Chasing After Rainbows

Among the different phones networks here, I am already using a phone that is commonly used around the world, which happily includes Europe. However, overseas roaming charges are there. Calling a local number while in the country, with the SIM card of the operator back home inside, is technically seen as an overseas call, which means higher charges. One way around it is to get a local SIM card or use a payphone. Problem with getting a local SIM card is that I would be travelling to an another country, making the call while in that other country also seen as an overseas call. In addition for prepaid SIM cards, I can't get the refund of unused balance. The same for using a phone card for payphones. How about using coins for payphones? Well, if you have several coins of specific denominations , that wouldn't be a problem, but, for overseas calls, that means inserting coins more frequently. In practice, who would even carry so many coins of the same denomination? Sure the paypho

With the introduction of the Euro in 2002, the hassle and fees of changing currencies has largely been eliminated for this trip. The problem is that my home currency is not the Euro, and the UK still uses the British Pound. At least France and Italy, two of the countries I'm visiting, uses the Euro. Guess what. The flight I'm taking makes a stopover in a small country in the Middle East called Quatar. (Near UAE and north eastern corner of Saudi Arabia if you didn't know where) It has its own currency called Qatari Riyal, so I don't know how am I to obtain that. I don't recall seeing it at the money changers I have been to or walked past. On closer look, it does have money changer and has ATMs (unclear on fees or if international cards are accepted). It's not clear if my home currency is accepted there, but what is certain is that the Euro notes that I'm already bringing along would be accepted. (Some money is lost in the conversion though.) Sadly, I

I'm preparing the camera for my trip, so I am gathering all the SD memory cards the camera uses. Check the battery, charge it, and such. Found several mini and micro SD cards that are, at most, 2GB. Ugh... these tiny, easy-to-lose cards... At least I have the adaptor that turns it into a regular SD card. The camera may come with 2 8GB SDHC cards, but on a holiday, I want to reduce the inconvenience of changing it and, if I'm not near a computer I could use, have enough space for more shots. Oh well, something is better than nothing. The camera is a normal point-and-shoot kind, 12.1 mega-pixels, 1080p video recording (with the capacity of those <2GB cards I mentioned earlier, that works out to less than 5 minutes. Total. With nothing else on it.). I had used it for my travels last year (2012) and I kind of like it better than other cameras I had used. What I liked is the 4x optical zoom. Handy for taking pictures of animals (or people) without getting too close and risk t

Woman: "Ah, I almost forgot. There are several spare uniforms at the staff room you can wear. We keep spares in case our students stained theirs with paint or blood, or gets torn apart. Wait inside the girl's toilet of the nearby park. You will attract attention if you don't change." Why are they keeping spares at all? Why at the staff room instead of the storeroom? What is with the mention of blood and tears? Why wait inside the park toilet instead of the outside? This sounds very wrong, even for a school away from the city. Me: "Is the bullying that bad?" She had an odd expression on her face when I said that. Woman: "Not all the families of the students can afford the uniform, and you know, bullying cases where they tear them apart. Some are... Left behind by students. There's a set prepared in the first cubicle in the toilet." Why did you already prepare the uniform when I had only just met you? I felt that the conversation was

Here's something new: not only am I being made to study at Mizuho Academy, they posted me to its middle school! It will be a long 3 years before I get out of it, or an additional 7 years if I'm put through high school and college too. I have already studied at the latter two (along with a number of non-Mizuho high schools), but not the middle school. With Mizuho seen as a prestigious academy, on top of recent sharp rise of people enrolling into middle and high school in general all over, there is competition over securing a place. While Mizuho has tens of times more classrooms than the average school, and maximizing classroom usage, there is just not enough space for everyone. New extensions are slow, made worse by construction workers being forced to wear clothes they can't change that aren't suitable for the job. Robots have been brought in to overcome the physical and safety issues, and speed up the construction. (Funny how they can program these things to be ruthl

It has been four years since the day every single human has been turned into a young Japanese woman due to an unexplainable phenomenon that caused it. The housing demand is still not met with people who were poor before the transformation now wanting to live into a upper-middle or high wealth house from the windfall that came with the transformation. On top of that, the very people who are constructing these houses are made up of women in office suits that are physically weak and lacking courage. The skirt and shoes that are part of the suit limits their movement, so they can't run well or jump. What are these office women doing constructing buildings with a cowardly attitude, and getting their suits dirty? Well, these women were brave strong men who had been working for years before the transformation. After transformation, it is impossible to find anyone. Ask any of these women and they will tell you that the transformations are the worst nightmare that has happened to them wi

With so much changes to the human body, the education ministry has decided to withdraw biology from being taught in schools until the new features of the human body is understood, though a limited range of it is taught only for zoologist, botanist or doctor college courses. Basically anything non-human related, or on a need to know basis. They could have just taught those to everyone, but when people come across subjects on animal reproduction, a lot of people could ask why (the current reproduction system of) humans could only reproduce with man-made products, while animals, monkeys especially for being closely related to humans, could just mate naturally. Also raises the question of the absence of human males if taught that even experts do not have the answer to. Because the transformations causes arousal on the sight of images of "hot men" that make people difficult to concentrate is also difficult to subdue one you see them, images featuring men are banned. Due to how w