Brother! Now THAT'S what I call SERVICE!

An interesting thing happened today, and I guess I could make a blog of it.

I was sitting here doing some work and all of a sudden it sounded like a fax was going to come in on that new used beast I bought, then there was this long beeeeeeep and that was it. I looked over... no fax. Hmmm... 

Then I saw the display was blinking on the monitor of my recycled Brother MyMio Fax/Printer/Scanner/Colour Copier beast with some sentences and a number. After I figured out what it said (it can be extremely difficult to read blinking, scrolling katakana), "call call center", I did and guess what? Apparently "Error 41" means that the printer head died and the machine must be repaired.

The tech guy asked me some standard questions (is it attached to a computer, does it have a cordless handset, what is the serial number on back, etc.). He also asked me if I bought the long term warranty on it. I said no and told him truthfully that I just purchased it a few weeks ago from a recycle shop. When he told me that the printer head was broken, I ben thinking that I would have to either take it back to the recycle shop (they gave me a month return-warranty on it), or pay for repairs...

And then... then... the guy said to me that I have the choice of either having it repaired FOR FREE, or that they would send me the next generation FOR FREE!

Holy smokes! I did not expect that, especially since I was not the original owner, nor did I purchase any X-years special guarantee that they usually offer as an "add on" to electronic products (one year included, three years for XXX extra, five years for YYY extra, etc.)

In addition to that he ALSO told me they will send new ink cartridges (four colours) FOR FREE as well!

I had to ask him to repeat it a few times in different ways because he was using "keigo", or polite Japanese which can become confusing as there are some different words and verbs and expressions that are not used in ordinary Japanese. But I finally realized in my daftness that they were actually offering to replace this machine with the next generation... for free!

Wow! Imagine that! I bought this used amazing beast for about $80 (the latest generations are about $400), it dies, and I get a NEW one (not latest generation I don't think, but still new). For free!

It was shipped yesterday, arrived today at 11am, and all I need to do is package this old one up in the box that the other one comes in, and send it back FOR FREE. Talk about the Universe being nice to me! I love you Universe!!

The tech guy then apologized profusely for the inconvenience (huh? inconvenience?? who? where?), and he proceeded to tell me that the newer model had a smaller footprint, and the paper was loaded from the underside on an internal tray as opposed to sitting up vertically in the back which makes it all smaller in general. He again apologized for the fact that thicker paper, or cards might not go smoothly through the machine. So he apologized for that potential inconvenience in the future as well!

Wow! Talk about something cool happening today!

In Japanese we have a phrase that looks like this:　　不幸中の幸い。

It is pronounced FU KOU CHUU NO SAIWAI ("foo co chew no sigh why" if I type it out phonetically for those of you who do not know how Japanese vowels are pronounced) and means "from misfortune comes fortune".

And that is exactly what this was!

Now THAT'S what I call BLOW MY SOCKS OFF CUSTOMER SERVICE, Brother!

I love you!

Cam

P.S.  13:51.... It took about 2.5 hours in total to get it all unpacked set up, installed test printed (wow! Good ultra fine quality photo printing!!), and the old stuff packed up and the courier called. Surprisingly the old software uninstalled and the new stuff installed with absolutely no glitches whatsoever. Even the network printers automatically found it! It's back to business as usual.

Dreamscape: Torn Apart Together (4) [Waking Up]

And now, two hours after waking from this dream to find myself writing characters on a "gossamer blackboard" in the air for Carrie's kids, in what would apparently be one of many "travelling lessons" from me to many children and adults alike, the dream fades from my mind as the spring birds continue their unbelievably LOUD cacophony that awakens me every morning about 3:30am as they themselves awaken with the rising of the sun.

Oh the joys of paper-thin walls and single-paned glass windows where you can hear the neighbour flush their toilet, or the baby crying in the night... and they can hear you ranting and mumbling in your sleep!

I guess it is time to get up and get the morning rituals started, and stretch out the kinks in my neck that have formed from sitting propped up in bed, scribbling this dreamscape into my bedside journal on my knee. The last time I remembered my dreams enough to write in my Dream Journal was ... *flipping back to previous writing* ... "The Reunion" back in February 1998. I was still eating tons of carbohydrates back then and was having a ton of these kinds of very "memorable" dreams. 1998 was when I first began experimenting with carb-cutting, and I am so glad I did!

Yesterday I took my BCAAs during my pilates after an hour of mountain biking and I knew that I would awaken from bizarre dreams, with cotton mouth (yep) and an extreme, deep-set feeling of "I'm so hungry I could puke" (yep) feeling that has come on without fail every time I have ever carb-loaded "for energy" at meals. I know now beyond the shadow of a doubt that all of the weird side-effects from carbohydrates are not from the sugars themselves, but from the primary cause: insulin. I experience the exact same side effects with the BCAAs and low-carb meals, so that has to be it!

I am so damn hungry right now that I could eat a Cthulu monster!

Have a wonderful day! After transcribing this nine page manuscript onto the computer I think I'll go for a ride on my low-tech bicycle and see what nature has in store for me today. And to hell with this cold that has me still achy in the joints (but finally recovering after five days, an extremely rare event these past 10 years since I started on EFAs...)

I learned when I had my triple herniated disc pain and could barely walk for a year that there is pain and discomfort that "has value", and there is that which does not. Sitting in the house feeling sick and miserable is "no value suffering". Since we always get better as these things run their natural course, why not have some enjoyment during the pain or suffering and make the best of it so that time turns from a waste, to "valuable time"? That's what I believe!

Ow! Crap! Cooler morning... humidity... Calf cramp!!!!

This ends the final installment that I wrote in my Dream Journal on May 10th, 2008.

I love you!

P.S. No yo-yos were used as weapons in this dream.

ThoseSneakyJapanese... Baby!

A couple of nights ago we heard a newborn crying at night next door (opposite direction of Dickhead, thank god! We don't need three generations of dickheads living next to us, as two is two too many).

Mayu: "Is that a baby crying next door?"

Me: (listening) "It sure sounds like one, but it couldn't be theirs, as she hasn't been pregnant."

Mayu: "True, true..."

Me: "Maybe a relative is visiting..."

Well, just now, as I am finally putting away the coffee, olive oil and cashews that I bought I hear a bunch of kids playing next door. I look outside and see two of the neighbourhood girls holding this brand new ... baby!

So I grabbed my camera and took this photo:

The girls saw me and I waved. I asked if it's the neighbour's baby and they said yes!

My jaw dropped.

I closed my mouth and I asked when it was born and she responded, 2008, March 14th.

My jaw dropped...

Then the little boy next door who is just a few years old, but old enough to not stop talking saw me and said, "I'm a big brother now!"

My jaw dropped...

Well, I went outside to the ruckus and congratulated the mom and the sister in-law (they live here both families on the same short street just four houses away from each other), and the grandma who always comes over and does all their laundry, and house cleaning, etc. every day (and has been doing as long as we've been here).

And I had to ask... "WHEN on earth were you pregnant????" And she laughed and said that's what everyone in the neighbourhood has been asking her. She said that she was here until the last month when she took leave and went back to her parent's place. Then she had the baby, stayed there for a while and just recently came back here (that's how they do it in Japan).

We HAVE seen her over the past 10 months... but never even once did it ever occur to us that she might have been pregnant!

I mean, I've been exposed during my two decades of being here (as most likely Matt and Dunnster will have experienced), cute coworkers, female friends, etc. who are "single" every time you ask them, and then the next thing you know they are going from "single" to "just married"! You have to ask yourself "when did boyfriend come in?" Usually Japanese women tend to be "single" or "I have lots of boyfriends" because they don't share this stuff with others who are not directly in their circle (even coworkers, believe it or not!). So I'm used to that.

But what I am NOT used to is a family that we chat with when they go to work, when they come home, and whenever we see them (in a blue moon?) to SUDDENLY have a brand spanking new baby!

Well, everyone, meet Ishida Kazuma, the new kid on the block, born March 14th, 2008.

ThoseSneakyJapanese!

I love you!

Cam

P.S. Maybe they're aliens ...

Dead Lift / Dead Tired... *Shrug*

Today I had to go out to a far away food store to get coffee and extra virgin olive oil as the one in Fukui went bankrupt. We cannot find the coffee or the oil at the prices they offer in that direct import store. On my way back I went to Relaim and buckled down to do my "heavy workout". I noted that the last time I was there was on 4/28 so it has been two weeks. I should have gone a week ago, but with my cold last week I didn't want to push it. Also I have been doing more cycling, and a fair bit of pilates recently which kind of keeps me away from the gym, and away from these "big workouts".

In all honestly, I am not a fan of exercising indoors when the weather is fine; I would much rather be out on my bike to tell the truth. So usually during the good weather seasons (like May, June, July, September, October) I spend more time logging elevation, and less time logging kilograms.

But as my workout sessions now are about one week apart from each other (A, B, A, B spread apart by a week each) I get back to each muscle group every two weeks. That's just about right considering the weight I do impacts greatly the frequency at which I can successfully perform it.

I stopped working on my machine at home for several reasons:

1. As I no longer needed to go to the gym, I didn't have any opportunities to meet with anybody at all, and I got pretty damn lonely with no outside communication.
2. The machine forced me to work out with greater and greater gaps between so that I was about at a month between workouts. This had a negative impact on my strength, but I was still too tired to become stronger. Also, my full range of movement decreased dramatically so I went back to the gym and started a hybrid program which seems to work quite well for me.

Today was Workout B day which included a lot of heavy leg work on the machines as well as my dead lifts, and shrugs. Because I am at such insanely heavy loads, it is imperative I focus completely on my task at hand, and am 100% present in what I do. The slightest break from that concentration, the slightest eye movement off to the side.. and well, I hurt my jaw back a month and a half ago and it took several weeks to finaly stop being locked at a funny angle in the morning.

I went to my dentist and got fitted for a custom mouth piece which will probably be ready some time this week. The mouthpiece itself will only cost JPY 5,000 (about USD $50), and the time at the dentist cost me a measly JPY 700 (USD $7.00). Insurance will not cover the soft mouthpiece, but it did cover the visit. I just dropped in, and didn't even have to wait! I love Japanese health care!

Here is a photo I took in the gym today right before I started on this, the heaviest part of my workout.

The large plates are 20kg each ((44lbs), the bar is also 20kg. Medium plates are 10kg ea (22lbs), and so on. Total weight is 205kg (451lbs) for my three sets of dead lifts, and three sets of shrugs.

I had to cut back to this weight as I found that 210kg was jussssst beyond my limit. I tapered back to 200kg for a few sessions, and then worked my way back up to 205kg today.

This heavy workout is what wipes me out for about five days after doing it and why I considered trying the BCAAs. Today I did not take the BCAAs for two reasons: the first being that I did not eat a large lunch and had the insulin started coursing during the workout I would have gotten the "so hungry I could puke" feeling that I felt it would distract me from my task at hand. Secondly, I want to see how my recovery is after this workout. I can tell you that during the workout I started yawning, and now I am having trouble staying awake. This doesn't happen with BCAAs as recovery is very rapid and the extra energy it gives is phenomenal. But we will see how I feel tomorrow, and if I am up to pilates or not.

I did go to McDonald's and eat four cheeseburgers (tossed all but one bottom bun) and two cups of delicious Premium Roast coffee for a whopping total of JPY 500 (USD $5.00).

I love you!

Rip van Cam-El

Dreamscape: Torn Apart Together (3) [Religion/Technology]

Institutionalized religions had completely broken down because, as it turned out, they had not been based on sound principles, but rather on the power games played by all the modern religious leaders, the men and women who desired power and control of their "flock" by twisting the original teachings of all the prophets, the great elders of yore like Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed, Confucius and more.

It was obvious back in the 21st century with all the religious wars, terrorists, etc. that had been going on and how religious sects, splinter groups, fundamentalists and more had twisted the original teachings to suit their needs, and their desired ends. Greed consumed all religion, greed and the desire for power. This unconscious collectiveness could simply not withstand the tests of time, and so they all broke down, and collapsed. Not a single major religion that we knew of in the 21st century remained in tact.

They all still did exist, but in a "purer" form, in small sects, cults, hidden worship grottos and such, much like how Christianity once began thousands of years ago. The good majority of the people had either become agnostic in their unconscious rage, anger and disbelief that "their god" would have the audacity to abandon them, or they had turned to what DID remain resilient (sort of) to what humanity had tried to hard to destroy: the power in nature, or a pure form of "druidism", something similar but different again from the "shintoism" kind of worship found to weakly still exist in 21st century Japan. This kind of belief in the "mother goddess" ran quite deeply among a good portion of people around the world, and in a sense, it united those of different cultures in the exact same way that modern religions of the 21st century divided them.

Technology was that weird blend of ancient/modern mishmash that we might expect to find after the destruction of our present civilization and all the toys and science that went along with it. Pockets of modern wonder had remained, but those pieces of technology were looked on more as magic than anything humanity might have developed in the past, and the users of that technology were considered to be powerful magicians and seers...

This was pretty much the end of the dream, but I still have another three pages of text that I wrote before getting up for the day; it tied the entire experience together with my thoughts so I will include that as part (4) tomorrow. Have a lovely rest of day. I have errands to run, and locks on my auto spare tire to bust off... not to mention coffee and olive oil to purchase while out at my car guy. Then probably the killer heavy lower muscle workout at Relaim as I haven't been there for a while.

I love you!

Cam

Dreamscape: Torn Apart Together (2) [Society]

... We desperately needed the water to survive, but we feared what it brought in our midst, in our minds, and to our social networks ...

I can recall now, although the dream is finally fading after awakening from it 1 1/2 hours ago at 5:10 am, that we were constantly on the move from one ruin to another, sleeping under ruined buildings when we could, making small fires if we were able to find dry things to burn. But we were always on the lookout, always on high alert taking care not to be attacked by other clans, other individuals, other... creatures.

The current biggest problem was that the region we were in had been governed by a vicious military junta for a very long time and the military, and paramilitary forces had carte blanche to do whatever they pleased and nobody on the "outside" could say or do anything to stop them from the horrors they forced their people to endure (this must have come from reading news on current events in Myanmar).

Food aid would be welcomed, then confiscated and never delivered to those people suffering, even though the military and governing warlords always claimed that the food was distributed to those who "needed it most". No outside observers were allowed, no foreign aid workers allowed to follow their deliveries; everything had to be handed over to the powers that ruled the land. Just like what China is doing in Tibet, all news channels, and communications networks were controlled entirely by the military rulers so that no real information could leak out, or make its way back into the zones. Nobody anywhere knew what life outside their microcosm was really like.

People had become restless, they were forming pockets of ever-increasing resistance, fighting back in a "Robin Hood-esque" style of guerrilla warfare (much like what goes on in Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan , Palestine and other warring states). Of course they were considered to be "terrorists" in their attempts to destabilize the ruling party's efforts at reconstruction, as well as those who supported the military junta's existence (for the time being). But just like most every rebellion, or insurrection in the past history of our world, they were all based on a common desire to rise above the oppression, the ethnic cleansings, the numerous whatever'cides that the governments exposed their own peoples to. Without these "freedom fighters", fighting for the rights of the average man, woman and child in the street, many poor would have been worse off, many would have died in their squalor, poverty, and starvation.

This of course lead to the military forces destroying entire towns and villages that were believed to harbour these terrorist organizations (as Israel does in Palestine), bulldozing down complete family dwellings, apartments, holy places of worship. And of course this just further enraged the innocent, lighting a further fire within to continue to resist in hopes that one day they would be able to lift themselves above the horrors they had to face.

Everything was scarce: food, fuel, especially water, and we had "devolved" from our "abundance mentality" to "scarcity economics" which caused people to polarize, and resent those who had so much more than those who suffered with so much less. Of course this led to uprisings against the "rich" who where often just those who worked hard and had a good idea that they were able to profit from. These localized uprisings against the "aristocracy" were known as FrenchRevolvers, after the famous French Revolution.

To be continued...

Dreamscape: Torn Apart Together (1)

This was a weird morning dream...

I awoke from an insulin-induced semi-lucid dream state waving my arms around as I was teaching Carrie's son, Joaquin, and his older sister (two years older but still in elementary school), English. It wasn't just a general lesson; I was giving pointers on how to make the spoken language more natural by stressing the "big words" (words with content) and de-stressing the "little words" (prepositions, between-words, unimportant words). There was a teacher in the room and she was using a nearly exhausted whiteboard market, but she was writing on the solid paper Japanese fusuma doors that partitioned the rooms from the closets. Yes, this took place in "Japan", and yes, the kids were speaking and communicating in Japanese, or half-Japanese, or neo-Japanese or something...

The school was a mess; it was actually closed down and everything was torn up, overturned, ripped apart, blown to smithereens, in ashes, or non-existent. We were actually using just one of the upper floors of the school as most of the lower levels had been totally destroyed by permanent flooding, so badly that there never was any receding, or any access to the levels by anything other than fish, and other "creatures" of the deep".... Even the levels we could use were covered in rot, mildew, slime, sludge from where the seas had receded some. Not much had survived "The Great Flood" which had put Japan, and most of the land mass of the earth permanently under sea water...

Yes, this was the future, the future after consecutive cataclysmic catastrophes that tore through all of our civilizations around the world, wreaking havoc, killing hundreds of millions, uprooting hundreds of millions more, destroying entire civilizations, forcing us all to live a "Road Warrior" existence, something feudal, something akin to "Waterworld" where the main commodity, the most precious and most scarce resource had become... fresh water.

Everyone was battling for the water; there were water wars going on all around the globe. We in our "wis-dumb" made the critical error of trying to focus our technology on replacing fossil fuels with bio-fuels when we should have been thinking about developing technologies that would easily convert salt water, a growing resource, into potable water, a rapidly dwindling resource in the 21st century.

There were sharks swimming through the lower levels of most buildings, along with many other strange and unknown creatures that had decided to come up from the depths of the deepest darkest unknown parts of the trenches in the seas and oceans. Many of them were "Cthulu-like" nightmares both in form, and in character, and some claimed that they were the ancient races of Atlantis come back to take what they believed was rightfully theirs. They were dark, deadly, dangerous and many a person would disappear in the night, never to be seen or heard from again. It was a terrifying time.

Our technology, having taken a giant leap backward prevented us from going too deep to explore, or conquer, or even to defend so we were much more vulnerable than ever before. Finally we had stopped being the top predator, and had become one of the prey. We were forced to live and die near the surface of the seas, dependent upon them for navigation and commerce, and fearful of them at the same time. Even those who attempted to break away and move inland were never able to survive completely away from the oceans that became known as "The Giver". The giver of life.... the giver of death....

And of course as the human race continued to try to survive from being preyed upon, having the nature that we have, we were also continually at war with one another in an attempt to expand, to take, to conquer the weak, or the sick in order to expand our need for greed, our need for more, our desire to take all...

To be continued...