おは異様ございます！
Apologies for the delay, I have been traveling this past weekend, going to Hong Kong for the 3rd time and Shenzhen for the first time. A lot has happened in the world and to me this past week. For starters, obviously Drake has dropped not one, not two, but three albums in one night, so I needed to process that. Everyone needs to stop playing with The Boy! Summer is his, the whole year is his. The whole rollout got me emotional. I will never switch up on the GOAT. My Top 5 is:
I need to give the albums some more time to settle in before I can give an honest evaluation, but I mess with all the projects heavy. However, the beef with LeBron needs to squashed, I do not know how to feel about those bars. My two GOATs cannot be fighting, I will always back Bron though.
Man I am sad though, Lakers got swept 4-0. Due to the possibility of LeBron Raymone James retiring, I might have to take a 23-day sabbatical to reflect on his illustrious 23-year career. I can not imagine the NBA without Bron, it just does not hit the same. Bron and the NBA are mutually exclusive, you can not have one or the other, but like all things we are going to have to get used to it.
From now on I will be starting my mornings by being:
The goat, pookie bear, sunshine, King, LeBron Raymone James, can not retire 😔
Moving along now and aside from world popular culture news, the content of my courses has definitely kicked up a notch, but the work is nothing too hard to manage. I am still able to go out and side-quest while "studying." I wish I can do some more side-questing though because besides the Hong Kong/Shenzhen bender, as of recently I have not been able to adventure.. It is not like I do not want to go out and explore the Kansai region and Japan more, but my body can not keep up with me. My body is quitting on me because of my inconsistent circadian rhythm due to ice-hockey. I am used to the late night practices back at UCSD, but that is when the rink is 10 minutes away not 2 hours and 45 minutes away.
Hockey is taking a lot out of me. I love playing, it is fun, but I absolutely despise sleeping late. A goal I had prior to coming abroad was to improve my sleep, getting a solid 8 hours a night, but that was thrown out the window the second I got to Kyoto. My sleep schedule is so inconsistent, some days I get 8 hours and have a great day, and on days I have practice, I get like 4 hours or less and my mood for the whole day is ruined. I would sum it out with this clip from Michael Beasley:
Michael Beasley's story is pretty sad. I have yet to listen to the whole Shannon Sharpe podcast he had, but man that clip when he was describing everything leading up to the "wrong shorts" situation, and he said, "I will cry a lil just act like you don't notice" hits hard. That statement alone just tells you everything you need to know about how long he has been holding that pain in and the state of his mental health. Hopefully no one reading this, or I know is going through a similar pain, but I need to check up on my people to make sure. Please do not be alarmed if I send you a text!
An interesting thing that happened last week was that I have got into a lab; Developmental Neurorobotics (Veale Lab) at Kyoto University. The research and projects we do is primarily focused on how eye-movement can be linked to patient’s with schizophrenia. I have no clue how I will be of assistance, but at least I got a cool thing to add to my LinkedIn profile and have something to do abroad other than be a traveling degenerate 😂. Neurotechnology is the field I want to specialize in. When I tell people that, they assume I want to work for Musk’s Neuralink, and want to help him take over people’s minds. If you actually look at what his company does, it’s not at all that. The company’s mission statement is "To create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow." Maybe the last part sounds pretty villainous, but the first half is something I can subscribe to. I strongly believe that with technology, neurological diseases can be cured or at least more livable. Back at UCSD, I am part of Triton Neurotech, and before I came abroad, I was working on a EMG (Electromyography) Neural prosthetic hand. It is powered by a neural wristband like the same type of one Meta uses to control their smart glasses. I think I included a video of it on one of my Instagram posts. The team went to the Neurotech conference in Berkeley, but I have no clue if the project ever got finished or not. If you ever watched Big Hero 6, it is like what the main character presented to get into that university at the conference before the fire broke out, but just not that advanced. I would include the video, but I am writing this log on the plane in the air, and there is no Wi-Fi.
Speaking of Wi-Fi, I must tell you, how much of a blessing, having Wi-Fi, and the invention of Wi-Fi is. My brother and I wasted about an hour trying to get connected to Wi-Fi and get an eSim for the day when we went to Shenzhen. If you never visited China, cellular service is essential because everything runs on WeChat (Weixin). WeChat is everything there. Cash is absolutely obsolete. It is crazy how technology-advanced China is. Shenzhen puts Silicon Valley to shame and the Bay Area is "tech capital of the world." It does make sense that Shenzhen looks more technologically advanced than Silicon Valley because everything coming out of Silicon Valley and what it produces likely came from Shenzhen 😂. Hopefully I get to visit Shenzhen again, but I do not know, I can not keep coming back to the same places over-and-over again because I would be going through Hong Kong. Hong Kong to Shenzhen is 15 minutes via high speed rail, and unlike Japan, the train only cost $10 USD, which is insane. It’s cheaper than BART and Caltrain, and you ride for a shorter duration with better service. Man I am so lucky to be able to travel and see the world. I will post the whole trip review later in a different section on this website along with my book reviews. I will announce when it will be up, but for previews and most likely the TLDR will be Shenzhen is peak.
The plane is about to land, so I think I will wrap up the log here. Big things coming, and the end of the semester is coming closer and closer, yet there is so much I want to do. I need to make the most of the time I have now, and enjoy it while it lasts.
See you next week! じゃね！