w00kie's ramblings

Category: Me, myself and I

  • 80cm of fresh snow

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    w00kie
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    I was in Kagura Saturday for a my second day snowboard of the season. We left at 5:30AM to get there by 7AM, get dressed and catch the first ropeway car up the mountain. I was snowing big flakes the whole day, no wind. Deep powder everywhere, leg-deep out in the forest where we spent…

  • Surf or Study

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    w00kie
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    Sunday December 2nd is for many of us in Japan the dreaded day of 日本語能力試験 – also known as JLPT or Japanese Language Proficiency Test. But this weekend is also the start of what looks like the best ski season I’ve seen since I’ve come to Japan. Trying out my new snowboard gear on 130cm…

  • Japanese Credit Card

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    w00kie
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    Sunday as I was going to the old apartment to give back the keys, I had the nice surprise to find both my JLPT convocation and my Flying Blue VISA credit card. Nice surprise since I was rejected twice by the Japanese VISA company and I was starting to lose hope. The situation was getting…

  • Weirdest dream

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    w00kie
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    As my moving in date approaches I’m getting all the preparations done, canceling utilities contracts and setting up new ones, packing, etc; all of this stuff is racing around my head 24/7 and lately I started having really weird dreams. I remember one vividly from last week. I was showing off my new apartment to…

  • I found an apartment

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    w00kie
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    After waiting a week for an answer from the owner to the real-estate agent, we finally called him up yesterday and were told the apartment was ours. Now all I’ve got to do is have my company sign all the papers and we can set a date to move-in, hopefully by the beginning of November.…

  • Shiodome Park Hotel – 33rd floor

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    w00kie
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    Since my girlfriend is in town and I have tons of vacations to take before the end of my contract, I organized a special night out in Tokyo with her last week. I’m such a romantic guy… First we went for drinks and dinner at her favorite restaurant: T.Y. Harbor Brewery in 天王洲アイル. It’s a…

  • Bed town

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    This Saturday, my girlfriend arrived in Tokyo to look for a job, pass some interviews, etc. She’ll be staying at my place for 2 weeks or so, hopefully enough to get a good feel of the current job market. So this Sunday, we went to Kawagoe to scout out the place and see what kind…

  • Preparing for snowboard season

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    w00kie
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    Last week I took a day off work to go apply for my visa renewal in Shinagawa (hoping for 3 years this time). I love spending, every year, 2 1/2 hours listening to kids shout and cry, waiting for my number to come up, and 5 minutes of effective work with the immigration officer. After…

  • I signed!

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    w00kie
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    This morning, after almost 2 weeks of negociations between HR, my boss and I, I signed my employment contract at Valeo Thermal Systems Japan. I’m hired for 3 years in a position slightly higher than I had before. I’m staying on the same project and on the same team but I’ll drop all the basely…

  • You broke my watch!

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    w00kie
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    Yesterday I went to Tokyo to buy back the sunglasses I had lost on a snowboarding trip some time back. On the way to Omotesando, I dropped by the Swatch store in Shibuya to get my watch bracelet widened – something about drinking too much beer and putting on weight… So I show my watch…

  • Sometimes I cook

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    And sometimes it ends up being pretty freakin’ good… Gotta satisfy my french food craves.

  • Worst dream ever

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    I had the worst dream ever yesterday night. To put it back in context, the rainy season just started here and it’s becoming unbearably hot and humid, 蒸し暑い as they say it here, but I hadn’t turn on my aircon in hope of pushing back the inevitable surge in my electricity spendings. So the dream…

  • Surfing in Shonan

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    I’ve got a new hobby. One of my friends with whom I went snowboarding in Hokkaido this winter lives in 湘南 in a cool house 300m from the beach, right in front of 江ノ島. Since the last month I go surfing there almost every weekend. I can check the weather / wave size on Yahoo!…

  • Additional flash

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    w00kie
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    You never see a photo taken with the flash on in my flickr photostream. That’s because I hate flashes, and my GR Digital‘s flash in particular: it burns everything. So yesterday, as I was on a day-off and had nothing else to do than watching season 2 of House M.D. and browsing flickr, I got…

  • Web2.0 interview

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    w00kie
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    Last week I received a flickr mail from a woman of Nokia Japan who wanted to have me come over to their headquarters to talk about my usage of flickr, my keitai and other web2.0 apps. I wanted to take a day-off from work anyway so I said “why not” and accepted the invitation. Friday…