Kokochi

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For a cacophony fundraiser. Lots of art, music and burning man folk...Ahhh, I feel back in what feels good and fun!

now at Jade

Midori Mushi

Transcription by Chuck Swenson:
My first time at this place in Hayes Valley. Totally cool but packed, and I'm upstairs in the bar section waiting for my friend Joy. We all have to take our shoes off downstairs in the tiny restaurant. This place was the "office" part of a motel (which is now a chain motel but they don't use this part.

Joy is a lawyer and was slated to move to Tokyo for one year (we went to high school in Tokyo together). Anyway, I thought she already left, but she called to go out tonight. Turns out she was sick for a month -- broke three ribs from coughing! She's better now and will be leaving next week. Wild though!

Natural Beauty

Transcription by Dav:
Visiting the newly renovated conservatory of flowers. Been wanting to check this out for a while. So warm and colorful.

From my brother Ian:
Loving it out here - first time to see the sun in weeks!

in golden gate park

Walking around with my visiting brother and friends. Found a jazz band jamming in a tunnel.

a little insight

Dav was a psychology major before he got into computer stuff and knows a bit about the Briggs Myers personality test. He did a test and scored as an INTP. And from what I read, it's right on (and he agrees). He thought I would be an ESFJ, but when I took a short version of the test, I scored as EFNJ. There are some definite truisms about me:

"deal with things according to how you feel about them." Very true.

"They live in the world of people possibilities." Yep. I love people in all their flying colors.

"...tend to be more reserved about exposing themselves." I thought that came from growing up in Japan, but hey.

"When faced with a conflict between a strongly-held value and serving another person's need, they are highly likely to value the other person's needs." Not a shining quality, but I've done that.

"Their genuine interest in Humankind." Once again, yup.

But it wasn't a perfect fit as Dav feels about his:

"use their power over people to manipulate them." I hope not! But maybe I'm not facing the truth? Eeeeck..

"turn to dark thoughts when alone..." I actually like being alone and had a blast living on my own. Don't remember too many "dark thoughts" other than missing Dav.

I dunno. How can you type humans into 16 categories perfectly? Anyway, with these two types between us, I of course wanted to find some sorta compatibility analysis. I mean, the tests show we view and react to the world quite differently. I didn't find much between INTPs and EFNJs, but with INTPs and ESFJs, there's "mutual attraction." The ESFJ likes serving "as an anchorage for the INTP's flights to the higher levels of abstraction," according to a different summary. Admittedly each summary says something a little different so in the end, I can't really tell what all this means.

Besides, I noticed an opposite dynamic between us too. For example, when he goaded me to buy the meanest phone in Tokyo, set me up with my first blog, and gave me moblogging capabilities, it was he who anchored me while I ran around snapping pics every which way. Anytime I had a wishlist or a problem, I'd email him and had the best tech support anyone could hope for.

Another example was when I visited him in SF from Tokyo for NYE. He had bought me these beautiful green butterfly wings to wear with a matching fuzzy green top. I truly felt like a magical butterfly. But being a debutante in wing-wearing, I promptly danced around gleefully hitting people in the face unbeknownst to me while Dav, ever so watchful, ran after me keeping people out of the danger I was causing. When I figured this out, I was embarrassed, but also charmed. I got to fly around while he took care of damage-control.

So these tests are cool as food for thought; a nudge towards insight, a reason to say, "hmm, I suppose I can be a pain in the butt that way," or "ah yeah, that's how to describe what s/he does." Yet ultimately, you just gotta live together - day in, day out - to figure out how our quirky characters mesh together. That's pretty much what we're doing.

Along with 2 very quirky cats, if I may add.

doodling

Transcription by Anonymous:
Someone dosed my donut!

doughnut birthday cake

It's Ezra's (one of the engineers here) birthday. Mena brought in Krispie Kream doughnuts for the occasion. We had one candle to proudly set on Ezra's doughnut, but no one smokes here and we don't have any lighters. So we glued on a yellow paper cut to look like a flame. Now we have sugar highs...

modern community

As you know, I met a cool group of friends through Burning Man. We live together at Burning Man, call ourselves Campalicious, and hang out throughout the year. It's not just our house here in Potrero Hill, but in the neighborhood are several other campalicious members living too. Our group is close to what folks have coined modern day "tribes" where we support each other, have fun together, and actively create community. I feel particularly lucky to know these people because of the age we are in. We're not just a bunch of youngsters out to party. I mean, we do love having fun together, but as we grow older, we're also sharing relationships, marriages, and now, the birth of children. I think we're all slowly transitioning, and we're doing it together.

Karina just had a beautiful baby girl, Jet. She currently lives in NY, but was here visiting and a bunch of campalicious folk gathered at this Potrero house to say hi and see the new bundle of joy. The pics of her and Jet are quite dark, but it makes for a more intimate setting, no?

Then what was kinda cool (for Dav and I at least...it must have just seemed geeky for others) was that my parents hooked up on the ISight when everyone was there. So we brought the laptop around, turned the lights on and introduced my parents to everyone. It was rather funny to see Dav holding the laptop facing everyone while my parents peeked out from the screen saying, "hi...oooo, is that the baby? how cute!"

lots to learn

For a few days earlier this week, my Nokia phone all of a sudden stopped sending emails. So I couldn't upload to Kokochi. It turns out that T-Mobile decided to no longer support the Nokia mailbox that I was using. I don't know why they suddenly changed, but I sure was confused by all the inconvenience. So over dinner, I had Dav explain email systems to me. POP and SMTP, that sorta stuff.