Eating Around President's Day

Our first picture today come from something that takes up a large portion of my time but which there are not many pictures of...no, get your mind out of the gutter! I mean the Star Wars RPG that Diego, Ralph, Rick, Sean and I play. I do not want to get into explaining exactly what the Star Wars Game is, but lets just say that it is essentially "Make Believe"” for big kids, and for us it is basically a social event. Once a week we get together for several hours, pretend to be Star Wars inspired characters of our own design. We rarely dress up. This picture is an exception.

So, on Sunday night Tomoko and Yuko came over to my house for a "Fish Eating Party"”. I picked them up, drove them to my house and gave them a tour. When the tour reached my room I opened my cabinet, removed two T-Shirts and made them put the T-Shirts on.

The shirts, custom made that afternoon, both emphasized the character "魚"”, which means "Fish". This one, Yuko's, reads "“トレントンで作った魚を食べた。まだ生きている。" This (complete with grammar mistakes) translates as "“Ate the fish made with a Trenton. Still alive."

Tomoko's reads "魚が大好きです。安全魚。" The first sentence means "Really like fish."” The second Sentence can either mean "Safe fish"” or "Safety Fish"” as I discovered. Oops. On the Front was the character for "Fish".

I was very proud of my shirts. They were fun to make and fun to give. I was also proud of the meal I prepared. Talapia, Snapper and Salmon, marinated in Tiger Sauce, Lemon Juice and Honey, all cooked on a bed of tropical salsa. Spinach salad with Walnuts, Mushrooms and Caesar Dressing. And finally, a giant pot of Rice-A-Roni.

We ate everything with chopsticks, because we could. However, Rice-A-Roni is next to impossible to eat with chopsticks, so we switched over to spoons.

A large portion of the rest of the night consisted on me trying to be entertaining. I will not disclose my tricks here, since I only have a limited number of tricks for entertaining guests and I want them to be fresh for when I need to use them on you, gentle reader. I had a good time, and I want to have dinner guests more often. I have noticed that I have an intense and growing desire to make sure that my friends have good diets. Here is the final shot from Sunday night.

I woke up this morning and looked at the metal sculpture that hangs above my head at night. It was glowing purple. Beautiful.
Anyway, after enjoying the beauty of the sun for a while I played around with Skype, did some work I have been needing to do, and set off to meet up with Kerrie, Mary and Cindy. Mary drove up from UCSB for the weekend, and on the way she picked up Cindy at UCB. I was very happy to see all of them. I felt like a dog whose master has finally come home, and if Mary were reading this she say that it's good I finally recognize what I am and that she is my master.
So, first we went to lunch, then everybody got in my car and we drove to the Jelly Belly Factory.
The Jelly Belly Factory was very crowded this time, but it wasn't bad. Here is Mary making a souvineer penny while in line.
I love the hats they give you when you take the tour.
Well, having toured the Jelly Belly Factory we were kind of out of ideas. What can you do in the Davis area when you only have 2 hours to spare? After several false starts, I drove everyone to Slide Hill Park. Here are me and Mary about to go down.
Cindy, screaming her way to the bottom.
Slide Hill Park is a blast. Anyway, after riding on the slide we were all ready to eat again. We went to Nobu's where I tried Jellyfish for the first time (unless I ate it in Korea, I don't really remember, there was so much I ate in Korea). It was fantastic! I really liked it. The rest of the meal was good too, and the company was great.
Here we are saying a temporary goodbye to eachother. I have begun planning a trip down to Santa Barbara to see Mary, probably in April. I really need to see her more often.
I came home and delivered a bag of Belly Flops to Ed'd. I then took this picture that makes him look like he is 500 pounds, and Ed'd insisted that I put it in the blog. Thus, a post that consisted almost entirely of pictures of beautiful girls ends with Ed'd looking like Jerry Springer needs to do an intervention.

I Love Spring

However, to date I have never had a thrilling Valentines Day. This year though, I had a pretty good time anyway. Yuko, who is a newcomer to this Blog, attended the same "drinking party" as me. At that time, she lost a grey, knit cap that she was borrowing from a friend. Thinking that I had some connection to the owner of the apartment, she requested my help in tracking down the hat. Well, I don't know the guy. But I took Yuko over to his place, we knocked on the door, left a note, then went to Slide Hill Park...
This was the first time I have been to Slide Hill Park with cardboard. It was sooooo much fun. I am going back again when I have a bigger box. Holy cow. Who would have thought that sitting on an Amazon.com box on a cement incline could be such a blast. I tried to get Yuko to do it, but she was in a skirt.
I don't need to explain this picture. Valentine's Day.
Alright, so why do I like spring. I love the warmth. I love the sun (even though it does not treat me well). I love the, um, smaller outfits. I love the fresh air from having my windows open at night. I love the night sky in the spring. But I have to say that my favorite thing about spring is the flowers.
When I see the flowers, I can't help but smile. I don't ever want to live in a place without flowers.

Well, today I was a very bad boy. I went to my aerobics class, but I skipped all of my other classes and instead went to the Internship and Career Fair to practice my interviewing skills...
Then I went out to lunch with Sung Eun. Well, I had lunch, she had pie.
This was a simple post. But that is OK.

TEFL Certified and other shenanigans

I made a wonderful discovery recently. My camera, the Pentax Optio WPi, takes the best macro zoom photos of any camera I have ever seen, even though it's distance shots tend to really suck. As a result, I have been rediscovering the wonderful universe of very close up. This is a picture of Green Tea ice cream (one of my favorites) that I took at Osaka sushi when I went with my family on Thursday night.
I have been spending money far more than I am comfortable with this quarter, but it has all been on very worth while things. Mostly my health, education or friends. Except for one thing. So, I went to dinner with Tomoko on Friday night. Well, during my drive to pick Tomoko up I drove through a yellow light. Suddenly, there was a huge flash behind me, which startled me. I realized immediately that it was probably one of Davis' new red light cameras, which fine you...$370!! If I am actually fined $370 I am going to be very confused. I distinctly remember thinking as I went through the yellow light that stopping would be impossible and that I was obeying the law. I think I will contest the ticket. $370 is how much it costs for me to eat for a month and a half. Anyway, I was not upset by the possibility of going to court at the time, and I went and had a good Thai meal with Tomoko anyway.
Brought home what was left of the Thai food to Ed'd. Thai food "makes his toes curl".
The next day was my second to last TEFL class, and at lunch time we had a fantastic potluck. It was the only potluck I have ever been to where every single food was good.
Although, it may have not been a very good idea to have such a large lunch, since my brain did not work very well for the rest of the day. Here is me with some of my classmates after lunch.
The moon when I left class.
So, on Sunday we had our "practicum", which was sort of like a final exam. Everyone in the course had to teach an English class for 10 minutes. The night before I was very stressed out. So much so, in fact, that I got a head ache and a sore throat. I finally decided to play a modified game of 20 questions where I turned guessing what was in a box into an lesson in describing objects. The Santa hat was the final touch. At the end of the class, whoever guessed what was under the Santa hat won the object.
The actual teaching part was not stressful at all, an interesting contrast with the planning stage. After I sat down the instructor came up to me and said "That was really good. No, I'm serious. For a guy who didn't know what he was doing yesterday, I'm really astounded. You should keep at this." These were the marks he gave me.
And here is the certificate I got. It probably isn't worth much, but hey, I got my money's worth of knowledge out of the course.
The final shot of the class.
After class I went over and visited grandpa Jim.
Then went to Ryan's family's house for dinner. Which was also really good, although I was on the verge of sleep for half of the time I was there.
So what is next? Well, I still want to learn how to do massage, mom wants me to take accounting, I'd like to do EMT training, volunteer locally and travel around California a little. So this week I am back to my plan making. TTFN.

Jerry Reveals His Wisdom

So, first of all, a shout out to Nick, who would have featured much more prominently if I had actually remembered to bring my camera when I went to sushi with him yesterday. Your stalking is greatly appreciated, even though it cuts the number of stories I can tell you in half. Oh well. We'll just have to go for sushi again so that I can get a picture.

The rest of the bolg is philosophy. As always, in purple so you can't take it too seriously.

So I met with Chih-I (Jerry), my Taiwanese PAL partner from last quarter today, and we started to talk about empathy. I defined empathy for him as "when I feel something, you feel something". We then got into a long discussion of times when we had felt empathy with other people. About an hour into the discussion I remarked that I would love to know what people think. "Why?" he replied, "that is the worst thing you can know. Peoples minds change all of the time". He went on to explain that knowing the thought of another person is almost worthless in comparison to knowing your own thoughts. After all, there is so little in the world that one can actually control. We cannot change the weather. We cannot become a rock. We cannot even control our heart beat. Sometimes, we cannot even muster the strength to get out of bed in the morning. But we can affect our 'self'. We can try to become what we want to be, and if we do this the rest of it will fall as it is meant to. Things happen, and the most you can do is be strong when things do happen. Sometimes, the happenings of things can even work to make you stronger. Fighting the happenings of things will probably make you weaker.

I had no response. I had no response because the majority of what he said I held to be true at one time. I realized that I had forgotten it. In my time at college I have been trying to develop human relationships. This is not a bad thing. But in the process I have severely neglected my own development as a person. I have become a better person socially, but have not improved much as a person because I have not thought about 'self' for a while.

There is more, but I don't want to share it. Don't worry, I am happy, balanced and not in any danger of suffering a nervous breakdown. I just like to think.

Left with nothing I could say I responded by telling Jerry he was very wise.

"I'm older than you," he said.

Transition

So, spring is coming. Here is proof. Soon this will be a beautiful flower.
So, like I promised in my last entry, here is the news. On Friday Mom, Koki, Manabu, Takaya and I went shopping for my first suit.
Suit shopping was supprisingly fun, but I realized I am going to need to get hair cuts more often and shave daily.
I was supprised at the selection of suits.
After shopping we had lunch and I taught Manabu, Koki and Takaya how to check their voice mail. They had messages on their phone from October, which is why I could hardly ever get hold of them before.
Then Coffee for Mocha Jet Max.
And a short walk to the Taffy Shops in Old Town Sac.
I returned to Davis for Diego's Birthday.
It was at Cafe Italia.
The next day I went to class, stopped by Sakakibara Sensei's houe for lunch, when back to class, went back to Sakakibara Sensei's house and drank coffee with Takaya and Koki, then went to dinner with Koki, Ralph, Takaya and Mom. Then we picked up Tomoko and some of Takaya's Korean friends and went to what had been described to me as a "drinking party". And it was indeed, a drinking party. There was very little to do but drink. Luckily, I was able to talk to Tomoko for part of the time, so I was entertained. I have many pictures, but frankly, I find pictures of drunk people who I barely know as boring as I find drinking itself. Here is a picture of a fan.
This is my class. I was supposed to do a presentation about myself, so I took a photo of them to show that I like to take photos.
Then today I got up at 5:30 and went to the extention center to say goodbye to everyone. Unfortunately, Takaya gave me the wrong time, and everyone else showed up at 6:30. So by the time the people who I wanted to see showed up I was freezing and kind of craby from sitting in the car for an hour.
Me an Manabu with the sunrise.
Takaya getting on the bus.
And that is it. Takaya, Manabu and Koki have gone home to Japan. But I know that I will see them again, so while I was a little sad, I mostly felt at peace.

Besides, this week is too important for me to dwell on anything. While every second you live affects the course of your entire life, the next two weeks in particular are crucial for me.

The First Day of Feb.

It is a good thing that I never decided to peruse a career as a supervillian. The type of dedicated planning and plotting that goes through my head on a daily basis is, quite frankly, terrifying. This is even more common around birthdays and holidays. When I special even approaches I concoct numerous plans, visualize their execution, the (most of the time) scrap them all for lack of resources or skill.

Yesterday was one such day. It was Diego's Birthday. Sure enough, my grand scheme to cook Diego a fantastic multi-course breakfast was foiled by the fact that we only had eggs and frozen bread. We didn't even have butter. Lots and lots of yogurt, to be sure, but no one eats that but me.
The rest of the day was mostly uneventful. I met up with my new PAL, Haksoo, and then waited for Takaya's last "Hosei Conversation Hour" to start at 5. This is a pretty picture.
So at 5 I went over to the Silo and joined the standing-room-only crowd in breaking fire code on the second floor. I would guess that about 30 people showed up. By the way, I am slowly, slowly getting better at socializing in large crowds of people I do not know. I am very pleased about this. It is a very useful skill to be able to make small talk with people you don't know until the person you really want to talk to shows up. Speak of the devil, here is Tomoko taking a look at Takaya's rented porn.
At some future date this may become my profile picture. Future English Teacher?
And no room full of Japanese people and people learning Japanese would be complete without the part where one person takes a picture with everyone's camera. Again, I was sunburned by all of the flashes. I decide to take my own picture, and I am very happy at how it turned out. It looks like the poster for a T.V. show staring Minoru. In the background are the secondary characters.
The Hosei students will be leaving on Monday. Fortunately, I will get to spend time with them before that.

Next time, on the 6 Billionth Voice: Trenton goes suit shopping. Ed'd has a birthday! Trenton suprises his TESL class. And "Dinner?", Trenton reveals his plans. Tune in next week and hear more of my attempts to live an extraordinary life!