59 slides later...

July 25: Presentation Tomorrow

This morning I got up and ate dorm breakfast of natto with okra, gobo (burdock root), and miso soup and rice.  I am getting to quite like natto mornings, not because I actually like the flavour (although it's totally fine for me now), but because those little beans apparently pack an appalling amount of energy.  When it's natto for breakfast, I'm never very hungry by lunch, which is kind of a wierd experience. O_O  At the SAME STOP as the LIVE FOR SPEED lady, a guy got on with a shirt that said "SCOTLAND: They speak of my drinking, but never of my thirst."  It had fleur-de-lis all over it. >_<  I am going to have to keep my eyes open whenever people get on at Takegawa, as it has spawned some rather entertaining moments...

I got to work and spent all day just doing stuff with my presentation and trying to learn Variational Inference.  It's kind of hard to go into more detail, because all I did was read formulae from a textbook and tinker with graphs in my slides pretty much all day.  I honestly have no idea how the day passed so quickly doing that, but pass it did.  At lunch I ate tan-tan-men again, which is somewhat akin to Aka-Oni Ramen, but not as good (as it's made by the company cafeteria).  At least I know what to look for when I eat ramen somewhere that might do it well!  At lunch my coworkers were asking me all kinds of details about my upcoming trip to Kyoto, but I knew absolutely nothing, because Kabutoya-san did not give me any info until later in the day. >_<  I didn't even know how long I was going for, or really what I would be doing there, aside from something to do with "the topic of my research".  Oh well, they didn't seem to mind haha.

I played handiball, and my shoulder feels juuuust about better.  I hope I can start doing overhead serves again, so people will actually pass to me again!  I decided to stop "casually mentioning" that nothing hurt except for serving, since it clearly wasn't doing much good. D:<

In the afternoon I found out not that much more about the Kyoto trip, other than that the Shinkansen fare is covered by the company, it will be on Friday, I will not be staying overnight, and there is a researcher named with the last name Iwata that works with Kabutoya-san there that we will speak with, which is the reason for our trip.  I am also apparently going to proofread Kabutoya-san's new paper, as it's in English, and Kabutoya-san doesn't like using the company's professional technical writer, as apparently you just give him your paper and he gives you something back later, with almost zero communication in between. D:  Sounds dangerous...

I am kind of glad that I am wishing every day that I didn't effectively skip my entire Multivariable Calculus and Introduction to Probability and Statistics courses.  Cramming and getting ugly, ugly B-'s that are 20% below my average was unfortunately not really enough to teach me to stop, but I feel like this sort of constant regret that I didn't really learn the material, and thus am struggling with it at work right now (not that anyone seems to be complaining >_<), is something I will be able to draw on to discourage myself from skipping in the future. D:  Oh well, lesson learned, hopefully.

After work I walked home, and once again mourned my inability to bring a proper camera, as the forest in the valley beside the office was once again misty and gorgeous in the sunset.  D:  I walked by some literal cottage-industry, as I noticed in the window of a small room detached from the larger house on a property I walked by, that a man was inside sitting on a tatami floor and making what appeared to be furniture with hand tools.  Whoa. O_O  That must cost a fortune, either that or it's for him and he's just saving money (though definitely not any time).

I ate dinner at the dorm, consisting of cold soba in a ramen bowl with boiled chicken and seaweed, along with some gyoza and rice (no miso soup, yo-dawg avoided).  I actually went out and got a frozen dessert the other day, which comes with a rather... underwhelming story that I am nonetheless going to share with you.  Basically I was in LAWSON STATION to pick up katsu-don on the "weekend", and I saw the chest of frozen desserts, and was like "OH YES MUST EAT RIGHT NOW!!!".  I was perusing the selection, and saw a bar labelled "Vanilla", to which, and it still evades me how I could possibly have this bad of a brain fart, I thought "Oh man!  A VANILLA bar?  I wonder what that tastes like!"

...

It tastes like VANILLA ICE CREAM, RJ!  THAT IS WHAT VANILLA ICE CREAM BARS TASTE LIKE!  Somehow I completely missed the fact that vanilla is like, you know, THE standard flavour of ice cream, and that I do indeed know what it tastes like.  I got home and put it in my ice bucket and was like "... did I just get excited and curious about a bar entirely composed of vanilla ice cream and purchase it?"  Yes.  Yes I did.  Oh well it tasted pretty good (it's ice cream, derp). ;D  The next day I tried a frozen Calpis dessert that I thought was going to be a frozen yogurt Calpis bar, but turned out to be just frozen Calpis in a plastic bottle/tube. >_<  Steeerike two!

I was GOING to watch GSL semi-finals after dinner, but both of the losers got their teeth kicked in 3-0, and so I actually only caught the last game. D:  Oh well, I was able to do more productive things with my time, like browse TL. >_<  I actually remembered to blog early today, so I may actually get to bed early tonight (famous last words).  In either case, that's all I've got left to write, so I will depart for now.