I have been trying to find cheap flights from Tokyo to Taipei – but I’m getting nowhere. When searching for airlines failed I thought I had come up with a great way to discover who flies between these two places: I went to Narita airport’s web-site and checked the departures list. This shows quite a few airlines that fly to Taipei. But when I then went and searched the web sites of Eva Airlines, Delta, and China Airlines I got a variety of different error messages. I assume that they are operating code share flights with either ANA or JAL.

Going to the OSDC in Taiwan may be quite expensive.

I asked Marty what I should wear to the WWE Royal Rumble tour. I don’t watch WWE on television – though Marty tries to change that – and I didn’t know what to expect. He suggested tight jeans with either a low cut top or one of his WWE t-shirts. I opted for the low-cut top. And then decided I would need to wear my hair down and full make-up. I think I did fit in. The audience was male dominated, most of them wearing jeans or some sort of droopy trousers. Some were dressed as their favourite WWE Superstar (I called them wrestlers but Marty was quick to correct me) and some women were even wearing kimonos.

The venue was impressive. It’s an aspect of living in a big city that I love – great venues to hold great events. We had seats on the arena floor putting us really close to the action. The seats weren’t tiered and when the crowd jumped to its feet, which happened a lot, I couldn’t see anything but the backs of all the tall people who stood in front of me.

I still don’t know what to make of the whole thing. It’s obviously staged – yet the crowd screamed and yelled with every fake punch. I was close enough to see a lot of the missed punches and kicks. However, they still throw huge men out of the ring and the acrobatics are amazing. It felt like a rock concert crossed with pantomime only the audience was more excited. I assume it’s because they have villains as well as heroes. Imagine how much fun a rock concert could be if the bands you thought sucked got hit over the head with chairs by the bands you thought rocked. O.K. some people would love that – I’m still not sure about the violence part.

Marty seemed to know in advance who would win every match. This puzzled me – why is it still fun if you know? He told me that no titles would change hands because the event wasn’t being televised. For the non-title events he could tell who would win by how the crowd reacted to the performers – apparently there was no way that Umaga was beating Triple H tonight. Or that Ric Flair would be beaten (something about a plot). The crowd went mad when Ric Flair came on. He is nearly 60 years old and he still was able to throw his competitor out of the ring and allow himself to be tossed about.

The crowd was fascinating. There was a little boy sitting close behind me. He yelled and yelled until he couldn’t yell any more. My favourite yell had to be, “you suck, forever and ever and ever … and when I die and I’m in heaven you will still suck”. He was also very cute when he realised that in his excitement he yelled that one of his favourites sucked. He would scream, “Jericho sucks – em no he doesn’t really suck, Y2J, Y2J…”.

I noticed that the losers get cheered as much as the winners. Even when the loser was someone the crowd was booing just minutes before. When I mentioned this to Marty he told me that this might be peculiar to Japan.

I didn’t enjoy watching the two female wrestlers. They were acrobatic and the crowd loved Mickie J but it didn’t have the energy or power that the men had. Some of the male wrestlers, like Jeff Hardy and Chris Jericho, have great charisma and had the audience hanging on every move they made. I really wanted to see a woman that made me think “warrior” and not “playboy bunny”. There is nothing wrong with woman looking like playboy bunnies but I felt that the emphasis on sex appeal stripped away some of their power in this forum. And I’m not saying that the men didn’t look good – Randy Orton was gorgeous – but the emphasis was very much on his skill and not on his beautiful body. Nor did I get the feeling that conventional beauty was a prerequisite for the men.

I can’t imagine this becoming my favourite sport or pastime but I am considering taking Marty to see one of the big American televised events – at least then he wouldn’t be sure who would win.

I am finally over the flu!

Today was a national holiday. Marty was off work so we decided to go out for a walk. The snow has gone and it felt like spring. He wanted to explore the local area and to show me the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I can see why he was amused that I didn’t know where it was. The Midorigaoka section is less than a minute from our apartment. We aren’t sure where in the campus YAPC::Asia will be but it took under 15 minutes to walk to the main entrance and we weren’t exactly rushing.

From there we walked through Ōokayama and on to Kita-Senzoku. We stopped walking when Marty got hungry, hopped on a train, and had dinner at Okusawa After dinner we went to Big Echo for a couple of hours and then home to watch “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”.

Tomorrow evening we are going to see the WWE Royal Rumble tour. Not so sure how I feel about that but Marty assures me that it will be fun…

Once I start to travel again I am going to eat some normal pizza. Normal pizza for me contains mushrooms and ham. Pizza in Japan can be strange. We had a pizza tonight that was half chicken teriyaki and half bolognese. The chicken teriyaki part contains teriyaki chicken, onions, sweet corn, peppers, broccoli and mayonnaise (we get ours without mayonnaise as I can’t cope with the thought of mayonnaise on pizza). Marty wanted to try something new, which is why we ended up with half a bolognese pizza. The bolognese half contained a beef bolognese sauce, béchamel sauce, extra cheese, and potato. It tasted really odd and not like pizza all. Marty liked it – but then Marty likes most food.

With our delivery we received an advert for a new pizza – hamburger pizza. They are actually making pizza with what appears to be lots of smallish hamburgers on top. Yuck!

Saturday night is a great night to sit in, watch a film, and eat take-away food. Tonight we thought we would watch “Little Miss Sunshine” and eat pizza. It was snowing so we decided to order in. Marty logged into Dominos site but there was a message stating that no more deliveries would be made tonight. Then we tried the curry house but they also wouldn’t deliver. In the end we gave up as no one would deliver. Who knew that a little snow could be so problematic?

We finally received the results for our Japanese exams. Unfortunately I didn’t pass mine. I knew when I was studying that it would be a close thing but I had hoped that I would manage to scrape through. In the end I only got 56% overall. I did do as well in the kanji and vocabulary as I was expecting getting 78% in that section but it was the grammar section that let me down.

On a happier note Marty did pass his. And I’m thrilled as his qualification was required for a course he would like to study.

I knew that I lived in an area famous for its cakes but I didn’t know that we had food based theme park within five minutes walk of the apartment.

On the second floor of the circular gray building, an ivy-covered gate leads into a small country village where the smell of sweets baking in the oven wafts through the air. The village is dotted with country houses, leafy pink and white trees, wooden mailboxes, birdcages and a wooden well. There’s even the sound of birds and music boxes to set the mood.

I have walked by “Sweets Forest” numerous times. There is some sort of water feature outside the building and occasionally I have glanced up the stairs and considered going to take a further look – but I’ve always just walked on by. I’m going to have to visit sometime soon.

I need to get out of this apartment. I really don’t feel that bad. O.K. so when I look in a mirror I can see that my eyes are puffy and my nose is red and sometimes I can’t seem to stop sneezing but it’s just a cold, honestly. The flu is gone and I don’t have the plague. I can’t believe that I am actually thinking about getting a mask so that I can at least go for a walk.

I’m reading yet another paper (pdf) on motivation and free and open source software.

One thing that most of the papers I have read have in common is that they use a survey to gather their information. However, most do not publish the actual survey so that I can see the questions they ask. Surveys will be biased by the people writing them. They will have a predefined list of things that they think are motivators and they will ask questions about them. In the last couple of these papers I have read the researchers are getting a very low response when asking questions about reputation. But really, who is going to actually admit to taking part in an open source project because it will enhance their reputation? It seems so much nobler to suggest it’s because of ideology or that you do it because it makes you feel happy.

The problem with asking people questions about the things that motivate them is that many people don’t actually know what motivates them. Provide them with a list of the sort of things you expect to motivate them and they are bound to find one that the like the look of better than the others.

They will have some idea as to the sort of thing it might be, or things they would like it to be, but they may not know the real reasons as it’s a very difficult thing to work out.

How do I know this? Well, I’ve read Maslow’s book on “Motivation and Personality“. I could give you very plausible reasons behind my actions and I can speak about motivations in an educated way that would convince many people that I know what I am talking about. But, for example, I haven’t got a clue what motivates me to write. I really don’t. Why do I spend hours writing on this blog? It could be a desire for intellectual stimulation; it could be that it’s an enjoyable pastime; maybe I think it will enhance my career prospects; or I want the respect of my peers…

But that’s all just made up from a list of things that I know are supposed to motivate people. I just don’t have a clue. And after reading Maslow I realise that I am not alone.

A while back I was sitting on a train on my way to meet Marty when my I noticed that the girl beside me was fiddling with her socks. Girls in Japan tend to wear long socks which are pulled up to their knees or that are worn over the knees. These socks were just below her knees. She had pulled one of her socks down and was holding something that looked to me like Pritt Stick. She started to apply this to her leg. I looked away, as it’s rude to stare, but couldn’t help but look back. She appeared to be gluing her sock in place. She then did the same thing with the other sock.

I have always thought that schoolgirls in Northern Ireland did strange things with their socks. They roll them down in a certain way and the last time I asked my little sister they were wearing about three pairs of these at a time. But they don’t glue them to their legs!

I asked some Japanese friends about this and they wanted to know what I did to keep my socks and stockings in place, as the obvious way to do this is to use sock glue. I think for now I’ll continue to let mine slide down.