the adventure of the job hunter continues

After failing the Alpine interview, I know that I don’t have much time to be disappointed and all; I have to move on to the next step!

So without wasting time, I went to K. Sensei once again to ask for his recommendation to my next target: Daihatsu Motors located in Osaka. I already promised Tsubasa to try for a Daihatsu interview IF I flunked Alpine.

He immediately called the human resource department of the company, but I’m already out of luck: they have closed the opening because they have already filled up all the available positions for (future) fresh graduates.

So I kinda freaked out for a second, and then move on to do research on other available companies. Two went straight into my line of sights: Isuzu and TCM. Isuzu is a bus, jeep, big-ass-vehicles maker while TCM makes industrial vehicles.

Out of the two, I decided to go with TCM because they don’t have pre-exams in their interview process, unlike Isuzu. The other reason is because I think making industrial vehicles like HUGE tractors are way cooler than making buses.

I’m out of luck again. By the telephone call that K. Sensei made, they’re really skeptical about taking in a foreigner. Of course they don’t say that they don’t want foreigners, but you can just feel the vibe of not-welcome-ness to gaijins. After exchanging opinions with K. Sensei, both of us have agreed that TCM is not for me. I better find other Japanese companies that are more gaijin friendly.

So I went home with a bunch of lists of Japanese companies that has a more open policy to foreign workers. Man, it’s really hard to choose. Went home, and I got a FedEx document from Malaysia. I never got a FedEx before. Opened the documents and I was kinda surprised: it’s from P*r*d*a, the Daihatsu-backed Ma*a*sian car maker! And I was offered a job as an engineer!

I forgot. I still got Konica-Minolta and P*r*d*a as backup!

So I took a deep breath, and look at the lists more carefully. Then I have decided to try this plastic parts maker located in Kanagawa. The pay was quite good (210000yen), they have a manufacturing plant in Malaysia, and they’re very open to foreigners!

So the next day, I went to K. Sensei again, and asked him to write a recommendation letter. I posted all the necessary documents to the company (that I’m not going to say its name here, for a lot of reasons) yesterday, and all I gotta to do now is wait for an answer, and practice the SPI tests and do some math exercises.
I’m also busy doing the 外国文献 (gaikokubunken – foreign thesis?), translating English journal/thesis made by foreign researchers (I got the thesis from a team of researchers from Swiss) to Japanese. The original English thesis is already extremely hard to understand, how in the world would I be able to translate such mind-numbing journals into perfect Japanese?

Thank God I have the Japanese-English digital dictionary/translator Fujitsu’s ATLAS; the software really helped me a LOT. I only wished that the Swiss team would write their thesis using more grammatically correct English. Well, they’re not native English speakers, so I guess it cannot be helped.

I’m scheduled to present the translated thesis next week (2nd July). I’ve already finished translating; right now I’m doing the powerpoint slides and the presentation’s text-aide. I also have presentation practices to prepare. But most of all, I have to read the thesis over and over and over again, because I still don’t understand what kind of experiments the Swiss team has done and what are the benefits of their boring research. Not a slightest fucking idea. Nanoscale Friction Varied by Isotopic Shifting of Surface Vibrational Frequencies. What the fuck is that?

Changing topic.

Today I ate the 390yen shake bento from grandmart, again; accompanied with the new okinawa vitamin water drink and the oh so rich and creamy glico’s torori cream pudding. awesome.
footnote:

1) Alpine does not involve in any production of paper. Alpine makes audio-visual electronics for consumer cars, and also GPS-based navigational system. So, Syazi, Alpine nih bukan nya kilang buat kertas. Mahu pun kilang buat jagung bakar. Ataupon air soya.

2) Gaijin (外人) is an abbreviation of gaikokujin (外国人) which means foreigner; or an outsider. In recent times, the word has become regarded by some as exclusionary or derogatory and thus offensive; most japanese tv broadcasters avoided using this word and prompt to use the full ‘gaikokujin’ phrase instead. Common Japanese people though, would use this word widely to refer to foreigners, but only behind their backs. So if you’re not Japanese and a Japanese is calling you a ‘gaijin’, that means he/she have no respect for you and is verbally assaulting your sorry gaijin ass.

first ski experience! スキー初体験！

It’s almost 5 years since I first set foot on Japanese soil, and before last week, I’ve never skied before! So last week, about 10 days ago, I joined the university’s ski tour to ski for the first time in my life! I’ve snowboarded before (like 2-4 times a year) but never tried ski so was very excited and looking forward to this trip.

The trip was targeted to foreign student who had no ski experience whatsoever so it was the perfect trip for me.

It was a two hours trip from the university to the tazawako ski sports facility, the place where we’re going to stay and consume food. Talking about food… let’s just say that it was not the best they could offer.

After taking our first meal, I went to the powder room. To take a shit. And then I was surprised with the toilets they have in the facility. Of course it had the normal warmed seat, jet-water and all; the weirdest thing about the toilet, as seen on the picture above is that it has a button in which if you push it, the toilet seat would make an artificial flushing sound. At first I really don’t understand why the genius Japanese toilet makers would create such functions. Then I used my knowledge of Japanese culture and ways of thinking to solve this mystery.

Let me explain it to you in detail here. See, the Japanese are very polite and don’t want to cause you any unpleasant feelings. Remember this mentality. Then I would like you to imagine yourself shitting a huge pile of shit one day, and the toilet cubicle at both sides are also occupied with people who probably would shit a huge pile of shit too. If you would shit a huge, long, hard human faeces and drop it into the toilet, it would surely make a loud splash sound, a ‘plup’ sound, whatever. This distinct sound is quite embarrassing; so if you are a true Japanese, you would flush the water in just milliseconds before the huge, long, hard shit starts coming out of the hole of you arse and touching the water below. Are you following me? The sound of the flushing water would sort of ‘cover’ the sound of your huge, long, hard shit dropping into the toilet hole. People were doing it since the introduction of western toilets, I guess.

But with the rise of awareness to save water to help with the global warming, this practice seemed very unreasonable because you are wasting water. If you used this method, you would have to flush two times! Oh what a waste! So the brilliant guys at the toilet companies made a remarkable invention: put a button that actives the sound of flushing water! Now, no matter how big, how long and how hard you shit is, you will never have to waste water to cover the sound of your humongous shit dropping into the water. If you felt like the tip of your long, hard shit is just about to come out of your arsehole, just push the button and you are safe from the embarrassment of the sound of your own shit. Man, this kind of invention made me love the Japanese more!

I think even if you’re shitting messy; I mean like diarrhoea-kind of messiness, you could also use the button to cover the sound of shit spraying out of your butt.

Enough about the toilet already! After having some quality time at the powder room, we were told to strap on our ski gear because we’re taking our first ski lesson! Then we were separated into groups; with my groups consisting of 2 malaysians and 3 koreans. The 5 of us had not skied before so everyone looked like a idiot trying to balance themselves for the first time while slowly trying to learn how to break and turn. It was a great lesson and I think I’ve picked it up quite fast, unlike when I first learned how to snowboard. Now I know, snowboarding is a lot harder than skiing.

Skied for 3 hours and that’s enough for the day. I was quite tired after the lesson so I ate like a the fat kid on tv. Then later into the night, they had arranged a little ‘japanese winter’ event for us. First, we were tasked to draw/spray images onto these blocks of flatten snow. We were tasked to draw an image with the theme: Japanese Spring. it took us like 30 minutes and honestly, it was one of the ugliest drawings on a flattened snow that I have ever seen in my entire life. I think our group is kinda retarded. Then I looked at the drawings of the other teams. Thank GOD, they’re far worse.

Then we were tasked to dig holes on walls of pressured snow; holes big enough to fit a candle. Then we put candles into those holes and light it up. The end result is quite amazing, considering how retarded we are. Everyone said it was pretty. I was saying lets get inside I’m freezing my arse out here. Before going to bed, I went into the ofuro (hot spring) to get myself hot and went to sleep like a big baby. Ok, a gorilla baby.

The next morning, I went to the ofuro again; it was awesome! I really like hot springs, it makes your body warm and relaxed. The only negative thing about it is that you have to be fully naked to be able to go inside. I am quite shy when it comes to showing my own dick to strangers, so I always cover my little brother with a small towel, baring my arse for all to see of course.
You see, being a foreigner and also shy to show your penis to the public, it was quite hard. You want to know why? Well, it’s because the Japanese were also very curious people. They want to know. How big/small is the dick of a foreigner? I once went into a traditional hot spring in Nagano with a Nigerian friend, and everyone in the place was looking at the African guy. The Nigerian is not like me; he is not afraid to show his penis to the public. And I think I know why. If an innocent Japanese school girl accidentally saw his penis, she would run away because she might think that she had seen an amazon anaconda. You got the picture. If that guy chooses to work in the Japanese adult entertainment industry as a porn star, I’m sure he’s going to the very top. Yeah.

Enough with huge dicks and ofuro; the next morning, we went out again for the second time. This time, it’s not training anymore; we’re going to get on the lift so that we could start skiing from the top of the mountain. Although I’ve done this many times before, having ski gear at your feet instead of a snowboard does made the experience fresh. There was a slight rush of fear while I was going up the hills because the cable lift were constantly shaking up and down, left to right. I looked down and thought: man if I fall down, I might as well zip down and show my freezing penis to the whole world because I won’t survive the fall.

The moment of truth has cometh upon me. Everyone was on the top of the hill and was waiting to go down. This is the time to use those braking and turning techniques that we learned and practiced yesterday! One by one, the foreign student goes down. A lot of them fell down; one hit a tree and only a few stays standing on their feet. I was glad my training paid off!

The sense of speed rushing onto my face boils me excited, so I went up again to do it all over again. It was fun. After a couple of hours of skiing, the ski instructors told us to go down for the last time because we don’t have anymore time.

Then the inevitable group photo time comes. We took lots of photos, congratulate each other for a small achievement and went back to our staying place for the last lunch and to prepare to go home.

All in all, it was a great weekend. This is what I call a weekend well spent! I never thought that skiing was this fun! But I have to be honest, snowboarding is way cooler, so I ain’t skiing anymore yahoo !!! I want to snowboard !!!

たけやパン工場でのアルバイトのこと

I wanted to write this earlier but I was just being busy not being busy. So my short-termed part-time job was over and surprisingly, it was not just money that I’ve earned. This has got to be the longest 6 days of 2007 for me; when you’re doing labour job all day long non-stop, every second feels like a minute, a minute seems like an hour.　My foot trembles out of exhaustion everytime my shift ended.

But it was all worth it.

I’ve learned how effective it is the way the Japanese handle and manage manpower. You were never left without anything to do. It’s always work, every second of your working time; and everything must be done FAST. And everyone follow the rule.

I was also amazed by how strong some of the ‘veteran’ workers there. You really can’t help it but be amused when a 60 years old dude mixes a 20kg of mochi by hand for hours and on when I can’t even handle it for 15 minutes. Man, I want those muscles! You know, just to look cool.

I also appreciated money more after the short-term part-time job. Knowing how hard it is to get money, I become more aware of my money-wasting habits and I have decided to be more money-smart; well at least the first week.

My last job at the flower factory thought me all of these things too, but I kinda forgot. Actually, the job at the flower factory was actually a lot harder than this one. Before accepting the job, I was like; ha ha ha how hard it is to work in a place where they create pretty flower decorations? I was dead wrong.

Anyways, my part-time job was over and now I can return into my ‘no goal’ life. Ah, shit I forgot! The final is just around the corner. Thankfully, now I have a goal that I can look forward and put effort into.