For all you even thinking of climbing it...it's HARD. Yes, it's touristy and stuff, especially during the on-season. But it's not like it's paved all the way up. And it's HIGH. You WILL find it hard to breathe, regardless of whether you actually get altitude sickness.
Well, okay, some background to put the following comments into perspective. I'm Asian, 5' 2", 120 lbs ish, and not terribly in shape. My idea of a workout is a 45 minutes of a dance video.
Fuji was HARD. The ascent was difficult; the descent was difficult and horrifying. We were a group of 10, starting from the 5th station at around 6pm. We got to our rest house somewhere almost at the 8th station at around 10:30 pm. We were then told that most people, in order to reach the summit to watch the sunrise, leave around midnight. Midnight! Uhm, yeah, so we caught like an hour's worth of sleep and set out again. I didn't think the altitude would affect me much. After all, I'm relatively small and so I don't need as much oxygen, right? WRONG! It was definitely hard to breathe. Every step made me pant. It felt like there was a weight on my chest all the time. By the time I reached the top (not in time for the sunrise, but almost!), any kind of exertion faster than a snail's pace made me feel nauseated. Yah, this shit is no joke, it sucks.
The ascent was just tiring, but there was the tantalizing reward of ever greater views. The descent was by the Fujinomiya route, which was a zigzag route down the mountain. It was awful. Fuji is like how I'd imagine Mars to be, all red volcanic scree, some loose gravel and some big rocks. I couldn't decide which was better, going down. Big rocks offer stability, but you have to pick your footing through them. Loose gravel you can just slide down...but sliding down it sucks and I fell on my butt/twisted my ankle/screwed up my knee about a zillion times. Permanent damage! And it was sunny and hot.
Okay so here's the advice.
Things I particularly couldn't live without:
Headlamp. I definitely needed BOTH my hands to help me scramble up the mountain at night, and the headlamp was invaluable in letting me figure out where to put my feet.
Gloves. Volcanic scree, remember? Without gloves I couldn't really have used my hands to help me up. Or gripped the rope tightly to keep me from falling so much, all the way down the mountain.
Sunglasses. Sunrise at the top, brutal sun on the way down. And since we were above the clouds...yeah. Even more brutal. On that note...
Sunscreen. The power of sunscreen, man. Some of us in the party had huge stripes of red from where they missed a swathe of skin with their sunscreen. I applied it twice, and I still got burned on my neck. And I rarely burn! I usually just tan.
Other stuff:
Hiking up the mountain in jeans is okay. Really. But really, I should have brought a complete set of clean clothes and an alternate set of shoes or something, cuz after the climb I spent like 8 hours of the rest of the day on a train, feeling pretty gross.
The ascent was totally worth it. The descent? Not so much. We were lucky...it didn't rain, and it wasn't even that cold. And our group was very good.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
the end in sight
Today was the last day of dance class...
I'm sad. My teacher and all of the other students have been so kind to me, and it just makes me really sad to think that it's all over, and that it's unlikely I'll ever see them again...
It was a lovely class though. My teacher let me take a video of her doing my dance, so that I can have a record of what the steps are supposed to look like. I feel a little less bad about not really being able to finish learning it (I finished learning all the steps yesterday, but I still can't do it without messing up and i forget the sequence), because the video is more than 12 minutes long. It's pretty long, for a dance. And some of it was cut, at that.
And another student gave me another kimono...I think she received it from her grandma, but it was way too small for her, so she was kind enough to pass it along...
Again, so grateful!
*sigh*
I'm sad. My teacher and all of the other students have been so kind to me, and it just makes me really sad to think that it's all over, and that it's unlikely I'll ever see them again...
It was a lovely class though. My teacher let me take a video of her doing my dance, so that I can have a record of what the steps are supposed to look like. I feel a little less bad about not really being able to finish learning it (I finished learning all the steps yesterday, but I still can't do it without messing up and i forget the sequence), because the video is more than 12 minutes long. It's pretty long, for a dance. And some of it was cut, at that.
And another student gave me another kimono...I think she received it from her grandma, but it was way too small for her, so she was kind enough to pass it along...
Again, so grateful!
*sigh*
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
fundamental mistakes, fundamental passions
A conversation from Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night (keep in mind it was published in the 1930s). Still thought-provoking.
"I quite agree with you," said Miss de Vine, "about the difficulty of combining intellectual and emotional interests. I don't think it affects women only; it affects men as well. But when men put their public lives before their private lives, it causes less outcry than when a woman does the same thing, because women put up with neglect better than men, having been brought up to expect it."
"But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?"
"You can usually tell,' said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes _fundamental_ mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is."
"I made a very big mistake once," said Harriet, "as I expect you know. I don't think that arose out of lack of interest. It seemed at the time the most important thing in the world."
"And yet you made the mistake. Were you really giving al your mind to it, do you think? Your mind? Were you really being as cautious and exacting about it as you would be about writing a passage of fine prose?"
"That's a rather difficult sort of comparison. One can't, surely, deal with emotional excitements in that detached spirit."
"Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?"
"Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it's dead right, there's no excitement like it. It's marvelous. It makes you feel like God on the Seventh Day--for a bit, anyhow."
"Well, that's what I mean. You expend the trouble and you don't make any mistakes--and then you experience the ecstasy. But if there's any subject in which you're content with the second0rate, then it isn't really your subject."
"You're dead right," said Harriet, after a pause. "if one's genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass, as Queen Elizabeth said. Perhaps that's the meaning of the phrase about genius being eternal patience, which I always thought rather absurd. If you truly want a thing, you don't snatch; if you snatch, you don't really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it's a proof of its importance to you?"
"I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundamental errors. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring. I wish one could teach people nowadays that the doctrine of snatching what one thinks one wants is unsound…If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller--all other interests, your own and other people's….However painful it is, there's always one thing one has to deal with sincerely, if there's any root to one's mind at all. I ought to know, from my own experience. Of course, the one thing may be an emotional thing; I don't say it mayn't. One may commit all the sins in the calendar, and still be faithful and honest towards one person. If so, then that one person is probably one's appointed job. I'm not despising that kind of loyalty; it doesn't happen to be mine, that is all."
"Did you discover that by making a fundamental mistake?" asked Harriet, a little nervously.
"Yes," said Miss de Vine. "I once got engaged to somebody. But I found I was always blundering--hurting his feelings, doing stupid things, making quite elementary mistakes about him. In the end I realized that I simply wasn't taking as much trouble with him as I should have done over a disputed reading. So I decided he wasn't my job." She smiled. "For all that, I was fonder of him than he was of me. He married an excellent woman who is devoted to him and does make him her job. I should think he was a full-time job. He is a painter and usually on the verge of bankruptcy; but he paints very well."
"I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job."
"Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures."
"I quite agree with you," said Miss de Vine, "about the difficulty of combining intellectual and emotional interests. I don't think it affects women only; it affects men as well. But when men put their public lives before their private lives, it causes less outcry than when a woman does the same thing, because women put up with neglect better than men, having been brought up to expect it."
"But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?"
"You can usually tell,' said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes _fundamental_ mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is."
"I made a very big mistake once," said Harriet, "as I expect you know. I don't think that arose out of lack of interest. It seemed at the time the most important thing in the world."
"And yet you made the mistake. Were you really giving al your mind to it, do you think? Your mind? Were you really being as cautious and exacting about it as you would be about writing a passage of fine prose?"
"That's a rather difficult sort of comparison. One can't, surely, deal with emotional excitements in that detached spirit."
"Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?"
"Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it's dead right, there's no excitement like it. It's marvelous. It makes you feel like God on the Seventh Day--for a bit, anyhow."
"Well, that's what I mean. You expend the trouble and you don't make any mistakes--and then you experience the ecstasy. But if there's any subject in which you're content with the second0rate, then it isn't really your subject."
"You're dead right," said Harriet, after a pause. "if one's genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass, as Queen Elizabeth said. Perhaps that's the meaning of the phrase about genius being eternal patience, which I always thought rather absurd. If you truly want a thing, you don't snatch; if you snatch, you don't really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it's a proof of its importance to you?"
"I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundamental errors. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring. I wish one could teach people nowadays that the doctrine of snatching what one thinks one wants is unsound…If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller--all other interests, your own and other people's….However painful it is, there's always one thing one has to deal with sincerely, if there's any root to one's mind at all. I ought to know, from my own experience. Of course, the one thing may be an emotional thing; I don't say it mayn't. One may commit all the sins in the calendar, and still be faithful and honest towards one person. If so, then that one person is probably one's appointed job. I'm not despising that kind of loyalty; it doesn't happen to be mine, that is all."
"Did you discover that by making a fundamental mistake?" asked Harriet, a little nervously.
"Yes," said Miss de Vine. "I once got engaged to somebody. But I found I was always blundering--hurting his feelings, doing stupid things, making quite elementary mistakes about him. In the end I realized that I simply wasn't taking as much trouble with him as I should have done over a disputed reading. So I decided he wasn't my job." She smiled. "For all that, I was fonder of him than he was of me. He married an excellent woman who is devoted to him and does make him her job. I should think he was a full-time job. He is a painter and usually on the verge of bankruptcy; but he paints very well."
"I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job."
"Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures."
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
one! small! victory!
After spending two days cleaning up data from limesurvey, importing/exporting it across 5 different file formats, I FINALLY got ALL the quantitative and network data to read properly into UCINET and NetDraw. And here, finally, is one small piece of evidence of my success!!
This shows all the people who responded to my survey and how they are connected to each other.
Black is me, Red is females, and Blue is males. Arrows indicate direction of invitation...
I'm so happy! of course it's all preliminary, but hey! You can't analyze data if you can't get your program to read it, so this was a very necessary preliminary success!
Also, I am starting to get a blister on the end of my right index finger, from using the mouse on my thinkpad so much...
This shows all the people who responded to my survey and how they are connected to each other.
Black is me, Red is females, and Blue is males. Arrows indicate direction of invitation...
I'm so happy! of course it's all preliminary, but hey! You can't analyze data if you can't get your program to read it, so this was a very necessary preliminary success!
Also, I am starting to get a blister on the end of my right index finger, from using the mouse on my thinkpad so much...
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