Day 91,
Garam Masala Scallops in Lemon Cream Sauce:
1 very full plate on spaghetti
Ingredients:
Scallops, 15 or so 1 inch scallops, or larger ones if preferred.
2 Tbl Lemon Juice
2 large cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped.
1/2 cup Heavy cream or half n half,
1 Tbl garam masala
chili powder as needed
sugar to balance the lemon, just a pinch.
Sear the scallops in a very hot pan with 1 Tbl oil.
Add garam masala and stir briskly to coat.
Add 2 Tbl Lemon juice and garlic
Simmer briefly, stirring to coat the scallops thoroughly. They need to take in the lemon juice.
Add cream and simmer for several minutes over low heat, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Season to taste with chili powder.
Sugar can be added to balance the tartness of the lemon.
…
Day 101,
Well, life has been a good bit busier lately, as you may
have guessed by the extended hiatus…
I’ve got only a few more days here, nineteen to be exact, and I’ve had
real actual work to do. What a pleasant
change. Not that it feels all that
thrilling to be slaving away on that same FPGA that I’ve been working on for
over a month now, but it’s at least a nice change not to be counting the
seconds till the end of the workday. My
birthday was yesterday, and I went out the night before with Jen and a bunch of
NOVA teachers to a restaurant in Sagami-ono, one stop away from
More importantly, perhaps, I’ve been re-learning how to type: a week or so ago my “ergonomic” keyboard crapped out on me due to getting wet in a typhoon and I was so uncomfortable within a half day of typing on a regular keyboard that I decided that it was time to go ahead and try something radical. Why not just buy another of the same one for fifty bucks? Well, with all the typing and such that I’ve been doing at work I’ve already been in continuous mild discomfort most of the time -- mostly the right wrist from mousing/using the control and alt keys on the ergo keyboard. With permanent employment looming just around the corner I’m realizing that a more drastic solution is in order. In my browsings online I saw most of the old standbys, curvy keyboards that only address slight problems of wrist alignment, too-slow chording things like the Twiddler, and other such. Then I stumbled upon www.datahand.com , which really captured my attention with its extensive corporate accounts and incredibly detailed and honest testimonials, one of which was from a Caltech acquaintance and soccer-nerd come dot-com jackpot winner Dave Zito. That was the strongest selling point. Anyhow go check it out, it’s beautiful and expensive system that completely reshapes your interaction with the computer – all of the keys surround your fingertips and your hands and arms stay *completely* still. The key arrangement is qwerty-like, but a few keys are done with different fingers, like T, N, B, and Y. All of the traditional extended keyboard is built in using shift keys, and there’s even a mouse-like feature, although it’s far too coarse for serious mousing. Still, getting around windoze without having to ever take your hands off the keyboard is a big relief when you suffer from chronic wrist troubles. With a lot more practice (I’m touch typing at maybe 10 to 15 WPM after about three hours of drilling in as many days) I should get back to and exceed my previous speed of about 100 plus WPM on the normal board. Still, the subtlety involved in matching an ergonomic solution to my particular usage habits and requirements is phenomenal – you start to appreciate the easy access to those number key labels when you try learning to type on a device where looking doesn’t even help! Sure there are charts that show the keys, but it’s a distinctly different brain function – see, map to correct finger, press right direction instead of “see and strike”. But the plus side is manifold – faster eventual top speed, greatly reduced fatigue and pain, and of course, no way to cheat by looking at the keyboard like I always did as a kid. Honestly I see no real problem with that, since I learned to type lightning fast except during transcription… I mean fuck it, we have scanners and administrative assistants for that shit. It’s been super-neat to sit and run through my flat keyboarding motions and realize how eerily automatic it is for me even with eyes closed and no actual keyboard in front of me. The Data Hands setup (which I received in three days via courier, and with exceptional customer service) is such that after only three days I have a comparable spatial knowledge of the device already – your fingers never move more than a quarter inch, and each letter is a unique stroke. The hardest parts are: learning to make small lateral movements with independent fingers, learning to use different fingers for those four displaced letters, and teaching the damn things that pressing a key isn’t just a blind stab at a general locale, it’s a specific motion N,E,S, or W. I keep pressing the N instead of the K which is done with the same finger in a different direction. It is SO cool to feel my typing speed increasing even as I key this very paragraph – it’s really surprisingly rewarding to feel like you’re mastering a totally new and yet totally familiar skill. Kind of the feeling I had when I first learned to hang glide, only way nerdier and sans adrenaline. I had really gotten it about right in my dreams of flying as a young kid… The muscles were honestly sort of pre-trained despite a complete void of real information. Dreamstate is a very powerful thing.
Day 108,
Just 11 more days till I go home, and things are wrapping up nicely with a couple of minor exceptions. First, I just met a few more folks I’d like to have gotten to hang out with more, in particular an Aussie-Filipina inline thrasher girl, Charisma, who I’m going out to dinner with tomorrow. Ladies, take note: if you want my instant approval say the following things on the phone, preferably with an australian accent:
Me: “So is there anything I should avoid in picking a restaurant, etc?”
You: “No, unfortunately I’ll eat pretty much anything”
“Okay, then how do you feel about expensive food?”
“Like what kind of expensive?”
“Well, you’ve got your overpriced normal food, your expensive nice food, and then your high cuisine. I’m thinking in the latter category.”
“Like…?”
“Somewhere in the realm of 7000 to 10000 yen [50-80 dollars]… I really want to eat at this last Iron Chef restaurant…” <cringe for ‘are you nuts’ response>
“Sure, sounds good.”
Made my day.
Just my luck to meet her AFTER I’ve gone to the other two Iron Chef’s places :P
Also, I can’t seem to get the phone number I have for our
family friends here in
Other than that, things are well. I have the board I’m working on at work
finally up and running, I have started trying to figure out how to get all my
stuff home, which will probably make use of some bookrate mail to clear some
space in my pack and involve sending my luggage to the airport a day early
using a delivery service, and I am whittling away steadily at the list of
things to eat and places to go that I have compiled over the last few
weeks. It’s a short list, actually. I oughta try and find some
My typing speed is increasing steadily through simple practice, not training at all, just writing emails and whatnot. I haven’t measured, since I type poorly from any source but my head and always have, but I’d reckon I’m getting up towards 30 wpm and increasing speed rather remarkably quickly. Let’s hear it for neuronal plasticity. Take that, Chomsky :P I even noticed my fingers making the wrong movements on the flat keyboard a few minutes ago when I was entering a few quick commands that way, which says to me that the reprogramming is really working, although the independent dual proficiency is obviously not there yet. This would make a REALLY interesting brain study.
Here’s the best part, though: it looks like I may be able to work at IDEO after I get back from my wanderings in January. Having heard from a couple of guys now working at Applied Minds I’m a bit skeptical about their treatment of new hires – hiring people as consultants with no benefits for 6 months or more, and being unresponsive to make the transition to fulltime. It’s not like they’re unjustified in doing so, as recent grads tend to eat up a lot of time, but it reminded me a bit of how Steve was treated at a couple of jobs shortly before he committed suicide. Not all that related, but I know how soul-sucking it is to have to wrangle over money in any context. IDEO I know for certain is on the level. I dig that. Even more than that, though, I dig the ability to live in SF and commute by bike and train! Would be very nice, though I’ll miss the SoCal flying…
Day 109,
Improbable Pasta Sauce:
1 medium tomato, in chunks, peeled if you’re into that sort of thing
half a *head* of garlic, peeled smashed and chopped.
half onion, chopped
1 small can of mini corn, ~ 10 spears
olive oil
cooking sake (other wines would probably work, but this way you don’t need any sugar)
black pepper, a pinch
Toss everything together in a wide flat bottomed pan, add a few Tbls of olive oil, and turn on the heat, full blast.
Pour in a half cup of rice wine, stir a bit, and cook over top heat, stirring every so often until the liquid is nicely orange from the tomato juice and oil.
It should taste a bit sweet and salty even without adding salt or sugar.
When it’s got a nice color and has condensed to your satisfaction, maybe 10 minutes total cooking time, throw it over a bowl of pasta and chow down.
Bread recommended for sopping.
Makes a large single serving.
Mmmmmm.
I love AAA. I just ordered roadmaps of every state I may pass through on my upcoming trip, about 20 maps and 35 or so possible states, all for free because I’m a AAA member. Maps rock. If only I could get topos that way… It’s looking like Mattie may not join me until the drive down the east coast, so I may be on my own all the way through the west/midwest. A bit daunting, but on the plus side it looks like legendary flying at Point of the Mountain Utah is one very long driving day away from SF or Auburn or Reno or wherever the heck my first stop will be. If I’m alone I’ll be much more able to fly without inconveniencing my companion. I still need someplace to stay in Utah/CO/Wyoming, though. I can camp but it’d be nice to have some folks to visit.
Day 111,
Alrighty, we're really gettin' down to the wire here, and I'm finding myself much more interested in reading my last few books (Empire Falls, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles) than going out around Tokyo. Mostly it's cuz I'd rather be in the mountains but don't have the time to get there due to wanting to hang out with various friends here before I split. Not that I'm sweating it particularly. I'm only really frustrated about one thing now, and that's my inability to get in contact with these family friends -- I've gotten no email response, and their phone line appears to be out of service, despite its having worked when I called it from the states in early July.
I went to eat at the restaurant of Iron Chef Chinese Chen Kenichi last night. I was starting to wonder, after a series of 7 or 8 flawless high-priced dinners in the last year or two, if maybe I'm really just an undiscriminating softy who will always like what's put in front of him if the price tag is high enough... But last night I dispelled that misguided notion. The meal that we had was out-and-out *bad*. Too much in each course, flavors that ranged from unexciting to downright unpleasant, and a lack of organization that one would be appalled to find in a 2 dollar taqueria, much less a prestigious restaurant. Boy, it was really pretty amazingly bad. Don't ever go there :|
I went out and walked around Machida for a while trying to see if there was anything cool for me to buy, since the cash I have in the bank here is going to be devalued by about 20 percent in the conversion back to dollars. Sadly, I can't seem to find much. I'm not ready to spend the big bucks on a digital SLR camera, and it looks like the accessory stuff like tripods, which I could actually use, are both far more expensive here than in the states and a pain in the ass to transport back given my rather limited baggage allowances. It's all the paraglider's fault...
So if there are any particular Japanese records you want, now's the time to let me know.
Tomorrow is my final Japanese lesson at work. In all likelihood it could be my last Japanese lesson ever, actually. I doubt if I'll ever live here again for long enough to merit extended academic study. I'm also hoping I can get somewhere with the board I've been working on by the end of the week so that I can leave on a positive note. Apparently we're going out eating/drinking some night this week for my farewell party -- the restaurant selection has been left in the competent hands of Matsui-san, the other younger guy in my section. Should be good eats at the very least.
I went out yesterday before I met Charisma for the bad
dinner, and ran into Koji, my Dutch-Japanese skater friend, on the train to
shinjuku completely by accident. That
really doesn't happen very often in
I'm really hankerin' for home now. Need... Burrito.
Day 117,
Three days left. I
had lunch with Reno Mogami today, my high school Japanese teacher who’s now
working as a diplomat for Uncle Sam, at a very tasty french restaurant in
I finished work yesterday, and managed to leave everything in a very reasonable state. I spent about four hours trying to clean up all the files for the FPGA project, and finally managed to get it all working and neat. One thing in particular that I’ve learned these last few months is the importance of really careful version control when you’re developing code for FPGAs, especially when the software you’re using has a nasty tendency not to save critical files… But all is well. I didn’t get the system running completely, but it’s well on the way and the problems are not of my creation, at least. All of those ones I was able to solve.
The delivery service apparently has to come pick up my bags tomorrow even though my flight isn’t until Tuesday, another unfortunate consequence of being in the boonies. Takes them two days to be able to guarantee that my bags will actually make it to the airport. Sheesh. This of course means that I must have everything packed in about 16 hours from now, and I should really sleep sometime in there, too. I’ve got most of the clothing done now, which is good, so I only really have to toss all the little stuff in my big pack and then figure out what I actually want to bring as carryon. Hopefully they won’t bug me about my carry-on case this time. Getting all this crap through customs is really gonna be a bitch, though. It’ll be tough to fit it all on one cart. I’m very glad that I shipped all those books home now. I’ve got the guitar in its soft case, wrapped in a bunch of clothing, and I think it should be fine. I mean, it’s already pretty beat, so if it takes a few lumps, I’m sure it will only gain character.
This is my last long entry from
If I write anything else after today it’ll likely be short and typed on the laptop keyboard.
So, how I feel about leaving:
In short, very good. I want to get started on having a real life
of some sort, and that necessitates being somewhere that I know I can be happy
in the long term. Which
at the moment is
I guess this is pretty much the end of the line for the Morgan Venable Japan Experience.
Tune in next time for my rantings from the road.
-- morgan.