I blew it

Yesterday in the morning, my wife came to my hospital to undergo a stool test for occult blood. The day before yesterday, she had an annual checkup including blood examinantion, electrocardiography, chest radiography, and examination of female reproductive organs. A stool test was scheduled but not performed because of her constipation. After my wife took a container which included a small amount of her stool to the laboratory room of the hosiptal, she left my hospital and went back home.

One hour later, the result proved to be negative. I breathed a sigh of relief; a positive result of occult blood would indicate the need for stomach camera and colon fiber. Upper endoscopy would be OK, but, from my experience, colon fiber is not something that is acceptable in terms of its preparation and procedure itself.

During my lunch, I was going to send good news, i.e., the negative result of her stool, however I noticed that my cell phone was not on my desk or in my bag. All of a sudden, I remembered that I put my smart phone on the seat of the train, and got off the train without holding it while I commuted to work this morning. Oh my goodness...

I regretted having such a careless behavior but I had been still optimistic because I know that Japan is one of the safest countries and the Japanese generally have good manners. I called lost and found at the station, and found myself being depressed after letting me know that no smart phone had been delivered so far. I called my cell phone several times, without any response; it seemed like that the power stayed off.

Google gave me information about what to do if you lost your smart phone. According to the advise, I call the provider company and asked it to stop the data connection. On top of that, I have altered my password, e.g., Amazon.com, on the Internet to avoid being abused.

Hopelessly, I am waiting for the reunion to my priceless cellphone that is full with lots of photos with my dear family. I am not going to disregard the possibility that the robber would read this blog and return it to me.

Athletic meeting

It was a special day. An athletic meeting was held at my little son's elementary school. On top of that, he was elected as one of the members for a 100-meter relay on behalf of his class. My son is really athletic and very good at any kind of sports, except for swimming.

I was excited, but an emergency call woke me up at 3 am. I went to my hospital to treat my inpatient. It was lucky for me to go back home around 8 in the morning because I thought I was able to attend the sport festival, which was supposed to start at 9 am.

It was 8:30, however, that I had a second emergency call form the hospital. There was no other way but to give up the athletic meet since it takes at least an hour to get to my hospital.

Lucky enough again, I come back home just before noon. I headed to the elementary school, in a hurry, because I knew that my son was about to start the race around noon. No sooner had I arrived there than I saw my son being ready for the race.

The race started several minutes after I got there. His team's first runner was not as fast as others. He got the baton in the last position. My little son ran with his best efforts, as shown the image above. I shouted, "GO FOR IT!" He overtook some rivals and passed the yellow baton to the next runner almost in the top place.

His team finally came to the last or second last but I do not care about it. It is not the result that matters. No doubt, the process is way much more important. I was very proud of my son and his team. Also, I was satisfied with myself not only because I am his father but also because I did not turn my back to my patients.

Anyway, it was a tough day to me and I will never, ever forget the day.

Rainbow park

There is a park called Rainbow park in my residential area. It is not close to my home; it takes several minutes by car. One of the most amazing things that the park includes is two sliders. I think that no explanation is needed to understand the characteristics of the twin sliders. Just taking a look at the right picture is enough. Can't you believe the steep angle, can you?

My guess is that they are the steepest sliders in the world. Of course, I cannot rule out the possibility that there would be steeper slider somewhere. However, even if steeper sliders were available, it would be nothing but a fall. Not a slider for fun, although our sliders seem horrible to some people.

Today, my little son, 9 years old, and I went to the Rainbow park after he had his hair cut. This was our third time to visit the park. Whenever we went there and saw the sliders, we climbed up to the entrance of the slider and gave up sliding because of fear.

Today, however, we were different. I succeeded in sliding the smaller slider, followed by my little kid, as you can see in the right picture. The small kid is my son. We would say that we got brave. In our opinions, the thrill was not so strong as we expected it would be.

Nevertheless, we may be still cowards because we were unable to give a try to the larger slider. We found the fear way much big, as compared with the smaller one, when we were at the entrance point to the big slider. Promising to try the bigger one next time, he and I climbed down with the steps. I an not sure when the next comes to us, though.

A 70-year-old man presented with a 3-hour history of lower abdominal pain

　　　 　　　　　

The objective of this post is to make sure whether the codes that I wrote today work well; the codes were for the sake of controlling video files with a frame by frame movement. It seems like that everything is OK.

Bubble gum

"Dad, look. I made it." My little sun suddenly told me. I took this photo in haste.

On that day, he has been battling with bubble gum. His goal appeared to make a balloon with gum. I explained how to create it but he did not succeed. It took him a few hours, nevertheless he did not give up.

Sorry for the blurred shot, but his success developed all of a sudden and did not last more than a second. Literally within a second, the gum balloon that he was successful in making burst with a popping sound.

I was waiting for his second success, but it never came to him and me. Before long, he stopped challenging, saying "I did it, anyway."

I love his attitude that he never gives up until he achieves a goal that he once decided to reach.

That night, he was scolded by his mother at the dinner because of the leftovers. No doubt, he was not starved at all with tons of sweet gum during the day time.

Blackout

One day, in the evening, my family was in the living room and chatting about something not important, such as dinner or TV programs on that night, when it started to thunder all of a sudden. Before long, we found all of the household appliances stop working.

I have never had blackout for more than a decade, thankfully due to durable infrastructure Japan provides us with. Seeing my kids enjoying the blackout, I thought that everything will be resuming soon, but my expectation did not come true.

After sunset, my residential area was covered with complete darkness.

One hour later, electronic experts came here and climbed a pole close to my house. Although I did not figure out what was being done on the electric pole, it took me by surprise that electrical power came back to our town a few hours after their arrival.

What a relief! It seems like that the recovery was not a blessing for my little kid because he made believe he was exploring a cave in an unmanned island. Maybe, it was the case with me, since the sky during the blackout had the most beautiful stars that I have ever seen.

P.S.
Next day, my wife noticed that the electronic shutter of the garage did not work. I tried to fix it, without success. A mechanic told me that it would cost about $1,000 to have it repair. Oh my goodness. However, he continued, saying that the same trouble developed around here, findings suggestive of the association with the thunder, and the unexpected expenditure would be guaranteed by insurance. The negotiation is still under way, but I am really positive about this accident. We have to be thankful to the electric pole struck by the thunder, instead of us; Nobody was injured and nobody was killed. Money cannot buy anyone of our family.

Elon Musk's first work?

Are you a big fan of computer games?
If so, have you ever heard of a game called Blastar?

I am reading a biography of Elon Musk, a well-known inventor and innovator. According the book that I am really into right now, he got his first computer at the age of 9 years and started learning programming using BASIC ― one of the computer languages to write codes.

BASIC was the easiest language to master at that time, and I also learned it when I was a middle school student. What was wonderful is the age that he studied it ― just 9 years old!

He created a video game, Blastar, as shown in the left panel at the age of 12. It is reported that, when he was asked the game, he said, "a trivial game, but better than Floppy Bird."

Surprisingly, the game Blastar is still available in modern age. If you want to try it, click here. It does not matter which is better, Blastar or Floppy Bird, since the backgrounds are completely different. The former was in 1984 and the latter was around 2014 or 30 years after Musk's first work.

Reportedly, Elon Musk sold the game to a computer magazine for $500 (equivalent to $1,200 nowadays). That means that he has been a good business person since he was very young.

High school baseball

My little son, my wife, and I went to a baseball stadium called Koshien to watch a game of the Japanese high school baseball championship in summer.

It was a fine weather without any cloud in the sky, as you can see (some clouds can be shown though). To be honest, it was too hot to watch a baseball game outdoors. My skin got red and hurt after the game, but I was satisfied because my elder son's high school won the game. The victory, however, did not surprise us because his school is considered one of the teams that would come in first place in the competition.

This is my first visit to the Koshien stadium for the first time in three or four years. I do not think that I am a big fan of high school baseball, which is very popular in Japan and some are crazy about it, like my Dad, but I have plans to get there again in order to root for the team.

Now, the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic games are also going on, and proudly, Japanese athletes have achieved great results including 6 gold medals, 1 silver medal, and 10 bronze medals so far. How fantastic they are. They have been pouring energy into everything and everyplace in Japan.

Not to mention that I have been so excited about sports this summer.

Shimanto River

My family of five had a 3-day trip to Shikoku Island by car. It was a lot of fun.

One thing that interested me was Shimanto river, which is considered one of the purest river in Japan. The river is close to nature, less controlled by humans, and rich in traditional Japanese scenery. I was actually moved by the landscape surrounding Shimanto river.

Over the river, there were some unique bridges that had no side walls on he bridge. No wonder that lack of side walls put passengers and cars crossing the bridge at risk for falling into the water. It seems, however, that the structure is useful for the bridge to protect itself from breaking down when a massive flood occurs.

I have heard that a bridge like that is called "Chinka bashi", meaning "able to get under the water for safety in the situation of increasing in river water." I am not 100% sure if this theory works on practice, but there is no doubt that crossing this bridge by car makes the driver feel uneasy.

Take a look at the left lower panel, where we are going over the bridge with our car. I could see anything but the surface of the river through the side windows of the car, because the bridge had no protect side wall. What was worse was the width of the bridge, which was almost as wide as that of a family car. This can explain the reason why the trial scared me (I am not a coward), although my three kids were excited.

I guess that we should not have crossed the river by car because a car itself would not be suitable to such a beautiful nature.

Money box

My summer vacation this year has just started.

While I was having toast and coffee in the living room, my youngest sun wake up and came to me, saying, "Dad, do me a favor and help me create this." What he showed me was Piggy bank on the book. Strictly speaking, it a coin bank with a miraculous trick.

Take a look at the left picture. This is a saving box that my son and I  made this morning. It was not a tough job and totally took about an hour.

One thing that is really interesting to me is a ball of Pokemon in the white box. It looks like as if the ball is floating in the air, doesn't it?

This trick box is consisted of a hemisphere attached on a mirror and a cardboard cube with a window in the front side. The combination may be simple but the effect is beyond my imagination when the mirror is obliquely placed.

Another thing that surprised me was his ability to create something. Over years, I have helped my son with his craft homework during his summer vacation, however I have never felt his powerfulness regarding doing it yourself than ever before.

No wonder that my little son is evolving. Next year, I might not be needed anymore.