I quit my job and I’m going cycling!

Wow. Where to start. I wrote a very long post last Sunday that I was intending to post today, but after looking at it again I feel that it somehow doesn’t accurately portray the things that I am feeling right now. I’m not sure that any kind of blogpost written by me could convey what I’m feeling right now, but I’ll try. To business first: I’ve decided to quit my job at the end of March. In the beginning of April I will begin a cycling trip of which I don’t know where or when it will end. I will leave my old life behind and go searching for something new.

There. I feel better now that I’ve finally said it. Of course this isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, starting as far back as in December. It may seem like a crazy decision to leave behind a safe and (fairly) happy life for something uncertain, but if you could see the world from my point of view you would completely understand. I’ve looked at my decision and my future options from the positive side and from the negative side, and after trying out a lot of different ideas in my head I’ve always come to the same conclusion: I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I’m certain that I don’t want to waste my time doing things that I already did before. I’ve been here for four years, and no matter what, I must leave here. This is an absolute certainty for me.

The where-to-go part is less certain, though. Finding another job is one option, which I’ve considered many times before, and in fact acted upon many times as well. Unfortunately, my few attempts at applying for a job that genuinely interested me did not meet with success. So here I am, with a contract that’s about to expire, no new job yet, and, let’s be fair, not a lot of friends here. My self-chosen lifestyle is not easy, and it’s been getting increasingly boring as friend after friend went back to their own country. Making local friends is…. possible, but difficult. Difficult enough for me to consider another option: admitting defeat and going back to Holland.

You can tell from my phrasing that I’m not too fond of this option. At first when I realized that my contract would soon be ending I gave myself a deadline: find a job in Japan before your contract ends, or go back to Holland. Plain and simple. But it just doesn’t feel right, and I’ve come up with all kinds of (good and bad) reasons for not doing this. Holland is the easy choice. Going back would mean that I will absolutely have no problem in speaking the language, understanding the culture, integrating into society, and I would probably not have a very difficult time finding a job where I would be respected and have an opportunity to advance my career. Note that I am not grudging my current job, because I never looked for a career in my current job. I’ve always just wanted to enjoy the unique experience here. Now that the experience is becoming less ‘unique’, I seek something else, but I’m not sure if what I am seeking is a career opportunity or another unique experience.

I decided not to decide. Rather than search desperately for a job in Tokyo so I can stay in Japan, or go back to Holland not knowing if that’s really what I want, I will cycle. I will start from here, Atsugi, Kanagawa. I’ll go past Mount Fuji, Cross the Mie peninsula, visit Kyoto, go to Hiroshima, enter Kyushu and then cycle all the way to the southernmost tip of Kyushu. I’m not sure if I will have made up my mind by then, but if not I will simply continue. Okinawa, Chichijima, Hahajima, Hokkaido, Guam, Australia, New Zealand. All of these names have entered my head while I was fantasizing about the trip I am about to take, but everything still seems so far away. I can’t seriously write here that I will go to any of those places. No, for now, it’s Kyushu that will become my goal.

I’m keeping my options open. I’ve made my plans with two major options in mind, though I may find some interesting alternatives along the way. Who knows, perhaps becoming a fisherman in Hokkaido is what I was meant to be. Of my main options, this is number one: cycle until X, go back to Tokyo, fly to France, cycle back to Holland. Option two: cycle until X, go back to Tokyo, get a job. Possible alternatives include going to a different country or studying in Japan instead of getting a job. Money is an issue though, as I basically won’t have any income this year starting from April. I hope that the Donate button makes a little bit more sense to you now

That’s my plan. It may sound like a lot, but it isn’t really. It’s not like my mind is made up and my steel will has decided that this is the way that things must be. It’s just that the alternative is worse. The one thing that I have never had any doubts about is that my life would be worse if I stayed here, in the same situation, for another year. It would just be a waste of time. Besides, if I changed my mind now, I would regret it for the rest of my life. How can I let such a great opportunity for adventure just pass me by? The answer is: I can’t. I have to go. It’s now or never.

2005 photo. It looks the same but it feels different

I’ll have a lot more to tell you guys about my plan, my preparations, the route, and tons of other things. For now, I’m just very happy that I can share my ’secret plan’ with the rest of the world. It’s my little act of rebellion against a boring life. I’m young, crazy and way less fit than I should be. Let’s do it!

All the good times..

I feel like I can forgive everyone who has ever done something bad to me. Today. I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow, so I wanted to write this down today. I wouldn’t call myself happy at all, but I’ve accepted that certain things just can’t be changed easily. The longer things have time to grow, the harder they are to change afterwards. Yet somehow, today, I feel that I can accept my situation and be happy about it.

I’m not quite there yet though. I have a lot of things I want to say here, but something is still restricting me, preventing me from putting down everything I want to say. Common sense, perhaps? I guess I’ll settle for being vague for now.

Today, after talking to someone who hasn’t talked to me for a long time, I remembered once again a feeling that I haven’t felt in a long time. I remember how I was three years ago: eager, excited, frustrated, energetic. Only a girl could make me feel the extreme ends of the emotional spectrum. At the time I was frustrated that I couldn’t get her, and I let out my frustration by cycling. In the morning, to the seaside, like a maniac. It’s a habit that stuck, although nowadays I don’t think about her as often as I used to. Most importantly, I remember how a single simple feeling could drive me to achieve things that I never thought possible. I’m sure many of you can sympathize with this.

I haven’t made any important decisions about my life in the past two years. I’ve been riding the flow of life and enjoying or hating myself along the way, but that can’t go on forever. Even the best of feelings will start to rot if left untended for too long, and that’s a definite sign that it’s time to start making some changes in your life.

That’s a lot of words, and yet somehow I’ve managed to avoid saying anything real about myself and my current situation. Who knows, perhaps words will just stay words, and nothing will come out of this. Or perhaps this is just a precursor to something incredible. Who knows. Today, I am reminded again of the strong power that used to motivate me, the power that strove me to be a better person, better than I ever thought I could be on my own. This is the feeling that has brought me this far, and I will still rely on this feeling in the future, because it is the only feeling that drives me to greatness.

Let’s not put words on it, shall we? After all, we all know which feeling I’m talking about.

Well that was rather mellow. Must be the effect of all that shoujo anime that I’m watching..

Unfit for duty

Today, looking out my window, I admired Mount Fuji in the distance, very clearly visible today. The view is always the same: to my left, the AXT tower, where I work, right in front of me a very ugly square white building. The, further in the distance is the mountain range that starts out low on the left side, and eventually becomes OoYama (BigMountain) on the right. Fuji is behind those mountains, right in the middle of my view. I was thinking today that I could probably get a great view of Fuji if I cycled up that mountain ridge that’s not too far away, then I could finally see the full Fuji. After all, how hard can it be to climb a couple of low mountains by bicycle, right? Right.

I set off towards OoYama after finding a ‘hidden’ path on Google Earth, that branches off from the main OoYama road just before reaching the end. From there, I should be able to climb a small bit and get a good view. I’ve cycled up towards OoYama twice before, with a crappy bicycle. It’s about a 300 meters climb, and the two times that I tried it with my old bicycle I was completely wasted and could barely make it to the top. This, however, was three years ago, and I’ve improved my fitness level a lot since then. Besides that, I got a nice bicycle now, with a lot of gears and full tyres. This time I should be able to do the climb easily.

It didn’t take long before I arrived at the start of the mountain pass, and I started on the uphill. Following the sign that says OoYama, I climbed a lot, only to find that the road that I took did not actually go to OoYama. Instead it branched off after a while, went downhill again, and then joined another road that went to OoYama. But that road also did not go to OoYama. Being slightly pissed off and incredibly out of breath, I decided to change my plans. I took a random road up the mountain to see where it went, figuring that there will be some hiking trail in the end that will allow me to hike up the remainder of the mountain.

There was something that could possibly be called a hiking path, if one was so inclined. That would, however, require a lot of imagination or, alternatively, the use of psychotropic substances. The road that I walked up on (the incline was too steep for me to continue cycling) became a dead end, with the only way to go on being a hiking trail that looked like it hadn’t been used for decades. The entrance to the trail was blocked by a lot of fences, and the only way through was by a door that was tied to the fence with a rope. To keep wild animals from entering the road, I guess.

Gateway to hell, taken from the hell-side

Always being the stubborn one, I decided to try the hiking path anyway. Opened the door, tied the door behind me with the rope, and started to climb.

Not a hiking trail

I didn’t get very far. A lot of twigs and bushes ran across what used to be the path, and eventually the path became narrower and narrower, until in front of me was what seemed like the entrance to a dense forest, to the left of me was a high mountain ridge, and to the right of me was a barbed wire fence. Not confident that I would be able to find my way back after entering the unhikeable forest, I turned back. No great view of Fuji this time.

It's only funny in one direction

Getting back on my bicycle, I cycled downhill a bit, scaring the hell out of myself after realizing that my brakes were not really as strong as I thought they were. (Definitely something to fix before setting out on a trip!) After circling some smaller mountains I somehow ended up on the road to OoYama again. I figured ‘why not?’ and started to pedal, slightly less confident in my stamina than at the start of the trip. My doubts about my stamina were justified, as I soon found myself in lowest gear, my bicycle rattling like a cable car as I went up the hill at 5 kph. My heart racing, I took every opportunity to stop. Besides the road flows a river, and quite frequently there’s a bridge across the river for the people who live at the other side. Pretending to be incredibly fit and not tired at all, I stopped at every bridge to admire the great view and act like a tourist. I guess I prefer people thinking of me as a tourist rather than a tired, sweaty gaijin (foreigner). Oh well.

I did make it up eventually, although my detours meant that it was a bit too late to start climbing. The sun still sets early here in winter. I took a short break, and then went back down. Having gotten used to my weaker brakes I went at insane speeds down the hill, enjoying myself greatly. Once back down again, I zigzagged my way towards the riverside and cycled back home. Today’s distance: about 25 kilometers. 25 HEAVY kilometers. Still not fit yet…

I did get my view of Fuji though.

I HDRed this photo a bit by duplicating a single photo in Photoshop, creating two copies with exposure +2 and -2, then merging them in Photomatix Pro, letting the plugin do all the work. Here’s a comparison of the original vs. the end result.

I can’t believe that cycling up the damn hill is still as difficult as it was three years ago! I’m definitely not fit enough. I’ll have to work on that..

Soar

No, not one of my photos, just something I felt like sharing

(I don’t know who made this >_<; )

WTF

De buggery

I didn’t really know how to use a debugger four years ago, even after I graduated from computer science. Of course the theory behind debugging was taught to me, and we had some practical tests too, but I never really needed it during my education, so it became a neglected skill. When I first arrived here at AK I realized that I was the exception to the rule, as everyone around me relied heavily on their debuggers.

So what did I do when my program broke? Basically, I guessed. Usually when a bug happens it’s a direct consequence of something you changed in the very recent past, so that’s a good place to start looking. My analysis was never very detailed, basically just changing something back or slightly modifying something to see if this would fix or influence the problem. When my first instinct didn’t prove right, I’d either try more guesses or resort to a massive amount of printlns that output debug info while running the program normally. I’ve since learned a lot, and I try to avoid println statements wherever I can, and I think my skill as a programmer and the quality of my code improved after I made this step.

I still don’t do much debugging, although it does depend on which language I’m using. I blame perl for making me dislike debuggers. I never liked debugging perl. It was just way faster to guess-run-fix the problem than to figure out how to use the debugger. In Java I use the debugger in Eclipse, which is excellent. Still, I rarely ever need it, but during the times that I did need it I’ve realized the value of the debugger.

It’s quite easy to depend on it too much though. In a recent case I was developing for the iPhone and mixing Objective-C, C++ and C code, which confused the debugger a lot. And trying to fix a problem on an iPhone app without a debugger and in a crappy environment (XCode just plain sucks), it’s like trying to pick up a dime in the middle of a highway while wearing earplugs and eyeshades. At night.
Interestingly the XCode debugger, when switching from Obj-C/C to C++, messed up all data types, making it impossible to look at the values of anything: pointers, integers, ids, they’re all messed up. So how did I solve the problem I was having? Simple: I used printlns. Lots of them…

Viva la debugger!