Thursday, September 30, 2010

Guess who's back? Back again?

Tah is back. Tell a friend. Guess who's back? Guess who's back? Guess who's back...
TADADAM TAM TAM TAM.

Well after a long but amazing 10-day-trip to Tokyo (more on that in other posts), I'm back to Sapporo! I was surprised by how good it felt to be back to familiar grounds, kind of how I felt driving back home, after a long day at work in ugly Beirut, when I reach the Monsef highway. If it feels like this to come back to Sapporo after 10 days away and only 6 months living here, I wonder how it'll feel to go back to Monsef after 8 months away and a couple decades living there haha. Will find out at Christmas :)

Finally got my modem on Wednesday, plugged it in and no connection (unknown network blabla). So called the internet company customer service and the woman speaks impeccable English yay! It seems however, that customer service is customer service no matter where you are... After 30 minutes on the phone trying different stuff (eh Joujou ana noob khales shimmo):

Me: do you have an IP I can ping to see if I'm even connected to you somehow?
Her: no you get an IP automatically
Me: yes, not mine, yours
Her: we may have connected your phone box to another broadband internet provider, I need to send you some engineers to check it out then come over to your place and test it
Me: ...
Her: oh and we can't send them before the 8th
Me: ...
...

Friday, September 10, 2010

The return continued

... And so I open the bag and find a BigMac! So somehow my McFlurry was understood as BigMac... Guess I shouldve said MaccuFurari.

Other than that back to the gym. With a vengeance! And I'm sore all over to prove it lol. In other news, donno if I mentioned it, but a while back was having dinner with some friends, and while leaving we saw a festival across the streets. We got a couple beers and proceeded to listen to an old man doing karaoke hehe. Old traditional song. Basically there was this Japanese dude looking at us so I did a cheers jesture, and he came over and introduced himself as a DJ in a tiny local radio station. And each Tuesday he has interviews some foreign student. Questions about the country and food etc.

Finally went last week. It was lots of fun. After introductions, we were flooded by thousands of questions on the show's twitter! Questions from the millions of listeners on a Tuesday at 22:00 lol. No but there were many more questions than I could answer in an hour. So he asked me to go one more time this last tuesday, and bring a friend. So went with the an equally annoying Spaniard and it was loads of fun again. The "studio" though is as big as my bedroom back home haha. Ah the good old days of having bedrooms...

Speaking of which. Time to put the phone aside and get some shuteye.

Monday, September 6, 2010

The return! Or is it?

Tam tam taaaaaaam.
So new apartment (read room).
New fridge (read used).
New washing machine (also used).
Computer table.
Computer chair.
All one needs to feel at home :)
At least for me. Some people would go with bed as priority, but then again they're not writing this blog so they can shush :)
There is one thing missing though. Internet. So I'm using my phone at the moment, which is a pain in the ass for typing for long.
So short(er) posts. No photos. For now.

Moving was a pain, but not that much. Knew I'd be moving so never bought lots of stuff, just vacuum cleaner. Speaking of which, rocks to be on the 8th floor, and away from Toyohira. Donno if it was that or being on the third floor, but it was DUSTY! Had to dust and vacuum every two days or I'd feel like I was in a western, only the tumbleweed rolling around was actually dust... Good thing my camera is dust proof heh. Whatever that means :/

Had to go to the district ward office and and change my address, then do the same at postal bank and I must say, times like these make you love Saporo. Try to do much much simpler stuff like that in Lebanon. It'll cost you a couple hours of your life, and a couple weeks worth of stress attached.
Here, there's a ward office for each district I think, so it's not very crowded, especially for the foreigners counters. So you get a number, wait in line, everyone's relaxed and quiet, you get there and it takes them 5 minutes to finish your stuff, and that's with my crappy Japanese and their worse English :) fun stuff.

One such mixup was at a McDonald's. Ya I hate that place with all my heart, and sadiki Hicham I know we shouldn't support the bastards ;) but I was passing in front of it in subway station and really wanted ice cream! And I love their McFlurry. So I ordered one to take out, still needed to give old apartment keys back. I give them ¥200 and they give me my bag. I grab it and am walking out when I touch the bottom of the bag and notice it's actually hot...
And I'll finish the story tomorrow.
*cliffhanger* ooh!