A few anectodes

Last Friday, after working the festival, I was subjected to Japanese wordplay. The Japanese, as far as I can tell from basically every piece of Japanese culture I've consumed since I was born, love their wordplay. Having been drinking for a while, we ordered some food. They wanted me to try raw horse. It was delicious! No, seriously! Really strong flavor, though.

Anyway, うま (uma) is Japanese for horse. うまい (umai) is (when used in this context) Japanese for delicious. "UMA-I!" he exclaimed. Get it? GET IT?

I understood and appreciated the joke, so I laughed. They laughed because I laughed. I laughed because they laughed. We shared laughter. We were drunk.

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Last night, at the welcoming/farewell party for me/Emily, I was asked to make a Japanese speech. Inebriated beyond understanding English, I had no idea what was being asked of me, so I agreed. Then everyone went silent and realization dawned. I was left speechless, until someone prodded me to say "arigatou." So I said "arigatou." They applauded! Then I was asked to continue. "Gozaimasu?" More applause! A for effort? (What effort?) A few seconds later, I thought of things I could have said. A few seconds after that, Emily gave her own little speech in rapid Japanese and I chuckled silently to myself at my own inability to speak Japanese or even come close to understanding her speech. (She speaks perfect English and I assume also perfect Japanese!)

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Earlier today, instead of working, I got to go with my immediate boss on a tour of Cisco's customer hardware, including but not limited to a TON of server hardware. The tour ended with a demo of their video conference product, which was pretty rad. It was a bizarre experience, though, as I've never once in my life expected to one day end up participating in a video conference. It's a weird things to specifically expect to never happen, but there it is.

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After the Cisco tour, I was treated to a meal at Baker Bounce - Real American Flavour. I ordered a chili cheeseburger. It was wonderful.

P.S., Yes: "Flavour."

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To summarize the past two days: Wednesday night, as mentioned earlier, I went to a welcoming/farewell party. We were almost right on the beach for fireworks! In other words, we were close.

Interestingly, the waves looked to be bigger at this beach (a bay beach) than out in the ocean. Granted, I don't really know much about how waves work - I just expected straight-from-ocean waves to be bigger!

But anyway, it was a great drinking party - again! FYI, taking pictures of fireworks with an alcohol-soaked shaky hand at one-second-long exposures produces some interesting results. Some day, in the future, after I no longer have dial-up, I'll upload the pictures. ):

I held off on drinking too much, though, because I didn't want a hangover today. Luckily, my strategy worked, and I was able to fully enjoy the aforementioned Cisco tour.

Basically this job, even though it's IT and not want I want to do, has already been infinitely more rewarding than my previous co-op experience at DigiLore. I don't know if it's just because it's Japan, or if it's because of this particular group of people... I'd venture to say it's probably both! I am really enjoying it. Life is grand.

Are you jealous?!

This Friday I go bowling, "surprise event"ing, and drinking again! But! For the first time since coming back from Korea, I'll have to pay for the alcohol. ): Noooo!