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a lost wallet and loose socks, aug 25 - sep 5, 2001
Sep 5, 2001, 20:46
first off, i am now the proud new owner of four fat bags of honey nut cheerios! woohoo!
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--a national crisis--
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i lost my wallet the other day. 'what?' most of you who know me are probably saying. it is a well known fact that i haven't used a wallet in over three years, so i guess it's to be expected that i would forget how to use one. anyway, my standard method of rubber banded cards, plastic bag change, and wadded up cash was finally put to an end because influential people in high places (sachiko) decided to give me a wallet. it's a nice wallet. it's in my pocket now. well anyway - back to the story - i didn't lose it, i had a pretty good idea of exactly where it was...
on thursday night a member of our research team from akita (where i will be going for another business trip this thursday-same hotel-yay!) came down so we took him out for beer and great yakiniku. for those of you who don't know, yakiniku literally means fried meat, but it's basically korean style meat frying. ah, good, good stuff.... i highly recommend it. anyway, i was pretty sure my wallet fell out when i decided to rest my feet by putting them up on the chair beside me for a bit (i don't like wallets in my butt pocket, it makes me lopsided). the food was so good, (or the beer so dulling) i didn't notice that the bulge in my pocket had gone down... i mean....forget it, you know what i mean. so i walked back home thinking nothing of my bulgeless pocket.
i woke up the next morning bright and earlier than usual, six something. i took my time reading and lounging until it was time to go. it was then that i went into a frenzy to find the lost wallet. i looked everywhere, under the futon, behind the bee larvea, on the balcony, and then i realized that it had to be at the restaurant, hopefully. so i go to work but i can't get in because i don't have my card, and of course no one recognizes me because i'm the only white guy this side of tokyo (not really, it just feels that way....). so i have to fill out all this special 'i-don't-have-a-card form' and went on my way. all in all it was a normal day, i never would have thought a national crisis was brewing....
i changed into my puke green pants and lighter green shirt and went to the office to start my morning routine, which mainly consists of waiting for my computer to turn on. in the mean time i mention to my co-worker and mentor mr. yoshida that i lost my wallet last night. a small snowball began to roll down the snow covered mountain... soon, i was asked a barrage of questions like where did you lose it? what was in it? your bank card? anything else? etc, etc. and of course the rest of the people in the office had to join in as well. everyone asking and worrying. even the nice lady ms. komiyama who always brings us mail happened to be walking by, and then she joined in the worrying and the suggesting of things for mr. yoshida to do. so mr. yoshida breaks out the phone and calls (1) the police department, (2) the restaurant (it's still closed), (3) our section leader at home on vacation who's probably still sleeping at 8:40 in the morning, (4) the personnel manager of the entire plant, and finally (5) the director of the entire R&D center. the snow ball at that time had grown so large that people i didn't even know came up to me and said things like 'shame about your wallet, steve'. 'hope you find your wallet', 'your bank card???'. ah....
so the guy from akita who we went out with the night before came in for our morning meeting at nine, and i began telling him the story. we're in a small conference room and he begins a loud, hardy laugh. just then, the director of the whoe R&D center himself comes bursting through the door 'steve! you lost your wallet?!' yes, yes, i lost my wallet. he then went on to tell me how easy it is to lose important things while drinking. he reminisced about the day before he was supposed to go to the States... he was out drinking with some buddies and he lost his passport, plane tickets, and wallet. yes, it's important to keep track of your valuables while drinking...
well, the panic died down after a while but i still got the knowing, reassuring smiles from the mail ladies and people i didn't know. it was so cute. then, when we finally got a hold of the restaurant and found out that the wallet was there, the snowball had to be pushed back up the mountain to it's precarious perch. mr. yoshida called everyone in reverse to relay 'the wallet has been found, i repeat, the wallet has been found'. just in time, too, because i'm sure there were pilots in fighter planes somewhere breathing sighs of relief that they didn't have to go in and take out a poor yakiniku place for not finding my wallet. there's a theory that says information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, but i'm pretty sure the scientists weren't thinking about japan...
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--brave, brave sir robin--
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the other day i decided to do it. yes, i decided to eat the bee larva. and they were really good. well, they were interesting. sorta crunchy yet sticky, sweet yet tasteless, and sorta had an i'm-not-standard-nabisco flavor. i basically just put the little fellas on rice and started chowing down. i forgot what i was eating after a while because the weather forecast was on, the most useful thing on japanese television. i like rice. so, now i have to get myself up to eating the other worms and grasshoppers and things, but i just don't know how they fit in with cheerios and egg sandwiches....
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--a real national crisis--
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on a sad note, 44 people died in a fire in tokyo this past week. it was horrible... but, there's something to be learned from it. first off, there was only one exit, and it was blocked by the flames from down stairs. a lot of people got out through the window, but some windows were covered up with billboards so they couldn't get out. so 44 people had to die because there were absolutely no precautions taken against a possible fire. one small exit in a small store. another interesting tidbit to this story is that the news says it is sort of a restaurant located in the heart of shinjuku, one of the busiest, trendiest, and seediest places in japan. but i don't think the news says that the place was called 'super loose' and featured the standard 'super loose' socks worn by a lot of the high school chicks here. did you know that they have special glue to keep the socks up? ah, the things people do for style...
anyway, the place was called "super loose" and it featured school girl clad hotties (they could still be in school, but maybe not) with their skirts probably way way way too high (mmm....). these chicks entertain the business guys that come in after hours to ogle and grope by pouring them drinks and talking and laughing and being hot. oh, it really is horrible though! imagine the young guy who died while his wife didn't know where he was, and she has to figure out that he died playing with a school girl. and the grieving mother to find out that her daugher isn't only dead, she worked at "super loose". not all news can be happy, i guess. this is my forcast, though: fire standards are going to be upped for all the shady bars in downtown tokyo. fireman will frequent as many of these bars as possible to make sure they are safe and secure. they will probably check twice, or three times, depending on how hot the chicks are. thus, all the business guys can still ogle and grope without a fear of dying in a fire trap.
long live loose socks!
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--this week's math--
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you are given six matches in the following configuration: two equilateral triangles with a common side (obviously the same size triangles) and one extra match protruding from a vertice of one of the triangles (it doesn't matter which one). your job; move three of the matches to create four equilateral triangles, each the same size as the first two.
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(i don't know if this picture is gonna stay in tact, but i'm sure you can figure it out)}