Moments of atavism

Last week, I wore my kilt out and about. At one point, I was in a men's room and reached for the zipper-- which a kilt doesn't have. It was the first time I'd explicitly forgotten I was wearing a kilt. It was a common article of men's clothing covering the waist, of course it has a zipper.

Today was even weirder. Seeking to save wear'n'tear on my laptop keyboard, I snagged a spare Apple keyboard from a pile of unloved hardware that collected in one corner of the incubator's office space. I wonder if that happens a lot at incubators: folks bringing their home hardware in and abandoning it.

I plugged it in and started typing, and couldn't type anything. It was so weird. I tried typing "cd" and got "je." I tried "ls" and got "no". Concerned, I watched my fingers, and they were going to the right buttons. And then it hit me: they were going to the right buttons. But I'm a Dvorak typist. Somehow, typing on this old keyboard made my QWERTY habits come back hard.

A few seconds of practice and I found the Dvorak module in my brain, but that was just weird. Of course I can type QWERTY; you have to in this world, where too many keyboards don't come with a remap option, like on a Palm. I just don't all that often. Very weird.

It was an Otaku heaven. Or hell. Depending

I went to meet Omaha at the Westlake Center food court prior to a meeting we had scheduled than afternoon, and while I was there I saw the most astounding sight imaginable:

Dozens of Japanese high school girls, all between the ages of 15 and 19, wandering around the mall. All of them dressed in knee-length grey pleated skirts, white blouses, black school blazers, knee-high socks and black shoes. It was like a bad otaku fantasy come to life. Some of them wore grey vests; others wore black V-necked sweaters with white trim. And they were all accessorized: mostly the bags, from Gucci, Urban Outfitters, and American Eagle. Some big and gaudy, some small and elegant.

Later, Omaha and I went over to See's Candies, where while Omaha was ordering I took a step back from the line and ran into one of them, along with two of her friends. I didn't see who I'd stepped into at first so I turned and said, "Excuse me. Ah, sumimasen."

She nodded, looking embarrassed. I said, "Ano, Eigo ga wakarimasu ka??" (Um, do you speak English?)

Her eyes widened. "A... a little."

"Skoshi?"

"Yes." She laughed.

"Gakuen wa, doko desu ka?" (Where is your school?)

"Saito International, near Tokyo."

"Thanks," I said. I don't know what impression I made. She smiled nicely and wandered off. Rather ordinary kid. In fact, that was the main vibe I got, just how ordinary they all were. Giggly high school girls, playing one-up games as to their findings and their gossip. I later learned from the woman behind the counter at See's that there were 400 of these girls set loose on Seattle: the entire upper class of a private high school. They'd been coming through Westlake every day for the past week.

And they're going home tomorrow.