While being the third most active industrial region of the world (The triangle Milan-Turin-Venice), Italy is still plagued by one of the heaviest and most corrupt administration systems. But for once it’s not my problem.
Right now, I need to gather some documents to send to my next school, and so far the Italian part of the deal went smoothly. In fact the longest part was the 15 minutes spent in the line waiting for my turn.
Here is a check list of the things I need to obtain or to do :
my High-school graduation diploma - done [April 30th]
my High-school grades - done [April 30th]
a document that certify that I’ve graduated from Milan University - done [April 31st]
Obtain an official translation of the above mentioned certificate(IT to FR) - done [May 2nd]
Get it certified at the French consulate of Milan - done [May 5th]
Write a motivation letter to explain why I want to enter the Strasbourg University 1 - done [May 4th]
Do copies - done [May 5th]
Final check by phone with the school’s office - done [May 5th]
Send everything to Strasbourg ! - done [6th May]
You’ll notice that the hassle is caused by the French administration wanting an official and certified translation of my Italian certificate. I had the luck to find a really kind translator that accepted to do it tonight and to give it to me Friday (tomorrow is the 1st May, the “Work Day”, nobody works), I’ll have to get up early on Monday to go to the consulate and get it certified. It’s just bad luck that tomorrow is not a working day here AND in France, or else the consulate would have been open, and everything would have been sent by Friday at 12AM *sigh*.
Other things to do? Yep. The CROUS thingy, to get an apart in Strasbourg and maybe some financial aid.But now I’m just waiting for them to send me the papers I need to fill and the list of official documents I need to send.
Well, I cheered myself up by ordering my new PC. I chose this one. I decided to get a notebook because I’ll be moving and working around a bit from June to September and even after that (Paris -> Japan -> Paris -> Milan -> Strasbourg -> Japan … if everything goes according to plan). Once I’ll get settled I’ll think about getting a more powerful desktop work station.
I think I’ll do a post soon about my friend G., as it’s the guy I’m going to work with from June to August.
It’s done! I finally graduated from my university.
Strangely, in Italy you get called “Dottore” (which means doctor) after a Bachelor degree (3 years of study here), while in the rest of the world you have to get yourself a doctorate (7 years and more of hard work).
Anyway, Thursday 17th of April, I made a little introduction for my thesis in front of some of my professors, my family and whoever was interested. In the end I was awarded a 92/110 vote … which stands for a 16,76/20 in France or a B+ in USA/UK. Not bad.
I’m really happy that this part of my life is over. I really didn’t like my current school. If I knew better 6 years ago I would have gone to attend school in France, but staying here in Italy gave me the opportunity to study Japanese and to make some valuable friends. Now I’m preparing myself for next year. My “search for school “was a success coupled with a great disappointment : I did find a lot of schools in Japan that were really interesting, even in public schools, but as I couldn’t find anyway to pay for my tuitions and my stay in Japan I had to give up, for now.
For now my main plan is to join the “Université Louis Pasteur” - soon to become “Université Louis Pasteur Strasbourg 1″ - in Strasbourg. They have some Nice computer science Master courses the tuition is lower (200€ (250$) a years!!!! All inclusive!!!) and I get the opportunity to try to apply for exchanges with 8 different Japanese Universities.
Here are a couple of pictures of my gradution day.
Before presentation
My parents made a video of my speech … I’ll try to upload it, if it’s a good video. For those interested in reading my thesis I can send you a .pdf copy of it, but it’s written in Italian. I’m thinking about making a translation in French and English, might turn useful when I’ll be attending schools in France or Japan. The title is :
Implementing the Game of Go : Going beyond the physical limits of the board and remote interaction trough the net.
Near my house there is a small abandoned villa. Abandoned house are not what you can call beautiful … but their garden often are, while they are slowly returning to the wild. I took this pictures with my cellphone, so you might not see much, it just made me realize that tulips (those yellow and red dots on the picture) are in full blossom in this seasons. While you go Sakura-sighting in Japan, In Holland you go tulip-sighting.
Yesterday I went to my favorite Japanese restaurant with some friends, I tried this sake, which is the first Nigorizake I ever tried. I loved it! I paid 10€ (approx 1300¥) for a 0,5l bottle … was it too expensive? I’m asking the few sake lovers I know. I bought another one to drink at home … just for me *hu-huh-hu*.
In my constant search for a way to go to Japan for as little money as possible, I finally found the ultimate occasion. A few weeks ago I discovered that a cultural association from the Japanese community of Milan was searching for young Italian (or Italian speaking) youngsters to send to japan for a cultural exchange program. The offer is more than interesting : they pay for plane tickets, do the administrative jobs for me (like visas), give me a room to sleep and provide a little monthly allowance.
Ok where is the catch? well their initial Japanese culture stage is quite complicated. I’ll have to go to Fukui and stay there for 4 months inside a full-time pension named the Eiheiji. There, from what I understood, I’ll study culture and Japanese languages in a super-intensive course. Then I’ll be sent somewhere around Japan in there branch offices where I’ll have some part-times occupations but I’ll still have time to do something on the side, from what I could understand from their badly translated pamphlet. In total it’s a 1 years contract, that I can extend if I want to. In the end it looks like a minor clone of the JET program … with less high school girls to teach your languages to.
I went to the reunion, I didn’t understand a lot of things, but the food was okay and there was some sake tasting too. Funny enough they had a monk come too and do a little speech. Here is his picture. At the reunion I could speak to some alumni, strangely enough, more than a couple looked at my head and told me something like : “Too bad, I really like your hairs …” which is quite hard to answer with a : “euuuh … well .. thank you?”
The organizations is called SCSP … which stand for the Soto-shu Culture Study Program. Everyone told me that the first four month are a bit though as the place I’m going is pretty much isolated and that I’ll have really long lessons.
I asked around and I’ve a good chance to get accepted as they have more places than candidates. I think I’ll give it a try.
I heard somewhere that someone had enough time on his hands to study the fact that team or players wearing red tends to win more often. ,if I mention Manchester United, Milan A.C., or Ferrari in Formula1, you can understand. But if I told you about the Cincinnati Reds, the Atlanta Falcons, or the Daemons Brugherio (which is my former American football team that went 0-6 last season) it’s a compromised theory, don’t you think?
Anyway here is an article that sums up the situations of the said research: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/science/19red.htm
Do you think this is a bad omen for my actual team? The Milano Rhinos. We do wear Orange and Black … let’s hope not.
As red is the theme I chose for this article, I’ll now speak about music now - just humour me here there is a [thin] connection. I really like when two worlds I love collide, what would happen if Otis Redding and Japan would meet? It gives us a nice video from Shinjuku. I therefore introduce you the FAVE RAVES at the Shinjuku’s RED CLOTH (I hope you see the connection now).
I think I’ll try to check out this location once I get a chance. Anyone know that place?
[UNIVERSITY SEARCH UPDATE]
I managed to set up a good connection with the Osaka Prefecture Univ. the only thing I’m worried about is there pretty uninteresting list of lectures and courses. Why is that most university are 100% research oriented in Japan? Can’t they have more practical subjects?
I got news from my inside men at the Shizuoka Rikoka Daigaku, now It’s up to me. Thanks R-G.
Now I know I’ll have to choose only 2 or 3 schools to apply for. Exams do cost 30.000 yens each and I won’t have enough money to take 10 of them. I already will have to get tickets, hotel’s room and the exams in France before coming to takes the entrance examinations. The sad fact is that I still didn’t find a way to pay for tuitions fees and any other fees if I ever get accepted.
Anyway, I made a list of the top priority criteria that I’ll apply to choose my 3 choices :
Subjects and majors - I’ll see the one that interests me the most.
Fees reduction, access to scholarship, or other help that foreign students can get.
Reputations of the school. If it’s a 3rd rate school I’d better stay in France … right?
Does it have an American Football club?
What food can I eat there? (I might should have put that on top priority)
If anyone is an alumni of a college in Japan please do try to convince me to go to your former, or actual, school. Or at least speak up.
I’m still amazed at the fact that most Japanese try to go to college while the price for education is so high (30.000¥ for entrance exams + 282.000¥ for matriculation fees + 535.000¥ for tuition per year = 847.000¥ for the first year … more or less 6750€ almost 10.000$) . If you had to pay that much in France, 90% of the people wouldn’t go past middle school … IMHO. In the end I’ll have to find 1.385.000¥ for 2 years of masters, then add the lodging, food, and fun stuff; that’s 3.000.000¥ to 4.000.000¥, easily, for 2 years in Japan, my savings are along the 250.000¥ so far. It’s a harsh world we live in*sigh*.
I’m living proof that chocolate is a drug. I actually decided to go on a diet, actually it’s more like I have decided to regulate what I eat. No more eating out of meals and no more chocolate or pastries, no more alcohol - not even sake - but apart from that I can eat whatever I want. As incredible as it seems this is enough for me to lose 5kg in a couple week. The only negative effect is that I’m in the middle of my withdrawal symptom due to my chocolate dependency, just about anything is getting on my nerve right now. So don’t f**k with me!
Even under the actual circumstances I’m writing my thesis. In the end that’s only getting me even more irritated;Let me explain. I got the most fantastic parents; They let me do whatever I want, while still caring for me, as long as it won’t land me in a wooden box, but sometimes they do piss me off. For example, the most classic situation, let’s say the light-motive of the 2007/08 academic years : whenever I’m finally concentrated on studying for an exams, writing code lines for my projects or writing my thesis ,someone, automatically, comes to me with “I need you to go buy …” or “I need your help with …”. While, just last week, this would have just made me calmly explain to them, that, even though I look like I’m doing nothing on my computer (like usual), I am actually seriously working for something really important; or sometimes I would just go and help them when I knew I got time. Right now this would just result in me listing aloud all the most dirty insults I know in at least 3 different languages (that’s a 1 to 2 hours of insults) to anything that dared approach me (dog, bathtubs and walls included).
Apart from that, by working when alone at home, I could get to a decent point in my writing job, and I might get finished in mid-Mars or earlier.
On my “search for school” I’ve some decent-to-good news : Osaka Prefectural U. responded, actually the dean of the department of computer science in person responded to me. The good news is that they already had similar Foreign students as Master’s students and that, incredibly, the CEO of Nintendo is one of their alumni and some (not too many though) of their students have already landed a job there. OPU is more expensive that Osaka U. or Osaka City and I’m afraid I don’t meet the requirements for Fees reduction right after the admission.
I’ve found a good course in Torino (Italy) as another back-up plan, but I really really really do want to get out of Italy - I can not take that much inefficiency anymore.
Some more Masters in France popped up too, but I still don’t have any exact money related infos about french universities courses.
Alas, I have not heard of any good news from the Kanto region so far. Anyone would like to extend an helping hand to me? The JET program seems to be more and more appealing to me if I want to get on boozing trips with Roaf and southofreality; and of course paying my respect to shizuoka’s cuisine will be on my goals too.
After yesterday’s training at the beautiful Civic Arena Stadium in Milan - a beautiful neoclassical stadium built in the early 19th century - one of the Guards of our Offensive Line I was helping getting up told me : “You look stressed.” Where did this incredible insight came from ? Maybe from the fact that he was 125Kg (275 pds) and I made him do a back-flip before almost destroying our only valid QB - I’m 95Kg (210 pds) - during the last scrimmage. We will never really know. Anyway I responded : “Sorry I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
The thing is : Like you can learn from reading my previous post, I’m contacting a lot of universities in Japan, but the ones that really interest me (like Osaka U. and Kyoto U.) don’t seem to want to answer my questions. Most of the schools that answered me have nice classic computer science programs with things like “Advanced calculators architectures” or “Networking protocol studies” but nothing too fancy in the Multimedia, interactivity or pure software development field. What I study is equally important to where I study it, but if I can’t study things that are interesting to me I’d rather go study in France (cheaper and near home … but it’s not Japan).
Plus did I mention that Osaka and Kyoto have two really nice American Football teams?
Mars is getting near, I need to finish my thesis, to meet my supervisor, and to print it. I don’t have any idea of when should I go to Japan to apply to those schools, and if I don’t take my tickets soon enough I will have to pay an indecent quantity of money for an uncomfortable, 16 hours-long flight. Oh! I almost forgot : I have to find money to pay my studies too!
Anyone got connections at the MEXT (the japanese ministry of education) or at any universities (ANY!) in japan? Please do read on.
First, I would like to thank Mr. Henry Brunel for his book “Les plus beaux contes zen.” While not changing my life nor turning me into a Buddhist this book did give me some things to think about like : “Why the hell should I do this?” or “What the hell do I really want now?”. So I decided to traduce another one for you english speakers :
Once upon a time was a young monk walking around the city while carrying his empty bowl waiting for a charitable mind to give him some rice. It was a serious monk, really respectful toward traditions and the practice of zen. But, one night, the young monk went running to his master his heart was confused :
” Master, I’m consumed by a shameful desire, please help me, advise me!
- Speak. said the master wanting to help this novice.
- Well, master, everyday while walking around the city I come across a merchant that sells really delicious looking pastries, I can’t keep myself from wanting to taste one, I keep thinking about all the time! said the novice while lowering his head.
- Very well then, and, while reaching a bronze coin to give it to his novice, the master said : Go get yourself some of those pastries and eat them for me.”
Surprised the novice took the coin and went back to his room. Some days later, one night, the master summoned the novice.
“Tell me, did you appreciate the pastries?
- Well, master, yes … I think so.
- You think so? Weren’t you happy to eat what you desired for such a long time?
- Well, master, I was thinking how shameful I was, a monk eating pastries, it’s not very honorable, was it?”
Then the master understood that the desire that consumed his apprentice’s heart had been badly satisfied, and that it was still there, hidden within the shadowy corners of his heart, deep down his mind, like an obstacle on the path toward illumination.
The master gave the novice a silver coin and told him :
” I want you to buy some more pastries, eat them while facing the sun and the heaven, taste them slowly and fully, find them delicious. I want you to do so in honor of our temple, do it as an homage to Buddha, like it was your sacred duty to do so.”
So did the novice. And the desire once fulfilled fell from his heart like the skin after the slough. The young monk was free and the path toward the awakening was wide open.
In the past month I’ve been searching and contacting any graduate school that had a Computer Science Major in Japan. So far only a few schools seems to be accessible for me, even fewer offers lessons in English (which is kinda secondary right now as long as they accept a foreign student that speaks very little japanese), and even fewer again that have entrance examinations in english or none at all.
Here is a list of schools I’ve contacted or will contact soon : (if you are an alumni or a professor or a staff member, orif you have contacts, friends, acquaintances, ex-lovers, neighboors that works in those university please send me a message or comment here I’ll contact you back, I really need help and recommendations).
Even though practically nobody comes here and read this blog, I still feel a lingering guilt when I come back and post some new material here. It’s like calling back an old friend after a long time without hearing anything from each other, you know he won’t mind, because after all he’s your friend, and friends are - or should - always be here for each other, no matter how long you’ve been apart, no matter what have happened; But , whether it’s for him or just for your own peace of mind, you still fill to justify, to make an excuse, or to think of a reason.
So why make an excuse in the first place? That’s something I need to think about some more.
Here is a story that really made me think, well of course, it’s a “zen tale”, they are made to make you think. I’m not saying I’m going to pick up Zen-studies tomorrow, but sometimes getting something not related to your daily life to think about is a great help.
The boat and the two monks
One fall night, the Saitama river was almost entirely covered by a thick fog. A monk and a young novice were going to cross the river on a small boat. The river stream was yellow and in tumult, a violent wind just started blowing :
“Master, I know we are expected at the Rishiko monastery, wouldn’t it be safer to postpone our visit to tomorrow? We could eat a nigiri and sleep in the hut we just passed.
- … “
As his master was just keeping silent, Kasuku resigned himself to get on the boat, and started to row. We could only distinguish a small dark line where the other side of the river should have been.
“Master, the river is wide and the wind that blow on our side is strong, it keep us from going on as we’d like to.
-…”
A few minutes later, that seemed like hours for Kasuku, he was still rowing in silence, with worries in his heart.
Suddenly, letting go of the oars, he stood up pointing in some direction with his arm.
“Master! Master! Look at this boat we can distinguish upstream, it’s coming right at us.
-…
-Master! It will collide with us, our boat will be torn apart, we will capsize. Hey, You on the boat! Hey, You ! If only I could get my hands on the person that is riding that boat, I would teach him the consequence of endangering the lives of two saints-men like us!
-…
-Master! The boat is getting closer. I can see the pilot now, the idiot is peacefully sleeping!
-…
-Master! The boat is really near. For Brahma’s sake! This criminal be damned, that he be reborn over and over for a million years, let him be a rat, a bug, a hyena, …”
When the two boat collided, be it a lucky wave or the master skillful handling, but the boats didn’t capsize, and each peacefully continued on its path.
“Kasuku, did you see what was inside the other boat? asked the zen monk.
- Yes, Master. What I though was a man, was a grain bag.
- Tell me, Kasuku, who were you getting mad at?”
I hope my translation isn’t too bad for you to understand this story. Just think how many times you got mad at just nobody or nothing, just screaming, pointlessly.
Birth Date : 18th November 1982 Birth Place : Nice, France. Horscope : Scorpio Blood type : B+ Live in : Monza, Italy. Work in : Milan, Italy. Profile : "Quand j'ai faim je mange, et quand j'ai sommeil je dors." - Un moine zen anonyme.
"Primum vivere, deinde philosophari" - anonymous
At the reunion I could speak to some alumni, strangely enough, more than a couple looked at my head and told me something like : “Too bad, I really like your hairs …” which is quite hard to answer with a : “euuuh … well .. thank you?”
Birth Date : 18th November 1982