Teamster

I'm going to be a teamster for a week! My boss knows that I'll be leaving soon, but wants to keep me for a long as possible. So I'm going to be hired at union wages, then quit a week later. My last day at work will be the 17th, and I'm leaving for Japan on the 21st.

My new boat and dog

The main reason that I haven't gotten a sail boat or dog yet is that I haven't had a good name. I used my last good dog name on my mom's dog, and that was really only a good pug's name anyway. But now, thanks to the brilliance of my sister, I have both a sailboat name a a dog name.

Background:
I have this friend named Eina (Eh-nuh) who wanders off the places like Nepal or some Buddhist monastery or something like that every once in a while, and never keeps track of people. She's very zen like that. So a few months ago, Sky said that she was in the 'ham.

So Kelsey and I were driving though town the other day when I said, "I need to find Ena sometime". Kelsey, who can't hear because years of talking too loud have damaged her hearing, thought I said "I need to find ainus umtime" No it doesn't make any sense at all, but that's what she thought. So we get into this discussion about words that, when follow or preceded by other words, morph. For Example: Larry's sail boat becomes Larry's ale boat. So I said, "That's It! That's what I'll name my boat. Ale Boat. So now that I have a name, I can get a boat. (Except for one of the minor reasons I don't have a boat yet: lack of money)

But sister's ideas didn't stop there, "And you can name your dog 'Schooner'". Perfect a beerboat boat, and a beerboat dog. So now that I have a dog's name, I can get a dog too. (Except for the minor reasons I don't have a dog yet: lack of money and no place to live.)

Getting ready

It's already October. I just realized that the other day. Time to get moving. I've started looking at airfares for Tokyo. $500 or less seems to be what I'll be able to get tickets for in mid to late November. My current job will end around the 15th, so any time after that will work.

I have a place to stay for as long as I need. My friend Lyle, who's probably the best friend I have in Tokyo, has a 3 bedroom house, paid for by the US government, in a suburb of Tokyo, and has an extra room that he'll let me have for half of utilities. Lyle was the fist of my friends I told when I found out I had Hodgkin's, and he was the first person to give me some reassurance, though in an odd sort of way. He said, "It seems like everyone I know either dies, or gets cancer, but never both, so you'll be fine."

I'm also hunting down jobs. I'm hoping that I'll be able to find something fairly quickly. I will have to wait until I get there probably to have any interviews, but I'll be in contact with some recruiting agencies, and there's a job fair for bilinguals in December (not that I'd consider myself bilingual, but hopefully my excellent English Language skills will be a selling point). I should be able to make it living with Lyle since it will cut my expenses considerably. Commuting will be pricey for a time, since it's so far in the country, but companies always pay commuting expenses, and once I get a job and get some cash in the bank, I'll be able to move closer to work. Maybe back to Koenji. I really liked that neighborhood.

So now I have to get everything I have here finished up. I'm going to sell off my darkroom stuff, put two bugs together into a drivable one, and maybe I'll be able to get my SL350 together and sell that. Lots of stuff. Too bad I work so much!

Looking for a car

On Sunday, the rain made me realize that I didn't want to ride in it. Kind of a late realization. I just thought, "hmm... rain... wish I had a car."

And so began my car hunt. What I'd really like is a Karmann Ghia, but they're a bit hard to find, and not so cheap, so what I'll probably get is a Super Beetle. And this causes another problem. He wants a curved windscreen because they have a little more nose room, (maybe that's how his nose got squashed?) and they only made those for three years, as Beetle production was starting to wind down. So I'll have to find one, have him sit in it, and see if he can tolerate it.

But I really do want that Karmann Ghia.

Forever is not really that long

It seems that I have been writing this blog forever, so I went back in my archives to see what I wrote 5 years ago. Well, 5 years was really not long ago, but I've only been writing this blog for two and a half years, not quite forever.

5 years ago, I was on my one year exchange program at Asia University, and I lived in the men's dormitory a cross the street from the campus. At night, when I was cooking dinner in the kitchen on the first floor, I'd watch the news on CNN. This night, when I turned the TV on, a shaky camera was focused on the World Trade Center tower, just after a plane had hit it. The reporters at the time were saying that probably a small plane like a Cessna had hit it. A few minutes later, the second tower was hit, and all doubt as the what was going on was gone. I ran up stairs and knocked on Mick's door, and told him he had to come downs stairs. We both watched the news for the rest of the night live. First seeing papers from offices flutter to the ground, then people, then the entire buildings. It was all too strange to be a movie, yet it didn't seem real. For the next several days, people asked me if everyone I knew was alright since a plane also crashed in Washington (The Washington I come from is a state, not a city, and not the capital of the US). For me the surreally I'm sure ended more quickly than for people in the US. Things were notably different when I came back though. The US had become plastered with flags.

Promotion

So I'm working now. I wrote about that right? Basically, it has sucked since I started, around the 15th. I've been putting things in boxes. So finally, last Wednesday, I got put back on the machines. I'd driven order pickers, forklifts, ect. the last two summers I worked there, so I know how everything works basically. The only difference now is that everything is done electronically. It actually makes the job harder to do, but I figured it out pretty quickly. Well last Monday, one of the permanent employees was sick and didn't come in, and the lead in the area I had been in, who goofs around a lot, was goofing around, and got demoted from his lead position the next day. The permanent employee who was gone that day, then took charge of that area for Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday though, he kind of blew up at the Somalian women who are working there after one hurt herself. He thought that she was faking it, and was ready to fire the whole lot of them.

So on Friday I came to work, hopped on my machine and drove down the the other end of the warehouse to start working, and the warehouse manager called me up and offered me the lead position. That meant that I had to deal with the aftermath of the previous day's events. So what was the first thing that two of the girls asked me? They wanted to leave at 4:45, one hour away. I told them that the management is not happy with the productivity of the packers, and that they're getting ready to fire some if it doesn't improve. There had been too much socializing rather than working, and tons of mistakes. And since they were in such a difficult position, asking to leave in only one hour would probably mean not coming back at all. I guess they didn't really think that they'd fire anyone because they still pressed the issue, so I referred them to the manager, who told them that it was fine to leave, but that he couldn't guarantee that their jobs would still be there on Monday. I think they got it that time, because for the rest of the night, I barely heard any talking that interfered with work, except for one girl, and another, afraid that one of the people I was talking about might be here, moved away from the other talking girls, and was fine the rest of the night.

The main problem was that the PIC (People In Charge) didn't give them any warnings, so they thought that they were doing fine. I think for at least one, it was a perceived language barrier or some other reason that he didn't want to give them a chance. On Monday my manager wants a list of all my people, and a ranking. If my lowest ranked people match the list of the guy who blew up, some heads may roll. I hope that I can prevent that though. I think that the problem was do to the old lead, who never told them when they were goofing off too much because he was always too busy goofing off himself, and the management, who would rather git rid of the whole group and start over.

So I had a bit of training today, and I'm coming in an hour early on Monday for some more training and a pay increase! That and an extra room at my friend Lyle's house means that I may be able to return to Tokyo a bit earlier than my last estimate.

Dead Bike

I've been riding my CL350 Scrambler a lot recently, but it, as old bikes will, leaks. A lot. The first engine was leaking out of the head gasket after I put a few hundred miles on it, so I figured that I'd swap it with one of the other 6 engines I have laying around. The one I put in it was out of a bike that I payed $55 for, and was seized at the time. This one ran a lot better, and didn't leak out of the head gasket much for the first 1000 miles, but just after I fixed the leak in the crankcase, the head gasket sprung a leak, and it started smoking. On saturday is started smoking so bad, that I decided to swap the engine out again, this time with the engine from the bike that Mark Risvold, Sky's dad, gave me in exchange for working on his GoldWing. I spent the better part of the day on Sunday and Monday Morning working on this, and started it up about 3 hours before I had to head to work. It sounded a lot better than the engine I had been using, so I went on my first test ride.

About a mile down the road, I thought it was sounding pretty good, so I turned onto the highway, intending to take it up to speed. Half way through the corner, my rear wheel slipped. This could either be dirt, ice, or oil. There was no dirt on the road, and it's the middle of summer, so that leaves the last option. I proceeded slowly to the first place I could park, looked down and oil was pouring out of the engine onto the ground as if the drain plug had come out. I shut it off as quickly as I could, and the oil slowed to a trickle. I had my phone, so I called both mom and dad, who were just leaving for vacation, to come pick me up. Mark however, is always free, so I called him and he was able to come pick me up.

So this week, I'm riding granddad's GoldWing, which I've gotten a lot of comments on since it's in almost pristine condition except for the dents that Kelsey put in the tank a few years ago. It's also one of the few GoldWings without a fairing and saddlebags, which makes it cool, and the bike that I wish I was on when I bad ass Harley rider (or so he thought) challenged me to a race a few weeks ago. (It would have been fun to kick his ass, but I still probably wouldn't have raced him.)

In other news, I've been working for one and a half weeks now, and I'm trying to get a job at REI. It's part time, so ideally, I can work there in the mornings and at my current crappy job in the evenings, and easily make my November goal of returning to Tokyo.

Also, coffee helps get blogs posted. This is the second post today? I've had so much that I can't stand still.

Appointment with Nick

I think I finally have an appointment with Nick to see a bike that he told me about a month ago. It's a 1953 Triumph that's torn apart in his friend's basement. I think it might be a 650 Thunderbird like what Marlin Brando rode in "The Wild One". It's missing the tank, but I know where to get one. I just have to figure out how to keep dad from claiming it as his.

Keep writing

and I keep forgetting to save what I write. I have a job, and it sucks. Not the principle of having a job, just this particular one. It's crappy. I'd much rather do just about anything else. I have some requirements, but not many.

Seattle International Film Festival

I have have a two person pass! If anyone wants to see anything with me, let me know! I'm planning on using it as much as possible. I used it last night, and it was pretty cool. I was able to just walk past all the ticket holders who were waiting in line outside the cinema, and right to a line outside the theater. About 20 minutes before the start of the movie, they let all the pass holders in for their choice of seats, then ten minutes later, they let in the ticket holders.

The movie I saw last night was this low budget Japanese movie called Princess Raccoon that was a musical, but just about the strangest thing I've seen. Tonight, mom and I are going to see A Parie Home Companion and hopefully a documentary about the Afghan buddah statues that were destroyed by the Taliabn. I'm trying to make up a schedule of movies for the rest of this week. There are at least 24 movies each day, and I can probably make it to 4 or 5 depending on the location and how sick I am of sitting in a theater.