office wonders and phoning home

there`s a guy at work in the same main office but a part of a different lab group. i dont know him. i know his name only because they gave me seating charts of everyone in the office. he always has a huge smile on his face. it`s not such a great smile. once i thought it might just be permanent because of some teeth/jaw problem. he`s not very attractive at all in fact it looks like something might be wrong with him mentally, although that probably isnt true...unless he has a mild form of asperger`s syndrom or something similar which very well could be true since i`m certain there was a population of men at mit with the disease. but that doesnt matter. his happiness, it seems for no particular reason other than being at work, is quite contagious and mystifying. he`s happy 8:30am on monday and still happy thursday at 5pm. i wish i could be that pleased at work, at home even. i wonder what his life outside of work is like. i wonder what he eats for breakfast.

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as soon as i left for japan, my mother started watching cnn, encouraging friends and other family members to do the same on a daily basis. when i called home on sunday i was told by my sister that they were so worried about me because of the tidal waves and why hadnt i called them to say i was okay. i said oh you mean the tsunami in the indian ocean, you`re late girl, i already called home many times after that happen, you must have been asleep or at work. she said mommy was trying to call you all week and you never answered (i remembered the phone call i ignored at 5am on friday; i remembered that when i`m online my phone fails to let non-japan callers ring in; i remembered that i keep my cell phone on vibration mode a lot).

oh? tell me more about these tidal waves. tyra (cousin) heard about it on cnn on tuesday or wednesday and called mommy. i hadnt heard about any tsunami warnings in japan recently. i did a quick google search, `tsunami warnings japan`, before she went on about the blizzard and her grades from her first semester at community-she got her first 4.0 ever, senie, the older of my 2 sisters, got a 2.0. i`m jealous. i miss school, i want some snow. she offered me her psychology class and philly`s 10 inches. sure enough on wednesday there was a tsunami warning-later withdrawn-for the izu islands (southeastern japan, ranging from 60-200 miles from tokyo), after a 6.8 quake in the pacific. and it seems people were told to evacuate to higher ground.

i guess it wasnt such a big deal in the national japan news because these tsunamis, quakes, floods, typhoons, volcanic eruptions are not rare here. that makes me nervous. reading articles like this and this make me more nervous. im very scared about all these predicted catastropic quakes but ironically the frequent day to day tremors/quakes dont phase me much any more. sometimes i cant even recall them...was there an earthquake yesterday? were there 2 on friday? was that a tremor or just the wobble-design effect of the building? ive been living here too long. i should remember when the ground shakes.