Oww

I twisted my ankle yesterday while skating. It hurts.

In the course of 2 playing sessions, Steve and I beat Halo 3 in co-op mode. It was really fun. However, I didn't like how Bungie chose to end the series. I knew going into the game that it is the last in the series. Because of that I felt that the story should be absolutely epic. Sadly there's no plot twists, no super-cool boss fights, and no explanation for that giant tentacle monster from the 2nd game. Everything ends how you would expect which deters from the coolness of the story. All well, at least I can say I went through it.

In school news, I finished the first 1/3 of my translation for Japanese. I also started writing up an overview of what the project will be about. I set some deadlines which I need to follow in order to complete the project. It will be an interesting study.

Bye Bye and Good Luck!

I just got back from Brenden and Mayumi's farewell party at Fitzgerald sensei's house. We went really early at 3pm and just got back at 1am. Wow. Everyone from Kaiwa club was there. I worked with Kenneth to set everything up. We moved tables, got chairs, put out food, made kabobs, and tons of other stuff. I brought a cheese plate for everyone to munch on in the meantime. We didn't end up eating until well after 8 o'clock. It was a fun, good party.

Track and Field

I dunno if I mentioned it before, but I joined a residential hall intermural team. Previously we had been playing football. Today was the Track and Field meet. After Japanese class I skated over and met up with 3 other people: Tony, Rob, and Eric. It's a good thing I showed up otherwise we wouldn't have had enough for a relay team!

Sadly, there were no other res-hall teams at the track meet which meant that we got 1st place in every event we participated in. Even so, it was fun to run against the fraternaties. We all did the 4x100 meter dash and came in first in our heat. I decided to run the 400m individual event to see if I still had it in me since high school. Turns out I do. I got 2nd overall with a time of 57 seconds. That is crazy fast for not running in almost 4 years. It almost makes me want to join the track team...

I had a great time running today and you can bet that I'll be super-sore tomorrow!

More Fun at College

Yesterday at noon the juggling club had their first performance in Thwing hall. It was for Health and Awareness week put on by the university hospitals. It was pretty fun. We had about pretty big group go out and juggle 3 balls (the group I was in). I managed to not drop anything which is awesome.

Later that night Jack, Schell, and I went to Giant Eagle to do shopping. For the first time I really didn't need much. At this point I have enough food to go about a month without shopping (aside from the occasional gallon of milk.)

Finally, Steve and I being the skater bums that we are went to the parking complex near my dorm to skate. We took the elevator all the way up to the 7th floor and skated all the way down to the bottom. It was soooooooo fun! Now I have a lot more confidence turning and stopping at higher speeds. I'm just hoping that nobody actually looks at the cameras all over the place...

BTW

For anyone who doesn't know what Freelining is, check out this site:

http://bushi.freelineskates.net/

Wiped Out

I know my posts have been really short and sweet lately. I don't really wanna drone on and on about how school is going because frankly, every day seems to be the same anymore. It is nothing like Japan...

As I said, I go to class, do my homework, and then figure out what to do with my free time. I joined the juggling club a few weeks ago and am going to be in a show tomorrow. It's just simple stuff really. I learned to juggle 3 balls in a matter of a couple days and now I'm moving on to other tricks with those. Everyone in the club is really cool and seem to have their own specialty.

I've also been spending quite a lot of time freelining around campus. I really, really, REALLY like doing it. It feels a lot like snowboarding or wakeboarding except on a sidewalk. My favorite thing to do is glide from the athletic center Veal all the way through the quad to Euclid. Just carve back and forth with no effort needed! Yesterday was the first time I actually fell. Sure I've bailed what seems like a million times already, but this time I flew off and scrapped up my knee and palms. I wasn't paying attention to the ground and hit a pothole. My right wrist still hurts because I landed so hard on it. Hopefully it's just a sprain.

Shiro is doing great. He is starting to tear up the newspaper in his litterbox for fun. It's better than him chewing up my homework! After the shot he got for mites, his hair has been starting to fill in and his coat looks overall much better. The bad part is, he eats a TON of hay!

I better get back to doing homework now. Steve and I wanna go freelining when he gets out of class at 4!

Freelines

People like to stare at you when you freeline around the quad. Too bad I still can't go uphill very well...

Another Day Another Party

I got absolutely no work done this weekend. It's not exactly a bad thing I suppose. Our new suitemate moved in Saturday morning while I was still sleeping. Later that night we held a housewarming party. It included lots of curry and lots of pong.

Suns Flying By

I can't believe I have already been at school for a month. I've hardly been spending any time in my dorm except for the occasional gaming session or movie watching. Last night Claire and Michelle came over for the FIRST TIME EVER to hang out with us. Those two spend way too much time on homework and not enough time with us. 6 people can comfortably sit in my room and enjoy a Golden Eggs Marathon. Sweet.

Lots of homework, I don't feel like talking about it.

From here on out I should have some free time. Not too much, but enough to finish my homework early and enjoy more gaming sessions.

Defense

Today Brenden is defending his PhD thesis. Good luck Brenden!

Another Late Night

The festivities are over and everyone is finally going home. The second batch of Waseda students were here the past couple of days causing me to be out and about from morning till night. I'm really pushing being up this late. I need my sleep for tomorrow. I'm even passing on the shower tonight (morning showers are a rarity) to sleep early and get up a little earlier. Now if you'll excuse me...

眠い

寝たい！

Stormy Weather

There is one heck of a storm out there right now. I walked back from Kaiwa club and a meeting for Anime Society/Japan connection with Steve and Claire. There are tree branches blown all over the ground, orange barrels flying down Euclid, and surprisingly no rain. There was also this large metal structure lying across the binary walkway. It was wrapped halfway around a lightpost. Scary stuff. We made it to Olin okay and Claire made it back to her dorm. Steve and I worked on Compilers for a while and proceeded to get burritos at Qdoba. Now we're gonna finish the homework in my dorm. We'll see how that goes...

完成

味噌汁できました！

10AM is the Magic Time

When the sun comes up and shines through my window, it scorches my black sheets turning them into an inferno. Thus waking me up and pissing me off. Note to self: Close window blinds at night.

Back to Japan

I am so sad!!!! All of the Waseda students are leaving Cleveland tomorrow!!! That leaves all of us here sad and alone. I have never been so attached to any group of exchange students before. It is so sad to see them leave!!!

Under Claire's discretion we made eggs and pancakes at my place. That is a suitable going away party no? My dorm has never been so packed with people since I arrived! It was a pretty good party but without the booze. My speakers got a workout when everyone decided to crank them and move the party into my room. I had no idea that 8 people could fit in here!

I wanna put more down here but sleep is coming over me....

Friday with a few Exceptions

I've got Japanese class in a couple of hours, but I figured I would write here before starting my homework. Yesterday out of the passion of Steves heart, he drove us to the nearest pet shop in order to get more hay for Shiro. I bought a 50lb bale this time. It should last pretty much the rest of the year as far as I'm concerned. While we were out we also got Subway for lunch and picked up some goggles at Target.

I went swimming by myself and did waaaaaay too many laps. Sooooooo sore today.

Finally, the Waseda students did their final presentations at a dinner party. They each had to design a poster and explain it to anyone that asked them. I was a little late and didn't get to see all of them but I saw my face in a lot of the pictures. The dinner was amazingly delicious. Salad and beef and fried veggies and pizza-like things. Mmmmmm...

The after-party was at their hotel. We watched a documentary about 9/11 and once that got to be too sad, changed to the playboy mansion show. The're the same thing right? People started falling asleep at midnight so I took my leave.

This morning I made a kim chi omelet. It was amazing.

Algorithms and Me

I don't like 'em, they don't like me, but we have to work together in order to fulfill my graduation requirements. Algorithms is a pretty interesting class, but I am having a hard time remembering all the math (induction I'm looking your way!) to do all the problems. The homework took longer than I thought it would but I got it done. Yay.

After class Steve, Yuki, and I went to free swim in Veal. There were a lot of people there. Yuki said that he was the captain of his high school swim team. Wow! It really showed once he jumped in the water. I wish I was that fast.... Anyway, Steve and I never really having swam before didn't have goggles. That makes doing anything other than backstroke really tedious. We swam for a good 45 minutes before getting dressed and heading to dinner.

We ran into Brenden outside of Veal and walked to Mama Santa where everyone else was waiting. The pizza there is amazing. For the first time I tried anchovies on a pizza. It wasn't bad but it was too salty for me. I'll stick to the pepperoni and double cheese thanks!

Went to Juggling club afterwards but as it was getting dark, couldn't really do anything.

Went to Northside to work on homework with Joe and Jim. We kinda finished it and kinda ended up playing smash bros afterwards. Good times.

Now for some ZZZZ's

Curry!!!!!!!!

and rice. Steve, Jack, Shell and I made a beer run to Wally world and Giant Eagle. Shell was the only one who actually bought beer. I picked up a bunch of random stuff that I needed to make life easier. I got a water purifier for the horrible Cleveland water. I got some new shoes for walking and skating purposes. Then I bought lots of food for curry. Yes curry! One of the most simple things to make in Japan is actually a pretty hard dish to make in the states. Acquiring the curry was the hardest part. We spent about an hour in my dorm preparing all of the ingredients. Curry, Potatoes, Carrots, Onions, and Chicken. You fry all the veggies and meat together in a large saucepan, boil water in a giant pot, put said veggies in the pot, add curry once all the veggies are cooked. It is so easy yet curry is insanely hard to find in the states. Anyway, a burst of Japanese goodness with American products was amazing.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... Spicy...........

In other news, I was an hour late to a lunch meeting with 2 of the deans of engineering. Whoops. The important thing was that I showed up and I got free food though.

In swimming we moved on from freestyle to backstroke. After class Pablo and I learned that free swim is from 11-1 and we were free to stay and practice. We did some laps, very slowly I might add, but it was a good workout none-the-less

Printers Hate Tech Guys

Once again, the printers have proven that they are the bane of my existence. Steve and I went to the computer lab to do our compilers homework. It took a little over 3 hours to get the program working correctly. Apparently you can't just copy code from a pdf file to a text editor and have it work. Oh no. You gotta type everything in by hand or else the compiler things you did some weird stuff to it. I finally got it working, then I couldn't print it. OMG! There were no printers connected... We went to the gaming lab. The print option was grayed out... We went to the circuits lab. The printers were not there!!!! I found out that for some strange reason, the printers would not show up on any word/notepad/wordpad/IE document, but if I opened it in Firefox the printers showed up. I had to save my homework.out file to a homework.txt file, email it to myself again, open it in google documents, and finally print it. OMG that was the most retarded thing I have ever seen computers done.

Asian Market

While everyone else was having fun at Niagra Falls, I was at home doing homework. I only left for a few minutes to pick up my mail (yay compilers and 281 book!!!) I got a ton of reading done and a bunch of my homework for next week.

I started playing Spore at about 10pm last night too. Sadly, it does not live up to my expectations. After being in development for soooooo long, it feels like it is still in beta. The creature and building creators are really cool but the gameplay sucks. All well.

Today I got up today with Steve, Claire, Michelle, and the Waseda students to eat breakfast/lunch over in coventry. Pacific East was the plan, but they don't open till 3 on Sundays. Tommy's was really crowded so we went across the street and settled for Panini's. Apparently Houston and Pittsburg were playing and there were a bunch of people cheering them on. The Waseda students enjoyed watching football and cheering for whatever team had a good play.

Joe and Leah took Steve and I to the Asian market down on 34th street. At Tink Holl I spent $60 on groceries for the next couple of weeks. I bought all sorts of stuff used to make Curry, Miso Soup, Soumen, Udon, and of course sushi. This week is gonna be a lot of cooking with Japanese Food!

In Good Health

With the help of Steve (thanks a bunch!) I took my rabbit to the vet today. We were a bit late for the appointment and had to wait for 20 minutes or so anyways. I think it is the first time I have ever been to the vets office. Anyway, the assistant did a quick examination and saw that his nails needed trimmed. They were really long! She had to have taken at least half the nail off each toe! The vet, Dr. Mandell, was really nice and informative. He confirmed that Shiro is a male and has not been altered yet. I am probably going to get that done in the near future. He told me that he has a rabbit at home that is the same species. Next I asked about the apparent fur loss right above his tail and it turns out that he has mites. I was told that they are kinda like fleas, but smaller and cause hair loss in patches. Dr. Mandell gave Shiro a shot that is supposed to kill all the mites, but not their eggs. After all the eggs hatch in another month he has to get another shot. Aside from that, everything was fine. I was told that rabbits can live just fine on only hay. Veggies are for treats and pellets should not be used at all. I kinda knew that already but didn't realize that you can get by feeding rabbits just hay.

After the vet, Steve drove me to a local vet store where I bought some hay and a bowl for water.

Back at school I grabbed my stuff and headed out to get my final class scheduled. Professor Podgurski had absolutely no problem with me signing up for EECS 393 and approved it right away. Yay! No more worry about class until my transcript shows up from Waseda!

I ended up ordering the freeline skates from Skates.com. They have free shipping on them. It's gonna be pretty exciting trying to learn how to ride those!

Yesterday I went to juggling club under Steve's advice. They said I was doing exceptionally well for my first time. I can juggle 3 balls about 9 times before screwing up or throwing a ball wrongly. They also had a tightrope there too! It is something new they are trying. I could stand on it for a couple of seconds before losing by balance and falling off. Soooooooo difficult! The juggling club might be turning into a circus club.

Last night I was planning on having a movie night at my place after juggling club. Problem was most of the people I invited ditched the idea and did homework instead. I still don't understand how people have homework on the 2nd week of class. I suppose it will be catching up to me pretty soon... Steve and Kristyn came over and instead of watching a movie, talked and played Castle Crashers. Fun stuff ^_^

Homework Doesn't do Itself...

Or does it? I finally "acquired" the homework problems for logic design and compilers (my 2 classes with homework due tomorrow. I got half of both done because of computer access problems. I got all the book problems done which is the bulk of both assignments. Steve and I went on an adventure through all of Olin looking for UNIX computers with free access so that we could compile our programs form compilers. We couldn't find any so we mailed the professor about it. They were supposed to give me an account last week, but somebody has been really lazy about it. My other homework assignment doesn't specify what we need to do with the program that we make. The instructions are so vague to the point that I did what the TA did in recitation and quit. They don't even mention whether or not it needs printed out and handed-in in class. weird.

I found out once again that I am terrible at basketball. We played in Veal with some of the Waseda students and some other random people.

Einstein Bagels are really good but they raised the prices.

Claire is a big meanie.

My swimming coach made me demonstrate my stroke in front of the intermediate class today. It made me feel special and like a douche at the same time.

Apparently the game Spore has been leaked. I saw Chris playing it in his room.

I got my new speakers today. They are freaking sweet! When I went to Fribly to pick them up the lady said "Oh so you're the one!" The box was very big and very heavy. I had trouble carrying it to my room. I may watch a movie with lots of action tomorrow, or at least this weekend to test them out. Music sounds so much better than headphones and I think even better than the system at home. I am very satisfied.

I'm running out of hay for Shiro. Gotta buy more.

I finally got my classes figured out. I need to take EECS 393 which is the old senior capstone and it will count for mine as well. I will be graduating on time unless I fail a class!!!!

Cleveland Indians

So we went to a baseball game today after class. It was the 8 Waseda students, Kristyn, Amon, and I. The Indians ended up winning 9-3 and I think we all got to appear on TV. Pretty fun day.

I've been thinking about a different mode of transportation around campus. I already have roller blades at home, but they are a little too big and need a new set of wheels. Then Steve introduced me to something called a Ripstick which is a kind of caster board. Basically you have one wheel on each end that swivels in 360 degrees. The board is two smaller boards for your feet and a torque rod in the middle which swivels and provides a bending motion. I was thinking about getting that but then I stumbled upon something called freeline skates. They consist of a platform with 2 wheels on it. Super small and super portable makes it look like a better deal. Plus there is the added benefit that it looks sweet. They are both a little on the pricey side, but it beats buying a pair of new skates.

Homework Update

I still havn't done it. Spent all day taking it easy around the suite and then playing Castle Crashers with Steve.

It's Not What it Looks Like!

I swear that I am not an alcoholic.

We had a good time yesterday. After cedar point I slept in until noon for the first time since I have come back from Japan. I spent the morning not doing my homework which may come back to haunt me today. Instead I spent some time playing video games and then at 4 met up with Hiro and Claire to go to Kaiwa Club. Once again there was a huge attendance. The 2 hours of Kaiwa Club always seem to fly by.

I decided not to go eat with everyone because I wanted to get homework done. Hiro, Claire, and I returned to my dorm. Hiro and I played pool while Claire did her homework. She is so much more dedicated than I am. Eventually some other guy named Peter came and hung out with us. We watched a little bit of the US open on TV before deciding to find the other Waseda students.

It had to be almost 11pm by the time we started drinking. Last time we went to the Waseda students dorm they taught us Japanese drinking games. This time we got to teach them American drinking games. It's pretty bad I know. It was a really good time. Back at my place 3 of us continued the party and even one of my suitemates came out to join. I went to sleep pretty okay, but the others did not.

I swear I'm not an alcoholic.