It has been a long time

I'm sorry for leaving this blog for a long time without writing any article, although many people may not watch this blog..

From 1st September, I started to be trained in a sales department. This training will continue by the end of this September.

My impression for sales departments is that people in sales departments are better at talking and communicating than those in technical departments. So it is fun and interesting for me to talk with people in sales departments, though I think I am poor at sales activities.

Debate is difficult

Today I received English class in my company. In today's class, we debated with the subject "Should the Democratic Party (Japan) win this election?", of course in English.

The participants were divided into three groups, which are "negative side," "affirmative side," and "judgement." I was assigned to the judgement.

Because I am poor at listening to other people, it was a difficult task. However I think it was very good for English learning.

heavy

In my department, I am assigned precision instruments for wireless communication emulation.
The instrument has a very heavy weight, that is 30kg! Today I often carried the instruments, so now my legs are aching a little.

(The aching is also because I did running exercise on last Sunday for the first time in two weeks. )

Kakubin

Two days ago, I went to drinking with my colleagues and English teacher. The shop deals with many kinds of liquors including some whiskeys, Suntory Old and Suntory Kakubin (角瓶).

Because I already own Kakubin in my house, I chose Old when I drank a whisky.

The Shawshank Redemption (DVD)

Today I bought a movie DVD whose title was The Shawshank Redemption", and watched it.
Japanese title is "ショーシャンクの空に" (translated literally, "To the sky of Shawshank"). Although I don't know why Japanese title was decided in this way, I think that probably it is because the word "redemption" ("贖罪" (Shokuzai) in Japanese) is unfamiliar and a little hard to underdtand for many Japanese.

This movie is Academy Award-winning one, and is also high-esteemed in Japan. For example, many Japanese celebrities says "The Shawshank Redemption is my favorite movie", such as Hikaru Utada (宇多田ヒカル), Hitoshi Matsumoto (松本人志), etc..
Moreover, whenever it comes to a topic of hanky movie in 2ch (the most famous anonymous forum), "To the sky of Shawshank" is always quoted. (Ex1, 2)

Today I watched this movie in Japanese voice over. Tim Robbins (as Andy Dufresne) was dubbed by Hochu Otsuka (大塚芳忠), and Morgan Freeman (as Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding) was dubbed by Masaru Ikeda (池田勝). Both are long-career-experts of voice-over for foreign movies, so their acting impressed me, of course.

By the way, in Japan, most of Japanese movie DVDs are more expensive than foreign movie one. So although I want to buy Japanese masterpiece movie such as Kurosawa or Mizoguchi, I should hesitate to buy them.

diet

Last night I ate and drank with my uncle.
I respect him, because he gave me a good advice when I was a PhD candidate and wandered if I should go to academic area or company. As a result, I joined in this company according to his advice.

However, whenever I have a dish with my uncle, I come down to suffering from stomach ache because he always recommends me a number of dishes.

Although of course last night I suffered from stomach ache after the dinner, it was very enjoyable listening his interesting talking.

Too Tired to Karaoke

This morning, I was called from colleague to play table tennis together. Because I like playing table tennis, of course I accepted the offer.

Although playing table tennis itself was amusing, I got tired very much since I excised running before going table tennis.

Though my colleague invited karaoke after playing table tennis, I refused the offer because of tiredness.