Hearing silent bells

I keep reviewing options for various small businesses, but nothing seems to ring a bell. Of course, my partner doesn’t instill much confidence, with memories of my last foray of being peppered with questions about “Have you made any money yet?” being a constant drain. Being more realistic, I think it will probably be something related to my hobbies, though I’m not sure if either of those is enough of a niche to live on. Perhaps I’m thinking about it too much, and living here I suppose makes it a little more difficult, though getting a proprietor’s license is not that difficult here. Sometimes you have to take off to fly, but just thinking about it seems difficult recently.

Grooving on not moving

A teacher and I were talking about where people decide to live. His situation and his sisters’ were very different, in that his sister even when faced with leaving her ‘home’ city to find other work in her career line refused to consider relocating. In her defense, she also has a husband with a good job in the same city, a home, and three kids. She literally did not consider at all moving as she has lived her whole life in that one locale. She is mentally and physically very settled in her city.

Time to settle down?

The teacher in question is different in that he has lived in a few places, and wouldn’t mind moving again and living elsewhere, given a place he wanted to move to and a suitable income to live there. I also fall in the ‘have passport, will move’ category. I have lived in Japan for a period, but I don’t consider not leaving. My parents on the other hand, have lived in the same place now since 1967. Somehow the thought of doing that gives me the chills, though I suppose at this juncture I am ‘moving’ in that direction.  I still wouldn’t mind moving though, and would welcome a change.

One last thing I left out about the ’stationary’ sister was that she also had a wide circle of friends in her home city. This might be a deciding factor for many people, as building a new network of close contacts takes time and energy, more so when your friends live farther away and you have to make real efforts to meet each other  when you travel. if you’re fortunate to have them on your business trip routes, that makes it slightly easier (and cheaper) to visit them, but still it’s not like where you can meet them anytime by walking out the door and running into them at the local pub or store. Then again, if you’re a common person in Japan, you might not meet your friends very often as all of you are very busy and of course possibly not living near each other (but possibly near a family member of some sorts, more on that in a future post).

Idile Minds head somewhere

This weekend I’ve been catching up on ‘Family Guy’ and roaring with laughter. Seems like it often is a free form association program, where any thought is capable of being found.

Is Japan still the place to be? Is any place the place to be? No matter where you go you’re always with yourself. So perhaps it doesn’t really matter where you are as long as you can see your way to moving toward some goal. Being centered on results helps you avoid growing old in places where you don’t want to be.

Idle mind

Then again, if you take a more Zen approach to life, things are supposed to happen for a reason. And it doesn’t always mean that you know or understand the reason. So when you’re watching a TV program, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing…

God is calling

This story on a minor leaguer who was due to probably be called up to the show soon.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/A-s-prospect-leaving-baseball-for-call-of-the-pr?urn=mlb,215238

Seems he decided to serve god instead, though I heard god doesn’t pay as well. Perhaps the ‘death benefits’ make up for it, I don’t know. But seriously, we all have to decide what is more important in the long run. Being a professional ball athlete is not for everyone, and of course the career one has will probably be limited. Now as to readers’ comments that he could have done more with the money he made from playing ball, it would depend if his focus was still on that. That is harder to do, be focused on religion when your main focus is on your career and possibly the money that it brings. There are athletes though that get involved in youth programs, etc., so it is possible. Of course one could also argue that serving god can be done in many different forms.

Serving the lord

Racist technology?

This TIME article talks about some frustrations non-Caucasians find when using face recognition software in cameras. Asians found the camera couldn’t recognize when their eyes were open, as well as a darker skinned person found another camera couldn’t locate  his face.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1954643,00.html?xid=rss-fullworld-yahoo

So even technology is biased? Well certainly the same kinds of problems were referenced with voice recognition software originally, so it’s a matter of time and complaints before things get changed. I think the user-friendly category is another area that follows this progression. People tell me their software is user-friendly, but when you try to use it, suddenly it’s not so ‘friendly’. I still wish my friend Bill at MS would fix some ‘bugs’ with Word where the default settings always revert to Japanese even while making a document (even though I never type in this language) and the font size always seems to do an auto adjustment as well.

It’s the same problem with cookies on websites that adjust the language of the site you go to even though you searched for it in English! Why would I suddenly want the Japanese version of a site if I searched for it in Yahoo or Google in English? Oh, because my IP shows I’m in Japan?

Well, I could on about that, but it probably wouldn’t change anything overnight.

No way?

No way in Japan often means I don’t like it because…..

No way?

.. I’m lazy

..I don’t want to share that info

..I think that is too new for me

..I don’t get why it’s needed

Editing mode

I finally went through my blog and updated my posts as well as changed the title. It got me to thinking that perhaps if life could be edited as easily, events would lose some of their permanence and we would worry less. Less stress, fewer problems right? I’m not sure if that is always true, as a little stress is actually good for you.

But who is to say how much is enough? That is  sticky call to make, as too much stress may see us as another suicide stat whereas not enough my see us lingering as some social malcontent.