Putt, Putt

So on my first day of summer vacation I did the following:

1) Woke up at 11am.
2) Spoke with mom, then Leah on Skype, took shower and dissected Harry Potter with Leah; spoke about Venice Carnivale and possible trip to Antiparos in Greece for her fall break (LUCKY!).
3) Realized at 12:30 that I had not eaten anything yet and had no milk or sugar for my coffee so I went to QQ Shop for a quick grocery trip.
4) Made salad for lunch; finished downloading all the songs from Grey's Anatomy Season 3.
5) Began to hack at excess photos on my hard drive; re-organized and fixed iPhoto so that I do not hate it so much (I still find it sorta confusing, but now I think I have it figured out, so that I just don't have a whole lotta photos and lack of organization).
6) Between the hours of 5:42 and 6:55, try to read Outlander in Japanese, and do a whole lotta nothing.
7) Dinner with Ingram for okonomiyaki at 7:00pm.

Alot of puttering about, especially on my computer. I had been meaning to fix my iPhoto and get rid of alot of photos that are just excessive (say three photos of the same thing) or out of focus. Out of about 2000 photos, I ended up deleting/hacking at 200.

In other news, for the past two days it's been sunny and HOT. According to the weather authorites, rainy season is over. And just in time too - I can have a week and a half to go out and enjoy the sun. It's 5:30pm and because the sky is so clear I don't have to turn on the light in my apartment.

In rainy season, I had to around this time because my windows face east so I would begin to lose what little light there was at around 4-ish. Downside is, I get the sun BLARING into my apartment like I said before at 7am, so it takes a bit more effort to sleep in. But I might not do that tomorrow, I want to check out Shimogamo Jinja which is near me and a World Heritage site. I've some sightseeing to catch up on, and I want to do some of it this week because next week, I'm going to give myself a head start of JLPT studying.

Putt, putt.

Wonk, Snarf

Not much to blog about.

It was 82 degrees today and I got to use my Yojiya oil blotting paper twice. Thank god there is an outlet in Torrance, CA and I can order from them - but that wont stop me getting about 100 little booklets of the stuff (x20=2000 sheets, hmm three year supply?) since my income is in the yen anyway.

Tomorrow I am going to wear my new cropped jacket, with my pearls, navy blue t-shirt, Citizens jeans and pink flats.

Went to the gym today after a long hiatus and have more reinvigoration to get back on the points watch for the diet, and making bento boxes for lunch is fun and healthy. Powerwalked for 2km, rode the bike for 7km = 9km = 5.6 miles. OoOoO. Now multiply that by 4 (since that is the number of times a week I intend to go to the gym) = 22.4 miles per week. My goal is about 20 miles a week either by powerwalking/stationary bike (I can keep it at above 90rpm so I do the 7km in 20 minutes) so that is about...32km divided by 4...at least 8km per session needs to be reached.

My peonies are blooming, but the last two aren't open enough yet - trust me they warrant their own post, as I have been taking photos of their progress.

Wonk, snarfle.

The Quiet Month of March

I am blogging to amuse myself. It has come to that point.

March has been a rather quiet month, overall. I don't have much money in the budget for fun, far-reaching stuff (meaning trips outside Kyoto), and I don't want to touch the money that I have been able to save up so far. Usually, when I begin to save money, my fingers get a bit itchy, ESPECIALLY when the new kate spade (not capitalized for a reason, that's how the label is spelled out) collection is out, there are three pairs of shoes that I would like to get and my Jack Spade wallet really isn't holding up to the grunt of god knows how many ID and memberships card that are in there. But once I do start saving, then I don't want to touch it.

If I don't put the change that I have in my business card case (niftily used as a change purse) my wallet won't close. I need a wallet like the ones my sister and my mom have - lots of card slots (so I don't have to double and triple up anymore and a nice big space for change. Something like a checkbook wallet. Something like this one:
The "jane street maria" checkbook wallet in kelly/amethyst. A girl can dream. And then post it on her blog.

In other news, I have been going to the gym that is 5 minutes away from me by bike, and on my way home from Rits, so I have no excuse in not going to the gym. The first week was rather hell, since I haven't exercised in god knows how long. And I went to yoga. It's the basic yoga, nothing too flashy like hot yoga (good stuff) but the room is kept rather warm, so I do work up a bit of a sweat and my heartrate does go up. I also go to aerobics; I have discovered in the course of my first few weeks that I HATE HATE HATE the treadmill. There are no ellipticals in the machine room. Me + treadmill = hell. I powerwalk on the thing, and the timer ticks on by but because there is a timer, I am more conscious of the time and thus start to whine in my head and then give up. For yoga and aerobics, the time goes quickly by and I am not bored. And the teachers mix things up a bit - which is both good and bad. Good because I am not bored, but bad because once I get over my fear of throwing my legs up and over my head while on my back (still working on it rather) my yoga teacher goes and throws in headstands for kicks. THAT is something that is going to take me awhile to get used to. I am afraid that I am going to break my neck.

But back to the saving - there is a wedding coming up and flowers, a dress and pretty paper are involved in it on my end. Plus, I already did my traveling for the really-long-break in Korea so I did my "I am OUT of here!" part.

That doesn't mean that I am done travelling. You kidding me? The last week of April is Golden Week, a week long mush of holidays which this year has two days off in between. It's April 28-30 and May 3-6. I was originally going to skip the two days in between and two days before to go to the Philippines and meet Mel, but tickets are expensive during Golden Week. The next option was Hong Kong, because Deena has off the exact same days that I am off for the first half of GW. I just came back from the co-op a bit disappointed: they did have tickets for only $450, but there was no seat available going to Hong Kong. The only other option? $900. HELL NO. Instead of April, Mel and I are going to the Philippines at Christmas for sure next year since we have alot of time to save up the money. It will surely be more kicking then.

Another option is to go to Okinawa - I emailed Colleen about it and she told me (ran into her today on campus) that she saw it but hasn't had the chance to email me back. I quickly told her that if that didn't work out, there is the fourth option, which can be done by myself as well (as is Okinawa, but Okinawa would be fun with more people): train-tripping it around Kansai and the Chugoku (where Hiroshima is) area. There are tons of places that can be a day or two day trip and it won't be that expensive either. One of them that I really want to go to is Koya-san, a Buddhist monastery/city in the mountains, and you can stay at the temples and get traditional cuisine there included. Then there is Ise (the main Shinto shrine in Japan). So there are things to do, it's just a matter of getting things organized.

I have spend most of my vacation reading, watching Grey's Anatomy and just chilling out before the onslaught at Rits begins - not only do I want to take two regular classes (one out of the two that my sensei recommended and a culture course that I thought would be cool) but I also want to take Japanese classes. I finally figured out - and everyone agrees with me who is also just a research student - that there is nothing that is really expected of me in terms of a "final result." Like I said before, even my sensei doesn't know what is expected of me. If there is, I can just show my published paper and the fact that I went to two conferences. So, my plan is to pretty much do what I need to do to prepare for grad school applications. Have to be honest though - every time I look at history department's websites at places like Harvard, UPenn, Stanford, I slowly begin to scream in my head. It can be rather nerve-wrecking to say the least. And friggin scary - the average amount of people that apply to these programs is 300-400 give or take. And on average, the schools accept about 30-40 people. That is 1 in every 10 about if I do my math right. To borrow a quip from Prof. M (medieval prof, not Asian prof): "I only count in base 10."

Doggie Days

Every year, people usually make a list of things to do during the dog days of summer.

For example: go to the beach and get a tan. Go on vacation. Read alot of books. Take the kids to the park. Keep the kids occupied so you don't go crazy. If all else fails, some parents send their kids to summer camp - sleepaway are day is dependent on parental preferences and location. In New York, parents CAN keep their kids occupied without sending them to sleepaway camp.

I for one have never been to summer camp. My summers were filled with chilling with my childhood group of friends and our mothers while the dads were at work (most of our moms by the time we were in the tweenie years worked for the public schools, so when we were off, they were off) - mostly running amok in my old neighborhood every day during the summer from about 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Our mom's would collectively gather in front of my apartment building and the one next door (because 3 families were concentrated between those two buildings so it became a focal point). One mom would make frappe - Greek iced coffee - the others would sit and chill and make sure that none of us got hurt. When you put together the kids that lived on my block plus the "fringes" (lived in the neighborhood, not on the block but came most of the time) there were about 20 of us, ranging from 18 to the age of 3 by the mid-1990s. And we made ALOT of noise. Today, my old block is quiet. Everyone got older, my family and two other families moved away from the block, and there isn't a new generation of kids to take our places. It's a bit sad in a way because my old block had such a reputation for being kid-central in the summer. We got creative; we would play manhunt or hide-and-seek. One time, one of hte older kids hid my little sister in a trash can. We would ride our bikes around the block till we were red in the face.

Sometimes, however, our summers were spent in Greece as opposed to the front stoop. In Astoria, Greek parents ship their kids off to Greece to stay with grandparents or other relatives. For the entire summer. Some of my family friends have gone to Greece the day after th public schools finished (around June 25) and don't come back till Labor Day weekend or the day before school starts (first Thursday after Labor Day weekend). If you have a sharp memory, recall that my parents did that to me in 1995 as a "graduation gift" from elementary school. For the entire summer. Yep, I did the "whole summer in Greece" thing.

I have done it twice actually; first in 1995 and the second time in 2002. Both times I stayed with family and had to deal with relatives that I have never met before (like a third cousin from my dad's uncle's side[?]). However, in 2002 it was a bit more fun; although I lived in the village outside of Sparta with dear ol'grannie, my mom and my sister for about 5/6 of the summer, mom sister and I did go into Athens and Thessaloniki and visited the other grannie in Florina (way up north, about 18km from the Greek-Yugoslavia border. We actually went to the border; it was a bit of a highlight). but when we were back in Sparta, my yiayia would take us around the other villages in the mountains and other little towns - one was a beach town called Yitheio, another time, we took the ferry with my mom's cousin to a small island for the day called Elafoniso. Whenever the old biddies from the village would come to call, my mom sister and I would make fun of them afterwards or in hushed voices - but in English of course.

And now, the dog days of summer are here upon us again and the summers of 2-month+ vacations away from home are long gone. For now at least. In the future, I plan to go a month here, a month there and I know I can drag Mel along at least because if we do something like that in Europe there is internet connection. Plus the time difference is such that if I fulfill my dream of renting a house in Tuscany for a month, Mel works during the mesimeri/siesta/naptime.

My other future summer goal is to go to Greece, pretend I don't speak Greek and island-hop like a tourist for a month or two. I told that to my dad - he took one look at me and started laughing. He said I still had to visit yiayia ALL THE WAY UP in Florina. It's an eight-hour bus ride between Florina and Athens.

But this summer, I have academic pursuits to accomplish. All of which revolve around Japanese:
1) Get up to 1000 Kanji
2) Get through "Le Petite Prince" (in Japanese)
3) Get through my "Breaking into Japanese Literature" reader
4) Review all my grammar
5) Record vocabulary and put onto iPod

and other little things. In June I did nothing at all - I needed a little bit of a break from school, especially after this past semester. I was exhausted. I also have other little miscellaneous things that I want to complete:
1) London scrapbook
2) Small vacation with Mel
3) And yes...get a tan. I am a pasty freak. Not to the point of leather but a nice little glow.
4) Get DVD's for Japan (when I was in London I only had like 5 movies which bored me to tears after watching them twice when I had the flu. This time I am going to be prepared, although there is a DVD rental store in Kyoto that is bilingual.)

and other things I forgot at the moment.

Let Yourself Go, Let Myself Go

During the summer, it is not impossible to lose track of the days and the weeks. When I went to Greece back in 2002, I had to ask someone every few days what the date was. This goes to show when people (maybe just me?) are out of their "native habitat" shall we say, we just tend to let everything go. Even the day of the week - unless you wear a watch that tells the date. I do not wear a watch - like most people my age, I rely on my cell phone to tell the time. However, I would like to get a watch soon. I am tired of relying on my cell phone, sometimes I just want to throw it out a window. But I can't. The world these days wants everyone tied to a tether of some sort or another and most of the time that leash is invisible.

Sometimes, a cell can be useful, especially when you are down in the Bowery and you need someone to be a backup for a concert when the person your with doesn't have proper ID even with a student ID. I called about 5 people before I found someone(s) to be a backup. Needless to say, my friend was able to get in and the someones as well. The security guard was actually nice.
Nonetheless, I really do wish that I did not have to rely on it so much.

I had recently established a pattern for the week:

Count for 4.5 days and that is I when I do not go to work. Count for 2.5 and that is when I do.

Given that I am only on some sort of schedule for half of the week, and that my mother is not on vacation yet so she can remind me to clean my room and tell me what day of the week it is, I have been quite out of character for the past few weeks. Even to the point of being slovenly. Granted, me being slovenly only amounts to not making my bed in the morning and having a few random things strewn across my desk because I like to switch my bag in accordance with my outfit or my mood and hence, I have to empty the previous bag and leave a few things out if the bag isn't big enough. (I cannot carry my iPod, cell phone, wallet, various little miscellany that a girl always carries, a book to read AND my humongous planner in my green bag).

In short, I like bags. I like to carry stuff in my bags. I like to feel that I have what I need (band-aids, gum, bottle of water, tylenol, etc. etc.) in case I come across an ailment as I pound the pavement in my inter-borough travels. My pencilcase is a microcosm of my theory of bags: highlighters, colored pens, pencils, mini-stapler, you name it I have it. In high school, my nickname was "Staples" for very good reason.

So me being a mess. In London, my room was pristine with a very big P. My flatmates and friends were aghast at the organization. My textbooks were in order according to size and category. I do the same thing with my closet - organize by type, then style, color, and fabric. It helps keep my sweaters in order.

But recently?

My desk has been an utter disaster. Seriously. More so than usual; during finals time my room does lapse, especially my desk. Sometimes I will just stack my papers and journal articles neatly and just deal with it after finals. Every semester, when my mom starts to look in my room - she usually doesn't, as she knows that my room is a mess only when I don't have time to clean it due to schoolwork - I have to remind her of the deal we made back in freshman year: Leave me and my room alone during the second week of December and the second week of May and there will be no harm done to either party and I will tidy and reorganize in the third week of December and May when the madness is done. That is all I ask for.

As you can probably surmise, my mother is a neat freak. It has rubbed off on me (ALOT, I can be really anal-retentive when it comes to ordering my textbooks in size order. My 3rd-grade teacher told my mother at Parent-Teacher Conference that I had the neatest desk in the class because of my ordering the textbooks on one side, workbooks and notebooks on the other in accordance to size and category). But my dad is an utter slob so I have a bit of that too.

However, being really organized does pay off, given the profession that I want to go into. I like tidy offices. I also like tidy offices that look really nice and have character. My favorite professor's office was my Global Inequalities professor back in Fall '05 - not only did she have everything organized - even binders in accordance with the class she was teaching to keep materials in check - but she even had a side table with a cute little lamp next to the chair that students sit next to. And she even had a bulletin board! Those rock. I'm going to try and get myself one of those (or even the bits of cork) in my room in Kyoto.

But back to my disaster of a desk. Little papers and receipts strewn over the desk, 600-page novels stacked upon my laptop (obviously not a good idea, but this is the laptop that I am ready to chuck and the novels are in paperback so it's not an issue). iPod and cell phone chargers, cell phone headset and other miscellaneous wires for my digital camera, Mel's dad's digital photo printer, etc. I should take a photo of my desk and put it on Flickr with notes, just like how people take photos of what's in their bag and post it on Flickr. Everything tells a story, so long as you have a narrator to tell it.

I feel like I have just woken out of a reverie - or maybe a mental vacation? - and I finally tidied up my desk before I went to the Cat Empire concert on Tuesday down at the Bowery.

So I have been working on getting my act together. I am an "adult" now, so I have to keep track of the days - both the date and the day of the week.

That means I have to put the twenty-odd textbooks that are totally irrelevant on Half.com for sale.

And empty out my desk.

Those "little things" certainly do pile up.