Rand Wacker

Now here’s a great idea for a birthday party, trapeze lessons at the San Francisco Circus Center! My friend Junichi, whose always been one of the most creative people I’ve ever known, thought this would be a good group activity for the first part of his thirtieth birthday party. He was right. We had about thirteen people there and had a frickin’ fantastic time.

The lessons start out (after signing the waiver) with going through a basic routine on a bar. You have to hang from your hands, tuck up and put your legs through the bar so you can hang from your knees, let go with your hands and stretch back so you are pointed down and looking behind you. Back up, legs out, drop to the ground. Simple enough a foot off the ground with a pad underneath; I did crazier stuff in elementary school playing “Battlestar Galactica” and pretending we were launching ourselves out of the jungle gym.

OK, now they put a ridiculously tight harness on you and you get to do this whole process thirty feet in the air while swinging like a pendulum. The first jump is the scariest, but all the twisting is easier because you can use your momentum too help. Legs up, let go, reach back, return to hanging, and then drop into a seated position on the net. Then do it faster; all one fluid motion. Then dismount with a backflip (this was fucking cool). And then, time for The Catch.

There’s already a guy on the ground holding your safety ropes, one guy up on the platform getting you rigged up before you jump, then a third guy showed up and got on another bar about fifty feet from the platform and started swinging back and forth. He’s the catcher. The catcher would get some real momentum going, call “Ready…hup!” at which point you would jump off the platform and scramble to get your knees up and hands out because when you came back you linked arms with the catcher and let go with your legs and boom! you’re swinging on his trapeze now. Everyone who did this (and everyone in our group did it, which was awesome) let out quite a scream at this point. A blast, completely and totally fun.

Our Japanese Super-Consultant, Ozi

We just got back from the traveling Cirque du Soleil show Alegria. We’ve gone to see O and Mystere at their permanent locations in Las Vegas, but this was my first time seeing one of the traveling shows. Still, completely amazing. Beautiful, fun, powerful. I only wish that they were staying longer so that my niece and nephew could see the show when they come over to the states for our wedding next year.

When my older nephew was staying with us back home in Durham and going to my old high school, one of his friends got recruited by Cirque, and has been living up in Montreal for the past few years training. I can only imagine the scale of the operation up there, considering each show has at least 30 performers on each night and who knows how many backups/understudies/stage hands.

If you get a chance, you should go see it. Quite enjoyable even after seeing the other shows.

Grumble. When I was flying through Japan last year, there was free WiFi access in the terminal after you went through security and were waiting at your gate. Very nice!

This year, however, it appears that the Intel Marketing Machine has gotten it’s claws into even International Airports, and the only hot spot I could find was 1000 Yen/day (about $10) over around gate 28. It didn’t even support any of the Wayport access accounts that all their sites do in the states.

Oh well, I should have remembered to get the international dial-up numbers for our corporate AT&T GlobalNet account. At least since the pay phones take phone cards, it works pretty well to dial-up to a local ISP for a last fix before you get on the plane.

Now if only United would put power outlets at their seats!!!

We had Thursday morning off before heading to any meetings in the afternoon, so I spent the morning getting caught up on a few things back at the hotel then headed out for a little adventure. My first quest was for lunch. I’d heard rumors of there being a Kua’Aina burger place in Tokyo, and I wanted to find it. Kua’Aina started in Hawaii and we visited the Honolulu store back in August, fantastic food. I’ve been using one of their stickers as a bookmark for a while now that lists “Oahu and Tokyo”, so I really wanted to try to find their store in Tokyo.

Getting there is pretty easy. Take the subway to Omete-sando and go out exit B2. Head straight down the road (southwest), and it will be on the left at the next major intersection. You can’t miss it. The food was great, even if it was a little expensive; $15US for burger, fries, and a Coke! A good find, and a nice infusion of cheese into my bloodstream.

After our meeting, JF and John and I were walking to a subway station when they stopped to get a Yakitori stick. I was trying to get the woman sitting behind a video rental counter to throw away my water bottle, but that turned in to filling it up (they’re very courteous here). The owner of the video store was there and asked what country I was from. When I said America he immediately responded:

“Ah yes! Howard Dean, very good! Bush, very bad!”

We had a broken conversation about politics back in the states. “Bush violent, dangerous. Al Gore, real president.” It was fantastic.

After we said goodbye, JF explained that in Japan people are very informed on politics. People on the street here will know who the prime minister is for random countries on the other side of the world, understand the issues facing not only them but many other international regions, and stay up on campaigns for major elections in other big countries.

VERY refreshing change from the common ignorance found in America!

On Sunday we had a non-sightseeing “rest” day. Sandy and I went to Yoyogi Park (huge) for a pick-up game of Ultimate Frisbee with a bunch of locals and gaijin. He had told me it was a “medium skill, medium speed” game; right up my alley. Turns out that there were a bunch of guys from a local university team, and they were fast. During o ne break as it was starting to get dark, we couldn’t find a couple of them then noticed that they had decided to go and join a pick-up soccer game while they were waiting for the rest of us! Anyways, much much fun had by all.

Early the next morning we went to Tsukiji Fish Market, a gigantic warehouse where a massive amount of the seafood sells each day (over thirty million US!) It’s indescribable, so I’ll have to let the pictures do the talking.



Today is work work work. I guess that is the reason we came here (heh).

Oh, and Wes, this picture is for you.

The Mac DVD Resource Downloads

Lumberjack - An access log for your blog

Copernican Inversion - Offline Demos of Enterprise Web Applications