mamachari

Just came back from the iSummit ‘08 in Sapporo. We had a great week up in the north. The weather was great and the temperature there was about 10℃ cooler than it is in Tokyo. I slept well too.

This is how I felt when I got off the plane this afternoon…

I am in Sapporo attending this year’s iSummit. I guess I am supposed to liveblog but I have never done it and don’t even know how so decided not to even try and waste time.

I caught some interesting speeches during the keynote session. The highlight of Day 1 for was an intriguing keynote speech given by Mohamed Nanabhay from Al Jazeera, who is also a member of GV Linuga Arabic. He provided a concrete set of information that is based on their own experience. Hope to get a hold of of his slides later if I can.

Tired and more later.

M. Nanabhay presenting

I don’t know what it is but I have certain obsession with 3-way junctions and Tokyo is full of them.

3-way junction near Dentsu-in, Bunkyo

Haven’t got around to updating this blog for quite a while…

While I was away for two weeks last month, my little niwa was backhacked by miscellaneous biological organisms…
Here is the evidential photo↓

What can I say… I think it’s a little too late to do anything. There is a 2 metre tall bamboo right in the middle of the swiss chard patch now and I see no swiss chard left there… The spinach and the lettuce are all taken over by weeds.

Tokyo summers are unbearably hot if you only spend a whole day thinking about the heat. But if you know all the good stuff happening in Tokyo that distracts you from the heat, Tokyo is a cool place.

I went to the famous morning glory market in Iriya in the morning and then to Bunkyo’s hozuki market later in the afternoon.

guys selling morning glory at the market

Ones with white stripes are my favourite

Morning glory pots on display

“certificate” of the Iriya brand

Bunkyo’s hozuki market is not as big as the one in Asakusa but it too has a hint of the Edo summer.

Bunkyo hozuki market

with a glass Edo wind bell of course.

I went down to a nearby grocery store, Seiyu, to grab some food for lunch, and I found sliced Nile perch in the seafood section. This is the first time I ever saw Nile perch sold in a store. They were selling it for 97 yen a piece. It’s less than a dollar (US or Canadian). Seeing the meat was shocking enough, but seeing people buying it was pretty strange…far more so than whale meat. The film by Sauper has received a lot of criticism, but apart from the controversy over the accuracy and objectivity/subjectivity and what not, the fact that the fish caught in Lake Victoria in inland Africa is exported to a country that is surrounded by the sea seems so absurd.

Slices of Nile perch at a super market

“Nile perch: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda (Lake Victoria)” reads the label

When Chris left for Hong Kong in March last year when he met Oiwan by fluky chance, we had no idea where the outcome of this trip would lead us to. Even when we met Boris for the first time for a nice and spicy lunch, we had no clue what we were getting into. Then 14 months later, we were in Budapest, attending the GV Summit.

I am not going to write about what happened and what was discussed during the summit as it has already been a couple of weeks since it ended and many people already wrote posts about it.

I have to admit, I did not know what to expect of this occasion and I was totally unprepared and unequipped when I walked into the conference room. Before the summit, I had only met a handful of the people who were present at the meeting Everybody else seemed so virtual simply because I had never met them. Also, this was the first time I ever attended a conference like this, so I didn’t know what people normally do when they attend one. Even after the whole event ended, I was still madly going through the endless list of people I met, trying to digest every detail of the discussions and keeping track of how much forint I had left in my wallet. Maybe I should have simply enjoyed the occasion and not tried to digest everything I heard and saw. But there was something unusual and surreal about it that didn’t let me do so.

Just looking back the past 14 months, the way I ended up in Budapest seems pretty quirky. More so, to think about the fact that I had been “working virtually” with all these people I had never met is almost unbelievable. And the moment these virtual people suddenly became real was just surreal. This fact I think was what I could not digest.

今気づいたのだけど、さっき投稿したエントリの日付が6月28日になってました。サーバの問題？Wordpressの日付が10日遅れてるみたいで、タイムスタンプを今日の日付に直そうとしたら、「投稿予約」となってしまいました。と言うわけで、この一つ前のエントリは7月8日に投稿したものです。

Just noticed now that the clock on my WordPress is screwed up. It’s 10 days behind. After I posted my previous entry I noticed that it was timestamped June 28, 2008. Haven’t figured out how to fix it. Maybe the server? Anyway, my previous entry was posted on July 8, 2008.

I know it has been two months since I last updated my blog. But I was madly trying to get all my work done and clean the apartment and pack before I left for Budapest to attend GVO Summit (June 27 - 30) and I really had not time for anything else. Lots of things happened since my last update and it is unfortunate that I simply could not record those events (including getting my bike towed and buying a new bike, and eventually get my old bike back, yaddi yaddi yadda…)

Anyway, after attending the meeting for four straight days and travelling for more than 24 hours from Budapest to Tokyo, I really don’t feel like going anywhere for a while, or at least not until the iSummit…

More later…

↓This is how small my “garden” is. Just wide enough for me to walk through and turn around and maybe scratch my head.