the Namesake

It is about time I explain to you all about the namesake of this blog.

My blog is titled "蒼穹〜イフテンゲル” and it means "Azure". The first characters are Japanese and the latter is in katakana but it is actually Mongolian.
I borrowed this from the title of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies' Mongolian Language Study Alumni Journal.

To make a long story short, my mother's father (thus my grandfather) attended the school that preceded TUFS before the war.
I've never met my grandfather because he was already passed away by the time I got around to this world. Well, he passed away long time before I was born, in fact he passed away when my mother was only in high school. That is why I always refer to him my "mother's father" not my "grandfather".

I do not know anything about my mother's father except stories told to me by mother and her relatives. Yet I feel very attached to him, that he was the reason why I am here in this world.

Here is the only objective (meaning not from a relative) documentation about him that I've known. It is from the above mentioned Alumni Journal.

「戦後燃料不足の時代にオガライト（家庭用燃料）を開発し、従業員１００名の工場を経営。温厚で芯のある人柄であった。昭和４１年病没」("During the era of fuel shortage post WWII, he developed home-use fuel named 'Oga light" and ran 100 personnel factory. He was a gentle person and a man of principle. passed away in Showa 41 (1966)"

The goal in my life is to try be called that after I am gone.

My grandfather's name was KURACHI Kazutoshi 倉智和年.

my old home

I did a "time travel" yesterday, visiting my old hood with childhood friends.

Here is a video of my old home in Yokohama.
It is kind of sad to see it like this after over 10 years...

Google Speaker Series: Camino

Interesting video on Camino (a mac web browser developed by Mozilla).

Takao San

I went to Takao San with a group of friends.
It was quite fun experience, although there were SOOOO many people at the tiny (599m) mountain.
Happy Golden Week to you all:)

Indian Ambassador comes to ICU!

Indian Ambassador to Japan came to ICU yesterday.
Supposedly, 2007 is a "India-Japan" Year.

I asked a question about Indian ex-pats (Ambassador described as an "Indian Diaspora") and their relation with their mother country.

It was funny that Ambassador said something like to the effect of "there are a lot of Indians living outside of India but there are MUCH MUCH more Indian people in India."



And as a OMAKE:
a picture of the MC, the great Hongo sensei :)

There has been an incident at ICU...

this is freakin funny~
まじウケたw

Foxkeh website doesn't like Safari

It seems like http://foxkeh.jp doesn't like Safari.

The text on the right column is not correctly displayed.
By the way, the two guys are Seth&Seth dressed up? as Foxkeh :)

You can tell it is pretty messed up in this screen cap


I wonder if this is a problem with Safari? or the way Foxkeh website is made?

I'm sure people at Mozilla Japan double checked with Safari (since I hear a lot of people at Mozilla is a mac user).
I hope this problem will be fixed b/c Safari is a great browser for "browsing" ie. just looking through websites since the rendering is so beautiful.


Anyway, it's just my 2cents.