05 07 2004

Mon, 05 Jul 2004

Curry and internet

I woke up late today. I didn't go to bed particularly late last night, but I don't think I ate enough, so my body was trying to regain energy.

Yesterday was Sunday. I spent the day half-heartedly studying, with an obligatory trip to the internet cafe as well. The half-hearted studying is not for lack of interesting material to read - just laziness. There's less intellectually challenging things to occupy me as well, and it's difficult to muster up the energy sometimes. But soon I'd like to organise a routine for studying, where I put in a given amount of time each day. Sporadic studying marathons are doing me more harm than good.

One of the reasons I haven't been so motivated recently is because I've been picking up a fair few words when out in restaurants, bars, etc. This is important because it teaches me how to communicate with real people rather than how to speak textbook Japanese, but the downside is I'm probably not picking up as much as I could be from the books. Ideally I should be doing a bit of each.

Last night I met a certain someone and we went out to the local Indian restaurant called "Nanak" - "nanakku" in Japanese. I've been there once before with OT, and I wanted to go back there because the food was good. I can't remember if I've described the heat system in Nanak before. When you order a curry, there's a scale from 0-50 where you can select your spiciness level. There's even some accompanying English on the Japanese sign - "pick up the hotness of your choice". The sign advises that 0-1 is mild, 2-4 is medium, 5-9 is hot and 10+ are super hot - or some numbers close to those. The numbers are calibrated for an average Japanese palate, however, and thus not quite as hot as the categories would denote.

Last time I was there with OT, we ordered a #5 - which wasn't very spicy at all. My companion also likes spicy food, so this time we decided to hazard a #12 - the low part of the "super hot" category. It was still pretty mild! I want to try 20 or 30 next time.

On the drinks menu at the restaurant is a drink called "lassi", which is a famous Indian drink. It's basically a yoghurt drink, but quite thin (not viscious). It kills the spiciness rather effectively, and would probably be an essential companion to a real super-hot chilli. I wonder if you can find it back in Australia.

Those of you who know me well probably know that two of my main vices back in Aus were curries and internet access (probably in the reverse order). So I guess it's time for an update on the progress of my internet application.

A few weeks after I arrived in Kumamoto, I put in an application for internet access to a fibre-optic company. For about 6000yen a month (~$72AUD), you can get an unlimited traffic 100Mbit up/down link - they run the fibre right into your apartment. This is incomparable to anything on offer in Australia - consumer internet access for the same price back home is in the order of 100 times slower. So being the computer nerd that I am, I was anxiously awaiting the processing of my application. I thought it'd be 1 or 2 weeks.

After about 3 weeks, they finally contacted me and requested a time when I could meet them in my apartment. Great, I thought. It's almost ready. They came over to the apartment, poked around the power sockets and looked outside. They had digital cameras and took lots of photos of the apartment, where the cables would run. I was mildly amused by the technicians using the light attached to their mobile phone to illuminate the inside of the wall cavities. Mobile phones here can do anything.

After they were finished doing their thing, they tried to explain to me that they'd need to contact the building owner and obtain permission. We struggled a little as my Japanese is pretty limited, but we got there in the end without too much hassle.

Then begun the waiting. I put in my application on the 25th April. It took the apartment owner about 6 weeks to finally contact the internet company to let them know they had permission to proceed - so I've now been waiting about 9 weeks for anything to happen. A few days ago I received a letter from the internet company indicating they'd finally obtained permission. Now they're commencing "preparations" (running fibre along the power poles near my house), and they'll be in touch when they're ready to install it in my apartment. It'll probably be close to 3 months by the time it finally gets hooked up.

But at least I can use free internet in the international centre in the interim.

It was my sister's birthday on Saturday. Happy birthday, sis.

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