Saturday, May 21, 2005

business trip #1 (MAY-19)

business trip #1 to tokyo today. went to the shimizu research institute. that's the research institute of one of the three largest construction companies in japan: shimizu corporation. they have very interesting facilities, mostly from an engineering standpoint, but anyone would find some of the technologies they have very interesting too, like air-conditioning through the floor, fire protection using water walls, etc.  they have this computer set-up for doing very complicated computer simulation of wind: 10 pentium 4 3.something GHz processors, plus more!

anyway, going to shimizu pala, it's kind of school S-O-P that we wear formal attire.  yup, i was wearing suit & tie, the works.  but it was a very hot day (probably reached 26 or 27 degrees) in the tokyo area, and we were running late for our meeting time with the shimizu guys, so we ran probably 700 meters from the station to the institute, at around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, with our suits and ties on!

then, our agenda at shimizu was quite over sooner than i expected, and two of four of us wanted to go back to atsugi already (one guy had previously thought about going around tokyo), so... it was just around 3:30pm and i was going to meet pa with mia in chiba at around 7:30 pm pa... so home the three of them went, i went to my friend at todai (tokyo daigaku - tokyo university) and made tambay there muna. hehehe, conio-sounding na naman.  anyway, my meeting place with mia was at tsudanuma station, and i got there at around 8pm na din.  so may mga pinadala na akong mga books kay mia.  then i ate muna at becker's inside the station, and si mia na din, and i was on my way home na from tsudanuma at around 8:30pm.  i took the local train.  anyway, sa pagmamadali ko, i stepped on a train going in the opposite direction!  so i got off one station away, and got on the train going home.  i took a local train, which means it stopped at every station, so that i don't have to change trains pa until shinjuku, and naka-upo ako the whole time.  basa na lang ako ng nobela at nakinig sa mga senti na kanta sa aking palm zire 72.  medyo na-apektohan yata ako ng mga senti na kanta.  or baka pagod lang ito.  anyway, naka-48 years of solitude na ako.  hehe.  i've finished around 48% of the novel "100 years of solitude" by gabriel garcia marquez.  very interesting novel, for me at least.  by the way, i paid just 150 Yen for my trip from iidabashi to tsudanuma, and tsudanuma to shinjuku.  hehehe.  guess why.

got back to hon-atsugi eki (station) just before 11pm, and to the apartment at 11:15pm na.  the price for taking a local train.  on my trip from shinjuku to hon-atsugi eki, naka-upo naman ako.  pero i was so tired of travelling the whole day, i felt na parang super tagal ng trip na yon.  upon getting down at hon-atsugi, i decided against my previous plan pa of going back to TPU (the school) to get the bicycle para the next morning, magba-bicycle ako to school.  anyway, i was super pagod na talaga, so i took Bus No. 25 which goes to as close as two blocks away from the apartment.  Bus No. 26 goes straight to TPU sana.

by the way, i thought i don't need to buy an iPod if i wanted a music player, dahil pwede naman sa palm zire ko, lagyan ko lang ng malaking capacity na memory card.  problem: hindi pang-matagalan as a music player ang batterya ng palm.  lasted me a over 2 hours lang.  my advice: okay ang iPod.  but if you want a palm PDA and a music player in one, PalmOne is releasing a PDA model that has 4Gb of capacity and is priced under US$500.  pretty good na din yon, i think.  antayin na lang din natin na mag-mura.

ang dami ko nang sinabi!  bukas ulit! :-)