Back from Vietnam, with food

We're back from Hanoi — actually, we came back earlier this week, but we've been busy sorting ourselves out after the trip. I'm slowly going through the pictures, so it'll be a while before I can put up a real post.

But tonight we made our first foray into Vietnamese-style cooking.

On the left, shrimp and pork skewers. On the right, beef spring rolls made at the table.

The shrimp and pork skewers are very simple. They're a mix of minced pork and chopped shrimp with spices rolled into a leaf then fried in a pan. The beef spring rolls are even easier, but you do want fresh, soft rice paper for everyone to roll their own at the table. We also made a simple garlic and fish sauce dipping sauce and some rice on the side.

To Hanoi

We're leaving for Hanoi early tomorrow morning. I won't even bring my computer this time, just a tablet, so I doubt there will be any updates here for a while. I don't want to let this blog lay fallow for too long, so here's a grab bag of recent pictures for you to peruse while we're away. Still need to decide on what cameras to bring...

Typhoon 13 came by this weekend, flooded parts of Kyoto, and drenched much of Kansai. Osaka was mostly fine, though. This picture is from a different rainstorm earlier this summer.

Kobe is a major harbour, with shipyards and services in addition to the freight terminals. This is Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Forces submarine rescue vessel Chioda, lying at the Kawasaki shipyard, right next to Mosaic restaurant and shopping mall. As you can see here, it would normally carry a deep-sea rescue submarine in the center.

The internet really is amazing, by the way; and even more amazing is just how quickly we have come to taking the worlds knowledge at our fingertips for granted.

Curry udon — here with karaage (deep-fried chicken) — is a favourite food. It's a bowl of udon where the soup is mixed with equal parts Japanese-style curry. Not quite a stew but too thick to be a soup, it's just amazingly satisfying and warms you up in winter like few other foods. The weather is finally getting cooler here now, so we can start enjoying this again.

As most of you know, I work at the supercomputer center in Kobe. I attended a short course on code optimization and parallelization recently, and during a facility tour at the end I finally got to see the K supercomputer that I use every day. Didn't bring a real camera unfortunately, so this cellphone shot is all I have. Might have to join another visitors tour with a better camera someday.

A pair of old work boots have been neatly put aside by a tree in Kobe. I actually see this now and again; my guess is, they're deliberately left for homeless people to get more use out of.

A night-time street in Kyoto earlier this summer. I have no idea what the couple was doing, but the scene seemed straight out of some movie. The colour film really adds to that feeling.

Hanoi Next Week

We're going to Hanoi in Vietnam next week. It's my summer vacation — we have to take five days, but can take them at any time up to the end of September. We figure an early autumn trip should be more pleasant than going anywhere at the height of summer.

It's the second time in Vietnam for me, as we went to Ho Chi Minh City some years ago. Knowing myself and knowing what to expect with Vietnamese food I am putting myself on a diet of sorts up until we leave. I know and accept that I will gain weight no matter what, but at least I can limit the overall impact a bit.

Pho. It's what's for breakfast. And lunch. And, probably, dinner. Why yes, I do like pho; why do you ask?

Summer Festival

Summer is winding down again. It's finally getting cool — about 28-30° now — and the weather is unsteady and rainy. Typhoon season is upon us.

While I'm no fan of the hot, humid summer here in general, I do enjoy the summer festivals. We try to catch the festival at our local shrine every year, with crowds of people, stalls selling snacks and fast food, and a really festive atmosphere. Makes the climate not just bearable but really enjoyable for a while.

This is not one of the big, famous festivals you may have head of in Kyoto or elsewhere, but just a small neighbourhood thing. Japan is filled with these events all summer long. The street in from of the shrine is filled with stalls like this, while the shrine itself has ceremonies, stages with performances and other events. Lots of fun.

Girl in summer kimono is playing a ball pick-up game at one of the stalls.

Playing an old-style ball-game at another stall.

There's games fit for grown-ups as well. One game (I didn't get a good picture) we played was basically a large water jar with a small cup at the bottom, with the opening upwards. Drop a coin from the surface, and if it gets into the cup at the bottom, you win. In this case you got two sticks of candied sugar (your choice of flavour) if you won; and one stick even if you didn't. We didn't win, but still tasty to share one stick!

Speaking of sticks, there's no limit to what kind of food you can serve on a stick. Here's pineapple and banana, both dipped in chocolate. I had grilled beef-tongue and iced cucumber as well, both served on a stick. You can get corn, fried chicken, hot dogs, squid, sweet beans, or fish cake on a stick too, if you want. And you do — it's all really good.

I had a beer with my food. It did not come on a stick, though I'm sure Top People are working hard on solving that problem even as we speak.

The shrine itself is on a small hill right among the houses. Here two boys are studying the street below.

These summer festivals do have a religious origin, though most people no longer pay much heed to that. You pay your respects, then go back to mingle and having fun. This is the fushimi inari altar off the side from the main shrine building.

The grounds are lit up in the evening with paper lanterns. They bear the name of local businesses that sponsor the festival. This lantern is from Yamako Paper Manufacturing, a local maker of tissue paper.

The area has plenty of older city blocks, with a group of homes in the middle accessible only through an alleyway you enter right through one of the street-facing buildings. These are the name plates hanging above one such alleyway entrance.

Monday Morning

Ah, Monday morning. We finally got a good rainstorm here this weekend, and it's wet and unsteady today as well. Which means temperatures are finally dropping to around 28-30° and life becomes bearable again. I feel great; time to update the blog, with a few gratuitous Gakkenflex shots from earlier this year.

A street in Akashi, west of Kobe.

Blood!

It's not just the weather; there's another reason for my new-found perkiness. I've long had somewhat high blood pressure and have taken a mild medication for it. But the pressure has dropped along with my body weight, and by now it was hovering right at the edge of hypotension. Low pressure is basically a good thing, but it makes me very tired and listless.

I finally got around to reducing my medication a few weeks ago, which raised the blood pressure a few mm. The effect has been pronounced. I feel much more energetic, less grouchy, and I no longer fall asleep at any time of the day. Should have done this a long time ago. Blood pressure is especially low in hot weather, so I may need to readjust the medication upwards again come autumn.

If you're feeling unusually tired lately and your blood pressure tends to be on the low side, you might want to have it checked out.

Umeda underground arcade and train stations, Osaka.

Short Course (for a Short Horse?)

Today and tomorrow I attend a short course on optimization, OpenMP and OpenMPI programming for supercomputers. It's focused on FORTRAN, but most of it is directly applicable to C/C++. Nothing you couldn't learn by your own of course but it's good to get a coherent, effective presentation of it.

Besides, the course is free and in the same building I normally work so it doesn't actually cost our project anything to have me attend. Not all of it is relevant to us; the presenter is currently diving into the difference between FORTRAN 77 and FORTRAN 90 when optimizing code. So I take the chance to finish this blog post instead.

Nagahiro street, Osaka. A view from home.

Poisoning the Well

I got a few ebooks from Rakuten earlier this year. Happy with the books, and happy with the process. And I fully intend to get more ebooks from there at some point (format and DRM permitting). So I signed up for a Rakuten newsletter for new book announcements.

I've signed up with other book sellers that send me really good material. Pragmatic Programmers and TOR books send me an email every couple of weeks or so, with links to essays, interviews and other fun stuff. O'Reilly sends me a "deal of the day" thing that is short and to the point, and I've bought most of my books from them through those deals. Marketing material I actually look forward to.

But Rakuten effectively sends spam, and lots of it. Last week I got four new emails from them in a single day. There's no actual content, just a painfully colourful garbage dump of books (manga, mostly) I have never, ever shown any interest in, screaming about some new 20% off — or 40% Off! or "Double Your Points!!!" — promotion since the last email.

So, I've unsubscribed from all of it. The indiscriminate hard sell makes me less likely to use Rakuten in the future. I no longer want to see their promotions, and the used car sales-approach is turning me off dealing with them. Less is more, OK?

Fishing boat in Akashi.

Summer Holidays

I've had no summer holiday so far. OIST lets you take your summer vacation at any time up until the end of September. Since the summer is too hot to be enjoyable we decided to take our vacation late; we'll go to Hanoi in late September. Why Hanoi? We really enjoyed our previous trip to Vietnam a few years ago and neither of us have been to Hanoi before.

AICS in Kobe, where I work, did have three days last week with electricity savings at the office, which means no air conditioning or anything, and you're expected to work elsewhere. I can log in and work from anywhere, so I spent those three days at chain coffee shops in Osaka with laptop and tablet in hand.

And amazingly, I was a lot more productive during those three days than I usually am at the office. Whether coffee shop or office I have a table with only a computer and a mug of coffee, and other people talking nearby. So what's the difference?

Change of scenery is my guess. If I'd work from the same cafe every day I'd soon get no more done than at the office. But different places with different people are stimulating. It helps me focus. So I'll occasionally bring my laptop to common areas and meeting rooms in our building and see if that has the same effect.

Shimanouchi, Osaka.

Xperia Tablet Z

Lots of silence around here, but I haven't stopped writing. I've been working on a post about my new toy, the Xperia Tablet Z, and it's now posted on Japan Mobile Tech, right here.

The very short takeaway is that it's an excellent tablet. It's light and thin and water resistant, and works very well for reading research papers, playing games, surfing the web or anything else you'd care to mention.

August...

It's august, and temperatures are stuck in the 35° range. Later this week the nightly low is predicted to top 30°. At least we haven't had any days close to 40 this year.

The cicadas — mostly Kumasemi - "bear cicada" around Osaka — are out in force, and the noise in parks and around trees is well nigh deafening (a related species sounds like this). And there seems to be a lot of them around this year; I even had this one fellow hitch a ride on my leg during a walk on Sunday:

Confused kumasemi mistaking me for a tree trunk