Damn, it’s already been a year since the last time I got old? I guess your perception of time goes with age, eh?
Honestly, the first half of the year was absolute crap. Things got worse before they got better - as always happens with any good story. Overall the year was worth it though as in the end I got a new job, car, out of school, and am no longer in constant college-student poverty.
But just upping my standard of living from crap to normal isn’t enough. Well, it is, as long as I ensure the next year of my life is going to be even better. I’m not talking the typical start your 23rd (or any other) year with drinking till you don’t remember a damn thing, something better.
I needed to think outside the box...or perhaps outside the country?
I’m being shipped overseas – to Japan. Yes, kick-ass. Copious amounts of ass.
Lockheed needs some people over there, not for a long duration, only one to two months, but still long enough to enjoy real sushi without having to pay cool-tax to eat it. Needless to say when I found out I’d be going I was dancing around like a little schoolgirl with a crush (er, um, yeah, something like that).
The dust is still settling on these plans, as they are very rushed (is there any other way?); however it looks like I’ll be leaving sometime around Dec 28. I’m definitely going to be there until the end of Jan with the possibility of the assignment lasting till the end of Feb or maybe even a little bit longer. I can only be over there 90 days without a visa, so it won’t be any longer then that.
I’m not quiet sure how everything is going to work out, what I’m going to be able to see, etc. The work is in Okinawa (the island to the south). This is good because things should be a lot cheaper then they would be if I was in Tokyo - meaning I can actually live off the daily allotted money. I’m going to try to swing it so I can at least stop in Tokyo for a day or so on the way back though, just to get lots of pictures and be in Otaku heaven.
Work’s going be boring, at least from the details I heard. The work days are 12 hours long, and there is not internet access on-site. On the up side, I’ll be getting three-day weekends. I guess that balances things out. I’ll at least have plenty of time to see the island with those weekends, aside from the coding I’ll still have to do.
Yeah, heh coding – go across the ocean and I can’t escape my free-lance work. As such, I finally invested in a laptop last (they have DSL and a laptop in the apartment we stay in, but it’s a Lockheed laptop so no way I can get Photoshop, SSH etc on it). I got the Compaq v2413 – which I have now affectionately dubbed "Ping" (its silver, MegaTokyo character, read the damn comic). It’s a nice little AMD64 Turion processor widescreen laptop for about $1k after all the annoying rebates. I wanted a PowerBook, but the one I spec’ed out would have been over $2k. I can’t justify spending that much on a laptop right now when I still have a nice desktop (did I mention I love my G5?). Plus I didn’t want to spend all the money I’d be making on the project on the laptop. I hate having to go back to windows (it feels like I betrayed a close friend), but the AMD64 makes it speedy enough so it feels like the G5, just running CrapOS(tm). Pretty screen too.
Oh, needless to say, don’t try to catch me on my cell once as I will not get the message.
