It's a very hot day...

Yeah, no kidding, it's been like this for a week now, 33-37C (about 93-100F) and 100% humidity, everyday. The air is so thick and you can cut it with a knife!
This makes it really difficult to go about your routines and even try to lead a normal life. You just can't think. And this alone makes the days completely unbearable.

I'm still bummed with this. This weather makes it even worse, the heart that usually forgives finds it really hard these days. My sister will always advice that something is a big deal because we make it one, so I definitely should switch my state of mind to make it a no deal at all.

I have to say it's hard, though. The heat and humidity really isn't helping. So, last night I made a list on what 100-times-better things to do than seething in grudges:

1. Taiko drumming, of course!

Oh I am so looking forward to my taiko practice on Sunday and the Earth Celebration next week!! There is nothing in the world like drumming that never fails to pick up my mood to the 7th heaven. You can give so much to taiko and guaranteed it will give you back the equal amount of energy. It's always funny with musical instruments, you get back as much as you give them.
Not to sound melancholic or cheesy, but there was a time when I had to go through a really terrible unfortunate situation. Details unimportant, but it involved a lot of unhappiness.
The following morning after the most horrible situation took place, I went to my taiko class, thinking that beating on the drums would take my mind off it. It was one of the most intense meditative experience that I have had with the drums, I laughed when the song was joyful, cried when the song was sad, bopped around as the song went funny, cried out with ridicule when everybody made mistakes during the songs. After very intense 4 hours, I left the practice feeling deadly exhausted physically but the heart felt a great deal lighter and I was able to smile again.

Yes, taiko is my other life. Indeed it is, I feel a lot better already now thinking about it.

2. Eat chocolate cake.

I want to eat chocolate cake. I want to eat a LOT of chocolate cake. The fudge one.

3. Bake the chocolate cake so it can be eaten

I am going to cook Nigella Lawson's chocolate cake. It looks really good in her cookbook!

4. Be a couch potato in an air-conditioned room.

Watch a whole bunch of DVDs that my sister sent me on some TV series that I like, ranging from Desperate Housewives, CSI: Las Vegas season 7, Grey's Anatomy, and Ugly Betty. This will be fun

5. Piddle with Antonio Sanchez la guitarra mi corazón!

Yes, teacher M gave me a couple of homeworks that she will test on me on Monday. She said that if I could keep up until level 5 exams songs, she'll have a chat with the school's guitar orchestra and see if I can take an apprenticeship training with them. I'm giddy with joy just to have that prospect. FUN!

6. Thank goodness it's Friday!

The weekend is coming up tomorrow! YEAH! Finally, a full real weekend. I forgot what it's like to have a real weekend. How fun it is to be able to sleep in, go to the gym, or I can also NOT do anything at all whatsoever.

7. Daydream about Earth Celebration 2007

This event is my annual pilgrimage. I go and join the celebration every year and schedule all of my work in August around this event. Ah, days and nights of fun, happiness, drumming, laughing, swimming, outdoors concert, camping, road trips, foods. Words truly can't explain just how fun it is to be there at the celebration. Believe me, I've tried so many times, you just have to go there and experience it yourself!

Ah.... there are indeed many things that are 100-times-better than the thing-I-thought-about when I started this post. Better dedicate energy to those! It's now long forgotten.

Please excuse me, now I need to continue my daydream about Earth Celebration 2007.

The virtue of patience

On the blissfully beautiful Saturday, I went with an out-of-towner friend to visit the Meiji Shrine compound. We decided to get an omikuji. Usually an omikuji is a fortune that tells if you're having a lucky day or not. If not, then you will hang it up on a tree in the shrine compound and the monks will pray for you.

We happened to picked our selection from the poem box, so both Ropeninja and myself got ourselves a little poem that were supposed to have a particular meaning. These poems were composed in the traditional 31 syllable form, by either the Emperor Meiji or the Empress Shoken (his wife).

This is what is said on mine:

"Such is the force of water
That it will with gentle pressure
Shape itself to every vessel
And yet pierce the very rock."

In Japanese:

"Utsuwaniwa shitagai nagara iwaganemo
Tosuwa mizu no chikara narikeri"

-- Emperor Meiji --

Meaning:
Water meekly follows the contours of any vessel it is poured into, yet it can also pierce stone itself. Let your heart too be as patient and as strong.

Let my heart, too, be as patient and as strong as this water. Well said.

The light!!! I see it!!!

I do have to remember that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Last week was by far the hardest period that I had to go through in my professional history. Taking in a criticism is not easy, especially when it came as an explosion out of nowhere (my point of view, of course) and resulted in a massive shock.
I kept on thinking that I don't want to give up, but then... maybe I should?

One of the things that kept me going was something a dear friend pointed out to me during this time, "Tari, you love your job, and because you enjoy doing what you do - it seems like you're having fun and it seems that what you do is easy. This is why you are at a very prone position to be misunderstood. I am Japanese and I love my job, but I also know that I am a rare case. You have to realize that only few people actually do, especially in Japan. Here people live to work, not the other way around. This is sad, but this is the reality."

Last week I thought that I have to give up Japan, but of course that was emotion talking.
Finally after talking this through with several mentors and thinking this through myself, I'm beginning to see the light.
As much as it hurts, from this point forward it can only get better. When you are at the bottom, there is no where to go but up!

A lesson learned

In such days, you have to bow your head, think back, and reflect to what you did wrong and try to fix it for a better tomorrow.

There was a crisis at work on a project that I delegated to someone else because I had another responsibility.
The bottom line is, my client did not provide us with enough information and did not comply with my company's basic vendor procedure. For two years we had worked together and an issue had never come out.

Until yesterday.

Things that was not requested, suddenly was. Things that was not my company's responsibility, suddenly became one.
It exploded. In the middle of finishing up at the other place, I was called up to respond to this crisis. After a very long day of battle and putting out fires, everything was finally over.

Or so I thought.

I walked back to my desk and suddenly two of my team members called for a meeting. Even though the crisis was finally taken care of and we were finally off to a better ground with my selfish client; the situation is not the same with my team.
Not knowing what I had to go through on the other side battling with the client - they confronted me and letting their heart out. Fingers were being pointed, harsh words were flying all over the place. A volcano errupted.
From their perspective: I did not bother to understand how hard they had worked to help me in this project. Also that it seemed to them that I had always battled for the client and fulfilling their needs without enough consideration on the hard work that the team had to work on.
After a long conversation and heart-to-heart talk, finally we understood that both parties, myself and team members have not expressed and explained each other well enough until this time on the degree or situation of things that we do in our respective positions.

Apologies were expressed, broken hearts were mended, and off we go to a new page, a hopefully better tomorrow.

Lessons learned:
- I have to share and share and share so my team would understand that I am doing everything that I could in my power to help them and protect them. This was something that they never see directly, and thus uninformed.
- I also have to spend more time to listen to them and revisit my approach when speaking to them, so they know for sure I am with them at every step of the way.


This was a lesson that I had to learn the hard way. However it is also something I am determined to use as a stepping stone to make better decisions in the future.

Onwards, upwards!

An Elephant Leap

Wow! I did it!!!

Last Sunday I made a major leap to add to my professional portfolio. I moderated focus groups in a language that is not my own.

About 3 weeks ago, I received a contact from one of my long-term client. She informed that she was going to conduct a new-approach workshop. She had said then, casually, "I want you to help moderate the groups, Tari. This is a new-approach focus group. They won't be held in a traditional research facility, but we're thinking to have it in a wine and dining lounge type of place."

"Me? Are these groups going to be in English?"

"Yes, you. And no, the groups are going to be in Japanese, but you'll be fine."

"You know I can arrange a native speaker moderator to help you in the session..."

"No, I want YOU to help me. I have a bunch of brand people who are native Japanese speakers, but they don't know research 'do's and 'don't's, so I want you to lead them."

"Sure, I'd do it... I guess..."

She really has got a lot of faith in me. She really does.

I was so sure that anytime after we had this conversation, she'd call up and say, "Now that I think about it, maybe you're right, we should arrange for a native speaker moderator."

Well, that call never arrived.

Last Monday, I came back from my 9 days off to be thrown into a really long research project. Next thing I know it was already Friday when we had a meeting to finalize the discussion guide and logistics for the field day. Only then I realized that my client wanted me to do everything. Not as a help, but as a lead moderator for this focus group. With less than 48 hours to go before the research, it was apparent that making drastic changes (i.e. calling a replacement moderator) would not be a wise choice.
Sure I'm an experienced moderator, and sure I'm an experienced researcher - but I had never done it in Japanese. Besides it is my firm's policy to always put forward native speakers to be in charge of moderation. So I couldn't help but wonder... "What if I lost all of my Japanese capability as I'm going through the discussion? What if I had no clue what the respondents were saying? How would this affect my company's reputation? How would this affect the quality of the research?"

I had planned to run an extensive study on Saturday evening before the session, to make sure I get all of the buzz words right in Japanese. By Saturday noon, as I was wrapping up another research, I realized that I had no energy to do any additional study, and besides I doubt that learning everything a night before the 'exam' day would help at all. So I decided to sleep instead.

Come Sunday, I woke up much earlier than usual. I guess that was my nervous unconsciousness. I took a long shower, had my breakfast and finally made my way to Ebisu.
There I met up with one of my colleague who's helping out on the logistics and I drilled her with questions for 15 minutes. Basically I asked her all of my questions in Japanese and asked her whether I made sense or not. After a few tweaking, we headed to the classy restaurant.

11:30 the first session started.
I was surprised and comforted that I progressed through the discussion just as naturally as I did in English. Except that I clocked a 7 minutes overtime.

14:30 the second session started.
I did better with my timing. Everything finished right on time.

*PHEW*

It's finished. I was able to get all of the information that I was asked to gather. My client was happy, and the respondents had a good time. My client said that from the next workshops, she wants me to help her again.

Well, this may be something small to all moderators out there - but because it was in a territory that is completely virgin to me, this was a relatively big achievement. I felt like I won an award for having completed this with no glitch. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I know I could do it and I finally did it.

Thank you, Ms. O, for your faith in me.

Generation X or MTV Generation?

So, I was working on a proposal for a client the other day, when I stumbled across “Baby Boomers” segmentation, being a part of the screening criteria.
I have heard this term many times and of course I understand generally what that means, but it always piqued my interest what the names are for other generations.

This is what I learned.

Wikipedia, my favorite first-stop on my search routine, categorize all generations by birth year and elaborate in greater details. Click here and find the information.

Now, according to the chart, in this lifetime there are at least 17 generations that are still living, from Interbellum Generation (born 1900-1910) to New Silent Generation (born 2000 - 2020).

Where am I?

Born in 1976, that means I am either Generation X (born 1963-1978) or MTV Generation (born 1974-1985).

How do they differ?

Generation X

The article highlighted that “…one of the defining factors of Generation X is the transitions resulting from the decline of colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. The transition between colonialism and globalization is thought to separate the Baby Boomers from the Baby Busters, a sub-generation of Generation X made up of the earliest born members.”
It is also said that Generation X is someone who is twenty-something sometime during the 1990s.

Common denominators

- Nihilism
- Cynicism
- Postmodern attitude to life
- "So what," "who cares," and "what is your point?" attitudes ("whatever!")
- Distrust of political, religious, and societal institutions
- Atypical jobs and checquered careers
- Lack of marital commitment and disintegration of traditional families
- Distrust of science, religion, technology, or ideologies as narratives
- "Take the money and run" attitude toward work
- Childlessness
- Pessimism about the future
- Carpe diem attitude about living
- Almost complete disregard for religion
- Networking and globalization
- Liberalism and libertarism in the guise of a "who cares" attitude
- Slacking
- Flexibility and disregard for traditional values

OK, now how about the other one? Let’s see, shall we?

MTV Generation

The name is much cooler, I have to admit.
In this Wikipedia article, it is said that “…MTV Generation is a term used in order to define those who partake in both Generation X and Y - being that today's media targets the youth of tomorrow. The worldwide acknowledgment of an MTV Generation has been proven through the success of MTV and its by-products on a global scale as well as its influence upon youth culture and society throughout the 1990s. The term defines a generation of teenagers and young adults or Twixters influenced by fashion trends, music, and slang terms shown in music videos on the newly created cable channel MTV. MTV Generation has often been associated as a neologism for Generation X.”

Global Factors Defining the MTV Generation

Most notable factors relevant to the MTV Generation is the overall nihilistic attitude of the teenagers growing up through the 1990s having been brought up in the 1980s and recently becoming adults of the 3rd millennium, as well as
- The launch of MTV
- The fall of Berlin Wall
- The first Gulf War
- The Waco Siege
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- And so forth...

So… I was set out on this research to figure out which generation I belong to the best, only then to realize that I am both. I don’t relate to all of the denominators in Generation X nor MTV Generation, but I feel belong to both equally strongly.

My point is… (and I do have one), it is fascinating to understand that there are many boxes that you can claim your own. In Market Research perspective, the more segmentation box you can fit in, the more chances you can get invited to a market research discussion.

It’s fun. Which generation are you?

Self Pity

Just when I thought I cannot get anymore narcissistic in my blog, I have decided that today I am going to blog about how I am pitying myself.

I came home yesterday evening and slumped right into the couch and nearly fainted, my stomach was lurching as if I was going to throw up. Not only that... my house is at it's dustiest state. Even though all things were in place, I am just bottom line unhappy with the way the apartment feels.
Man, I was feeling very sorry for myself.

Basically there are two things that needed to be analyzed. My own physical state and my apartment's physical state.

The first one, I finally concluded, was a result of doing too much work out in a very short period of time. When I looked back at my planner since I returned to Tokyo, everyday I had put a work out agenda, one day can be more than the others. For example this past Saturday, Sunday and Monday was filled with 2 hour soccer/futsal training, 3 hours taiko drumming, and 6 km run respectively. All of those combined with 1 hour speed cycling each day.
OK, these are no hard training if I was in shape, but I'm obviously not. My last routine work out was pre-bone incident, so that was... oh October?? Shame on you, Taiko Tari!

What should I do, then? Oh heck, I'm going to continue the work out regimen. What happened last night was a punishment on how I haven't been taking care of my own body. Your body is your temple, goes the saying. If you don't love yourself, then who will - goes another saying.
And I will try to remember to eat something at 6 PM before I work out. Yesterday I was stupid not to eat anything prior to the run. No wonder the stomach wasn't happy.

Now for my apartment's physical state.
Never mind the vacuuming. I've done that twice already within the past week, and the dust kingdom persisted. I'd like to blame my books, and carpets and other stuff. One need not to point fingers, regardless what it is, the dust needs to go.
Since I cannot seem to get to the bottom of it, lovely Pauline to the rescue. I called my devoted cleaning professional. She knows how to do it right. I'm not going to even bother to ask her how she does it. Sometimes you just have to leave it with the professionals.

Oj! I'm looking forward to going home tonight. It will be nice and fresh and clean...

New Years Resolutions

So... I've lived long enough to see New Year's resolution came and went unnoticed. I have come up with a resolution for year 2007, but I need to be sure that I can find somewhere in my little mind to stick to my willpower which sometime is just not visible anywhere.

The following are some case studies from the past couple of years.

Resolutions for 2004

1) To be spontaneous
2) To pick up a new musical instrument

All who knows me are sometime frustrated with how extremely organized I can get. I plan and research everything to the very last detail, to ensure that I have all the information I need and might need in hand. You know, just in case. And I usually take advantage of all the information to make it 100% useful.
Back then, I was working my full time job during the week and every Sundays I hosted shows at the Tokyo Sesame Place with Big Bird, Elmo and the likes. In a week I only had 1 weekend day. I had to plan my Sundays a month in advance, because I only get 1 Sunday free. The Sundays I work with Sesame Street I had to leave my house at 6.15 AM and I will return home at 7 PM at the earliest or 9:30 PM if I had to host birthday parties at the park.
Because of this, for almost two years, I lived on a schedule. The only available day I had for personal life is on Saturdays. Therefore to be able to utilize a Saturday to the max, I had to plan ahead of time and make sure I can pack as many things or see as many friends as I could in that slot.
Anyways... after sometime I got so depressed. Relaxing shouldn't be this hard. So, I decided to take charge and be more spontaneous. So I stopped planning. I stopped looking at my diary and confirm with friends 4 days ahead of time max.
This approach didn't work. One thing I didn't take into account was that to be spontaneous with your friends require your friends to be as spontaneous as you are. While I deliberately stopped planning ahead, the other people didn't need to. So with the action = reaction theory, I realized that it wasn't working. Besides... I'm a planner, it is bothering me when I can't anticipate what's going to happen.

At the end of my 2nd year contract, March 31st 2004, regardless how much I loved being with the kids, performing, singing and dancing - the pay didn't foot the monthly bills. It was a hobby job. And sometime grownups have to make smart decision. I quit the MC job and freelanced whenever they have big shows that required an English speaking MC for the off-site shows. It was a big decision, saddening, but ever since then I was finally able to have a quality life.

This then left me with a new window to pick up a new musical instrument. I picked up taiko drumming... and hey! the rest is history. Still doing it, still loving it.

Resolutions for 2005 and 2006

1) To have one night off every week
2) To pick up a new hobby or pick up a new musical instrument

The first one had been rather successful. While not 100%, at least in 75% of my weeks in 2005 and 2006, I was able to have 1 night off every week.
For item number 2, in 2005 I was sticking to my taiko drumming life and was shopping around for new hobbies. This became much more challenging than I thought it could. I've instruments-hopped so much in my life that I couldn't think of any new instruments to pick up. And thinking of a new hobby actually pained me. I had so much going on hobby-wise that it was draining me.
So, in aggregate, I came down to this

2005: sticking to taiko drumming and returning to classical guitar.

2006: I ditched my acoustic band, sticked to taiko drumming and classical guitar and latter in the year I began studying fue (Japanese flute).
New/old hobby: I joined an all-female futsal team

Finally... Resolutions for 2007

Oh, I'm scared. I have 3 things in my list

1) To have one night off every week
2) To pick up a new or return to a previously studied musical instrument (maybe returning to a piano again. It's been 10 years...)
3) To go back in shape: more committed to my weekly sport schedule (never skip anymore of that weekly futsal/soccer training, cycle everyday to work, to make full use of that darned gym membership, go jogging a lot more)

Well, I'm trying to be realistic. I just don't know how I can do so many things at once with an increasingly busy schedule at work and a pile of books waiting to be read at home. Oh dear... What have I got myself into?

A friendly farewell the characters threw for me to say goodbye after 2 years of togetherness