Thursday, October 30, 2003
Accidents happen
10/30/03
Monday I left campus early with Haesung to go get our Alien Registration Cards from the Ward office. Some of the others had already gotten them or were going earlier in the day, but both of us wanted to go to our labs and use the internet before we left campus. We met at 4:00 at the top of the mountain, and walked back down to where we'd parked our bicycles. On the way we stopped at the International Student Office and I turned in my class registration forms. I'm taking the S3, L4, R3, W4, G4, and K3 Japanese classes.
We didn't really know the best way to get to the Ward Office from campus, but we headed in the general direction of downtown and found our way there. I think the route we took was probably the best route, which is good because we only got there 15 min. before they closed.
Nick, Zen, and Jeff were outside when we left the building, so we stopped to talk with them. Jeff told us he had acquired a "flying death machine." When asked for an explanation he informed us that the shiny new bicycle he had was this machine and that it was of the "flying death" type since he has never been taught how to ride a bicycle. Zen's bicycle was taken by the police last week (he parked in a no bicycle parking zone when there were only a few bicycles parked there). Nick and Jeff were planning on going to see the movie "Kill Bill" that evening with Lane and perhaps some other people, so Jeff decided to let Zen ride his bicycle back to the Int. House for him. Thus Haesung, Zen, and I rode back while Nick and Jeff went to go see the movie.
Tuesday morning it finally happened. I had my first bicycle accident. I was riding down the hill near the Int. House, and was going fairly quickly since I was running a bit behind schedule. Since I was behind schedule I met more traffic than usual (cars were backed up all the way up the hill, instead of half way) and rather than try to ride next to them I crossed over to the other side of the road. There's a while line on that side which sort of makes a virtual sidewalk for people to walk on the side of the road. About 2/3 of the way down the hill an actual sidewalk starts. I decided that I'd rather be riding on the sidewalk than the wrong side of the street, so I started heading toward the sidewalk (still going at a fair clip). As I neared the sidewalk I noticed that the "driveway" that I was planning on using as my on-ramp was actually about 2 inches higher than the street. I thought, well, that shouldn't be a problem if I hit it going perpendicular to it. Unfortunately there was a little old lady walking on the sidewalk, and I ended up having to go at quite a bit of an angle in order to keep from running her over. The result was that when my front tire hit the driveway it decided to go parallel to the street, while I kept going at an angle. It's quite amazing how long it takes you to get from the point of seeing the inevitable accident to when the accident actually happens. Additionally, it seemed like I was in the air for quite a while before I hit the sidewalk. It seemed a bit surreal, sort of like when they do slow-motion in a movie or something like that. I hit the sidewalk with my right hand and my right knee, and rolled once before coming to a stop. My bicycle lock flew out of my basket, and my water bottle detached itself from my backpack and rolled down the hill a bit. The little old lady came running up asking, "Daijoubu desu ka?" which means, "Are you OK?" I managed to stand up and then told her I was. She picked up my bicycle for me while I retrieved the lock and bottle. My handlebars are a bit scraped up on the right side, the basket is bent out of shape, and the hand brake was twisted down, but everything still seems to work OK. I managed to make it to campus on my bicycle, but my knee hurt quite a bit so I was only able to pedal with my left leg. Also, holding the handlebars was a bit hard because the palm of my right hand was pretty scratched up.
Before my class started I went into the bathroom and tried to wash some of the gravel out of my hand (with cold water and no soap), and then took a look at my knee. My pants gave absolutely no sign that anything had happened to my knee, but the knee itself looked pretty bad. It was fairly bloody and looked really dirty (when I tried washing the "dirt" off I discovered that it wasn't dirt, it was just a grey bruise).
After class I went to the campus clinic, where the nurses took a look at it. They had me wash my hand again (this time with soap, but still no hot water) and then put some antiseptic on my wounds and taped gauss onto them. For my hand they gave me sort of an elastic net that wrapped around my hand. They cut a thumb hole in it, and it worked really well at keeping the gauss on my hand. It was sort of like a really thin mitten with the finger part cut open. They told me to put antiseptic on my wounds every day, but when I told them I didn't have any they said I needed to come back that afternoon after 1:00 PM.
I took the bus up to lab to do email, and then ate a quick lunch and took the bus back down, arriving at the clinic at about 12:50 PM. Since I've got class from 1:00 to 5:50 on Tuesdays (and the clinic closes at 4:30 or so) I was hoping that I'd be able to have them do whatever it was they needed to early so that I wouldn't miss much class. They had me fill out a form when I got there, but I had to wait until about 1:25 before the doctor was able to see me. I think he got back late from lunch. I was the first of about 6 people waiting to see him. He took a look at it, and told me that it didn't look too serious. In Japanese he told me "There's not much of a worry that it's fractured," but that if the pain got worse I should go to a hospital. They put a bandage on my knee and hand, and charged me 63¥.
By the time all my classes were over, I was able to walk without too much of a limp and was able to ride my bicycle back to the Int. House, although I only used my right leg to get the pedals around again so that my left leg could push the pedal.
Wednesday morning I slept in again. It's nice to be able to sleep in on the weekends AND in the middle of the week. My knee was feeling a bit better, and I was actually able to ride my bicycle to campus normally. I bought a box of bandages (100¥ for 20 medium and 20 small generic bandages) at the co-op, and put those on my wounds.
When I got back to the Int. House I decided to rearrange the furniture so that I could reclaim my table (it was being used as a TV stand, since the antenna plug was on the wrong side of the room). After much pushing and shoving I discovered that the piece (bookshelf? Closet?) I was trying to move was screwed to the wall. I used the screw driver in my "multi-functional pliers" to unscrew it, but it still wouldn't move. I then discovered that not only had it been screwed to the wall it was also screwed to the closet next to it. I managed to use a 10¥ coin to unscrew that, freeing this piece. Since I wanted to move all the pieces, I took a look and discovered that they were all screwed to each, a situation which I quickly (well, it probably took a fair amount of time) remedied with my 10¥ coin. Unfortunately, each of those pieces is ALSO screwed to the wall, and I stripped my screwdriver getting the first piece unscrewed. I'll have to get another screwdriver if I want to unscrew those. I hadn't realized this was going to be such a big project. Some of the other guys in my hall have rearranged their furniture, and none of them had anything screwed to anything else. I wonder if the previous residents of their rooms had unscrewed stuff, or if the previous guy in my room had drilled the holes and screwed stuff together. Anyway, I did move my desk, which gave me almost enough room to put my DDR pads in front of it. I taped the pads to the floor there (one corner is under my bed and another corner is on the wall), and played DDR for maybe an hour (my knee felt fine) before going to bed (at about 2:30 AM). This also gave me a chance to sweep away a bunch of dust and grime that the previous resident had let pile up everywhere.
I discovered that some Japanese TV stations play static after 2:00 AM, and others play music. One station had the standard test pattern on the screen, played music, and put the title of the song and the CD on top of the test pattern. Another had a list of all of the tracks on the CD and highlighted the one that was playing.
Since Daiei won the Japanese baseball tournament this weekend, they're having a big sale. Norm and some other guys when there to buy stuff (I heard that John bought "just about everything in the store" except for the Naruto game. He said he decided to wait until he can get another controller). Joey discovered that our scholarship money had come, and promptly went out and bought his $600 PDA. Now he's complaining about how he only has $200 left for rent, food, and utilities this month (our scholarship gives us about $800/month). I'm glad the money is here, because I think I'd have spent the rest of the money I had by the end of tomorrow. I think I've been spending about 1,500¥ to 2,000¥ on food every day. If I remember, I'll try taking some pictures of the food I've been eating in the cafeteria.
Monday I left campus early with Haesung to go get our Alien Registration Cards from the Ward office. Some of the others had already gotten them or were going earlier in the day, but both of us wanted to go to our labs and use the internet before we left campus. We met at 4:00 at the top of the mountain, and walked back down to where we'd parked our bicycles. On the way we stopped at the International Student Office and I turned in my class registration forms. I'm taking the S3, L4, R3, W4, G4, and K3 Japanese classes.
We didn't really know the best way to get to the Ward Office from campus, but we headed in the general direction of downtown and found our way there. I think the route we took was probably the best route, which is good because we only got there 15 min. before they closed.
Nick, Zen, and Jeff were outside when we left the building, so we stopped to talk with them. Jeff told us he had acquired a "flying death machine." When asked for an explanation he informed us that the shiny new bicycle he had was this machine and that it was of the "flying death" type since he has never been taught how to ride a bicycle. Zen's bicycle was taken by the police last week (he parked in a no bicycle parking zone when there were only a few bicycles parked there). Nick and Jeff were planning on going to see the movie "Kill Bill" that evening with Lane and perhaps some other people, so Jeff decided to let Zen ride his bicycle back to the Int. House for him. Thus Haesung, Zen, and I rode back while Nick and Jeff went to go see the movie.
Tuesday morning it finally happened. I had my first bicycle accident. I was riding down the hill near the Int. House, and was going fairly quickly since I was running a bit behind schedule. Since I was behind schedule I met more traffic than usual (cars were backed up all the way up the hill, instead of half way) and rather than try to ride next to them I crossed over to the other side of the road. There's a while line on that side which sort of makes a virtual sidewalk for people to walk on the side of the road. About 2/3 of the way down the hill an actual sidewalk starts. I decided that I'd rather be riding on the sidewalk than the wrong side of the street, so I started heading toward the sidewalk (still going at a fair clip). As I neared the sidewalk I noticed that the "driveway" that I was planning on using as my on-ramp was actually about 2 inches higher than the street. I thought, well, that shouldn't be a problem if I hit it going perpendicular to it. Unfortunately there was a little old lady walking on the sidewalk, and I ended up having to go at quite a bit of an angle in order to keep from running her over. The result was that when my front tire hit the driveway it decided to go parallel to the street, while I kept going at an angle. It's quite amazing how long it takes you to get from the point of seeing the inevitable accident to when the accident actually happens. Additionally, it seemed like I was in the air for quite a while before I hit the sidewalk. It seemed a bit surreal, sort of like when they do slow-motion in a movie or something like that. I hit the sidewalk with my right hand and my right knee, and rolled once before coming to a stop. My bicycle lock flew out of my basket, and my water bottle detached itself from my backpack and rolled down the hill a bit. The little old lady came running up asking, "Daijoubu desu ka?" which means, "Are you OK?" I managed to stand up and then told her I was. She picked up my bicycle for me while I retrieved the lock and bottle. My handlebars are a bit scraped up on the right side, the basket is bent out of shape, and the hand brake was twisted down, but everything still seems to work OK. I managed to make it to campus on my bicycle, but my knee hurt quite a bit so I was only able to pedal with my left leg. Also, holding the handlebars was a bit hard because the palm of my right hand was pretty scratched up.
Before my class started I went into the bathroom and tried to wash some of the gravel out of my hand (with cold water and no soap), and then took a look at my knee. My pants gave absolutely no sign that anything had happened to my knee, but the knee itself looked pretty bad. It was fairly bloody and looked really dirty (when I tried washing the "dirt" off I discovered that it wasn't dirt, it was just a grey bruise).
After class I went to the campus clinic, where the nurses took a look at it. They had me wash my hand again (this time with soap, but still no hot water) and then put some antiseptic on my wounds and taped gauss onto them. For my hand they gave me sort of an elastic net that wrapped around my hand. They cut a thumb hole in it, and it worked really well at keeping the gauss on my hand. It was sort of like a really thin mitten with the finger part cut open. They told me to put antiseptic on my wounds every day, but when I told them I didn't have any they said I needed to come back that afternoon after 1:00 PM.
I took the bus up to lab to do email, and then ate a quick lunch and took the bus back down, arriving at the clinic at about 12:50 PM. Since I've got class from 1:00 to 5:50 on Tuesdays (and the clinic closes at 4:30 or so) I was hoping that I'd be able to have them do whatever it was they needed to early so that I wouldn't miss much class. They had me fill out a form when I got there, but I had to wait until about 1:25 before the doctor was able to see me. I think he got back late from lunch. I was the first of about 6 people waiting to see him. He took a look at it, and told me that it didn't look too serious. In Japanese he told me "There's not much of a worry that it's fractured," but that if the pain got worse I should go to a hospital. They put a bandage on my knee and hand, and charged me 63¥.
By the time all my classes were over, I was able to walk without too much of a limp and was able to ride my bicycle back to the Int. House, although I only used my right leg to get the pedals around again so that my left leg could push the pedal.
Wednesday morning I slept in again. It's nice to be able to sleep in on the weekends AND in the middle of the week. My knee was feeling a bit better, and I was actually able to ride my bicycle to campus normally. I bought a box of bandages (100¥ for 20 medium and 20 small generic bandages) at the co-op, and put those on my wounds.
When I got back to the Int. House I decided to rearrange the furniture so that I could reclaim my table (it was being used as a TV stand, since the antenna plug was on the wrong side of the room). After much pushing and shoving I discovered that the piece (bookshelf? Closet?) I was trying to move was screwed to the wall. I used the screw driver in my "multi-functional pliers" to unscrew it, but it still wouldn't move. I then discovered that not only had it been screwed to the wall it was also screwed to the closet next to it. I managed to use a 10¥ coin to unscrew that, freeing this piece. Since I wanted to move all the pieces, I took a look and discovered that they were all screwed to each, a situation which I quickly (well, it probably took a fair amount of time) remedied with my 10¥ coin. Unfortunately, each of those pieces is ALSO screwed to the wall, and I stripped my screwdriver getting the first piece unscrewed. I'll have to get another screwdriver if I want to unscrew those. I hadn't realized this was going to be such a big project. Some of the other guys in my hall have rearranged their furniture, and none of them had anything screwed to anything else. I wonder if the previous residents of their rooms had unscrewed stuff, or if the previous guy in my room had drilled the holes and screwed stuff together. Anyway, I did move my desk, which gave me almost enough room to put my DDR pads in front of it. I taped the pads to the floor there (one corner is under my bed and another corner is on the wall), and played DDR for maybe an hour (my knee felt fine) before going to bed (at about 2:30 AM). This also gave me a chance to sweep away a bunch of dust and grime that the previous resident had let pile up everywhere.
I discovered that some Japanese TV stations play static after 2:00 AM, and others play music. One station had the standard test pattern on the screen, played music, and put the title of the song and the CD on top of the test pattern. Another had a list of all of the tracks on the CD and highlighted the one that was playing.
Since Daiei won the Japanese baseball tournament this weekend, they're having a big sale. Norm and some other guys when there to buy stuff (I heard that John bought "just about everything in the store" except for the Naruto game. He said he decided to wait until he can get another controller). Joey discovered that our scholarship money had come, and promptly went out and bought his $600 PDA. Now he's complaining about how he only has $200 left for rent, food, and utilities this month (our scholarship gives us about $800/month). I'm glad the money is here, because I think I'd have spent the rest of the money I had by the end of tomorrow. I think I've been spending about 1,500¥ to 2,000¥ on food every day. If I remember, I'll try taking some pictures of the food I've been eating in the cafeteria.
Comments:
Post a Comment
