Blinking boxes

Last month I turned 28. Having just two more years to end the 20s doesn't make you feel any better. Time to time through some Facebook links of your young siblings you get a glimpse of what a weird place this world is turning out to be in a few years. In order to survive in this chaotic place one should definitely be flexible to adopt the new trends in technology.

Therefore Last year on my birthday I bought myself an i-pad. It has changed my life in such a way that I can't possibly describe. First of all I must say that I got lucky since I could buy the I pad for just 60$s due to a sales promotion.

To mention the obvious, the I pad has accelerated my reading. By the end of the last year I could only finish 5 books in total but even though I was busier this year I could complete more than 15 books so far. Well,call me a geek but I don't really care for the fresh aroma of the books rather the content of them. Infact I get a sick feeling when I get hold of dusty old books cause they make me sneeze. The nice thing about using e-books is that you can just click on a difficult word and the meaning of the word appears right there saving you a lot of time referring to a dictionary. On the other hand you can decide the size and the type of the fonts. You can also decide on the brightness. E-reader automatically keeps bookmarks for you. I couldn't have truly asked for a better reading experience.

Reading aside one of the most wonderful things about using a tab or a smartphone is the endless number of apps that can be used to improve your life. Now I've completely stopped using pen and papers since I can easily make notes with my own handwriting using an app. I have an app to keep a track of my running speeds and burnt calories, another to update my resolutions one for learning new Japanese and English words. At the moment I'm typing this blog post via my iPad on the train. So ya I'm very glad I bought these little blinking boxes.

On the other hand I think I'm not exaggerating when I say these boxes are leading to an amazingly quiet generation. We are globally connected via these screens but at the same time they make us ignore the presence of people. I'm a big fan of meaningful conversations and connecting with people face to face but unfortunately, it seems that these will soon be good old things of past.

Don’t Panic

Once in a while in life you get to experience the unexpected. They aren’t always pleasant. There I was having a slow day at work, teaching a student in my lesson booth. It was just a sluggish afternoon or so I thought. Suddenly things started to move.

After being in Japan for about a year I was used to earthquakes and didn’t really get panicked. But this one seemed to be quite strange. It didn’t stop in few seconds as usual and my student started to panic. On to my left I could see that my fellow instructor who has only been in Japan for 2 weeks was turning red with terror. He didn’t know what to do. He was looking at me with the expression, “what the hell is going on here?”

Well, the only thing that came in to my mind was to go under the tables as I was told more than hundreds of times by my husband and we all did. We were clinging on to the steel bars of the table. My student started to scream in Japanese and I could hear a quite a lot of swearing on to my left. On the other hand I thought that it was ‘THE END’. Therefore as a Buddhist, I was recalling all the good deeds I have done in my entire life. Surprisingly it wasn’t really scary as I expected it to be.

I was in the 3^rd floor and the Building went swimmy. The shaking got stronger in every second. Books and laptops started to fall down from the tables and it felt like an hour. Later from the reports I got to know that it lasted only for five to six minutes but believe me, it felt much longer than that.

After the two major earthquakes we all came out of the building from the emergency exits. Everyone was shaking with fear. I will never forget those facial expressions for a quite a long time. I think major disasters have the power to unite people, for that’s what happened on that day.

Trains and busses stopped operation for they were expecting aftershocks. Therefore all of my workmates and I went to the nearby evacuation center. Even though the Japanese insisted that the buildings are earthquake proof as foreigners we had doubts about staying inside a building therefore we went to the soccer field outside. Everyone shared their experience. For us it was bonding over an earthquake.

One of my friends has been in a bus and she had seen how the buildings started to swing and how her bus was rocking like a ship. Another workmate was really nice that he was in a restaurant at the time and he had run out of the restaurant keeping a 1000Yen note on the table. Isn’t this world full of beautiful people?

With the earthquake telephone network went down and I had no idea about what has happened to my husband. Surprisingly internet was available and I could put a status on Facebook. After trying so hard for about 5 hours I could finally contact my husband for few seconds and have never felt so relieved.

All this time aftershocks continued at least once in every ten minutes. It felt as if we were in a ship. The temperature was also near zero. It was almost impossible to stay outside and with heavy hearts we went inside the evacuation center. At the evacuation center there were more than thousand people and everyone was given blankets, food cans and water bottles. This level of preparation surprised us all. It was only after watching TV at the evacuation center that we realized the true impact of the disaster.

All of us who were travelling from trains had no choice but to spend the night at the evacuation center. I thought it was going to be a very long night. All by sudden my husband came to the evacuation center looking for me. He had been cycling all the way from home to the evacuation center. It was such a pleasant surprise. Both of us walked home for about 5kms.

It would have been wonderful if this was the end of the nightmare but both of us woke up next day to another middling aftershock to find out the real catastrophe with the nuclear plants. A lot happened within these two weeks. Most of our friends left the country. Radiation levels rose. Water got contaminated. With all these happenings it is astonishing to see the resilience of Japanese. They keep on working as if nothing has happened.

All this time it hasn’t always been easy to keep it all together. But there is one thing that keeps me going. That’s what I have read in the book “Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”. In that science fiction there exists a guide which has all the information about the entire universe. The Guide is encased in a plastic cover with the words "DON'T PANIC" inscribed on it in large, friendly letters.

The Art of Conversation…

There is a famous Chinese proverb, “A single conversation across the table with a wise person is worth a month's study of books” and I totally agree. Food and meaningful Conversations are two things that I enjoy most. The Research presentation competition of IMECHE (Institute of Mechanical Engineers) which I took part last month could not only fill my stomach with mouth watering dishes but also provided me with a vast supply of food for thought.

The contest itself was mind-blowing with seven mechanical engineers from seven different countries presenting their research in detail to a non-technical audience. Even though the presentations were highly technical each of those presentations was inspiring, because each and every one of us had a true passion for what we were presenting. I must say all those presentations were second to none of TED talks I was watching recently. From the secrets of formula1 car racing to self balancing scooters, from convertible technologies to greener solutions, from face tracking robots to lean manufacturing, they all were truly inspiring.

Apart from the competition I enjoyed the fruitful conversations amidst of never ending food courses. What more can you ask for when you are on a vacation? It was interesting how all of us share many experiences including the engineering softwares we use such as Solidworks, PROE and so on. On the other hand it was equally interesting to observe the different perspectives across the globe for example in Sri Lanka where Engineering field is highly recognized with top students are entering Engineering field In China and Hongkong the field of Engineering is not treated with the same status. There the top students enter management and marketing.

We are living in an age where we are connected across the globe with various networks but at the same time it makes this a silent age that isolates us to iphones, laptops, and ect that makes us ignore the presence of people. I learnt the power of conversation through my grandma. As a person who haven’t received any education more than 5th grade her awareness about the world is better than a college graduate all due to the family culture of conversation where all of her seven children share their day with her. On the other hand conversation is way different from gossip that is why they say “Conversation is an exercise of the mind; gossip is merely an exercise of the tongue.”

My signature in cyberspae

Writing is something that I always had a passion for. My father always thought that I would do better in writing or in law rather than in engineering. May be he is right. So thatta this blog is dedicated to you. Through the years from grade 6, I had diaries, scrap books in which I scribble down how I see things and how I feel the world. It was the perfect way to express myself. Sometimes I felt that it is by writing that I clarify exactly what I feel about things. The worst part was my parents found those writings interesting and they used to secretly read them, which was very annoying. Through the time I always get embarrassed by what I wrote in past. So most of the time all what I wrote ended up in garbage cans. May be I will not dare to delete my blog posts. So here I am putting my signature in the cyber space. These posts are not written to please or impress anyone they are an aid for me to discover myself better.
Signing off for today...