Entries this day: Carla_and_Maruan_parties Jin_at_ELF Man_2 Masae_at_ELF earthquake

Carla and Maruan parties

8:16am JST Thursday 7 April 2011 (day 14988)

Interesting that there are three upcoming parties with people I know through PB 52. Maruan will be celebrating his 30th solar revolution, and Carla will be volunteering in northern Japan, but will be chilling with people on her two Tokyo days on either end of that trip.

I want to go to see Maruan and Kyoko, Carla, Tony, and my few other peeps who I know and love, but I feel embarrassed when I don't remember other people's names, and those faces will span 8 years ago when I worked at NOVA to 4 years ago when I volunteered with PB.

So when I told Lin about it, my voice was not all super genki, and she was thinking that means I don't really want her to go....

Ah... I just realized another part of it. I don't want to tell people that I'm still jobless and living for two years on Soness's living room floor. gah.

Jin at ELF

7:21pm JST Thursday 7 April 2011 (day 14988)

Before the filming, Mark made a saw blade with a milk carton while we talked to his friend Jin, who may be suffering from what we'd call psychosis. She sometimes screams (apparently every 10 or 15 minutes or so when not on her medication) and says it all started when she took some medicine to help her sleep or something (I may have the story confuzzed in my mind).

Man 2

11:16pm JST Thursday 7 April 2011 (day 14988)

I was Man 2 in a movie scene recorded at ELF in Tachikawa this evening! Good fun, with about 15 different takes with different camera angles and microphone positions. Chris was actor, director, and camera operator, so he was pretty busy!

Masae at ELF

11:22pm JST Thursday 7 April 2011 (day 14988)

After the filming, Mark's friend Masae came by and we chatted for about an hour. It seems she might have chronic fatigue syndrome, from what I can tell of her story. She used to be genki and then about 4 years ago, she had to drop out of work and just slept all the time. Still isn't back to normal yet.

When I was on my way out, I offered her a hug. She accepted after assurance from Mark that it was utterly platonic and my girlfriend wouldn't mind. Masae was like, "then can I have a hug?" (in Japanese (something like 「ハーグくれていいの？」)) and she came to where I was standing and hugged me. At first she was kinda one arm semi-formal, but then I felt her relax into it but actually she had suddenly passed out and collapsed into a pile on the floor.

Mark saw the whole thing, and came over to help pat her back awake, and she took a few minutes to recover, including some periods of moaning, and apparently not being able to hear me repeatedly ask her, "Masae, what's your name?"

But then, after a few minutes to recover, she recovered to 80% normal, and okay enough to apologize and say that she sometimes faints when hugging guys she doesn't know.

Wow. That's a first for me! Mark wondered if maybe she had been hypnotized to have that reaction. Weird; I know it's possible, but I wonder who would do that, and why....

earthquake

11:40pm JST Thursday 7 April 2011 (day 14988)

Just a few minutes ago, several people's cellphones started singing the earthquake alert together on the train. Lin called me and asked if I was okay; it was apparently a big quake, but I didn't feel it, and the train is still running. (We were a couple stations west of Noborito on Nambu Line when it happened.)