moof's prattling

halfway around the world

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:59:43 GMT

I finally booked (one-way) plane tickets from Tokyo -> London via the US. The whole thing is starting to seem very real; my feelings are roughly equal parts excitement and dread.

Anyway, my schedule looks like this:
LA: Mon Jan 18 - Wed Jan 20
San Francisco Bay Area: Wed Jan 20 - Mon Jan 25
Chicago: Mon Jan 25 - Thu Jan 28
London: Thu Jan 28 - ???

Let me know if you nice peoples wish to meet up or something.

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 06:10:43 GMT

Io, Saturnalia!

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:26:12 GMT

My official start date at Google London is 1 Feb 2010; there are signed contracts and everything. Yay. (So, uh, who's left on LiveJournal that's in the London area and feels like showing a poor ign'ant Yank what the town is like, as I've never been there?)

I wonder if livejournal is going to become more active again with the Facebook privacy debacle, or if it'll be subsumed by tweeting. (Not that _I've_ been terribly active on LJ for the past year or two, or that I remember who the hell half the people on my friends list are.)

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:23:41 GMT

google called; they said that the executive hiring committee (or something to that effect) approved me, and that sometime around the end of next week they'll have a formal offer for me. They expect that, accounting for the delays with the visa paperwork, I'd start sometime around January 2010.

Yay, perhaps.

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:12:22 GMT

Today I went to the restaurant run by the Iron Chef Chinese; I had Chen's mapo tofu. It was really really good; not overly hot, but quite piquant and flavorful, with lots of sichuan pepper.

I'm a little surprised that it never occurred to me previously to go to any of the Iron Chefs' restaurants.

japan, taxes, et al, redux

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:42:34 GMT

I finally submitted my tax forms (five or six months late!) around three weeks ago; the tax board sent me the appropriate bill and payment form. After figuring out how to wire money to Japan (not the easiest, because they expect you to send money from Japan, not to it), I went to my bank and tried to pay.
Day 1, first bank branch: "Uh, no, we can't do bank transfers. Why don't you go to the real bank down the street?"
Day 1, second bank branch: "Oh, it's 2:45; we can't give you money in time before the bank closes. And no, we can't do bank transfers either."
Day 2, third bank branch: "Oh! What you can do is call our call center (for which we have phones right here), have them change your withdrawal limit, and then you can go to the other bank." After changing my ATM withdrawal limit to roughly $20,000/day (!), I was finally able to withdraw a huge sheaf of bills, and walk down the street to the "real" bank.
Day 2, "real bank", 50m away: after filling out the payment form and going up to the teller, the teller took my huge pile of banknotes (189 of them, or something like that; it was about an inch and a quarter thick) without batting an eye and started manually counting them. She initially put a few through the machine counter, but I guess that was to search for forgeries or something. The actual count was done by hand, twice. After everything checked out, the teller put a stamp on my payment form; that was the only form of receipt I got.

Ah, Japan.

Any of you have opinions as to whether I should move to either London or Sydney?

google, redux

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:46:27 GMT

I got a call from google today; after 2.5 months and five rounds of interviews, they decided that they're not going to expand the Tokyo office at all, and would I be interested in a job in Mountain View or Sydney instead?

n.b.: I haven't actually been referred to the hiring committee yet, even.

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:55:43 GMT

For those of you who want a postcard and have a preference of "cats", "pigs", "weird", or "other", please let me know.

Also: had round 5 of interviews at google today; I think it went well.

postcard time!

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:48:02 GMT

And because I haven't done this in a while: it's postcard time! If you want a gen-u-ine postcard from Japan, leave your name and address as a (screened) comment. Hell, if you want other people to get a postcard at random from some weirdo in the mysterious East, that's fine, too.

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:46:12 GMT

It's a truism for me that the more time I have to make LJ posts, the fewer things I have to say. I haven't been keeping up with reading LJ, for that matter. Life has been fairly quiet as of late, and thus not terribly interesting to post about (or is overly navel-gazing for general consumption). I'm supposed to have my fifth round of interviews at Google sometime in the next fortnight. If it doesn't pan out, then I get to figure out if I want to stay in Japan, move elsewhere, or what.

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:27:58 GMT

I haven't updated here recently - but then again, I haven't updated anywhere else recently, either. Still in Japan, still unemployed; I'm planning on sticking around here until September at the earliest. Past that, if I can't find an acceptable job here, then things are up in the air (and would probably mean moving back to the SFBA.) I'm realizing that I really need an office in order to do worklike stuff in any expedient fashion; being holed up in a single room just ain't cutting it for me. Too difficult to concentrate, doesn't have the right kind of work surfaces to do things, etc. It's remarkably difficult to find cafes with WiFi access, too; it seems that role has mostly been assumed by the manga cafes that charge by the hour (and offer individual little rooms, so I infer.)

I've sent my resume to Google for a couple of positions in Tokyo, but I dunno how much interest there is in a niche geek who doesn't speak much Japanese. Ah well.

Mon, 25 May 2009 10:28:38 GMT

Today, I got a big package in the mail from San Jose, California; when I saw it, I thought "Oh, fuck no, they didn't..." but no, they did: Yahoo! (which laid me off four weeks ago) sent me a five-year anniversary gumball machine.

state of the moof

Mon, 18 May 2009 10:40:46 GMT

Here's what's happened to me over the past month or so, this time in non-short-cryptic update form. About five weeks ago it was decided that my group would be merged with two other groups. My then-manager knew (because he was going to no longer be a manager) -but unbeknownst to my then-manager or coworkers, the last week of April would not only be the announcement of the group merger, but also when a good portion of Yahoo!'s Sunnyvale employees would be laid off.

I flew to Sunnyvale and started scheduling meetings as best sas I could; my new manager was being a bit coy about what our schedules look like. Around noon on Tuesday the 28th, I was called into a conference room by my new manager and told that I did great work but I was being laid off anyway. No explanation was given as to why. Later, when my former coworkers asked WTF, he still didn't give much of an explanation but intimated it wasn't his decision. I was then in the south bay for a few days without much to do - but I wasn't really in much of a state to do a whole lot, regardless. To top everything off, on the flight back to Japan I got food poisoning and barfed at least a dozen times on the plane; some nice people from the airline pushed me around in a wheelchair to the open infirmary (it was a federal holiday, so the closer one was closed). I got a saline drip and rested for a few hours; while I was able to catch the last train back to downtown Tokyo, I missed the last subway back home and had to spring for a $60 cab ride (which Yahoo!'d better pay for, dammit.)

In the aftermath of my third layoff, the primary things occupying my time are going around Tokyo and being tourist, and wondering "Well, what the fuck now?". The latter consists mostly of "Do I want to stay in Japan? Can I stay in Japan? Can I find a job at an acceptable pay level that doesn't require me to speak much (if any) Japanese? And if not Japan, then what?" I'm lousy at taking vacations unless there's something specific I want to do, so this isn't exactly the most relaxing of times. Given that I had two months of vacation time stored up and I'll get three months worth of severance pay, however, I don't need to rush things excessively.

and all is revealed.

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:57:07 GMT

It appears the reason Yahoo! flew me out here was to lay me off in person. I think I'd have preferred to stay in Tokyo to find this out.

surprise, surprise.

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:28:23 GMT

For some reason unknown to me, my boss, or my coworkers, on Thursday we were informed we have a mandatory on-site meeting from April 27 - May 1. This means I have to haul my ass from Tokyo to Sunnyvale for about a week; I'll get into town Sat 25th, fly back out at early-o'clock Sat 2nd. I have absolutely no fucking idea what I'm going to be doing during the week, but presumably my corporate masters will allow me at least a little free time; I'd like to see y'all.

I'm going to be so royally pissed if this is some fucking teambuilding/morale boosting exercise.

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:45:21 GMT

Yesterday, in the grocery store, I thought the Muzak sounded familiar... and then I realized it was Dragostea Din Tei, aka the Numa Numa Song.

time

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:53:00 GMT

I've started getting used to the notion that I'm getting older and creeping towards middle age; however, I still haven't adjusted to the thought that my parents are getting old; Dad's 68, and Mom's 67 - not that far away from their seventies.

Still haven't gotten my taxes straightened out yet, either. Bah.

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:13:15 GMT

This year, March is like February part II. Bleah.
I'm still rather freaked out by the "please pay the first installment of your taxes - $17,500 more or less - on Monday" surprise I got on Friday.

march whine

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 08:57:08 GMT

It's grey and overcast, which makes me not very inclined to go out and about or do much of anything. I've also had a cold for the past week, which has kept me from going to the clubs, for that matter. It's like this last week has been an extended form of February.

Six Word Story Theatre

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:41:28 GMT

God exists; good souls... taste better.

nope, still not dead.

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:16:51 GMT

Haven't been reading livejournal much lately. Spent New Year's Eve delirious with flu-induced fever. Was there some political thing that happened recently?

Anyhow: I've realized that it's a good time to send out postcards for no particular reason. Want one? Leave a [screened] comment with your snailmail address.

cold in Chicago

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 04:23:03 GMT

I didn't go up to the city on Saturday; my mood crashed, and I ended up sneezing and dozing in bed for most of the day. I'd thought that it was due to cat exposure, but as the symptoms have gotten worse since then, it now seems like I've come down with a good old-fashioned cold. Bleh.

The flight to Chicago was nice and boring. Today, rather than go out, I stayed at home and sneezed and read and dozed; since the high temperature for today was 13F, I don't think I was missing too much.

So many people I didn't get to see while in the SFBA. Wah!

SFBA, here I am.

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:02:16 GMT

I'm here in the lovely southbay; yesterday, I pretty much got in the car, drove straight to my hotel, and crashed until this morning. My stupid Cingular phone no longer seems to work, and my good Japanese phone doesn't either... but the stupid Windows Mobile one does. Since the phone's number is Japanese, anybody wanting to get in contact with me would probably be best off mailing my pager address: page dash moof at yahoo dash inc dot com.

And I should go to sleep soon so I can be at the office at a reasonably normal time tomorrow....

moof in SFBA on Saturday.

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:07:31 GMT

I'll be in the SFBA this Saturday the 6th, and fly to Chicago the morning of Sunday the 14th. Other than this Sunday, my schedule is pretty much wide open. I'm staying in the southbay, but could probably be fairly easily coerced up to the city. Anybody want to Do Stuff?

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 02:46:03 GMT

My mom sends me double-edged razorblades as gifts; does that make me emo?

I'm at the point where I'm running around, trying to assemble crap to bring with me to the US in two weeks...