I have been working on the basics of my company webpage today. Although I am planning nothing spectacularly difficult, I realised that as the whole world (except myself) is now using mobile phones to go online, I would need to catch up with the latest mobile design and programming models, unless I want to become the last dinosaur on the web. Or maybe the first?
Anyway, I decided to throw some money at the problem and to get myself a decent book on the matter. Yes I know how that sounds. Remember: I’m a non-mobile phone owning, actual book reading dinosaur. So, I was browsing a bit and settled on something that seemed reasonable and I can order it from amazon.
Of course, shipping stuff to Japan is prohibitively expensive, you get used to that, but what really riled me up was the estimated duration of the shipping: 3 – 6 weeks. Excuse me, how long? People, it’s a book. One single book! I know that Japan is an island, but I am sure you’re not hiring a personal swimmer even though this would explain the price… Come on people, 6 weeks is ridiculous! Shipping all my 42 boxes from Germany – on a real container ship – will not take longer than that, and yes, my things will have to go through customs as well.
Okay, I thought, let’s look at amazon Japan. I’m glad to say that they have the book too and there they have free shipping, but delivery will take just as long. Obviously they are buying the book in America themselves. I’m deeply sorry I can’t read textbooks in Japanese, although, given the subject matter, half of the book will be English words and phrases anyway.
I have resigned to not buy the book as I wanted to be finished with the site by the time the book should arrive. Although not a big fan of learning things that way, I will look for some tutorials on the web, which will hopefully do the trick. Alternatively, I can always have a look at Kyoto University’s library, I know they have a fairly good English section for the sciences.