Thursday, June 28, 2007

8 Facts Meme

Okay, I got tagged by Mojoey who runs the Atheist Blogroll.
So first the rules must be posted before the response given.
Rules:
  • Post these rules before we give you the facts.
  • Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
  • People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
  • At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
  • Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.
So here is the information about me.
  1. Habit: I talk to myself. More when I'm alone than around people, though I seem to wander off sometimes into my own thoughtspace and end up in a sotto voce conversation with myself. This also plays into my sense of hearing.
  2. Habit: I pull on my beard a lot. Not in a thinking-about-something-beard -stroking-look-intelligent way. More in a do-I-have-split-ends way.
  3. Fact: I have a rash on my leg. I was bitten by a tick in the woods 2 weeks back and the lower half of my shin and calf has broken out in a large rash. I'm heading to the doctor's over a  bit of reluctance to have it checked out.
  4. Fact: My dog is named Ken. Ken is the other reading (on-yomi) of the Japanese character for dog. People here in Kobe find it amusing enough even though it's not a great joke. But it's Japanese-y and easier for my folks to say than my wife's second choice "Asashoryu," her favourite sumo wrestler.
  5. Fact: My wife speaks Japanese better than me but doesn't test as well. We found this out when we both took the JTOC test about 6 years ago and I beat her by 30 some points but she knew what the genetics radio program questions were about because she'd listened to the show on the radio previously. I couldn't follow that sort of thing to anywhere near her level, so I took the test. She took the content. I still get stick for the results.
  6. Fact: I haven't really settled on a theme or expertise for my blog. I'm jealous of folks like The Uncredible Hallq who has his jive down on religious and philosophy issues, or Canadian Cynic who's got his consuming interest in Canadian politics (a scene I lost touch with during my first stint in Japan and never got back on board). My interests are too wide (and lacking depth) and my attention span too short, so I flit from topic to topic like some sugar-addled ADD sufferer and never settle.
  7. Fact: I have spent most of my adult life outside of Canada. I left for Japan shortly after I finished university and have been back for 3 since my mid-20's. I'm out of touch with the place and how it's changing. When I went back to Ottawa I changed from being a gaijin in Japan to a gaijin in Ontario. During those 3 years I never settled into my old groove. After we booked and ended up in London I felt more comfortable being a gaijin when it was in a foreign land but I've not felt like I was where I was from in a long time. That's how I ended up with the name for the blog.
  8. Fact: I'm an atheist. I don't suppose I've always been but I don't remember ever believing. For me it's not like I reached any kind of 'epiphany;' I just thought about it one day between high school and university and realized that I'd been born Catholic but never done anything about it. I'd never been convinced in the first place so I never gave up. I don't have a conversion story just a slow unwinding where you know the beginning and the end are completely different, but there's not clear point in the middle where there was a change.


So in turn I'm going to tag the following people:
Pooflingers Anonymous
Canadian Cynic
Galloping Beaver
Unrepentant Old Hippie
Rational Reasons
Watashi to Tokyo
900 ft Jesus
The Homeless Atheist






--  From: 	The Eternal Gaijin 	Lost Somewhere in Kobe, Japan 	"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi there,

you tagged me, but I would like to know more about this. I'm new to blogging and do it for socio-political reasons because if we don't counter the BS out there...well, you know.

What is the purpose of Meme? If there's a good enough reason, I'll go along with it, but if it's a chain letter-blog-thing, I doubt I will.

I don't mind the extra work, but I really hate chain things just for the sake of chain things. (I also don't say much about myself unless it's absolutely relevent to what I'm blogging about.

Nice blog you have! Glad you tagged me, if only for that! I plan to spend a lot of time "here."
thanks!
900ft Jesus

Mojoey said...

Hi - thanks for post. I really do hate these things and often do not play along.

I wanted to mention that my son did a year in the in Aomori while in the JET program. He did a radio program while there twice a week on pop music. It was neat to listen to him, although I did not understand a word. I think he would move back in an instant.

The Eternal Gaijin said...

900ft Jesus
Love the name by the way.
Memes are basically a "thought virus" that travel around. In this sort of case people do chain-letter it.
Other than promoting links between blogs of similar view points or interests and giving as much or little insight into the motivations or influences going into your blog, there's not much purpose I suppose.
It's of course voluntary so if it doesn't fit into what you want to do with your blog drop it.
I'm happy to have people click through here to see the work you do on your blog, so I hope the link helps a bit. You're right about countering the BS out there.
Thanks for the kind words about my (unfocussed) work as well by the by.

The Eternal Gaijin said...

Mojoey
I'd like to get out to Aomori this time around. Supposed to be beautiful up there. I've been up to Hokkaido but not northern Honshu.
Thanks for the tag off. I'm not sure who'll do it, but it'll be interesting.

900ft Jesus said...

thanks. I actually got tagged again, and I see how responding helps like-minded bloggers to link, connect. So, I did it. Interesting experience, forced me to look up many more blogs, since so many I usually watch were already tagged.

The Eternal Gaijin said...

900ft Jesus
I saw that you got double tagged. I'm glad there was some value in it all for you.
Liked the answers.
L8r