Robotics

Yesterday I had my first major language mishap in front of a large group. I was listening to a seminar in which they were nice enough to put one of the students on stage in English for my benefit - and his horror. All of the attendees had to introduce themselves, again, in english so that I could understand what was being discussed. One young man who is entering the lab this semester after doing an undergrad degree in Tokyo was introducing himself and the research interests he had as an undergrad. I nodded and smiled because I clearly heard him say "robotics". I said something stupid like "robotics are a interesting and Japan is strong in this field". It turns out he was doing social research related to addiction withdrawl. I still have no idea how that all unfolded, but I am quite sure that they all think that I am an idiot - and of course it doesn't help that any time I sit down at a computer I have to ask a student to help me find the google.ca website (can't read a thing!).

Here is a map of the university campus. The orange sun is where my tiny one room apartment is and the lightbulb is where my "office" is. It is about a 40 minute walk each way which allows me the time I need in the morning to talk myself into actually going to work again; the walk home allows me a nice bit of time in the fresh air to recoup. Oh, and with any of the photos I post, you can click directly on the photo to enlarge it.



Today was a good day in a small victories type of way. I looked at a few potential apartments that I will move into around the time when Shawn arrives. There is no way that the two of us will fit into the shoebox that I am in now, and there aren't any larger rooms available in the "visiting researcher housing". Even though it will be an order of magnitude more expensive, I think that it will be for the best. I have reserved an apartment that is closer to the main gates of campus and closer to downtown and the train station. I also found an english version of the manual for my phone so that I didn't have to ask the students how to use it, they would be certain that I am an idiot if I had to do that!

I am heading back to my room now for the night. Tonight, a nice glass of red wine and a bath are in order. The wine is crazy cheap here and the bath tubs are to die for. Did I mention that I can program my hot water heater in my room to automatically fill my tub at a pre-set time and to a pre-set temperature and volume? Now that is the kind of technology that I could get used to!