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We were listening to music in the living room. In the meantime some sort of melody came on.
"Oh, this is the favorite one of my high school days. 'Self Portrait'. Sounds sweet, doesn't it?"
"Pretty, though it sounds like bit of ASIENCE"
"ASIENCE? Ah, I know certainly it was used in that commercial."
"Yeah, I'll tell you that you've got to stand in the shape of 'A'."
"(laugh) But you'd never be able to be 'A' because you have duck's ..."
"Shut up. Just watch I can be a perfect 'A' if you give me an emergency cowl we used to put on in those disaster drills."
"No kidding!"

OK, anyway I'll have to write. It has to be to think honestly to myself - not to bluff or creep or go self-poisoned. When I think back about 3 years of life as a salaried worker, I can notice that it started as a sort of vengeance. That was when my wife was having a hard time as a system engineer while I was enjoying a life of freewheeling. She came back home late everyday, going straight to bed only to get up 4 hours later. It wasn't long after she came to this metro area from a provincial town in western Japan. She is such a restrained person that she seldom complained in order not to make me get worried, though there were times she forced out her words with patience on Friday midnights at a nearby family restaurant. At those moments, my initial reaction was always erupting with anger against the people around her pulling her chain on their own ugly will. Knowing that such a reaction makes her only embarrassed and reluctant to say something, I was developing my hatred for the people's lack of consideration and for the social systems that foment their slavish devotion to their situations. Instead of putting myself fully into her shoes, I was just agitating myself - if not completely disregarding her suggestions - and that is still my bitterest regret. I found I had no easy way to make a breakthrough so meanwhile it led to the dilemma fermented inside. One day on a sudden it finally reached the point at which I eventually made up my mind. "Alright, now it's my turn. I'll exploit them in the way that no one could go along." So at least for the very first motive it was kind of my ressentiment to the society, not like that I intended to reintegrated into society or some such. Nowadays, as soon as I get to the office I start gazing into the live scoreboard of NBA playoff games communicating with my wife through e-mail play-by-play. It usually lasts for an hour or two and after that I look into review articles extensively from Sports Illustrated which also takes another hour. Then I put my stereo headphones on, open the project database and finally start coding Java programs in a truly languid manner. I know few people will agree with me that despite of all those slack behaviors I'm still pushing hard. Believe or not I'm still dead serious about doing my work. The work ethic I established was nearly at the end of my rope. That's because for me in one way, to work was not to perform tasks but to exploit or to revenge to grant my initial wish which is definitely a self-indulgent kind (only in one way I mean). A driven soldier at bay who seems ready to die resides in the heart of mine and I simply failed to calm him down. This is just a view of my work ethic projected to rather a negative direction. What has tormented me most for this long period of time was it has another projection into a completely opposite direction, which is my irresistible feeling of thankfulness.