Last Sunday, I went to Laguna Seca circuit in Monterey to enjoys Moto GP 2012, championship of motorcycle road racing. I went to Moto GP 2011 last year actually, and it was very impressive to look at super motorcycles closely, so that`s why I went this year as well. Motorcycles in this race are made by racing teams, so they are not available in the market,a and they are not allowed to ridden on roads. Most exciting thing for me is exhaust sound from engine throughout its muffler. Max RPM of motorcycles available in the market is around 14,000 at maximum, but these motorcycles can reach 18,000. If you consider RMP of car which max RPM is 7,000, you can figure out how impressive it is. It sounds like terrible noise for those who do not have interest, but its sound is really exciting and comfortable for those who like it. So most exciting time is start of race. During countdown of signal of start, every rider keeps RPM almost maximum, and combined sound by many motorcycle is almost great music for me actually. I bought grand stand seat and it was in front of start line, so it was really exciting to look at it closely. Problem was that it was really large sound, so I could not be there without ear plug.
Another exiting thing was that before the start of race, some lady sang American anthem, and when she was about to finish it, two fighter airplanes flied over above the circuit. How exciting it is ! and how accurate they are ! Degree of my excitement became maximum at the same time.
Race result itself was expected one. Everybody expected that either Storner or Lorenzo win. And Stoner won actually.
In addition to the seat, I bought a Paddock pass ticket which allows me to enter dedicated area where I could see riders in close distance. I actually waited riders in front of Repsol Honda team while looking forward to seeing Casey Stoner. Finally I could see him a little bit.
He looked really tense, so he did not gave us high five. Everyone did not complain about it because he was second position and would concentrated on racing before starting. Unlike him, Alvaro Bautista kindly gave us high five, but do not get me wrong, I do not mean that he did not concentrate. That`s difference of personalities.
After enjoying the race, my concern was traffic congestion. Last year, it was first time so I was stuck in heavy traffic congestion in highway 1. By learning what I experienced last year, I checked local roads in advance in order to avoid it. As I expected, It was going well in the middle, but unfortunately there was a car accident in highway 101, so I was stuck again.
Regardless to say, I was so tired, so I fell asleep before 10pm at the night.
A few weeks ago, when I was reading a motorcycle magazine in the book store while standing, somebody talked to me by asking if I am interested in motor sports. He was from Indian, and looked nice while wearing nice clothes and shoes. He spoke well, and I have many Indian colleagues so we talked a lot about India because I wanted to talk at that time. I admitted that it was obviously fun for me to talk with him. And he proposed to exchange phone numbers and email addresses each other, I did it without doubting anything because that was natural and I thought I could make a new friend and wanted to meet and talk with him again. After going back home, I was a little bit excited about this. In the following day, I told this to my close Indian colleague, he instantly said that it was one of scams. I do not write a name of company, but he mentioned a name of company specifically. According to him, this kind of scam is popular in the bay are. They are usually Indian guys who looks nice and approach to peoples by starting general conversation and try to see who you are. When he talked to me about this, I was a little bit shocked actually because I felt like losing one of my friends and deceived . In the same day evening, I went to go for drinking with my other colleagues. One of them coincidentally start to talk about scam which name was exactly same one which my Indian colleague mentioned. I was surprised to hear that and realize how popular this kind of scams are around here.
A few day later, he called me and send email to me, but I neglected all by believing what my colleagues said.
Anyways, I am shocked at my self about how easily I was deceived. And I realized to be more careful because recently I am feeling peaceful.
Do you know 30 days which is name of TV title created, filmed and supervised by Morgan Spurlock who is a documentary film creator. I noticed this TV series when I watched a presentation on TED by Matt Cutt who is a engineer in Google. In the presentation, he said that he was stuck totally for some period and started to do something new for him for 30 days. As you might be able to guess, he said during the presentation that he was inspired by Morgan Spurlock TV series, 30 days. Matt, he is proposing that if we want to do or know something new but we do not do that with some reason, then we should do that for 30 days at least. He guarantees that after doing something new for 30 days, it is always going to be great for us and we can surely feel that something changes in good meaning somehow. At last he said "What`re you waiting for ? " I like his last comment. I would guess that he wanted to say "Why not do that" additionally. Here is his presentation on TED. It`s worth watching.
I was impressed by Matt`s presentation, and I got interest more in 30 days of TV series. I was wondering how impressive it is and how affect on Matt, and came to want to watch it at any cost. I am a Netflix user, so I went to Netflix at first to check if it is available there. Luckily, Netflix has it at streaming service. When I looked at outline, what I found was that there are 3 seasons from 2005 to 2008, each season has 6 episodes. Each episode is one hour stories. Concept of 30 days is to do something for 30 days, and every topic is different and looks curious for me. So let me share topics and brief summaries with you. If you become interested in 30 days and if you watch it, it is going to be my pleasure. In that case, I highly recommend to stop to read here because if you look at my summaries, then you come to know what happen before you watch it actually.
Minimum Wage This is the first episode of 30 days, and Morgan Surlock himself tried to do this trial. For 30 days, he and his fiance tried to work with minimum wage which is guaranteed by lay. They tried to see if they can live with the wage. He worked as a day worker and his fiance worked at a coffee shop for washing dishes. At first, they had to rent a apartment with cheap fee. A apartment which they could rent was relatively cheap and clean, but the location was not safe in terms of crimes, and as they lived, many cockroaches and ants came out. Unfortunately his fiance suffered from a fever and they had to go to a hospital but they did not have insurance because they were supposed to work with minimum wage. Later they figured out that required medical fee was as expensive as they could not afford to pay. (If you have seen a doctor in U.S, you already know how expensive it is even though it is a slight diagnosis. Most part of fee, of course, is covered by your insurance) They felt that if you are alone without any children, then they can managed to live somehow as long as you are fine without diseases and health problems. Otherwise, they can not live, and it is almost like living hell.
Anti Aging In this episode, one guy tried to do anti aging training. He is in the middle of thirty, and his body is shapeless due to daily life and eating habit. However he used to be swimmer in his high school days and his body looked good with muscle, so he wanted to get back to normal. He started to do this by consulting with a special doctor of anti aging, and followed advice of the doctor. Before he started this, he did medical check about his body like liver functionality, and every result showed good value, which indicated that he was absolutely healthy. The doctor`s anti aging training was to do proper exercise and take supplements and inject some anti aging medication into body everyday. At first, everything seemed to go well, but 20 days later, when he took a medical check again, he figured out that his reproductive function did not work at all in terms of number of active sperms. His family has already three children, but he wanted to expect one more child, so he gave up to continue to do anti aging program. Throughout the training, he could lose his weight. I think there is no easy way to get back younger, and it comes true by doing long time effort. During the episode , a lady who looks younger said that her secret to be younger is "eat correctly, exercise correctly, and think happily". What she said really makes sense.
Muslims and America
Straight Man in a Gay World
Off the Grid
Binge Drinking Mom
Immigration
Outsourcing
Atheist vs Christian
New Age
Pro-life, Pro-choice
Jail
Working in a Coal Mine
Living in a Wheelchair
Animal Rights
Same Sex Parenting
Gun Nation
Life on a Indian Reservation
I have not watched last 6 episodes yet, and I will do later, but every episodes which I have seen ever is thought-provoking story and educational for me. Throughout some episodes, I could see and understand cultural stories which are still controversial not only in America but also in the world. Most of them are stories which you never know until you try to know intentionally. Most impressive topic so far is "Outsourcing". This is about outsourcing by which many jobs are going to India from America, so it can happen to me actually. In the story, it shows us how motivated and eager Indian people are to get jobs and make money because if they can get jobs from all over the world, then they can be rich in India even though their salaries looks cheaper compared to average salary in developed countries. It looks cheaper for us, but it is surely big dear for them. The reason why jobs go to India is obviously that labor cost is lower and they can speak English, although accent is a little bit unique. Unique accent is not big deal, because they can communicate each other as long as they work together with Indian colleague. You might be wondering if they work with American people. Let me tell you the story behind which I learned from the episode. For example, many American companies outsource call center to Indian companies which get call center jobs from many companies. What they do is to teach American accent to Indian operator in order to speak like American as similarly as possible. Moreover, what I know from a book is that they teach local accent depending on states. I do not know that they feel that it is fortunate or unfortunate for them, but they used to be under British, so they do not have issue for English learning. I feel a little bit jealous. I am thinking to ask it to my close Indian colleagues. At first, outsourced jobs were just routine jobs but gradually they are changing from routine jobs to high knowledge jobs. In addition to that, their salaries are increasing gradually. That`s natural phenomenon for capitalist society. Someday their growth will slow down and saturate to certain point, but it does not mean that outsourced jobs come back, and jobs will be just outsourced to other countries by pursuing lower cost.
One of my Indian colleagues in U.S said to me ironically "I come to U.S to look for advanced and exciting jobs but they are already started to be outsourced to my country.".
A few weeks ago, my colleague talked to me about electronic money on a mobile phone. He looked excited about it, but I was not surprised at it because it already has been common sense in Japan since 2001, which Japanese trains company, JR, started that service to make ticket less paper and save time to buy tickets in train stations. Now almost it all people use this service because it is very useful. Before this came out, people used to bought a ticket on ticket machines, but sometimes it was very crowed and took much time for waiting for long line. Of course, if you have commute card, it did not matter. So JR introduced a card, called Suica standing for Super Intelligence Card, in which you can put electronic money. Electronic money is recorded magnetically on the card. So if you have this card, you do not have to buy a ticket. When you touch a gate of train station by this card, then the gate has a sensor, and they can communicate magnetically by using magnetic field induced by motion of touch. Amazingly, accuracy is very good. When you touch your card when you enter a train station, a sensor recognizes that you are inside trains system. At this moment, no money is charged. When you get out of another train station, you have to touch your card on a sensor again, then money is charged depending on how long you travel by train and electronic money is automatically subtracted. If your recorded electronic money is not enough for fee, you have to recharge money on your card.
Many people would concern how to charge and recharge money, but you can do that either by manually by using machines at trains stations or by automatically when you touch your card on the sensor. You can recharge money automatically if you do setting in advance. Another good thing is for this card is that you can use this for any purchases, as long as stores can handle electronic money. I am really sure that this had triggered electronic money. So in any place, electronic money is available for usage. You can buy a dink at vending machine, a book at book stores, and a snack at Kiosk. A few year later after this card came out, cell phone companies came up with an idea which tried to implement this system on cell phones. It is successful and many cell phone already integrate it as a default.
By the way, we have another problem about Japanese train system especially during morning commute. That is too much people for limited number of trains. Tokyo is a place to work for almost all people and many peoples commute to Tokyo every day from other cities and prefectures because housing cost is really expensive, many peoples can not afford to buy a house while feeding own family in the center of Tokyo. So every morning, it is terrible situation for many people. More than 200% peoples get on a train. Train station employees try to push peoples into a train as much as they can. I found a video on Youtube which can show you exactly what real rush hour it is.
I am sure that you can figure out what happen in Japanese train station. When I was a high school student, I used to commute to the center of Tokyo from outside of Tokyo by taking one hour every day in summer in order to attend mathematical and physics seminars. And when I was a university student, I did same thing every morning. So I know how painful it is physically and how stressful it is mentally. Although it is a wonder, human being can get used to that situation while accepting that this can not be helped and avoided, and painful and stressful feeling gets less gradually as time goes on.
Do not worry, I do not mean that this happens everywhere in Tokyo. If I say precisely, this happen at stations which are a little bit far from the center of Tokyo. When trains come to the center, peoples get off station by station, so it is not so crowed actually.
Just in case when you visit Tokyo for sightseeing, you should be careful to use train for moving somewhere especially in the morning.
Last Saturday, I realized how strongly peoples are affected by blogs. That was happening in a lunch place. Last Monday, when I looked at blogs which Japanese peoples living in the bay area write about what they think, experience, and eat, I found that someone wrote about a Italian restaurant in the Mountain View. She said that it would taste good for Japanese. Many peoples say that it is very difficult to find good Italian place in the bay are because especially past is always over boiled and it is soggy. We do not like the way, and we think that past should be cooked to al dente. Many peoples still pursue it even here. I have experienced same things a lot here, so when I found the blog, I was very excited at that. I immediately decided to go there at the following weekend. Last Saturday, I went to the Stanford shopping center from the morning, and after doing shopping there, I went to the restaurant. It is located along the El Camino Real on the way home from the shopping center. When I arrive there, It was around 11:40, there was already one family there, and We were second one. After entering the restaurant, I felt something embarrassed because the first family was Japanese. I immediately thought that it was not coincident, and I thought that many Japanese would come later. I was right perfectly. After ordering past and pizza, I saw many Japanese peoples come during waiting food. I felt embarrassed much there because I was conscious and I took care of how I look, and I thought that everyone say same blog and felt like trying pasta which tastes good for Japanese. I guess that every one think same thing. Finally, Japanese families occupied more than half of tables.
Learning from this experience, when I look something attractive places in blogs, I should wait for a few weeks to try them actually in order to avoid the situation.
When I talked about this to my Indian colleague. He said that he was feeling same thing at first a few years here, but he realized that nobody cares about you than you think. That makes sense, and it`s matter of feeling, but I do not reach that point. I wish I could go there soon.
Last Saturday, I suffered from a computer virus, S.M.A.R.T virus. When I surfed internet web sites to look for documentaries in Japan, something happened to my computer. It turned out later that something bad software was installed on the background when I watched some videos. I did not care about virus on these web sites because I had enjoyed these site for more than two years. Let me describe here what I experienced and how I recover. I would be grad if I could help someone who suffers from same situation.
1. Situation
When I watched a embedded streaming, every software windows suddenly got closed. After that some, small many windows warning hard disc error showed up and they overlapped slightly. In addition to those windows, a big window opened and seemed to start to checking the hard disk condition. It showed that my computer seemed to have many serious matter as shown in the above figure finally. Additionally, a window popped up to encourage to buy some software to fix problems. Another symptom was that many files looked gone including my document, etc. It turned out later that ever files still existed but just made invisible.
2. What I did at first
At first, I did not consider this seriously, because I was thinking optimistically that the widows function of restore of system in accessory would be able to recover everything, but it was not able to work out. After I realized this, I got serious. I investigated S.M.A.R.T virus in the internet, and as I expected, many people suffered from same thing and many recovering solutions are already available there.
3. What I did to recover
Firstly I had to kill virus software because it stayed at start up and it always interrupted what I was trying to do. So I opened the command window, and typed msconfig and opened it. If I looked at start up software tab, I could see unfamiliar software which was installed at the time when I felts something wrong. When I unchecked the software, then it stopped to work.
Secondly, I had to find where the software was installed. So I went to the folder options in the controlled panel and checked "show hidden folders" in order to show everything. In my case, if I look the desktop, there was a short cut of the virus software, and I found the path by looking property.
Thirdly, What I had to do was to remove the software completely, so I installed a software which can remove any installed software by over writing it somehow.
Forth, many folders still remained hidden. If I show hidden folders by unchecking something, it still remain half transparent. So I had to installed a software which can show folders which were hidden intentionally.
These four actions were what I did so far. Honestly, it looks that everything comes back to normal but I do not know whether these are enough or not. If I look back the past, I had been lazy for security since I had used Window 7 because it looked like robust against computer virus.
When I talked to my friend about this, I was suggested to install security softwares immediately to protect my computer. These are free, so I`m thinking to install them soon. I will tell you what I install after I do it.
Unfortunately, sport car is getting less popular
in Japan. Regardless to say, motorcycle is getting much less popular,
the industry is at stake. There are many reasons for this. One of them
is obviously internet. I do not mean to say that internet is bad. I want
to say that we got a lot of things in good meaning since internet came
out. Young peoples do not have to enjoy motor sport. Second reason is
surely long recession in Japan. Because of this, young people can not expect increase of salary and try to save money for future. Possession of car generally needs much money like tax, parking and maintenace. For example, one of my friend tried to find monthly parking in the center of Tokyo, monthly fee was $400 at that time. He gave up to buy a car. Yong people can not afford this unless he/she is really wealthy or he/she spent much % of salary on it.
However, there is still young peoples who like to drive sports car. Generally, these peoples are influenced by a manga and an anime, "Initial D". Initial D is about one guy who drives a car to help his father`s busiess for Tohu delivery and gets great technique without realizing it. He happens to race with some guy and beats him. So he gets interested in driving gradually and improves his drift technique as the story goes. The interesting point about this is that it is not impossible to do similar thing in Japanese load, especially in local mountain loads. So that`s a point. Young peoples try to do same thing. In the story, many existing car show up, and it drive peoples buy own favorite one. Cars which shows up in the story are old cars. So if you look at used car shops in Japan, there are many old sport cars with high price even though they are old.
If you want to watch Initial D, it is available in Hulu for free at the moment. The earlier you can watch, the better it is. Hulu never guarantee that it is for free forever. I put the link below.
Last time I wrote about RX 7, but let me write about GT-R as well. I have never seen skyline GT-R since I came to U.S. With the same reason in the case of RX 7, I was thinking that this car is really popular here, but it is not actually. In the movie. "The first ant the furious", Paul walker was mainly driving this car. If I say specifically, it is R34 GT-R. I was so surprised not to see this car, so I checked if this is available in U.S. According to Wikipedia, Nissan sold this car in Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and UK. Because of some reasons, this car is not available in U.S market. One of them is opposite steering. In U.S, it is left side but it is right side in Japan. Second is that position of tank is too close to rear seat in terms of U.S regulation. I easily imagine that many American people would be surprised to see the movie at first time. Nissan have stopped to manufacture this car in 2002, but it is still popular in Japan, and price of used car never goes down now. This car already got premium image. This is still my favorite car because this car performance is as good as Porsche 911 but price is affordable for anyone if people can spent much % of income on the car unlike other high performance cars.
Nissan started to manufacture GT-R again since 2007. This time, this car is called Nissan GT-R against previous Skyline GT-R. These two GT-R look different, and engine systems are also different. Nissan GT-R employed inline 6 engine like BMW, on the other hand, Nissan GT-R employs V6 engine. Unlike the previous one, Nissan sells this car in U.S market, so I sometimes see this car in the bay area. Incidentally, Paul walker also drove this new GT-R in the last scene of the movie "Fast five". When I looked this concept car in the Tokyo motor show, I was shocked honestly because I would have never said that this looked good. I can say same thing for any high performance sport car, they all are over spec in Japan. As for this GT-R, maximum speed limit is regulated to be 180km/h even though it can get over 300km/h practically. However, if you go to the circuit with the GT-R, the car automatically turns off speed limit by using GPS.
A few weeks ago, I saw RX 7 FD in Sunnyvale at first time and in Cupertino at second time. I was really surprised to see this and got excited a little bit at the same time because I had not seen this car and I was thinking this car was not available in U.S. According to Wikipedia, this car had been sold until 2002 here, but Mazda have already stopped to make this car all over the world. A new car is not available any more in the market, but this car is still popular especially for young peoples who like sporty drive in Japan. Although RX 8 is available here, it is different car. When I watched a movie, Tokyo drift, many Japanese car including RX 7 showed up in the movie, so I was expecting to see RX 7 many times before I came to U.S. A problem which I come up with is that RX 7 was fully modified in the movie so almost all people could not recognize that it was originally RX 7. A picture shown below is the modified one. It does not look like RX 7, it is almost a different car. If you do not know background, you could not recognize this.
Regarding the reason why old cars are still popular, I will tell my opinion later.
