Maitta! Always - Daily Amazing Confusions -

I went to Sunday service 10:30 am. At first I couldn't enter the chapel during worship songs. In recent one and half year, I couldn't hardly stand the volume of the piano and voices of worship songs especially when I was tired. I myself like to sing, so I sang outside. Today it wasn't out of pitch. Sometimes I become so tired that when I try to sing, all I can do is cry out songs out of pitch. In recent weeks, we (church members) learn from the book of Matthew, from the Lord's prayer. Today we learned from "Give us today our daily bread". I learned that it's no worth worrying, and at the same time, we easily worry. I'm really easily worry. We may want to learn from birds in the sky. Recalling today's message, I recalled the birds I saw. I never see the birds in the sky look worried. It was so enlightening that I suddenly rush out from the chapel and saw in the sky. Then I didn't see any bird. Instead, I was taught that birds totally ...

CCNA exam ended and studying the subject around it became of lower priority. I came back the reading of "JavaScript The Definitive Guide". I had already read 36%. It was for the first time probably in a month. The part I read yesterday was like a compact guide of CSS, although it was a book of JavaScript. After all anipulating CSS is one big theme of JavaScript as well as controlling other web page features. Since I had already learned much about CSS, reading this part helped me guide me into regular reading of this book

Today on the way to visit the mental clinic I listened to music on iPod. I used the shuffle function. I have hardly ever used this function. The most of what I listened was the lesson tracks of English conversation, instead of songs. Usually I listen to music as well as I listen to spoken English, but the number of files of spoken English is likely to be much bigger than song files.

This week was much colder than last. Last week high temperature was 30 degrees even close to 35 degrees. This week most days high didn't reach 25 degrees. This affected my physical and mental condition, and it's taking more time to recover from the tiredness from the exam than I expected.

I have hard time these days in that little energy is left when I come home after work. On the other hand, it's not so bad that I manage to go to work regularly and manage to meet the needs of my workplace. Sometimes I feel so strange that I cry out or sing a song loud, but if I was permitted to do, I could only sing one out of pitch loudly, staggering from left to right. I have little imagined how other people are struggling with daily things. At least I can guess that my colleagues have as much or more difficulty than I have. I sometime wish that there were more people who are ready to listen to what I want to say. Then I reflect on my self. Am I a person who is ready to listen to some one else? My answer now is, regretfully, I feel too tired to listen. If so, it is easily imagine that many people may be too tired to listen to what I want to say. This is one of the problems I have encountered throughout my life since I entered elementary school.

My entire body is itchy probably from tiredness. On Saturday, I took the CCNA test and yesterday I went to a meeting of adults with developmental disabilities. This morning, I felt my entire body heavy and itchy. I realized that the exam and the meeting were overload to me. By the way the word overload also reminds me that a term on computer networks of Port Address Translation or IP masquerade.

Same as before, I counted down in the bath from 200 down to 0 this evening. On the way I counted a few bogus number. I counted "thixty-three" when I meant 63 (sixty-three). I was so worried about the pronunciation of the "th" sound of three, I pronounced "sixty" with the pronunciation like "three". I also counted "twelven" when I meant "eleven". It was probably because I was confused after when I counted twelve. It was funny that when I count down I hadn't hardly done ever, I mistakenly generate a few bogus number or a false order.

I hadn't decided if the meeting of young adults with developmental disability in the city for this month until I ate supper this evening. I had been worried about my physical and mental condition. I was tired a lot after the CCNA certification exam and I've been thinking that I need more sleep to get back to my normal condition. Since the meeting will be held from 6:30 pm and end around 8:00 pm, if I attend, I'll have to give up more sleep on Tuesday. It was after the jogging after supper this evening that I decided that I want to go. At first of the jogging I was so tired that it took 730 steps to run 400 meters. By the end of the jogging I felt my pace was going up and my condition was getting better. I thought then that it might be fine as long as I could have regular sleep to maintain this condition. Still my tiredness is lingering, I'll be careful not to think too much about non-important matters.

10 minutes ago I counted from 200 down to 0 in the bath. It became much more difficult that counting from 100 down to 0. I counted 140 down to 120 twice, by mistake with I counted one hundred and thirty then one hundred and forty nine (130, then 149).

I passed ICND2 test (the latter part of CCNA certification) today. All test was done on a computer. Questions are multiple choices, drug-and drop type questions, and scenario questions based on simulators. Before start the real test, I took a tutorial. During the tutorial, a network trouble took place and the PC needed reload. It was fortunate that it didn't affect the time of the real test. At first I struggled with user interface of simulator and occasional terrible translation of questions (since I took exam in Japanese although I read Official Cert Guide written in English). Then I was upset to know the time left was only 35 minutes while the questions to be solved remained about 40. I chose what it seemed me to be correct as soon as possible. I was able to solve multiple questions fast thanks to a Japanese learning site. Without it, even though I had enough knowledge, the chances would have been failing the test.

I thought that fluency is the decision to tell anyway even if what I'm going to tell and how isn't stylish enough, on the way back home today. Even in my native language Japanese, there have been handful cases that I was able to speak in a stylish way.

In the mid of week I've been a little bit tired. This evening after I ate supper I was only able to move slowly. To recover from this tiredness, I thought, good night sleep is essential. I had heard that warming my body with light exercise help me having good sleep 2 hours later, with radical cool down of my body. I went for jogging anyway, although at first I only could move as slow as to go 350 meters with more than 800 steps. My target time was 20 minutes, 3200 steps for 2 kilometers. This pace was obviously slow, but I continued anyway. The goal then was to keep to a light exercise pace at which I feel comfortable. I went on, and reached 1600 steps, the half in total steps of 3200 in a distance of 800 meters, 40 percent in total distance. I crossed a level crossing, passed by the station I take train to work every day and crossed back another level crossing, which I usually cross when I go to work. I felt my pace up, and my body as warm as to feel sweat, but still OK wi...

Just an hour ago when I had a bath I counted from 100 down to 1. The main purpose was to fully warm my body, but this countdown could be an easy check for fluency. Today I had a difficulty in counting from 9 (nine) down to 8 (eight), for example 99 then 98, or 79 then 78. Numbers from 1 up to 100 is, I guess, one of the simplest words most people would know, when they learn a certain language a little bit further than ABC. Saying these numbers smoothly may be a barometer which measure elementary level of fluency.

Things have been going well recently, although a little bit tired after daily work. The problem is I have hard time with coming up with what to write. So far, I have written mainly about communication and sociability problems from autistic disorder, in the past and recently. Now I realized how I've been dependent on problems when it comes to choosing what to write.

Through a mail from LingQ I'm listening to some videos about language learning from Steve Kaufmann. One title "Fluency over pronunciation" drew my eyes. I thought I knew better than to unable to imagine what being fluency is like. I've realized now that I know what being fluency is like in a sense that a news narrator is speaking news one after another, but I don't really know what it is like that I'm speaking fluently. I make speeches daily especially at work in my own language, but my speeches are usually far from fluent. When I was elementary school, I believed that I was speaking fluently, but though several speech test I was told I needed intensive training. It was not about English, but about my own language Japanese. It wasn't until more than twenty years after this that I have problem with my speech even though I believe I'm speaking fluently. In this way I know what fluency is like when I'm listening someone speaking but hardly und...

I've just been back from work without much trouble. It looks like that every day after vacation to me is a sort of rehabilitation, having long experienced dropout and mental depression once in a while.

It looks like that after I have conversation to a certain amount, something like a circuit breaker is likely to work and shut down further conversation. My tiredness in this vacation was felt like this way; I didn't want to talk to anyone as if my conversation circuit had been shut down. Now that I have to return to regular work and therefore regular conversation, so I might want to replace the circuit breaker of conversation

I want to do if I get better:  I want to buy a road bike and make trips of day or two around Tohoku area.  I want to take a lot of exercise and run a triathlon.  I want to know more about computer, and make either a web application or one run on Windows or Linux.  I want to find someone I can talk to if I want to tell something I learned about computer or mathematics.  Maybe I want to buy a car and drive it, but I have to consider carefully if my mental state is good enough to always have judgement to drive safely.

Yesterday I restarted my laptop due to an Windows Update. In spite of that, today I received the message prompting restart again. I looked up the word Windows Update on a real-time search site, and happened to find that your PC may fail to restart after restart PC to apply the update. I looked up further about the problem, and found a few viable options. 1: uninstall a particular update (KB2982791) 2: recovering your PC with a recovery point before the update. I tried option 2: using recovery point. After a long time of reload, my laptop restarted. A message told me that recovery had been failed. Still, reload was successful. It gave me a hope that my laptop isn't a PC which cause the restart trouble, and I restarted the laptop again anyway. It restarted without problem. It was fortunate that Windows Update was done without much trouble, after having heard about trouble with the update for this month.

On the third day of vacation, I was inside home all the day. Weather wasn't very good, and I was sleepy with the tiredness after I walked about 10 kilometers yesterday.

Today I went to Kitakata, Fukushima to eat ramen. It took 3 hours even I rode Shinkansen Superexpress to Koriyama. It is becoming my routine to go there in this time of this year.

I'm up bright and early for a day trip. There's a little bit time before I leave, so I'm listening to interval signals of radio stations from a collection website. These music reminds me that I woke up early to listen to radio when I was elementary school.

The last half of this week I have a summer vacation. The first day of vacation, I practiced for the CCNA exam, and I swam 1 kilometer in 28 minutes. Before going to the pool to swim, I took a nap and walked to the pool. The schedule became unexpectedly tight considering the timetable of the bus, but actually the bus was delayed by 15 minutes. I plan to go to Kitakata for tomorrow, taking the train of 5:30 AM then transferring to Tohoku Shinkansen, and the Ban-etsu west line.

I'm going to be off from tomorrow for 3 days plus Saturday and Sunday. In the beginning of the off I'm a little bit spaced out. It's probably because I've just been released from the tension at work.

In this week, I'm troubled with battery troubles of my laptops at work and at home. At work the battery of my laptop suddenly went out of order. It was no problem as long as I work at my desk, but when I have to results to my boss, the laptop should be driven by battery. Fortunately, I had the permission to swap the "alive" battery from the laptop not usually used and can work the same as before. A few days later, battery trouble took place the laptop at home. My laptop at home use the utility that prolong the battery's life by managing the timing of charging, and not charging when the battery is full. On that day, however, battery didn't begin to charge even after the battery level is as low as 10 %. I looked up what to do, but there was not an exact solution. I unplugged the PC anyway and began to drive by the battery running out. Some advice said that the utility doesn't allow to begin to charge until the battery level is lowered by 5 point or m...

Sometimes I have hard time at worship service. Today, it was heavy rain, and the sound of piano sounded so loud that I plugged my ears, left the chapel, went outside, and put up my umbrella and listened to praise songs outside in the middle of rain. I felt as if my breath would have been going to stop, and I became so nervous and uneasy that I was always muttering myself in the chapel. I knew I looked stupid, and I have to admit that I was actually so in my current mental state then, mentally tired and couldn't stand quietly in the public. I took shelter in the dining room for timeout, where kids were playing with their portable game players. The sound of it was kind of a little bit noisy, but at least bearable to me. In the dining room, I looked out of window, just looking at cars of church members who came to the worship service. I took up my ball-point pen. I couldn't help sketching wheels of these cars. After I drew wheels of three cars, and finally couldn't help...

August 10 is the Day of Road (in Japan). When was in junior high school (24 years ago), I went on a bicycle trip with my friends on early August. We saw everywhere on information board, screen, and banner on the road, read "August 10 is the Day of Road." All of we wondered why, but I haven't looked up why until now. Just now I looked up on ja.wikipedia.org, and knew that this day in 1920 was the beginning of the  first plan of improving (modernizing) roads in Japan. I'm not sure if there are such information even now, but if I drive or ride on a bike along a national road, I'm probably going to see the information of the day on the information signs along the road.

On the way home from work I saw Datsun Bluebird 510 station wagon. It was a model of 60-70s, more than 40 years ago. It, with its orange color, was stylish, but after a while the car passed by, it slightly smelled exhaust gas. It was a model before exhaust gas regulation gas was taken seriously. This reminded me that contemporary cars emit such clean exhaust gas that it seldom smells. There are even cars that even boast that their exhaust gas is even cleaner than the air of a metropolis. The smell of exhaust gas of course is a little bit unpleasant, but it also reminds me of a little bit of nostalgia.

Yesterday I told a story of my dominant foot. It was surprising that I had lived my first twenty years unconscious of my dominant foot. In fifth and sixth grade, there are high jump classes in gymnastics. Most students jumped from the side. I wasn't aware of off which foot they jumped, but probably most of them jumped off one foot. I jumped off two feet from the front instead of from the side. At first with I performed relatively well with the record of 125 centimeters. Teachers and classmates saw my odd way of high jump curiously. They were curious about how I could jump so high with such an odd way of jumping. At that time, it was I that was curious about why so many people were stepping and jumping from the side of the bar.  It was after I became 30 years old that most people jump off one foot (dominant foot) in high jump. In long jump classes also, I jumped off two feet. This was why I at first relatively good, but before long I become an average jumper.

In long jump and high jump, I jumped on my two legs. I saw many people jumping, but didn't see what leg they jumped on. I didn't know my dominant leg. My right arm is dominant. It was after I became 30 years old that I began to ever think about jump on one leg. Until then, I hadn't have an idea that jumping on two legs after I run is strange and ineffective. Now I'm a little bit used to jump on one leg, with preparation the rhythm of 1, 2, and 3, but still I can't find out which is my dominant foot.

It was really hot today. When I came home, my mother told me that the temperature hit 37 degrees at the entrance. The reported high temperature was 34 degrees. The temperature is as high as 30 degrees even after evening came. It was really hot day, and it will be really hot night.

At the entrance of my house, the temperature hit 35 degrees days for 3 days in a row. It's fortunate that an air conditioner was installed in my room weeks ago. In a few days, fall comes on the calendar.

I needed to recertify CCNA by the beginning of September. I registered for an ICND2 exam on Saturday, August 23. I've prepared at my own pace, but now that the exam is less than three weeks away, I have to pace up the preparation.

Today I practice swimming. On Wednesday, I had watched a lesson video of swimming for triathlon. I learned the way of swimming with one stroke, one kick. In freestyle swimming, three kicks for one stroke may be more typical. I learned that each kick should be done when pulling water, and the leg kicking should be the same side of the pulling arm. When you are pulling with left arm, kick with left leg, and right arm, right leg. Today right after I was ready for swimming, I checked the way I usually swim. I pulled with left arm, and kicked with left leg. My way of kicking was just the opposite. I tried to swimming in the way I had learned. At first I couldn't swim in relaxed way at all, and I couldn't believe that I could swim a long distance in this way. Soon I found this new way a more efficient way of swimming than I had done before. After I got the hang of it, I continued swimming 700 meters and 2 kilometers total.

I sometimes listen to CBS news podcast. To be honest, I don't always "listen" to the podcast when I'm playing it on iPod, but often let it go through ears. Even when I'm playing the podcast show this way, sometimes the spoken words comes directly to my head. You may feel it's a good condition for me, but I'm afraid usually not. I listen very well to podcast especially when I'm extremely tired or mentally stressed. It's more likely to be even fatigued when I can listen better. On the other hand, when I'm mentally in good shape, spoken English in podcast more likely to sound indirectly, as if I'm protected by a hard shell. When I'm stressed, this "shell" or "shield" are weakened and words go directly to me regardless of Japanese or English. In this way, the time when I understand English very well isn't always good for me, at least in terms of mental health. It looks like my language barrier plays a ro...