Ugh…

I just arrived at Johannesburg. I ‘misunderestimated’ the flight time, which turned out to be 10 hours! That means I had a total flight time of 17 hours, quite a bit more than going to Australia from Japan. Can’t say I’m very tired right now, but it’s 6:50AM local time. I’m sure it will catch up with me later. I have to wait 2 hours for Kamil to arrive so I’ll share with you some of my thoughts I had during the flights.

First of all, now I know why they call it BOREding. The entire boarding procedure in Malaysia airport took so long. Incidentally, I thought the airport was quite crappy. The terminal area had a very nice green area in the center part of the terminal (but you’re not allowed to enter), and from there several ‘arms’ extend towards the boarding areas. The center is filled with tax-free shops selling trinkets that I don’t care about, and there’s barely any nice restaurant. Still, the food was good. Also on the flight the food was excellent. Malaysia Airlines has good food Too bad the airport is so desolate and empty. It reminded me of Zurich. I’d say the best airports I’ve stayed at so far are Narita and Cairns. They just feel more peaceful and relaxed, and less like a big industry. Johannesburg is not too bad either. It’s very practical and the toilets are clean (Malaysia was so dirty!). It reminds me of Holland somehow.

Well, that’s it for now. I doubt I’ll have internet during the tour, so this’ll be my last message for a while. This Is Africa!

I’m in Malaysia!

It’s bloody hot here… I need to wait four hours for my flight, and I am indecisive between getting a taste of the loca Malaysian cuisine or going to Burger King

More later!

(Also: free internet. W00h00!)

At Narita!

My schedule for today: wait, fly, wait, fly. It’s kind of boring, but I’m okay with that, considering what’s planned for next week. Traveling through South Africa and Botswana to end up at Victoria Falls in Zambia. I’m starting to realize that I’m actually going to Africa. I’ve also realized that my stomach still hurts.. Must be the curry. Or the malaria pills. Meh.

I doubt that there are many opportunities to access the internet during our trip, but at least Johannesburg and Livingstone should provide some internet access. I’ll try to keep track of what I did so I can share it with you guys later

Amaziful

The iPod classic never fills up! I simply don’t have enough crap to copy to it, even after copying all the anime I wanted to see. Incidentally, don’t copy anime to an iPod. The screen is way too small to see the subtitles…

I finished Clannad today. It’s just a typical schoolgirl anime much like Kanon and Air (it was made by the same people). The storyline barely had any surprises, and the characters were quite one-dimensional and predictable. That being said, I had a great time watching it, and found it to be even better than Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, which is another anime I watched recently that I really liked. Clannad fits perfectly in that little pocket of ‘virtual Japan-space’, where so many anime exist in. Things happen that could never happen in real life, and characters do things that you normally wouldn’t expect people to do, but because it’s anime it somehow fits, and everything makes sense.

This is a problem of anime that I’ve encountered a lot recently: it requires the right mindset and a familiarity with the culture to enjoy it properly. I’ve been trying to get Wendy into anime recently (we’ve all been trying!) and failing, either because the characters are unrealistic, the storyline is unrealistic, or she’s simply not familiar with a lot of ‘traditions’ of anime. Even though anime still fails to entertain my friends, I’ve been picking up the pace for the past few months and finding more and more good new anime to watch. Still. I wonder if there will ever be an end to it. Anime certainly pushes the limits of human creativity to its limits. Did I mention that the two anime I’ve linked to in this past were both based on a game? One of them was an erotic game, even. Japanese people will at this point shrug their shoulders and move on to the next topic, whereas Western people will stop and stare in wonder at their screens. Overly worried parents may at this point spit their coffee at their screen and wonder what is wrong with society these days.

Tomorrow is my last working day before leaving for Africa. I’m working on a speech recognition demonstration for Google’s Android mobile phone platform. The demo will be part of my companies’ showcase at the ESEC convention in Tokyo Big Sight. The demo is mostly done, but I still have some loose ends to tie, so I’ll be busy tomorrow. Ganbarimashou >_<;

To the limit

I always seem to be living my life up until some kind of limit. Either I’m brainlessly happy, horribly depressed, terrifyingly genki or deadly bored. Either my life is always in one of those states, or I only seem to remember the extremes. In any case, it would seem that I prefer the extremes over the average. Unless it’s extremely average, perhaps? I can certainly take pleasure in being very depressed, or being in much physical pain. I guess my jokingly saying ‘I like suffering’ turns out to be true. It doesn’t mean I don’t like happy things, though, cause I like those too. I don’t like nothings. Being in-between is what’s boring. Running at my limit feels great. Running at an average speed that I could keep forever is boring. Same goes for cycling. Basically, if you can prepend the word ‘epic’, then I’ll like it – Epic trips, epic photos, epic life-threatening situations. Epic malaria… That’s what makes life interesting.. >_<;  Seek out sensation. Why else would you bother to live?

On a slightly more practical note: I’ve been pondering exactly what photo equipment to bring with me for the trip. At first I got all excited and I planned to bring three main lenses and the two primes. Then I started thinking I’d want to carry less stuff for this trip. I don’t think I could feel really free if I’m carrying around a heavy (and expensive!) camera and a bunch of lenses. So I considered bringing my old camera (400D) cause it’s smaller and lighter and only the 18-200mm lens, but that’s also quite a lot of stuff, and I’d rather bring the 50D instead. Then I thought: why not bring just a compact camera? It’s not like I will miss any part of the experience with only a compact camera. I will still be able to see everything that I would see with a large heavy bulky camera. The experience would not change for me at all. It might even be better with only a compact, because I will see with my own eyes instead of through a lens. But then I remember all the people I’ve spoken to so far. All my friends and my family, they tell me: “take lots of cool pictures! I want to see them when you get back!”. I realized why I take photos. It’s not for myself after all, it’s to share them with the people I know, so they can look at my experiences and enjoy it too. So I will bring all the heavy stuff, and I will take lots of pictures

I am leaving for Africa with a good feeling.

(Note to self: next time you have an important trip, don’t eat four different kinds of curry the week before you leave!!!)

Ugh

Running in the rain: 9m20s. Boo hoo. Lots of preparations to do this weekend. Getting a bus to the airport, buying a bag for my clothes… and something else.