I realized this last week that I’ve been playing a very dangerous game, by attending the Police Citizens Academy each week. Particularly, by driving and parking my car there, at Police HQ. I’d heard about the law that gives new residents up to thirty days to get their Washington drivers license, and I’d taken care of that weeks ago. But apparently it’s also necessary to get Washington plates within that same timeframe. In either case, my current registration is months out of date. It’s only a matter of time before the jig is up. At least my habit of backing in to parking spaces is paying off.

On Sunday we had ward council. It’s interesting going to those out here. I’ve been in ward council meetings back in Provo, but there was never a missionary presence. Having the sister missionaries here brought me back to how it was in Australia, putting together progress preports, coordinating with the Ward Mission Leader, filling in meal calendars, good times.

And that’s about all there was for this week. Till next time!

Oh, right, yeah there was this whole Tokyo thing. Better say a bit about that.

So I had planned on doing some work at my office the morning of my flight, then playing fast and loose with traffic to make it to the airport on time for my 1pm flight. But since there was a weather-related power outage that day, I ended up heading to the airport way earlier than I usually do, lining up with the recommended “2 hours ahead of schedule”. On the shuttle over I met this group heading to Texas for a “roller derby”, where they basically do laps around a track on roller skates while playing full-body-contact keep-away. One of the contenders was from Australia, and I mentioned I’d spent some time there. “Oh, why’d you spend time there?” “Well I was a missionary for my church, wanna hear all about it?” “Absolutely, sign me up for baptism.” Well, I’m sure that’s how it would’ve gone, except he never asked why I was there. So that nascent missionary opportunity never came to term.

On the flight to LAX I sat next to a really bubbly girl who was good friends with some marketing executive at Google. She sent an email to him introducing me, because “it’s all about networking these days.” Well, I do appreciate her efforts, but the promotion committee wouldn’t give two hoots if I knew Larry Page himself.

At LAX I found a quiet corner and practiced my presentation with my advisor over the phone. I had at least couple hours until the flight over to Japan. After I practiced and browsed around for a bit, I decided to wander over and check out the gate. I still had an hour or so left, and it was only about 500 feet from the gate where I’d arrived, but just in case. Checked the departure board on the way; yep, same gave number as before; status: a big all-caps BOARDING.

I think the rule about connecting flights is, don’t guess at times, ever ever ever ever ever. Probably didn’t have enough ‘ever’s memorized. It was a couple days before I was over the shakes of almost missing that flight.

I guess I’m just not blessed with the ability to sleep on long flights. Even with Ambien, it was a no-go. Of course it was only on the way off that I noticed that they’d included a set of ear plugs and a sleeping mask in our seat pockets. Really felt like that guy on the cruise who only ate crackers.

It was only after I landed in Tokyo that I realized, after I’d replaced my regular socks with compression socks, that I’d placed my regulars in a disposable bag that I’d gone ahead and… disposed of. Well, shucky darn.

It was very late when I arrived. Before allowing us through customs they had us walk past a thermal camera, to detect whether we were showing flu symptoms.

I made my way to the hotel via subway. The cars made an interesting sound when they started moving, I think like the Vulture Terran unit from Starcraft.

The intersections on the surface were eerily quiet. No crossing indicator sounds. Later I learned that it was only in some locations where there were no sounds, though I never figured out what made the difference.

I was feeling kind of nervous then; while all the advice I’d heard stated that US plugs work just fine in Japan, what I didn’t catch on to was that they only work for two-prong plugs. Ground pins don’t fit. Which was going to be a problem for me if I couldn’t charge my laptop. While rummaging around in my backpack for an unrelated reason, I happened across a two-prong Apple charging adapter, which has stayed compatible across models ever since at least 2007. Nice.

The next day I set out on an hour-and-a-half walk towards church. Figured it’d be a great way to see the city.

Traditional Japanese food is great and all, but sometimes it’s nice just to have some good old-fashioned American Mickey-dees.

That night I met up with a group who was traveling from BYU. Their professor was rather flush with cash from grants, and so while their paper hadn’t been accepted to the conference, they traveled anyways. Which was great, would’ve been not nearly as fun without them to hang with.

The next morning, after seeing the hotel’s sad excuse for a sausage and eggs breakfast, I headed to the convenience store next door, where I didn’t fare much better. Couldn’t read anything, so I picked out something that looked like it was made of meat, but ended up just being rice wrapped in some kind of sweetened sheet of… stuff. At least it was filling.

That evening we headed out to visit Akihabara, otaku central. Games, anime, electronics galore.

We headed back from Akihabara to a hotel near the conference venue, where they had a great dinner planned.

The next morning I set off to Tokyo Station to grab tickets for the bullet train, headed for Kyoto, several hundred miles away. I’d heard great things about it from the person I’d sat next to on the plane ride over, so I figured I’d spend a day there after the conference.

For lunch a couple of us went off in search of authentic ramen.

That night we went to Shibuya Crossing, the busiest crosswalk in the world.

I had to part ways with most of the BYU people at that time. A couple of them were staying through the rest of the weekend, so we went off to find some more sights to see.

Next morning I was bound for Kyoto.

My last day I visited five places: the fish market, one of Tokyo’s large parks, Google’s Tokyo office, a massive graveyard, and a museum.

Then it was time to grab my luggage and haul it off to the airport. I really hadn’t noticed how few elevators there were to the surface from subway stations, until I had to haul my heavy suitcase up several flights. These stations were deep – three escalators and two flights of stairs, in some cases.

And now I’m back. Still dealing with a weird sleep schedule, but I should adjust by tomorrow, if last week was any indication.

Sort of a shorter post this week, beginning with a funny tidbit I forgot to mention last week. On the plane, during takeoff procedures, the flight crew added this bit to their safety briefing: “The FAA has instructed us to inform those of you who are in possession of a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, that your phone must remain off for the entire duration of the trip.” These phone models, you see, have a tendency to explode.

This week I got to have breakfast with some Googler BYU alumni and a visiting professor. It was pretty slick. We spoke a bit about what we do, then got into BYU business – what’s changed in the department, who’s retiring, etc. One of the main topics of discussion was a debate over what language should be taught as a first programming language to students. It was Java when I went through, then switched to C/C++ a bit before I graduated. Now they’re thinking they might move to Python. These shifts are made in response to what the college feels is best for graduates to know when seeking jobs. Anyways, fun times. Turns out that someone at that breakfast goes to my singles ward, had no idea.

Aside from that, I’ve mainly just had my nose to the grindstone getting ready for the presentation coming up next week at the conference in Tokyo, and getting on top of a new project I just got assigned, very involved and complex. Which is a good problem to have, all considered.

—

And, that’s where my weekly missive would have ended, had I not procrastinated posting this. About three hours ago I got a call from someone who’d gotten baptized yesterday – his family is devout Jehovah’s Witness and he was gonna need a new place to stay once he joined the Church. I’d been arranging with him to have him move in in a couple weeks. But turns out, tonight was a good time to get him all moved out, and would I be at all ok with having him over sooner, please and thank you.

It was quite the contrast to how I moved into the apartment at the beginning of my time here: bright, sunny weather, with family to help carry stuff in. Tonight it was cold, dark rainy, a move necessitated by being removed from his family’s home. There were five or six ward members helping him move things into the apartment, which made everything very fast.

So the long and the short of it is, I now have a roommate, after weeks of being on my own. Gonna be a bit of an adjustment I think, but he’s a really cool guy, happy to have him here, and glad I could help him out during this little transition period.

This week at Police Academy we had quick-fire presentations from a hostage negotiator, S.W.A.T., and a guy who specializes in Tasers – he’s currently finishing up an undergrad research project on the subject, while he works on the force.

The Taser guy asked, up front, if we’d rather spend the whole hour on Tasers, or if we’d want to go over the basic rules of use-of-force. You can guess what I was interested in. Sadly, the vocal majority wanted to cover use-of-force, so that’s what we talked about.

We did have some time at the end to cover Tasers. The officer was aiming to make a strong case for why they’re one of the most impactful tools of police work to be invented in the past 50 years, due to the lives they save. He illustrated this by showing recordings of violent criminals being brought down non-lethally by Tasers. Unfortunately, for the elderly woman sitting next to me at least, people being Tasered do not go down silently. The videos were pretty hard to watch for her, with the screaming and yelling. It didn’t help that the officer presenting to us was cheering on the officers, laughing, saying how cool this all was. You’re not helping your case, bud. Of course, I was super into it, but it would’ve been nice to get the others on board as well. But it might’ve been a lost cause anyways; one video showed a violent dog attacking officers. One officer drew his gun, and would’ve been entirely within his rights to shoot the dog dead. But instead another officer Tasered the dog, who fell over whimpering for five or six seconds before getting up and scampering away. To which the old woman muttered, “Oh that poor dog.” And I’m thinking, well yeah, sad he got hurt, but at least he’s alive.

Anyways. Oh, I keep forgetting to mention, but the Kirkland Police Department is set up in basically a retrofitted Costco building. They carted out all the shelves, and built up walls for offices, and fit a jail in there as well. They’re currently working on putting ceilings on the conference rooms, since without them any loud conversations in the hallways or offices can be heard a long ways off.

So the big event of the week was McCall’s wedding! I flew in Thursday night, and headed down to Provo to check in with an old friend, and to see my old roommates.

In Washington I’ve taken up the habit of having Google Maps get me everywhere I need to be, except for places I frequent and have figured out how to get to. So I start whipping my phone out and calling up navigation directions down to Provo, bug I realize, Hey, this is my hometown, I know how to get around. Don’t need no new-fangled gee pee ess.

I want to reference this song, which accurately “illustrates” how I felt driving back in Utah, on familiar highways, where 80 mph is a perfectly acceptable average speed.

So I spent an hour or so catching up with a friend, cooking up popcorn and swapping stories. Darted from there to my old roommates, to catch up and watch some Battlestar Galactica.

Eventually got out of Provo at 2:00 am to head up to Alpine. Seeing as how I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night prior, I was especially tired. It was a weird feeling, barreling up the highway, trying to keep myself from crashing and burning. You know how when you’re driving normally, and you need to do something like change lanes to get around a slow driver, you don’t need to think about every individual action; your years of driving have burned in almost-automatic responses, so you can just decide to change lanes and do it without too much fuss. Well this evening (morning?) my autopilot was completely offline. Lessee, I think I’d better change lanes. Am I too close to the car ahead of me? Let’s check to the left… make sure my speed’s ok… turn… slowly turn… am I turning too fast? Better dial it back. Ok, I’m over enough, better straighten out… and increase speed… And not only did I have to think about each task, but they were all super hard. But I survived to crash another day.

The wedding was just great, made moreso by the bride’s siblings’ outfits.

Ended up helping set up at the reception afterwards. Which again, thanks in large part to Morgan, was a ball. Literally, there was a ball of disco spinning around up there.

The next day, Saturday, we spent on a family hike. The original plan was to do Donut Falls, then eat at the Silver Spoon afterwards, a nice little restaurant farther up the canyon. Unfortunately, when we arrived we realized that Scout was gonna be even more trouble than he usually is. The rivers up that canyon are routed into potable drinking systems, and dogs aren’t allowed anywhere in the canyon. We ended up heading to a neighboring canyon and hiking that instead, eating at Barbacoa on the way out.

Headed back, got a bit of shut-eye, then headed down south to Provo to see my roommates and watch a pivotal two-parter of Battlestar Galactica. I also was on a mission to check out The Worthing Saga from BYU’s library, which I’ll return when I’m back in town next.

Before all that, I decided to stop in and see the Thomases. Turned out to be great timing, they showed up about 15 seconds after I arrived. Had a great little visit. Got to see John again, for the first time since he left on his mission. And got some great advice for things to do in Tokyo later this month.

After Provo, I made record time up to SLC to see Lauren and her husband Antony for dinner at a nice Italian place, as a thank-you for doing the work on her wedding website. After eating entirely too much there, I stopped by a friend in Holladay before getting back to Alpine just after midnight.

Last night I had a dream where I was at a family reunion, and a group of us got in a wagon-sort-of-thing that was actually an airplane, just to borrow it for the morning. We took off, and I noticed we were heading straight for a helicopter. I look over and Evan & Driel’s daughter, Moriah, is piloting us. “Hey, do you know how to fly this?” “I do not, and we’re going to have an adventure!” I reach over and take the controls, trying to avoid the helicopter ahead as well as the greenery overhead, as we’re in some kind of huge forest. I have no control over the throttle however, since the gas pedals are at the floor, where Moriah’s still sitting. Several arcs and dips later and I crash the plane, only a little bit. Morgan had lost consciousness for a bit during one of the maneuvers and had to be taken to a hospital, but other than that everyone was unharmed. Felt bad about the wagon-plane, though, the rest of the family had been looking forward to using it later on.

Sunday, today, was just great, relaxing with Conference on, Steve & Lauren over, along with Grandma. Played a great mystery game of Mattie’s choice. Had to leave for the airport just as I was wreaking havok on a group of intrepid explorers as an over-powered mummy.

On the way through security, my backpack was flagged by the X-ray technician. Oh boy, what is it this time. I made extra sure to leave any knives at home. At the examination table, the TSA agent pulled out a couple things I’d completely forgotten were in there.

The first was a Zippo-like lighter, that uses electrical arcs to ignite flames, instead of gas. “What’s this?” “Oh, it’s just an electric lighter, I use it to light fires.” Not helping your case there, pal. “…when I’m camping.” He set it aside.

The second thing he pulled out was a small tube of gallium. Gallium is a very neat metal that’s liquid at just-above-room-temperature. I got it for Christmas a couple years ago. Makes for a neat demonstration, putting it in warm water for a bit and coming out with something that behaves a bit like mercury.

Something else that makes gallium cool is what it does to aluminium. Aluminium soaks up gallium like a sponge, which then leaves the original aluminum extremely brittle and easy to tear apart. See this video for a demonstration of its effects on a soda can. The tube has a hazardous-material symbol, but it’s not corrosive to human skin, just aluminium.

So, given all that, when the agent pulled out the gallium and asked what it was, I wanted to put his mind at ease that I wasn’t carrying anything that was dangerous to handle. “Oh, it’s just gallium. It’s not corrosive to humans, just aluminium.”

…

It was one of those moments I knew immediately I’d want to have as a do-over. Needless to say, they weren’t letting it on the plane, the high-altitude high-speed machine with an aluminium airframe. At least they let me keep my lighter.

On the way to my gate, I ran into Jake Stucki, heading back to LA after a weekend in town for Conference. On the way to baggage claim in Seattle, I ran into a couple from the Redmond ward. She’d gone to BYU to study nursing back in the day, and he’d actually been my current bishop’s predecessor in the YSA ward. Small world.

Retrieved my baggage. Noticed that both of the zipper handles were missing. shrug Caught a shuttle to the parking lot, picked up my car, headed north to my apartment, took just under half an hour. Was looking forward to getting to bed before midnight. Pulled in, parked, thought to myself, It’s gonna be a pain dragging that luggage up the stairs. Huh, that’s funny, I can’t remember lifting it into the carohhhhhhssshhhhhoooooooootttt. And that’s the story of how I ended up making that half-hour trip three times tonight to go retrieve my luggage I’d left at the airport parking lot.

So, a lot of driving, a lot of visiting, darting all over the place, that pretty well describes my weekend. But it was a blast to be back in town for a while. Felt like I hadn’t even left, really. Can’t wait to head back for Thanksgiving.