My kitchen sink currently has two tap water temperatures: warm water and hot water.

A couple more weeks and I’ll have fresh cilantro for my Thai curries!

Shortly after my arrival yesterday, Fred&Co mentioned they were off skydiving today. Having enthusiastically accepted an offer to join, I found myself this morning at 7am, mildly jetlagged and ever-so-slightly hangover, riding a mini-van to a small airfield 1 hour away from Honolulu and subsequently jumping off a moving plane, 10,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean.

Among other observations, in no particular order:

• WOOOOOOOOOT. This was absolutely awesome. Perhaps not to the point of instant addiction, like I have seen a few friends get into, but definitely to the point of doing it again next time I get a chance.
• As a cousin of Natalie pointed out: if you are gonna pop your skydiving cherry somewhere, Hawaii is definitely one of the best place to do so; in addition to the great (and warm) weather, the view going down only adds to the awesomeness of the free fall… Cloudy mountains on one side, ocean on the other.
• There were 4 of us jumping. I went third and, having seen Anne’s departure, assumed ours would be similar: a nice jump off the ledge, followed immediately by the regular downward-facing, arched-back position… My (otherwise rather laconic) instructor must have mistaken my lack of comments during preparation for jadedness, because he decided to go a little more special, with no notice or forewarning: if jumping off a plane is bad enough as it is, doing so with a backflip, followed by half a dozen flips and summersaults in every possible orientation of space, is enough to test the most hardened digestive system (mine definitely wasn’t at its best, but luckily held on long enough).
• The whole time waiting at the skydiving place for our plane ride, the music playing was, I kid you not, a compilation of James Bond theme songs. I badly wanted to ask if a Union Jack parachute, with landing on skis and AK-47, was an option.
• Did I mention: WOOOOT…?

Leaving for Honolulu in a couple minutes…
Japanese cell won’t be on, but email will be checked occasionally (I hear they have Internet there, but don’t tell my advisor).

Back on Tuesday. Enjoy tsuyu, suckers!

Post-meeting dinner with visiting Todai researcher and incidentally major wine amateur: any day, really…

Minutes from the first meeting of the organisational committee for the Joint Bioinformatics Center’s Grad Student Presentation Day:

P-san: Ok, now that we have set the presentation schedule for the day, we need to name the session chairs. And a time-keeper for each session.

Dave: That’s easy: there are three sessions, there’s three of us… We each chair one session.

K-san: Actually… The goal is to avoid doing it ourself. Chairing sessions is a real pain in the ass.

Dave: Good point.

K-san: There are three participating labs. For time-keepers, we’ll just pick the kōhai in each of the three labs…

P-san: nods in assentiment

Dave: Great idea. Stupid kōhais, gotta be good for something.

K-san: For session chair, we’ll just ask one senior member from each lab to volunteer.

P-san, Dave: Sounds good…

Dave: Wait a minute… There is only one research student in my lab: me!

K-san: Oh… that’s right.

Dave: …

K-san: …

Dave: Chotto FML.

It’s 4:30pm on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I am sitting at my balcony in my underwear, sipping on a gin & tonic, putting together some very repetitive music on my laptop while waiting for the lab’s computers to spit out some results.

I am also holding a high-pressure water gun, carefully aimed at the neighbourhood pigeons, patiently waiting for them to get within range.

What?

Oh, me too: I used to have a real job, wearing ties and fine Italian suits every day, working some place where people would say things like “synergy”, “milestone” and “ballpark estimate”, while planning the next meeting on their Palm Pilot… You bet I did.

But you go ahead: judge me.

Pros and cons of attempting to survive on maximum recommended dosage of Japanese cold medicine on a workday:

Pros: Finally answering the old nagging question of whether Vapnik–Chervonenkis dimension makes more sense on mushrooms (or any satisfyingly close approximation thereof).

Cons: The answer is: no, it definitely doesn’t.

Because Golden Week is no reason to slack off, this week program is centered around: 2 hours biking, 6 hours clubbing and 4 hours banging at a keyboard in some vague hope of finding a cancer cure by accident¹. Daily.

Day 2 (and counting) of that regimen and, beside symptoms of mild sleep deprivation, everything seems good.

1. hey! it worked for Fleming. I say it’s worth a shot. [↩]

Too many things, too little time. So, until I manage to get my new non-keitai to play nice with the Keitai Logs auto-post script, here is a small selection of Spring snaps.

You know you are at a Japanese free party when…

• … everybody is smiling, having a good time and randomly engaging in friendly conversations.
• … people you’ve never met spontaneously come up to you and offer you a beer (or a swig off whatever bottle of alcohol they are drinking from).
• … asking for a light gets you not only that, but also a brand new mini portable-ashtray as a gift (to you and surrounding Nature).
• … little kids and grandpas, dancing along with the rest of the hippie club kids, is the most natural sight in the world.
• … you are standing over the Kamogawa, surrounded by cherry blossoms, dancing to some of the funkiest, jazziest, house beats you’ve heard in a long while…

What a nice and unexpected way to cap a lovely hanami/easter picnic on a Sunday afternoon…

You know you are in Japan when…
you show up to renew your Kyodai ID and a staff you’ve never met before immediately pulls it out of a stack of 300 identical cards, before you had a chance to give your name.

Yea: not a lot of whities in my faculty.