Clarity

明らかにする (akiraka ni suru) - To make clear, illuminate

I've learned a lot about who I am and what I want in life over the last few days.
Personally, professionally, academically.

There's still lots more that I need to sort out with myself, but I'm feeling a little less lost in the world. I'm nowhere near where I want to be, but I'm confident that I will get there eventually.

This is just the beginning of a long long walk, but I feel like I'm at least pointed in the right direction now. Maybe I'll write more about this someday when I have more time. But for now, onward we go.

Impatience

待てず (matezu) - Unable to wait

I've been eyeing the newest iPhone since before I had even left Japan. Rumors at the time suggested it would be released in the summer and I figured it would be worth the wait. Since I was moving back in mid-June, I needed something to tide me over and so bought a Virgin Mobile prepaid phone. It has got to be one of the worst pieces of electronics I've owned in my life, but somehow I managed to get by.

Fast forward three months and Apple formally announces the iPhone 5. I put my preorder in less than 12 hours after it became available, but was somehow still late to the party. Apparently preorders were even crazier than in the past and demand massively outstripped supply to the point where Apple was pushing back their expected shipping dates within an hour of taking orders. I was expecting a bit of a wait, which would have been ok, until Sept 19th when I got an email from AT&T saying it would take 14-21 business days for my phone to ship.

Waiting another month was not on my list of acceptable outcomes, so I started looking at backup plans. Since I don't have classes on Fridays, I thought it might be worth taking a shot at lining up at one of the stores on launch day to try and snag a phone. I wasn't willing to camp out overnight or anything like that, but a quick conversation with a sales guy at the AT&T store left me thinking I could have a pretty good shot if I showed up two or three hours before the stores opened up. It just so happened that my prepaid month on my old phone expired the day before the iPhone launch, so I decided to try my luck.

To give myself the best odds possible, I decided to avoid the Apple crazy student masses in Berkeley and head up to the AT&T in Richmond instead. Between BART and my bike, I figured I could get there in about 30 min, which sounded pretty reasonable. I cut my Thursday evening at Bar of the Week early and went to bed around midnight so I could get up early the next day. I woke up a little earlier than planned and was out of the house by 5:15am.



It was still dark out and I had the streets to myself, so I made it to the store simple enough. I rolled up at about 5:45 and was pleased to see only a dozen or so people waiting in line already. I figured my odds were looking pretty good.



It was pretty chilly out but I was wearing plenty of layers. I hunkered down in line, knocked out some homework, worked on my resume, and waited. I kept busy and the time passed fairly quickly. Finally, just as the sun broke over the Berkeley Hills to the East, store employees came out and started taking orders.



As it happened, I nabbed their last 16gb model in black, so I guess I timed everything pretty perfectly. I have to say, it is one good looking phone. This is my first smartphone so I'm still getting used to it, but it is head and shoulders above everything else I've ever owned. Did I mention it's gorgeous?

I have no idea how it stacks up against the 4s, so I'm not much of a reference for people who were on the fence, but I absolutely love it. I'm still getting used to it myself and have almost certainly only scratched the surface of what it can do, but I can see a long and happy relationship ahead.

September has been a phenomenal month in tech for me. My new Lenovo ultrabook arrived a few weeks ago and now the iPhone. AT&T was running a special on Jawbone Jamboxes for 35% off and I convinced them to toss in another 10% off, offsetting sales tax, so I picked one up too. Then, at a Haas event Friday night, I won one of Amazon's new Kindles in a raffle. I think a tablet is pretty much the only thing left that I could realistically upgrade at this point (going full frame on the camera isn't in my poor student budget, sadly). For a guy who loves tech stuff as much as I do, this is about as good as it gets!

A Room at the Haastel

住宅 (juutaku) - Residence

I've been out here for roughly two months already and my parents keep bugging me for pictures, so here we go.

I'm living in a house with five other first year Haas MBA students. The MBAs who had been living here before it dubbed it the Haastel, a name which we have decided to keep. My room is the only one on the first floor and clearly used to be a dining room (hence the awesome chandelier).

I love how big it is. I love how it is full of windows that let in tons of light. I love that it has no closets, so I don't feel bad about having two clothes racks, two shoe racks, and a set of shelves to hold my clothes. I love that there is enough wall space to hang the bits of art I collected while travelling around Asia. I love how I can stash my bike in here. I love that it's the only bedroom on the first floor, which means that the bathroom down here is (usually) all mine.

I don't love how cold at gets at night (lots of windows means little insulation). I don't love that it's right next to the stairs that my five roommates tromp down. I don't love that it's right next to the front door, so you everyone come and go. I don't love that it is right next to the living room, so you can hear it whenever people watch TV. I don't love the huge rent bill.

I've filled the room with an assortment of Ikea furniture. It was my first time living in an unfurnished place, but I think I did a pretty good job with it. I'd like a better desk, but it doesn't fit my poor grad student budget. There's currently a black leather couch residing in here as we wait for our living room to get cleaned that I'd love to keep permanently, but such things will have to wait until I start getting paid again.

I wasn't sure what I thought of the space when I first moved in, but I've grown quite fond of it. It's starting to feel a little homey.

On Hold

がっかり (gakkari) - Disappointment

I've been thinking about my next laptop ever since my old one died back in April. There are tons of cool new options out there, so I felt a bit like a kid in a candy store. Hell, I even considered getting an Apple (it took about 30 seconds helping a friend with Excel on a MBP to talk me out of that one). But at long last I found the one: the Lenovo X1 Carbon.

They had only provided initial product specs at the time and would only say it would be available "Summer 2012". It didn't matter, it had to be mine. So sleek, so sexy, so light. There could only be one choice.

And so I waited. I borrowed my girlfriend's Sony, an awful tiny little bastard, for my last two months in Japan. Since getting back state-side, I've been surviving with my Dad's old Samsung netbook, another under-powered computer that is hard pressed to run much more than a web browser. For a guy who spends large amounts of his free time at a computer, it has been a trying four months. Not only is my regular computer use repressed, it also demotivated me from using my camera. Without a proper computer to run Lightroom, I have no way of processing my pictures. I've got boat loads of pictures from China and Thailand just sitting there, waiting for some lovin'. Cali is gorgeous and screaming for me to run around shooting. But all of that is on hold until I get a little more computing muscle.

With that in mind, you can imagine who pumped I was when Lenovo launched the product earlier this month. I put in my order, sat back, and day dreamed about the wonderful package that would be at my door shortly.

The day after putting in the order, I realized I had a one time 10% off coupon that I'd forgotten to use. 10% off of a $1,400 price tag is no small change, so I called up Lenovo's customer service to see if I could get it applied retroactively. That is when the trouble started.

First, I was told that my order had been cancelled. Apparently Lenovo has a policy where they won't process credit card orders where the shipping address and billing address are different unless both addresses are registered with the credit card company. Why they decided to just cancel the order without contacting me first, I don't know. Fortunately, the customer service person I was talking to was a good guy and quickly replaced the order for me with the coupon applied and I was back on track. I called up my credit card company, added my Cali address, and resumed day dreaming.

When I made the order, they had given me an estimated shipping time of one week, with an expected delivery date of Monday August 27th. As that date drew closer, I pulled up the shipment tracking site to check and was given a rather rude shock. The delivery date now said September 26th, almost a full month later.

I was sure there must have been some sort of administrative mistake. Maybe something strange happened when my order was resubmitted. I called up customer support again to sort it out and, after waiting forever and a day to get connected, finally got through. I was informed that they were having a supply shortage and there was nothing they could do. In no uncertain terms, I made it clear that this was absolutely unacceptable, but that only earned me an apology and the promise of a $60 discount. I continued to push and was put on hold while he spoke with people on the supply chain side. He told me that they were scheduled to get more parts next Monday, so my status might be updated as a result but that he couldn't guarantee anything. He promised to ask them to prioritize my order but, again, couldn't guarantee anything.

And so I am left waiting, praying that it doesn't actually take an entire month to get the damn thing. I'm committed to this computer and don't want to settle for something different, but this is definitely a disappointing experience. I've used Lenovo computers in the past and they make great machines, so it's a real pity that they can't get their shit together on the business side. You'd better believe that I will be back on the phone with customer service first thing next week, breathing down their necks if that shipping date hasn't come much much closer. I will not sit silently and tolerate this kind of nonsense...

Risk Taking

解放する (kaihou suru) - To release or let out

Today was the first class for our communications course. At the beginning of the class, the professor really pushed home the idea that he wanted us to challenge ourselves and take risks in the class. We had also all been asked to prepare a 2-3 minute speach on "Who I Am" and encouraged to go beyond just the standard introduction. I'd written something simple about the path that lead me to Japan, but it was hardly putting myself out there. Normally I'm a pretty risk averse guy but, as I sat there listening to the professor speak, an idea for a much more personal topic started to form in my head. I couldn't decide what to do.

We split into smaller groups and started giving our speeches, some of which were pretty touching. When it came to my turn, I got up and told the GSI about the two options I was weighing: the prepared but conservative speech or the personal but unscripted one in my head. He told me to go with the riskier choice. I ripped up my note card for the speech I'd written, took a minute to gather my thoughts, and just had a go at the new idea. I spoke with total honesty about personal weaknesses that I wanted to change during my two years at Haas, things I had never told anyone else. The speech itself was hardly a masterclass in public speaking, but I thought it went quite well. More importantly, it felt liberating, even a little cathartic.

I won't go into detail about what I said, but one of my goals I talked about is to become more outgoing. It's something I've struggled with for a long time and am truly desperate to change. Since moving out here, I've been making a conscious effort to improve at it and have done alright, but it certainly hasn't been easy. Today has me wondering if taking a little more risk and putting myself further out there might help in that regard.

Off to the Races

始まる (hajimaru) - To begin or start

Tomorrow is my first day of classes at Berkeley. It's been a long time since I've been in a classroom and, in all honesty, I'm not sure if I'm mentally ready for it. I've never really enjoyed studying all that much and it's already feeling hard to motivate myself to take care of business these days. For nearly two months now, I haven't really had to do anything. No job, no responsibilities, no nothing. The laid back attitude that accompanies such a lifestyle is definitely not going to fly back in school. Between orientation last week and all the little things getting thrown at us, it's already started becoming a bit of a whirlwind. I know I'll get up to speed quickly enough, but the first few weeks could be a bit of a rough ride. Step one is surviving the first-day-of-class stats quiz tomorrow...

Self Investment

投資 (toushi) - Investment

When I was in high school, I would tell my friends that I would own a Porsche by the time I was 50. Though it may be laughable now, it seemed like significant achievement at the time. To be fair, Ann Arbor isn't exactly the biggest city in the world and a Porsche was a pretty rare sight when I was a kid. Honestly, all I knew was that they were fast fancy rich people cars and didn't have the slightest clue what one actually cost. Regardless, that was the dream.

Fast forward ten years or so. At the ripe age of 26, my bank account is fat enough that I could walk into a Porsche dealership and pay for a 911 Carrera in cash. Or rather, I could have until I payed tuition for the fall semester earlier today, a hefty $26k plus change. Over the next two years, this MBA will continue to rock the bejeezus out of my finances and leave me with tens of thousands of dollars of debt instead. I've made my peace with this and just have to look at it as an investment in myself.

Those who know me know that I am conservative with my money. It's that attitude that has let me save up as much as I have, despite not having a particularly high paying job. I've gotten better in recent years about being willing to bust out the wallet in pursuit of a good time, but the next two years will be a real test. I've never owed money to anyone and, quite honestly, the idea does not sit well with me at all. But if I let the debt get the best of me and don't make the most of these two years, it will have all been pointless. So my personal goal for the near future is to find that balance: have the time of my life here at Berkeley while still being responsible with my finances. I'm confident that I can make this work.