a day of reflection

I just wanted to catch up with my journal entries today. I did a lot of downloading of National Anthems today. I’m not sure why, but I like them a lot. I have the Japanese National Anthem playing over and over in my head since the Sports festival. It really has something that you’d get emotional to hear. So I’m thinking about incorporating it into my website as an intro to my site, but I’m not sure how I’m going to do that too.

I did a lot of research for my laptop again. I went from the Type S to the Type T, but I might go with the newest one TX, but I’m going to wait it out for a little bit. Right now all the specs for the Type T and TX aren’t exactly something that will get me out of my house and to the Sony Headquarters asking about how to customize it. Right now it’s just average and something I’m not too excited about. I want them to get more storage into the little machine, which would be ideal for me since I’m a downloading maniac. I’m thinking about going to Open Source products too. Now that Google and Sun Microsystems are working together, I think that it’ll spawn a whole new brand of technologies and I want to get some of the latest stuff, if I’m going to have to get something.

I’m also trying to wait out the HD-DVD and the Blu-Ray fight over the next generation of DVD players. Since I’m getting a Sony Vaio, it’s pretty obvious I’m supporting the Blu-Ray technology. But I’m not sure when those players will be produced for the Vaio. So I’m thinking about waiting for that. The problem that I have with this is that it could be a long while and I’d be waiting till about the time that I leave Japan for that. I don’t think that I could go that long without a computer at home. I will use the computers at school, but there’s no guarantee that those will be there forever either. So I’m in a bit of a dilemma.

I was planning on getting out of the house today, but that all ended up with me going into the next house to do my laundry. That was it. I wanted to get some groceries done, but I couldn’t do that because I don’t have enough money to. I just need to go to the bank and cash some more money, but that would mean that I’m just spending more than my allotted monthly budget, and that is getting dangerous. I don’t like to over spend, but this month was a rare exception because my friend / co-worker was getting married and then I went shopping at Costco for things that will last me a long time. So I needed to spend more money on that.

I decided that I would make dinner tonight too. I ended having three meals on my day off and I can’t remember the last time that happened. All of which I prepared too. So I’m happy about that. I’m actually able to cook and feed myself, but I think I’m getting fat because I’m not going out and walking the long distances to get my food like I usually did. I made something simple tonight, it was only spaghetti, but it was good and something nice to eat and watch some Everyone Loves Raymond. I watched two episodes tonight. I’m shooting through them, they aren’t as funny as before, but still very funny.

So the reflection that I was thinking back upon was the concept of friends. It has been on my mind for a long time now, but just recently I’ve been thinking about it more. I’ve been using Friendster and MySpace for a while now, well since 2003, which really isn’t that long. But I’m trying to understand the concept of why I do it. All I get from people is chain letters and bulletins that usually don’t make any sense. I guess people are just bored, but it’s nothing to the effect of talking to my friends or catching up with them. But putting up tests to see if they read it, and if they do, they are considered a true friend to post something back. I don’t post anything back and want to see if that’s the deal-breaker and if that will truly end a friendship because I didn’t put up a bulletin. I wonder what friendships are really based on. I used to think that it is someone that you could tell anything to and that they would keep a secret, but then again, you could go online and do the same thing to a completely random stranger and it would be the same. I guess I only bring this up because it seems like all my friends are either feuding with each other or with me, for reasons that are beyond me because I’m not understanding why. Life is complicated, but I think that it is only because people allow it to be. I, personally, like a complicated life only because it keeps me busy, but nowadays, I prefer to enjoy the simple life. I really feel at peace living in Japan and I’m really glad that I made the decision to come, but it came at the price of leaving all my friends behind. Anyways, since no one reads this, I’m safe on that side that I won’t offend any of my friends because no one responds. But then again, I don’t either, so it’s a taste of my own medicine I suppose.