So far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time here in Kobe, Japan. I’ve taken in the sights, traveled around my new home plus Osaka, Kyoto, and Himeji, as most definitely eaten my fill of sushi, ramen, and many other things I can’t even name. Yet still I am not satiated…
I do have a purpose being here. Working on one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, the K Supercomputer. But I’m not sure yet my physical presence here has amounted to much personal growth yet. Recalling my last long term travel to India, I recognize on hindsight that I changed a lot across those few months. And I’d like to do the same here, but change cannot be forced. Still, “who are we to wonder where we are going?… Who am I to tell me who I am” and will be?
Regardless, new environments are always breeding grounds for change and adaptation. Compared to Japan’s Kobe, my hometown of Granger, IN is a baren rural paradise of solitude. But here, I travel via train daily for a 45 minute trip from home via Hanshin to Sannomiya Station then via Portliner to the P08 stop for the K Computer. The system is easy to use (though I’ve still messed up a few times as a newb) and I’ve adapted to it, but it’s crazy seeing the number of other people who do the same. Yet, most tend to keep to themselves during the workday, except for the kids off to school who are noticably chatting away. What is that is different in the transition from school to work that brings greater solitude in society. It’s perhaps exagerated here in Japan where streets in this crowded city are surprisingly quiet at night even near the central hub of Sannomiya, from what I assume to be courtesy to others, compared to the streets in Chicago or Madison where it’s always bustleing with people going to and fro having a good night out with friends. This perspective is perhaps mostly biased since most friends I’ve made thus far here are my Taiwanese fellow intern from the University of Tennessee and other confident English speakers at my home, DK International House.
But I started to ramble… I think it’s more of a symptom of me being lonely, still dealing with the passing of Mom and last week now my cat whom she gave to me when I was 10 years old, thinking the kitten would help me following the passing of my father at my time. The cat did help but at the time I thought the cat was weird lol. Probably why Mom and I never really finalized a name for her, both Kit and Tigger at last check. Anyway, the loneliness is why I’m so eager in seeking out change. I came to Japan, applying to the program before my mother’s car crash, first wanting to do really cool work developing algorithms and meeting other experts solving meaningful problems of the day. Literally within a 100 feet of where I’m typing this now, computer simulations are being done to model ideal protein designs for cancer treatments, future climate is being predicted to find upcoming typhoons this summer, and galaxies are spinning up by ones and zeros at a top speed of \(10.51 * 10^{15} \) calculations per second in order to understand fundamental questions of our universe. But here I sit, banging my head against a keyboard trying to eliminate bugs from a parallel eigenvalue solver. It’s a necessary and vital problem for much of the science enterprise, but admittedly its doesn’t sound as sexy when I put it down to the level of the math I usually end doing. Obviously, I’m excited by this opportunity I have to be doing what I’m doing, even if I’d like to more directly be addressing problems of climate change and global adaptation, but I rambled again…
I know my mother would be proud of what I’m doing. She was always proud of everything me and my brothers have done (perhaps sometimes too much). I admit to not having the best of relationships with my mom. I think all of my family had issues connecting with each other knowing some of the issues she had to grow up with and how it impacted her adult self. In any case, I was glad to have been able to go to Notre Dame these last few years, even if I never liked the school growing up. It gave me more time to be with my mom before that unpredictable crash. I just wished I had more time with her like anyone else likely would. But, I’m remided from a short essay I wrote, finding it before I left this summer amongst the cleaning of my mom’s house. I wrote on the exact moment seeing my father die. Then, I had the space to actively grieve and prepare for the inevitability of ALS, but you never get that chance with a car accident. But, the point I made in that essay was “All you can do is move on.” I think that mindset allowed me to push through rather typically more difficult things in my young adulthood with ease, making me come off as a bit more mature or knowledable/adjusted for my age throughout my life thus far. I still have troubles though to deal with, like everyone does. Life questions continue to distract me from my research and the math. John von Neumann did say, as displayed in my bedroom, “If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.” Perhaps that’s what drew me into math since it’s more comforting to address math rather than life.
However, now I’ve come to a point where I’m seeking more out of life than simply knowledge and learning. My mom may have instilled in me that education is the single most valuable thing one can pursue, and she was write to do so. But there is more to life than reading books and seeking understanding. I want to do something. I want to make things. I want to change myself and other for the better. I may not feel the need for a legacy of recognition as some reknowned scientist like I think quite a few of my peers seek themselves. I just want to be connected with the others around me and be part of making our lives enjoyable, both now and in the future. All we can do is value each lived moment. But this is hard, especially when my education now is an investment for the future. Being set in the future for so long is making me anxious. And it wouldn’t be called graduate school if it didn’t :). Regardless, as for what I started with, who am I wonder where I am going?
Anyway, I got a bit too existential. I started reading a recent book on the Japanese approach to self-improvement, Kaizen (改善). Thus far, I’ve wanted massive self improvement. Given past experience, being abroad pushes my limits to accept more changes than I’m used in regards to the habits I want to change. But I can’t change them all at once. My brain doesn’t like that. I have to take the changes one small step at a time, actively pinpointing what I need to change and identifying the gradual steps I can take to change them. I’ve done well so far in my physical health, going to the gym and climbing gym recently, investing in memberships at each this summer. But it’s my focus, willingness to push through the problems I encounter in research, and how I go about actually joining the scientific community that’s hard to surmount.
So here’s to me restarting my blog. I’m writing this down to hold me accountable, just like when I wrote down last year I’d climb more, I did in fact do so. Now if only if I could get gud… Anyway here’s to less Facebook, more active reading of the texts and math/climate/hpc methodologies I want to learn, and actively synthesizing this progress on this blog. Change can always happen, even if it’s a month long into the transformation summer you promised yourself. We can always push it off and stay in our comfort zones. But where’s the fun in that? Japan will be my new rising sun.