Kinya Hanada a.k.a. Mumbleboy

I've started using a couple of new things online recently.

(New Mumbreeze card!)

I've joined Twitter a few weeks ago like, I think millions of people have as well. I knew about it for much longer and I didn't have any intention of joining it, but then I started checking Twitter pages of friends and after a while, I wanted to join in. I'd never been a fan of chatting online and hardly ever chatted unless if it was for work or a friend prompted me to do it. I mostly try to avoid having to chat if possible. Twitter on the other hand feels totally different from chatting. For one thing, you can post whatever you feel like any time, but it's not (unless you're responding directly to someone) directed at anyone in particular, so you're not requiring anyone to respond. Likewise, you can look at other peoples' 'tweets', but you don't need to respond to it unless you fee like it. So, looking at your Twitter page is kind of like sitting down with a dysfunctional group of friends. Everyone is tweeting whatever they feel like and some of them, you have no idea what they are talking about, but that's actually more interesting than people chatting with each other. There's nothing as bad as having to listen to a bad conversation, but if it's something written by a single person, there is no small talk involved and it is more informative. Anyway, I wouldn't write about it here unless I wanted more people to know that I am on Twitter. So far I've got a few friends and some other people I'm following, but I think I could do with a few more. There are some people who tweet every little thing they do and it's a bit too much to follow and I don't keep them in my list, but I wanted to see if I'll gain some new people to follow by writing about it here. Likewise, if you're on Twitter and want to check me out, you're welcome. I don't think I'm the most interesting Twitterer out there, but then I think I'm not the most boring either. I tend to be kind of all over the place as far as subject goes, but I think my top subjects are bicycle, environmental issues and artwork. If you're not interested in any of that, then my tweets might be super boring for you. Anyway, feel free to follow me on Twitter. Add me to your list and then delete me if you're not into it. I won't take any offense at all. If you add me, I will check your page too (unless it's private) .


(Mt. Tabor Park, Portland)

The other thing I've been doing online (for 4-5 months now I think) is the Google reader. I may have written about it a while ago, but It's a Google tool that lets you keep up with all your subscribed blogs, so you can browse through all your favorite blogs without having to go to each site. If you like to read a lot of blogs, this is a good tool to do that with. I'm sure most of you know that already though. With Twitter I could use more activity, but lately dealing with Google reader have gotten me a bit overwhelmed. I know exactly why this is too. I started following Tree Hugger recently through the reader. I really like a lot of the articles they have. The problem is that they upload so many articles everyday and even if I take ample time going through my reader updates, I can never seem to get through all of them. If I can skim through the titles and only read the most interesting ones, maybe I can get through all of them, but they all look pretty interesting to me so that I want to at least read a little bit of most of the articles. Anyway, so I'm in a strange situation of having access to a lot of interesting reading, but not having the time or the mindset to be able to go through all of them. If the number of unread articles get to be too much, I will just have to set the status to "all read" and just forget about all the information I might have missed in them. Maybe it seems strange to you that I am interested in environmental issues at all. Wouldn't it be more appropriate if I recounted some psychedelic dreams I had here? For me though, I'm interested in the environment mostly for selfish reasons. I want to live in a world that feels good basically. My idea of what that world would be like has changed as I've gotten older. I didn't care much for nature when I was younger, but as I grow older, I seem to crave the charms of nature more just as a lot of people do. When I was younger, I didn't really like doing the same things as most people and if people said flowers are pretty, I questioned that statement. I guess maybe I'm not such a rebel anymore and I have come to appreciate nature through first hand experience. Anyway, so the world that feels good to me is one where nature is thriving much more and human civilization is in harmony with it. I think though that the way we are living is destroying the environment and we're getting further and further from my dream world. Maybe it's futile, but still I like to think that we can turn things around. Sites like Tree Hugger, while not all their writers might have high aspirations for a better world, does contribute greatly in sharing news and ideas about our environment and I think the more of us that are better informed can bring change for the better. I've gotten way off track, but that's sort of why, I am stubborn to not to dismiss all the articles in the ever growing list of unread updates. Anyway, Maybe I could just get better at reading them and I won't worry about this any more.

We had our first guest to our new place and she has been staying here the last few days. I don't have a car, but we decided to go see some sights of Oregon, so we rented a car and drove to Central Oregon. I'd been to Bend, Oregon a long time ago, but hadn't really notice how much variety of terrain there is in this state. My image of Oregon was mostly lush green forests, but there is dessert and a lot of tall snow capped mountains and valleys and more. Anyway, our friend is from Japan and wasn't used to driving in the States, so I became the navigator. I wasn't driving myself, but it had been so long since I took an active role in the act of driving, so I noticed a lot of things had change since I drove regularly which is more than 10 years ago. Most surprising was the price of gasoline. I think it used to be like I could fill the tank with like $12, but I think now it's more than $40. That's crazy. I don't know how or why people pay that kind of money and drive daily.

The other thing I've noticed is that even though Portland is a relatively eco-conscious city, still most people don't think much of how critical things have become with global warming. The other day, I went to a regular supermarket and told the cashier lady that I don't need any bags as I had my own and the lady was like "you do whatever you like, honey". The lady obviously doesn't think not using grocery bags is all that important and it doesn't really change much in the big picture, but I feel I ought to do what I can anyway. I think it's really gotten to the point where we all really have to do things differently. I think if we keep on doing things the same way, things will become noticeably worse in just a few years.

It's maybe contradicting for me to be talk about going driving and then talk about doing things to stop global warming. I'm thinking it's OK to go drive once in a while and see some places, but I don't think driving everyday everywhere is really necessary especially in a city like Portland. If it's something that didn't effect everyone everywhere, then just those of us who want to can do these things, but even if a country like Iceland uses alternative energy source like hydrogen all throughout the country if the other countries don't reduce their CO2 emissions, climate change won't discriminate and effect them as well, so I know it's not really fun to read stuff like this, but I feel like I have to rant about it just the same. If you don't really care about it, but you've been annoyed by weather that's out of whack, that's likely a direct result of us humans polluting the atmosphere.

The topic of food seems to come up often while talking with friends. Many of them say that eating organic produce from the local area is really the best thing to do for a number of reasons.

1-having food transported from far places require energy (usually fossil fuels) to be spent.

2-Food that can withstand long trips are usually full of chemicals like pesticides.

3-Food grown locally is simply so much fresher.

I can only remember these 3 at the moment, but I'm sure there are a many more reasons.

The problem is that organic produce is usually more expensive and I am not affluent enough to buy them most of the time. In fact, it's been quite fun to look for cheap produce from the many supermarkets around where we live and cook cheaply. Is it always more economical to buy the cheaper produce? That's not always the case, for example, Kao found out that the more expesive organic ginger has a lot less fiber and has more edible parts than the cheaper kind. She also heard from a friend that the eel from China is to be watched out for as it is loaded with chemicals and the rumor has it that it can effect the fertility of women.

So, maybe we should all start to eat local produce starting now?
Well, if we all did that there wouldn't be enough produce for everyone especially in heavily populated areas. So maybe this idea of eating local produce also needs to be appended with spreading out of the population. That should be much more doable nowadays as a lot of people's work involves working on a computer, it's really not necesarry to be in a specific location for the work to get done. In that way, people will no longer have to commute by car. So on and so forth. I doubt any of these will come true on a grand scale anytime soon, but maybe things could start to move towards that way now that the republicans no longer control the congress.

A night before my birthday which was a few days ago, I went out to dinner with a friend whose birthday was that day. She told me she'd been very popular with the opposite sex, but not by men she's attracted to at all. One of them comes on really strong offering to taker her to his upstate estate or to Las Vegas. Another one just hangs out where she works and just stares at her. It's quite embarrasing to hear these kinds of things as a member of the male sex. I guess it's true that "money can't buy love" at least for my friend.

This conversation made me remember something I saw on YouTube the night before I met with my friend. I'll put it here.

It's a short film about dating in Japan made by the same people who made the infamous "How to eat Sushi" film. This one is even more elaborate and funny. It's in Japanese, but you should be able to understand most of it. It just goes to show you how desperate men go to so much trouble to try to impress a girl. In reality, I think most women are turned off by such men. I think instead of wasting time and effort in fruitless attempt, it's maybe better to focus one's attention into other things. I was no expert on dating and I'd almost given up hope that I would find someone, but without even trying, I just happened to meet Kao. Maybe it won't work for everyone, but I think if you just did things you want and met people with an open mind and without ulterior motives, you might run into that someone sooner or later.

part 2 and
part 3 of the film

Went to see "The Science of Sleep" by Michel Gondry last week. I'm sure many of you have seen it and also many people have already written about it, but I thought I would write about it anyway. Well, it's not gonna be entirely about the movie, but maybe more about Michel Gondry the person and the phenomena of celebrity.

I had been a fan of Michel Gondry's work for sometime. Since well before he had become such a star director. I really like the inventive approach he brings to each piece he's done. I only knew of his work and didn't know much about Michel Gondry the person until his Directos Label DVD was out. In that DVD, I finally saw Michel Gondry the person and he seemed quite an interesting and charming person. So, I was quite surprised when I heard from a friend that she didn't think of him too highly. I think prior to meeting him, she admired his talent just as I did, but when she did meet him at her job doing some work for one of his projects, she said he was quite egotistic and bossy. He may have been under a lot of stress or something and I am not about to label him in anyway without having met him myself, but I think it's sort of funny when people who have a lot of admirers seem to think of themselves differently than they used to. I think it's quite easy to fall into that. I've felt that too on rare occasions of being at some conference or something when there are so many people who are focused on you and your work. I guess that's the phenomena of celebrity. A lot of people seem to want to focus on talented and/or famous people and in turn those people seem to change into public persona. I have been listening to a lot of podcasts from Japan lately and one of them is by the famous Japanese singer Yumi Matsutoya. She's quite a major star, but I like some of her early songs. So I subscribed to her podcast to see what she's like as a person. Well, it turned out to be just kind of a short show without much substance. The show is mostly just about fashion. She just talks about her likes and dislikes in fashion each week and because she's been a big star for so long, her sense is a bit beyond that of an average person. She's always refering to fashion items she aquired in foreign countries. It was quite not what I expected from the feeling I get from her songs. I'm not sure why I keep listening to it. Maybe I too am part of the phenomena.

The movie was great. One of the most visually creative movies I've seen. There's a similar feeling I get from Wes Anderson's movies that is sort of like childish playfulness which I quite like.

I also saw recently in Ken Burns' "Jazz" documentary that the legendary musician Sydney Bechet was a kind of crazy trouble maker off the stage, but on stage he was one of the most brilliant players ever.

So, I'm thinking maybe it's good to think separately about the artist from the art he/she makes at times. This is probably something most people already know I'm sure.