I don't like Mondays
THEY SUCK!
Today was the day of the dreaded test that I have known was coming for some time. I hate the class so darn much that despite usually being such a conscientious student I just couldn't bring myself to bear coping with the grief of struggling with the unintelligible and absract grammar. I never do the homework as it's so much easier to do all of the other work that is required for all of my other classes and then tell the teacher it was just too hard - which it rather is!
I think that whilst my head is now rather split from the past 5 hours of grappling with the intricacies of minute differences of near identical grammar conjugation and usage, but I think I have finally come upwith some sort of hold on how one might go about trying to understand the stuff. However, this new found knowledge did very little to offset the otherwise highly unprepared situation into which I had cornered myself. Thus I now feel like kicking things hysterically and letting tears of immense frustration flow freely.
Unfortunately (though perhaps fortunately for my dignity) I can indulge in no such thing as I had mountains of work continung stacking up and to top it all off I must present my Nausicaa report this week - much work still required - and meet with my favourite little Korean buddy about our literature paper. I can't even clearly remember what I was supposed to be writing about . . Man, this is shaping up to be a great week already!
A quick summary of the weekend that kept me from my studies:
Friday night I did some reading on Japanese linguistics - all part of my dreams of studying SLA or something as part of post-grad studies - I'll just keep up the dreaming and 'light' reading. Following which I cooked up the vege dregs of my overly large fridge - perhaps the mould wasn't such a good addition to the overall flavour . . . Hmmm, speaking of which, I think I need a new bag of rice . . Will I ever move out to homestay ? Who knows - right now I just don't have time to try and think about that - It would require so much packing and the like and right now I hardly ever get a moment when I shouldn't be studying - I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew this semester . . . How depressing - I don't want my last 3 months to continue like this - It's not much fun.
Anyway, I was recently reprimanded for careening on with such excessive amounts of detail so I shall try to steer away from the constant harping on my current stresses.
Back to the weekend . . . Friday night people were supposed all be coming over for card games and drinking, however it was bucketing down most of the afternoon and way into the evening. This, along with the fact that as soon as the sun goes down these days it gets freezing, meant that a large proportion intended attendees piked! Whinging Poms, hey! Aren't you supposed to be used to constant rain and cold ?
It ended up a smallish but fun affair and I tried to teach O-san how to make a pineapple and banana cake. It may have been the 梅酒 ume-shu but was more likely just my lacklustre cake baking skills, which resulted in a cake rather stodgey instead of being fluffy as she had requested - I'm still waiting for all of those sponge cake recipes to start flooding in . . the current situation could only be compared to a creek in Kings Canyon at th height of summer.
We proceeded to play a number of card/drinking games whereby Hyok, Evan and Lane consumed a goodly deal of alcomahol (alco-ru in Japanese), Yonosuke turned the most red I have ever seen any Japanese person turn off so little drink, and I got see bits of the highly dubious movie version of Dungeons and Dragons or something while the fact it was all in Japanese probably added to the quality of the dialogue (This was apparently also the case with the lastest Star Wars travesty - judging from our groans of pain compared to the relatively positive impressions of people who followed the Japanese 字幕 jimaku subtitles)
We watched some American TV that Lane had downloaded before O-asn suggested we watch one of the movies she had downloaded. With difficulty The Punisher ended up the choice of the night and I quickly disappeared when it looked like one of the openiing scenes was going to involve the main characters entire family being massacred. . . . I can't help giving too much detail can I ?!
とにかく (Anyway) - I hopped off to my room, but did a bit of emailing before hitting the sack at the rather late hour of 2am. This set the trend for the weekend and meant I slept in til 11am and got very little down by way of study before I was due to walk over to the castle for meeting up with Higuma Sensei - aka Drunk Sensei - he proceded to supply all with drinks and food and despite feeling the need to go home and study I stuck about in town til about 10pm. I was happy that I nicked someone's coat and stayed about for the performances - I forget what type of music it was now - will supplement this post with that information later - but suffice to say that it was wayyyyyyy better than any Lion Dance you might see on a January or February night on Gouger St. It kicked arse! I also got to pose with one of the costumes (very heavy!) on as Higuma Sensei has the most amazing web of contacts (someone once suggested they thought he was somehow involved with Yakuza).
When I got home I figured I should do some work but couldn't bear the thought of the aforementioned grammar and so I stuck out to make some headway on the Honours thesis proposal for next year. Icck - I don't know that it ever made any sense but thanks to Midge for getting it a once over so that I could at least get something in today. I figured that having done so much work doing extra reading and finding out about all of my options I should make some attempt at the proposal - from now on I don't particularly care what happens.
Right, right, too many details!
Ran late to meet my English conversation student as I struggled to get up but had to take some books back to the Peace Park library. Ended up forgetting one anyway so will have to try and get back there soon as the book is now overdue and they'll probably start chopping of limbs in recompense. We had our English convo class and I worked hard for my pay, stifling back yawns. Then we headed off to a tea ceremony as Kikuko's friend is a teacher of this particular style of tea ceremony (which is not the popular macha 抹茶 tea ceremony of green and bitter fame). There I endured sitting seizai for some time which gave me a much better understanding of why it is that traditional old woman, geisha and the like walk around with that shuffling gait. The tea was clear and a little salty it seemed to me, and we received some yummy sweetish sembei (rice craker thingies, but these are not those glazed salty things of which Miss Aliese is so fond). Then it was off across the road ot another friend's glass engraving exhibition and then onto a tram off to west Hiroshima station and on to another friend's Okonomiyaki shop for a wonderful lunch! My lastest big thing is okonomiyaki with mochi in it - ace as! We hung out there for quite some time eating with her friends and I'm to go back for a party there on th 6th of December - sounds like it will be lots of fun. On a Tuesday afternoon after our usual lesson time which may mean missing some school - how sad!
Then Kikuko dropped me back home and I did about half an hour's work before Marie arrived for our cooking party. It was poorly attended but we had a really nice time - O-san (mapo dofu and chauwan), Marie (mini pizza type things on tiny gyoza circles), Alex (she made a fabulous dips and put them in the best bread cob I have eaten in Japan - with a pricetag to match!), Risa (Lisa - she actually hand-made zenzai and warabimochi! 手間がかかる！！ That's stacks of work!!) and I made a big improvement on my cake record with a very successful pineapple cake. Lane also came down and came us company which is always nice. Evan was wimpy and decided that study had to take precedence! Pansy!
Then I passed up a walk with O-san and Alex and procrastinated over my test preparation. I talked to Wiz for quite some time, finalised and sent off my proposal, did 30 minutes or so of study of grammar, had a message from a boy and reflected on how much I love to get emails - Thanks to all of those people who sent me distracting and amusing emails this weekend - everyone played their part in assisting my methods of procrastination and keeping me happily engaged in other activites, and generally feeling remembered and friend-bound!
You know what I noticed today ? Oh - it's different on this computer but on another earlier today the cursor would disappear almost right off the screen on all sides except the lefthand one. This led to me feeling that I could express a little of my frustration without injury to myself or others by repeatedly careering the arrow into that side and watch it beat itself up against the computer's edge . . . hhhmmmm - I reflection, perhaps that's a little bit of bizarre thing to take delight in. I didn't particularly indulge in my discovery but I did note this urge in myself and feel that I should a bee-line for a soft surface for a nap.
Well, this post only goes to cement, for those of you not previously aware, of my inherited (from Nanna Norma) ability to string a series of fairly minor events, facts and happenings into a missive of epic proportions.
I really came to the computer rooms to get my homework done for Sakoda Sensei （迫田先生）. Due to the impending test in 4th lesson I couldn't go to the lower level Japanese class as I usually do. I regret this as I feel that in terms of practical applicability and all-round general usefulness these class are far in advance of stupid bloody 中級日本語！ I did drop by before the lesson though to make my apologies though I sent an email last night, and I was rewarded for popping by with a black sesame seed sweet (halva step aside!!) from Kyoto - I forget the name of them now - but they are triangular in shape, (as is usually the case) made of rice and often contain an (餡) paste and are a famous 名物 (meibutsu specialty food product)of Kyoto. These were the best!! I am a huge fan of 黒ゴマ(kurogoma black sesame) and have never had these before - get me back to Kyoto today, baby! I'l take anoterh round of that rocking tofu iceceamm too, thank you! It's perhaps fortuitous that I do not live in Kyoto - city of Tofu!
This week's assignment is to write about making a tradtional food of your country - can anyone else see this particular topic appealing to me in the highest?!!!!
What's the time ? I might go soon and look at the road and swear a lot cos I'm not on the bus . . .
Special thanks in this post goes to the lovely Ms LSD for sending me music that got me through the hours of study today minus lunch - Also, I suppose, some credit must go to those crazy Adelaideans who made the stuff our of the sweat and inspiration in the first place!! brillig, frequent seahorse, eiderdown, papertiger, ianto ware and other assorted less frequently listened to, but none-the-less enjoyable, peeps! Why she didn't put herself being brilliant onto the CD as well I don't know - it's been far top long since I got to hear her great work and I'm miss it!! You must all make up for my missing out and check out her site and get to a gig pronto!!
If you don't hear from me from some time to come now that this is because you are demanding too much - look at how much I have just written!!! No, really, I will have turned into a study bug and they don't have big enough digits to effectively utilise keyboards.
Today was the day of the dreaded test that I have known was coming for some time. I hate the class so darn much that despite usually being such a conscientious student I just couldn't bring myself to bear coping with the grief of struggling with the unintelligible and absract grammar. I never do the homework as it's so much easier to do all of the other work that is required for all of my other classes and then tell the teacher it was just too hard - which it rather is!
I think that whilst my head is now rather split from the past 5 hours of grappling with the intricacies of minute differences of near identical grammar conjugation and usage, but I think I have finally come upwith some sort of hold on how one might go about trying to understand the stuff. However, this new found knowledge did very little to offset the otherwise highly unprepared situation into which I had cornered myself. Thus I now feel like kicking things hysterically and letting tears of immense frustration flow freely.
Unfortunately (though perhaps fortunately for my dignity) I can indulge in no such thing as I had mountains of work continung stacking up and to top it all off I must present my Nausicaa report this week - much work still required - and meet with my favourite little Korean buddy about our literature paper. I can't even clearly remember what I was supposed to be writing about . . Man, this is shaping up to be a great week already!
A quick summary of the weekend that kept me from my studies:
Friday night I did some reading on Japanese linguistics - all part of my dreams of studying SLA or something as part of post-grad studies - I'll just keep up the dreaming and 'light' reading. Following which I cooked up the vege dregs of my overly large fridge - perhaps the mould wasn't such a good addition to the overall flavour . . . Hmmm, speaking of which, I think I need a new bag of rice . . Will I ever move out to homestay ? Who knows - right now I just don't have time to try and think about that - It would require so much packing and the like and right now I hardly ever get a moment when I shouldn't be studying - I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew this semester . . . How depressing - I don't want my last 3 months to continue like this - It's not much fun.
Anyway, I was recently reprimanded for careening on with such excessive amounts of detail so I shall try to steer away from the constant harping on my current stresses.
Back to the weekend . . . Friday night people were supposed all be coming over for card games and drinking, however it was bucketing down most of the afternoon and way into the evening. This, along with the fact that as soon as the sun goes down these days it gets freezing, meant that a large proportion intended attendees piked! Whinging Poms, hey! Aren't you supposed to be used to constant rain and cold ?
It ended up a smallish but fun affair and I tried to teach O-san how to make a pineapple and banana cake. It may have been the 梅酒 ume-shu but was more likely just my lacklustre cake baking skills, which resulted in a cake rather stodgey instead of being fluffy as she had requested - I'm still waiting for all of those sponge cake recipes to start flooding in . . the current situation could only be compared to a creek in Kings Canyon at th height of summer.
We proceeded to play a number of card/drinking games whereby Hyok, Evan and Lane consumed a goodly deal of alcomahol (alco-ru in Japanese), Yonosuke turned the most red I have ever seen any Japanese person turn off so little drink, and I got see bits of the highly dubious movie version of Dungeons and Dragons or something while the fact it was all in Japanese probably added to the quality of the dialogue (This was apparently also the case with the lastest Star Wars travesty - judging from our groans of pain compared to the relatively positive impressions of people who followed the Japanese 字幕 jimaku subtitles)
We watched some American TV that Lane had downloaded before O-asn suggested we watch one of the movies she had downloaded. With difficulty The Punisher ended up the choice of the night and I quickly disappeared when it looked like one of the openiing scenes was going to involve the main characters entire family being massacred. . . . I can't help giving too much detail can I ?!
とにかく (Anyway) - I hopped off to my room, but did a bit of emailing before hitting the sack at the rather late hour of 2am. This set the trend for the weekend and meant I slept in til 11am and got very little down by way of study before I was due to walk over to the castle for meeting up with Higuma Sensei - aka Drunk Sensei - he proceded to supply all with drinks and food and despite feeling the need to go home and study I stuck about in town til about 10pm. I was happy that I nicked someone's coat and stayed about for the performances - I forget what type of music it was now - will supplement this post with that information later - but suffice to say that it was wayyyyyyy better than any Lion Dance you might see on a January or February night on Gouger St. It kicked arse! I also got to pose with one of the costumes (very heavy!) on as Higuma Sensei has the most amazing web of contacts (someone once suggested they thought he was somehow involved with Yakuza).
When I got home I figured I should do some work but couldn't bear the thought of the aforementioned grammar and so I stuck out to make some headway on the Honours thesis proposal for next year. Icck - I don't know that it ever made any sense but thanks to Midge for getting it a once over so that I could at least get something in today. I figured that having done so much work doing extra reading and finding out about all of my options I should make some attempt at the proposal - from now on I don't particularly care what happens.
Right, right, too many details!
Ran late to meet my English conversation student as I struggled to get up but had to take some books back to the Peace Park library. Ended up forgetting one anyway so will have to try and get back there soon as the book is now overdue and they'll probably start chopping of limbs in recompense. We had our English convo class and I worked hard for my pay, stifling back yawns. Then we headed off to a tea ceremony as Kikuko's friend is a teacher of this particular style of tea ceremony (which is not the popular macha 抹茶 tea ceremony of green and bitter fame). There I endured sitting seizai for some time which gave me a much better understanding of why it is that traditional old woman, geisha and the like walk around with that shuffling gait. The tea was clear and a little salty it seemed to me, and we received some yummy sweetish sembei (rice craker thingies, but these are not those glazed salty things of which Miss Aliese is so fond). Then it was off across the road ot another friend's glass engraving exhibition and then onto a tram off to west Hiroshima station and on to another friend's Okonomiyaki shop for a wonderful lunch! My lastest big thing is okonomiyaki with mochi in it - ace as! We hung out there for quite some time eating with her friends and I'm to go back for a party there on th 6th of December - sounds like it will be lots of fun. On a Tuesday afternoon after our usual lesson time which may mean missing some school - how sad!
Then Kikuko dropped me back home and I did about half an hour's work before Marie arrived for our cooking party. It was poorly attended but we had a really nice time - O-san (mapo dofu and chauwan), Marie (mini pizza type things on tiny gyoza circles), Alex (she made a fabulous dips and put them in the best bread cob I have eaten in Japan - with a pricetag to match!), Risa (Lisa - she actually hand-made zenzai and warabimochi! 手間がかかる！！ That's stacks of work!!) and I made a big improvement on my cake record with a very successful pineapple cake. Lane also came down and came us company which is always nice. Evan was wimpy and decided that study had to take precedence! Pansy!
Then I passed up a walk with O-san and Alex and procrastinated over my test preparation. I talked to Wiz for quite some time, finalised and sent off my proposal, did 30 minutes or so of study of grammar, had a message from a boy and reflected on how much I love to get emails - Thanks to all of those people who sent me distracting and amusing emails this weekend - everyone played their part in assisting my methods of procrastination and keeping me happily engaged in other activites, and generally feeling remembered and friend-bound!
You know what I noticed today ? Oh - it's different on this computer but on another earlier today the cursor would disappear almost right off the screen on all sides except the lefthand one. This led to me feeling that I could express a little of my frustration without injury to myself or others by repeatedly careering the arrow into that side and watch it beat itself up against the computer's edge . . . hhhmmmm - I reflection, perhaps that's a little bit of bizarre thing to take delight in. I didn't particularly indulge in my discovery but I did note this urge in myself and feel that I should a bee-line for a soft surface for a nap.
Well, this post only goes to cement, for those of you not previously aware, of my inherited (from Nanna Norma) ability to string a series of fairly minor events, facts and happenings into a missive of epic proportions.
I really came to the computer rooms to get my homework done for Sakoda Sensei （迫田先生）. Due to the impending test in 4th lesson I couldn't go to the lower level Japanese class as I usually do. I regret this as I feel that in terms of practical applicability and all-round general usefulness these class are far in advance of stupid bloody 中級日本語！ I did drop by before the lesson though to make my apologies though I sent an email last night, and I was rewarded for popping by with a black sesame seed sweet (halva step aside!!) from Kyoto - I forget the name of them now - but they are triangular in shape, (as is usually the case) made of rice and often contain an (餡) paste and are a famous 名物 (meibutsu specialty food product)of Kyoto. These were the best!! I am a huge fan of 黒ゴマ(kurogoma black sesame) and have never had these before - get me back to Kyoto today, baby! I'l take anoterh round of that rocking tofu iceceamm too, thank you! It's perhaps fortuitous that I do not live in Kyoto - city of Tofu!
This week's assignment is to write about making a tradtional food of your country - can anyone else see this particular topic appealing to me in the highest?!!!!
What's the time ? I might go soon and look at the road and swear a lot cos I'm not on the bus . . .
Special thanks in this post goes to the lovely Ms LSD for sending me music that got me through the hours of study today minus lunch - Also, I suppose, some credit must go to those crazy Adelaideans who made the stuff our of the sweat and inspiration in the first place!! brillig, frequent seahorse, eiderdown, papertiger, ianto ware and other assorted less frequently listened to, but none-the-less enjoyable, peeps! Why she didn't put herself being brilliant onto the CD as well I don't know - it's been far top long since I got to hear her great work and I'm miss it!! You must all make up for my missing out and check out her site and get to a gig pronto!!
If you don't hear from me from some time to come now that this is because you are demanding too much - look at how much I have just written!!! No, really, I will have turned into a study bug and they don't have big enough digits to effectively utilise keyboards.
posted by Eleanora Martinez at 10:36 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Ellie,
I thought I'd point you in the direction of my spongey cupcake recipe. I dunno if this is the kind of thing your friend is after but they are really tasty! Brian asked for the recipe when I posted it on our flickr account so here it is.
Ta muchly Michelle you win in the cupcake stakes!!! All of your cooking adventures sure look successful too!
I had no idea anyone actually read my blog other than the comment-ready LSD, Nick and Phili.
Now I feel wayyyy popular!
Flour in Japan is a bit crazy and crap but I will certainly give these ago at the next opportune moment - actually come to think of it I could never get any decent cupcake foil thingos though so I think it'll just have to be one biggie!
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