chidade.net

I’ve been accepted into university. I’ll be attending Swinburne University of Technology’s Hawthorn campus for another three years of I.T. training. I’m relieved in a way, because I’ve technically been on holiday for the last two years now and my brain has been dribbling out my ears. I need to have a regular schedule again. 4 hours of evening classes 5 days a week in an eikaiwa didn’t count. They were complete no-brainers.

So, I have two weeks left before orientation. Surrounded by 17 and 18 year olds who are going to go batshit insane over the free alcohol. Vodka lost it’s novelty for me a while ago. I wonder how I’ll cope surrounded by kids?

Anyway, I digress. What I was going to say is that I have 2 weeks left to get myself organised for school and my tight budget that begins February 19th. So, while this list is probably quite boring for you, dear readers, deal with it. What follows are the system requirements to be able to install the upgrade to Chidade: version 3.1.

• Purchase replacement Razr V3x and mod it so that it has all necessary ringtones, images and the Final Fantasy victory fanfare as the SMS alert.
• Install the calendar syncronisation program that’ll keep my Google Calendar and keitai in sync, via Outlook.
  Note: this will require installing Office 2003 at last.
• Deauthorise the iTunes on Akiba and convert AAC files to MP3 then backup on PC.
• Backup Akiba and reformat, see if you can get an English OS instead. Learn how to actually operate the tablet features since that’s why you bought the bloody thing.
• Try and get Joomla installed and running for the Aug. website eventually so they don’t hassle you for free web design work during the semester, the tightwads.
• See if you can get a good chunk of the planning done and some psuedo-coding for the fundraising website.
• See if any of the textbooks you spent thousands of dollars on during the first degree can be recycled for this second one.
• Upgrade the blog to Wordpress 2.1 Ella, which looks very spiffy.
• Get Chidade to job level 50 and bloody job change into a Blacksmith already!

Two weeks should be enough to get all of the above done, except for the fact that this weekends seems to want to rip me apart with social engagements. Good grief. I don’t think I’ve ever been so over-booked.

• St. Kilda Festival
• The inaugural Discworld convention and gala dinner Nullus Anxietas - the first outside the UK. Yay! I finally get to do what everyone else already seems to have done - meet Terry Pratchett!
• Snark’s 25th birthday and party
• Madman’s free open-air cinema again on Saturday night. This time, it’s the awesome Read or Die
• R’s Shindig and catching up with Mi
• An old high school friend’s birthday party
• K’s Singstar party

The Gala Dinner, K’s party and the school friend’s birthday party have already become victims. Most of this weekend is going to be taken up by Nullus Anxietas, I guess. Hopefully St. Kilda Fest and Madman get a look in. Ross Irwin and the Soul Special are playing at the festival.

Gah! Busy!

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For some reason, the Japanese have a thing about poo. Called unchi, you’ll find the Mr-Whippy-Icecream shape on all sorts of things, in an attractive brown and occassionally with little wafty lines drawn above it.

My onee-chan will alway giggle girlishly when she sees some whipped cream or something shaped like unchi. The connotations with poop just aren’t as prevalent here so there’s been at least three occassions in the last two months where she started laughing hard and took photos to put on her mixi to show her friends back home the unchi us strange Australians eat.

But then, today on Lisa Katayama’s blog, I saw a photo which took me back to my eikaiwa teaching days in Yokohama. A student had been living in Osaka for a while and came home to visit, bearing gifts. For us teachers, he presented a box full of Unchi-kun Gumi, which probably translates best into “Mr. Gummy Poop” - a gummy cola-flavoured lolly.

Aha! Australians weren’t the weird ones eating unchi-shape things! The Japanese were the weird ones eating unchi-shaped things! Advertised unchi-shaped things!The box of candy was probably finished by the staff in less than a week. There were plenty of gags and attempts to gross out the Japanese staff with practical jokes. The lollies themselves were fairly edible. Kinda more-ish. It was a challenge to try and peel them out in one piece though. Generally you had to mangle the plastic mould with your teeth to get a mouthful. Well…half a mouthful.After the box was emptied, there was a huge amount of discarded packaging. What a waste. Reminded me of this clip from Futurama:

And on a side note: I love the Internet. Doing a search for unchi turned up this completely useless factoid: there’s a children’s book called Minna Unchi, or, Everyone Poops. Good grief. I’m not sure that I believe that the author’s name was really Taro Gomi. It’s kinda like saying his name was “John Poopies”. Only in Japan.

UPDATE: I’ve been told by my nee-san that Taro Gomi is a perfectly feasible name to have. Just a rather unfortunate one.

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