Today is better than yesterday; I am able now to post to my blog again; I initially used my laptop to connect to the school network (still using it now). And then a little later today, I was given a temporary computer to use, until my very new computer gets repaired. We confirmed that one of the memory (RAM) consoles was busted; we removed it (found out which one of the two memory consoles by trial and error) and the system was working again. So thankfully I was still able to retrieve my files so that I can work on them. The pain of having to work on a temporary computer remains. I was already getting comfortable on my "new" computer - a Core 2 Duo with 2Gb RAM and 250 Gb SATA drive (pretty much the same as my computer at my previous employer) - such that I could focus on what I am here for: learning. But now, no, I have another thing to worry about. I hope my computer gets repaired or replaced very soon! I heard it might still take two weeks. The manufacturer won't be able to pull it out from here until tomorrow. Painful indeed.
Now a good thing happened today, a blessing indeed, although it is like your favorite ice cream flavor for a broken ankle because of the busted PC. Apparently all new PhD students get to have one new 1TB external hard drive, courtesy of TPU! That is the coolest gift I've received here so far! Thank you, TPU! Thank you, Lord!
Last Saturday, if I haven't mentioned, I received another undeliverable mail notice, apparently for my ATM card. With help from the GCOE Secretary, we scheduled a delivery again between 7-9pm tonight. Great!
So, what did I do today? Nada. Transferring files. Cleaning up this temporary PC I will be using for now - it has too much software programs installed! Reading a little bit here and there. I finally registered for that environmental wind engineering class, which is about the mathematics of the atmospheric boundary layer (i.e. the layer of the air we live in). I will be attending it together with the other two new PhD students, although we three are all taking the structural wind engineering track. The schedule is on Friday; Thursday is a holiday here, so our Thursday class under Prof. Tamura gets moved also to Friday. Friday morning is lectures morning, straight from 9:30-12:30. Yeah baby. Nihongo class is also on Thursdays, but the next session will not be until next week, the 6th of May, just after the 5-day weekend from May 1 (Sat) to May 5 (Wed). May 3, 4, and 5 are holidays here, and the week that includes them, starting from April 29th is called "Golden Week." April 29 is called "Showa Day," in commemoration of the late Emperor Showa's birthday who has passed away in 1989. May 3, 4, and 5 are "Constitution Memorial Day," "Greenery Day," and "Children's Day." Annually there is a total of 15 public holidays in Japan, some of them are moved to Monday under their "Happy Monday System" - to encourage tourism and so on. And I thought having 15 public holidays and moving some to Mondays was a Filipino original. Anyways, it doesn't matter. :-)
Last kwento for the day: Today is the first day I threw out the trash. "What?" You might ask, considering I've been here more than 9 days. Well, it's like this. I got this brochure that says, I should separate all the plastics, tetra-pack cartons, all other pieces of paper that do not easily burn, all cloth-like materials, all plastic bottles, all canned bottles, all glass bottles, and all biodegradable ("burnable") waste like food and small pieces of paper - and except for the last one, they should all be clean already. So you can imagine while I have amassed an amount of garbage, I only have probably a liter or less of biodegradable/"nabubulok" trash so it really wasn't much. All the other "trash" are cleaned. Today was the schedule for the plastics, cloth-like, and recyclable paper materials. Tomorrow is for the burnable stuff. Nope, they don't call them biodegradable here, they call 'em "burnable" - "pwedeng sunugin," so says the flyer on waste management that I have with me which was in Filipino, apparently left by the Filipino researcher who previously worked here. Then somebody told me "You don't have to follow those waste segregation guidelines, except for the plastic/PET bottles and the cans." O. Kay... :-D
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