you don't meet nice girls in coffee shops
April 10, 2013 (水)
Q: A chore you ignored today ___________.
A: Dishes. No time and there is only a bowl and a spoon dirty anyway.
April 11, 2013 (木)
Q: What sound effect are you most like today?
A: A yawn. (Is that a sound effect?) I'm tired.
April 12, 2013 (金)
Q: Write down a new fact you recently learned.
A: That in some parts of the U.S. and Europe, sitting cross-legged is called "tailor sitting".
April 13, 2013 (土)
Q: What is your favorite thing to do on a Sunday morning?
A: When I was younger it was lying in the sun with the cats and reading the comics.
April 14, 2013 (日)
Q: If you could acquire a talent (without any extra effort), what would it be?
A: Learning languages. How great would it be to just be able to pick up a language with no effort?
April 15, 2013 (月)
Q: Which celebrity would you want to interview?
A: Meh. Can't think of one. I'd rather just read interviews (if I'm that interested). Well, okay, so maybe Nathan Fillion would be cool...
Random Ramble:
Boy these are becoming frequent....I guess I have a lot that swims around in my head some days. (Doesn't everyone, though?) Today, I have three things.
1)Ever since my friend Anne recommended
this video, I watch it about once a month. I think it really hits a lot of nails on the head. It kind of fits in with one of my favorite Baz Luhrman quotes: "Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life...The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't."
I've been thinking about this stuff a lot recently as I take a look at my own life and at those around me. I find it really interesting how things change over time - how people change and sometimes, consequently, life paths. It's kind of exciting, if you think about it. What's next? Hopefully good things, or at least things that can be made the best of.
I also recently learned that someone has come up with a word for something I often do:
sonder. This all comes out here because recently I've been asked by people about what I will do next after my contract here ends. It's strange that when I first decided to go back to school, I was really excited, but I became less so the more I thought about leaving Japan and this life that I've become accustomed to. I talked about it to people with almost a sense of regret - as if I had somehow failed and that was why I was moving back to the U.S. But then something changed. I told one of my mentors here in Japan about my plans and he got so excited about it that I suddenly felt excited again. He didn't say that it was too bad I was leaving Japan - he was just simply excited for me. I had another similar conversation with the principal of one of the schools I go to - he was so interested and excited for me that I felt really glad to be changing. To be moving on. To not be stopping.
And...just because
this is soothing to listen to.
2) One of the things I really enjoy about learning Japanese is that the kanji to words sometimes really adds depth and a kind of poetry to words. Today I learned the Japanese word for regret. It's "kokoronokori". The kanji for regret is 心残り . The first kanji means "heart" or "mind" and the second kanji means "to be left over" "to remain".
3) I have an aquarium here. I started it in my first year to brighten up my days and to have something to take care of since I'm not allowed pets and the coldness of my house in the winter would probably kill most plants (or send my heating bill through the roof!). I have had two cleaner fish for most of that time (sadly, Admiral Boom died the first time I cleaned the tank): a
zebra loach and an
algae eater. Both of these fish have stuck with me through thick and thin.
The algae eater had its fins so badly eaten by a zealous male platy (a true bully that I felt no remorse for flushing after I had had enough) that one of them didn't even grow back (not even a stub left) and one of the fins that did is misshapen.
One time, the zebra loach tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the bucket I had put the fish in while cleaning the aquarium. I found him sticking to the carpet (who knows how long he had been there!) and thought he was dead, but when I pulled him off the carpet he moved, so I put him back in the bucket (just in case) and he has been alive and kicking (well, swimming, in this case) ever since.
Anyway - these two have formed a fast friendship. Sometimes I catch the loach letting the algae eater clean him. Today I saw that the algae eater has picked up a habit peculiar to loaches - sleeping on its side. I know that they are fish and maybe there isn't such a thing as friendship, but I think that these two might have the closest approximation. I'm actually a bit worried because this morning I saw that the loach had some kind of infection on its skin. Luckily, I have some medicine, but I am worried that I might not have seen it until it's too late. The loach and algae eater are pretty secretive (and I've given them plenty of hiding places), so I'm not sure how long it has had the infection...
Labels: Random Ramble, Today's Question