Saturday, April 23, 2011

living at sakura house for 3 weeks

I've been living at Oomori's sakura for about 3 weeks by now.

As I previously described, the walls are very thin, and you can even hear the guy next room walk...
And my neighbor apparently REALLY likes his girlfriend, and brings her over every weekend, and does lots of nasty stuffs from morning till noon...
I like nasty stuffs, so that wouldn't really normally annoy me, and I really like hearing girls' nasty voices, so that's OK too, but that girl sounds just annoying, and I really gotta study (Rakuten gave me so many books! which I gotta read like in a week...).

And the kitchen... is dirty as hell. The chinese guys just won't clean their messes for who knows what damn reason...
I saw like a huge roach in the lavatory yesterday.

I think he's gone now, but there was an Australian guy who always talked in the hall with some girl like at midnight, and woke everybody up (he had a really loud voice and not much respect for other people...).

So, I can safely say I don't love it in here.

Maybe I'm not fit to live in a room sharing place, or maybe I'm just too used to Japanese manners so I get annoyed rather easily for foreign standards.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

personality types and how to handle them...

I heard about this personality test (the Merrill-Reid personality test), and it does really tell you about yourself, and about to how to handle other personality types.

25 years... I've lived without knowing how to handle the A and D types (driver, and very analytical), now at least theoretically I know how^^. This would have helped me so much in high school and college!

Info about the personality types:
http://www.2h.com/articles/personality-tests/personality-types.html

How to handle them?:
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/how_personality_affects_how_you_handle_sticky_situations.html

free online test:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Rakuten's training

omg, the weekend's training is horrible...
I can't speak about the training itself, but the thing is we got split into groups, and mine is a real pain in the... let's just say it doesn't become me very well.
They're all noob engineers/programmers (I have the second top level, because I don't have a doctorate), and they way of thinking really tells me so...
Obviously not all of them, but only a few, really lack logic in what their proposals... but somehow they understand each other, while I can't understand crap what the heck they're saying...
As you can guess, this is a really annoying situation.
It's really hard for me to contribute to the group (being that I have no idea what they're talking about most of the time, and they just really like to talk about it!!).

There's especially a girl who likes taking leading positions, that's obviously great, but she's the one I can't understand the most...
My abstract thinking (especially in Japanese, and in business stuffs!) is not good, so I guess it's my fault too.

I have to think how can I contribute something to this group (besides the occasional "didn't he just say..., so we should be talking about ..." phrase). And do whatever I can to get a better evaluation than today's...

Being that I "usually" do good in teams (as leader/sub-leader mostly), this situation is incredibly annoying for me. And honestly I feel like hell right now.

I'm really gonna think about what to do to fix it, and maybe sleep early tomorrow!! (today, Saturday, I went to work at 8:10 and left it at about 22:00... hell)

my thesis

The one about clustalw2/phyml's web interfaces and balibase v2 benchmarks for clustalw2... where clustalw2/phyml are versions of the programs modified to analyze codon sequences... is done!
I actually finished it last month (obviously), But just uploaded it to my webpage.
Take a look if you want:
http://www.rikijpn.co.cc/en/clustalw2_phyml_interface.php

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Rakuten girls + I'm getting brainwashed

It's been a bit over a week since I started working at Rakuten.

Wow, let me tell you, I've never seen this many beautiful girls in one place...
They all can be like fashion models or something.

There's especially one very cute girl that looks like Ogura Yuko (below pic), but probably even cuter!
And she's in the same unit as me!!

I armed myself with courage, and asked her e-mail...
And, it has to be a miracle, she gave it to me><.

She said "you look so happy!", hell I was!!!^^

She said like hi by waving her hand over me the other day, and there was another guy, in between, she moved her hands like "not you, him" signing at me...
That just got me><. I'm usually the guy in between!! lol And being said hi from a girl this cute, never happens to me...
She probably doesn't have that kind of interest in me, but still you can't blame me for using my imagination;)


We had a kind of party, in Kabuki-chou, Tokyo. And it was very fun.
I still can't believe I got into such a great company, where I got the chance to meet all these (mostly) great people.

But, I gotta admit, their training is working very good.
Before, getting on a train meant listening music, and enjoying the view...
Now I'm doing all my assignments with my android cellphone, and making/fixing my schedule for the next week><.
Where the heck did my laziness go?! And believe me, I had lots of it!!^^

Anyway, I'm gonna try to keep up and make myself a bright future (hopefully, a Japanese girl is included in that future!).

Saturday, April 2, 2011

The cheapest ISP in Japan

The cheapest internet service provider in Japan has to be gmobb. It's great! NTT (the Japanese telephone company you have to pay to get the optical fiber router) doesn't have it in its double application list when you sign the contract, so you have to only ask them to have the router, or tell them you are going to use your own provider (more instructions in gmobb's page).
The only thing besides NTT you can use, is yahoo BB's stuff, but you obviously can't choose your own provider then... (and it's not cheap at all)
gmobb costs about 750y for optical fiber, this is as cheap as you can get.

gmobb also gives wi-fi access in BB wifi spots for about 300y. In which case you wouldn't need to call NTT (its router is over 3000y I think... don't remember, but it's what really costs money). But BB wifi spots are not that many even in Tokyo so you can't really use it as your main internet service.
BB wifi spots are usually McDonalds, train stations, and other restaurants/coffee shops.

My first day at work

Yesterday (4/1) was my first day at work!

Being one of the top IT companies in the world, and most employees being from Universities a lot better than mine, I was very nervous.
But it wasn't so bad. I met lots of cute girls, I even got their email addresses (one of them asked it to me>_< Never got that before!), and I got along with everyone in the development department. So far so good.

What did suck, is that I didn't understand all of the lots and lots of explanations we had. Rakuten is going to be using English as the official language since next year. But still being in a translation stage, English is used mostly in documents, and everything oral is mostly Japanese...
I speak a decent amount of Japanese, having studied here for like 6 years.
But really, the explanations were just too complicated to understand, especially in Japanese! So, I had to keep asking the people next to me when I didn't understand...

I have lots and lots of homework, which I can't talk about because is everything is "secret" and can't discuss...

Still, it's a great company, and I really liked it when they talked about their mission, and I just know there are lots of hackers there too, but still there are a few people who get in my nerve^^.

I hope I do OK in the training, and be able to learn all the what they are trying to teach me the easy way><.


At least, I apparently I'm doing good in my tests and online learning stuffs.


This is how I look now!!
I look so much as an adult^^ I still feel like in high school though...

Anyway, now that I work in a good company and have lots of chances I hope to a cute Japanese girlfriend.