Probably the biggest thing to happen this week was this weekend – basketball training camp!

After the influx of new students at the beginning of their academic year (which is April here in Japan), my basketball circle held their next training camp, this time in Chiba. I only went on one of these last year and I had a whole lot of fun that time. The other ones that have happened in between I haven’t been able to go on for various reasons, but I’m glad that I got to go on this one. It was pretty tiring, but in a good way.

I was actually the first person to arrive at the meeting place, which is a little odd since I was probably one of the furthest away in terms of where I was living, but that’s all good… I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t late!

There were 8 teams for the first day, which meant that we had a lot of games to get through! My team was Team Neko (cat) and was lead by my friend Fukushima (or Fu-kun). Unfortunately we came in at number 7 after winning three, losing three and drawing one. After a lot of tiring games, it was back to the hotel to chill out. I didn’t get to go have a shower and a bath for a little while… the little bathroom only had a four-person capacity for the little places where you sit and shower, so there was a bit of a wait! Anyway, after all that was a very nice dinner, then people went about their business chilling and relaxing before the party that night.

Unfortunately for me, the party wasn’t as fun as I was hoping. Being on my meds means I can’t drink, and my lack of Japanese ability meant that I didn’t really understand or follow (and certainly couldn’t really participate in) most of the games that everyone was playing. I ended up going to bed as early as I could really get away with, which was after the awards. I had a lot of people comment to me beforehand that they thought I was going to take the top for rebounds, but then when I pointed out that there were a lot of people that did repeated rebounds where they just couldn’t get it in the basket, but got a lot of rebounds… not so much with me, I’m happy to say. In the end I took third place for rebounds. ^^

Most people stumbled into the bedroom (it was six to a room) around 4am. My sleep was pretty broken, despite the drugs.

Today went a lot better on the basketball front. The teams for today were divided up by the year level of the student, so I was in the “fourth years and above” group. My team cleaned up – we didn’t lose a single game, which was great. Some really good basketball going on, and a whole lot more running! My team-mates very kindly said it was largely thanks to me given that I really got in there on defence and rebounds, although I couldn’t shoot to save my life all day other than the short shots after a rebound. Just not in the zone, I guess. Anyway, the second round after that was a group of teams much like what we do at practice, all randomly grouped up. At this point about half of the players were playing volleyball on the next court over (it was more of a recreation day, after all) and a few more were just exhaustedly lying around, so there were only four teams, no subs. My team did all right, we won two and lost one.

After the basketball was done, we went back to the hotel, had a bento lunch, showered and rested up before the long trip back to university. After I finally managed to get back home, I just chilled out for the evening with Anastasia.

While that was probably the most prominent thing in my mind for this week, I certain did get up to a bit more than that. Before I get to that, though, my landlord dropped by this weekend. While I was away. Anastasia had a pretty hard time understanding who he was and what he wanted… in the end he apparently just gave up, although it sounds like he wasn’t too stressed by the whole thing. I’m sure that he’ll stop by another time, hopefully when I’m there!

On the school front, I had my usual classes and so on… very unfortunately understanding even less than usual in my Socio-Information and Communication class. I couldn’t only really pick up that it was about privacy and the relative importance of different kinds of information. Beyond that, I don’t really have a clue. My supervisor’s class this week was giving an overview of sketch-based research, some of which I knew just from being in his lab, others of which were new to me. All good stuff, and I can follow along with a reasonable bit of the Japanese so far. My vision assignment is giving me a bit of a headache, as it’s a bit harder to wrap my head around than I thought it was going to be.

Earlier this week I went and had a chat with a Kiwi named Karl, who’s been doing some research at ERATO, a collaborative research/design lab that my supervisor heads up. It was suggested to me that he might be interested in helping me out on a research idea of mine, but that didn’t really pan out. He’s been doing some interesting work, but he was leaving the country pretty soon and his interests didn’t overlap as much as I thought they were going to, which was unfortunate.

I also watched the first lecture online in a series at Stanford on High Performance Websites, which was pretty interesting. I don’t know if I’m going to register for the course or anything, but I’ll certainly enjoy watching the other videos they offer for free, and I might pick up the course book at some point. It’s all about the craft, right?

Early this week was my next meeting with the psychiatrist. Now that my sleep seems to have (relatively) levelled off with the use of the drugs, it’s time to start gradually weaning me off them. His proposal on how long it’s going to take is frustrating, especially with how I know it’s altering my behaviour and body-chemistry, but I guess I’m better safe than sorry on that front. Another couple of weeks, then back to his office to review.

I finished reading an article my Mum sent me from NZ in her care package. It was about the NZi3 and how basically all the smart (IT) people in Christchurch leave because there aren’t enough opportunities to stimulate them or provide them with enough income. The laid back lifestyle of Christchurch is great, the people are great… there just isn’t a whole lot to keep you there if you want to make a big career for yourself in the IT sector. I guess the problem is more ambition than anything else… the smart graduates all have their eyes set on big challenges, and equally big paychecks to go with them. Not a lot of that to go around in Christchurch. Still, it was an interesting read even if it was stuff I’ve known for years.

Have I mentioned Japanese paperwork irritates me? I had to re-apply for my automatic payment on my electricity bill because I didn’t include one of my names (having a long name can be irritating sometimes) on the application form. So on their forms, I have three names (the other wouldn’t fit), but I have four for the bank, so I needed to put in all of them… apparently they couldn’t work out it was me from the other three identical names that matched up with the account number I gave them. Ugh, whatever. New application is now posted.

I have a desk! It’s very studenty with scratches all over it and a bit wobbly, but it was free (apart from getting it transported) and certainly serves its purpose. I’m hoping to fill it up with filing a lot of my stuff this coming week, although really I just need a whole lot of shelving. I miss having a lot of shelving!

I managed to catch up with a few people this week, which is a bit rare for me. I caught my Dad (who’s nightmarishly busy himself) on Skype for a bit of a chat, I talked with Daniel (still enjoying his animation course) and Tom (who’s just started to work at Sidhe, the only game development house of any noteworthy size in NZ). All a bit mental, really. Anastasia and I also managed to get out to dinner with Takuya (after not managing to catch him a little while back) and, as it turns out, Tomo. Not the Tomo I played basketball with at St. Andrew’s, the one that’s the architect friend of Kyoko. Anyway, that was really cool to have a bit of a catch up and to introduce Anastasia to the two of them. My stomach complained a bit at the sashimi later, it’s been a while since I’ve had it, but that cleared up just fine.

After realising (for the upteenth time) that I didn’t have an RSS feed for Sinfest (despite there actually being one), I did a bit of Googling and came across a way to write one. After adapting it a bit to suit a bit more formatting that I prefer, the world at large is now welcome to use my Sinfest RSS feed. I’m hoping to add links to the archive pages that the strips belong to as well at some point.

While I’m talking about things to entertain me, I saw in my email that Spider-man is now on Broadway! Crazy! I don’t think that I’m actually going to be able to go see it, but the fact that it exists at all entertains me.

Also on things that entertain me, I managed to get Under a Killing Moon working on my computer earlier this week. It’s a bit jerky in places, but it’s still an awesome game and I’ll probably play through it again when I’m trying to wind down. Gotta love Tex Murphy – I really hope the guys over at Big Finish Games get enough funding to make another one.

This week I had a few very bad mornings for waking up. I gave some serious consideration to going back to drinking coffee. In some ways I don’t even know why I still persist at not drinking it. It’s not like I’m experimenting with tea while I’m in Japan, or have another hot drink of choice that I’m having. I have the odd hot chocolate, but that’s about it. I don’t really know any more. I mostly started it as an experiment for the effect that it would have on my body, given that before I stopped, I had been having a fair bit of it, and I was one of those people that would be able to have a cup of coffee before bed and be fine. It was just a bit weird, really. I still very much like the taste of coffee… actually, I just don’t know why I’m not drinking coffee. I guess in my head it would be a weird way of making my body do what I want it to in a sense, and I’d rather have my body adjust to a nice bio-rhythm without it. Maybe it’s as simple as that.

Right, so my dream. I had a dream in the middle of the week that was really weird and the fact that I remember any details of it at all is probably even more weird since usually I’m just kind of peripherally aware that I dreamed at all. Anyway, I dreamed about going back to develop games for Ignition (insert pun about my dream job), and getting Ian a job there making music while I was at it. There was something about my being away for a while and coming back with more experience to bring to the team. I was there from the morning to meet up with Jeremy, most people didn’t show up in the office until after lunch for a team meeting. At the meeting a producer (that wasn’t Barrett, which was a bit odd) informed everyone that someone out of the west coast office was going to be moving out to our office to help with… the marketing stuff, I think. Reactions were mostly eye-rolls. Anyway, I spent most of the dream (after my meeting) shaking hands and catching with people. It was all just a bit surreal. Maybe I’m just projecting where I think I’ll end up at the end of my degree… maybe my brain is telling me I should be making games and not doing things that are unrelated for my Masters.

Maybe it was just a dream.

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