Nicolas, Amrita, Elena performing at 聖母幼稚園 (Seibo youchien) Christmas 2013 gathering. Nicolas’s performance was very impressive, Amrita enjoyed being on-stage, and Elena was delighted to join her mother’s club live.
Merry Christmas 2013 to all!
Tag: japan
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Is recent IT talk just a show of hands
I recently attended Oracle Events at Westin Hotel here in Ebisu. My topic of interest was to see what’s the future for a product we’re using that now has been acquired by Oracle.
Quite interestingly the first session from a senior, hi-ranking Oracle official failed to woo me. I mean, c’mon. Just piggybacking on stuff that’s so prevalent nowadays with Apple doesn’t really make a case for Oracle to progress ahead. Big words were just thrown out on every page, every sentence. I sometimes wonder do these guys actually value much as far as the company is concerned. Oracle seems to be calling their new (but nothing novel) buzz as “Oracle Experience” to demonstrate an end to end service to their customers. Every experience you know about purchasing a thing is the exact same thing Oracle wants to offer?
Just what is the customer these days? A lump of flesh, an idiot, or a baby who needs your constant attention, and love to continue using your product? Much recently, the Apple has garnered alot of attention, craze, hysteria within the so call consumer market. Now everyone wants to try it out – suddenly everyone’s got ‘it’.
The Oracle Event was a prelude to their sudden attention to their customers. Surprisingly, I didn’t come across a single presentation that meant anything for the ‘customer’. Every statement was proclaimed as seen from where Oracle stands. At times I felt trouble just bearing the innate nonsense these guys keep churning about every keynote presentation they make.
Make a genuinely good product that last forever, satisfy what the customer needs, and …
just stay out of the way for f*k’s sake.
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Jazzersice Performance by Amrita, Nicolas at Lala Garden, Tsukuba on Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day, May 13th was a celebration in Lala Garden, Tsukuba. The junior jazzersice group had a dance performance where Amrita, and Nicolas gave the public a short sweet performance on music.
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Farewell dinner party for Jose
Enjoyed an extremely wonderful dinner party for Jose. Iain, Sasha, Sandy, Dinesh, kids and us enjoyed it alot. Was very interesting to meet new friends, have a nice little chat, mixed with rare Moldovan dinner, and special Moldova wines, of course! Second round was with Turkish, Indian sweets, and hot cup of delightful Turkish tea.
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Horse ass
No offense, but this is an actual name of a bar in Japan 馬尻 (Majiri) means literally Horse’s ass! Wow, wonder what you get in the bar?!?
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Miyagi earthquake
Miyagi earthquake will be the worst earthquake in history of Japan. Magnitude 8.8 ! It has been an extremely devastating, painful, worst disaster. I was on the 19F of my Tokyo office when around 3:00 PM the vibrations started. At first this was expected to last 5 seconds, but even after 20-30 secs everybody on the floor started to get anxious. You couldn’t even stand properly on your feet without holding onto something. This was in Tokyo, imagine Miyagi !
Anybody close to the windows pointed out the black smoke coming off towards direction of Odaiba.
People started calling their near ones, but all mobile phones, even landlines were jammed due to instant surge in telephone traffic. I was getting a little nervous too, I couldn’t reach my family in Ibaragi, Tsukuba and my wife, 2 kids weren’t out of danger, because just somewhere I heard Ibaragi was also hit with M5 tremor.
I was lucky that day I came to Tokyo with my bike, thus I managed to squeeze past long lines of cars, trucks, buses, people with a total 3 hour trip back home. Power supply, water, gas was cut-out, and the city was in total darkness by the time I reached home, finding most of the people from our building taking shelter in their cars with necessary supplies of water, blankets, food. It was a pitiful sight to see people gathering their effects and preparing for worst instead.
Fortunately we spend the night inside our house, with lights out having the torch keep us from dashing into something. No water, no gas made things bitter, and cold food was of no interest to bite on. Near-n-dear ones from outside Japan tried reaching us, and got through only at middle of night by 1:00AM when I could talk to my brother and assure him that all was fine.
The power came back around 4:00 AM morning, and it was definitely a relief seeing bright sunlight pour through the windows, giving ray of hope in this terrible situation. Very often I heard ambulances, fire-trucks rushing through the street, and with constant tremors hitting throughout the day, it has been an unhappy time for all people of Japan. I decided to fill gas, and keep my car ready in case.
All shops are closed, the ones which are available are already depleted on basic supplies such as milk, eggs, even bottled water ! A nearby barber shop was in shambles, and I don’t think anybody would want to work in that place again.
While writing this, I already have sensed 2 light tremors during which I briefly stopped writing. It has been on and off throughout today, and I pray, hope that this gets over soon, that people missing get found soon, and Japan gets over this bad memory soon!
-Update 2011/03/13
Today has been a very hectic day. Water supply stopped, and I had to jump instantly to get first a container to fill the water in, which I got after a good search in a nearby supermarket, because all containers were SOLD! Can you believe this? It’s as if this place is at war, people stocking (un)necessary supplies in extra, no drinking water available, one guy bought a whole basket of energy drinks in small cans – You got to salvage, and have what you can!
My next stop was to get usable water for washing ourselves, cleaning. There too was a long queue of people waiting in turn, bringing everything imaginable to garbage cans, to plastic bags to small jugs to get water in. I got my 20L of water, got back home in time just to witness a small mishap occurred at one point. A whole truck supplying water skidded alongside a turn, and turned over – water gone, hopefully nobody was injured I suppose.
It’s a positive thing to see the whole city geared up in helping each other, trying to save themselves through this situation. My next thought was to fill gas in my second car, just in case. This turned out to be a pretty long wait for over an hour just to get my chance to fill.
2 gas stations already have closed, some are working, but tomorrow’s trip seems to be in next city to get supplies, and get reserves as well.
No supplies as well, everybody has stocked all possible things to avoid getting into troubles later. What should we do?
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Enjoy winter in Japan
Pleasant, but chilly winter. Our garden was superb view for kids especially when it was snow !
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Happy New Year 2011 – Wishes to my wife
My best wishes, and sincere feelings for my wife Elena, expressed as a little poem.
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Nicolas performing You should be dancing tonight
Hilarious, isn't it?