free web tracker soliloquies: 07/02/2006 - 07/09/2006

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.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

drunk

Exhaustion had prevent me from writing last night...besides, I didn't have anything to write about yesterday.

On the other hand, today was filled with fun and excitement. This morning, I went to Roppongi Hills to watch Mission Impossible III which had just premiered here in Japan. I didn't have too many chances to watch movies since last December, but the movie was filled with interesting scenes and a lot of actions that gave me a lot excitement along with thrills.

After the movie was over, we went in Soup Stock Tokyo upon her request for her first time. What surprised me there was that they had increased the variation of breads that you can choose along with your set. I was also interested with the story about the "special" membership card of Tsutaya Roppongi that seems to have existed before.

We walked from Roppongi Hills to Mita Campus of our university, along with a lot of explanations on the shops there on our way. The famous taiyaki in Azabu-Jyuban she had talked about before was delicious indeed, especially its "skin". Downtown Azabu-Jyuban was filled with interesting shops and it was an enjoyable walk despite the humidity and the temperature.

Even though things were quite fun till then, the orientation explained a lot of things which I thought were common knowledge if you have been abroad and it was quite boring, but the convivial meeting afterwards was really fun, other than the fact that I was a bit drunk from the amount of alcohol I took there.

A month left until our departure...I wish I could enjoy my trip to the utmost with 59 participants who are going along with me.

Friday, July 07, 2006

past 2am

Finally, after hours of struggle, I have successfully completed my assignment I was talking about yesterday. I think I have had enough English for a while, but it's probably my one and only sales point, so I must brush it up as much as possible.

Fortunately, I was able to finish making a debate that required an analysis of huge amount of information which was an attempt I have never done before, but upon completion, I think I had reconfirmed the advancement in my English skills. A lot more vocabularies came out smoothly when I made that paper and that effect can be seen when I'm type this blog as well

It was my mother's XXth birthday today and in the midst of an assignment rush, I tried to celebrate it as much as I can with a complementary gift of expensive cakes and olives she adore upon her request. Although she hadn't requested any other gifts besides these, from her reaction, I assume that I was able to satisfy her just enough to make her feel like a birthday girl for the day.

Anyway, I can't wait till Saturday!

Thursday, July 06, 2006

yokohama and munich

It was raining throughout the day today. Rainy days are quite annoying with that many people on campus...that sort of population density makes me really difficult to get to places I must go. The deadline for my English assignment is closing in with lack of help from the members of my group. So far, I have sacrificed my Civil Law class to do my best to create the foundation necessary for my group to commence the necessary debate on Friday. I continuously typed in words throughout the class with a laptop I usually don't bring along with me to school.

After class, I was again alone in the media center with my laptop, continuing my research and typing. I had around 7-10 browser windows open simultaneously, rapidly citing information off my resources. To be honest, I really wanted a group assignment in my class since I had been envying someone about her participation in one, but a week long deadline in a testing week is way too inadequate to create papers with an acceptable quality. I think I was able to complete the background section of the assignment today, but the upcoming part, the proposals are probably much more difficult to make unless I adopt some fictional elements into it.

Anyway, I met my friend from high school after school in Yokohama today despite the situation I am currently placed in. It's been 4 months since our last meeting and I think I was able to talk enough about various subjects within our 2 hour long stay at a restaurant. Even though our last interval had been a bit long, I am looking forward to the upcoming show that's supposed to take place on the 29th. I had seen it last year in the midst of despair, but I would like be an audience with a lot more happiness this year.


Pasted below is the material I composed today, regarding the Munich Olympics massacre. Waddaya think??

Original Terrorism Debate: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Beyond Its Borders

Munich Olympic Massacre, 1972: An Unforgettable Tragedy at a Ceremony of Peace

Ever since the beginning of 20th century, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has gone though countless confrontations of all sorts, often following an act of revenge by both sides. This long and complex history ultimately leads to chaos we still see today from the worsening of the Israeli-Palestinian relations resulting from Hamas majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council with its radical rhetoric and the recent air raids of the Palestinian governmental complexes in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Air Forces, following Hamas’ provocative proclamations.
In a way similar to the recent events listed above, we usually see this issue taking place in the Middle East where we image Palestinian activists bombing tactical locations in and outside the Israeli territory with car bombs or suicide bombers, but there had once been a notorious massacre outside the region involving the same two regimes. Ironically, this massacre took place in an event we usually interpret as a “Ceremony of Peace” and where participating countries and regions place an effort to exclude political tensions to the utmost.

1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany were to be the biggest and most expensive sporting event ever held in the history of mankind, but while it had these honorable records, it also placed a milestone in the history of the Olympic Games since the event has been used for the first time as a “political theater” to push through demands of a single group. Some people may know this event from a film called “Munich” which was created by a Jewish-American film producer, Steven Spielberg in 2005. After its defeat in the World War II, Germany needed an opportunity to present a new, democratic figure of itself to the international community and had actively campaigned to show Munich’s superiority over other candidate cities. As a result, they had successfully won the bid to host the Game of the XX Olympiad from the 26th of August to the 11th of September in 1972. At this point, no one had the slightest idea for a possibility of an occurrence of such tragedy in an event the West Germans had placed their utmost effort to host. Along with the already complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the location where the massacre took place emphasized the complexity with the existence of Germany’s own intricate history with the Jews in Nazis Germany that collapsed only 27 years prior to the Games.

The Black September was an extremist Palestinian guerilla group which had close ties with Yasser Arafat’s then military-oriented faction of the PLO, the Fatah. Although the extent of Fatah’s control over the organization remains controversial, it is most probable that the Fatah utilized the Black September just enough for it to be able to commence such an operation in a distant location. The Fatah, with an acronym of the phrase Harakat al-Tahrir al Filistini (Palestine Liberation Movement when translated) for its name, was founded in 1957 by members of the Palestinian Diaspora. The most notable of them was Yasser Arafat who led the organization for it to become the dominant force in Palestinian politics and had an estimated membership of over 11,000 people by the late 1980s.

Institutional nature of the Black September remains a mystery from lack of resources; however, based on some speculations, the Fatah utilized the organization during the period of 1971 – 1974. The Black September takes its name from a conflict of a same name that took place in September, 1970 where King Hussein of Jordan, who was fed up with the amount of terrorists within the Palestinian refugees, forced the Fatah out of Jordan to seize his kingdom with a loss of 4,000 Palestinian fighters, meaning that its original objective was a conduction of a resistance movement against the Jordanian and Israeli governments. Unlike today, the Fatah movement had no place other than the Arab states outside Palestine to operate and this expulsion made it difficult for them launch terror operations against Israel. Although they had conducted 9 major terrorist attacks from its formation to the massacre, their lack of resources made it more and more difficult to set Israeli targets and this situation led to an alternative plan of the “Munich Operation”, proposed by the Fatah leadership.

It was approximately 4:30 on September 5th, 1972 when 8 Arab terrorists of the Black September calling themselves the fedayeen (“fighters for the faith”), wearing track suits began executing their plan to capture the Israeli athletes residing in the Olympic Village, following the orders for the “Munich Operation”. As the athletes slept, the gunmen with their duffel bags filled with Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades scaled over the fence into the compound, where the terrorists used stolen passkeys to enter the apartments used by the Israeli team, located at 31 Connollystrasse.

Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling referee of the team quickly noticed the unnatural atmosphere of the situation and his rapid notification allowed one roommate, weightlifting coach Tuvia Sokolovsky, escape out of a window. Nonetheless, the Arab terrorists’ successful entrance immediately made 5 Israeli athletes hostage: track coach Amitzur Shapira, fencing master Andrei Spitzer, rifle coach Kehat Shorr, weightlifting judge Yacov Springer and Yossef Gutfreund. The first casualty of the intrusion was Moshe Weinberger, a wrestling coach. His struggle with the intruders during the terrorists’ search of the complex for additional hostages resulted in his death from multiple gunshots to his head. By 5:00, the Black September had already killed 2 Israeli athletes and captured 9 others, while 2 had successfully escaped.

Right after their operations, the Black September stated their responsibility for their actions in the Olympic Village and made their initial demands against the Israeli and West German governments. In their demands, they mentioned an immediate release and a safe transport of 234 Arabs held in Israel with a deadline and a complete typewritten list of the prisoners. This list also included Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader who were the founders and the leaders of the infamous Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang and were then imprisoned in Frankfurt. The deadline set by the terrorists was 9:00 and if their demands were not met by then, they announced that they would begin their execution of the hostages, one by one for an each hour passed. Their seriousness was proven by their action where they threw Moshe Weinberger’s body outside the apartment window.

That morning, the West German chancellor Willy Brandt assembled a crisis team to discuss the available options they had.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

independence day

Although it doesn't have any significance here in Japan, today was the Independence Day of the United States of America. It celebrated its 230th birthday and I can imagine everyone celebrating with fireworks and parades. Meanwhile, here in hot, humid, Japan, I had 2 French exams today in school.

Luckily or unluckily, depending on your perspective, the tests were continuous and took place two periods in a row. I think I did fairly well which is a good thing since I did put a lot of effort in studying last night. One of the exams had the exact difficulty my teacher announced prior to it and the other was easier than I had expected.

That's just about it.

Monday, July 03, 2006

thirty

Third consecutive day at work. I was in charge of phone calls like in a way I always am lately, but the amount of it was tremendous with an unprecedented number. It is a well known fact that the amount of phone calls increase on Mondays since many contact lens shops and eye doctors (a.k.a. ophthalmologists in a technical term) are closed on Sundays and those calls are transferred over to those present on Monday.

I briefly wrote that I had to make 30 phone calls throughout my 7 hour-long shift today at work. It wasn't that difficult but nevertheless, it was quite tiring since not all customers take the call on my first attempt and sometimes, 2 or more calls are necessary to confirm the information necessary to ship the right product or products to them on time. Without this effort, I may end up inputting wrong data of the products into the terminal and this may result in complaints.

Anyway, I can probably bet you that this is a record breaker for all of the employees there and it will remain a record for a substantial amount of time. Period.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

moved

At the moment, it's most likely that studying French is the thing I am supposed to be doing, but I must not be lazy with English either. It was an awkward day at work today, since they had moved my office from one side of the building to the other in a way I had written about yesterday.

First of all, the whole layout was different and I had difficulty finding where things were. Secondly, my PC was re-setup and all the settings were initialized. And last, but not least, my boss made me do stuff I usually don't do at my current work. He made me sort out the cardboard boxes that were randomly placed in our new office and afterwards, I opened them up to neatly organize them into the shelves along with some other young colleagues. A bit surprising, but wasn't that tiring either.

Now, its past midnight...must get back to studying.

move

For some reason, my office was filled with cardboard boxes when I first went in this morning. At the morning meeting, my boss told everyone that the office was going to be relocated to the opposite side of the building. I've been told that my office had previously been located there, so I wonder why the company is using all the time and resources to move it back and forth, but I hope our new office which we are going to use from tomorrow has much more hospitality.

Work was a bit busier than usual today, but I think I was able to manage everything without a fuss. Even though it was a bit busier, I was fighting against drowsiness which constantly arose within my mind. Those coffee candies served me well and I was pretty awake when I had them.

During dinner, I was surprised by the fact that my mother partially noticed something I had never told her. This was not the first of this type of case, but her instinct is astonishing. Nevertheless, I am a lot better at hiding stuff nowadays, so I call it even...for now.