Recently I took a quiz on the BBC website, which supposedly tells you the ’sex’ of your brain. As a premise that is a bit ridiculous, but it turned out to be an enlightening quiz anyway. It is broken into different sections which test different things. To get the good out of the way, I am wicked awesome at mental rotation tasks. Give me some sort of Lego-like blocky shape and I can imagine it from whatever arbitrary viewpoint you like. Nice.

Now the bad news. I am totally incompetent at interpreting facial expressions. The quiz section in question presents a series of faces, cropped tightly around the eyes, and asks you to interpret the emotions of the owner of the face (e.g. happy, sad, angry, jealous). Going through this section I was convinced the test makers had messed up. There was simply no way anybody could interpret these expressions. They are cropped too tightly around the eyes, and the eyes themselves can’t possibly tell you anything. Nevertheless I did my best, and ended up getting 3/10, which is pretty much what somebody would get picking randomly. I didn’t feel too bad, until my rationalization that the test was flawed was shattered when my friend T independently sent out an email about the test, announcing that the “eyes” section was “so easy!” that he had scored 9/10, and only missed the one because he didn’t think the emotion was genuine.

So, what did I learn? Well, I’ve got skillz pretty much where I knew I had them. However, I am totally incompetent in a pretty darned important area. Mentally rotating objects is nice and all, but isn’t communicating with other people one of the more important and rewarding aspects of life? But I suck at this (or at least one component of it), and now I shudder to think. I must have messed up so many times over the years. Remember that one time you were glaring at me because I was being an idiot? Yeah, I had no idea. Maybe I thought you were flirting with me. And that time you were flirting with me? I was probably distracted by the thought of the sandwich I was going to make later. Oh well.

Come to think of it, maybe there’s a product here. I could mount a little camera on my shoulder which interprets people’s moods and lets me know so that I have an idea what’s going on.

• The Japanese are fanatical about recycling, yet everything is over packaged. Is it really necessary to individually wrap every cookie in a bag of cookies?
• All the food is good. It doesn’t matter where you go, it’s all good. And it’s cheap, too.
• Combination toaster/microwave = great idea.
• Combination washer/dryer = great idea.
• Some soap in the bathrooms would be nice.
• Guys, could we forget about the whole footwear obsession thing? I mean, shoes for outside, slippers for inside, and other slippers for the bathroom?
• Architectural style of the train stations: labyrinthine.
• Talking on your phone in a confined public space (e.g. on the train) is just not done. How civilized!
• Thank God there’s at least one country that hasn’t been over-run by tourists.
• Please stop cracking your knuckles.
• There’s an apparently infinite supply of free umbrellas.
• 3 alphabets is 2 alphabets too many.

I was browsing www.fark.com and there was a flash ad for Skoal smokeless tobacco. Now, smokeless tobacco is not something that I think about frequently, but this ad really made an impression on me with the sheer magnitude of its grossiness. How much more unappealing can something be? It’s a sack full of gooey looking brown stuff that you suck on. And this is ignoring the fact that it can kill you or make your tongue fall off.

Unfortunately I was unable to take a screenshot in time when little sacks of it were flying around suggesting situations where smokeless tobacco might be fun. One suggestion was “shopping with the wife.” Now, to me, munching on tobacco while shopping with the wife is a double-dose of suck. If I’m going to be stuck shopping, I want to suck on something fun. How about jelly beans!

I needed some noise-isolating headphones, so I went down to Yodobashi and picked up a pair of Sennheiser CX400s. When I got them home I was faced with a daunting task: opening one of these horrid glued together plastic clamshell packages with nothing but my fingers and some nail-clippers. Any company who still uses packaging like this must hate itself. Why? Because every customer who is forced to struggle opening one of these things forms a negative opinion towards your product before even having a chance to try it.

Packaging is important, even though it’s something you only deal with once. Or, maybe it’s important because you only deal with it once. Apple figured this out. Opening an iPod or a Mac is a joy, and something you remember for a long time. I will remember the Sennheiser experience as well, mostly because of my sore fingers and a smallish cut.

And how are the headphones? A little bit muddy and bass-heavy compared to my Grados, but of course there isn’t really anything under $100 to compare with a nice set of Grados.

Update Dec. 5, 2008: These headphones are pretty terrible. It really hit home listening to Black Sabbath: Paranoid. It’s like I’m listening to my neighbours’ music through the wall. Boomy, indistinct, and altogether unpleasant.

I’ve been in Japan for almost 2 weeks now, and it is time to write a post. My first weekend was uneventful, what with me being sick and sleeping the whole time. The first week in the lab was better. The people are very welcoming, and have helped me adapt to a new and strange country. We go to lunch together regularly (Kizami Udon ftw. Katsu Kare ftw.) and I’ve started learning about the projects here. They are doing some really good work which I hope to be able to help with.

My second weekend was more fun. I headed to downtown Osaka with not much of a plan, and ended up wandering randomly. I ended up in Yodabashi, which turns out to be the ultimate “Garth Store,” selling pretty much all I’ve ever wanted. Watches on the first floor, cameras on the second, TVs on the third… you get the idea. It is also an amazingly intense environment, with employees up on ladders yelling at people to come on over and buy this or that. I get the impression that in general Japanese take shopping very seriously, and go about the activity with intensity.

While I was in Osaka I went into some random restaurant place because it had an appetizing picture of rice and beef in the window (I ignored the McDonald’s next door. Yay me!). The restaurant inside appeared to be the equivalent of an American truck stop. Pretty low budget, with stools crammed together around a bar area. The guy came over and while I was trying to figure out exactly how to tell him I wanted the rice and beef bowl he says to me “beef only!” So, yeah, this restaurant serves only one thing: rice and beef. It makes ordering easy!

Is it bad if you dream about the portfolio manager of a mutual fund you own? Last night I did just that. Peter Hodson is the manager for the Sprott Growth Fund, and I actually met him once at a dinner event in Vancouver. I was seated right across from him, and took the opportunity to pepper him with questions while he tried to eat his food. He was friendly and seemed to take it quite well. My dream was that I was reading a discussion on the net focussing on the recent poor performance of the Growth Fund. Somebody was defending Peter, saying something like “He’s a really nice guy. Too bad his fund has been having such a rough go recently.” That’s the dream, really. Sorry if you were expecting something more titillating.

And Peter, if you ever read this, please get your ass in gear and make me some money.