Thirty years ago today, an event that can’t be forgotten and shouldn’t be forgotten occurred in Kobe and its vicinity. Ten years ago, I posted both English and Japanese entries of what I had experienced, witnessed, and thought at that time; you can read them below:
Category: Software
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The Words of the Year 2023
It’s time to wrap up the words of this year. As I do every year at the end of the year, I’m looking back at what has happened to me and what I have encountered over the past year, and I’m listing them up in a few short words.
The words of 2023 are flight simulation, fitness, TOEIC, and voice recognition.
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Flying an Airplane
As I wrote in this entry of my blog, I became interested in flying an airplane last year; I had been interested in airplanes and aviation 20 years ago, but at that time, I was more fascinated by the women flight attendants who took care of the passengers in the cabins of airplanes than by flying itself. This time, I was seriously interested in piloting the plane itself.
Of course, I don’t have the time, ability, or financial resources to attend flight school or have a flight instructor train me to get a certificate to fly an actual airplane. What I am trying to do is just a simulated flight using a flight simulator. Nevertheless, the 2020 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator is much closer to flying a real airplane than previous versions, so mastering how to fly in that simulator is enough for me. Most reassuringly, nobody will die or be injured if I make a mistake in the controls.
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The Words of the Year 2022
The words of this year are: web3, Ford Focus, gout, and pilotage.
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The Words of the Year 2020
It is time for me to look back at what I experienced this year and summarize it in some words, as I do it every year-end. This year, COVID-19 has affected a great deal to the lifestyle of people all over the world, including myself. I have been forced to stay home and work from home for most days of this year.
Despite such restricted situations, I encountered some new things. The words of this year are Synapusyu, the handgun, and computer programming.
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Becoming an e-Estonian
Estonia, one of the Baltic countries that became independent of the Soviet Union along with Latvia and Lithuania in the early 1990s, is an IT-conscious country with a significant number of IT-related startups, including Skype. The Estonian government is doing its best to make a “digital country” by inviting IT engineers to some offshore development sites in Europe’s IT market.
The government issues Estonian citizens an ID card, similar to a Social Security Card in the United States, which enables holders to offer one-stop services, including taxation, online banking, issuing medical prescriptions, and more. In addition to offering an ID card for real residents, it introduced the e-Residency scheme, which is available not only to residents of Estonia but also to people who don’t live in Estonia. In this scheme, an “e-Residency Card” is issued to the “e-Residents” of Estonia, and similar services to those for real residents are offered “electronically” with the card via their computers.
Application for an e-Residency Card is easy. First, visit the application page on the e-Estonia website at https://apply.e-estonia.com/. And then you can apply for the card by filling in the required information on the website and paying €50.99 online with a credit card. You can have the card sent to any Estonian Embassy outside Estonia, so you can pick it up at the nearest Embassy without flying to Estonia. About one month after submitting the online application, the card will be ready, and you will receive an email notification.
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