refine how I am going to present them. I am trying to strike the right balance between "simple, accessible and usable", and "rigourous, detailed and complete", and doing so has been revealing holes in my understanding that I have to patch. My presentation is reasonably complete for the LDA/MM with CGS part, except if I need to show more mathematical derivations, which I will ask Kabutoya-san about on Friday (he was away from his desk a lot today, and swearing whenever he was there so I didn't bother him while I still had stuff to do).
I ended up leaving the office at about 6:20 to 6:30 (I can't really remember), and I walked home as it wasn't raining anymore, and I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to see the misty hills after typhoon-rains, and to smell the air in the "forest" part of the walk after a rainstorm. I got home without getting rained on much at all, and ate dorm supper of garden salad with pork, some kind of egg, shiitake and gobo mixture, and rice and miso soup with EGGPLANTS in it. The eggplants were soo mushy you could "chew" them with your tongue, which was kind of an interesting experience haha.
After supper I hung out in my room kind of hoping for games of Dominion that never materialized. I watched MC lose to HongUn in GSL (professional Korean StarCraft II), which was surprising and disappointing, as I quite like MC (along with 1/3 of StarCraft players haha). I discovered a lovely trick for keeping cool, which is totally obvious, and I am a dunce for not thinking of it before. I filled up my shower bucket with ice from downstairs and chilled my water jug in it! Ah, the miracles of modern technology! I realized that I haven't had a cold drink in like, at least two weeks, and I must say it was quite a nice experience. I am definitely going to be doing that as often as possible. For some reason the ice machine's tray full of ice cubes makes me want to hide things in there for no reason. Like ice cream bars or something, but we have freezers, so it'd be totally pointless, not to mention probably against some rule or other.
Back upstairs after an ice run I found people from my floor sitting around in front of the fridge in the lounge. They told me that they had found a nine-month-old egg (or maybe eggs), and asked if I wanted it (they were not serious). Charming, I'm sure. The decidedly strange guy from my floor told me that "Inside this fridge... There is only... chaos..." O_O Thanks...? I told him that's a rather fancy way of saying "old eggs", and went back to my room haha. He's right though, that thing is ridiculous. I am not surpised in the slightest that there are nine-month-old eggs in there, as it's just totally jammed with nondescript bags that look easy to forget about.
I am trying to decide whether to go to Akiba tomorrow or the next day right now. If I go tomorrow I will be more tired, as I'm currently awake at a rather inappropriate hour, but if I do manage to get up relatively early, I can spend all day there, whereas I will likely not spend as long there if I go on Thursday, and I have to come home at a reasonable time. Decisions, decisions...
Anyways, I'd best be getting to bed. Night!
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