Bicycle business

So, it's really late, but I'm feeling quite generous tonight and as such will give the common people a quick update, basically about my bicycle lol. And of incoming changes!

Last week, I opened Google maps, and traced the route I take everyday from my dorms to the university, and learned that it's approximately 4km each way. Doing very simple maths (nijma3!), this amounts to a minimum of 8km a day, around 16ish on days I go to the gym (which hasn't been happening much though).

8km à pied, ça use, ça use.

8km à pied,ça use les souliers!

Only I'm not walking, but the concept remains unchanged, and so I use that fact to make myself feel less bad about the 3rd bicycle I've so far kinda broken or ruined...

First one was the old crappy one my very nice friend gave me (I'm really not being sarcastic here), didn't take me much effort to ruin the chain so that it came off every other block. Returned it and she actually was nice enough to give me another one.

Condition was better, but not much... it wasn't ME riding it when the chain actually broke, but I paved the way for it.

The last one, which I bought second hand from the Co-op, seemed more promising, in much better condition. It seems however, that it is a bit small for me. I should have realized this when my feet would brush the ground when I would be banking right or left lol, but I just assumed the road was uneven.

Last week, the main suspension (under the rear seat) actually broke... Seems it wasn't meant to carry me + my books + my laptop for a total of 80something kgs. Go figure.

Asked the nearest repair shop, turns out it costs nearly as much to change it as it would to buy another second hand bike... So I fixed it myself. It's not a very good job, but it seems to be holding out for the time being. I just need to make sure everything's still in place every couple of days, and avoid carrying my laptop with me lol. And maybe stand up when there's a bump in the road. And maybe not jump off the sidewalk when there are many people there. That might help a little haha (no seriously wasn't doing that, maybe only once or twice. Now I just avoid streets with many people).

Good thing is however, that this long ride is amazing exercise. Especially since I'm always late in the morning! When I first started making the trip maybe 2 months ago, I'd get there tired, now I can very easily go full speed the whole way back and forth one go. So I started to find other ways to make it a challenge, like standing as much as I can (while avoiding straightening the knees of course), or not using my thighs and stuff like that.

There are days however, when all this is unnecessary. Days when the wind is more than enough challenge! Days like today.

Once the wind was so strong, it actually stopped me in my tracks, from nearly top speed! Had to walk my bike... but this only happens at the riverside for some reason. Maybe coz of lack of buildings that shield you.

Well anyway enough of silly and uninteresting stuff. Winter is coming (Song of Ice and Fire reference... if you don't know what that is, shame on you! But worry not, you do not need to read them, HBO is making a series based on the books! Books will be better of course, but I digress again). Therefore, bicycle riding will be somewhat hard. Add that to the million reasons living in these dorms (or any other dorms) sucks, and you get enough incentive to move to an apartment! I say apartment, but it's basically a bigger room lol...

Et voila! My new apartment. A couple minutes away from my lab (on foot!) and on the 8th floor (8 being my favorite number). I'll be missing out on the daily workout but I can think of many many more positive sides to the move. Like: hotel Tah is now open for visitors! Well not yet, but as of August 21st (or a week after that). Come one come all! I won't pay for your ticket :P but you'll have a place to stay, and a guide for the bestest foodz hehe.

Enough rambling for now, so much to write about, so little "jalad" to do so :)

Uploaded many pix on FB though so check them out.

Moo.

GAD DAMMIT I'M NAT FAT! >>.<< !

We got the results for the health examination we did a couple months ago, and it seems I'm fat! Lel. BMI (Boday Mass Index?) never really applied on me coz I'm quite dense. Physically people physically! So when I had myself checked at the gym and results came up less than 10% body fat percentage, at 72kgs (with clothes), I wasn't really fat :D

So now, haven't gotten taller (unfortunately), but have gotten 2 kgs lighter at 70 kgs, and my BMI is 25.2; the average here should be between 18.5 and 25.

So I got a comment that I'm a bit fat (or skinny.. stupid computer automated message) and that I should watch my diet lol. Getting quite hungry just thinking about it. And coz it's 2 AM and I haven't eaten anything in a while! Like 6 whole hours... weather got hot all of a sudden and I just woke up hot and sweaty, and not very sleepy. Thus the update. And the incoherence in sentence structuring...

And finally, not nice to have an entry with no photos! So! The school visit I spoke of last entry was not done yet and we had to write a thank you letter! Seeing as I'm quite lazy and couldn't come up with much to write, I decided to just go buy a brush and some ink and draw a big THANK YOU in kanji! Nice right? No. After getting the stuff, found out the letter's addressed to the kids (7-year-old don't know the kanji for thank you, don't think anyone uses it...) so we came up with another idea. Don't remember if it was Wulan, Pen Pen or Vangie that threw the idea out as a joke, a joke I found to be quite serious!

Et voila! Just drew a couple names and a quick thank you and it turned out quite nice.

Ehab, my palms (or palm to be more precise) still blacker HAH!

And I think I'll go back to sleep now. Peace.

Shopping: part I

OK so much shopping done this week!

First item on shopping cart:

Photo was taken using second item on shopping cart, my new Sony Cybershot touch screen waterproof slim camera yay!

I've had my eye on that camera for a while now, and after rafting, where I couldn't take my own photos (especially in the water hehe), I just had to go get it!

Once there, saw an unbelievable offer, for only one day, on a Nikkon camera. Most specs were better than mine, but it was bulkier, worse off with low light, and not waterproof. However, its price went down from 42,000 to... 18,000, just for that one day! WAT ZA FAK!?

Told some friends about it and I think 2 ended up buying it lol.

Last but definitely not least:

MUGIWARA KAIZOKU! むぎわらかいぞく！One Piece yay!

If you don't know what that is, then you suck hehe. If you do, then my good friend Michal showed me this shop where you can bring out the geek in you :) they have all that is related to manga! Toys, figurines, cosplay costumes, DVDs, comics, the whole works!

The shirt however is from the clothes shop on the floor above. They also have many others, but unfortunately no Fullmetal Alchemist :(

Speaking of the geek in us, kinda took a wrong turn somewhere in the convenience store when looking for the camera section and ended up at:

Lol annoying ass character but still cool usher to the DVD section imo!

Right inside, there was an old school section:

Behind the glass, some all-time favorite series on DVDs!

The original Star Trek:

MacGyver lol:

The original Mission Impossible!

Rafting

Aha!

And we're back! Dina がんばって！OK had to begin with that.

So since it's been a while and I have no idea where to start, so I'll start with rafting last Sunday!

It all started at 9:30 AM in the huge train/subway/convenience store building I've spoken about more than once, where I met Aiman (Libya), Barbora (Slovakia), Dasha (Russia), Julien (France), Ted (Mars), Vala (Russia) and we took a minivan towards... geh need to get the brochure forgot the name... NISEKO! Muahaha my memory never fails! Or rather since I KNOW that it will, I've come up with many methods to get around that fact, like for example:

Taking a photo of the subway entrance in front of which I parked my bike... just in case ;)

As always I sat in front to chat with the driver, but I hadn't thought about the fact that I can't really speak Japanese lol. Turns out he speaks little English though, and he works as a fisherman half the year, when the rivers aren't freezing, and different things the other half. Thanked him for contributing to my healthy diet of sashimi/sushi since I got here :D

Last Sunday was the last day of ski, still plenty of snow as you can see.

Coolest part of the drive:

That was a bridge, that went into this half-tunnel thing (to protect from avalanches I guess). Striking resemblance to that Need for Speed 2 track! Which reminds me of Niz rest his soul, he always used to kick my ass on that track :(

Finally arrived at our destination and were greeted by the evil puppy with plans to take over the world with his hypnotic powers.

20 seconds later, we had to hold this strange woman back. She was trying to scratch out the eyes of a poor unfortunate smaller man while he pleaded: "I'm sorry the dogu tolde me to grabu youro assu!" OK maybe that didn't happen. Donno why I just had the urge to write that, felt like a voice in my head compelled me to do it...

Moving on, we put on the wet suits, emptied extra air (if you have lots of air inside and fall into the water, the air might all go to your legs thus making you float legs up lol), and went outside to take the bus.

The guy with long hair was our guide. The other team of 7 Japanese girls had Spider-man for their guide... But ours was cooler! We called him Spider-man coz he was showing off (we assumed?) and hanging down from the bars on the bus' roof. Strange man with red hair...

Once in the water, the craziness began (again I blame the evil puppy!). Our guide miscalculated and started to hype us up by yelling: "HIGH FIVE" to which we would high five with our oars and scream while screaming it with him. I think he started regretting doing so the 38th time we did it haha. We did some rafting between jumping in the water, pushing each other in the water, and splashing the other boat full of Japanese girls every chance we got! Fun stuff.

(photos are on my FB so can't be bothered to upload them again here)

After finishing, the bus was waiting for us with hot tea. Then we were back at the puppy's base of operations, where we changed back into our clothes and went to the hot springs! Not sure what type of hot spring it was, but it wasn't Sulphuric which smells bad so that's cool. Hot spring with a cold 750ml beer? Yes please... No photos inside for obvious reasons ;) sorry ladies.

Video of a small drop we did yay! Unfortunately we had to take the silly side, the cool side (with much bigger drop was too dangerous for us... pansies...)

Wednesday: Bicycle III - I still know that you still know what I did last Saturday

Remember the nice Myanmar man that gave me a free bike, the same bike whose tire exploded last Saturday?

Well today he offered to fix it! Seriously, too nice.

So we (mostly he) took the wheel apart, and after finding out that the tire is way beyond repair (the air chamber had a 4-5 cm rip in it), we decided to just replace the wheel.

As you might already know, disposing of trash here is no easy matter, especially bulky trash, like a broken bicycle for example? So people just leave these bicycles near the garbage collection spots, and people who need spare parts (me) can scavenge them there lol.

Didn't take me long to find myself a spanking new wheel. And we were done with that issue along with the chain. I was good to go.

One problem. It's raining, and I'm in Sooen (or whatever the stupid dorms are called... can never remember that name), which is a half hour ride from where I live. And it snowed a little teeny tiny bit in the morning (while I was sprinting to uni with friend living in same building and as late as I was haha), so it's kinda cold lol.

Sapporo TV station on the way home:

25 minutes or so later, finally made it home. Must tell you, with no hat or gloves, not a very pleasant experience haha. Bright side is that, after you start thawing, and feeling returns to the fingers and face, it feels warm and fuzzy! Oh and it's great exercise! My thighs hardly fit in my toyght jeans for like 2 minutes after getting off lol.

As a side note to my friends in za mozerland, I'm uploading for 120kB/s here, that's like 10 times faster than my download back home lol (hi Joujou sup?). Not that I'm uploading or downloading any torrents or anything of the kind of course...

Saturday: Bicycle II - The Revenge

Saturday! Woke up and went shopping for repair materials! Oil for wheels and pump for wheels (the pumps here are small compressed gas tubes! You just put it in the small "bazbouz" (ya sorry donno any other word for it...) and it just blows the tires in a second). Took my bike, put the beer in the front basket (there are some advantages to these girly bikes after all), and got on my way to Victoria's birthday! Now Victoria's a girl, so we can't ask her which birthday it is hehe.

Anyhoo, half way there, I was crossing an intersection, with another dozen or so people, when suddenly there was this loud pop, and everyone nearly shit their pants haha. Priceless to see their faces, until I realized that all these faces were looking at me... good thing I had just shaved :P turns out my wheel just decided to explode... you see two blocks before that, a policeman stopped me and started blabbering something in Japanese, to which I just smiled. Turns out he was telling me to turn on the lamp that I have but don't know how to use hehe. Noticing I had no idea what he was talking about, he was nice enough to click it on for me (albeit after a bit of struggling with it). It basically rubs on the wheel, and just converts the mechanical energy into electrical energy, which lights the bulb. Seeing that the bike wasn't in the greatest shape, this mechanism was making a loud rasping noise, which was really annoying and quite scary. I don't know if it had anything to do with it, but 20 meters or so after I turned it back off, the wheel exploded.

20 minutes of pushing the bike after, I met my friends waiting for me so we can go together. Late again hehe.

So the people you see now are the non Russian speaking section (well except for the lovely ladies on the sides... and the birthday girl who's standing in the middle).

And the rest (plus 2 more that came afterwards), the Russian speaking section, where I found myself sitting. Depleted my Russian repertoire in less than 5 seconds and just waited for translation from Alex whenever someone made a funny joke hehe. Masha помощь needed!

After some cake and beer and laughter with my new Tovarish, it was time for Karaoke!

Very very strange these people they are...

So this place is 7 or 8 floors, consisting solely of Karaoke rooms...

This is the 5th floor, each door leads to a different soundproof room. Each room has its own size. You rent out the room by half hour, hour or for the whole evening. The evening costs something like 15-20$ for open drinks and singing.

As for the selection, they have EVERYTHING! I should've checked for Haifa or Amro Diab, coz they had Korean songs, Chinese songs, most of Iron Maiden songs, even Judas Priest (the fact that you haven't heard of them is proof of the wide array of songs they have haha).

There are 2 touch screens you use to search by title or artist name, choose a song and queue it. Very awesome. But a couple hours in a closed karaoke booth... not my cup of tea. Although I must say it is very good Hiragana practice!

Image quality is crappy. But colors are funky heh.

Met Shoma-san who was also celebrating his bday (also lives in our building along with most of the people that were with him).

Also took a video but miserably failed at attempt to play commentator, so not posting it :P

After that made a big ass group and walked back home. Fun stuff!

Friday: Bicycle I - The Beginning

Where to start!?

The bad thing about being as lazy as me, is that when I DO come to update, so much has happened that I have no idea where to start, and I end up forgetting so much hehe. Ah well not to fret. Not to fret.

So. Where to begin? OK bicycle! So no photos of aforementioned bicycle, reason for that is... OK just chill I'll get to that in due time... sheesh...

So my very very nice classmate from Myanmar asked her equally nice teacher (also from Myanmar) to give me a bicycle someone left behind. She heard me saying I was gonna buy a used one and just went without telling me and asked for one. Really nice.

So got my new (again, new might not be the best choice of words) bicycle Friday evening, and rode it to Aiman's place for horror night (by horror I mean supreme silliness and laughing).

At 5 AM, got on my bike, that squeaks, has a somewhat loose chain that slips occasionally on the gear cogs, took out my map and rode back home.

On the way home, golf course:

Toyohira river (me thinks hehe) after which the region I live in is called:

Other side of bridge, nice view:

Can't say it wasn't a great way to end/start the day, especially since it's just so easy to follow the map and get where you want in this city!

Just like in Beirut: the first turn after the second bank on the main road? Ya NOT that one! The one after it... then you keep going till you see a big pothole in the middle of the road...

Honya honya.