A car accident : hitting a box on highway

I wrote this post for those who unfortunately are involved in car accidents first time and who don't know what to do and how to deal with it. Nobody wants to be involved in car accidents, but we could be involved even though you drive your car carefully because it's human to human society on roads and it can cause crashes as same as it is in your life. I was involved in a car accident so far once in California, therefore, I can understand how insecure, concerned, and scare peoples feel. So let me tell you my case today. I would be happy if it could help someone feel good and know what to do from the beginning to the end. I would appreciate you if you read this as one of example of what to do. 

It was night of Thanksgiving day around 8pm. I left home for a shopping mall which is one hour drive away and was supposed to start a big sale from 9pm. When I got on highway near my apartment, there was a car on the same line which looked like a pick-up truck although it's was hard to recognize its proper type of car because it's dark night and I kept safe distance. At one time, I saw something dropped off from the truck, but what I could see for sure was a huge plastic back and it was flying toward a right shoulder, so I thought that It did not matter and there was no chance that I could hit the bag. A few second later, a huge box came out in front of my car and it was too late to avoid it. Finally I hit it unfortunately with big sound like "Ban!!". I was shocked but I could manage to think that I could run my car somehow by judging from a little noise from my car and I pulled over my car at the right shoulder. I also could see the truck run away unfortunately even though the driver might recognize that he or she dropped off something because I could see brake lamp of the car after dropping off something. I got out of my car carefully and looked at the damage. The right front body was damaged and bent, and the right front light was completely broken. Although this was turned out later, I could not turn left because my right front tire was touching the bend body when I tried to turn left. When I pulled over my car, I noticed that someone behind my car kindly pulled over his car to make sure whether I was fine or not. He said to me that what I hit was a huge wooden box and it was broken and pushed toward the right shoulder. I was shocked and my heart was beating hard but I could know what to do before he went away . What I did was to ask him his phone number and ask him to tell what he saw when my insurance company contact him as a witness. He kindly said yes and went away while saying "drive carefully and take care !". At that time, I thought that I should get out of the highway because it was very dangerous to stay there because someone might hit the remaining part of box on the road and cause  second accident. Fortunately, it was close to my house and I knew where I could park my car close to the exit of the highway. As soon as I parked my car at a parking lot of Japanese supermarket, I tried to call my insurance company. I kept insurance documents about what to do in case of car accidents inside space in front of passenger sheet, so I tried to find a phone number which I should call at, but it was first day of long holiday, and I figured out that my specific insurance company was closed and a emergency call center was open. I called at the call center actually and told everything about my insurance information and about my car accident information, and a person in the call center told me that a person in charge of my accident case would contact me at the early following week. Next I called at 911 of police. When I told that it was a car accident, a person in the call center of 911 connected me to the California highway patrol (CHP). Like what I told to the emergency call center of my insurance company, I told everything about what I knew to a person of the CHP. A person asked me whether I need a collision report or not, and I needed it so the person asked where I parked my car and stay there until a police car arrives. A collision report is a report which police makes to make sure that there is a accident, and a insurance company would contact a police station about its report to make sure that it is real accident in order to avoid car accident scams. I waited for more than 40 minites, but nobody came and I wanted go to a restroom so I called at 911 and asked them if I could go home and stay there, then a person at the call said that Thanksgiving night is usually busy and they deal with case in high priority order and my case is low priority so it would take time to get me so I could go back home and wait at my apartment. Police guys finally came to me around 12:30am and I told them everything again. They gave a collision report card to me with several important numbers printed there. It was Thursday night so I had to wait for more that 3 days until I could expect to be contacte by the person in charge. For these 3 days, I felt longest time for which I had ever felt so far. At the following Monday, there was no contact from my insurance company actually and I got a phone call from a person in charge at the morning at the following Tuesday. He told me to take my car to a body shop close to my house where he searched and make a reservation of a rent car. So I called the body shop and asked a tow service of my car from my apartment to the body shop because my car could not turn left. Towing service fee and rent car fee were covered by my insurance, although rent car fee was limited to be $30 per day. In the body, I asked a person in charge how long it could be expected to be fixed from his experience, then he said that it would take a few weeks at least due to supplies of parts. After this, communication about car fixing had been done between the body shop and my insurance company until my car was fixed and the guy in the body shop update information to me regularly by phone call. A week later, my insurance company sent letters to me, and one of them described that my responsibility was zero percent and the insurance company could cover 100% other than deductible money. Another one was a letter to ask to write about the car accident and send it back. Finally I got my car back 3 weeks later and it amazingly costed more that $8,000 for fixing. According to the body shop, they did not use third parts and use same parts with my car so it costed so much. It did not matter for me because I paid only $250 of deductible.  

Let me summarize what I did.

1. Aks my witness a phone number
1. Call my insurance company (a emergency call center)
2. Call 911 and ask them to make a collision report 
3. Take my car to the specified body shop and get a rent car
4. Do a paper work
5. Get my car back

A list looks like simple but it takes a few week to complete a list and needed patient and I suffered from much stress because I did not know what to do in a foreign country. It would bad been easier if it have been at my home county.

If I think this positively, I could learn a lot and grow up by one step.

Political and Religious talk

I have one thing which I have wanted to tell and made clear. It's about content of talk which I had heard I should not talk with peoples in foreign countries. Before I came to U.S, I had a guidance about living there. That's one of them and I have heard that these topics are very delicate and could cause conflict between human relationship. I believe that that's true and we should avoid it in situation of business.

I was surprised a little bit, but it is a little bit different in my case. I came here as a engineer and when I go for lunch or dinner, I frequently go with my colleagues who come from many countries because it is fun to talk. Each people has unique and different background and we can tell a lot of things each other. Before I came here, I did not think that talk topics never come to political and religious things. However, it's not true a little bit. They have interesting in them and ask me about how I think about them. I have talked even about hierarchy status before with my close colleagues. 

What I have learned is that it would be ok to talk about them between engineers, especially close colleagues, but not sales or marketing. We definitely should not criticize their religion and blame historical matters on theirs politics. Even they would never do that. What I regretted so far is that I do not know much about politics of my home country and religious. I should be familiar with them more in order to make talk fun and make peoples feel that they think that it is good time to talk with me. In order to be able to talk about them, I would bring these topics here for my education.

I have never seen people who do not have own religious sine I came here. They definitely have it. If you go to Japan and ask people about what religion you believe, then you would be surprised because all most all people, especially young people, would say they do not have it. One of my friend said to me that even though I say I do not have own religion, I seem to behave like a buddism people. He told me a list of main idea of Buddism, then I thought that what he told me is common sense, but they are not common sense in other religions. So according his own idea, Japanese people just do not realize it but we Japanese behave like that because we learn them through growing up without realizing it. I think he is correct.

I'm sure for one thing. Japanese people do not know much about our own religious idea which we naturally follow, although that sounds strange. 

Street Fighter from CAPCON

Have you ever play a game name of Street Fighter from CAPCON early 1990s. Yes, I have. 

If you are men around 30s, you might have played it once or heard of its name. This is one to one fighting game released from a Japanese game company both for arcade cabinet and home game computer named as Super Nindendo Entertainment System in U.S, Super Famicom in Japan. Looking back my past, one third of boys in my classmates played this game. This is my opinion, but one of reason why this game was very popular is that each game player can choose a variety of unique characters from all over the world. Additionally, each character is different in terms of moving motion and special technique. For example, one character can moving faster, but less powerful. On the other hand, another character is powerful but its moving is slower. There, of course, is a character whose performance is average totally. After school, we often gathered at someone's house and played this together until the sun goes down. At that time, unlike today, there was not smart phone to play with alone, and family computer like Windows machine was not so popular. So the game console was only a computer for children at that time. The place where I lived is not rich area, not every child had it even though they wanted it. So if someone have a game console and softwares, then children naturally gathered there and spent time by playing games. Games ranged from fighting game, baseball, soccer and so on. The game console which was available at the time was not so high performance than game consols available now, so game was not so complicated, and graphics was not so nice, so it was easy to play. Last year I bought a game soft named Battle field 3, but what I felt when I played it first time was that graphics is so nice and looks almos real, but it is difficult to find enemies and targets because of its nice graphics ironically. Some peoples would say that it's real in terms of everything and it's actually difficult to fine enemies in real battle field. I agree. 

Anyway, a reason why I though to tell this game is that I read news about pro Japanese gamer, Taigo Umehara who is a champion of Street fighter. He published a book which name is " strong will to continue to win", although my translation might sounds strange. It is all about how to keep motivation to win and do it actually, which can be applied to anything. In this case, it is practice, practice, and practice everyday.

Take a look at this video which is showing Street Fighter game between two players in 2004. One of them is him and another is a champion of U.S.

If you have ever played fighting games, you would know how awesome this is and how difficult it is to come from behind and win. As you can see, his player is a guy with blond hair and white Judo uniform. His player power gage is much less than power game of the opponent at the middle. At the end of the game, he defended from the opponent's special technique and offended his character's special technique and won the game with cheering and applause. Latter he said about his godlike technique that what he did is usual technique, but the reason why he could do that in very noisy situation is that we focused on it very much. This is an example which is possible theoretically but difficult to do practically. Additionally, he said that his secret of winning is to practice very much. 

What I felt is that as is always true for anything, but if you want to be a professional, you definitely need practice much, no matter what professional it is. This fact is common sense but I realized it again.

My Mac does not recognize my CANON T3 REBEL

Issue
Mac book pro does not recognize Canon EOS T3 by using USB cable connection.
Answer 
Take out your SD card fron your camera and insert it into SDXC card slot of your Mac. It will work.


Here is my story about that. This is a story about a interface which I had never thought that I use, but which I have used it recently. 

I changed my computer from Windows based computer to Mac book pro almost 3 months ago because my previous PC was brocken for some reason. When I decided to switch from Windows to Mac, one concern is interface compatibility of devices like ipod touch, USB external harddisc, camera which I have been using so far. When I look back my past in Japan, nobody uses Mac except a few people, but as we know, ipod, ipod touch, and iphone from the Apple are big hits and huge success. Another success of these big his is that it makes people who buy these products feel like using Mac as well, although I am actually one of those. Consequently, Mac user population has been increasing so far, therefore almost all devices and software can be used not only for Windows but also for Mac recently. There, of course, are many exceptions about this. Today, I will tell you such a exception which I experienced a few days ago about my EOS Rebel T3, Canon SLR. 

I have three cameras, accessory camera of ipod touch, Richo compact digital camera, and Canon EOS Rebel T3. Basically, I carry ipod touch camera everyday, and I use the compact digital camera when I go somewhere and I don't want to carry heavy stuff, and I use SLR when I want to shot something beautiful view. Regarding former two camera, my Mac successfully recognize them by connecting them with USB cable, but my Mac does not recognized EOS T3 at all for some reason unlike it did with other cameras. 

As usual, I googled my issue while thinking that many people would face same issue around the world. That's correct, and many people discuss it so far. Some peoples suggested to install appropriate driver, and so I tired to do that but Canon says that it's not available for Mac in Canos web site. Can't I use the camera with my Mac ? That's what I concerned when I decided to switch. I got depressed a little bit at the time, but I patiently continued to search how to solve this. I was finally able to find a solution which is not essential solution but another way to get and transfer pictures from the camera to my Mac. It is to use SDXC card slot interface which Mac book pro basically has as default interface. When I took off a card from the camera, I realized that the card is not SDXC but SDHC, and I was wondering if my Mac recognize it, but when I inserted it to the slot, then my Mac successfully recognized it automatically !! When I bought my Mac, I realized that it has many kind of interfaces including firewire, thunderbolt, and SDXC slot which I had thought that I would not use. So I wondered if time comes when I use them, but it came actually.

SDXC seems to be a advanced interface standard for SD series which was proposed a few years ago, and it is compatible with previous standards of SDXC and SD 2.0.

My story was almost about me, but I hope that it can help those who face a exactly same issue.