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Complexity

There are a few ideas I got in the conference.
The first: what is a bubble? Answer: Faster than exponential growth.
Currently the world seems to experience an economic crisis. The second idea states that the least bad scenario could be the japanese situation after the 1990 bubble, namely the so called lost decade.
I noticed that one sees few kids in Tokyo. Either they are all at kindergarten, school, home, or anywhere hidden, or there are just very few, which could be due the lost decade.
I also learned that the japanese analogon to pricegrabber or geizkragen/guenstiger is kakaku.

There are a few thing that I conclude from Wednesday night:
- although the fish is raw, one can eat a lot of sushi
- sake makes drunk
- “kampei” is similar to the chinese “gambey” (?)
- japenese are very patient (but I do not want to know what happens when they get angry)

Thursday (5.3.2009) we used to check out the city. This includes:
- The Fish-market is said to be the biggest of the world. I mean somewhere all the raw fish must come from. It is not a secret that the trawlers cruse the oceans of any corner in the world. The market itself is somehow funny. Obviously there is a lot of fish – dead or alive. However, there is no way of not standing in the way.
- The Hama-Rikyuteien Garden is located close to the fish market. One has to pay a small fee, but it is worth paying. The Park is very well maintained and kept very clean. It includes some nice ponds, bridges and stuff. The only disadvantage is that at this season all the lawns are grown, because of the dry grass. There is also a 300 year old tree.
- We did not skip the Imperial Palace. It sounds great, but when you visit it, there is not much to see. It is a quit big area with some old buildings. The real palace – one can only see its entrance – cannot be visited. We walked a lot.
- The Meiji Shrine is supposed to radiate tranquility (?). When entering, one needs first to wash hands and mouth in a fountain. One is also asked to ease ones mind (!). The shrine is nice and as everything else very clean. Unfortunately we were not able to figure out how it works, I mean the Shrine. I bought a “charm for soundness of mind and body”.
- We also went to the Shibuya neighborhood. There are many shops and people seem to be very busy. We realized that the flow is a big thing in Tokyo. I refer to the flow of people. They always stream from one place to another, such as in the subway stations or sidewalks, and one has to be careful not to interfere to much with the flow. In Shibuya we also visited the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office, a building with a platform on the 45th floor – nice view, but we were unlucky and had some cloudy weather. (accidently, we first entered the wrong building, but again people are so friendly that they just let us and did not escort us out)

It seems like the SARS-masks are used because many people suffer from a certain type of allergy which is caused by pollen, specially in spring. Therefore, the thoughts of my last entry were a little bit exaggerated.

We found a funny restaurant, where one first buys a coupon at a vending machine, gives it to the employee who then hands over the dish. It is rather cheap and the food is ok, only a bit fast-food style. The second time I went there, I was even able to use the vending machine on my own.

For lunch we get funny lunch boxes. Usually it includes (among others) two rice balls which look like over-sized sushi-rolls. Since the boxes themselves are made of plastic, they are collected for recycling. In general people here seem to be aware of ecological issues.
In the last entry I had also mentioned, how clean the city is. The paradoxon however is that there are very few trash bins. One really has to search them.

I also found out that my Japanese is worse than my Chinese. Nevertheless, probably I will never learn any of both.

After 6+12 hours of flights, we felt like tuna. Especially the long flight from Los Angeles to Tokio was a torture. Although the plain was bigger, the space per seat was reduced compared to the domestic flight. The best thing one can do is to sleep.
They showed several films. However, I saw only the city of amber. It is quit interesting, although the end is a little childish. In the physical sense it is unlikely that they go down the flow and still end up at the surface. To some extend some idea of the film is similar to Matrix (people living under the surface of earth) and Wall-E (people fleeing and loosing control of what is their aim).

The first steps leaving the airport were already interesting. The city is amazingly clean, almost hygienic. A little strange is to see people wearing SARS-style protection masks. We could not figure out what is going on. Maybe they are afraid of polution, maybe they are fearing an infection, or maybe it is just fashion.

The subway is funny. I am confident it is very well organized. However, the maps look very messy. In addition, there are different companies and one cannot just transfer from one train to another. In total, also because of the names, which are hard to memorize, it is rather difficult to understand the commute – although being used to the NY trains.

We also found out that here left-hand traffic is practiced. As know from London, this causes the risk, that one could be hit by a car because of looking to the left instead of the right. Further it is surprising how disciplines people are. Pedestrians almost never cross the street at a red light.

Seit Jahren höre ich die Musik der lustigen Combo aus Mönchengladbach. Kürzlich bin ich im Internet auf einige Ihrer Songs gestoßen. Warum ich dafür so lange gebraucht habe? Na ja, schließlich schreibe ich auch im letzten Blog des Internets.
Jedenfalls gefallen mir diese Beispiele ganz gut: EA80_music.

Hintergrundinformation:
Wenn ich mich richtig erinnere, machte ich die erste Bekanntschaft mit EA80 über den "Keine Experimente II"-Sampler (die ChaosZ-Titel finde ich jedoch wesentlich besser). 1993, auf Deutschlandurlaub (dummes Wort, oder?), hatte ich dann die Gelegenheit, mir in Hamburg das Schauspiele-Album zu kaufen. Bei dieser Gelegenheit nahm ich auch gleich "An den Ufern" von den Fliehenden Stürmen mit. Diese beiden Platten haben detoniert. Besonders die Schauspiele sind mir ans Herz gewachsen. Natürlich besitze ich inzwischen beide auch als CDs.
Danke an dieser Stelle an Florian. Die schwarzen Texte haben es leider nicht geschafft.
Lustig ist auch, daß EA80 bis jetzt ziemlich genau 17 Konzerte in Gießen gaben. Davon habe ich 100% verpaßt.
Ein interessanter Zufall ist, daß das letzte Lied der Reise ("Sommerjugend") von New York handelt.

I tried to write something about the maintenance of our building and the connection to MTA as well as the 2007 NY steam explosion.

However, after finishing I realized that it was to hard. I could be sued for posting what I wrote. Hey, I am a beginner in blogging.

Therefore, for today I will only post something about EA80, one of my favorite groups.

Probably as last human in the Internet, I now also want to start a blog. As friends, acquaintances, and relatives know, I live and work in New York. From this point of view it starts two years too late. This is due to the fact that only recently a friend brought up the idea. As a procrastination full-professional, which I am, I prefer to begin this project right away before the next two years fly. The intension of this blog is to prose all kinds of sense and nonsense, also about the last two months in New York. My motto: “Abandon what you start.” (subject to alterations)

Who is bothered by misspelling or style (the persons concerned know who is meant), is very welcome to mail me.

Wahrscheinlich als letzter Mensch im Internet will ich nun auch ein Blog beginnen. Wie Freunde, Bekannte und Verwandte wissen, lebe und arbeite ich in New York. So gesehen kommt es wohl zwei Jahre zu spät. Das liegt daran, daß mich jetzt erst ein Freund auf die Idee gebracht hat. Als Prokrastinationsvollprofi, der ich nun einmal bin, habe ich dieses Projekt aber lieber gleich in Angriff genommen, bevor die nächsten zwei Jahre vergehen. Ziel des Blogs ist es, hier so allerlei Sinn und Unsinn loszuwerden, auch über die letzten Monate in New York. Mein Motto: „Was man anfängt muß man auch aufgeben.“ (Änderungen vorbehalten)

Wer sich an Rechtschreibfehlern oder Stil stört (die Betroffenen wissen wen ich meine), ist herzlich eingeladen, mir zu schreiben. Ich versuche, mich an der alten Rechtschreibung zu orientieren. Hey, ich bin froh, überhaupt halbwegs schreiben gelernt zu haben.