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.