Went out to vaulting BCs yesterday in chilliwack and got to see cyd there competing with her team, which was great--she is getting so grown up and she did really well! Everyone came and so we all got to see her which was cool :) Vaulting was great too--I didn't get to compete, but i did get up on a barrel and mess around a bit in jeans, including a couple of back tuck dismounts (can't wait to be adding the 1/2 twist to that!) and talked to susan about starting to vault with sky soon :)
Spent this morning playing with Toby's new bday present I proxied from Peter...so fun! It's a big 8x10 foot foam floor thingy with a hockey rink painted on it, and then a set of blowup boards and nets so you can have a great game of miniature indoor floor hockey going! Other than that, not too much--just staying here and trying to work.. I feel like I procrastinated all weekend, but I guess I did get a fair amount done:
street snaps layout, last 40 pages of crash changes inputted and ready for potential submission, japanese lesson, assignment, recording and quiz, reading of 2 articles for cmns 110, a chapter for anthro, the rough draft of an essay for humanities, reading an article for cmns 130, and half of the subsequent analysis... about to round that out with some reading of wuthering heights which should set me up nicely for bed :)
hope everyone is well!
xo
d
Monday, September 24, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Well, amazingly, I've been back for a month. Actually, I'm not sure why that's amazing, but I haven't been blogging much at all since I got back, so maybe the fact that I'm blogging at all is what's amazing (or, more likely, you're all going, "No...not again")
Regardless, I got home a month and a day ago and in a lot of ways, it feels as though it was
a year ago. I was thinking about it yesterday and its really no wonder I feel a bit disjointed these days and no idea for which city I should be homesick--this newest place marks four cities in two countries and on two continents in which I have lived in the last 2 years... For someone who doesn't like change, the relative chaos is fairly impressive! (For those keeping track: Toronto (September 05-April 06), Victoria (April 06-October 06), Tokyo (October 06-August 07), Vancouver (September 07-present). That's kind of cool actually!
Its too bad transfer credits are such a bitch to do properly, or I could knock London and San Francisco off my list on my way back to Tokyo...hmmm (no, no, I can hear you all groaning from all corners, but I need to stay on track here!!)
School is going fine, and once again, I'm lucky to be in such a great situation living wise--It's fun having my 'own' place, more than ever before actually, and of course having family upstairs cuts down on the lonely!
I'm taking 5 courses, Japanese by correspondence (its a bit weird, cause I've done the first half of the course, quite literally (I was using this textbook in Japan!), but I don't know enough to go into 110, so I'm spending time procrastinating on a Japanese kanji website until my class catches up, which will be in just a couple of weeks now (how sad is that!) The kanji, incedentally, equally infuriates (so let me get this straight, I need to learn two readings, several meanings, a bunch of strokes, and who knows what else for each of them?!) and thrills ('big' 大+ 'learning'学=university大学? how cool is that!!) me.
Other classes include Communications 110, Communications 130 (so far, nearly one and the same despite both professing to be vastly different!), Humanities 101 (HARD readings, but really interesting, cool prof), and Anthropology, which is very interesting as well... So that's all good, it would be a bit of a big(er) mess if I hated my classes!
Anyway, I'm off to bed, but there's a very short round up of what I'm up too... I really need to start exploring more soon! I haven't been ANYWHERE yet, which is ridiculous! But one step at a time, I suppose... off to UBC tommorow for coffee with a friend and a long work day, I have so much I want to get done! (Because, as my CMNS 130 prof so astutely put is, "days are for getting stuff done") Good to know!
mata ne!
xo
d
PS - if I didn't post them already, some photos of SFU/my apartment
Regardless, I got home a month and a day ago and in a lot of ways, it feels as though it was
a year ago. I was thinking about it yesterday and its really no wonder I feel a bit disjointed these days and no idea for which city I should be homesick--this newest place marks four cities in two countries and on two continents in which I have lived in the last 2 years... For someone who doesn't like change, the relative chaos is fairly impressive! (For those keeping track: Toronto (September 05-April 06), Victoria (April 06-October 06), Tokyo (October 06-August 07), Vancouver (September 07-present). That's kind of cool actually!
Its too bad transfer credits are such a bitch to do properly, or I could knock London and San Francisco off my list on my way back to Tokyo...hmmm (no, no, I can hear you all groaning from all corners, but I need to stay on track here!!)
School is going fine, and once again, I'm lucky to be in such a great situation living wise--It's fun having my 'own' place, more than ever before actually, and of course having family upstairs cuts down on the lonely!
I'm taking 5 courses, Japanese by correspondence (its a bit weird, cause I've done the first half of the course, quite literally (I was using this textbook in Japan!), but I don't know enough to go into 110, so I'm spending time procrastinating on a Japanese kanji website until my class catches up, which will be in just a couple of weeks now (how sad is that!) The kanji, incedentally, equally infuriates (so let me get this straight, I need to learn two readings, several meanings, a bunch of strokes, and who knows what else for each of them?!) and thrills ('big' 大+ 'learning'学=university大学? how cool is that!!) me.
Other classes include Communications 110, Communications 130 (so far, nearly one and the same despite both professing to be vastly different!), Humanities 101 (HARD readings, but really interesting, cool prof), and Anthropology, which is very interesting as well... So that's all good, it would be a bit of a big(er) mess if I hated my classes!
Anyway, I'm off to bed, but there's a very short round up of what I'm up too... I really need to start exploring more soon! I haven't been ANYWHERE yet, which is ridiculous! But one step at a time, I suppose... off to UBC tommorow for coffee with a friend and a long work day, I have so much I want to get done! (Because, as my CMNS 130 prof so astutely put is, "days are for getting stuff done") Good to know!
mata ne!
xo
d
PS - if I didn't post them already, some photos of SFU/my apartment
Saturday, September 08, 2007
A mixi message; in three parts:
1. What I wrote:
こんばんわ！げんきです？はい、わたっはのほんごはべんきょします、でも、むすかしいでしょ！あなたのしゅうまつたのしですか？またね！
2. What I think it *might* vaguely mean:
Good evening! Are you well? Yes, I'm studying Japanese, but it's hard, yes? Was your weekend fun? Talk to you later!
3. What Altavista's Babelfish thinks I said:
It is dense, it is, it is the わ! The げ it is going back and forth? It is, the わ it is the ほ it is the べ it is the sewer does the っ, with, the む it does tilting, it does, the ょ! Your palpus well it is it is the present? In addition don't you think?!
Oh dear God!
d
1. What I wrote:
こんばんわ！げんきです？はい、わたっはのほんごはべんきょします、でも、むすかしいでしょ！あなたのしゅうまつたのしですか？またね！
2. What I think it *might* vaguely mean:
Good evening! Are you well? Yes, I'm studying Japanese, but it's hard, yes? Was your weekend fun? Talk to you later!
3. What Altavista's Babelfish thinks I said:
It is dense, it is, it is the わ! The げ it is going back and forth? It is, the わ it is the ほ it is the べ it is the sewer does the っ, with, the む it does tilting, it does, the ょ! Your palpus well it is it is the present? In addition don't you think?!
Oh dear God!
d
Monday, September 03, 2007
Pecha Kucha Night, which you should all be familiar from due to several blogs of fun nights at Super Deluxe, turned up at the top of my gmail news stream today-sugoi!
From Wired News.
(in part):
Let us now bullet-point our praise for Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, two Tokyo-based architects who have turned PowerPoint, that fixture of cubicle life, into both art form and competitive sport. Their innovation, dubbed pecha-kucha (Japanese for "chatter"), applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That's it. Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate clich into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.
From Wired News.
(in part):
Let us now bullet-point our praise for Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, two Tokyo-based architects who have turned PowerPoint, that fixture of cubicle life, into both art form and competitive sport. Their innovation, dubbed pecha-kucha (Japanese for "chatter"), applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That's it. Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate clich into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Moving towards my last couple of nights in Victoria, which is a bit weird, except that I'm coming home on Thursday anyway, so I'm not too concerned about it-I started looking for where my classes and everything are, of course, Tuesday had to be the only day when I have an 8:30 class, and I only have a vague idea of where I'm going, but that's ok! It will be an adventure!
Just discovered its almost a 3 hour trip from SFU to the ferries though, that's a bit crap!
Spent the day working on mom's website while she worked on Crash for me, and then we went down to the barn and she got on Ringo a couple of times while I pretty continuously fed him bits of carrots. He was more interested in where his next carrot chunk was coming from than anything, which was good!
Came back up to the house and had a quick chat with Helen before heading downtown to meet Mayu for dinner. we both agreed that it was very weird to see each other here in Victoria and that it felt like we were in tokyo rather than here. It's quite funny as she can't understand why I'm so desperate to go back to Japan, and I can't understand why she makes yearly pilgrimages to Vancouver and really misses it there ;) We had a good time though--went to Earl's and sat at the bar, where I had to cough up 2 pieces of photo id in order to get a diet coke! Random!
Anyway, back home now, around 11pm, and waiting to get some final work to do on BAB before sending it over for the final time... Mom and grampa have gone to a movie I think, so it's all very quiet around here...
Anyway, mata ne!
xo
d
Just discovered its almost a 3 hour trip from SFU to the ferries though, that's a bit crap!
Spent the day working on mom's website while she worked on Crash for me, and then we went down to the barn and she got on Ringo a couple of times while I pretty continuously fed him bits of carrots. He was more interested in where his next carrot chunk was coming from than anything, which was good!
Came back up to the house and had a quick chat with Helen before heading downtown to meet Mayu for dinner. we both agreed that it was very weird to see each other here in Victoria and that it felt like we were in tokyo rather than here. It's quite funny as she can't understand why I'm so desperate to go back to Japan, and I can't understand why she makes yearly pilgrimages to Vancouver and really misses it there ;) We had a good time though--went to Earl's and sat at the bar, where I had to cough up 2 pieces of photo id in order to get a diet coke! Random!
Anyway, back home now, around 11pm, and waiting to get some final work to do on BAB before sending it over for the final time... Mom and grampa have gone to a movie I think, so it's all very quiet around here...
Anyway, mata ne!
xo
d
As I'm sure most of you have figured out--I'm back in BC!
I wasn't blogging because I knew it would be super grumpy, and I didn't want that, so, suffice it to say that I'm homesick, if that's what you call it after livisiting...'second'homesick? maybe? Anyway, I am SO happy I'm still working on BAB since that kind of keeps me connected to Tokyo, and of course with skype, facebook, msn, email, etc. they really can't escape me!
It was great to see everyone when I came home, of course, and I've actually done fairly well in terms of catching up with people...two weeks was a nice amount of time to be home, and then I'll be back for weekends anyway, so that's nice!
Things that were weird when I came home:
Tipping (was *this* close to not tipping but luckily the TIP: thing was on the receipt so I remembered...I probably wouldn't have had I paid cash...
Tax-which should be built in! (I got SO confused the first day at Starbucks because the tax wasn't built in, and I had the change all counted out, but then of course the price changed, and I was all flustered and had yen and CDN mixed together and it took me forever to pay--I think she thought I was hungover or something)
The number of questions I get asked when, for instance, ordering fast food. It begs the question: "Are things just simpler in Japan, or do they simply not bother to try it on with me?"
How freaking empty it is!!!!!!!!!
How early everything closes!!!!!!
Sketchy dudes in dumpsters, violent news, being worried about me and my schtuff (sux!)
Highlights of the trip back:
seeing mom and grampa, hanging out with navina and planning with joey ;)
vaulting!!!!! (they got a great new horse called Kit--I'm a big fan! She's a registered canadian warmblood--a TB/Holsteiner X or something like that...very cool, I like her a lot!)
gymnastics!!!!! (I started working on an arabian, which is a back tuck with a half twist), and also got my back tucks off beam back
hanging out at bolens--I can read all the books!
seeing David and Sue up here; finally!
working for BAB
I still miss Tokyo A LOT though! best trip/experience ever!
xo
d
I wasn't blogging because I knew it would be super grumpy, and I didn't want that, so, suffice it to say that I'm homesick, if that's what you call it after livisiting...'second'homesick? maybe? Anyway, I am SO happy I'm still working on BAB since that kind of keeps me connected to Tokyo, and of course with skype, facebook, msn, email, etc. they really can't escape me!
It was great to see everyone when I came home, of course, and I've actually done fairly well in terms of catching up with people...two weeks was a nice amount of time to be home, and then I'll be back for weekends anyway, so that's nice!
Things that were weird when I came home:
Tipping (was *this* close to not tipping but luckily the TIP: thing was on the receipt so I remembered...I probably wouldn't have had I paid cash...
Tax-which should be built in! (I got SO confused the first day at Starbucks because the tax wasn't built in, and I had the change all counted out, but then of course the price changed, and I was all flustered and had yen and CDN mixed together and it took me forever to pay--I think she thought I was hungover or something)
The number of questions I get asked when, for instance, ordering fast food. It begs the question: "Are things just simpler in Japan, or do they simply not bother to try it on with me?"
How freaking empty it is!!!!!!!!!
How early everything closes!!!!!!
Sketchy dudes in dumpsters, violent news, being worried about me and my schtuff (sux!)
Highlights of the trip back:
seeing mom and grampa, hanging out with navina and planning with joey ;)
vaulting!!!!! (they got a great new horse called Kit--I'm a big fan! She's a registered canadian warmblood--a TB/Holsteiner X or something like that...very cool, I like her a lot!)
gymnastics!!!!! (I started working on an arabian, which is a back tuck with a half twist), and also got my back tucks off beam back
hanging out at bolens--I can read all the books!
seeing David and Sue up here; finally!
working for BAB
I still miss Tokyo A LOT though! best trip/experience ever!
xo
d
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