New House
We moved up to the ridge of foothills behind the city last May. We're only 15 minutes from town and 20 minutes from work, but we're living at a 1000 ft. elevation instead of sea level. The weather is a little different up here. There's little need for an air conditioner in the summer, but the winter has teeth. I never thought I'd buy a house in Japan for reasons obvious to most residents of the Estados Unidos. Land is expensive, sold by the tsubo, a unit of measurement equal to 2 tatami mats. Then there's what you don't get: no yard, no central heating and no increase in the value of the house as time goes by. Contrary to what you expect in the good old USA, houses steadily depreciate in value and are torn down and replaced by new ones as time progresses. But, a funny thing happens when you leave the city and climb through the groves of cedar and bamboo, home prices start to decrease rapidly as lot sizes begin to expand.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Meetings
Another slow and malingering meeting at work. Due to decreasing student enrollment, the school has stopped replacing teachers when they retire. One perceptive faculty member noted that the number of committees now exceeds the number of faculty and proposed that we scrap all committees and hold general faculty meetings on a weekly basis to wrangle out all school business. The school president chuckled and opined that he understood the speaker's frustration, but thought the proposal too strong. He concluded that milder measures would suffice and made a counter proposal to keep all committees but add a second monthly faculty meeting to promote discussion and information flow. Great, an attempt to streamline the meeting process adds an additional meeting to the workload. Have I mentioned that in Japan teachers actually run the schools? I've been on committees that have drafted regulations for the student parking lot, solicited estimates for copiers and computers, written regulations for the Student Association, and wrestled with the thorny problem of students smokin' in the restrooms and wearing street shoes, instead of slippers, inside the school.
Back at home my son and I walked down to the park. Plum trees and daffodils are blooming; spring should be here big time soon.
Also found that Mouse Computer sells a Shuttle SN41G2 PC that doesn't cost much more than it would take to build one yourself.
Another slow and malingering meeting at work. Due to decreasing student enrollment, the school has stopped replacing teachers when they retire. One perceptive faculty member noted that the number of committees now exceeds the number of faculty and proposed that we scrap all committees and hold general faculty meetings on a weekly basis to wrangle out all school business. The school president chuckled and opined that he understood the speaker's frustration, but thought the proposal too strong. He concluded that milder measures would suffice and made a counter proposal to keep all committees but add a second monthly faculty meeting to promote discussion and information flow. Great, an attempt to streamline the meeting process adds an additional meeting to the workload. Have I mentioned that in Japan teachers actually run the schools? I've been on committees that have drafted regulations for the student parking lot, solicited estimates for copiers and computers, written regulations for the Student Association, and wrestled with the thorny problem of students smokin' in the restrooms and wearing street shoes, instead of slippers, inside the school.
Back at home my son and I walked down to the park. Plum trees and daffodils are blooming; spring should be here big time soon.
Also found that Mouse Computer sells a Shuttle SN41G2 PC that doesn't cost much more than it would take to build one yourself.
Monday, February 24, 2003
Job
The school year is over in Japan, but meetings remain. I work at a junior college and right now higher education in Nihon is between a rock and a hard place. The cause of this is a birthrate that has been falling like the Nasdaq; there are too many colleges and not enough students to go around. Japan used to pump out 2 million high school graduates a year. That figure is now down to 1.5 million and will dwindle to 1.2 million in the future. Now it's easy to get into a 4-year college. Other students choose what are called specialty schools that prepare students for specific jobs such as healthcare workers or computer programmers. Junior colleges bottomfeed and must have a high job placement rate to keep afloat. This school has had a job placement percentage in the high nineties, but the slumping economy could knock the stuffing out of it this year.
Well, a sure way to get your mind off problems at work is to think about building a new computer. I'm intrigued by the Shuttle SN41G2 . It's a small, quiet motherboard-in-a-cube that is about the size of a small toaster. Plus it has onboard sound and video and plenty of USB and 1394 ports. Now I have an overclocked Athlon in mammoth case I've crammed underneath a table. The fans raise a racket and are powerful enough to cool an Arizona subdivision. What I want is something doesn't impair the MP3 listening experience and that I can put on top of the table where my 2 year-old son can't get to it.
The school year is over in Japan, but meetings remain. I work at a junior college and right now higher education in Nihon is between a rock and a hard place. The cause of this is a birthrate that has been falling like the Nasdaq; there are too many colleges and not enough students to go around. Japan used to pump out 2 million high school graduates a year. That figure is now down to 1.5 million and will dwindle to 1.2 million in the future. Now it's easy to get into a 4-year college. Other students choose what are called specialty schools that prepare students for specific jobs such as healthcare workers or computer programmers. Junior colleges bottomfeed and must have a high job placement rate to keep afloat. This school has had a job placement percentage in the high nineties, but the slumping economy could knock the stuffing out of it this year.
Well, a sure way to get your mind off problems at work is to think about building a new computer. I'm intrigued by the Shuttle SN41G2 . It's a small, quiet motherboard-in-a-cube that is about the size of a small toaster. Plus it has onboard sound and video and plenty of USB and 1394 ports. Now I have an overclocked Athlon in mammoth case I've crammed underneath a table. The fans raise a racket and are powerful enough to cool an Arizona subdivision. What I want is something doesn't impair the MP3 listening experience and that I can put on top of the table where my 2 year-old son can't get to it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)