Erek Speed

So, I’ve been reading a lot of stuff about Saito and whether or not he’s a terrible person.  I live in Japan and frequent his store, so I’m fairly confident that he’s not a terrible person just on account of my personal interactions with him.  I felt that his own final words on the topic should be put forth.

I hope that the translation conveys the true sense of his words.  If it makes you feel angry, then you probably don’t understand.  Essentially, it confirms that AJ Sacher was essentially exactly right in his post here.  He never intended to break the rules.  His original article in Japanese is here.  Anyway, here’s the translation.  It’s pretty accurate, but getting all the nuances is hard, so mostly use it as a much better google translate. — Erek Speed

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I couldn’t tweet during the event but I had some thoughts that I jotted down in my phone which I will now share unedited:

Thoughts:

People are assuming I’m from the philippines which leads to a bit of confusion.  I don’t speak Tagalog!  (though I learned how to pronounce it.)

Round 3 opponent couldn’t believe I was black, exclaimed the unbelievable fact to his friend later.

He was going to guess half brazillian I guess.

After I told him of the Jamaican dilutution of my black half, he asked me if I smoked weed, I sadly told him no, but I guess Filipino grass is really good.  Oh well.

Rd 1:  mono-red.  Game 1 he gets me before i can stabilize. I die to hell thunder tricks game 2.

R2:  white weeny.  Game 1 I didn’t draw a planeswalker but sphinx almost got there.  I couldn’t counter the second conqerors pledge though.

Games 2 and 3 I did draw planeswalkers.  I exiled 2 baneslayer angels because emeria was live an I wanted to win. 😛

Rd 3:  sqeaker games vs Jund.   Game 1 he got me with burn mostly.  Casting hell’s thunder 3 times.  Game 2 I stabalized but i needed a 6th land for my sphinx for 7 turns before I died to incidental damage that included thunders and sarkhan throwing broodmate dragon’s at me.

Rd 4:  vampires.  No witches or vapors.  game 1 he hits me with mind sludge to destroy me.  Game 2 walkers plus sphinx. Game 3 he mulls to 5 and I day 2 hexmages.  Then I count up Jace because he’s stuck on 2 lands.  5 turns later I ultimate.

Martin juza should never call a judge.

Rd 5 vs jund
Game one I double sea’d and won with the walkers and sphinx.  Game 2 I went to 1 before stabalizing with coup and counters.  I countered a pulse on my tokens but maybe I should save the counters for burn only.

Rd 6 vs mono green
Killed me game 1 with monument.  Planeswalker awesomeness games 2 and 3.  Game I day/coup 3 times.

Rd 7 vs NLB
Game 1 I mulled to 5 and never had more than 2 land.  Game 2 I mulled again and took some time to get some blue sources. It happens I guess.

The Mosquitos here love to bite my legs.

Rd 8 grixis draw.

Greedy game one.  Spinx game 2.  10 minutes left.  Draw.

Rd 9 gw aggro ramp
He was late so he received a game loss.  He had a pretty aggressive start game 2 with 2 escorts and so many spawn tokens.  I slowly ramped up playing walls and spreading seas while keeping negate open for the overrun.  I countered it eventually and won soon after that.

So many girls here.  More girls than I’d ever at any magic event.  Most were even playing in the event.  Definitely a good sign for magic.

So, I foreshadowed future posts with my last post but nothing materialized out of that. I apologize.

My life is pretty boring which in my opinion makes my posts pretty boring. Producing boring content is not its own reward; it doesn’t matter how zen you think you are. On the other hand, it’s annoying when people are always asking me how I’m doing so I should probably try to post brief updates here from time to time. This is one of those times.

Instead of a small book of boring everyday minutiae, I’ll instead focus on the areas of my life which matter most to me.
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Last time, I was sitting in my hotel contemplating my return to Japan. This time, I’m going to talk about the following week and my adventures finding an apartment.

The Monday after I arrived I visited a realtors office so he could find me a place to live. I didn’t much care about size but I wanted a place close to work and good arcades. I work in Shinjuku and there’s a really good arcade in Shibuya so he ended up showing me a place in Shibuya and a couple of places in Shinjuku.

They were all fine but one of the places in Shinjuku was a block from work and came furnished so I went with that place. I spent a few days chilling and bumming about around Shibuya and other places in Tokyo. It’s pretty nice to be in this city and not have any obligations but I would be glad to return to work. It’s good to have a purpose in life.

In Japan, apartments have quite high move in costs. Not only is there 1 month rent agency fee and 1-2 months deposit but there’s also 1-2 months of key money (??) which is essentially a bribe to sweeten the deal for the landlord. This plus first month’s rent and stuff like lock changing fee and cleaning fee made me worried for a bit that I wouldn’t be able to move in as soon as I needed. In the end, everything worked out and I was able to move in.

In that time, I also went to the Tokyo Game Show with Hidde and spent quite a bit of time sleeping. In the near future, I’ll have a post about the former but probably not about the latter.

I’m going to begin a series of posts to map out my entry into Japan and anything else interesting happens while I’m here.  Smaller updates get posted to twitter at http://www.twitter.com/melink14.  In general, everything I do is low traffic since I’m pretty low key but the things I do post tend to be things that are hopefully a tad bit interesting.

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We’re now chilling in Las Vegas.  We have a pretty sweet hotel but everything here is quite expensive.  The trip here wasn’t too bad.  Here’s a list of cool things I learned:

• Utah has people in airplanes that check your speed.  I want to be pulled over by an airplane.
• Utah also has a beehive as it’s state highway symbol.
• Going down mountains are super fun.

Vegas was fun, I was trying to acquire a taste for beer, but it’s still at the pretty terrible range.  I had a pretty good fruity drink at some place that cost like 13 dollars.  Everything around here is way too expensive but I guess that’s the price you pay for being in the city of sin.

Also, Tom was really interested in the the calling cards that were handed out by random people everywhere advertising the best prostitutes.  $35 special indeed. (That was actually a lie.)

Tom has more here: http://alltom.com/pages/road-trip-2009

I don’t update my blog a lot so people don’t read it.  When people do read it they think it’s pretty lame.  That’s all fine, the purpose of the blog is to provide updates to people who care when I have time.

Since last time I graduated from MIT with a BS in computer science and have begun my summer job as a TA in the MITES program.  I have a great group of kids and look forward to teaching them something about programming and life.

This year we’re doing iPhone applications which means I get to learn something about coding for the Macintosh platform.  In order to facilitate this I bought a new Macbook Pro which came with an iPod touch.

I’ve also been accepted in to the Master of Engineering program in EECS here at MIT.  I’m deferring it for awhile though because I’m going to go work for Square Enix in Japan.

I have a lot of things I need/want to do this summer.  I hope I can manage to get some of them done. 😉

That’s all for now.  Maybe I’ll update more often in the future.

Contrary to what the title may make you think, this post isn’t about cheesy G rated movies on ABC which you might have watched during a better more simple time.  It’s about my plans post school.  That golden time when I get to join the work force and become a productive member of society.

In this case, not this society, but Japan’s.  That’s right, I’ve decided to go to back to Square Enix to work full time after school.

This was a tricky decision which took a lot of soul searching to arrive out.  In the end, SE has a vision and a mission which is simply more exciting than the other places I looked at.   

It will take a bit for me to get my visa after a graduate so I’m still up in the air about what I’ll do for the summer.  I’ve applied to MITES but besides that it’s up in the air.

If I don’t get to do that, I’ll just chill in Kansas doing nothing, or maybe fun projects or possibly anything at all.

First, I have to graduate. 😛

It’s a bit unfortunate that it’s so easy to see how bad I’ve been about updating this blog.  A quick glance down to the last post shows almost a 7 month hiatus on my part.  With such a lapse in my main form of communication with other possibly interested lifeforms, you might think that I’ve been keeping people up to date through other more traditional methods.  This is not the case.  Various forms of activities, each more pressing than the last, has made me one of the worst correspondents of all time.  I don’t feel like doing work so I guess now is as good a time as any to break one bad habit.

I’ve decided to make this entry more of coming back post than anything else.  A flashback episode to get us caught up to events more relevant to the status quo.

I survived the last semester of school pretty well.  It was my hardest term but also my best term with respect to grades.  This was also the time of my main job hunt (I have to leave school eventually) which required me to fly all sorts of places which gave me less time do work and turned one A into a B.

Now, I’m into another term which I’m supposed to be taking easy, but at the same time have all sorts of added responsibilities and unsurprisingly still no real time for my various hobbies and pet projects.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch up a bit in the near future and develop some kind of sane schedule before I graduate.  I’m not holding my breath.

Future posts will cover my future after MIT, spring break, and maybe other stuff less related to my life depending on how much I care to share.

Wish me luck.

It’s been awhile since I posted which is unfortunate, but generally my day has consisted of: getting up, going to work, working, going out, sleeping, repeat.  This leaves little time for awesome blog posts.  Also, since I’m not out exploring like last year, my day is more routine and less hot touristy action.  On a positive note, I did update my last blog post with pictures, so you can go check that out if you want.

This week, however, I’m on vacation because it’s Obon week.  It’s the week that the Japanese return to their homes in the countryside and light laterns to guide the spirits of the dead back home.  It’s like Mexico’s Day of the Dead, but in August. 

While I’m technically on vacation (literally as well until today or possibly tomorrow at least), my project deadline is coming up and it’s hard for me not to think about work.  I’m pretty sure I can’t just go to work legitimately, but who’s to stop me form stopping by when I’m in the neighborhood, just to check on things.

In anycase, this is a vacation and I’ll probably update with interesting things sooner rather than later.