Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Dramatic reunion with Floppy Discs

My current laptop is the 3rd generation. A few days ago, I had a chance to run my 1st laptop (2nd laptop has gone to my flatmate), and found quite a number of good old photos.

There is a little problem transferring these photos to my current PC. The old PC does not have CD burner. It can not connect to broadband either. Which leaves me the only way is to move them in to floppy disc(FD).

The capacity of floppy disc is 1.38 mega bytes(MB). There are at least 150 photos that each of them is about 600 kilo bites(KB). Yesterday I was busy re-sizing photos down to 200KB each approx. Today, finally I am ready to move them to FD, but then a new problem is found...

...My current PC does not have FD drive.(sad)

Oh my goodness, FD that had been extremely usefull in the good old time, has been kicked out and replaced by CD/DVD. This is shocking... Wait a moment! My flat mate! He has a desktop PC in his room that has FD drive, and furthermore, a CD burner. So the photos can be transfered via FD to his PC, then to my PC via CD. Perfect!

But anyway it is not the best way to transfer data now a days. Maximum photos I can put into FD is 7. I had dual task using 2 FDs with my old PC and my flatmate's PC for quite a long while.

Meantime, my old PC was flozen several times, and some photos had broken data. It wasn't so smooth opperation. When all the photos finally transferred into my flatmate's PC, I just couldn't resist making the "fanfare" sound that is recorded to my new PC, to welldone me.

In the end I had at least 20 round trips between my room and my flatmate's room. No more excersise today...

Anyway thanks Floppy Disks! You are turly wonderful.

Friday, December 23, 2005

How do you spend Christmas?

Hi All

As always every year, festive season has come. What I do usually is to go visit my friend or invite them on Christmas eve, and then will be at home all day on the Christmas day.

This year, I will visit my Greek friend (very good friend of mine since years back) at Howth village for Dinner.

As always every year, I have forgotten again that the bus does not run until late on Christmas eve. (See more info)

We have to do the dinner in the afternoon as his place is an hour away from city centre.

Why don't I stay in his place sleeping on the sofa? (he kindly offered)

Well, next day is Christmas day, which means no public transport at all. I don't wanna be stuck at his place all day long.

I will stay at home on Christmas day, and see an Indian DVD I bought in Delhi.

My plan is not extremely exciting, but cosy and relaxed moment is my happiness.

Well everyone, I wish a very very happy Christmas and a cheerful year 2006 (year of dog).

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The Old Navy

I have an uncle I admire. He call himself "Old Navy". Many part of my character come from him. He is an amazing guy. I will tell you more about him some other time.

Anyway, I was working with him over two years when I was younger. After work, we usually go to Japanese pub. This was how I learned how to cope with beers.

Being in Ireland, I find myself in a pub in a lot of social occasions. People easily go 5pints, 6, 7, ....15....whatever. Japanese people usually have less disassembly enzyme to cope with beers, and I sometimes feel sick. It is pity as people around me are having a great time and I can not stay any longer.

Now listen to my uncle's word.

"Hidekis, do you know why every pubs have tomato juice? How many people would take tomato juice in the pub? Probably none. Strange, isn't it? Well, If you drink beers a lot more than your limit, tomato juice would save you. It works before, during, or after drinking beers. Have it with one tea spoon of salt in it. Try. It was a navy's idea, and became traditional to have tomato juice in the pub."

Ever since, I don't know how many times this bloody tomato juice saved me. Especially this week, after I came back from India, there are a lot of parties going on.

So Yesterday, I had five pints of Beer plus tomato juice with one tea spoon of salt, then a glass of whiskey afterwards.

By the way, my limit usually is four pints....

Thursday, December 15, 2005

My hopeless situation

I am back in Dublin. It is, I must say

Coooooooooold!

Never mind, it is of course colder than Delhi. It is Winter my friends. What I have to do now is to clean my room. It looks like a JUNGLE right now and I don't know where to start. My flatmate said it's easy, and gave me an advice;

Burn them

Right. I decided to ignore him, and started with grouping these piled up things. I prepared some boxes on the bed, and put things in order somehow. Finally I can see the floor. Ok, good start.

Later I had a dinner with my flatmate. Then, he came to my room and said

"How are you going to sleep tonight?"

He's right. I replaced these boxes to the floor and made space on the bed to sleep. Wait a second...

My room looks like a JUNGLE again!

Never ending story.... in fact, a sad story.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Wanna try?

Hi there. Today, something completely different.

Here is something you don’t see in Europe everyday.



Street barber.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Horn Please

When it comes a peak time of the day, Delhi traffic goes mad.



This road usually is 3 lanes way, but when busy, all the car tries to squeeze in to whatever space is found. Now it became 5 lanes way. Most of the car drivers do not use side mirrors (many cars don’t even have them), so they make all the possible sound to alert other cars. In Europe, car horn is mostly the expression of upset or critical warning (in addition to that, we use horn for greetings as well in Japan). Signs “Horn Please” are on the trucks and buses.

This looks to me chaotic, and imagine if it happens in Ireland, there will be traffic accidents every 5 second. But here, I do not see too many accidents. Drivers are in a way quite skilled.

First week of my stay in Delhi, I was worried every second when I was on the cab, and amazed by seeing how close by side the cars come. Now to my surprise, I am used to it.

Still madness for pedestrians though…

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Thoughts on Delhi office

My stay in Delhi will soon be over. Everyday I am busy thinking
"have I done enough?",
"what can I do best for the rest of time?".

The atmosphere of Delhi office is getting so much better now a days. The Fares Department is not a place you can work on your own. Everybody must help each other and with it, whole department grows better and better. So to make a better atmosphere was one of the most important issues I have been working on.

When I first came here in Delhi office on October, still some people have not passed certificate and lots of personal competition was going on. The atmosphere was not great. But now people are more thinking about how to lift the office a better quality and trying to share the knowledge and experience each other.

Although people know that Hidekis is leaving soon, and a bit of bitter feeling comes to me and probably other people, they come and see me with a big smile and ask questions with hungry spirit to have my knowledge and experience as much as possible. Seeing them like that, I can not help loving them as if they are my younger brothers and sisters.

Except for knowledge and experiences, if there are more to learn from me, it would be a human relationship and a positive way of thinking. If anyone noticed and feels appreciated on that, Hidekis is 100 times happier than being told “Oh, Hidekis, you are a genius”.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Far away the other side

The nearest shopping mall is about 20minutes walk from the hotel. To go there, you must cross busy road at least twice while there is no traffic light until the mall.



Crossing a road is extremely difficult and dangerous when it comes the peak time. Over 1700 people have died this year with traffic related accident. I was exhausted when I finally got back to the hotel.

Next day I witnessed that there is something doesn’t care about crossing a dangerous road.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Meaning of availability

Here in India, I am training people in a new office. They are the fares department of an airline company. While they calculate fares, they also receive calls from other departments. The phone system automatically distributes calls to the individuals. In order not to receive calls, you have to tell phone system that you are not available. In Dublin office, we use a term “being on Special”, but here in Delhi office they say “being unavailable”.

One day, a meeting was about to start. I had to tell people to be “unavailable” and come to the meeting room, otherwise phone will keep ringing.

I approach a girl and said “could you please be unavailable?”.

She looked at me and said

“I AM unavailable”.

I had to notice a red mark on her forehead called “Sin-door” that is a symbol of married women.

I said
“Uh….ok, I can see that”

Thursday, December 01, 2005

What a....

As of international city Delhi, you can find things known world wide.

It looks that it is most popular to have Indian Cars such as TATA and Ambassador. However, Suzuki, Honda, Toyota, Hundai, and Scoda are popular too.

I think Pepsi is more popular than Coca- Cola.

Shops such as McDonalds, Marks and Spencer, Pizza Hut are seen.

Now look what I found in a local market…