Bits and Pieces: A random update

About that video I posted last Friday. I had an epiphany while watching his God-awful performance. If a guy can stand up in front of a crowd and not only sing the world’s most horrible song (even the lyrics were atrocious) but also revel in the attention and attract at least one fan (the adulator with the uchiwa in the video), then there’s a whole lot more I could be doing with my life if I just let go of my fear. Maria is my new hero. He’s probably completely insane, but he’s living his life with the right attitude.

There are so many things I scare myself out of doing. He accomplished something in that performance that struck a chord with me. (Har har.) I want to be more like him, minus the makeup and the head thrashing.

Next subject. I added gravatars to my blog’s comment pages. If you register your own gravatar, it’ll show up on any other blog plugged into the same system. I like being able to see who I’m interacting with. Thanks to everyone who showed their faces a week or two back. Now every post can be like that!

Next subject. Tony, our 10 year old, is reluctantly learning to read in English. While he sits in my lap and plays Counter Strike on the PC, I make him earn the privilege by having him sound out new words and correcting him when his swears are grammatically incorrect. (BTW, thanks Oliver for teaching him “Aaah shit!” He never said that until he pwned you at Red Steel on the WII.) Yesterday Tony read “Downloading Map” off the screen and really surprised me. Before bedtime we read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish together. It practically killed him to engage his brain that for that long, but he stayed with me through whole book. Barely.

This week I’m going to start learning Java (finally) with the O’Reilly Java Bookin their excellent Head First series. Previously I read the book on HTML and CSSand liked it a lot. I’m also trying to learn JavaScriptthese days. Life is too short, and I feel like I’ve wasted too much of it already.

Last item on the agenda. I posted some photos of Tony and Andy’s undokai, which was last Saturday. It’s the first in a series of “interesting but boring” photos I plan to take of just daily stuff that won’t be good enough to throw up on Flickr. At least take a look at the panorama of the school grounds.

[tags]geek stuff, Tony, fear, Java, JavaScript[/tags]

Rich Pav

Richard has been living in Japan since 1990 with his wife and two teenage sons, Tony and Andy.

4 thoughts to “Bits and Pieces: A random update”

  1. Reeeallly am impressed w/ the quality of the panorama pic!
    Am not used to seeing 芝生無し運動場 (shibafunashi undoujo)
    Here in the 田舎/country of outer island 沖縄/Uchinaa there are so much grass at the elementary school fields that they raise goats just to help w/ the 草刈り作業 mowing/upkeep of the school grounds.

    Your Google map still has you in Okinawa Main Island/Uchinaa, Rich…so Mensore! (Welcome!) …although it is “Nmyachi!” in the dialect of the island where I reside (Miyako Jima)

    I see according to your dream 行方/whereabouts you are in Itoman City near where the Peace Memorials/Battle of Okinawa Memorials/Museums are located.

  2. I recently came by this article on a guy who is trying to become famous in 31 days http://www.famousin31days.com/. What amazes me he dumped his work and left everything behind to pursue his dream. See I have been trying to do this all my life but I can never make this final step because I am lacking exactly what this guy from the video has plenty. BALLS.

  3. Your kids are so friggen cute, I listened to one of your podcasts with them, the car ride where they just spazzed going GOOD BAAAAIIIIIIII at the end with a lot of obscene noises xD But it was hilariously cute

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