19 Feb 99

Y is it that when I see one digit extended, I feel insulted?

Y is it that when two digits are reduced to nothing, I should feel fear?

Y2K indeed

351 days ‘til, and dreading.

The daily commute begins. Walk across the street to the train station. This "street" has four eastbound lanes and eight westbound. It’s sort of a one-and-a-half way street. In the station, buy a ticket from the vending machine, through the turnstiles, up a flight, crab-stride through the outflow to cross the passage and escalator up to the platform. I go to the station at street level, because on the second day here, I tried it underground. For about seventy meters of a ten-meter wide corridor, I was the only person walking toward the station. A shoulder-to-shoulder flowing mass of humanity was pouring towards me. This mere pebble then had to cross to the other side of the lava flow to reach stairs at the end. It was scarier than Y2K.

The trains follow the left lane rules like the cars here do. It still surprises. I take the JR Loop Line for three stops local, or one stop express – and step across the platform to another train. This train merely shuttles back and forth between the Nishikujo station and the Sakurajima station adjacent to the site. At the station there are shuttle busses to each area, and another to the USJCo and USI offices. Door-to-door, it’s about twenty-five minutes.

Walk up to the second floor offices, use my shoehorn to get into the cube and start decimating emails. Fergus announces that he has finally read through all 417 in his in-box. Time to grab a shuttle and go to the Area 2 GC [General Contractor] offices. We’re talking T2. We work on ways to support speakers, catwalk massages for targets, support of side screens, etc.

Lunch – we get back to our canteen just as the kitchen is closing down. Greg gets the pilaf with seafood; I get the beef with vegetables, two Avocados, and a croissant. I pick off the beef, and give it to Greg. Now I’m looking at ten haricots verts, and a quartered baby bok choy, two avocadoes and a croissant. I leave with an avocado in my pocket and a song in my heart. I think it’s Chopin’s Funeral March.

Bus back to Area 2. More ‘round and ‘round.

Off to the hotel. The one nice thing of meeting in Area 2 at the end of the day is that they have no railroad shuttle. Their entry is adjacent to the station. If you ever have a hankering for calling Fergus when it’s midnight in LA, here’s where you can catch him.

Return to the hotel. I look in the yellow pages for dinner possibilities. Lo and behold, here is an Indian restaurant next door to the Hilton, two basements down. Ashoka is located in the round hotel’s Maru Biru restaurant plaza. I order vegetarian thali and some wine. Dinner starts with a complementary wafer-bread made from a well-spiced garbanzo flour. The thali platter has a scoop of Japanese rice, a vegetable fritter, and bowls of aloo ghobi (‘taters and cauliflower), sag paneer (spinach and cheese), chana dia (yellow lentils), rhaita (yogurt), carrot halwah, and a portion of naan spread across the top. They are generous with the heat. Dessert is a very substantial portion of their version of ice cream – frozen condensed milk is the base.

It was all among the best Indian I have had to date here, but a bit pricey – and the better dressed clientele here are an indicator of that.

I don’t mean to give the impression that food is all that there is. It’s just that the culture and language are sufficiently different as that it seems the people coming here are settlers of a new frontier. The necessities are the focus of their existence – clothing, food, shelter, sex, and a source of sustenance. In most cases they already have clothing, and sex is a nonPC subject. So, everybody talks about the housing they got or are thinking of getting; where they ate or are thinking of eating, and where they work or what they think of the latest Dilbert.

I’m not looking for housing, since I’m not relocating, and the paper at the Hilton doesn’t carry Dilbert. That leaves me with food and this journal. So, when I’m not eating, I’m regurgitating my day. Life has its symmetries.

Ahhh.h.h… another day beckons! I hear another meal calling! If the weather holds up, I’m off to Kyoto.

Udon Saga