September 24: Happy Birthday Mom!
Whew, I've got a couple of days to catch up on, don't I? Good thing I didn't do much ahahaha!
Tuesday was pretty uneventful. Kabutoya-san took the day off, but I wasn't affected much by it, as I was just working on my paper. I am most certainly in the Related Work section now, which means I have to read a billion papers to check whether or not they are actually related to my work. Fun times... >_< There weren't enough people to play handiball, so I had to just go back to my seat after eating. D:
On Wednesday, I was woken up by an announcement being played through loudspeakers that are distributed by the area saying there was a flood warning due to heavy rain. O_O I am glad they had English, but the Japanese version said a lot more that I couldn't understand. D: I got up and wandered around the halls a little until I ran into someone who walked blearily to the bathroom, went pee, and then went back to bed. Since the announcement was quite audible the whole time, I took that to mean that it was safe to do so. >_< I went back to sleep and was actually able to sleep quite well until about 11, when I realized my bed was floati-- no I'm just kidding. ;D I had to use my sleeping bag when, well, sleeping, because the typ(h)oon dropped the temperature down to like, 23.8 according to my clock. Holy crap! Even as of this writing it's still only 25, which makes me very, very happy.
I didn't do too much on Wednesday, as the typ(h)oon was actually quite scary. The wind was whipping all the foliage I could see all over the place, and huuuuge sheets of rain were FLYING practically sideways. It was quite impressive, and I'm glad that my dorm appears to be well-suited to deal with typhoons. No rattling, creaking or leaking whatsoever. The rain had stopped by the time I went out to go get dinner, but the wind was so strong and the power lines were whipping around so crazily that I decided that scurrying to LAWSON STATION and hiding back in my room was in order. The ramen place that's a 20 minute walk away will have to wait. D: Seriously though, the wind was gusting stronger than I ever recall happening up at the front of the ferry, and it was switching direction all over the place. Quite a neat experience, though I was crossing my fingers whenever I went near any power lines. Thank goodness my Internet didn't cut out. :D
On Thursday I voice chatted with Mom and Jiuna in the morning for an unusually long time before setting out for the day. I actually made a long stop in Yokohama to try to pick up a pre-paid cell phone for Dad and Linda (and later Mom and Jiuna) from the Soft Bank near Yokohama Station, but I left empty handed. They have English sales representatives, which is nice, but the experience of taking a ticket, explaining what I wanted, getting told which model I wanted and the price, waiting for at least 20 minutes, and then going up to the counter after my number was called and having the lady say "Oh sorry... we're actually sold out of the 1900円 one, but we've got the 7000円 one in stock. Do you want that one?" was less than pleasant. Um, no way betch! I know it wasn't her fault, and I was pretty successful at remaining pleasant, but when she asked me if I wanted the 7000円 model instead, I'm pretty sure my voice went quite flat while saying "That would completely defeat the purpose." Oh well, when Dad and Linda are here, we can try looking in other stores if it's convenient.
I went from Yokohama to Akiba after that to try to pick up something for Jiuna, but I was unsuccessful, and only managed to buy something for myself again. >_< I'm pretty bad at this "personal shopper" thing... I had left so late and I had spent so much time in Yokohama that after looking for Jiuna's request and eating dinner (I ate katsu-curry at Katsu-ya instead of Meryl Streep), I only had time for two rounds of ESP Galuda and a round of Mushihime before I had to go home. I left earlier, because I wanted to have some wiggle room in case the typ(h)oon caused some delays or something.
Yesterday was also quite uneventful. I am up to 13 references, but that is not nearly enough, judging by how many Kabutoya-san's paper that he gave me as a sample has. For some reason DBLP (a giant online paper database) was on the fritz yesterday and today, which severely impeded my reference-hunting. I hope it's better tomorrow, because determining people's names by Google searches and then trial-and-error typing them into a plausible DBLP URL is somewhat tedious (though it works waaay better than it could, let me just say that). Yesterday for lunch I had delicious kimchi on some not-so-delicious fried rice. >_< Since the kimchi amounted to a whole four pieces, I think I will refrain from getting that one in the future. It was hella cheap though! But so not worth it. D: I played badminton with Kurauchi-san, because we again did not have enough people for handiball.
Today was, surprise, uneventful! I got up on time and ate dorm breakfast that was uncharacteristically small. D: For some reason it lasted until lunch though, so I guess I can't complain. For lunch I had wasabi chicken, and I finally got a large piece! I think I got it because Kurauchi-san was in front of me in line, but didn't get wasabi chicken. I'll have to follow him around and get stuff that he doesn't from now on... It was pretty good, and a welcome departure from hiyashi wakame ramen (that I miraculously still like). Today we played handiball again, hooray! I was terrible. D: Oh well, I don't have another game until the 7th, so I've got time to become un-terrible again, hopefully. In terms of actual work, my related work actually looks somewhat logical, but the problem I am having now is finding another aspect of my model to expound upon in terms of related work. I need more references, but I am not sure how to keep talking to get the space to make more citations. >_< I read over my paper a couple of times to try to suss out places to put more citations, but I think I'm good on that front, unfortunately. Oh well. At the end of the day I found more papers I actually want to reference, but I'm not sure how to go about using them without going on at length about a rather small detail of my model haha.
I think the people at the Yokosan are on to me. They must have caught on to my enormous grapefruit consumption habits, as the cheaper bags' grapefruits have been getting smaller and smaller, and the individual ones have been getting larger and larger, or at least that's how it seems... I have switched over to the larger ones, and am not regretting it so far. The small ones were seriously the size of a large orange this time, and they looked pretty ugly to boot.
At the dorm, supper was curry rice! It actually tasted quite a lot like how Mom makes it, which is strange because prior to now, I thought her style was unique (even though she SAYS she just follows the directions on the package). I got to chat with Yasu-san (the guy who did an exchange trip to Waterloo), which was neat. We talked about Japanese television and about how much Americans love guns.
Anyways, now that I've caught up in blogging, it's time to go to bed! One thing that I am very sad to have brought with me from Canada are my sleeping habits. >_< I need like, a shock collar for myself or something to help me learn to go to bed. D:<
Night!
No comments:
Post a Comment