Leaving today 11th of June. Arriving tomorrow June 12 in Tokyo Japan. Will stay until March 2010.
I will try to post about what’s going on there on the internet, if my japanese is good enough to surf the local web.
In the meantime, let’s enjoy time pass by with the Uniqlo calendar. This makes me feel wonderful.
So tomorrow I’m starting a one year training focusing on Japan.
I’ll be learning Japanese but also how to do business with the Japanese and tomorrow starts a ten day session at Paris Institut d’études Politiques called the “socio-cultural component”, with classes about history, buddhism, japanese society, etc. I’ll have two more sessions in Milan and london after that.
From June on, I’ll be in Tokyo studying business and Japanese at Waseda for about 10 months.
I am really excited.
Here is a great blog in English about Japan, called Pink tentacle.
From the “about page” of iamlamerde.com
La Merde was born in the void that existed between urban and urbane. (…) La Merde unites the classic elements of sophisticated dress with refined street sensibility. Our headquarters is based in Portland, OR.
I used Google translate to find a meaning to this in French. Then I Google-translated it back into English. It gave me something like :
“The Shit was born in the gap between urban and urban areas. (…)” .
Then I realized it did not make more sense.
(La Merde comes in Albatros brown color)
One of the posts I plan to do one day is about the best “about pages” of the internet. This one definitely should be featured.
By the way : some of The Shit is rather cool.
Thanks Morgazilla
Today, the Dalai Lama opened a Twitter account. The news spread like fire. Even AFP mentionned it.
By the time I write this, there are dozens of new people following him every time I reload His Holiness’ page (11 915 now).
It’s cool to have the Dalai Lama sending us thoughts via Twitter.
At first, he tried to answer back to every one sending him greetings. But apparently he can’t keep up..
Of course it’s not really him, it’s “His office”.
But just as the Dalai Lama himself, the office of His Holiness has a sense of humor : “HH will be just as inquisitive about technology as he has been over the past 14 reincarnations” (to that somebody on Twitter replied : ” I wonder if the 15th incarnation will inherit the twitter account”).
I saw the Dalai Lama twice in my life, once in Delhi at a conference at Habitat centre, the other time in Dharamsala, and it was incredible.
He really is holy.
Even if it was actually a fake.
Happy 2009.
As my official new year card, here is a photo I took in Japan in 2004, at Fushimi Inari shrine, near Kyoto.
Every arch here is a donation to Shinto Gods (the spirits of nature basically). This way goes on for about two or three hours around the hill. Shinto Shrines have something special : the center of the shrine is void.
I did also a try where I photoshopped myself into the image, from another photo where I was pretending to do Kung fu in a Kyoto Ryokan room, but I won’t post it on the internet.
OK : here it is.
Finally, last day of the year.
It’s the occasion to look back on 2008. I find lots of positive points :
I lowered my blogging addiction, which is good for saving some time, and bad for my blog.
However, I realised blogging doesn’t just mean ripping off things here and there from the internet and posting them. It should be about creating something original and fun for the internet. The internet is like a beast some of us have to feed. Or it’s just the sum of all our insignificant stories, ideas, images. It’s still a beautiful thing, let’s hope it stays that way. I just wish it could be consumed more easily, as a fancy drink or as a mdedicine or a drug that would be painlessly injected, feeding us daily with the flow of the world. No, not like TV.
So If I continue this blog, it should be more personal and hopefully more a display of my own creativity if I have any left.
One fact also is that I changed job, I have now more money and less hassles.
I think I take less responsability of what doesn’t belong to me and concentrate on doing a quality work for which I am paid for.
I am now in a communication department and I work on our internal magazine. I also publish my own section on the corporate intranet, with stories and images I gather around. I do it in French and English. My previous job was English only.
They also asked me to contribute to an internal blog about the internet, but on our intranet.
So that’s probably why I slowed down personnal blogging here. My compulsive need to put something online is fulfilled already.
And I like Facebook a lot finally. Facebook is a bit like paradise : you find yourself hanging out with long lost friends and lovers and we are all very happy.
I had a false name on Facebook so far, I didn’t want anobody to find me. I was a bit paranoid, I guess. You know, just in case, what they say about the CIA… Now I can be found and nobody gives a shit. So much for my inflated ego.
Stay tuned for more next year, hopefully. I’ll be blogging from various locations. More about that later.
About 10 days ago we were in Istanbul for a few days. We rented a nice place with a stunning Bosphorus view through manzara-istanbul.com.
Here are some images I brought back.
I can only post them now since my MacBook’s hard drive went down during that week-end and I had to change it myself. Now I have 250 Go of space. It feels nice and comfy.
Me playing it cool in a bar :
It’s amazing what the world is doing at a single moment.
And still there is only 1 habitable planet.
via Zewoc
It’s cool I like it. Since I stopped wearing neckties 6 months ago, I wonder what to do with my old ones.
Now I know : stitch it to a T shirt.
I think it’s from Holland. Mind Your Own Business.
via :Ilovenewwork
No new concept of course. Remember Art Garfunkel’s T-shirt :
