calvin aka p.phresh

I’m leaving to budapest on sunday.

Stay tuned, i’ll have more pictures and stories to go along with this one as well.

I’m going for business.  The company is sending me over for a business conference, an ATA conference to be exact.  Air Transport Association.  I’m attending the S1000D vein of this conference and user group.  i know it doesn’t make much sense to you but it does to me and that’s all that matters.  Anyways, Hungary here i come!

Today i had really strong thought about leaving my job.

I was sitting there cursing the report writing and non-web development stuff i was doing.  And then i told my colleague… “I hate this shit. All i wanna do is code.”

he replied “unfortunately you probably won’t be doing much of that anymore.”

And i thought to myself, “y’know he’s probably right.”

When we were hired on (my colleague and I started at the same time, summer 2007), we were tasked to repair and add functionality to the current IETM.  We finished the bulk of that work and we fixed what was broken, added new things and updated old functionalities.  We had a few additions throughout the year, but it didn’t facilitate enough work to last a long period of time.

So i haven’t been doing much coding lately because there just isn’t any work for it right now.  Instead I am tasked with writing reports or correcting animations on crappy 3D software (not Maya or 3DS).  My computer is slow and i have to make do with shareware programs to help me complete my job.  And it just doesn’t make sense… you don’t give a surgeon a box cutter and tell him to perform open heart surgery.  Granted my job isn’t anything near open heart surgery, but you don’t ask a mechanic to fix your car with a rock and a pipe.

The same goes for me.  In order to do my job well, i’d like to have the necessary hardware and software, and i don’t.

The fact that i am lacking in proper tools only adds to my frustrations.  And when i begin to believe that i don’t have any web development work to facilitate a steady job, i get really depressed.  I dunno if i want to stay here when i’m not actually focussing on web development, after all, that is what i went to school for.

But do i stay?  The job pays well, better than most web developer’s positions.  It has good job security.  It has a pension that i just started putting money into, where the copmany matches what i put it.  There are some good perks like travelling.  On sunday i’ll be leaving for Budapest for a week to attend a 3 day conference.  In the past 15 months i’ve been here, i’ve had the opportunity to visit Montreal and Washington DC for business.

But is it all really worth it?  If I stay here, i konw that i won’t be doing exactly what i want, and trying to find work elsewhere doing the same stuff will be hard if i’m not actually putting my skills to practice or advancing in other areas.  So i can’t really stay here that long, but getting the experience is a resume booster, and before starting work here i personally committed to 5 years minimum.  But now i’ll jump at the chance to work somewhere else.  I just don’t want to take the hit on decreased pay.  So decisions decisions… i guess if something good comes up i’ll take it, or if that job overseas comes looking i’ll be happy to go.

Anyone want to join me?

As the depression from going back to work in a cold damp city, slowly wears off, I eased back gently into work.

Luckily i came back to work after a days rest of returning on Monday, last week on October 6, rested the following Tuesday and started work on Wednesday.  Immediately upon my return I felt quite disgusted by my home town, and i wanted to leave again.  I have been looking, more so out of interest, for jobs out of province.  I’ve also taken a look at getting a job overseas.  I think i might actually enjoy getting out of here, seeing as how i really have no reason to stay.

In the summer of 2005 i entertained the idea of moving away, but then i got into a relationship with Laura, and i managed to find decent work in town… but now that i have a base of experience, and i no longer have Laura, i have been considering moving away again.  I know i always say i want to move away and i never do it.  But maybe this time i will actually give it a go.  I am giving myself two years to leave this province.  Maybe overseas, or maybe just go East, closer to my sister and nephew.

Laura has severed all ties with me and i have no contact with her and it saddens me to know that all i wanted was to move on, be grown up about it.  I don’t understand the childishness of “I’m not going to talk to you anymore cause i think you’re mean.”  Anyways, that’s another story, and it infuriates me.

Like i said i am somewhat actively looking for a good job overseas, something related to my field, and if not, then i will do what all foreigners do…. teach English.

So as i continue to pursue my “daydreams” of getting my ass overseas, i filled my long weekend with fun and turkey to get me back to Winnipeg life.

Friday
Met up with and old friend who is serving for the Canadian Forces.  It was nice to catch up with him.  For dinner i went out to Wasabi-Sabi.  A great sushi restaurant located on Taylor in the Piazza De Nardi.  I was at dinner to celebrate Pam Chan’s birthday.  There was  a large gathering of friends and i had a great time.  At the end of the dinner party, i made mention to Pam about oatmeal raisin cookies… i asked if she had a recipe and she said she had one that she doesn’t share with other people!  I told her i’d commission her for cookies cause i love them so much!

Went to Dessert Sinsations and had some Oreo Torte…. wow… it was awesome.

Saturday
went to the the comic-con immediately after getting off work at the library at 5.  Got in around 6 and didn’t get a chance to see any of the guests that were at the convention, although i would’ve really liked to see Lou Ferrigno.  The con was actually a lot better than i had expected, and there was many vendors there selling a lot of collectibles stuff, like the cult following stuff, Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Anime, Transformers.  There were a lot of comic vendors, and i managed to find a copy of the Udon Comic’s Art of Capcom.  Picked up a couple Resident Evil tee-shirts.

At night i went out to Whiskey Dix, the newest club to open in the exchange district.  I arrived around 10 and had to wait in line about 20-30 minutes.  The club is completely changed from the old “Empire” name it used to have, and apparently new managment/owners.  The club’s main level plays the top 100 and some added rock into the mix.  I didn’t stay on the main level too much.  The lower level still has a little lounge type area still with its own little dancefloor.  The music played is more along the lines of house/techno.  This area is not quite as packed due to the music being played.  A good place to dance and still move around freely, unlike the main level’s dancefloor.  The outdoor section of the club has several of those propane heaters placed around the outdoor area and the outdoor area also has their own DJ and music.  The music being played here is more inclined to the hip hop genre.  With some less mainstream hip hop and lots of remixes and mash ups.

Sunday
Minh and Donna are expecting a new baby and they came all the way back to winnipeg to have a baby shower with their friends and family.  So i went to that in the afternoon.  And then i got a big surprise… Pam baked me cookies!  The best oatmeal raisin cookies to date.  They were soft and chewy, not too sweet and just right in every way!  I can see why she kept this recipe a secret… it’s that good!

Short exchange of words between Laura and I occurred somewhere around this time.  It wasn’t a very good one, and long story short, she’s not talking to me now.

Turkey dinner was to follow sunday evening.  And i didn’t really eat a whole lot, i think becasue of the conversation i had with laura earlier, kinda destroyed my apetite…. thanks a lot…. and now i kinda regret it.  But it may have been the first turkey dinner i ate where i wasn’t uncomfortably full!  So maybe it was a good thing?

After dinner, i went to Cliif’s house to play poker.  We started at midnight.  We finished at 5 am.  I won first place.  I went home and crashed.

Monday
Tried to go watch the Dark Knight at Imax, but arrived too late to get decent seats and ended up refunding them and leaving.  We walked around Portage Place and I was about to buy a Blackberry!  Then i thought…. wtf am i doing??  And quickly left the store.  Went to a friend’s house watched Troy in HD but didn’t finish watching it cause he kicked us out.

Went home, ate dinner, flipped through the Art of Capcom book, and went to bed.

Just some odds and ends i wanted to blog about from Japan but didn’t get time to do it.  So here they are all in one entry, check it out!

MacDonald’s breakfast sandwich…. double sausage and egg with bacon and cheese… omg, yes it tastes as good as it sounds… like sex in an english muffin!

Raw horse meat….. yes, HORSE meat… not just good for glue anymore.  I tried it and it tasted just like meat… no different than having a slice of lean steak.

Spaghetti with chicken and some sort of light oil sauce…. very good.  I went all the way to Japan and had Italian food… lol.  But honestly the Japanese make a mean plate of spaghetti, there were so many different flavours!  This was really good though!

Street Fighter IV arcades!!  Sweeet… we haven’t even seen this game yet, it’s supposed to release for the consoles, but they’ve got this goin on in ALL the arcades.  One arcade I visisted, Club Sega in Akihabara had a floor dedicated to this game only.  The players can get their own card and take it with them and insert it into any arcade machine to keep track of their stats.  And when you play versus with someone, it’s not on the same cabinet.  Each machine/cabinet is double sided and when a player wants to join in they’ll go to the other side and play opposite you.  The way the machines are arranged doesn’t really allow for you to see your opponent.  There’s no more cramming into one cabinet to play versus, you sit down (yah sit down, all the machines are designed to be played while sitting in a chair), and you get your own set of controls, your own screen and your own elbow room!

Bathing Ape in Harajuku!  OMG i finally found the BAPE store in Japan!  Actually they have many of these stores all over Tokyo!  It’s a multi level store, on the lower level, seen on the picture below, is the women’s clothing.  And then you walk outside, around the corner and you enter the middle level to reach the Men’s section.  From the Men’s section you enter that area where the stairs are, there’s a little listening booth for “BAPE sounds” (didn’t take a listen, i’d assume it was the latest hip hop tracks from artist that endorse BAPE, Teriyaki Boys, Kanye, Pharrell), take the set of stairs up to another section containing shoes and more graphic-tees.

Once you get into the retail sections you notice everything is well spaced out and laid out very nicely, the counters are glass showcases with smaller accessory items, like keychains, toques, sunglasses, jewellery etc.  Then when you go to look at the clothing, there is only one of each on the rack or shelf.  They only have one item out and if you want to see it in your size, you ask the staff and they run to the back and grab you your size.

This clothing is for ballers, and sorry, i’m just not baller enough to wear this stuff.  It was upwards of $250 for a hoodie, and $60 for graphic-tees.  Even toques were $70.  A lot of money…. too much for me :(  I’m surprised they didn’t charge admission into the store LOL!

So in the past two weeks i was out there i managed to control myself and only bought 4 pairs of shoes.  And not surprisingly, they’re all Adidas.  Some people are Dunks and AF1 fans, but i am a connoisseur of shelltoes.  I dunno what it is, but i’ve been wearing shelltoes for over 10 years, and have loved all of them.  And through my love for shelltoes, i’ve become a huge fan of Adidas.  80% of the shoes i own are Adidas shoes.

Anyways, enough about my shoe addiction, here’s what i picked up overseas.  And for the record, i am positive, anywhere but here has much better shoe selection than we do.

Adidas Sunny Hi-Tops:

Adidas Superstar ABC Mart Exclusive:

Adidas Superstar Clear Purple:

Adidas Superstar Bling:

One early morning as Carrie and I were waiting for the subway to go to Tsukiji, we ate some buns we purchased the night before, as we were eating people would stare at us.  I didn’t know why at the time so i just kept eating away, and they kept staring… i was wondering why they were looking.  Now i know the answer.

I recently found out, actually right before i read this comment, that eating in public was pretty abnormal.  It’s downright frowned upon.

When foreigners are doing it they are somewhat excused, because they don’t look Japanese.  But when Carrie and I are eating, they don’t know we’re Chinese, we’re Japanese to them!  We only found this out near the end of our trip, and the entire time we were eating our breakfast on the go when we were rushed or having snacks while walking about!

Even when we met up with Carrie’s friends, one whom is born and raised in Japan, we still ate in public… the four of us were eating Mochi, while walking through the subway station.  I dunno when and where it all began, all i know is it’s bad manners.

edit: as pointed out by my esteemed sister, it was not Shinjuku, it was actually the Ginza district.

I forgot to mention that I also visited the area called Shinjuku Ginza and revisited Akihabara on saturday.  That would’ve placed it after the Tsukiji Fish Market, and before the night of clubbing.

Shinjuku Ginza is one of the more “classy” parts of town.  Go here to find the large and expensive department stores.  One of the major streets in Shinjuku Ginza was closed off and didn’t allow any motor traffic through it at all and this was a very large street, about 5 lanes accross.  This street can be considered the Rodeo drive of Tokyo.  Here you will find a Chanel store right next to the Cartier building and also within short vacinity of the Coach, LV and Gucci stores.  You can also find Tokyo’s Apple store here.  It may not be high priced like the rest of the stores, but i’m glad to see it in the district.

We didn’t spend a whole lot of time here, since everything here was well overpriced.  I looked at some Burberry golf shirts and Polo shirts priced at $250 and $200, and immediately backed away.

Shinjuku Ginza was also the place where i saw my second skyline of the trip, but Shinjuku Ginza was not the place for me.

After leaving Shinjuku Ginza, we went to Shibuya, and then went to revisit Akihabara.  I say revisit, because Carrie and I tried to see Akihabara on Thursday, the day we went to Tokyo Tower, but we got there too late, about 10:00 and everything was beginning to close, and that was the night my foot began hurting.

So we went back to see what all the fuss was about.  And there was a lot to see.  I don’t think i got to see everything i wanted to see.  I saw the electronics stores, but all the electronics were expensive.  I think Japan’s got the latest and greatest electronics, but Hong Kong’s got the best prices.

We stopped inside Club Sega, a multi-level arcade, with one floor completely dedicated to those claw machines, and another floor dedicated to a Gundam video game, and a floor all for Street Fighter 4!  Amazing!

We left Electric Town and headed back towards the hostel for dinner.  We were all starving by that time.

After spending a few hours at Ghibli Museum, we headed off to Harajuku.

Carrie and I both heard that Harajuku was the most colorful on sundays, with many people dressed up in their costumes.  And there were some, but i don’t think i was in the right place, cause i didn’t see a whole lot, but i did see a bunch of people with quite edgy and eccentric fashion styles.

We walked down one street that was apparently quite famous and popular in Harajuku.  And it surely was.  The street was packed with locals and tourists.  The street has many clothing stores, many dedicated to the “off-colored” fashion you’d see people wearing walking down the same streets.  There were also a lot of hip-hop styled clothing stores, selling a lot of clothing that you’d see in mainstream rap videos. lol

And for some reason there were a lot of little food stores that were selling crepes!  This was the first and last time i saw little food stands/shops selling crepes, and there were a few of these shops on one block.

Harajuku was probably one of my favourites.  There was so much people and the people watching was great, you’d see the oddest things, this is where you will see those “gothic lolitas” that seem to always appear when you talk about japanese pop culture.  And this was also the place where i saw the more “tourists” or “foreigners”.

We walked for a little while checking out many little shops, we even managed to find the BAPE store that was located in the streets of Harajuku.  Unfortunately Harajuku was to be our last stop in our trip to Tokyo.  The next day Carrie and I would fly back to Winnipeg.

Check the gallery for more/better photos of the streets of Harajuku.

Ghibli is the production company that makes all the Japanese animated movies. They are like the Disney of Japan. They’ve got a little museum exhibiting the movies they’ve done. They’re quite well known for Laputa and Totoro.

They have a little museum just outside of Tokyo in Mitaka. It took us about an hour and a half by subway and bus to reach the park where the museum resided.

Within the museum there are dome displays on how animation works. They have this neat little display that has a series of figurines set up on a turn table. When activated the turn table begins to turn at high speed and the display lights turn into stroboscopic light an turn the series of figurines into an animated display. Each set of figures act as a frame in the animation. It was do cool to see. They had the little girls from totoro playing skip rope and the cat bus running. Along with totoro jumping up in the air. With some other small things. Definately one of the nearer things I’ve seen.

They didn’t allow any photography inside the museum so I didn’t get much photos of the exhibits.

On the roof top garden they had a statue if the robot from Laputa. A full size statue. It was huge. Like it was straight outta the movie. Like a childhood dream!

There was so much attention to detail in this place. The décor seemed
So steampunk. The feeling that the place conveyed was serene and you felt happy walking through it all. I really enjoyed hamgin out there. We spent about 3 hours there and were off to Harajuku next.

So last night I had to go out and see what the club scene was like.

We got instructions from an avid clubber that worked at the hostel. That took us to a place called “WOMB”.

Getting to the club we had to wind through streets that took us down into a very small street. The streets in the area that lead up to the club were just littered with “love hotels” where you could rent a room for a “stay” or for a “rest”.

When we finally arrived to the door there was no signage. Just a man at the door wearing coveralls and an earpiece in his ear.

We were instructed by the man at the door that the main floor was closed and that only the lounge would be open. We came all the way so we decided that we’d go in anyways.

He let us into a door which looked like a back door to a building. Just a large steel door. When we got inside there was another man waiting inside there, wearing similar coveralls and another large steel door. We were instructed to just wait for a second.

Then he opened the door. And we could hear a faint thumping of the bass. Getting through that door lead us to a girl who checked our ID. I handed her my Manitoba driver’s license. The line kept moving forward where the next girl took my money, ¥2,000 cover charge. Once we paid we walked over to another steel door where another person was waiting to open it for us.

He opened the door and the faint thumping of the bass turned into a heavy bass undertone and full out music could be heard. We finally arrived at the “lounge”.

The “lounge” was pretty tiny. It was smaller than Hi-Fi, a local Winnipeg club. It would’ve been about the size of just the upper part of Hi-Fi with the bar taking up an eighth of the space and a designed corner for the DJ marked off with temporary steel railings.

There was about three couches for seating room which were ropes off. I guess for VIPs.

The music being played was house/trance. We went to the bar to buy a couple drinks. There was a small menu of about 80 drink listed. Seperated by vodka based, gin based, rum based, liquers, beers, wines and miscellaneous.

They didn’t have any whiskey and I didn’t see vodka and 7up on the menu so I ordered a screwdriver. That was about 500¥. I had a couple redbull vodkas after which were 1000¥.

As the lounge started filling up with people a few people were kind of dancing.

We decided to leave at about 1am since the music was not the preferred choice.

After leaving WOMB we came across another club. Vuenos. We asked what kind of music was being played, they told us hip hop. So we decided to head in. After a quick pat down and a cover charge of 3000¥ which included a free drink we entered into a smoke filled room. About the size of TYC’s dancefloor. There were about 20-30 people standing around. And then the music changed and kanye’s good life came on. You could hear an uproar of people. I walked towards the center of the room and over a ledge and looked down. The lower leve was packed shoulder to shoulder. Hordes of people were cheering!

We went down to the lower level and saw a stage where the DJ and a couple of dancers were on stage. We got our free drinks and walked into the large crowd. Everyone was dancing But then I noticed everyone was facing the same direction. They were all facing towards the stage. Groups of friends were standing next to each other, not facing each other dancing in a circle like we do at home. But all watching the state. Even when the girls stopped dancing and there wasn’t anything happening on stage they all faced the stage still. It was the weirdest thing. People would cut through the crowd and them stop right in front of you and start dancing. If it was a girl you be facing her back.

And for being such a packed crowd the people going through the crowd were still courteous to put their hand out so you knew they were coming and didn’t move till you stepped away.

The music was slightly behind by 6 months. And when the DJ played Kanye, Wu-Tang of any really mainstream music the crowd would go wild. I did hear some music I’d never heard before and prolly wouldn’t hear anywhere outside Japan either.

We ended up taking a cab home at 2 from Shibuya which eneded up costing the four of us 6,000¥. The subway stops running at midnight and doesn’t start back up till 5am. Often when people are out clubbing they’ll be out till 5 am since it costs so much to take a cab home. But we left early cause we had to be up and out the next morning.