Welcome to the Wonderful World of Erikku

Hello everyone!

This is my very first The Wonderful World of Erikku entry. Erikku is the Japanese pronunciation of my name, Eric. When I was born, my grandma Precy, found my name in a book and Eric means ever king. Yes, if you may want to ask... I am a king. Actually, everyone is a king or a queen in his own or her own right. So, what a nice way to have my welcome remarks as I open this new web log!

Well, as I have entered in this blog's description, I will try to chronicle every event in my everyday life. Today (I mean, yesterday, January 21), is just another ordinary day for me. It is a Friday so I was excited for the coming weekend. Ever since I got to work, I fell in love with Saturday and Sunday as they are the least stressful days for me. But I should admit that I fear Sunday nights as they signify that the following day is the beginning of another week.

Maybe this is just an idea of a stressed person. Yes, I should admit that I am stressed. I had been stressed since I started to feel awkward against my work. But I will put it aside for another article. I will not overload the minds of people reading this article who do not know me. (Who am I to assume that there are people reading my article except me?) Oh, well. It must have been one of my expectations in signing up for a web log account, right?

So going back to what happened to my day today... I set my alarm last night to wake me up by 7:30 am. Then when it woke me up, I begged for another half an hour and adjusted it to 8:00 am. Ever since this winter had started, I am having a hard time getting myself up. I always crave for longer sleeping hours. Anyway, I deserve it since I always sleep late. My earliest bedtime is about 2:00 am. Whether it is still an aftermath of my stressful office life way back in the Philippines, or if it is an occurring personal imbalance while I am here in Japan, it is inevitably giving me problems. Most especially in making it to class on time. Japanese are known to be punctual. And Filipinos are known to be the opposite. As expected, I came late to my Japanese language class. As I got up merely ten minutes before my class starts, even though I used my bike on my way to school (knowing that it is dangerous to bike over snow), it is a known fact that I will still not make it on time. Shameful as it may be, but I am always coming to my Japanese class late. And it is mainly attributable to my uncomfortable sleeping habit.

After the Japanese language class, I proceeded to attend my Topology sit-in class (sit-in class: a class that I attend without getting credits, merely for listening only). The professor mentioned that he will continue from where he finished last week. Oh no, they had class last week? Last week, the clerk in the International Student Section told us that there would be no classes on Friday (of last week) as there would be preparations for the upcoming Center Examination on the weekend (of last week). Instead of going to class, she asked me and my fellow international students to join a Kouryuukai (Exchange Assembly) with Japanese junior high school students. So it appeared to me that she only made lie to us. I will set aside my comments about her on a separate article.

After about thirty minutes (1/3 of the class period), I started to feel sleepy. The topic was interesting. The only thing was it was in Japanese. I have been taking Japanese lessons for about 7 months already but those 7 months of study are still not yet enough to make me understand everything inside a lecture. It is a good thing that Topology has many illustrations incorporated in it so those illustrations helped me a lot not to fall asleep while in class.

After my Topology class, I proceeded to the canteen where I had another share of their daily buffet. Daily as in they serve the same dishes everyday. It can be considered luck already that they occasionally change some of the dishes, but the main courses are always the same over and over again. After having my lunch, I felt satiated and I went to the International Students' Exchange Room to surf the internet. My Thai friend told me that the clerk of the International Student Section informed him that starting next fiscal year, our monthly stipend will be given to us via a post office account so we need to open a new one. Hearing this, I thought of it as another messy thing. We already have our bank accounts in the leading city bank here and already made auto-debit arrangements for our electricity, phone, gas and other bills. Now here comes the clerk informing us to have another bank account-this time, the one in the post office. Oh well, another procedure to be undertaken. Another thing that we have no choice but to follow.

After that I went to see the coordinator of the Japanese language class to ask her permission to absent myself from the Japanese class during Monday and Tuesday of next week. I will be attending a math seminar in a nearby university so that I will not be able to attend my Japanese language classes for two days.

I was about to go back home when I remembered to borrow books on Complex Analysis in preparation for my weekly seminar on Wednesday.

That ended my day outside my room. Now I am spending about five hours in front of the computer. And I finished my first article for my new blog. I hope you enjoyed it.

I am planning to incorporate bits of information about myself in my future articles, for the sake of readers who still don't know me. I am looking forward to that.

January 22, 2005
Yamagata City, Japan