Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Valentine's Day and some random ramblesome updates

Well, I get to see the boy this weekend and that will be Valentine's-y enough for me, I think. The dining hall had decorate-your-own-cookies that were super tasty. I have one stashed for tomorrow...

In Japan (as far as I have learned) on Valentine's Day, girls give boys chocolate. Apparently giriCHOKO is also sometimes given to teachers? (Obligatory chocolate heh) This wasn't made perfectly clear, but the vocab is handy and cute. A month later on White Day, boys reciprocate.

So the week is speeding by as they generally will, which is good. I'm still having trouble with my throat/nose. I think I will get some stuff at the store tomorrow, since I need more cereal anyhow. So I'm going to the store...and I'm also going to try to finish my film studies major paperwork!!! (Finally.)

Tonight at work I barely got any reading done. I love the book, but sometimes it's really hard to concentrate on. I get lost in Holland's struggles with Napoleon or something.

I should brush my teeth and do math and Japanese. I can put off the reading until tomorrow, I suppose.

Sanshiro is still really great. I'm so happy to be reading such stimulating fiction. At least, I find it stimulating. Back when I was trying to read I am a Cat (which I will return to someday when I actually have time to read. I hate when I start something and get too side-tracked by mandatory other stuff. <--A perfect example of a moment where I begin to feel as though I disagree more and more with prescriptive punctuation. I wonder, do people even speak of prescriptive and descriptive punctuation? If not, let the dialogue begin, because I feel that I would like to advocate on behalf the descriptive. After all, the written language is meant to convey spoken words, not just be cute. I don't think commas are all that cute in any case. Commas are pauses, so we should use them when we actually pause. I think I've started doing that, at least in my online writings and the original usage is starting to slip from my mind. It's sad on one hand, but on the other hand, it really makes more sense. We'll see...)

Other news:

I found a massive bibliography for my new annotated bibliography topic (Japanese Education, which obviously needs to be focused a bit narrower, but I'm going to take a look at some sources first.) I also realized that the online library catalogue will show you ALL the books we have on any specific topic, so I have a huge list of things to go check out (and perhaps check out ;p)

Next week, the National Japanese Debate Team is going to be here debating against Pacific. The topic is, "Should the Japanese military take a more active goal in international peacekeeping?" Does this mean that ACTUAL Japanese students are FLYING over here FROM Japan to debate? That would be really cool. In either case, I'm attending. Sounds interesting. I definitely enjoy a good debate. They're also having dinner. It's semi-formal, and I don't really have any good clothes, but I have...pseudo-semi-formal, so I guess that will have to do.

School is doing a production of The Mikado, which apparently can be described as "Pacific Students pretending to be British pretending to be Japanese" and also as a "good way to see all the stereotypes." Hmm...well, I'll probably end up going. Maybe it will be on a weekend where I can get the boy out here.

Math test on Friday. That class got harder, and I just found out yesterday that the guy who scheduled my tutor did it wrong, so I don't have one. She doesn't do that subject and the lady who does doesn't work with my time slots. *sigh*

To end on an up note, because I'm trying to be upbeat even though I sort of am in a funk, I have been playing Kingdom of Loathing and it's VERY silly! ^_^

1 comment:

Xavier said...

I agree. commas are places where you put pauses. and sometimes you don't pause before and even if you introduce a new subject, but whatev.

that mikado thing sounds really interesting. I like how it sounds. pac students acting as british students/people(?), who pretent to be Japanese students/people(?). That's a new punc. too. the parentheses Question mark :D And when you end in an emoticon you don't have to put a period. or do you?? :D in question marks the emoticon goes after the mark and in periods i think it would go before. lol!

the whole playing as a what playing as a what. sounds so shakespearean. like a male actor playing a female role who in the play is pretending to be male, but then as a male pretends to be female also. i forgot what play that was, but it was one of them. and it's just crazilly insane. how do the audience or the actor himself/herself(?) keep it straight?