{"id":1677,"date":"2008-05-24T14:25:13","date_gmt":"2008-05-24T05:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/?p=1677"},"modified":"2011-06-02T14:20:39","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T05:20:39","slug":"fuck-me-5-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/05\/24\/fuck-me-5-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuck me. 5 years."},"content":{"rendered":"

Busy as I was lately, justifying my miserable research stipend, visiting Japanese universities<\/a> and writing my Ph.D. thesis (yea I know, it might sound a bit premature, seeing how I haven’t even started<\/em> on my Ph.D., but this is Japan: in order to get a chance at getting a grant for your Ph.D. you pretty much have to submit your finished thesis, along with the rest of your 200-page application), I nearly let the date slip by…<\/p>\n

This month is this blog’s 5 year anniversary<\/a>. A meaningless token milestone that I would feel very remiss for not celebrating. Also, what would anniversaries be without the self-indulgent navel-staring and faux-emotional look at the past:<\/p>\n

Living…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1988<\/td>\n\n… huh… somewhere? (where again?)\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\n\n… amidst the green pastures, snowy mountains and red brick walls of my catholic boarding school.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\n\n… in a rent-optional warehouse, south of Elephant & Castle.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\n\n… in a 1.5 tatami room near Gotanda.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n\n… in a 4.5 tatami room near Shin Nakano.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Spending my days…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1988<\/td>\n\n… studying algebra and grammar.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\n\n… studying latin declensions.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\n\n… at a variety of hip glossy magazines, most of which never made it through to the 21st century.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\n\n… sleeping. Pouring drinks at a seedy Azabu-Juban bar on the outskirts of Ropponghell.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n\n… plotting world-domination, atop a research center overlooking the imperial gardens.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Spending my nights…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1988<\/td>\n\n… reading under the sheets.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\n\n… on group expeditions to the nearby all-girl boarding school.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\n\n… at a variety of hip glossy nightclubs, most of which never made it through to the 21st century.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\n\n… socializing with “snack bar” hostesses at the end of our respective work shifts.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n\n… socializing with old japanese geezers in improbable Shinjuku ojiyas.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Listening to…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1988<\/td>\n\n… lots of dead German and Italian guys and whatever’s playing on my dad’s turntable.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\n\n… still lots of old people’s music with the odd age-appropriate musical ventures here and there (mmn, maybe my first Nirvana?).\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\n\n… everything under the sun. Serge Gainsbourg, Pulp, Prodigy, Miles Davis, Laurent Garnier, Leonard Cohen, Sex Pistols…\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\n\n… too many botched karaoke renditions of My Way<\/i> by heavily inebriated Japanese salarymen to keep track of.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n\n… Polypunk<\/a>, Fleep<\/a> and a whole lot of retro-80’s synth tracks with badass electro bass lines<\/a>.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Reading…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1988<\/td>\n\n… my dad’s library, in alphabetical order.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\n\n… Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ars\u00e8ne Lupin.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\n\n… Burroughs, Ana\u00efs Nin, Baudelaire, Albert Cohen, Boris Vian, Hunter S. Thompson… anything with sex or drugs in it.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\n\n… \u7686\u306e\u65e5\u672c\u8a9e.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n\n… “Class Discovery and Molecular Class Prediction by Gene Expression Monitoring”.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Plans for the future…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1988<\/td>\n\n… archeologist.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\n\n… that job where you get paid to read books all day.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\n\n… astronaut, princess or dictator of a small self-sufficient country.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\n\n… assistant bar manager?\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n\n… underpaid slave to Science.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Plans for the night…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1988<\/td>\n\n… hoping there’s no liver for dinner.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\n\n… 7:30: dinner. 7:30 to 8:00: recess. 8:00 to 9:00: evening study. 9:30: lights off.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\n\n… editorial committee work meeting in a VIP booth at The End.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\n\n… go spin some records at Bar Tokyo after my shift.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n\n… drinks in Golden Gai, house party at Aya’s.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Secret ambition…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1988<\/td>\n\n… understand more than half the words in la Divina Comedia<\/i> and Midsummer Night’s Dream<\/i>.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1993<\/td>\n\n… life without an alarm clock.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1998<\/td>\n\n… make it alive to the year 2000.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2003<\/td>\n\n… speak Japanese.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2008<\/td>\n\n… find a cure for cancer. or hangover.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Busy as I was lately, justifying my miserable research stipend, visiting Japanese universities and writing my Ph.D. thesis (yea I know, it might sound a bit premature, seeing how I haven’t even started on my Ph.D., but this is Japan: in order to get a chance at getting a grant for your Ph.D. you pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1677"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4239,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions\/4239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}