Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The elevator going up to the third floor of the nondescript office building in front of Chiba Station was old. The doors closed so slowly after the third-floor button is pressed that I had to wonder if the maintenance work, and indeed if the whole thing will just stop working in its equally slow accent to the third floor that at some point, users will be trapped for hours. The building itself looked to be falling on hard times too, with unidentifiable companies of unknown business scopes occupying its equally unidentifiable office spaces.

My girlfriend is a stunningly successful career woman. A self-trained computer game and blockchain programmer, she is fluent in multiple programming languages, successful as a cryptocurrency trader, and soon to be fairly well-off when the startup she works for and holds stock in it completes its IPO. Her wide networks in the programming world mean she frequently finds herself at the receiving end headhunting messages with highly competitive compensation packages. But with the high demand for her skills, she finds no trouble finding better work anyways even without the headhunters.

Japanese and Chinese social media are respectively inundated with reactions to the misfortunes of two different athletes competing in the ongoing Beijing Winter Olympics. On the Japanese side, the ski jumper Sara Takanashi was disqualified for using a jumpsuit that violated competition rules. She apologized profusely on social media after the disqualification for contributing to Team Japan failing to secure a medal in the team event. On the Chinese side, figure skater Zhu Yi fell during her routine, contributing to China not medalling in the team competition. Videos made rounds of her crying after the fall.

Recent increases in the number of new COVID infections make for some grim reading. The city of Tokyo saw an unprecedented 20,000 cases per day for two consecutive days, with no sign that the number of infections will decline. Japan as a whole recorded 3 million cumulative cases of infections, only two weeks after hitting 2 million. With much of the population not yet receiving the third shot of the vaccine, little is there to slow down Omicron and whatever other variants that COVID will evolve to next in its quest to continue dominating the daily lives of people around the world.

Plenty of articles these days mention the correlation between social media and mental downturns at a personal level. Anyone using any social media platform would be bombarded by texts, pictures, and videos of others enjoying both their professional and personal lives. On the professional side, social media is inundated with boasts about the latest promotions, product launches, and other notable career highlights. And in private lives, others seem to be all having beautiful kids, getting married to beautiful spouses, and visiting beautiful locations for carefree vacations. It is not easy not getting jealous.

Previously, I wrote about my current plan to move to a new apartment in Japan, and all the hassles associated with fending off different moving companies as they offer ever-more competitive prices for trucking my few belongings somewhere just some ten minutes away by car. But after all the belongings went to the new apartment and set up in their proper locations, it was what end up being just one of many small paperwork-filled procedures that entails the end-to-end process of getting a new life set up in a new residence, Japanese style.

The small poster next to the main entrance of the neighborhood gym is clearly designed to be seen by all who try to enter its premises. In big red letters, it states that the gym absolutely prohibits tattoos and that anyone found with one will be reported to the police and be escorted off its premises. Regular members of the gym who are later discovered to have tattoos, the poster says, will have their membership immediately revoked. The gym proudly presents itself as a "clean" destination free of body art, and the poster at the entrance symbolizes it.