free web tracker soliloquies: 04/02/2006 - 04/09/2006

soliloquies

so・lil・o・quy/- n. [C,U] a speech in a play in which a character talks to himself or herself, so that the audience know the character's thoughts.

Friday, April 07, 2006

on yesterday's paper

The atmosphere in Hiyoshi campus felt a lot younger today with a fresh new wave of jerks with "Rishuruits" in their hands, using their intelligence only to evade tough classes. (lol) I don't know about the statistics, but I saw a lot of new faces and everyone seemed a lot younger. I may need a longer observation though, because I was only there for about 10 minutes.

Since I overslept yesterday and was unable to catch my friend's live in Hiyoshi, I didn't feel like going to school just to hand in a piece of paper. Keio University's system is so inefficient in a way everything is in this country. Why do we have to hand in these so called "entry sheets" and manually take courses afterward online?? What's with all this fuss??

The due date for my entry sheet was today, but I had work today again, like always. So, I ended up sacrificing my lunch break just to put this marksheeted paper in this mailbox, located in the academics center. It took me 30 minutes both ways and that's the reason why my stay there was ridiculously short. As for work, I had a lot of spare time since we didn't really have any orders to input into. I guess this ought to even things out.


You know what comes after gibbering about my everyday life; opinion time. Yesterday, on top page of Nikkei Shimbun (a Japanese equivalent of The Wall Street Journal or The Financial Times) there was this article on an interview that was done on Mr. Okuda of Keidanren. What he mentioned against one of the questions really was sympathetic to my opinion. He mentioned that in Japan, there's a lot of jealous forces that tend to pull people done from success.

I totally agree with his opinion. That's probably the reason why we rarely see leaders or successful entrepreneurs or Nobel Prize winners. While my ELEMENTARY school had Gifted and Talented classes that was designed to grow minds filled with curiosity to another level and the classes were divided levelwise in middle school, none of that is seen here. Of course, you will get "categorized" one way or the other via entrance exams for high school and university, but nevertheless, we don't have any classes that are designed to advance kids that can do things better than others.

No, I'm not saying that I made superior academic performance wherever I went in the past, but people are not equal. No matter how equal people are made legally, nobody can perform completely the same since no one is biologically equal. Therefore, there should be opportunities or options available for some people when he/she's got the ability to achieve something higher than others.

And people shouldn't be jealous about other people being successful, because that will only bring misery to "normal people". (excuse me for the expression) People should find and create a new goal within that successor and make attempts to get what that person got with his/her success. This will improve that country's competitiveness as a whole and will probably do a lot of good for the society, unless that successor is a dictator or something.

What he mentioned in this interview showed how much he understand our society today. He is a successful man and that's undeniable with his background. We should not drag him down just because he did better in business. We should try to follow his road of success and bring one for ourselves, instead of throwing everyone into misery.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

another day

Like my usual days off, I didn't accomplish much today. I watched FRIENDS and had plenty of sleep like always. The fact that I played this SNES game I used to like on my PC (Final Fantasy III) was the only part that was a bit peciliar about today. Legally, it's okay to play ROMs on emulators as long as you have the original cartridge for that ROM. And in this case, although the language's different, I do own a copy of the game, so I interpreted it that way.

Anyway, I'm beginning to think seriously about my future and my present seriously, possibly because of my age and I'm starting to think how a decent childhood can weaken one's will to work harder or accomplish things. In my mind, I have this image attributed toward successful leaders tending to have poor or "not-so-fulfilling" childhoods.

While it's true that I am attending one of the most prestigious universities here which will positivtely give me tremendous advantage in a solely meritocratic society of Japan, it's also true that I had a decent and sort of wealthy life as a child and was probably a bit spoiled living abroad and stuff. I'm not saying my family's rich or anything, because they aren't. But for some reason, I think I have relatively low will toward improvement or enrichment of my life, since I am pretty much satisfied with my life right now, supply-wise.

In other words, I guess I'm totally lost in this world of rapid movements. Yes, I do have a vague vision of my future self as I've written here a couple of times before, but my will isn't that strong. What sort of actions will make my fulfillment last the longest?? Same sort of question again, right?? Somebody give my an answer and I will stop asking. lol

Nobody's got the answer though...I wish I had a time machine or something.

Monday, April 03, 2006

a day off

Apparently, while a lot of people were putting themselves in enrollment ceremony and the orientation chaos that accompanies it, I had a great day off from everything. Making pasta, playing piano, watching FRIENDS, playing darts, taking naps and so on. In fact, I didn't even go outside today. I also filled out my "entry sheets" for college today too.

That's just about it. Oh yeah, I also ordered FRIENDS and Will and Grace DVDs on amazon.com today. That was my day, yes it was.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

a week

A rough week, mostly consisting of work had finally ended with today's shift. I hope I'm getting used to all the exceptional procedures and stuff that are complicating my work greatly, like "you have to do this when this happens" or "you must make a copy for these types of ordering forms" or "you change the delivery date on Sundays" and so on.

My 70 hour training period ended yesterday, so I guess I'm somewhat on my own now. Last month, my hourly wage was 900 yen. From April, it will rise to 1100 yen. This is a great deal really, since waiters and waitresses only get about 900 yen on average. But this will get me a lot closer to income tax which applies to people with income of 1,030,000 yen or more. I'm earning at that pace this year or this fiscal year at least. No, I don't want to pay any tax, so I guess I'll make this my little secret. lol

Besides, I'm not going to earn a million yen anyway.

A brand new topic. My memory's a bit blurry because I hadn't actually experienced it, but I think it was yesterday. My mom had a guest over from New Jersey; a quilt teacher who she learned a lot of her techniques off from. She's Japanese, but is married to an American and is pretty much naturalized there. As you know, while I was at work typing stuff in, they seemed to have had a decent, fulfilling conversations here and there about various topics regarding Japan and the United States.

My mom told me a lot of what she said about the United States and her concerns over a lot of problems American society is facing today. What she seemed to have said sparked my interest. When my mom told her about my ambitions toward the future that I have stated here a couple of times, related to financial firms and stuff, she confidently recommended me to enter into a Japanese corporation instead of its American counterpart.

According to her, even though her daughters have gone to Harvard and Stanford respectively, they are having tough times in American society and that's the reality foreigners face. This advice has made me think a lot of the direction I should be heading toward to. I'm going to be a sophomore this year and minor directional changes can and probably will affect my future greatly.

Above that, I will officially become an adult in about 10 months. In this unreadable world, what sort of actions will bring me a lot of good for me in the future? Law school's an option since I am majoring law in college, but whatever I become in the future, my fundamental goal is to get out of this country, this society I can never feel I can get adjusted to.

It could be this orientation or yearning toward Western societies I have at the foundation of my character but still, I would definitely want to work internationally and bring myself out of here by finding my way through whatever job I get and a temporal conclusion I reached was to head myself toward financial related posts.

I have no clue whatsoever though...but I guess I'll start things out with another round of TOEIC.