Remember that patch in October? Well if you didn’t install it, you might have been infected. Estimates say 12 million pc’s worldwide might be infected by this worm. It supposedly activates April 1st and has instructions to contact some servers. lol. “April Fool’s”. Aah, what memories that brings back of MS Blast. ‘Conficker‘, what a lame name.
Monthly Archives: March 2009
If I ever were to work in Japan
Mar
30
2009
I’ve actually been reading this blog recently, since it amuses me (hello!). Jees, no wonder Japanese have the highest suicide rate in the world. lol. It’s the only thing I never really liked about Japanese culture really. So repressed! “wa” my ass. Can count on one finger who would be shoved forward to speak to Shacho if there were dissatifactions, I’m sorry, things in an unusual state being far from the white Zen bubble. How not unlike how it is now for me. lol. Uh.. who did I make that sarcastic joke to just recently about just mailing the entire department for permission (starts with a romanized S)? Despite being a so called Japan-o-phile, having been there even if for a holiday, I know that in general it’s their way or the highway in the broadest sense of the word leaving the foreigner feeling asif the love only comes from one side. Truthfully, whenever it does, I don’t think that’s anything to pride about. How funny that is for a country where shame is as embedded as ‘gohan’.
I also have been to one place where my friend and I felt completely unwelcome as tourists, even though it was a tourist town. Or rather, we felt looked at as some trailer trash criminals! To think as tourists we paid for their ‘gohan’ (puleaze). They really can show you the xenophobic finger in some places of Japan, good luck trying to find that here in return except maybe a laugh or two because Japanese are always the only people that will wave back at you on the Amsterdam boat ride (gotta admit, it’s cute). Like the way Americans will always chat with you on the tourist bus and are the ones that get snacks at every stop. You try and get a bunch of spaghetti eaters (italy), scones (uk) or bratwursts (germany) waving at you and they’ll just look at you going “wtf… do I know you?”.
I’ve spoken to other people that have worked in Japan or have been there for a longer period of time and they all convey the same message “you’ll always feel like an outsider”. Some of them had problems with the way they were looked at on the street and such, but really, I wouldn’t. When sometimes I’m checked out in an awkward way here, you can feel it’s a feeling of disgust. I’m quite a lot happier with a mixture of disgust and awe if I had to choose (never one of ‘criminal’ though).
It’s things like that, see. I admire the sense of group awareness, and “respect” in some of it’s forms in Japanese culture; but I also call it a completely failed implementation without reservation. I guess what strikes most foreigners is that because there is such lack of discussion there is no “input” for self-reflection and no room for contributions of the individual to the common good. This is the way we do it here ne. Don’t like something? Go around and talk about it and don’t shy away from anyone, see if we can find a way to make it better (on the positive side of that medal). Factually, through conflict we grow; is the ideology. A conflict of interest is not something bad. Both Japanese and Western methods fail miserably, but that’s besides that point. The point is, taken in general, it’s resentable a foreigner should tiptoe around being careful what he/she does because it’s not the Japanese method of approach. It’s a method of approach we’re talking about here, and it’s one of the most substantial things people need to understand of eachother individually as well as culturally. Anything else and it’s epic fail by default regardless where you may roam. If you don’t like foreigners because they bring crime to the country, fine, I can’t say anything different judging from my own country’s national politics lately.